Ragna. Anna Miller Costantini
for us!"
Ragna looked up, blushing and smiling; they both touched their glasses to hers and drank.
"Now Mademoiselle, you must answer the toast!"
"I? Oh, never!" she cried in confusion. "I have never answered a toast in my life. I don't know how!" Then recovering herself, "You may answer it for me if you like."
"Shall I?" he asked. "Very well then, I rise, lady and gentleman—no I don't, I sit down," as a lurch of the ship threw him back into his chair and spilt half the contents of his glass—"I sit then, as the elements won't permit of my standing, to thank you for the toast just drunk, and to propose in return our newborn friendship!"
They all drank to that.
"There," said Mirko, "that is better; we have set the seal on our present relation. The Present with a capital P. is always the best life has to offer. Yesterday is dead and to-morrow is in darkness: to-day only we live. Carpe diem was the motto of the Ancients and it is mine!"
"Oh, no, not of all the Ancients," objected Ragna quickly, horrified at the Pagan irresponsibility of the thought, "the Stoics did not live for the pleasure of the hour, they taught themselves to forego pleasure. I think it is nobler to deny one's self," she added timidly.
"Deny one's self? What for?" demanded the Prince. "Why should I deny myself anything for the sake of others' pleasure? Am I not as good as they? And besides if I deny myself it only makes them selfish. To be really altruistic I should indulge myself on every occasion with the object of cultivating a beautiful unselfishness in others—that would be true self-sacrifice"—He stopped, laughing at the extreme bewilderment of the girl's face. She had lived entirely among serious-minded people, devoid of a sense of humour, and was unused to hear what were, to her, serious matters bandied about as subjects for jest; she rejoined gravely:
"You say, 'live only for the day,' but there is a to-morrow—someone must always bear the consequences, it can't keep on being just 'to-day' however much we may wish it."
The remark was characteristic of her, and she was one on whom life's to-morrows would fall heavily. Angelescu came to her assistance.
"Mademoiselle refuses to accept the sophistry of Your Highness's arguments," he said smiling. "Sophistry, why it is the simple truth, and the Epicureans are your true Stoics. Carpe diem! Let us drink to carpe diem!"
"Not I," said Ragna.
"Very well then, Mademoiselle la Stoique—but I shall make it my business to convert you. Let us then drink to the health of our noble selves. What do you say, in Norwegian, when you drink a health?"
"Skaal," said Ragna.
"Skaal, then," said both men raising their glasses and looking at Ragna, who half timidly raised hers to her lips, then put it down again—and Prince Mirko added under his breath as he drained his glass,
"And to your conversion, my dear."
On deck, a fresh breeze was blowing, and Ragna bound a long scarf over her head and wrapped her travelling-cloak well about her. Accompanied by the two men she paced briskly up and down the deck inhaling joyfully the strong sea air.
"Let us try the other side," she said presently, and they turned forward of the wheel-house: At the turn the wind caught the long ends of her scarf and wound them about the Prince's neck; they paused to disentangle the soft silken thing, Prince Mirko's hands delaying rather than hastening the process, when a lurch of the vessel flung Ragna against him. He steadied himself with one arm against the deck-house and with the other supported the girl, holding her firm young body close to his. He held her but a moment more than was needful, but in that moment, pressed close to him, his moustache brushing her cheek, she felt a repetition of the same thrill, half attraction, half fear, which had come over her the first time their eyes met. It was over in an instant and they were running down the deck before the wind, but Ragna felt a new and strange constraint upon her which did not wear off as the evening advanced.
She waited up long enough to see Heligoland rising up dark and forbidding on the starboard side in the half-light of the moon. The cloud-wrack behind, seemed like the wings of some monster bird of prey about to swoop down upon the island, crouching to repel the attack. As she watched, a cloud passed over the moon and a jagged line of lightning cleft the darkening mass on the horizon. The flash lasted but the fraction of a second, but she had seen a ship carrying full sail silhouetted against the storm-cloud. The ship stood out for an instant in wonderful relief, every spar and rope clear-cut against the sombre background, then was swallowed up into the night.
"It is Uncle Olaf," thought Ragna. "He has come to warn me—but of what?"
She turned to Angelescu, leaning on the rail beside her.
"Did you see the ship?"
"The ship! What ship? When?"
"Just over there, against that black cloud in the lightning flash."
As she spoke the lightning flared again but revealed nothing.
"You see there is no ship, Mademoiselle," said Angelescu, "and landsman though I be, I know that she would show some lights if she were there."
"Then," said Ragna in a low voice, "the sign is not for you—it was the ship of my Uncle Olaf."
"What are you talking about so earnestly?" asked Prince Mirko, joining them. He had been lighting a cigarette in the shelter of the companion-way. His tone was suspicious, he thought that Angelescu might have been warning the girl against him. The mere fact that he suspected such a contingency and resented it, was proof patent that his good resolution of the afternoon had fallen into abeyance.
During the brief moment when he had held her in his arms, had felt her heart beating under his hand and the stray locks of her hair blowing across his face, his pulse had given a leap, and had it not been for Angelescu's restraining presence, he would have kissed her.
Angelescu hastened to reassure him:
"Mademoiselle has seen the phantom ship of her phantom uncle—I have not, which proves that my spiritual vision is defective."
Ragna laughed.
"Should I be able to see your family ghost, I wonder?" she queried.
"What makes you think I have a family ghost, Mademoiselle?"
"Everyone has them—you, the Prince—oh, everyone!"
"If you mean a private, particular ghost, Mademoiselle, every man or woman has one after a certain age. Sometimes it is the ghost of the 'has been,' sometimes of the 'what might have been,' and sometimes of both. But you are too young for that sort of ghost—and I pray you may never have a worse one than your Uncle Olaf's."
"Oh, stow all that nonsense about ghosts," said the Prince testily. "Why should you fill up a poor girl's head with that sort of thing? Will you not walk again, Mademoiselle, and let the wind blow all these cobwebs away?"
But Ragna refused; it was late, she said, four bells had just struck, and it was time for bed. The men strolled over to the companion-way with her and each kissed her hand. Angelescu brushed it respectfully with his moustache, but the Prince set his lips upon it and the burning seal of his mouth sent a current through her veins. She snatched her hand away and fled to her cabin.
The men walked slowly up and down the lee-side of the deck, the swinging lamp grotesquely lengthening and broadening their shadows as they passed under its feeble ray.
"Otto," said the Prince suddenly, "what do you think of the girl? Is she as innocent as she appears?"
"I think," rejoined Angelescu, weighing every word, "that she is entirely too good a girl to play with and fling away. Anyone can see that she is nothing but a child at heart, and a man who can't marry her has no business to wake her up."
"Which means me? Well, calm yourself, good Otto, calm yourself, the fair maiden runs no danger that I know of. I have no foul intentions on her virtue! A little fun does no one