“Have you been in the harbour all day?” she asked, “then how was it you did not visit us? Was Herr Davies so shy?” (Curiosity or malice?)
“Quite the contrary; but I was,” I answered coldly; “you see, we knew Herr Dollmann was away, and we really only called here to get my letters; besides, we did not know your address.” I looked at Clara and found her talking gaily to von Brüning, deaf seemingly to our little dialogue.
“Anyone would have told you it,” said Madame, raising her eyebrows.
“I dare say; but directly after breakfast the fog came on, and—well, one cannot leave a yacht alone in a fog,” I said, with professional solidity.
Von Brüning pricked up his ears at this. “I’ll be hanged if that was _your_ maxim,” he laughed; “you’re too fond of the shore!”
I sent him a glance of protest, as though to say: “What’s the use of your warning if you won’t let me act on it?”
For, of course, my excuses were meant chiefly for his consumption, and Fräulein Dollmann’s. That the lady I addressed them to found them unpalatable was not my fault.
“Then you sat in your wretched little cabin all day?” she persisted.
“All day,” I said, brazenly; “it was the safest thing to do.” And I looked again at Fräulein Dollmann, frankly and squarely. Our eyes met, and she dropped hers instantly, but not before I had learnt something; for if ever I saw misery under a mask it was on her face. No; she had not told.
I think I puzzled the stepmother, who shrugged her white shoulders, and said in that case she wondered we had dared to leave our precious boat and come to supper. If we knew Frisian fogs as well as she did——
Oh, I explained, we were not so nervous as that; and as for supper on shore, if she only knew what a Spartan life we led——
“Oh, for mercy’s sake, don’t tell me about it!” she cried, with a grimace; “I hate the mention of yachts. When I think of that dreadful _Medusa_ coming from Hamburg——” I sympathised with half my attention, keeping one strained ear open for developments on my right. Davies, I knew, was in the thick of it, and none too happy under Böhme’s eye, but working manfully. “My fault”—“sudden squall”—“quite safe”, were some of the phrases I caught; while I was aware, to my alarm, that he was actually drawing a diagram of something with bread-crumbs and table-knives. The subject seemed to gutter out to an awkward end, and suddenly Böhme, who was my right-hand neighbour, turned to me. “You are starting for England to-morrow morning?” he said.