Lethway had won the ship's pool that day. In the evening he played
bridge, and won again. He had been drinking a little. Not much, but
enough to make him reckless.
For the last rubber or two the thought of Edith had obsessed him,
her hand on the rail as he had kissed it, her cool eyes that were at
once so wise and so ignorant, her lithe body in the short skirt and
middy blouse. He found her more alluring, so attired, than she had
been in the scant costume of what to him was always "the show."
He pondered on that during all of a dummy hand, sitting low in his
chair with his feet thrust far under the table. The show business
was going to the bad. Why? Because nobody connected with it knew
anything about human nature. He formulated a plan, compounded of
liquor and real business acumen, of dressing a chorus, of suggesting
the feminine form instead of showing it, of veiling it in chiffons
of soft colours and sending a draft of air from electric fans in the
wings to set the chiffons in motion.
"Like the Aurora," he said to himself. "Only not so beefy. Ought to
be a hit. Pretty? It will be the real thing!"
The thought of Edith in such a costume, playing like a dryad over
the stage, stayed with him when the dummy hand had been played and
he had been recalled to the game by a thump on the shoulder. Edith
in soft, pastel-coloured chiffons, dancing in bare feet to light
string music. A forest setting, of course. Pan. A goat or two. All
that sort of thing.
On his way down to his cabin he passed her door. He went on,
hesitated, came back and knocked.
Now Edith had not been able to sleep. Her thrifty soul, trained
against waste, had urged her not to fling her cigarettes overboard,
but to smoke them.
"And then never again," she said solemnly.
The result was that she could not get to sleep. Blanketed to the
chin she lay in her bunk, reading. The book had been Mabel's
farewell offering, a thing of perverted ideals, or none, of cheap
sentiment, of erotic thought overlaid with words. The immediate
result of it, when she yawned at last and turned out the light over
her bed, was a new light on the boy.
"Little prig!" she said to herself, and stretched her round arms
luxuriously above her head.
Then Lethway rapped. She sat up and listened. Then, grumbling, she
got out and opened the door an inch or two. The lights were low
outside and her own cabin dark. But she knew him.
"Are we chased?" she demanded. In the back of her mind, fear of
pursuit by a German submarine was dogging her across the Atlantic.
"Sure we are!" he said. "What are you so stingy about the door for?"
She recognised his condition out of a not inconsiderable experience
and did her best to force the door shut, but he put his foot over
the sill and smiled.
"Please go away, Mr. Lethway."
"I'll go if you'll kiss me good night."
She calculated the situation, and surrendered. There was nothing
else to do. But when she upturned her face he slipped past her and
into the room. Just inside the door, swinging open and shut with
every roll of the ship, he took her in his arms and kissed her, not
once but many times.
She did not lose her head. She had an arm free and she rang the
bell. Then she jerked herself loose.
"I have rung for the stewardess," she said furiously. "If you are
here when she comes I'll ask for help."
"You young devil!" was all he said, and went, slamming the door
behind him. His rage grew as he reached his own cabin. Damn the
girl, anyhow! He had not meant anything. Here he was, spending money
he might never get back to give her a chance, and she called the
stewardess because he kissed her!
As for the girl, she went back to bed. For a few moments sheer rage
kept her awake. Then youth and fatigue triumphed and she fell
asleep. Her last thought was of the boy, after all. "He wouldn't do
a thing like that," she reflected. "He's a gentleman. He's the real
thing. He's----"
Her eyes closed.
Lethway apologised the next day, apologised with an excess of manner
that somehow made the apology as much of an insult as the act. But
she matched him at that game--took her cue from him, even went him
one better as to manner. When he left her he had begun to feel that
she was no unworthy antagonist. The game would be interesting. And
she had the advantage, if she only knew it. Back of his desire to
get back at her, back of his mocking smile and half-closed eyes, he
was just a trifle mad about her since the night before.
That is the way things stood when they reached the Mersey. Cecil was
in love with the girl. Very earnestly in love. He did not sleep at
night for thinking about her. He remembered certain semi-harmless
escapades of his college days, and called himself unworthy and
various other things. He scourged himself by leaving her alone in
her steamer chair and walking by at stated intervals. Once, in a
white sweater over a running shirt, he went to the gymnasium and
found her there. She had on a "gym" suit of baggy bloomers and the
usual blouse. He backed away from the door hastily.
At first he was jealous of Lethway. Then that passed. She confided
to him that she did not like the manager. After that he was sorry
for him. He was sorry for any one she did not like. He bothered
Lethway by walking the deck with him and looking at him with what
Lethway refused to think was compassion.
But because, contrary to the boy's belief, none of us is quite good
or quite evil, he was kind to the boy. The khaki stood for something
which no Englishman could ignore.
"Poor little devil!" he said on the last day in the smoking room,
"he's going to a bad time, all right. I was in Africa for eight
years. Boer war and the rest of it. Got run through the thigh in a
native uprising, and they won't have me now. But Africa was cheery
to this war."
He asked the boy into the smoking room, which he had hitherto
avoided. He had some queer idea that he did not care to take his
uniform in there. Absurd, of course. It made him rather lonely in
the hours Edith spent in her cabin, preparing variations of costume
for the evening out of her small trunk. But he was all man, and he
liked the society of men; so he went at last, with Lethway, and
ordered vichy!
He had not allowed himself to think much beyond the end of the
voyage. As the ship advanced, war seemed to slip beyond the edge of
his horizon. Even at night, as he lay and tossed, his thoughts were
either of the next day, when he would see Edith again, or of that
indefinite future when he would return, covered with honors, and go
to her, wherever she was.
He never doubted the honors now. He had something to fight for. The
medals in their cases looked paltry to him, compared with what was
coming. In his sleep he dreamed of the V.C., dreams he was too
modest to put into thoughts in waking hours.
Then they reached the Mersey. On the last evening of the voyage he
and Edith stood on the upper deck. It was a zone of danger. From
each side of the narrowing river flashlights skimmed the surface of
the water, playing round but never on the darkened ship. Red and
green lights blinked signals. Their progress was a devious one
through the mine-strewn channel. There was a heavy sea even there,
and the small lights on the mast on the pilot boat, as it came to a
stop, described great arcs that seemed, first to starboard, then to
port, to touch the very tips of the waves.
"I'm not crazy about this," the girl said, as the wind tugged at her
skirts. "It frightens me. Brings the war pretty close, doesn't it?"
Emotion swelled his heart and made him husky--love and patriotism,
pride and hope, and a hot burst of courage.
"What if we strike a mine?" she asked.
"I wouldn't care so much. It would give me a chance to save you."
Overhead they were signalling the shore with a white light. Along
with the new emotions that were choking him came an unaccustomed
impulse of boastfulness.
"I can read that," he said when she ignored his offer to save her.
"Of course it's code, but I can spell it out."
He made a move to step forward and watch the signaler, but she put
her hand on his arm.
"Don't go. I'm nervous, Cecil," she said.
She had called him by his first name. It shook him profoundly, that
and the touch of her hand on his arm.
"Oh, I love you, love you!" he said hoarsely. But he did not try to
take her in his arms, or attempt to caress the hand that still clung
to him. He stood very erect, looking at the shadowy outline of her.
Then, her long scarf blowing toward him, he took the end of it and
kissed that very gravely.
"I would die for you," he said.
Then Lethway joined them.