The Queen's Cup Part 12

"People in your set have no time to do so."

"That is very unkind. They think about amus.e.m.e.nt."

"They may think about it, but it is all in a very languid fas.h.i.+on.

Now, in a country town, when there is a ball or a dance in the neighbourhood, it is quite an excitement; and, at any rate, everyone enters into it heartily. People evidently enjoy the dancing for dancing's sake, and they all look as if they were thoroughly enjoying themselves. Whereas here, people dance as if it was rather a painful duty than otherwise, and there is a general expression of a longing for the whole thing to be over."

"I enjoy the dancing," Bertha said, st.u.r.dily. "At least, when I get a really good partner."

"Yes, but then you have only been three months at it. You have not got broken into the business yet."

"Nor have you, Major Mallett."

"No, but while you are an actor in the piece, I am but a spectator, and lookers-on, you know, see most of the game."

"What nonsense! Don't pretend you are getting to be a blase man. I know that you are only about ten years older than I am--not more than nine, I think--and you dance very well, and no doubt you know it."

"I like dancing, I can a.s.sure you, where there is room to dance; but I don't call it dancing when you have an area of only a foot square to dance in, and are hustled and b.u.mped more than you would be in a crowded Lord Mayor's show. My training has not suited me for it, and I would rather stand and look on, listen to sc.r.a.ps of conversation, watch the faces of the dancers and of those standing round. It is a study, and I think it shows one of the worst sides of nature. It is quite shocking to see and hear the envy, uncharitableness, the boredom, and the desperate efforts to look cheerful under difficulties, especially among the girls that do not get partners."

"For shame! I am disappointed in you," Bertha said, half in jest, half in earnest. "You are not at all the person I thought you were.

Whatever I may have fancied about you, I never imagined you a cynic or a grumbler."

"I suppose it brings out the worst side of my nature, too," he laughed.

"When you come down on board the Osprey, Miss Greendale, you will see the other side. I fancy one falls into the tone of one's surroundings.

Here I have caught the tone of the bored man of society, there you will see that I shall be a breezy sailor--cheerful in storm or in calm, ready to take my gla.s.s and to toast my la.s.s and all the rest of it in true nautical fas.h.i.+on."

"I hope so," she said, gravely. "I shall certainly need something of the sort to correct the very unfavourable impression you have just been giving me. Now let us change the subject. You have not told me yet whether you had any flirtations in India."

"Flirtations!" he repeated. "For once, the small section of womankind that I encountered were above and beyond flirtations.

"I don't think," he went on seriously, "that you in England can quite realise what it was, or that a woman in London society can imagine that there can exist a state of things in which dress and appearance are matters which have altogether ceased to engross the female mind. The white women I saw there were worn and haggard. No matter what their age, they bore on their faces the impress of terrible hards.h.i.+p, terrible danger, and terrible grief and anxiety.

Few but had lost someone dear to them, many all whom they cared for. A few had made some pitiful attempt at neatness, but most had lost all thought of self, all care whatever for personal appearance. There was an anxious look in their eyes that was painful to witness."

"I spoke without thinking," the girl said, gravely. "It must have been awful--awful, as you say. It is impossible for us really to imagine quite what it was, or to picture up such scenes as you must have witnessed. I can understand that all this must seem frivolous and contemptible to you."

"No, I don't go so far as that," he smiled. "It is good that there should be b.u.t.terflies as well as bees; and, at any rate, the women of India, who had the reputation of being as frivolous and pleasure-loving as the rest of their s.e.x, came out n.o.bly and showed a degree of patience under suffering and of heroic courage unsurpa.s.sable in history.

"I am afraid," he said, as the hostess gave the signal for the ladies to rise, "you will long look back upon this dinner as one of unprecedented dullness."

"Not dullness," she smiled. "Exceptional certainly, but as something so different from the usual thing, when one talks of nothing but the opera, the theatres and exhibitions, as to deserve to be put down in one's diary by a mark. I won't flatter you by telling you whether a red or a black one."

"Who are the party going to be, Mallett?" his friend Colonel Severn said, as they stood together on the deck of the Osprey early in August. "You guaranteed that it would be a pleasant one when you persuaded me to leave London, for the first time since I retired, before shooting began."

"Well, to begin with, there is Lady Greendale, an eminently pleasant woman. She comes as general chaperon, and I shall consider her under your especial care. You will not find it hard work, for she is an eminently sympathetic woman, ready to chat if you are disposed to talk, to interest herself in other ways if you are not.

She has plenty of common sense, is tolerant of tobacco, and a thorough woman of the world, though her headquarters have for years been in the country. With her is her daughter."

"Well, what about her? I have heard of her as having made quite a sensation this season, and between ourselves I had some idea that this party was specially planned on her account."

"To some extent perhaps it was," Frank Mallett laughed. "Bertha Greendale is an old chum of mine. I knew her in very short frocks, for they were near neighbours of ours in the country; and her father, Sir John, was always one of my kindest friends. She was a slip of a girl when I went out to India, and though I thought that she would turn out pretty, I certainly did not expect she would be anything like as good looking as she is. She was always a nice girl, and success so far has not spoiled her.

"Then there is a Miss Sinclair, a great friend of Bertha's; and Jack Hawley of the Guards. I knew him out in the Crimea. The other two are Wilson, who is a clever young barrister, and a particularly pleasant fellow; and his wife, who is a sister of Miss Sinclair; so I think there are the elements of a pleasant party. All the ladies are broken into smoke, for Sir John smoked, and so does Wilson; so that you won't be expected to go forward, as they do on the P and O, whenever you want to enjoy your favourite pipe."

"That is a comfort, anyhow, Mallett. If there is one thing in the world I hate, it is having to go and hunt about for some place to smoke in; and I never accept an invitation to any shooting party unless I know beforehand that smoking is allowed. At what time do you expect the others?"

"They will be down at half-past twelve; they are all coming by the same train, and it was because I knew that you would want to be in a smoking carriage that I told you to come down by the earlier one.

And, besides, I thought it well to get you here first. You are the only stranger, as it were. The others are all intimate with each other, and it was as well to post you as to their various relations.h.i.+ps."

"One thing, Mallett. I hope Lady Greendale is not in any way a marrying woman. I am not like Mr. Pickwick, afraid of widows, and have perfect confidence in my power to resist temptation; but at the same time it makes all the difference in the world to one's comfort. I am not a.s.s enough to suppose that Lady Greendale would even dream for a moment of setting her cap at a Colonel on half pay, but if a woman is in the marrying line she always expects a certain amount of what you may call delicate attention. It is her daily bread, for she considers that unless every man she comes across evinces a certain amount of admiration, it is a sign that her charms are on the wane, and her chances growing more and more remote."

Mallett laughed. "You can set your mind at ease, for nothing is further from the thoughts of Lady Greendale than re-marriage. She was very happy with her husband."

"The more reason for her marrying again," the Colonel said. "A woman who has been happy with her husband is apt to get the idea into her head that every man will make a good husband; and a confoundedly mistaken idea it is. She is much more likely to marry again than the woman who has had a hard time of it."

"Well, you may be right there, Colonel, but putting aside my conviction that Lady Greendale has no idea of marrying again, is the fact that at present all her thoughts are occupied by her daughter. She is not at all what you would call a managing mother, but I am sure that she has set her heart on Bertha's making a good match, and that the fear that she will succ.u.mb to some penniless younger son or other unsuitable partner is at present the dominant feeling in her mind. I don't think she would have agreed to Jack Hawley being of the party, had not Bertha entertained a conviction that he was rather gone on Miss Sinclair, who by the way has, like her sister, money enough to disregard the fact that Jack is hardly in that respect well endowed.

"However, it is time for me to be off; I see the skipper is getting the gig lowered. I suppose you will be content to sit here and smoke your pipe until we come back; and, indeed, seven is as many as the gig will carry with any degree of comfort. The cutter will go ash.o.r.e to fetch off the luggage, which will probably be of somewhat portentous dimensions."

Two minutes later Mallett took his place in the gig, and was rowed to the sh.o.r.e. He was delighted, with his new purchase. She was an excellent sea boat, and, as he had learned from a short spin with another craft, decidedly fast. He had not, however, entered her for any race.

"There is no hurry," he said to his skipper, when the latter suggested that they should try her at Cowes. "I should like to win my first race, and in the first place we don't know that she is in her best trim. In the next place we must get the crew accustomed to each other and to the craft. I bought her as a cruiser rather than a racer, and don't want to have her full of men, as are most of the racers. It is a heavy expense, and fewer hands accustomed to work well together do just as much work, and more smartly than a crowd.

We found, when we sailed round the islands with the Royal Victoria race, that, considering we went under reduced canvas, we held our own very fairly; and I have no doubt that when we get all our light canvas up, the Osprey will give a good account of herself. Our gear is scarcely stretched yet.

"No; I will wait until next season, and then we will make a bold bid for a Queen's Cup."

Frank Mallett reached the platform at Southampton a few minutes before the train came in. The party were on the lookout for him, and alighted in the highest spirits.

"Now, ladies," he said, "the first thing is to point out the luggage. My man here will get it all together, and stand guard over it till two others arrive to get it on board. They will be here in a few minutes. In fact, they ought to be here now."

He looked on with something like dismay while the boxes were picked out and piled together.

"My dear Lady Greendale," he said, "I am afraid you must all have very vague ideas as to the amount of accommodation in a 120-ton yacht. She is not a Cunarder or a P and O. Why, two or three of those trunks would absolutely fill one of her cabins."

"You did not expect, Major Mallett," Bertha said demurely, "that we were coming for a month's cruise with only handbags; especially after telling us that very likely we might not get a chance of getting any was.h.i.+ng done all that time."

"Well, I dare say we shall stow them away somewhere. Now, as you have got them all together, we will go down to the boat.

"Now, lads, you had better get a hand cart, and get these things on board as soon as you can."

"Which is the Osprey?" Amy Sinclair asked Bertha, as they took their places in the boat.

Bertha looked with a rather puzzled face at the fleet of yachts.

"That is," she said, confidently, after a moment's hesitation, pointing to one towards which the boat was at the moment heading.

Frank Mallett laughed.

"Really I should have thought, Miss Greendale, that, although making every allowance for feminine vagueness as to boats, you would have known the yacht you christened a month ago; or, at any rate, would not have mistaken a schooner for a yawl, after the patient explanation I gave you on your last visit as to the different rigs. That is the Osprey, a hundred yards lower down."

"Oh, yes, I remember now, that when there is a little mast standing on the stern it is a yawl. These things seem very simple to you, Major Mallett, but they are very puzzling to women, who know nothing about them. Now, I venture to say, that if I were to show you six different materials for frocks, and were to tell you all their names, you would know nothing about them when I showed them to you a month afterwards.