Blow The Man Down. Holman Day
of passion might drive him to break all the rules of conduct his New England conscience had set over him; but what Alma Marston did overwhelmed him with such stupefaction that he stood there as rigid and motionless as a belaying-pin in a rack. She put up her arms, pressed her two hands on his shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on his lips.
“There, foolish old Yankee,” she said, softly, her mouth close to his; “since you are so ashamed I give you back your kiss—and all is made right between us, because we are just where we started a little while ago.”
His amazement had so benumbed him that even after that surrender he stood there, close to her, his countenance blank, his arms dangling at his side.
“What on earth is the matter with you?” she asked, petulantly.
“I don't know! I—I—I don't seem to understand.”
“I'm going to be honest with you. You are so honest you will understand me, then,” she told him. It seemed to him that he must be mistaken, but he certainly felt her arms were slipping up his shoulders and had met behind his neck. “I saw it in your eyes long ago. A woman always knows. I wanted you to do what you did to-night. I knew I would be obliged to tempt you. I came up here while the moon and the music would help me. I did it all on purpose—I stood close to you—for I knew you were just my slow old Yankee who would never come out of his shell till I poked. There! I have confessed!”
His mad joy did not allow him to see anything of the coquette in that confession. It all seemed to be consecrated by the love he felt for her—a love which was so honest that he perceived no boldness in the attitude of this girl who had come so far to meet him. He took her into his arms again, and she returned his kisses.
“Tell me again, Boyd, that you love me,” she coaxed.
“And yet I have no right to love you. You are—”
“Hush! Hush! There goes your Yankee caution talking! I want love, for I am a girl. Love hasn't anything to do with what you are or what I am. Not now! We will love each other—and wait! You are my big boy! Aren't you?”
He was glad to comply with her plea to put sensible talk from them just then. There was nothing sensible he could say. He was holding Julius Marston's daughter in his arms, and she was telling him that she loved him. The world was suddenly upside down and he was surrendering himself to the mad present.
In the yacht's saloon below a woman began to sing:
“Love comes like a summer sigh,
Softly o'er us stealing.
Love comes and we wonder why
To its shrine we're kneeling.
Love comes as the days go by—”
“That's it,” the girl murmured, eagerly. “We don't know anything at all about why we love. Folks who marry for money make believe love—I have watched them—I know. I love you. You're my big boy. That's all. That's enough.”
He accepted this comforting doctrine unquestioningly. Her serene acceptance of the situation, without one wrinkle in her placid brow to indicate that any future problems annoyed her, did not arouse his wonderment or cause him to question the depths of her emotions; it only added one more element to the unreality of the entire affair.
Moon and music, silver sea and glorious night, and a maid who had been, in his secret thoughts, his dream of the unattainable!
“Will you wait for me—wait till I can make something of myself?” he demanded.
“You are yourself—right now—that's enough!”
“But the future. I must—”
“Love me—love me now—that's all we need to ask. The future will take care of itself when the time comes! Haven't you read about the great loves? How they just forgot the whole petty world? What has love to do with business and money and bargains? Love in its place—business in its place! And our love will be our secret until—”
He pardoned her indefiniteness, for when she paused and hesitated she pressed her lips to his, and that assurance was enough for him.
“Yes—oh yes—Miss Alma!” called a man's voice in the singsong of eager summons.
“It's Arthur,” she said, with snap of impatience in her voice. “Why won't people let me alone?”
He released her, and she stood at arm's-length, her hands against his breast. “I have thought—It seemed to me,” he stammered, “that he—Forgive me, but I have loved you so! I couldn't bear to think—think that he—”
“You thought I cared for him!” she chided. “That's only the man my father has picked out for me! Why, I wouldn't even allow my father to select a yachting-cap for me, much less a husband. I'll tell him so when the time comes!”
Mayo's brows wrinkled in spite of himself. The morrow seemed to play small part in the calculations of this maid.
“Money—that's all there is to Arthur Beveridge. My father has enough money for all of us. And if he is stingy with us—oh, it's easy enough to earn money, isn't it? All men can earn money.”
Captain Mayo, sailor, was not sure of his course in financial waters and did not reply.
“Miss Alma! I say! Oh, where are you?”
“Even that silly, little, dried-up man,” she jeered, with a duck of her head in the direction of the drawling voice, “goes down to Wall Street and makes thousands and thousands of dollars whenever he feels like it. And you could put him in your reefer pocket. They will all be afraid of you when you go down to Wall Street to make lots of money for us two. You shall see! Kiss me! Kiss me once! Kiss me quick! Here he comes!”
He obeyed, released her, and when Beveridge shoved his wizened face in at the door they were bending over the chart.
“Oh, I say, we have missed you. They are asking for you.”
She did not turn to look at him. “I have something else on my mind, Arthur, besides lolling below listening to Wally Dalton fiddle love-tunes. And this passage, here, Captain Mayo! What is it?” Her finger strayed idly across a few hundred miles of mapped Atlantic Ocean.
“It's Honeymoon Channel,” replied the navigator, demurely. His new ecstasy made him bold enough to jest.
“Oh, so we are learning to be a captain, Miss Alma?” inquired Beveridge with a wry smile.
“It would be better if more yacht-owners knew how to manage their own craft,” she informed him, with spirit.
“Yes, it might keep the understrappers in line,” agreed the man at the door.. “I apply for the position of first mate after you qualify, Captain Alma.”
“And this, you say, is, Captain Mayo?” she queried, without troubling herself to reply. Her tone was crisply matter of fact.
Beveridge blinked at her and showed the disconcerted uneasiness of a man who has intruded in business hours.
Captain Mayo, watching the white finger rapturously, noted that it was sweeping from the Arctic Circle to the Tropic Zone. “That's Love Harbor, reached through the thoroughfare of Hope,” he answered, respectfully.
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Beveridge; “the sailors who laid out that course must have been romantic.”
“Sailors have souls to correspond with their horizon, Arthur. Would you prefer such names as Cash Cove and Money-grub Channel?”
Mr. Beveridge cocked an eyebrow and stared at her eloquent back; also, he cast a glance of no great favor on the stalwart young captain of the Olenia. It certainly did not occur to Mr. Beveridge that two young folks in love were making sport of him. That Julius Marston's daughter would descend to a yacht captain would have appeared as incredible an enormity as an affair with the butler. But there was something about this