"Why not?"
"It's none of my affair--"
"But surely you must see ... Listen: I'll tell you about it." He
narrated succinctly the intrusion of the mysterious bandbox into his
ken, that morning. "Now, a note was promised; it must have miscarried.
Surely, there can be no harm in your telling me. Besides, I've a right
to know."
"Possibly ... but I'm not sure I've a right to tell. Why should I be a
spoil-sport?"
"You mean," he said thoughtfully--"you think it's some sort of a
practical joke?"
"What do you think?"
"_Hmm-mm_," said Staff. And then, "I don't like to be made fun of," he
asserted, a trace sulkily.
"You are certainly a dangerously original man," said Miss
Searle--"almost abnormal."
"The most unkindest slam of all," he murmured.
He made himself look deeply hurt. The girl laughed softly. He thought it
rather remarkable that they should enjoy so sympathetic a sense of
humour on such short acquaintance....
"But you forgive me?"
"Oh, yes," he said generously; "only, of course, I couldn't help feeling
it a bit--coming from _you_."
"From me?" Miss Searle sat up in her deck-chair and turned to him. "Mr.
Staff! you're not flirting with me?"
"Heaven forfend!" he cried, so sincerely that both laughed.
"Because," said she, sinking back, "I must warn you that Mrs. Ilkington
has been talking ..."
"Oh," he groaned from his heart--"damn that woman!"
There was an instant of silence; then he stole a contrite look at her
immobile profile and started to get up.
"I--Miss Searle," he stammered--"I beg your pardon ..."
"Don't go," she said quietly; "that is, unless you want to. My silence
was simply sympathetic."
He sat back. "Thank you," he said with gratitude; and for some seconds
considered the case of Mrs. Ilkington, not charitably but with murder in
his bosom. "Do you mean," he resumed presently, "she has--ah--connected
my name with--"
"Yes," nodded the girl.
"'Something lingering in boiling oil,'" he mused aloud, presently....
"What staggers me is how she found out; I was under the impression that
only the persons most concerned knew about it."
"Then it's true? You are engaged to marry Miss Landis? Or is that an
impertinent question?" Without pause the girl answered herself: "Of
course it is; only I couldn't help asking. Please forget I spoke--"
"Oh, I don't mind," he said wearily; "now that Mrs. Ilkington has begun
to distribute handbills. Only ... I don't know that there's a regular,
hard-and-fast engagement: just an understanding."
"Thank you," said Miss Searle. "I promise not to speak of it again." She
hesitated an instant, then added: "To you or anybody else."
"You see," he went on after a little, "I've been working on a play for
Miss Landis, under agreement with Jules Max, her manager. They want to
use it to open Max's newest Broadway theatre late this autumn. That's
why I came across--to find a place in London to bury myself in and work
undisturbed. It means a good deal to me--to all of us--this play.... But
what I'm getting at is this: Alison--Miss Landis--didn't leave the
States this summer; Mrs. Ilkington (she told me at dinner) left New York
before I did. So how in Heaven's name--?"
"I had known nothing of Mrs. Ilkington at all," said Miss Searle
cautiously, "until we met in Paris last month."
He was conscious of the hint of uneasiness in her manner, but inclined
to assign it to the wrong cause.
"I trust I haven't bored you, Miss Searle--talking about myself."
"Oh, no; indeed no. You see--" she laughed--"I quite understand; I keep
a temperament of my own--if you should happen to wonder why Mrs.
Ilkington interests herself in me. I'm supposed to have a voice and to
be in training for grand opera."
"Not really?"
And again she laughed. "I'm afraid there isn't any cure for me at this
late date," she protested; "I've gone so far I must go farther. But I
know what you mean. People who sing _are_ difficult. However ..." She
stirred restlessly in her chair, then sat up.
"What is that light over there?" she asked. "Do you know?"
Staff's gaze sought the indicated direction. "Roches Point, I imagine;
we're about due at Queenstown ..."
"As late as that?" The girl moved as if to rise. Staff jumped up and
offered her a hand. In a moment she was standing beside him. "I must go
below," said she. "Good night."
"You won't tell me who it was in Lucille's, yesterday?" he harked back
pleadingly.
She shook her head gaily as she turned forward to the main companionway
entrance: "No; you must find out for yourself."
"But perhaps it isn't a practical joke?"
"Then--_perhaps_--I shall tell you all--sometime."
He paused by the raised door-sill as she stepped within the
superstructure. "Why not stop up and see the tender come off?" he
suggested. "It might be interesting."
She flashed him a look of gay malice. "If we're to believe Mrs.
Ilkington, you're apt to find it more interesting than I. Good night."
"Oh--good night!" he muttered, disturbed; and turned away to the rail.
His troubled vision ranged far to the slowly shifting shore lights. The
big steamship had come very close inshore--as witness the retarded speed
with which she crept toward her anchorage--but still the lights, for all
their singular brightness, seemed distant, incalculably far away; the
gulf of blackness that set them apart exaggerated all distances tenfold.
The cluster of sparks flanked by green and red that marked the hovering
tender appeared to float at an infinite remove, invisibly buoyed upon
the bosom of a fathomless void of night.
Out of this wind-swept waste of impenetrable darkness was to come the
answer to these many questions that perplexed him--perhaps. Something at
least would come to influence him; or else Mrs. Ilkington's promise had
been mere _blague_.... Then what?
Afterwards he assured himself that his stupidity had been unparalleled
inconceivable. And indeed there seems to be some colour of excuse for
this drastic stricture, self-inflicted though it were.
Below him, on the main deck, a squad of deckhands superintended by a
petty officer was rigging out the companion-ladder.
Very suddenly--it seemed, because of the immense quiet that for all its
teeming life enveloped the ship upon the cessation of the engine's
song--the vessel hesitated and then no longer moved. From forward came
the clank of chains as the anchor cables were paid out. Supple to wind
and tide, the Autocratic swung in a wide arc, until the lights of the
tender disappeared from Staff's field of vision.
Before long, however, they swam silently again into sight; then slowly,
cautiously, by almost imperceptible stages the gap closed up until the
tender ranged alongside and made fast to her gigantic sister.
Almost at once the incoming passengers began to mount the
companion-ladder.
Staff promptly abandoned his place at the rail and ran down to the
main-deck. As he approached the doorway opening adjacent to the
companion-ladder he heard a woman's laugh out on the deck: a laugh
which, once heard, was never to be forgotten: clear, sweet, strong,
musical as a peal of fairy bells.
He stopped short; and so did his breath for an instant; and so, he
fancied, did his heart. This, then, was what Mrs. Ilkington had hinted
at! But one woman in all the world could laugh like that ...
Almost at once she appeared, breaking through the cluster of passengers
on the deck and into the lighted interior with a swinging, vigorous
manner suggestive of intense vitality and strength. She paused, glancing
back over her shoulder, waiting for somebody: a magnificent creature,
splendidly handsome, wonderfully graceful, beautiful beyond compare.
"Alison!" Staff breathed hoarsely, dumfounded.
Though his exclamation could by no means have carried to her ears, she
seemed to be instantly sensitive to the vibrations of his emotion. She
swung round, raking her surroundings with a bright, curious glance, and
saw him. Her smile deepened adorably, her eyes brightened, she moved
impulsively toward him with outflung hands.
"Why," she cried--"Why, Staff! Such a surprise!"
Nothing could have been more natural, spontaneous and unaffected. In an
instant his every doubt and misgiving was erased--blotted out and as if
it had never been. He caught and held her hands, for the moment
speechless. But his eyes were all too eloquent: under their steadfast
sincerity her own gaze wavered, shifted and fell. She coloured
consummately, then with a gentle but determined manner disengaged her
hands.
"Don't," she said in the low, intimate voice she knew so well how and
when to employ--"don't! People are looking ..." And then with a
bewildering shift, resuming her former spirit: "Of all things wonderful,
Staff--to meet you here!"
She was acting--masking with her admirable art some emotion secret from
him. He knew this--felt it intuitively, though he did not understand;
and the knowledge affected him poignantly. What place had dissimulation
in their understanding? Why need she affect what she did not feel--with
him?
Distressed, bewildered, he met evasion with native straightforwardness.
"I'm stunned," he told her, holding her eyes with a grave, direct gaze;
"I'm afraid I don't understand.... How does this happen?"
"Why, of course," she said, maintaining her artificial elation--"I
infer--you've finished the play and are hurrying home. So--we meet, dear
boy. Isn't it delightful?"
"But you're here, on this side--?"
"Oh, just a flying trip. Max wanted me to see Bisson's new piece at the
Porte St. Martin. I decided to go at the last moment--caught the
Mauretania on eight hours' notice--stayed only three days in
Paris--booked back on this tub by telegraph--travelled all day to catch
it by this wretched, roundabout route. And--and there you are, my dear."
She concluded with a gesture charmingly ingenuous and disarming; but
Staff shook his head impatiently.
"You came over--you passed through London twice--you stayed three days
in Paris, Alison--and never let me know?"
"Obviously." She lifted her shoulders an inch, with a light laugh.
"Haven't I just said as much?... You see, I didn't want to disturb you:
it means so much to--you and me, Staff--the play."