Captivating Mary Carstairs | Page 9

day or two.
The two young men had been as furtive as possible about their
proposed journey. They had not met since the night Varney had

dangled the hope of jail and disgrace into Peter's lightening face, and so,
or otherwise, cajoled him into going along. Both of them had kept
carefully away from the Cypriani. Now they proceeded to her by
different routes, and reached her at different times, Peter first. Their
luggage had gone aboard before them, and there was no longer a thing
to wait for. At three o'clock, on Varney's signal, the ship's bell sounded,
her whistle shrieked, and she slid off through the waters of the bay.
About the start there was nothing in the least dramatic: they had merely
begun moving through the water and that was all. The Cypriani, for all
her odd errand, was merely one of a thousand boats which indifferently
crossed each other's wakes in one of the most crowded harbors in the
world.
"For all the lime-light we draw," observed Maginnis, drinking in the
freshening breeze, "we might be running up to Harlem to address the
fortnightly meeting of a Girls' Friendly Society."
Varney said: "Give us a chance, will you?"

CHAPTER III
THEY ARRIVE IN HUNSTON AND FALL IN WITH A
STRANGER
The landscape near Hunston, as it happened, was superfluously pretty.
It deserved a group of resident artists to admire and to catch it upon
canvas; and it had, roughly speaking, only artisans out of a job. The one
blot was the town, sprawling hideously over the hillside. Set down
against the perennial wood, by the side of the everlasting river, it
looked very cheap and common. But all this was by day. Now night fell
upon the poor little city and mercifully hid it from view.
They had made the start too late for hurry to be any object. It was only
a three hours' run for the Cypriani, but she took it slowly, using four.
At half-past six o'clock, when their destination was drawing near, the

two men went below and dined. At seven, while they were still at table,
they heard the slow-down signal, and, a moment later, the rattle of the
anchor line. Now, at quarter-past seven, Varney lounged alone by the
starboard rail and acquainted himself with the purview.
They had run perhaps quarter of a mile above the town, for reasons
which he had not communicated to the sailing-master in transmitting
his orders. One was that they might be removed somewhat from native
curiosity. The other was, they might be near the Carstairs residence,
which was up this way somewhere. So, between the yacht and the town
lay hill and wood intervening. The Cypriani, so to say, had anchored in
the country. Only a light glimmering here and there through the trees
indicated the nearness of man's abode.
A soporific quality lurked in the quiet solitude, and Varney, sunk in a
deck-chair, yawned. They had decided at dinner that they would do
nothing that night but go to bed, for it seemed plain that there was
nothing else to do: little girls did not ramble abroad alone after dark.
Up the companion-way and over the glistening after-deck strolled Peter,
an eye-catching figure in the flooding moonlight. For, retiring to his
stateroom from the table, he had divested himself of much raiment and
encased his figure in a great purple bathrobe. He was a man who loved
to be comfortable, was Peter. Topping the robe, he wore his new
Panama. Varney looked around at the sound of footsteps, and was
considerably struck by his friend's appearance.
"Feeling well, old man?" he asked with solicitude.
"Certainly."
"Not seasick at all? You won't let me fetch you the hot-water bottle?"
"No, ass."
Peter sank down in an upholstered wicker chair with pillows in it, and
looked out appreciatively at the night. The yacht's lights were set, but
her deck bulbs hung dark; for the soft and shimmering radiance of the
sky made man's illumination an offense.

However, aesthetics, like everything else, has its place in human
economy and no more. No one aboard the Cypriani became so
absorbed in the marvels of nature as to become insensible to other
pleasures. The air, new and fine from the hands of its Maker, acquired a
distinct flavor of nicotine as it flitted past the yacht. From some hidden
depth rose the subdued and convalescent snores of that early retirer, the
sailing-master's wife. Below forward, two deck-hands were
thoughtfully playing set-back for pennies, while a machinist sat by and
read a sporting extra by a swinging bulb. Above forward, on a coil of
rope, McTosh, the head steward and one of Mr. Carstairs's oldest
servants, smoked a bad pipe, and expectorated stoically into the
Hudson.
The thought of the