A good part of that last night in London, Napier spent in writing Nan a
full account of the results of Singleton's visit to Lamborough. He wound
up by warning her that Greta was in London, disguised as a Belgian
refugee. Moreover, Scotland Yard would have full and accurate knowledge
of those with whom the woman held any, even the slightest and most
innocent, communication.
He sealed the letter and left it in the trusty keeping of his servant.
The packet was not to go out of Day's hands except to be placed in those
of Miss Ellis.
Napier's secret was well kept. His own family had so little idea of his
change of plan that until he had cabled them from New York, they
supposed him to have vanished, in the now familiar way, into the B. E.
F.
Before ever the Atlantic liner left the docks, Napier's eyes, or rather,
his ears, in the first instance, began to open. What they took in was
the fact of the singular pervasiveness of the German tongue. On
examining the speakers, they were seen to be men young or youngish and
certainly _Kriegsfaehig_. The stamp that the German system sets on the
person who has been trained to military command differentiated certain
of these foreign-speaking passengers from the ordinary reservist. There
were at least four Germans of good military rank on board, no doubt
calling themselves "Americans returning to their American homes." Here
was a chance to observe at short range one of the greatest difficulties
of those days: how was England to safeguard herself without wounding the
susceptibilities of a friendly, but officially neutral, nation?
As he shouldered a way among his alien enemies, that new, involuntary
hatred of the Teuton accent may have played some part in the rapture
with which his ears greeted a voice not English, indeed, yet sounding
for him its special harmonies.
He turned with a leap of the heart toward the voice that floated up from
the crowd pressing to the gangway, a voice that called out to a porter
something about a "green suit-case." Looking down from, the height of
the tall ship, for all his hungry eagerness, he couldn't see the face
that went with that voice, nothing but hats: men's soft felts and hard
bowlers; the feathers and ribbons of ladies' headgear. Then came a
moment when, among them all, a little cap of brown came slowly up on its
golden wings till it landed Nan Ellis on the deck.
This latest manifestation of the cap of magic produced in Napier's mind
a medley of instinctive joy, an utter bewilderment, and that readiness
of acceptance, apparently without effort or cost, with which we greet
those strokes of fortune whose strangeness throws us back on the
essential mystery through which the most commonplace of us daily threads
his way.
Her first words in another mouth would have been an intolerable irony:
"So this is how you go to the Front!" He was glad of the quick flush
that rose to ask his pardon.
"To accept the worst construction on my being here," he answered,
smiling, "I am not the only shuttle-cock."
She evaded the explanation of her own presence with a speech that even
at the time struck Napier as being more odd than her apparition on board
the _Britannia_.
"Forgive me for saying that. I know, wherever you are in these days, you
_are_ at the Front."
It was something. It was undoubtedly too much, and yet it comforted. The
eager hope rose in him: she had come to know of Greta's return. Without
Napier's intervention, she had come to know of matters in that
connection which had made her flee. Hardly was the hope framed when it
was dashed.
"I got tired of waiting to hear from Greta," she explained. Besides, she
had a feeling she couldn't go on. She'd written him that. To show him
she really had got off, the letter was to be posted from Queenstown. It
was in--Heavens! where _was_ the green suit-case? Seeing him had put it
out of her head.
Oh, Napier would look for, he would find, the green suit-case!
But, _no_, she dashed after him. "Certainly not," she faltered as she
caught him up, unless by any chance she shouldn't find it in her cabin.
With consternation in her face, she flew down the companionway.
Serenity had returned when Napier met her a quarter of an hour later on
the way to the dining-saloon.
"It's a wonder I knew you," he said, "in a different hat."
"Can't wear the Mercury on board ship. But I won't have you mocking at
it." She stood with several letters in her hand.
"Why mayn't I mock at a Mercury cap if I like?" He remembered he hadn't
waited till now to commit that indiscretion.
"Because my Mercury cap is your responsibility."
"My--"
"You've forgotten already!" As they went down, she reminded him of that
time she appeared in the blue hat with Michaelmas daisies. "You
perfectly hated it." Yes, he remembered he hadn't liked it. And Julian
had quoted Herbert Spencer. Nobody was ever satisfied with hitting on
the right thing. If a person found a special kind of ink-pot that suited
him, or a milk-jug that would pour without spilling, or clothes that
were just right, "we were so certain to want a change that the same
thing wasn't made again," Miss Nan supplemented. "But my same-shaped hat
_has_ been made again and again, and you never noticed! _That's_ all I
get."
It was only to himself that Napier said: "No! no! She got more--more
than was wise or well."
"Did you find the green suit-case?" he asked, "and my letter?"
"Oh, yes. But the letter was hardly worth showing."
He claimed the sealed envelope and opened it on the spot. He read:
Dear Gavan:
This is to say good-by. Since my talk with you I haven't felt I
could go on staying here in England. So, as I have no news from
Germany and hear that my mother is in New York, I'm moving
heaven and earth to get off to-morrow in the only really good
sailing this month. I wish I need not think of you over there
in France, but I don't know how I can help that.
Yours,
NAN ELLIS.
P.S.--Perhaps you wouldn't mind writing me. N. E.
She gave a New York address.
Only to himself he put the question, On what terms had she left Julian?
What lay behind the delight in the eyes that welcomed Napier? Ask? Not
he. He would try not so much as to wonder. Even if the shining of the
hours in front of them was no more than the fragile iridescence of a
bubble floating in the sun, the greater was the need not to touch such
beauty with too inquiring finger.
They found their places in the haphazard way of the first luncheon,
before the seating is arranged. By ones and twos others came in, till
the table, at which Nan was the only woman, was full. The strangers at
her end seemed disposed to silence. Such words as fell audibly, though
English and addressed chiefly to the waiter, bore out the impression
given by the faces. Napier saw the steward about it afterward. There
were to be no Germans at his table as finally selected. He wished
afterward he had added, and no American actors. In which case Miss Nan
wouldn't have come up from dinner with Mr. Vivian Roxborough and walked
the deck at his side a good half-hour. If it were only for Julian's
sake, she couldn't be left to Mr. Vivian Roxborough. Napier made it his
business to avert the chance.
That next day--forever and forever the sunshine and the sweetness of
those hours would leave something of their flavor and their light
behind. If only they could go on sailing, sailing, and never land!
So Napier said to himself, as he hurried back on the second afternoon,
after a talk with the captain--a talk somewhat marred by a flickering
fear as to whether that actor might have appropriated the guardian
chair. No; one of those Germans! Napier's change of table had neither
prevented Nan from bowing to some of the men she had broken bread with
during that first meal on board, nor prevented chance conversation
(initiated by one or other of the Germans) upon that promising opening,
"You are American?"
Even Nan knew that the handsome big man who stood by her now was an
officer. He may have been thirty-eight, and he was certainly in the pink
of condition. In the midst of whatever it was he had been saying, Napier
carried the lady off to the lower and less-frequented deck.
"How they must laugh at the stupid English, those Germans!" he muttered,
as he strode along at her side. "Here we are, six months after the
declaration of war, and enemy aliens still going back and forth as
easily as in times of peace. Those that don't find their way back into
the German Army--"
"How _can_ they!"
"What's to prevent them? Anyway, those who don't take the popular
pleasure trip, New York to Genoa and so to Germany, can be trusted to
advance the German propaganda in the two Americas. But they won't find
traveling so easy after this."
"Why? Who will prevent them?" Her questions had come quickly.
"The British Government will prevent them--after the Intelligence
Department gets my report." He took out of his pocket a paper destined
to have an effect, the least part of which was to give Napier many a
sleepless night months after he had posted it.
The first eyes to rest on the report after Napier's own, regarded it, as
he felt even at the time, with something more than disapproval.
"Don't send that!" the girl urged. She added reasons in whose syllabling
Napier heard Julian's voice. Oh, he had well indoctrinated her! As
Napier listened, obviously unmoved, there came into Nan's earnestness a
note that gave him more uneasiness than her "opinions"--a note of
anxiety, a note of something very like panic. "You can't send that!
It--it might make _such_ trouble, not only--not to people you call your
enemies." She caught herself up. "As Julian says, 'The reactions from
that kind of tyranny--'"
Napier said quietly he must accept the reactions.
"But you _can't_!" she repeated. "It's the greatest mercy you've showed
it to me. Oh, Gavan, you don't want to make trouble between England and
America? You _will_ if you send in that report. I do _beg_ you--"
Napier had seldom known more difficult moments than those that followed.
As she stood beside him on the saloon-deck near the companionway-door,
he glanced at the mail-box near the purser's window. Its open brass
mouth seemed to bray a warning: "If you don't post that letter now, you
never will." Napier stepped inside, and dropped the envelope through the
slit.
Nan sat down on a folding-stool near the ship's railing. Napier went
back and stood silent by her for a moment. Then he said:
"Give me what credit you can. I don't remember ever doing anything
harder than that."
To his surprise, instead of reproaching him or punishing him with
silence or with tears, "What do you expect your Government will do?" she
said.
"Oh, I don't know." He didn't try to keep the touch of impatience out of
his voice. "Regulate the traffic a little better, perhaps." He would
have left it at that but for a trifling occurrence. The head of the
German officer whom they had left a few minutes before on the upper deck
appeared just then out of an open port in the dining-saloon. For the
merest instant it was there, only to be withdrawn. And why, pray,
_shouldn't_ a man of any race look out at the sea from a public window?
even, come to that, glance out at a pretty girl? "People may as well
know," Napier said, "that the British Government has come to a point
where it will be obliged to exercise its censorship openly and
thoroughly instead of--" He frowned in the direction where the offending
head had been. "I doubt if these fellows on board here have even been
asked to make a declaration, let alone been examined."
"Why _should_ they be examined?" The voice beside him rose indignant.
"On the open sea! bound for a neutral country!"
He looked at her with different eyes. "The British port was the proper
place," he said. "And perhaps people _were_ examined. You know better
than I."
"_I_ know?" She stared at him.
"You know if they asked you to make a declaration before you came on
board."
"_Me?_ A declaration! About what?"
"As to what you are taking over." He heard his own stern voice as if it
were some one else's.
"They asked," she said, with her chin up, "if I were taking over any
letters to people in America?"
"And what did you say?"
"That I _wasn't_ taking over any letters." Her note, like his, had grown
less and less patient. "Though I don't call it their business to ask an
American going to America if she--"
"Do you mean," the interrogation went on, "they didn't look for
themselves?"
"Look! Look where?"
"Look through your luggage, your hand-bag, your 'green suit-case.'"
"Certainly not."
"Well, they ought. And I shall see that next time they do."
Not anger only, and not only spirited revolt, appeared on the face
Napier loved. The something else he had been vaguely aware of showed
there clearer. He glanced sharply round and then bent over her. "What
would happen if they did their duty? What if they were to search you?"
"To search me!" She stood up.
"Sh!" He looked round again.
"They can't!" she triumphed. "Not now."
"Ah!" The emission of breath came as though forced out by a sudden
physical anguish.
"What's the matter? What are you thinking?" she cried.
"I'm thinking that I wish to God you'd go and get all that infernal
stuff of Julian's in the green suit-case and throw it overboard."
"I haven't got any 'infernal stuff,'" she said, with the faint pink
rising in her cheeks.
To Napier's further characterization of "the stuff," his bitter
denunciation of this using of English good faith to hamper, if not to
betray, England, the girl had her defense. Or, rather, she had Julian's
reinforced by the American's innocent belief, prior to 1917, that to the
citizens of that favored land no Old-World rules need apply, no
Old-World danger was a menace. "Americans don't recognize," was one of
her phrases. "We make our own rules. You are talking in the air. I am
not carrying over any letters."
"Look me in the eyes, Nan, and say that you are not carrying something
that I would prevent from reaching America if I had the power."
She got up and walked alone toward the stern of the ship. As she turned
to come back, Vivian Roxborough rose out of his chair. Before he reached
her side, a capped and aproned figure darted out of the narrow corridor,
near the smoking-room, and spoke to Miss Ellis. The girl and the
stewardess went below together. No sign of Nan for the rest of the
afternoon.
At six o'clock Napier sent a note to her cabin.
I hope you're not feeling out of sorts in any way. But if you
are, mayn't I see you a moment?
Yours ever,
G. N.
The answer came back:
Not out of sorts at all, thank you,
Yours as always,
N. E.
When he didn't find her at the dinner-table,--she had been punctual
hitherto--Napier went back to the upper deck and waited for her near the
companionway. Ten minutes went by. She must, after all, have been below
somewhere, and was no doubt at dinner by now. He went back to the saloon
and looked in. She was not there. As he returned again to keep his watch
on the corridor leading from her cabin, the same stewardess who had
carried the girl off early in the afternoon came laboriously up from
lower regions, carrying a tray.
"Oh--a--you are the one who is looking after Miss Ellis, aren't you?"
"Yes. I'm taking in her dinner."
"Oh, I see." But it wasn't true. He didn't see in the very least why he
should be punished in this way, a sulky way, moreover, and singularly
un-Nanlike, as he told himself.
Just after the luncheon-bugle sounded the next day, Napier met the same
stewardess again. Again she came toiling up the companionway,
tray-laden.
"You are taking that to Miss Ellis?"
Yes, she was.
"She is ill, then?"
"No, she isn't ill. Just having her dinner in Number Twenty-four."
"Twenty-four isn't Miss Ellis's number."
"No, sir. It's the number of the lady who isn't feeling very well,
though she does eat well. I'll say that for her." The woman pursued her
way with the access of vigor that a dash of vindictiveness will
sometimes generate.
He had not so much as a glimpse of Nan until evening. Going down to
dress, he met her coming out of the library with an armful of books.
"Well, at last!" He tried to take the books. She backed away from him.
"No, no, thank you. They're just nicely balanced."
"Look here, what have I done?"
"You've barred my way." She tried to pass.
"It isn't like you to take a mortal offense and not say how or what
about."
"I haven't--taken offense." She leaned against the wall, hugging the
books.
"Then why do you stay in your cabin the whole blessed time?"
"I haven't been in my cabin. I've been in--I've been looking after a
lady who wasn't well when she came on board and who is a very bad
sailor. So as I'm rather a good one--she _will_ wonder what has
become--" and before Napier could gather his wits, Nan was flying down
the corridor.
The next day same program was continued, except that Napier hung much
about corridor and companionway, waiting in vain for even a glimpse of
the flying figure. While walking the deck he had located Number
Twenty-four, noting with surprise that a passenger who was ill,
especially a woman looked after by Nan, should keep her port closed in
fine weather. He had of course looked up the number on the table
diagram. Twenty-four was occupied by Mlle. La Farge, the devil take her!
A restless, wearisome day. He knew it an ill preparation for sleep. He
turned up the light over his berth, the fierce, unshaded light, and read
till his eyeballs burned. He extinguished the horrible glare and lay in
the dark, turning and tossing, seeing in the renewal of his Nan-fever a
punishment for defective loyalty to his friends. Twelve o'clock came. Is
she asleep? As for him, he was wider awake than ever.
One o'clock in the morning. It wasn't to be borne. The real trouble was
that instead of taking a proper amount of exercise, he'd hung about
waiting. What was the night, the morning, rather--what was it like? He
couldn't bring himself to turn on the fierce flood of light. He felt his
way to the port. Yes, a gibbous moon, rolling lopsidedly among the
cloud-rack over a corrugated-iron sea. Was it hot or cold away from the
stifling steam heat? He opened his port and breathed deep. He was not
the only sleepless passenger. Two heads showed dimly, two figures in
long ulsters leaning against the rail.
Presently a voice: "Now a little more walking, and you'll feel better."
Nan! Good Samaritanizing! She was supporting the shorter figure, her arm
round the thick waist. They started down the deck in the direction of
Napier's open port, but thought better of it. They turned and went the
other way in face of the wind.
Napier pulled on some clothes and hurried out. When he got to the
other, the colder side, of the ship, there they were, going at a good
round pace for an indisposed person, pounding down the deck locked in
that embrace.
Well, women were odd beings. Here was evidently some frantic new
friendship started. He drew back in the semi-darkness and leaned against
the wall, smoking. The two heads hatless, with motor-veils tied round
them, were close together. The invalid ceased speaking as they passed.
Nan's voice was blurred, troubled. "There _must_ be some mistake--" the
rest was lost.
As they turned to come back, the mild, intermittent shining of the
moon lit the two faces for a passing moment--lit one delicate-featured,
pale, eager; and the other, full, pink-cheeked, with heavy, handsome
outlines and prominent eyes. By all the gods, it was?--No, it
_couldn't_--Something worse than a headache must be the matter with
Napier when he could imagine so startling a likeness.
"I don't know how to get any more," Nan was saying.
"You can borr-_ch_-ow some," said the other in remembered accents.
When the figures turned to come down again, the shorter of the two
halted suddenly. Napier had come out of the shadow and stood in such dim
light as there was, with his back against the ship's railing, waiting
for them.
It was the invalid who first caught sight of him. She turned about, and
before one could much more than blink, she had wrenched open the weather
door and disappeared.
Nan stood still for a bewildered instant, while Napier went forward.
"So _that's_ why!" he said. "Very well, then, you've got to know!"
Leaning on the railing there beside her in the windy moonlight, he told
her what Singleton had found in Greta's room.
Before he had gone far Napier was acutely aware of the girl's
stiffening; aware of a withdrawal, infinitesimal as expressed in the
body, a chasm as between their souls. He could feel that she was
thinking: "Gavan looked on! He allowed that baseness at Lamborough!"
That he should put a false construction upon what was found was the
least of his misdoing.
"Oh, yes,"--she turned sharply away--"she told me you'd say that!"
Was it anger or suppressed tears that clouded her voice? Napier didn't
know.
"What Greta must have suffered those horrible last hours at the
McIntyres'! All to spare me, to save me the humiliation of knowing how
you could treat my friend! She knew what that would mean to me. We,--"
she gave him her eyes again--"we at home treated Greta like a princess.
And she deserved it." As Napier made no attempt to rebut that view, she
dropped her head, struggling an instant with some new enemy to
self-control. "Greta puts me, too, to shame. That longing to see me
again that made her risk coming back to England! Only to find that she
might do me an injury, might compromise me! Imagine Greta in a thick
veil, waiting about in the dusk to catch a glimpse--Saw me coming out of
the shipping office with Madge. And when she found I was sailing on this
boat, dropped _everything_ to come along! _Greta_ understands loyalty."
She fell back upon ground evidently prepared for her. "_Isn't_ it
'trying to undermine,' _isn't_ it 'poisoning the mind,' if you ask me to
put the worst construction on innocent things? Greta's diary! As she
says, if you'd read my diary to my mother, you'd have _me_ in the Tower.
Oh, she is fair and just! She's been saying to me only to-night, that
since I'll be going back there, perhaps living among them, I'm to
remember it's only to the Germans the English are perfectly horrible.
She was quite willing to leave me my illusions about you all till you
yourself tear them away."
"Do you mind telling me how I've done that?" He tried to stem the
torrent.
She steadied herself with an elbow on the railing.
"Haven't you told me yourself about going through my friend's trunks
when she wasn't there? Oh, that--_that_, Gavan, was--" She turned
suddenly and buried her face in her arm.
"Yes, it was a mistake."
She lifted a wet face up to him in the moonlight.
"The alternative," he said miserably, "would have been better. Instead
of the private one, a public examination, Greta Schwarzenberg in prison
instead of free--"
"Then she is right!" Nan stood back, clear of the railing, facing him.
"You do want to be revenged."
She stood there, with the wind catching at the ends of her chiffon veil,
blowing them back over her shoulder, for that instant before she, too,
fled from him through the weather door.