“‘A sea cruise,’ said Wendoleth promptly, ‘will get the white paint out of your system quicker than anything I know; and your morbid feeling of vexation with this girl, impatience of her persistency in continuing to exist, and so forth, will vanish with other things. Mr. Mudge,’—the person she has since married,—‘has kindly asked Papa and myself to join his party on board the steam-yacht Fifi for a trip to Lisbon, Madeira, and the Canaries; join us. I assure you a complete welcome and at least half a cabin.’ Rustleton recognized the cousinly kindness in Wendoleth’s proposal, accepted, and went with her and Todmoxen—the Earl is still robust, but not what he was in the ’seventies, nor is it to be expected—down to Southampton to join the Fifi. Mudge is Liberal member for the North Clogger Division of Mudderpool. But for a crimson necktie—the Party badge—and a habit of hanging on to his own coat-lapels when conversing, he is almost quite presentable, and, like all those people who begin by not having twopence, he is astonishingly rich. His welcome to Rustleton was cordial in the extreme. But when Rustleton found Lord Twissing and his daughter already on board, discovered that he was to share Twissing’s cabin, and that Céline slept in the one next door, he was dismayed. He would have excused himself and left the Fifi only that she was already on her way. Fate, like one of those curious jelly-like creatures which wave their tentacles to attract their prey and then clutch it and gradually absorb it, had wrapped its feelers around my poor boy. He is now resigned, calm, content, even happy; but when I think how he must have suffered.... My salts. In the basket. So kind of you, and so reviving.”
Lady Pomphrey inhaled with drooping eyelids and sniffed at the salts-flagon from time to time as she embarked once more upon her narrative way.
“The Fifi anchored for the night, which promised to be squally, in Southampton Water, about a quarter of a mile from Hythe Pier. Depressed and discouraged, my boy retired to his cabin, leaving the entire party screaming over ‘Bridge’ at a number of little tables in the saloon. He had just put on his nightalines,—pink with a green stripe, the jacket ornamented with green braid in loops, to match—and was attending to his teeth with a palm-stick, when, with a terrific crash, all the electric lights went out and the Fifi was plunged in darkness. I shudder when I realize the awfulness of all that. Don’t you?”
The friend supplied a shudder expressly manufactured for the purpose.
“A Welsh collier steamer, the Rattletrap, from Penwryg, had run down Mr. Mudge’s yacht, becoming firmly embedded in the hull of the craft—the details are graven on my memory,” said Lady Pomphrey impressively—“immediately forward of the engine-room. The crew turned out—not into the sea, but out of their hammocks—the ‘Bridge’ players rushed in confusion upon deck. In their evening dresses, without being even able to save a bag from below, Mr. Mudge’s party were dragged over the grimy bows of the collier. The crew scrambled after. The captain of the Rattletrap, having ascertained that the Fifi was rapidly filling, and that all her passengers, as he thought, were safe on board his vessel, was about to give the signal from the bridge to reverse engines when, with an appalling scream a lithe young girl in a crêpe de Chine evening wrap embroidered with roses and turtle-doves—quite symbolic when you think of it—leaped back upon the deck of the Fifi and disappeared below. Guess who she was, and whither she had gone? You can? You do? What romance in real life, isn’t it? Céline Twissing had missed Rustleton, and, knowing that he occupied the cabin next to her own, had rushed below to save him.
“He had rung for his man and was waiting calmly to be dressed, when she burst in the door with her shoulder—have you ever noticed her shoulders?—and shrieked to him to come on deck and be saved. Wrapped in a Scotch plaid which he had hastily thrown over his pyjamas at the moment of her entrance, he defied her, rebuked her immodesty in entering a gentleman’s dressing-room unannounced, ordered her to quit the cabin and go back to her father. When properly attired to appear before ladies, my boy, ever chivalrous and delicate-minded, said he would board the Rattletrap. ‘Don’t you feel that this yacht is water-logged?’ screamed Céline Twissing. ‘Don’t you know she’ll sink under our feet in another minute? Come on deck at once, you duffing little precisian, unless you want me to carry you!’ He retorted with contempt. She instantly seized him in her muscular arms—have you ever noticed her arms?—threw him, Scotch plaid and all, over her shoulder, carried him up the yacht’s companion-ladder, and amidst the cheers of the united crews of the Fifi and the Rattletrap, handed him over the bulwarks to the men of the collier. Then she followed, the captain gave the order to go astern, the collier reversed her engines, the water rushed into the yacht, and she sank instantly. All that can be seen of her to-day is her masts. And Céline Twissing and my boy are to be made one at St. George’s, Hanover Square, in the first week of the Winter Season. Céline will be married in white satin and mousseline trimmed with silver embroidery, and she goes away in a gown of putty-colored velvelise—the new stuff. I believe she secretly adored Rustleton from the very beginning, and he, I feel, is reconciled to the inscrutable appointments of Providence. How we have been chattering, haven’t we? Time for luncheon now. Oh, I pray, no carp in beer, or eels with currant jelly. But one never knows. Au revoir, dear! Au revoir!” And Lady Pomphrey put up her green sunshade and sailed away.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
- Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.