"Look here, dad," said Charlie in a hurry. "If you"re game for a day out I particularly want to show you something. And incidentally you"ll see some driving, believe me!"
"My will is made! I am game," answered Mr. Prohack, delighted at the prospect of any diversion, however perilous.
II
When Charlie drew up at the Royal Pier, Southampton (having reached there in rather less time than the train journey and a taxi at each end would have required), he silently handed over the wheel to the chauffeur, and led his mystified but unenquiring father down the steps on the west side of the pier. A man in a blue suit with a peaked cap and a white cover on the cap was standing at the foot of the steps, just above the water and above a motor-launch containing two other men in blue jerseys with the name "Northwind" on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and on their foreheads. A blue ensign was flying at the stem of the launch.
"How d"ye do, Snow?" Charlie greeted the first man, who raised his cap.
Father and son got into the launch and the man after them: the launch began to snort, and off it went at a racing speed from the pier towards midchannel. Mr. Prohack, who said not a word, perceived a string of vessels of various sizes which he judged to be private yachts, though he had no experience whatever of yachts. Some of them flew bunting and some of them didn"t; but they all without exception appeared, as Mr. Prohack would have expected, to be the very symbols of complicated elegance and luxury, shining and glittering buoyantly there on the brilliant blue water under the summer sun. The launch was rushing headlong through its own white surge towards the largest of these majestic toys. As it approached the string Mr. Prohack saw that all the yachts were much larger than he imagined, and that the largest was enormous. The launch flicked itself round the stern of that yacht, upon which Mr. Prohack read the word "Northwind" in gold, and halted bobbing at a staircase whose rails were white ropes, slung against a dark blue wall; the wall was the side of the yacht. Mr. Prohack climbed out of the bobbing launch, and the staircase had the solidity under his feet of masonry on earth. High up, glancing over the wall, was a capped face.
"How d"ye do, skipper," called Charlie, and when he had got his parent on to the deck, he said: "Skipper, this is my father. Dad--Captain Crowley."
Mr. Prohack shook hands with a short, stoutish nervous man with an honest, grim, marine face.
"Everything all right?"
"Yes, sir. Glad you"ve come at last, sir."
"Good!"
Charlie turned away from the captain to his father. Mr. Prohack saw a man hauling a three-cornered flag up the chief of the three masts which the ship possessed, and another man hauling a large oblong flag up a pole at the stern.
"What is the significance of this flag-raising?" asked Mr. Prohack.
"The significance is that the owner has come aboard," Charlie replied, not wholly without self-consciousness. "Come on. Have a look at her.
Come on, skipper. Do the honours. She used to be a Mediterranean trader.
The former owner turned her into a yacht. He says she cost him a hundred thousand by the time she was finished. I can believe it."
Mr. Prohack also believed it, easily; he believed it more and more easily as he was trotted from deck to deck and from bedroom to bedroom, and sitting-room to sitting-room, and library to smoking-room, and music-room to lounge, and especially from bathroom to bathroom. In no land habitation had Mr. Prohack seen so many, or such marmoreal, or such luxurious bathrooms. What particularly astonished Mr. Prohack was the exceeding and minute finish of everything, and what astonished him even more than the finish was the cleanliness of everything.
"Dirty place to be in, sir, Southampton," grinned the skipper. "We do the best we can."
They reached the dining-room, an apartment in glossy bird"s-eye maple set in the midst of the virgin-white promenade deck.
"By the way, lunch, please," said Charlie.
"Yes, sir," responded eagerly the elder of two attendants in jackets striped blue and white.
"Have a wash, guv"nor? Thanks, skipper, that"ll do for the present."
Mr. Prohack washed in amplitudinous marble, and wiped his paternal face upon diaper into which was woven the name "Northwind." He then, with his son, ate an enormous and intricate lunch and drank champagne out of crystal engraved with the name "Northwind," served to him by a ceremonious person in white gloves. Charlie was somewhat taciturn, but over the coffee he seemed to brighten up.
"Well, what do you think of the old hulk?"
"She must need an awful lot of men," said Mr. Prohack.
"Pretty fair. The wages bill is seven hundred a month."
"She"s enormous," continued Mr. Prohack lamely.
"Oh, no! Seven hundred tons Thames measurement. You see those funnels over there," and Charlie pointed through the port windows to a row of four funnels rising over great sheds. "That"s the _Mauretania_. She"s a hundred times as big as this thing. She could almost sling this affair in her davits."
"Indeed! Still, I maintain that this antique wreck is enormous," Mr.
Prohack insisted.
They walked out on deck.
"h.e.l.lo! Here"s the chit. You can always count on _her_!" said Charles.
The launch was again approaching the yacht, and a tiny figure with a despatch case on her lap sat smiling in the stern-sheets.
"She"s come down by train," Charles explained.
Miss Winstock in her feminineness made a delicious spectacle on the spotless deck. She nearly laughed with delight as she acknowledged Mr.
Prohack"s grave salute and shook hands with him, but when Charlie said: "Anything urgent?" she grew grave and tense, becoming the faithful, urgent, confidential employe in an instant.
"Only this," she said, opening the despatch case and producing a telegram.
"Confound it!" remarked Charles, having read the telegram. "Here, you, Snow. Please see that Miss Winstock has something to eat at once.
That"ll do, Miss Winstock."
"Yes, Mr. Prohack," she said dutifully.
"And his mother thought he would be marrying her!" Mr. Prohack senior reflected. "He"ll no more marry her than he"ll marry Machin. Goodness knows whom he will marry. It might be a princess."
"You remember that paper concern--newsprint stuff--I"ve mentioned to you once or twice," said Charlie to his father, dropping into a basket-chair. "Sit down, will you, dad? I"ve had no luck with it yet."
He flourished the telegram. "Here the new manager I appointed has gone and got rheumatic fever up in Aberdeen. No good for six months at least, if ever. It"s a great thing if I could only really get it going. But no!
The luck"s wrong. And yet a sound fellow with brains could put that affair into such shape in a year that I could sell it at a profit of four hundred per cent to the Southern Combine. However--"
Soon afterwards he went below to talk to the chit, and the skipper took charge of Mr. Prohack and displayed to him the engine-room, the officers" quarters, the forecastle, the galley, and all manner of arcana that Charlie had grandiosely neglected.
"It"s a world!" said Mr. Prohack, but the skipper did not quite comprehend the remark.
"Well," said Charlie, returning. "We"ll have some tea and then we must be off again. I have to be in town to-night. Have you seen everything?
What"s the verdict? Some ship, eh?"
"Some ship," agreed Mr. Prohack. "But the most shockingly uneconomic thing I"ve ever met with in all my life. How often do you use the yacht?"
"Well, I haven"t been able to use her yet. She"s been lying here waiting for me for nearly a month. I hope to get a few days off soon."
"I understand there"s a crew of thirty odd, all able-bodied and knowing their job, I suppose. And all waiting for a month to give you and me a lunch and a tea. Seven hundred pounds in wages alone for lunch and a tea for two, without counting the food and the washing!"
"And why not, dad?" Charlie retorted calmly. "I"ve got to spend a bit of money uneconomically, and there"s nothing like a yacht for doing it.
I"ve no use for racing, and moreover it"s too difficult not to mix with rascals if you go in for racing, and I don"t care for rascals. Also it"s a mug"s game, and I don"t want to be a mug. As for young women, no! They only interest me at present as dancing partners, and they cost me nothing. A good yacht"s the sole possible thing for my case, and a yacht brings you into contact with clean and decent people, not bookmakers. I bought this boat for thirty-three thousand, and she"s a marvellous bargain, and that"s something."