"My dear!" she protested gaily, "you positively must not scowl at me
like that! You frighten me; and besides I'm tired to death--this
wretched rush of travelling! Tomorrow we'll have a famous young pow-wow,
but tonight--! Do say good night to me, prettily, like a dear good boy,
and let me go.... It's sweet to see you again; I'm wild to hear about
the play.... Jane!" she called, looking round.
Her maid, a tight-mouthed, unlovely creature, moved sedately to her
side. "Yes, Miss Landis."
"Have my things come up yet?" The maid responded affirmatively. "Good!
I'm dead, almost...."
She turned back to Staff, offering him her hand and with it,
bewitchingly, her eyes: "Dear boy! Good night."
He bent low over the hand to hide his dissatisfaction: he felt a bit old
to be treated like a petulant, teasing child....
"Good night," he said stiffly.
"What a bear you are, Staff! Can't you wait till tomorrow? At all
events, you must...."
Laughing, she swept away, following her maid up the companion stairs.
Staff pursued her with eyes frowning and perplexed, and more leisurely
with his person.
As he turned aft on the upper deck, meaning to go to the smoking-room
for a good-night cigarette--absorbed in thought and paying no attention
to his surroundings--a voice saluted him with a languid, exasperating
drawl: "Ah, Staff! How-d'-ye-do?"
He looked up, recognising a distant acquaintance: a man of medium height
with a tendency toward stoutness and a taste for extremes in the matter
of clothes; with dark, keen eyes deep-set in a face somewhat too pale, a
close-clipped grey moustache and a high and narrow forehead too frankly
betrayed by the derby he wore well back on his head.
Staff nodded none too cordially. "Oh, good evening, Arkroyd. Just come
aboard?"
Arkroyd, on the point of entering his stateroom, paused long enough to
confirm this surmise. "Beastly trip--most tiresome," he added, frankly
yawning. "Don't know how I should have stood it if it hadn't been for
Miss Landis. You know her, I believe? Charming girl--charming."
"Oh, quite," agreed Staff. "Good night."
His tone arrested Arkroyd's attention; the man turned to watch his back
as Staff shouldered down the alleyway toward the smoking-room. "I say!"
commented Mr. Arkroyd, privately. "A bit hipped--what? No necessity for
being so bally short with a chap...."
The guess was only too well founded: Staff was distinctly disgruntled.
Within the past ten minutes his susceptibilities had been deeply
wounded. Why Alison should have chosen to slight him so cavalierly when
in transit through London passed his comprehension.... And the encounter
with Arkroyd comforted him to no degree whatever. He had never liked
Arkroyd, holding him, for all his wealth, little better than a
theatre-loafer of the Broadway type; and now he remembered hearing, once
or twice, that the man's attentions to Alison Landis had been rather
emphatic.
Swayed by whim, he chose to avoid the smoking-room, after all--having
little wish to be annoyed by the chatter of Mr. Iff--and swung out on
deck again for a half-hour of cigarettes and lonely brooding....
But his half-hour lengthened indefinitely while he sat, preoccupied, in
the deck-chair of some total stranger. By definite stages, to which he
was almost altogether oblivious, the Autocratic weighed anchor, shook
off her tender and swung away on the seven-day stretch. As definitely
her decks became bare of passengers. Presently Staff was quite a
solitary figure in the long array of chairs.
Two bells rang mellowly through the ship before he roused, lifted
himself to his feet and prepared to turn in, still distressed and
wondering--so much so that he was barely conscious of the fact that one
of the officers of the vessel was coming aft, and only noticed the man
when he paused and spoke.
"I say--this is Mr. Staff, isn't it?"
Staff turned quickly, searching his memory for the name and status of
the sturdy and good-looking young Englishman.
"Yes," he said slowly, "but--"
"I'm Mr. Manvers, the purser. If I'm not mistaken, you crossed with us
this spring?"
"Oh, yes; I did. How-d'-you-do?" Staff offered his hand.
"Sure I recognised you just now--saw you on the main-deck--talking to
Miss Landis, I believe."
"Yes ...?"
"Beg pardon; I don't wish to seem impertinent; but may I ask, do you
know the lady very well?"