WE GO TO RYDE—THE AMARANTH—ACCIDENTAL MEETING WITH ARTHUR MASTERS AND HIS LADY FRIEND—I ENROLL HIM AMONG US PROVISIONALLY—WE DECIDE TO PURCHASE THE YACHT

I don’t know that it would be altogether necessary to the course of the narrative of this work to say much about our visit to Ryde and the Amaranth were it not that, while there, we accidentally encountered Arthur Masters, an old friend and school-fellow of mine. He was staying at Seaview, and, being in a mazed condition of lovelornness (for nothing short of it would have induced him to neglect the harriers of which he is master in Hertfordshire), had come over for the day with the young lady, and was spending it there mainly on the pier, being uncommonly warm and fine for November.

Mr. Brentin and I had just arrived, and were keeping our weather-eye open for the Amaranth, when we came on Arthur and his young lady sitting on the pier in the sun. She was introduced to us as Miss Rybot, and wore a straw-hat and a shirt, just as though it were summer.

We told them we had come down about a yacht, and, if we could only find her, were thinking of making a small trial-trip across the Solent.

As we were talking and persuading them to accompany us, up comes a sailor in a blue jersey, with Amaranth across it in red, and hands us a printed bill.

“Doing much business?” asked Mr. Brentin carelessly, cocking his eye on the man.

“Pretty fair, mister,” the sailor replied, “when the weather’s like this. There’s a good few aboard already.”

“Is there?” Mr. Brentin innocently remarked. “All right. Give Captain Evans Sir Anthony Hipkins’s compliments and say we will come aboard right away.”

“Sir Anthony! Lord love you!” ejaculated the sailor, and was off pretty fast down to the pier-head.

“We will give the captain a few minutes to clear out his Ryde friends,” observed Mr. Brentin with a wink, “and then we will pro-ceed.”

And, sure enough, as we got leisurely down to the pier-head there we found a boat just landing from the Amaranth, half a dozen excursionists in her with hand-bags and bottles, talking fast among themselves and giving frightened glances back at the yacht lying in the tideway two or three hundred yards off.

“Anything wrong on board, my friend?” drawled Mr. Brentin to a large, puce-faced man with a red comforter loosely knotted round his throat, as he clambered up the pier steps.

“Anythin’ wrong?” echoed the terrified man. “Captain says rust ’as suddenly got into the b’ilers and ’e’s afraid they’ll bust. That’s all!—Mother, where’s Emma?”

“We shall have the ship to ourselves,” remarked Mr. Brentin. “Music provided, too. Sakes alive!”

The music was a harp, a cornet, and a stout woman with a large accordion slung on her back. The cornettist, a battered-looking young man with one eye, carried a shell for collecting the money, and a camp-stool.

“Oh, don’t go!” drawled Mr. Brentin; “we have a passion for music on the waters.”

“‘Ave you?” cried the sarcastic cornettist. “Well, I ’ope you’ll like gittin’ blown up, too. Full steam a’ead, mates! Now then, missis, out of the way!”

Off they all trooped together as fast as they could down the length of the pier, giving occasional frightened glances back at the yacht, which began to blow us a sycophantish salute with her whistle.

“The only person who will get blown up to-day,” observed Mr. Brentin as he took his seat in the boat, “will be Captain Evans.”

All this time Miss Rybot had scarcely said a word. She was rather a haughty, not to say disagreeable-looking, young lady; tall, slightly freckled, with a high nose and a quantity of beautiful auburn hair. She appeared to take the situation with the utmost indifference, and not in the least to care whether she stayed on shore or went to sea and never came back. Altogether the sort of young lady who might lead an adorer rather a dance.

“Get under way at once, if you please, Captain Evans,” said Mr. Brentin, sternly, as we came on board and found the captain waiting for us, exceedingly alarmed, his cap in his hand.

“Aye, aye, sir!” bleated the captain. “Where to?”

“Anywhere where we can give the yacht’s speed a fair trial. What’s the matter with our going round the island?”

“There’s nothing the matter with it, sir, that I am aware of,” answered the startled Evans.

“Then make it so! And then come and give me a few moments’ conversation in the saloon. For the use of which,” Mr. Brentin gravely added, “I do not propose to pay half a dollar.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” And off we bustled towards Spithead.

“Where will you sit, Miss Rybot?” Masters asked, humbly.

“Anywhere out of the wind,” was the indifferent answer; “and be good enough, please, to leave me to myself for a little. I wish to collect my thoughts, and you have, no doubt, a good deal to talk over with your friend.”

The unfortunate Masters found her a sheltered seat (which she soon left and selected another), wrapped her legs in a rug (which she promptly threw off), and then came and sat himself down by me.

“She’s an orphan,” he whispered, biting his nails, “and has to teach. I met her at Seaview. She has forty pounds a year of her own, and has one little nasty pupil, whom she loathes. She’s a strict Roman Catholic, and talks of entering a convent, but she’s a good deal in debt, and wants to pay off her debts first. She talks of going to Monte Carlo and winning enough at the tables to pay her debts, and then becoming a Poor Clare.”

“A Poor Clare?”

“They’re a strictly enclosed order,” he groaned; “they keep a perpetual fast, have no beds, and go barefooted. They spend all their time in prayer and meditation, and live on alms.”

“Then they don’t marry, I suppose?”

“Don’t I tell you they’re strictly enclosed?”

“How long have you known her?”

“About a month. I met her at a friend’s house at Seaview.”

“Have you said anything to her yet?”

“Nothing very definite. I was going to to-day. But I don’t believe it will be any use,” he sighed; “she seems bent on the convent.”

“Do you think she suspects your attachment?”

“Oh, she must by this time. I’ve given up several days’ golf for her. But she’s so confoundedly independent and thinks so badly of men. She fancies they’re all after her because she’s poor.”

“Extraordinary young person!”

“Well, she says that if a man knows a girl’s poor he always believes she’s only too ready to marry him, just to escape from teaching and secure a comfortable home. That’s the sort of girl she is; she swears she won’t be purchased. What am I to do? What do you advise?”

I gave him plenty of sound advice, but could see he wasn’t attending to me. At last he roused himself to ask about my affairs. He had heard the Mabel Harker entanglement was over, and naturally supposed there was some one else. So off I went about Lucy and “The French Horn,” describing her minutely, and how unhappy I was, and how I was going down there at Christmas to make it all up, and that in the meantime—

“Then you would speak to her to-day and get some definite answer out of her?” he asked, biting his nails.

“How can I to-day, when she’s miles away in the Ladbroke Grove Road?”

Masters stared, and I saw, of course, he hadn’t been attending and was only thinking of himself.

With his mind in so confused and despondent a condition, I judged the opportunity excellent to try and get him to join us; so, after a few cautious preliminaries, I drew closer and let him into the whole secret of our visit to Ryde and trial of the yacht, giving him to understand that Mr. Brentin was already one of the heads of the enterprise, and that, if I couldn’t get the necessary half-dozen resolute Englishmen, he would easily fill their places with the same number of ditto Americans, from the hotels in Northumberland Avenue; which would cause me some national shame, I said, and give me ground for fearing the ancient spirit of the country was really gone and dribbled off into mere stock-jobbing, as so many people assert—Drake and the Gilberts and Raleigh having shuffled into Capel Court, touting on curb-stones like Hamburg peddlers or ready-money pencillers, instead of taking the broad and daring road of nerve and valor.

Further, I seductively pointed out there would be no sort of reason why Miss Rybot shouldn’t be of the party and try legitimately to win enough at the tables to pay her debts, if her heart was set on it; which would free her from all obligation towards him and bring about their marriage in the most natural way; and that if a chaperon were needed, I would engage to supply one, whether the young lady went to Monte Carlo by land or by sea.

As I had already experienced, different men take an announcement of this high order in different ways—some are shocked, some incredulous; some see all the difficulties at once, some never see any. As for Arthur Masters, he was in such a state of depression that I believe if I had said, “Arthur, we are going North to root up the Pole; will you make one?” he’d have answered, “Delighted!” and been off to Beale & Inman’s at once to order the necessary outfit.

At all events, what he did say was, that if Miss Rybot could be induced to come, he would certainly come too, and do his best, charging himself with the duty of feeling his way with her, and promising to let me know the result as soon as possible. He only stipulated he should not be away longer than a fortnight in January, because of his harriers, which all this time were being rather inefficiently hunted by his younger brother and the dog boy.

We got back safely to Ryde, thoroughly satisfied with our outing and the behavior of the Amaranth, and caught the six-o’clock train back to Victoria.

Mr. Brentin had unfortunately taken a strong dislike to Miss Rybot, and imitated her cold, haughty “Really! you don’t say so!” and other stand-offish little speeches, most of the way up. The imitation was not in the least like, of course, but served to show me the scornful bent of his mind towards her. When I told him I had secured Masters on the condition she came too, he grew quite angry, and declared that whatever route she took he should most certainly take the other, rather than be frozen in her society. He added, as a further ground of dislike, she was “pop-eyed”—a somewhat unjust description of her slightly prominent, large, cold, gray optics.

As for Captain Evans and his little game of using the yacht for excursions on his own account, the captain had given the, to me, rather lame explanation that yachts left idle came to no good, and should, in short, be taken out for exercise just like horses. Questioned why he didn’t go out without company, he averred he must have ballast or the yacht would throb her sides out, and that he thought he might as well make the ballast pay. Also that he had kept a most careful record of receipts, and was prepared to account for every farthing to the rightful owners, whoever they should turn out to be.

In short, as is so often the case, Captain Evans had managed to prove quite conclusively that Mr. Brentin was entirely in the wrong in suspecting his proceedings, and that he was a much injured and wholly innocent British sailor.

“That, sir,” said Mr. Brentin, chewing his cigar as we rattled along in the train, “has happened to me more than once with your lower orders. I go into my tailor’s with my noo coat bulging at the back, bursting with ay sense of injury at the misfit considering the price I have paid. And that tailor keeps cool while I stamp around; he surveys me with ay pitying smile, he calls up his assistants to admire the fit, and he proves to me con-clusively that the best part of that coat is precisely the bulge in the back, and that I shall injure his reputation and ruin the coat if I have it touched. I enter that store, sir, like ay raging lion, and I leave it ay teething lamb, my mouth overflowing with apologies, which the damn tailor will scarcely accept. And I know he thinks, ‘What infernal fools these Yankees are!’ and is laafing at me in his sleeve as the bulge and I disappear in the crowd of his other misfits, and are lost in the night of his paid accounts.”

That same evening the purchase of the yacht was concluded by Mr. Brentin, as he wrote me in the morning; directing me, further, to go right ahead and get the rest of my desperadoes together for a dash on the tables in January. He added in a postscript that, for his part, he was going into the city early next morning to buy three fair-sized cannon, capable of throwing three fair-sized shells; for, in case anything went wrong and we were captured, it would be just as well to leave orders with Captain Evans to shell the Casino, and so continue till we were released and replaced on board the Amaranth, with a guarantee for our expenses, and an undertaking for no further molestation.

Bold as I am, owing in some measure to my militia training, the rapidity of the American mind was again causing me some considerable qualms.