The Last Cruise

by Neith Boyce

 

The
LAST CRUISE

By
NEITH BOYCE

IN the last resort it was the fault of the Fat Man. Of course, after the gale that struck us on the way up from Boston, and blew a couple of holes in our jib, we should have put into Green Harbor anyway. But if it hadn't been for the Fat Man, we wouldn't have gone near the hotel, and then we wouldn't have met Edith Wayland.

Jim let the Fat Man come, against my bitter protest. And, of course, it was Jim's boat—though, after cruising three summers in her, and spending a month in painting her and varnishing her spars when Jim was too busy to get down to the yard, I was pretty nearly as fond of her as he was. And she was a beauty, was the Lorelei, and dressed out like a lady, thanks to nearly all Jim's spare cash.

She had a way of going through his pockets that no spouse could have bettered. Now it was a new suit of sails that she positively must have, or it was new riding lights, or her cabin must be done over; she could get anything she wanted out of Jim. But I will say for the siren that she amply repaid in pleasure all she cost us in time and money. Oh, I was daft about her as well as Jim. And that was one reason I hated to have the Fat Man along—he doesn't know the mainsheet from the tops'l clewline.

He came on board in yachting clothes, with a suit case and a bunch of fancy canned stuff. I prayed ardently that we might get some weather for his benefit. And we got it all right. We got twenty-four hours of it.

When the squall struck us, Jim and I were busy with the sheets. We thought the Fat Man could hold the tiller, but he howled he was seasick, and when a wave hit him he let go and tumbled into the bottom of the boat, and we jolly near capsized. We kicked him into the cabin, and there he stayed till we ran into Green Harbor. He was a piteous spectacle when we dragged him out. “You've killed me,” he moaned. And we had to row him in to the hotel and put him to bed.

The porch was full of women, in rocking-chairs and all along the rails, and we were sneaking through—we looked pretty tough, in wet clothes, and not having slept all night—when I heard somebody say: “Why, Mr. Wilson, is it you?”

It was a nice, soft voice, and she was a nice-looking girl, with neat-looking hair—kind of crinkly, brown hair—and awfully white teeth, which she showed as she smiled at Jim, and a ship-shape white dress. Seeing Jim was pinched, I loped along and escaped.

He joined me at the pier, and said the girl was a friend of his sister's, and had been at their house, though he hadn't remembered it until she told him so, or even her name, which was Edith Wayland. By way of apology, he had said to her that Prissy always had such a lot of girls about, one coming and another going. And she had laughed and said that he mustn't stand there talking in wet clothes, but he must come in and see her before we left, and tell her all about dear Prissy. And Jim, being rather rattled, with the whole porchful of females staring at him, had promised—so he said.

Well, it cleared off beautiful and warm, and we dried the sails and our clothes, and cleaned up the boat, and slept some. We attracted quite a lot of attention in the harbor; there wasn't anything around that could touch the Lorelei for smartness.

The next morning I got to work at the brasses, while Jim went ashore for supplies. He said he'd stop at the hotel and see how the Fat Man was, and make his call on Miss Wayland, as we expected to pull out the next day. It seems he found the Fat Man sitting on the veranda, the center of an admiring crowd of old maids, to whom he was relating our hairbreadth escape from drowning, and how he had saved our lives by his coolness at a critical moment. He shut up when he saw Jim.

Jim asked him when he was coming on board, and he said that his exertions and being wet through had brought on his rheumatism so that he would be compelled to stay behind for a few days, but we must pick him up on our way back. “Good riddance,” said I, knowing that wild sea horses couldn't drag him back to the Lorelei, and little thinking that I was in for something much worse than he.

Then Jim had gone and hunted up Miss Wayland, who was on the tennis court, and stayed to play a set with her; and then she walked around with him while he bought the supplies, and came down to the pier with him. I could see them from the boat, and it made me tired, for it was past lunch time, and I was starved.

But finally Jim came aboard with a couple of broilers, and some corn, and so on. I asked him if he'd got the lobster, which I was especially keen on, and he said no, the pots wouldn't be drawn till to-morrow. That made me peevish, also being kept waiting for lunch; and when Jim informed me that he was going to take Miss Wayland sailing that afternoon, it was more than I could stand.

I told him that it was a shame to begin the first day in port, and that if I had known there were to be skirts aboard, I wouldn't have come; that he was too easy to live, anyhow; first it was the Fat Man, and now this girl; that he'd better turn the Lorelei into an excursion boat, and ply between the mainland and the islands; and that I would go ashore, and he could have Miss Wayland to himself. He said I could go and be blanked if I wanted to, and proceeded to cook lunch.

Well, after eating a broiler and a dozen ears of corn, and a few other things, I felt better, and we smoked the pipe of peace. I will say for Jim that he's awfully good-tempered. I thought I might as well go along and chaperon them and keep an eye on the girl. Jim said that he hadn't thought of asking her, but she admired the Lorelei so much, and showed so much interest in her, and got him to talking about what she could do, and before he knew it the invitation had slipped out. Jim hated taking casual people to sail as much as I did, but his weak point was talking about the Lorelei; any one could get round him by praising her, and this girl was clever enough to see it.

Oh, she was clever, was Edith Wayland!

Jim went for her about two o'clock, and we had a nice sail. There was a good bit of a swell after the storm, and a stiff breeze, and the Lorelei showed her heels to everything, like the darling she is. Miss Wayland sat up out of the way, and kept quiet—didn't I say she was clever?—and she seemed not to mind getting wet, and her hair blew out and crinkled up round her face with the spray shining on it, and she looked quite pretty.

Every time Jim looked at her, she smiled, but he was too busy sailing the boat to pay much attention to her. But I could see that she turned pale and gulped every time the Lorelei heeled over, and that her knuckles were white from holding on to the rail so tight, and that when Jim wasn't looking at her—she didn't mind me—she looked miserable.

She was plucky, though, and when we got back, she had the nerve to say that she had enjoyed it immensely, and Jim believed her. And it seems that she had been making a sketch of the harbor, with the Lorelei in it, and she said she would do all she could to it next morning, but she hoped we'd stay over another day. If we did, she could finish her sketch, and we could get our lobster, and then we might come in to the dance next evening at the hotel.

I thought it was my duty to warn Jim, which I did when he got back from rowing her ashore. I told him that she was an artful female; that what she was after wasn't sailing, nor yet sketching, it was him; that she was scared blue by the Lorelei's ways, but that he was so easy any one could take him in. He only laughed, and when I kept it up he pitched me overboard. Of course, I was pretty wet already; still, I felt rather sulky, take it all in all, and I didn't say any more to him.

It was a glorious evening, the sea like a sapphire and the sky all purply and pink with the mountains against it. I often think that if 1 had insisted on going out that night, I might have saved Jim. But I was weak—I wanted that lobster—and, of course, I didn't realize the danger. It never occurred to me that Jim could actually get caught—and by a girl that hated sailing; that was too tragic an idea.

The next morning she was down on the rocky beach, painting away for dear life. There was a rattling breeze, and I wanted to go out, but Jim explained that the Lorelei was being immortalized on Miss Wayland's canvas, and that he had promised to let her ride at anchor all that morning. Then he said that he used to think I was good-humored. I said I'd go ashore, and he went along, to see what Miss Wayland was doing.

Her little sketch was really very nice. She spoke of the Lorelei's beautiful lines, and said she was going to give the sketch to Jim. He was no end pleased at that, and said he'd hang it over the mantel in his room, where he kept the Lorelei's racing trophies, and what a pity it was that Prissy was married, else Miss Wayland would be coming to see them, and could see for herself how nice it would look.

I was looking over her shoulder, and I noticed that her cheek, under a big flapping hat she wore, turned red. Now why in thunder should she blush at that? She went on dabbing little bits of paint on the canvas, and after a minute she said:

“I can finish this almost in another morning, if we don't have fog. I hope you're coming in to the dance to-night?”

I suppose Jim, after that, business of the sketch, had to say he would come. At any rate, he said it, and I said I'd be glad to come likewise, firmly intending not to stir off the boat. And then, seeing that Jim had settled down on the sand beside Miss Wayland's camp stool, and that they had a suggestion—oh, a mere hint—of three's a crowd—or, I should say, it was the back of Miss Wayland's blue painting apron and straw hat that gave me the notion—I left them.

I struck into a trail that led me into some woods and over a couple of small mountains, and around by a lake. On the lake was a tea house, where I had lunch. It was a lovely day, and lovely scenery, but my heart was with Jim. I smoked a couple of pipes and moped. I suspected Miss Wayland of the most honorable intentions, and I was jealous and foreboding. 1 got back, and found he had lunched with her at the hotel. I took him back to the Lorelei.

I hadn't meant to go to the dance, but when the music of the “Myosotis Waltz” came floating out over the water, I changed my mind and my clothes, and we pulled ashore. It was a regular hotel dance—about sixty girls and two or three men, beside ourselves and the Fat Man, who nearly danced himself into an apoplexy. No wonder Miss Wayland wanted us to come.

We danced with her turn and turn about. She was as light as a feather; and looked right pretty, too, in a thin muslin kind of dress with a scarlet belt. She had the figure of a slim kid of sixteen; but all the same, I would have bet she'd never see thirty again. Jim thought she wasn't over twenty-five, he being twenty-eight, and that was suspicious, too.

The dance was over at eleven-thirty, and as we were saying good night on the veranda, Miss Wayland cried out: “What a glorious moon! What a night for a sail!” Of course, we asked her and a couple more girls to come, and out we went.

And it was wonderful—I don't know that I ever saw a prettier night; just a lady's breeze, too, soft and steady, from the southwest. One of the girls began to sing that thing of Schubert's, “To be Sung on the Water,” and the “Serenade.” Then Miss Wayland sang some more Schubert, some of the Heine love songs. She hadn't much of a voice, but it was soft, and pretty, and tender, and—Jove, what with the love songs, and the moonlight, and the great sail like a white wing-carrying us along, I came pretty near feeling sentimental myself!

Oh, the siren! If I had realized it, I would have tied Jim to the mast and stuffed his ears with wax, too. The poor Lorelei! She had a deadly rival aboard her, and nobody suspected it but me, and I only vaguely suspected. If it had been put up to Jim then, “Will you take this girl, or will you stick to the Lorelei?” I believe he wasn't too far gone. But, of course, it never was put up to him that way. He thought he could have them both—she made him think so. Perhaps he even thought I could make a third. Or else he didn't think at all, which is most likely.

We did actually get off next day. The Fat Man came down to the pier and shouted good-by to us, and something about seeing us in a week, which I didn't pay any attention to. We had said farewell—as I supposed—to Miss Wayland on the beach, where she was painting faithfully up to the last moment; and Jim, being encumbered with me and the lobster—which we got that morning—hadn't stopped long. I felt we were well out of it, and as they both had an unconcerned air, I concluded there was nothing in it, anyway. So, as we slid out of the harbor, I was happy again.

We loafed round among the islands for a couple of days, then ran down to Portsmouth and took in the picturesque old town and sniffed the decaying odor of the past, and surreptitiously acquired some bottles of Scotch; and then we coasted up again.

Mostly we had fine weather, hot sun and cool wind, now and then a woolly fog, and two days of rain and cold. It was a heavenly peaceful time, one of our good old times. If we'd known it was the last, or threatening to be, I think we'd have bolted straight over to Spain. At least I would, and have put Jim in irons if necessary.

Jim could make a corking fish chowder. I was strong on pancakes. We nearly worked our way through the Fat Man's canned goods. I began to be rather glad we had let him come. He had some baked beans that weren't bad, and some spiced peaches in glass. I remember it was the night we ate the last of the peaches. We were lying up in a lonely bay on the western shore of some island. I was stretched on the deck twanging my banjo, and, I believe, singing; and Jim was smoking his pipe. Suddenly he interrupted me with the information that we were going back to Green Harbor for a couple of days, as he was entered in the tennis tournament with Edith Wayland.

After a while he said: “It sounds like you're trying to pull that banjo's hair out. What's the matter?”

I said it was too bad that a fellow couldn't express his feelings some old way, and that if I said what I thought, he would probably pitch me overboard, right after a full meal, too.

“Go on, spit it out,” said he.

“You're after that girl,” said I.

“I'm after no girl,” said he. “What's a girl to a boat like this?”

“Then there's a girl after you,” said I, “and that's a long sight worse. If you were after her, she might give you the slip; but if she's after you, there's no hope. I've always known that the first one that really played for you would get you—you're that soft-hearted you couldn't say no; and this one's clever, oh, she's clever!”

“I may be soft-hearted, but I'm not soft-headed,” said he. I only twanged the banjo, soft and mournful. “Besides,” said he, “there have been others, You seem to think no girl ever liked me before.” I twanged the banjo. “And besides,” said he, as a clincher, “you're mistaken if you think that this one's after me. Why, I tried to hold her hand that night in the moonlight, and she wouldn't let me.”

“Suffering cats!” said I, getting up and stowing away the banjo. “It's too bad of her, cradle-snatching like this! Go on, you poor innocent, and play doubles with her. Before you know it, you'll be doubled up for life. Why, it's like taking candy from a child!”

“Oh, dry up!” said he. “Your style of humor is crude.”

“I may be crude, but I'm not humorous,” said I. “If there's anything sadder than to see a good chum with a good boat gobbled up by a girl that will make him cut his friends and sell his boat and——”

“Sell my boat!” shouted Jim. “Why, you poor, blithering idiot, she's crazy about the boat!”

Well, that settled it. I knew then that he was a goner. I didn't say another word, and finally Jim got mad.

“You're a ripping good fellow,” says he, “but you're an egotist. Just because you like to cruise in the Lorelei, is that a reason why I can't make a friend of a nice, pleasant girl with no nonsense about her? Can't you cruise in the Lorelei just the same?”

But I was too crushed and heartbroken to protest at his making out that all my feeling was selfishness. Of course, it was partly selfish—nobody likes to have a friendship of years broken up—but only partly. I felt for Jim, too. I saw him going, nobly unsuspicious and confiding, to his fate, and I couldn't put out a hand to stop him.

I almost cried that night, rolled in my blanket on the deck, looking at the solemn stars, and listening to the croaking of the frogs in the marshes beyond, and the wash of the waves, and Jim snoring so peacefully. It came over me that it was my last cruise with Jim in the Lorelei—the last of our good old careless times.

If we cruised again there would be a Mrs. Jim, blighting everything. If we cruised! Jim flattered himself that he could make a sailor of her! Sleep on, poor soul, and dream your fond dreams! A wild idea of appealing to Miss Wayland came to me; of making love to her, and cutting Jim out, and then sailing away, leaving her on the pier.

Perhaps it was some such lingering notion that made me feel more cheerful in the morning. And, after all, there was a gleam of hope, as long as Jim wasn't actually married or engaged. He seemed the same as usual. I watched him carefully, and could see no signs of absent-mindedness or mooning. I gave him chances to talk about Miss Wayland, and he didn't seem to avoid the subject or to dwell upon it unduly. I began to think we might yet escape.

But my poor hopes went down with a crash as soon as we put into Green Harbor again. The Fat Man, cause of all our woe, had gone home. Miss Wayland took possession of Jim. He played tennis with her, he walked with her, he lunched with her, he took her sailing. He had begun to teach her to sail. It was all up.

Those days were nothing but torment to me. I wanted to get it over with. So I plucked up courage and asked him if the day was set. He laughed and said that there was nothing doing. I thought he was trying to bluff me, but he stuck to it that there was nothing serious. There he was, headed straight for the reef of matrimony, and insisting that the course was perfectly clear. Yes, I believed him at last—I believed that he didn't know where he was going. But she knew. I'd seen her look at Jim as a woman looks at a man when she has marked him for her own.

And she went on, learning to sail, as if the Lorelei already belonged to her, and she meant to spend the rest of her life aboard. She learned the names of things, and could manage the tiller under directions. Then they took to going out alone. I was glad to give them the chance, for it was no pleasure to me to watch them. They would repeat sea poetry by the yard to one another—she knew all Jim's favorites, the Swinburne things, and Matthew Arnold, and so on—I believe she must have got the “Golden' Treasury” by heart for his benefit.

I contributed only one thing to these symposia, and that was the Wordsworth sonnet beginning, “Where is the land to which yon ship must go?” I repeated it in melancholy tones, with my eyes on Jim, and he never turned a hair. At the end I glanced at Miss Wayland. She was smiling; she understood. After that I left them to themselves on the boat. I had ceased to expect that we would ever leave Green Harbor, unless with Miss Wayland on board.

The days were slipping by—days of glorious sea weather—and the Lorelei pulled at her moorings in vain. We were caught—anchored fast. For the first time Jim was deaf to the call of the sea and the Lorelei's graces. He had forsaken his first love. A stronger siren had lured him away. And still he denied it. But I could see that Miss Wayland was blooming, looking younger and prettier every day. Her cheeks were pink and pleasingly tanned.

She said it was sailing that gave her that color. Oh, the traitress! Anybody but me would have believed in her love of sailing. How she kept it up! She had a tremendous will—you had only to look at her chin. Jim was a child in her hands.

One day a crowd of us went for an all-day mountain climb. Coming back, I walked part of the way with Miss Wayland. We rested for a while on the crest of a long spur, with the harbor, and the islands, and the sea spread out below us. We talked about Jim. There was something in the back of my mind that I wanted to say to her.

I told her that Jim and I had been friends ever since prep-school days. The first summer that we spent together was down at Gloucester, where we learned the ways of a boat in the harbor—a dory with a mutton-leg sail. The next summer we hired a little sloop, a fat, tubby thing called the Grace. The year after that we clubbed together and bought her. Since then we had always owned a boat, one or the other or both of us. Three years ago, Jim had bought the Lorelei.

I described to her how we had worked over that boat; I tried to tell her how much the Lorelei meant to us, but the words stuck in my throat. I felt the pathos of my story too much. Our friendship, our passion for boats—our youth; this was the romance now coming to an end. She was ending it, and I wanted her to feel it.

I wasn't pleading for myself—I didn't want her to be kind to me, and let me come to visit them sometimes, and go out in the Lorelei. No, the old times were over for me—I would take my medicine. It was for Jim that I was pleading. “As you are strong, be merciful.” This was my plea. “Spare the friend of my youth. I don't ask you to give him up—I know you wouldn't—but let him keep his boat.” This was what I conveyed to her, and she listened, smiling and sphinxlike, drawing a long talk of grass slowly across her lips.

“You won't understand, of course,” I ended sadly. “It's a thing that you grow into, little by little—it takes years—and even then you must. have the instinct to start with.”

She smiled inscrutably.

“But what makes you think I don't like sailing?” she asked, with perfect assurance.

“You hate the Lorelei,” I answered her passionately. “And it is very ungrateful of you.”

She laughed. She knew what I meant. She had shamelessly used the poor Lorelei to get hold of Jim. And having gained her end, she had mentally sealed the fate of her rival. Once she had married Jim, she would have no more use for the Lorelei—and she would never permit Jim to be reft from her for weeks at a time by his first love. She would permit no divided allegiance. I had felt it all along, and now I saw it clear in a flash. My appeal had glanced off her stony heart. She was pitiless.

 

I was right; it was the ending. But there was something else that I did not see just then—that it was a beginning, too. Then, I merely wondered if Jim would ever find her out, and how he would feel about it if he did. Well, now I know. And sometimes when I am sailing the Lorelei—for I own her now, and Jim has never sailed with me since, and I haven't found anybody quite to take his place—when I am sailing the Lorelei in the teeth of a roaring gale, wet through and shivering, I think of Jim, paddling his canoe on the lazy reaches of a sheltered river—for Jim lives a thousand miles from salt water, and in his vacations he takes Edith on long canoeing trips; sometimes they take the baby and a waterproof tent—I think of Jim then, with the old affection, with regret, but without bitterness. For I got a new light on the workings of his mind which showed me that he could be perfectly happy without either me or the Lorelei. It happened in this wise:

It was a day soon after my talk with Edith—a blue, but threatening, day, with a falling barometer—and when I found that they were going out in the Lorelei, I protested. Jim laughed at me. I ought to have gone along, but they didn't want me, and I was peevish. They went out about two in the afternoon, over a blue, heaving sea. At three, a storm blew up over the mountains—a thunder squall, followed by a cold, driving rain, and a gale off shore. I hung about the hotel, and watched the harbor and the craft scudding in for shelter, and the choppy, white-tipped waves. The wind increased steadily.

After a while, I borrowed some oilskins and went down to the pier, and hired a launch, against the time when the Lorelei should return to her moorings. I thought that they might put in at one of the islands; but, again, they knew that we would be anxious, and they might try to beat back. It grew dark very early, and it was bitterly cold. The Lorelei was over-sparred. I cursed myself for not having gone with them.

While I was tramping up and down in the shed on the pier, staring out over the harbor for a glimpse of the Lorelei's slim whiteness, and full of bitter reflections about Edith and the folly of Jim, it suddenly came over me: How that girl must love him! To conquer her fear—for she was afraid, even on a quiet day—and to go out on a day like this, in the teeth of my warning—it took pluck, yes, lots of it! Unwillingly, I felt respect and even admiration for her nerve. If they got back all right I would take off my hat to her. If they got back!

I kept reminding myself that it was idiotic of me to worry, that Jim was a good sailor, and knew what he was about. Yes, but he was a dare-devil, too, and he would take risks. It was a bad two hours that I spent on the pier. A few old salts hung about in the shed and shook their heads, and didn't add to my comfort any.

It was after six, and pitch dark, when I made out a dim, moving shape in the flash of the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbor. My heart leaped—it was the Lorelei, tacking in under her jib. She came about, and I lost sight of her. Then I heard Jim's hail faintly through the roar of the wind. When I climbed on board, Jim roared out to me:

“Help, she's fainted!"

There he was, soaked and wild-eyed, holding Edith in his arms.

“She stuck to the tiller till we got in!” he shouted in my ear. “I believe I've killed her! The poor little thing! Got some whisky?—quick!”

Then he began kissing her white, wet face, her closed eyelids, and dripping hair.

“My darling! My love!” he cried.

It was a strange voice—and a strange feeling it gave me, there in the midst of the tossing waves and howling wind.

“We must get her into the launch—we must get her into the launch,” I kept saying.

Jim gathered her up to his breast, and then I believe he began to cry. And then she came to, at least her arms went around Jim's neck, and clung there. It struck me that I was watching something that shouldn't have had any spectators. It came over me that I had seen Jim kiss her for the first time. If I hadn't had to get those two drenched, half-frozen people to shore, I should certainly have removed myself. And then I suppose they would have stayed right there. As it was, I had almost to drag them away.

Jim and I stayed at the hotel that night. He borrowed some clothes, and we got something to eat. He was rather shaky and absent-minded.

“I tell you,” he said solemnly, “it was a near thing. There was one time when I thought we were gone. And to think I took her into that——” He choked and muttered something about “the cursed boat.”

After our meal he sent up to inquire after Edith, and then he went up to see her. He stayed some two hours—and when he came back he had certainly a shining morning face. He beat around the bush conversationally for a while, and then he said to me shyly:

“Look here, old fellow, you wouldn't think that a girl like Edith could really care anything about me—would you?”

“Wouldn't dream it could be possible,” I said solemnly.

“Well, she does. I can hardly believe it myself,” said he, in a brown study, standing there, ramming the tobacco into his pipe, and spilling it all over the floor. “I really can't believe it,” and he looked across at me with bewildered eyes. “But she does!” he repeated softly.

He lit his pipe, after several attempts, and broke the silence, having been too much absorbed to notice that I was silent, or that I was watching his brooding face.

“And look here, what do you think she told me?” he said, with a shame-faced and flattered smile. “She told me that she hated boats! She said that she only went out in my boat to please me, and because she wanted to be with me, and that she was frightened out of her life almost every time. Think of that! Think of the pluck of it! Actually scared, you know, and yet never letting on! Think of her doing that—for me——”

Jim gazed at me, with tears in his radiant eyes.

“What do you say to that?” he demanded solemnly.

There wasn't anything I could say. I got up and warmly shook his hands.