CHAPTER VI THE YACHT

To lie deep among cushions, and gently to ride out along streets and roads that she had so often tramped in every kind of weather, was enough to intoxicate Jenny. She heard the soft humming of the engine, and saw lamps and other vehicles flashing by, with a sense of effortless speed that was to her incomparable. If only she had been mentally at ease, and free from distraction, she would have enjoyed every instant of her journey. Even as it was, she could not restrain her eagerness as they overtook a tramcar, and the chauffeur honked his horn, and they glided nearer and nearer, and passed, and seemed to leave the tram standing. Each time this was in process of happening Jenny gave a small excited chuckle, thinking of the speed, and the ease, and of how the people in the tram must feel at being defeated in the race. Every such encounter became a race, in which she pressed physically forward as if to urge her steed to the final effort. Never had Jenny teen so eager for victory, so elated when its certainty was confirmed. It was worth while to live for such experience. How she envied her driver! With his steady hands upon the steering wheel.... Ah, he was like a sailor, like the sailor of romance, with the wind beating upon his face and his eyes ever-watchful. And under his hand the car rode splendidly to Keith.

Jenny closed her eyes. She could feel her heart beating fast, and the blood heating her cheeks, reddening them. The blood hurt her, and her mouth seemed to hurt, too, because she had smiled so much. She lay back, thinking of Keith and of their meetings—so few, so long ago, so indescribably happy and beautiful. She always remembered him as he had been when first he had caught her eye, when he had stood so erect among other men who lounged by the sea, smoking and lolling at ease. He was different, as she was different. And she was going to him. How happy she was! And why did her breath come quickly and her heart sink? She could not bother to decide that question. She was too excited to do so. In all her life she had never known a moment of such breathless anticipation, of excitement which she believed was all happiness.

There was one other thought that Jenny shirked, and that went on nevertheless in spite of her inattention, plying and moulding somewhere deep below her thrilling joy. The thought was, that she must not show Keith that she loved him, because while she knew—she felt sure—that He loved her, she must not be the smallest fraction of time before him in confession. She was too proud for that. He would tell her that he loved her; and the spell would be broken. Her shyness would be gone; her bravado immediately unnecessary. But until then she must beware. It was as necessary to Keith’s pride as to her own that he should win her. The Keith she loved would not care for a love too easily won. The consciousness of this whole issue was at work below her thoughts; and her thoughts, from joy and dread, to the discomfort of doubt, raced faster than the car, speedless and headlong. Among them were two that bitterly corroded. They were of Pa and of Keith’s confidence that she would come. Both were as poison in her mind.

ii

And then there came a curious sense that something had happened. The car stopped in darkness, and through the air there came in the huge tones of Big Ben the sound of a striking hour. It was nine o’clock. They were back at Westminster. Before her was the bridge, and above was the lighted face of the clock, like some faded sun. And the strokes rolled out in swelling waves that made the whole atmosphere feel soundladen. The chauffeur had opened the door of the car, and was offering his free hand to help Jenny to step down to the ground.

“Are we there?” she asked in a bewildered way, as if she had been dreaming. “How quick we’ve been!”

“Yes, miss. Mr. Redington’s down the steps. You see them steps. Mr. Redington’s down there in the dinghy. Mind how you go, miss. Hold tight to the rail....” He closed the door of the car and pointed to the steps.

The dinghy! Those stone steps to the black water! Jenny was shaken by a shudder. The horror of the water which had come upon her earlier in the evening returned more intensely. The strokes of the clock were the same, the darkness, the feeling of the sinister water rolling there beneath the bridge, resistlessly carrying its burdens to the sea. If Keith had not been there she would have turned and run swiftly away, overcome by her fear. She timidly reached the steps, and stopped, peering down through the dimness. She put her foot forward so that it hung dubiously beyond the edge of the pavement.

“What a coward!” she thought, violently, with self-contempt. It drove her forward. And at that moment she could see below, at the edge of the lapping water, the outline of a small boat and of a man who sat in it using the oars against the force of the current so as to keep the boat always near the steps. She heard a dear familiar voice call out with a perfect shout of welcome:

“Jenny! Good girl! How are you! Come along; be careful how you come. That’s it.... Six more, and then stop!” Jenny obeyed him—she desired nothing else, and her doubtings were driven away in a breath. She went quickly down. The back water lapped and wattled against the stone and the boat, and she saw Keith stand up, drawing the dinghy against the steps and offering her his hand. He had previously been holding up a small lantern that gilded the brown mud with a feeble colour and made the water look like oil. “Now!” he cried quickly. “Step!” The boat rocked, and Jenny crouched down upon the narrow seat, aflame with rapture, but terrified of the water. It was so near, so inescapably near. The sense of its smooth softness, its yieldingness, and the danger lurking beneath the flowing surface was acute. She tried more desperately to sit exactly in the middle of the boat, so that she should not overbalance it. She closed her eyes, sitting very still, and heard the water saying plup-plup-plup all round her, and she was afraid. It meant soft death: she could not forget that. Jenny could not swim. She was stricken between terror and joy that overwhelmed her. Then:

“That’s my boat,” Keith said, pointing. “I say, you are a sport to come!” Jenny saw lights shining from the middle of the river, and could imagine that a yacht lay there stubbornly resisting the current of the flowing Thames.

iii

Crouching still, she watched Keith bend to his oars, driving the boat’s nose beyond the shadowy yacht because he knew that he must allow for the current. Her eyes devoured him, and her heart sang. Plup-plup-plup-plup said the water. The oars plashed gently. Jenny saw the blackness gliding beside her, thick and swift. They might go down, down, down in that black nothingness, and nobody would know of it.... The oars ground against the edge of the dinghy—wood against wood, grumbling and echoing upon the water. Behind everything she heard the roaring of London, and was aware of lights, moving and stationary, high above them. How low upon the water they were! It seemed to be on a level with the boat’s edges. And how much alone they were, moving there in the darkness while the life of the city went on so far above. If the boat sank! Jenny shivered, for she knew that she would be drowned. She could imagine a white face under the river’s surface, lanterns flashing, and then—nothing. It would be all another secret happening, a mystery, the work of a tragic instant; and Jenny Blanchard would be forgotten for ever, as if she had never been. It was a horrid sensation to her as she sat there, so near death.

And all the time that Jenny was mutely enduring these terrors they were slowly nearing the yacht, which grew taller as they approached, and more clearly outlined against the sky. The moon was beginning to catch all the buildings and to lighten the heavens. Far above, and very pale, were stars; but the sky was still murky, so that the river remained in darkness. They came alongside the yacht. Keith shipped his oars, caught hold of something which Jenny could not see; and the dinghy was borne round, away from the yacht’s side. He half rose, catching with both his hands at an object projecting from the yacht, and hastily knotting a rope. Jenny saw a short ladder hanging over the side, and a lantern shining.

“There you are!” Keith cried. “Up you go! It’s quite steady. Hold the brass rail....”

After a second in which her knees were too weak to allow of her moving, Jenny conquered her tremors, rose unsteadily in the boat, and cast herself at the brass rail that Keith had indicated. To the hands that had been so tightly clasped together, steeling her, the rail was startlingly cold; but the touch of it nerved her, because it was firm. She felt the dinghy yield as she stepped from it, and she seemed for one instant to be hanging precariously in space above the terrifying waters. Then she was at the top of the ladder, ready for Keith’s warning shout about the descent to the deck. She jumped down. She was aboard the yacht; and as she glanced around Keith was upon the deck beside her, catching her arm. Jenny’s triumphant complacency was so great that she gave a tiny nervous laugh. She had not spoken at all until this moment: Keith had not heard her voice.

“Well!” said Jenny. “That’s over!” And she gave an audible sigh of relief. “Thank goodness!”

“And here you are!” Keith cried. “Aboard the Minerva.”

iv

He led her to a door, and down three steps. And then it seemed to Jenny as if Paradise burst upon her. She had never before seen such a room as this cabin. It was a room such as she had dreamed about in those ambitious imaginings of a wondrous future which had always been so vaguely irritating to Emmy. It seemed, partly because the ceiling was low, to be very spacious; the walls and ceiling were of a kind of dusky amber hue; a golden brown was everywhere the prevailing tint. The tiny curtains, the long settees into which one sank, the chairs, the shades of the mellow lights—all were of some variety of this delicate golden brown. In the middle of the cabin stood a square table; and on the table, arrayed in an exquisitely white tablecloth, was laid a wondrous meal. The table was laid for two: candles with amber shades made silver shine and glasses glitter. Upon a fruit stand were peaches and nectarines; upon a tray she saw decanters; little dishes crowding the table bore mysterious things to eat such as Jenny had never before seen. Upon a side table stood other dishes, a tray bearing coffee cups and ingredients for the provision of coffee, curious silver boxes. Everywhere she saw flowers similar to those which had been in the motor car. Under her feet was a carpet so thick that she felt her shoes must be hidden in its pile. And over all was this air of quiet expectancy which suggested that everything awaited her coming. Jenny gave a deep sigh, glanced quickly at Keith, who was watching her, and turned away, her breath catching. The contrast was too great: it made her unhappy. She looked down at her skirt, at her hands; she thought of her hat and her hidden shoes. She thought of Emmy, the bread and butter pudding, of Alf Rylett ... of Pa lying at home in bed, alone in the house.

v

Keith drew her forward slightly, until she came within the soft radiance of the cabin lights.

“I say, it is sporting of you to come!” he said. “Let’s have a look at you—do!”

They stood facing one another. Keith saw Jenny, tall and pale, looking thin in her shabby dress, but indescribably attractive and beautiful even in her new shyness. And Jenny saw the man she loved: her eyes were veiled, but they were unfathomably those of one deeply in love. She did not know how to hide the emotions with which she was so painfully struggling. Pride and joy in him; shyness and a sort of dread; hunger and reserve—Keith might have read them all, so plainly were they written. Yet her first words were wounded and defiant.

“The man ... that man.... He knew I was coming,” she said, in a voice of reproach. “You were pretty sure I should come, you know.”

Keith said quietly:

“I hoped you would.” And then he lowered his eyes. She was disarmed, and they both knew.

Keith Redington was nearly six feet in height. He was thin, and even bony; but he was very toughly and strongly built, and his face was as clean and brown as that of any healthy man who travels far by sea. He was less dark than Jenny, and his hair was almost auburn, so rich a chestnut was it. His eyes were blue and heavily lashed; his hands were long and brown, with small freckles between the knuckles. He stood with incomparable ease, his hands and arms always ready, but in perfect repose. His lips, for he was clean-shaven, were keen and firm. His glance was fearless. As the phrase is, he looked every inch a sailor, born to challenge the winds and the waters. To Jenny, who knew only those men who show at once what they think or feel, his greater breeding made Keith appear inscrutable, as if he had belonged to a superior race. She could only smile at him, with parted lips, not at all the baffling lady of the mirror, or the contemptuous younger sister, or the daring franctireur of her little home at Kennington Park. Jenny Blanchard she remained, but the simple, eager Jenny to whom these other Jennies were but imperious moods.

“Well, I’ve come,” she said. “But you needn’t have been so sure.”

Keith gave an irrepressible grin. He motioned her to the table, shaking his head at her tone.

“Come and have some grub,” he said cheerfully. “I was about as sure as you were. You needn’t worry about that, old sport. There’s so little time. Come and sit down; there’s a good girl. And presently I’ll tell you all about it.” He looked so charming as he spoke that Jenny obediently smiled in return, and the light came rushing into her eyes, chasing away the shadows, so that she felt for that time immeasurably happy and unsuspicious. She sat down at the laden table, smiling again at the marvels which it carried.

“My word, what a feast!” she said helplessly. “Talk about the Ritz!”

Keith busied himself with the dishes. The softly glowing cabin threw over Jenny its spell; the comfort, the faint slow rocking of the yacht, the sense of enclosed solitude, lulled her. Every small detail of ease, which might have made her nervous, merged with the others in a marvellous contentment because she was with Keith, cut off from the world, happy and at peace. If she sighed, it was because her heart was full. But she had forgotten the rest of the evening, her shabbiness, every care that troubled her normal days. She had cast these things off for the time and was in a glow of pleasure. She smiled at Keith with a sudden mischievousness. They both smiled, without guilt, and without guile, like two children at a reconciliation.

vi

“Soup?” said Keith, and laid before her a steaming plate. “All done by kindness.”

“Have you been cooking?” Some impulse made Jenny motherly. It seemed a strange reversal of the true order that he should cook for her. “It’s like The White Cat to have it....”

“It’s a secret,” Keith laughed. “Tell you later. Fire away!” He tasted the soup, while Jenny looked at five little letter biscuits in her own plate. She spelt them out E T K I H—KEITH. He watched her, enjoying the spectacle of the naove mind in action as the light darted into her face. “I’ve got JENNY,” he said, embarrassed. She craned, and read the letters with open eyes of marvel. They both beamed afresh at the primitive fancy.

“How did you do it?” Jenny asked inquisitively. “But it’s nice.” They supped the soup. Followed, whitebait: thousands of little fish.... Jenny hardly liked to crunch them. Keith whipped away the plates, and dived back into the cabin with a huge pie that made her gasp. “My gracious!” said Jenny. “I can never eat it!”

“Not all of it,” Keith admitted. “Just a bit, eh?” He carved.

“Oh, thank goodness it’s not stew and bread and butter pudding!” cried Jenny, as the first mouthful of the pie made her shut her eyes tightly. “It’s like heaven!”

“If they have pies there.” Jenny had not meant that: she had meant only that her sensations were those of supreme contentment. “Give me the old earth; and supper with Jenny!”

“Really?” Jenny was all brimming with delight.

“What will you have to drink? Claret? Burgundy?” Keith was again upon his feet. He poured out a large glass of red wine and laid it before her. Jenny saw with marvel the reflections of light on the wine and of the wine upon the tablecloth. She took a timid sip, and the wine ran tingling into her being.

“High life,” she murmured. “Don’t make me tipsy!” They exchanged overjoyed and intimate glances, laughing.

There followed trifle. Trifle had always been Jenny’s dream; and this trifle was her dream come true. It melted in the mouth; its flavours were those of innumerable spices. She was transported with happiness at the mere thought of such trifle. As her palate vainly tried to unravel the secrets of the dish, Keith, who was closely observant, saw that she was lost in a kind of fanatical adoration of trifle.

“You like it?” he asked.

“I shall never forget it!” cried Jenny. “Never as long as I live. When I’m an old ... great-aunt....” She had hesitated at her destiny. “I shall bore all the kids with tales about it. I shall say ‘That night on the yacht ... when I first knew what trifle meant....’ They won’t half get sick of it. But I shan’t.”

“You’ll like to think about it?” asked Keith. “Like to remember to-night?”

“Will you?” parried Jenny. “The night you had Jenny Blanchard to supper?” Their eyes met, in a long and searching glance, in which candour was not unmixed with a kind of measuring distrust.

vii

Keith’s face might have been carven for all the truth that Jenny got from it then. There darted across her mind the chauffeur’s certainty that she was to be his passenger. She took another sip of wine.

“Yes,” she said again, very slowly. “You were sure I was coming. You got it all ready. Been a bit of a sell if I hadn’t come. You’d have had to set to and eat it yourself.... Or get somebody else to help you.”

She meant “another girl,” but she did not know she meant that until the words were spoken. Her own meaning stabbed her heart. That icy knowledge that Keith was sure of her was bitterest of all. It made her happiness defiant rather than secure. He was the only man for her. How did she know there were not other women for Keith! How could she ever know that? Rather, it sank into her consciousness that there must be other women. His very ease showed her that. The equanimity of his laughing expression brought her the unwelcome knowledge.

“I should have looked pretty small if I’d made no preparations, shouldn’t I?” Keith inquired in a dry voice. “If you’d come here and found the place cold and nothing to eat you’d have made a bit of a shindy.”

A reserve had fallen between them. Jenny knew she had been unwise. It pressed down upon her heart the feeling that he was somehow still a stranger to her. And all the time they had been apart he had not seemed a stranger, but one to whom her most fleeting and intimate thoughts might freely have been given. That had been the wonderful thought to her—that they had met so seldom and understood each other so well. She had made a thousand speeches to him in her dreams. Together, in these same dreams, they had seen and done innumerable things together, always in perfect confidence, in perfect understanding. Yet now, when she saw him afresh, all was different. Keith was different. He was browner, thinner, less warm in manner; and more familiar, too, as though he were sure of her. His clothes were different, and his carriage. He was not the same man. It was still Keith, still the man Jenny loved; but as though he were also somebody else whom she was meeting for the first time. Her love, the love intensified by long broodings, was as strong; but he was a stranger. All that intimacy which seemed to have been established between them once and for ever was broken by the new contact in unfamiliar surroundings. She was shy, uncertain, hesitating; and in her shyness she had blundered. She had been unwise, and he was offended when she could least afford to have him so offended. It took much resolution upon Jenny’s part to essay the recovery of lost ground. But the tension was the worse for this mistake, and she suffered the more because of her anxious emotions.

“Oh, well,” she said at last, as calmly as she could. “I daresay we should have managed. I mightn’t have come. But I’ve come, and you had all these beautiful things ready; and....” Her courage to be severe abruptly failed; and lamely she concluded: “And it’s simply like fairyland.... I’m ever so happy.”

Keith grinned again, showing perfect white teeth. For a moment he looked, Jenny thought, quite eager. Or was that only her fancy because she so desired to see it? She shook her head; and that drew Keith’s eye.

“More trifle?” he suggested, with an arch glance. Jenny noticed he wore a gold ring upon the little finger of his right hand. It gleamed in the faint glow of the cabin. So, also, did the fascinating golden hairs upon the back of his hand. Gently the cabin rose and fell, rocking so slowly that she could only occasionally be sure that the movement was true. She shook her head in reply.

“I’ve had one solid meal to-night,” she explained. “Wish I hadn’t! If I’d known I was coming out I’d have starved myself all day. Then you’d have been shocked at me!”

Keith demurely answered, as if to reassure her:

“Takes a lot to shock me. Have a peach?”

“I must!” she breathed. “I can’t let the chance slip. O-oh, what a scent!” She reached the peach towards him. “Grand, isn’t it!” Jenny discovered for Keith’s quizzical gaze an unexpected dimple in each pale cheek. He might have been Adam, and she the original temptress.

“Shall I peel it?”

“Seems a shame to take it off!” Jenny watched his deft fingers as he stripped the peach. The glowing skin of the fruit fell in lifeless peelings upon his plate, dying as it were under her eyes, Keith had poured wine for her in another, smaller, glass. She shook her head.

“I shall be drunk!” she protested. “Then I should sing! Horrible, it would be!”

“Not with a little port ... I’m not pressing you to a lot. Am I?” He brought coffee to the table, and she began to admire first of all the pattern of the silver tray. Jenny had never seen such a tray before, outside a shop, nor so delicately porcelain a coffee-service. It helped to give her the sense of strange, unforgettable experience.

“You didn’t say if you’d remember this evening,” she slowly reflected. Keith looked sharply up from the coffee, which he was pouring, she saw, from a thermos flask.

“Didn’t I?” he said. “Of course I shall remember it. I’ve done better. I’ve looked forward to it. That’s something you’ve not done. I’ve looked forward to it for weeks. You don’t think of that. We’ve been in the Mediterranean, coasting about. I’ve been planning what I’d do when we got back. Then Templecombe said he’d be coming right up to London; and I planned to see you.”

“Templecombe?” Jenny queried. “Who’s he?”

“He’s the lord who owns this yacht. Did you think it was my yacht?”

“No.... I hoped it wasn’t....” Jenny said slowly.

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Keith’s eyes were upon her; but she looked at her peach stone, her hand still lightly holding the fruit knife, and her fingers half caught by the beam of a candle which stood beside her. He persisted:

“Well, Templecombe took his valet, who does the cooking; and my hand—my sailorman—wanted to go and visit his wife ... and that left me to see after the yacht. D’you see? I had the choice of keeping Tomkins aboard, or staying aboard myself.”

“You might almost have given me longer notice,” urged Jenny. “It seems to me.”

“No. I’m under instructions. I’m not a free man,” said Keith soberly. “I was once; but I’m not now. I’m captain of a yacht. I do what I’m told.”

Jenny fingered her port-wine glass, and in looking at the light upon the wine her eyes became fixed.

“Will you ever do anything else?” she asked. Keith shrugged slightly.

“You want to know a lot,” he said.

“I don’t know very much, do I?” Jenny answered, in a little dead voice. “Just somewhere about nothing at all. I have to pretend the rest.”

“D’you want to know it?”

Jenny gave a quick look at his hands which lay upon the table. She could not raise her eyes further. She was afraid to do so. Her heart seemed to be beating in her throat.

“It’s funny me having to ask for it, isn’t it!” she said, suddenly haggard.