even dorothy was disposed to believe that unless some peculiarly favorable combination of circumstances presented itself as a basis for her intelligent manipulation her strong desire for a yacht voyage must remain ungratified; for, now that his liver was decidedly the larger part of him, mr. port had a fairly catlike dread of the sea. to be sure, dorothy’s character was a resolute one, and her staying powers were quite remarkable; but in the matter of venturing his bilious body upon the ocean she discovered that her uncle—although now reduced to a fairly satisfactory state of submission in other respects—had a large and powerful will of his own.
fortune, however, favors the resolute even more decidedly than she favors the brave. this fact dorothy comprehended thoroughly, and uniformly acted upon. each time that even a remote possibility of a yacht cruise presented itself she instantly brought her batteries to bear; and, with a nice understanding of her uncle’s intellectual peculiarities, she each time treated the matter as though it never before had been discussed.
therefore it was that when miss lee’s eyes were gladdened one day—just as she and her uncle were about to begin their lunch on the shady veranda of the casino—by the sight of a trim schooner yacht sliding down the wind from the direction of newport, the subject of the cruise was revived with a suddenness and point that mr. port found highly disconcerting. the yacht rounded to off the casino, and the sound of a plunge and a clanking chain floated across the water as her anchor went overboard.
the yacht rounded to off the casino 060
“oh, isn’t she a beauty!” exclaimed dorothy, with enthusiasm. “now, uncle hutchinson, her owner is coming ashore—they have just brought the gig round to the gangway—and if you don’t know him you must get somebody to introduce you to him; and then you must introduce him to me; and then he will ask us to go on a cruise; and of course we will go, and have just the loveliest time in the world. i haven’t been on board a yacht for nearly five years (just look at the gig: don’t the men pull splendidly?)—not since that nice little lord alderhone took poor dear mamma and me up to norway. we did have such a good time! poor dear mamma, of course, was desperately sick—she always was horribly sea-sick, you know; but i’m never sea-sick the least bit, and it was perfectly delightful. look, uncle hutchinson, they’ve made the dock, and now he’s coming right up here. what a handsome man he is, and how well he looks in his club uniform! it seems to me i’ve seen him somewhere. do you know him, uncle hutchinson?”
a serious difficulty under which mr. port labored in his dealings with his niece was his inability—due to his philadelphia habit of mind—to keep up with the exceptionally rapid flow of her ideas. on the present occasion, while he still was engaged in consideration of the irrational proposition that he should court the desperate misery that attends a bilious man at sea by as good as asking to be taken on a yacht voyage, he suddenly found his ideas twisted off into another direction by the reference to his sister’s sufferings on a similar occasion in the past; and before he could frame in words the reproof that he was disposed to administer to dorothy for what he probably would have styled her heartlessness, he found his thoughts shunted to yet another track by a direct question. it is within the bounds of possibility that miss lee had arrived at a just estimate of her relative’s intellectual peculiarities, and that she even sometimes framed her discourses with a view to taking advantage of them.
the direct question being the simplest section of dorothy’s complex utterance, mr. port abandoned his intended remonstrance and reproof and proceeded to answer it. “yes,” he said, “i know him. it’s van rensselaer livingstone. his cousin, van ruy-ter livingstone, married your cousin grace—grace winthrop, you know. he’s a great scamp—this one, i mean; gambles, and that sort of thing, i’m told, and drinks, and—and various things. i shall have to speak to him if he sees me, i suppose; but of course i shall not introduce him to you.”
“mr. van rensselaer livingstone! why so it is! how perfectly delightful! i know him very well, uncle hutchinson. he was in nice the last winter we were there; and he broke the bank at monaco; and he played that perfectly absurd trick on little prince sporetti: cut off his little black mustache when prince sporetti was—was not exactly sober, you know, and gummed on a great red mustache instead of it; and then, before the prince was quite himself again, took him to lady orrasby’s ball. all nice was in a perfect roar over it. and they had a duel afterwards, and mr. livingstone—he is a wonderful shot—instead of hurting the little prince, just shot away the tip of his left ear as nicely as possible. oh, he is a delightful man—and here he comes.” and dorothy, half rising from her chair, and paying no more attention to mr. port’s kicks under the table than she did to his smothered verbal remonstrances, extended her well-shaped white hand in the most cordial manner, and in the most cordial tone exclaimed:
“won’t you speak to me in english, mr. livingstone? we talked french, i think it was, the last time we met. and how is your friend prince sporetti? has his ear grown out again? you know my uncle, i think? mr. hutchinson port.”
livingstone took the proffered hand with even more cordiality than it was given, and then extended his own to mr. port—who seemed much less inclined to shake it than to bite it.
“i think that we are justified in regarding ourselves as relations now, miss lee, since our cousins have married each other, you know. quite a romance, wasn’t it? and how very jolly it is to meet you here—when i thought that you certainly were in switzerland or norway, or even over in that new place that people are going to in roumania! i flatter myself that i always have rather a knack of falling on my feet, but, by jove, i’m doing it more than usual this morning!”
miss lee seemed to be entirely unaware of the fact that her uncle was looking like an animated thunder-cloud. “it is just like a bit out of a delightful novel,” was her encouraging response. “a long, low, black schooner suddenly coming in from the seaward and anchoring close off shore, and the hero landing in a little boat just in time to slay the villain and rescue the beautiful bride. of course i’m the beautiful bride, but my uncle is not a villain, but the very best of guardians—by-the-way, i don’t think that you know that poor dear mamma is dead, mr. livingstone? yes, she died only a week or two after you left us. so you see you must be very nice to the villain—and you can begin your kind treatment of him by having lunch with him and with me too. uncle hutchinson was so pleased when he saw you come ashore. he said that we certainly must capture you, and he sent a man to bring some hot soup for you at once—here it is now.” and so it was, for dorothy herself very thoughtfully had given the order that she now modestly attributed to her uncle.
and so in less than ten minutes from the moment when mr. port had informed dorothy that van rensselaer livingstone was a very objectionable person whom he desired to avoid, and whose introduction to her was not even to be thought of, they all three were lunching together in what to the casual observer seemed to be the most amicable manner possible.
