Satan in a new guise—Satan as a matchmaker!
All sorts of things, some almost half-forgotten, rushed together to clothe Satan in this new garment. He remembered Satan’s solicitude for Jude’s future, Satan’s complacency when he and Jude had gone off to the sandspit together, his conversations about Jude, the complete absence of surprise with which he had taken the business of last night,—a hundred things, and all pointing in the same direction and to the fact that Satan had wished the business, just as he had wished the dinghy away from Skelton, just as he had wished Ratcliffe on board of the Sarah Tyler.
He, Ratcliffe, was part of the sea-pickings of this gipsy, part and parcel with bunches of bananas, pots of paint, sailcloth, mainsheet buffers, cringles, and so on! He was annexed to fit Jude just as the mast winch of the Haliotis was annexed to fit the Sarah!
Jude herself had declared that Satan had brought him on board because he “wanted him.”
Skelton paused in his operation on the pineapple and stared at the other.
“I beg your pardon,” said Ratcliffe, “but something has just struck me so horribly funny I couldn’t help laughing—anyhow, the joke is against myself. Look here, Skelton, I want to tell you something—I’m—m—going to marry a girl.”
“Indeed—but what is there horribly funny about that?”
“Nothing—it’s not that, it’s something else; but let’s start with that. I’m going to marry that girl who rowed me over here today, Satan’s sister.”
Skelton laid down his fork. All his starch had vanished. Surprised out of his life, he seemed suddenly to grow younger and more natural looking.
“Good God!” said Skelton, staring at the other. “You don’t mean—”