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.