"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--"d.a.m.n 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 grat.i.tude; 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 a.s.sign 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 sh.o.r.e lights. The big steamship had come very close insh.o.r.e--as witness the r.e.t.a.r.ded 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sengers 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 cl.u.s.ter of pa.s.sengers 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 hoa.r.s.ely, 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!"