Jude and Satan were at work on something aft. In a minute it became apparent what they were doing. They were rigging an awning in imitation of the Dryad’s, an impudent affair made out of old canvas brown with weather and patched from wear.
It was like seeing a beggar woman raising a parasol.
Skelton sniffed; then he turned and, leaning with his back against the bulwarks, began attending to his left little fingernail with the penknife.
“Ratcliffe,” said Skelton suddenly and apparently addressing his little finger, “I wish you wouldn’t!” He spoke mildly, in a vaguely pained voice. It was as though Ratcliffe had acted in some way like a bounder; more, and, wonderfully, he actually made Ratcliffe feel as though he had acted in some way like a bounder. He was Ratcliffe’s host; that gave an extra weight to the words. The whole thing was horrible.
“Wouldn’t what?” said Ratcliffe.
Skelton had been rather hit in his proprieties by a man going off his boat in pajamas and remaining away to breakfast on board a thing like the Sarah Tyler in his pajamas; but the real cause of offense was “Pap’s” suit suddenly appearing at Sunday morning prayers. The chief steward had grinned.
Skelton, though a good sailor, an excellent shipmaster, and as brave as a man need be, was a highly nervous individual. A general service on deck for the whole crew was beyond him: he compromised by conducting a short service in the saloon. Even that was a tax on him. The entrance of Ratcliffe in that extraordinary get-up had joggled his nervous system.
“If you can’t understand, I can’t explain,” said Skelton. “If our cases had been reversed, I should have apologized. However, it doesn’t matter.”
“Look here, Skelly!” said Ratcliffe. “I’m most awfully sorry if I have jumped on your corns, and I’ll apologize as much as you want, but the fact of the matter is we don’t seem to hit it off exactly, do we? You are the best of good people, but we have different temperaments. If those other fellows had come along on the cruise, it would have mixed matters more. We want to be mixed up in a big party more, you and I, if we want to get on together.”
“I told you before we started I disliked crowds,” said Skelton, “and that only Satherthwaite and Magnus were coming. Then, when they failed, you said it didn’t matter, that we should be freer and more comfortable alone.”
“I know,” said Ratcliffe. “It was my mistake, and besides I didn’t want to put you off the cruise.”
“Oh, you would not have put me off. I should have started alone. I am dependent on no one for society.”
“I believe you would have been happier alone.”
“Perhaps,” said Skelton with tight lips.
“Well then, shove me ashore, somewhere.”
“That is talking nonsense!” said Skelton.
Ratcliffe had risen and was leaning over the rail beside the other. His eyes were fixed on the Sarah Tyler, the disreputable Sarah, and as he looked at her Jude and Satan suddenly seemed to him real live free human beings and Skelton as being not entirely alive nor, for all his wealth, free.
It was Skelton who gave the Tylers a nimbus, extra color, fascination, especially Jude. There was a lot of fascination about Jude, even without the background of Skelton.
“It’s not talking nonsense a bit,” said he, “and, if you can trundle along the rest of the cruise alone, I’ll drop you here.”
“Drop you on this island?”
“No—I’d like to go for a cruise with those chaps—I mean that chap in the mud barge over there. He asked me, any time I wanted to.”
“Are you in earnest?”
“Of course I am. It would be no end of a picnic, and I want to shove round these seas. I can get a boat back from Havana.”
Skelton felt that this was the washerwoman of Barbados over again—irresponsibility—bad form. He was, under his courteousness as a host, heartily sick of Ratcliffe and his ways and outlook. A solitary by inclination, he would not at all have objected to finishing this cruise by himself. All the same, he strongly objected to the idea just put before him.
What made him object? Was he insulted that the Dryad should be turned down in favor of the frowzy, disreputable-looking Sarah Tyler, that the companionship of the Tylerites should be preferred to his? Did some vague instinct tell him they were the better people to be with if one wanted to have a good time? Was high conventionality outraged as though, walking down Piccadilly with Ratcliffe, the latter were to seize the arm of a dustman?
Who knows? But he bitterly and strongly objected. And how and in what words did he show his objection and anger?
“Then go, my dear fellow, go!” said he as though with all the good will in the world.
“Right!” said Ratcliffe. “But are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Mind! Why should I mind?”
“One portmanteau full of stuff will do me,” said Ratcliffe, “and I have nearly a hundred and fifty in ready money and a letter of credit on the Lyonnaise at Havana for five hundred. I’ll trundle my stuff over if you’ll lend me a boat, and be back for luncheon. You’ll be off this evening, I suppose, and I can stay aboard here till you get the anchor up. It’s possible I might pick you up at Havana on the way back; but don’t worry about that. Of course all this depends on whether that fellow will take me. I’ll take the portmanteau with me and ask.”
He did not in the least see what was going on in Skelton’s mind.
“You will take your things with you in a boat, and if this—gentleman refuses to take you, what then?”
“I’ll come back.”
“Now I want to be quite clear with you, Ratcliffe,” said Skelton. “If you leave my ship like that—for nothing—at a whim and for disreputable chance acquaintances—absolute scowbankers—the worst sort—I want to be clear with you—quite, absolutely definite—I must ask you not to come back!”
“Well, I’m hanged!” said Ratcliffe, suddenly blazing out. “First you say go and then you say don’t! Of course that’s enough: you’ve practically fired me off your boat.”
“Do not twist my words,” said the other. “That is a subtle form of prevarication I can’t stand.”
“I think we had better stop this,” said Ratcliffe. “I’m going! If I don’t see you again. I’ll say goodby.”
“And please understand,” said the other, who was rather white about the mouth, “please understand—”
“Oh, I know,” said Ratcliffe. “Goodby!”
He dived below to the saloon and rang for his bedroom steward.
Burning with anger and irritation and a feeling that he had been sat upon by Skelton, snubbed, sneered at, and altogether outrageously used, he could not trust himself to do his own packing. He sat
