“i’ve run over to look up mrs. rattleton,” said livingstone, as he discussed with evident relish the filet that mr. port charitably hoped would choke him. “very likely you haven’t met her, for she’s only just got here. but you’ll like her, i know, for she’s ever so jolly. she’s promised to play propriety for me in a party that we want to make up aboard the yacht. the squadron won’t get down from new york for a week yet, and i’ve come up ahead of it so that we can have a cruise to the shoals and back before the races. of course, miss lee, you won’t fly in the face of fate, after this providential meeting, by refusing to join our party; at least if you do you will make me wretched to the end of my days. and we will try to make you comfortable on board, sir,” he added, politely, turning to mr. port. “i have a tolerably fair cook, and ice isn’t the only thing in the ice-chest, i assure you.”
“how very kind you are, mr. livingstone,” dorothy hastened to say, in order to head off her uncle’s inevitable refusal. “of course we will go, with the greatest possible pleasure. it is very odd how things fall out sometimes. now only this morning i was begging uncle hutchinson to take me off yachting, and he was saying how much he enjoyed being at sea, and how he really thought that if it wasn’t for his age—wasn’t it absurd of him to talk about his age? he is not old at all, the dear!—he would have a yacht of his own. and almost before the words are fairly out of our mouths here you drop from the clouds, or are cast up by the sea, it’s all the same thing, and give us both just what we have been longing for. at least, uncle hutchinson pretended to be longing for it only in case he could be young enough to enjoy it; but if he doesn’t think he’s young now, i’d like to know what he’ll call himself when he’s fifty!” and then, facing around sharply upon her uncle, dorothy concluded: “the idea of pretending that you are too old to go yachting! really, uncle hutchinson, i am ashamed of you!”
as has been intimated, if there was any one subject upon which mr. port was especially sensitive, it was the subject of his age. as the parish register of st. peter’s all too plainly proved, he never would see sixty again; but this awkward record was in an out-of-the-way place, and the agreeable fiction that he advanced in various indirect ways to the effect that he was a trifle turned of forty-seven was not likely to be officially contradicted. and it is not impossible, so tenacious was he upon this point, that had the official proof been produced, he would have denied its authenticity. for it was mr. port’s firm determination still to figure before the world as a youngish, middle-aged man.
to say that miss lee deliberately set herself to playing upon this weakness of her guardian’s, possibly, remotely possibly, would be doing her injustice. but the fact is obvious that she succeeded by her cleverly turned discourse in landing her esteemed relative fairly between the horns of an exceedingly awkward dilemma: either mr. port must accept the invitation and be horribly ill, or he must reject it, and so throw over his pretensions to elderly youth.
for a moment the unhappy gentleman hung in the wind, and dorothy regretted that she had not made her statement of the case still stronger. indeed, she was about to supplement it by a remark to the effect that people never thought of giving up yachting until they were turned of sixty, when, to her relief, her uncle slowly filled away on the right tack. his acceptance was expressed in highly ungracious terms; but, as has been said, dorothy never troubled herself about forms, provided she compassed results. the moment that he had uttered the fatal words, mr. port fell to cursing himself in his own mind for being such a fool; but the same reason that had impelled him to give his consent withheld him from retracting it. he knew that he was going to be desperately miserable; but, at least, nobody could say that he was old.
“i’m ever so much obliged to you, miss lee, and to you too, mr. port,” said livingstone. “and now, if you’ll excuse me, i’ll go and hunt up mrs. rattle-ton, and tell her what a splendid raise i’ve made, and help her organize the rest of the party. we shall have only two more. it’s a bore to have more than six people on board a yacht. i don’t know why it is, i’m sure, but if you have more than six they always get to fighting. queer, isn’t it?”
“i beg your pardon,” said mr. port. “mrs. rattleton? may i ask if this is the mrs. rattleton from new york who was here last season, the one whose bathing costume was so—so very eccentric, and about whom there was so much very disagreeable talk?”
“mrs. rattleton is from new york, and she was here last season,” livingstone answered. “but i can’t say that i remember anything eccentric in her bathing costume, except that it was exceedingly becoming; and i certainly never heard any disagreeable talk about her. there may have been such talk about her, but perhaps it was thought just as well not to have it in my presence. mrs. rattleton is my cousin, mr. port—she was a van twiller, you know. do you happen to remember any of the things that were said about her, and who said them?” livingstone spoke with extreme courtesy; but there was something in his tone that caused mr. port suddenly to think of the tip of prince sporetti’s left ear, and that led him to reply hurriedly, and by no means lucidly:
“certainly—no—yes—that is to say, i can’t exactly remember anything in particular. i’m sure i was led to believe from what was said that she was a very charming woman. no, i don’t remember at all.”
“ah, perhaps it is just as well,” livingstone replied, gravely. “but how lucky!” he added; “there she is now. everybody is at the casino about this time of day, i fancy. may i bring her over and present her to you, miss lee?”
“of course you may, mr. livingstone. i shall be delighted to meet her. and if she is to matronize me, the sooner that i begin to get accustomed to her severities the better.”
and then mr. hutchinson port suffered a fresh pang of misery when the presentation was accomplished and he was forced to say approximately pleasant things to a lady whose decidedly ballet-like attire in the surf—or, to be precise, on the beach above high-water-mark, where, for some occult reason, she usually saw fit to do the most of her bathing—joined to the exceeding celerity of her conduct generally, had marked her during the preceding season as the conspicuous centre of one phase of life at the pier. nor was mr. port’s lot made happier as he listened to the brisk discussion that ensued in regard to the organization of the yachting party, and found that its two remaining members were to be drawn, as was only natural, from the eminently meteoric set to which mrs. rattleton belonged.
had time been given mr. port for consideration it is probable that he would have collected his mental forces sufficiently to have enabled him to lodge a remonstrance; he might even—though this is doubtful, for dorothy’s voting power was vigorous—have accomplished a veto. but projects in which mrs. rattleton was concerned never went slowly; and in the present case the necessity for getting back in time for the races really compelled haste. and so it came to pass that not until the fleetwings was off the brenton’s reef light-ship, with her nose pointed well up into the north-east, was there framed in mr. port’s slow-moving mind a suitable line of argument upon which to base a peremptory refusal to go upon the expedition—and by that time he was so excruciatingly ill in his own cabin that coherent utterance and converse with his kind were alike impossible.
so far as mr. port was concerned the ensuing six days made up an epoch in his life that can only be described as an agonized blank. and when—as it seemed to him many ages later—the fleetwings once more cast anchor off narragansett pier, and he stepped shakily from the schooner’s gig to the casino dock, the usual plumpness and ruddiness of his face had given place to a yellow leanness, and his weight had been reduced by very nearly twenty pounds. the cruise had been a flying one, or he never would have finished it. after the first six hours he would have landed on a desert island cheerfully—and it is not impossible that a hint from dorothy as to her uncle’s probable movements should a harbor be made had induced livingstone to give the land a wide berth.
dorothy came ashore blooming. “you don’t know, uncle hutchinson,” she said, “what a perfectly lovely time i’ve had”—and this cheerful assertion was the literal truth, for mr. port had entered his cabin before the yacht had crossed the line between beaver tail and point judith, and had not emerged from it until the anchor went overboard. “and you don’t know,” miss lee went on with effusion, “how grateful your angel is to you for helping her to have such a delightful cruise. i’m sorry that you haven’t been very well, uncle hutchinson; but i know that you will be all the better for it. poor dear mamma, you know, was bilious too, and going to sea always made her wretched; but she used to be wonderfully well always when she got on shore again. and you’ll be wonderfully well too, you dear; and that will be your reward for helping your angel to have such a perfectly delightful time.”
mr. port made no reply to this address, for his condition of collapse was too complete to permit him to give form in words to the thoughts of rage and resentment which were burning in the depths of his injured soul. without a word to one single member of the party, he climbed heavily into a carriage and was driven directly to his hotel—while dorothy, still under the chaperonage of mrs. rattleton, gayly joined the pleasant little lunch-party at the casino with which the yacht voyage came to an end.