III
TWINS
On the boat-train, en route for Liverpool, Mr. Staff found plenty of time to consider the affair of the foundling bandbox in every aspect with which a lively imagination could invest it; but to small profit. In fact, he was able to think of little else, with the damned thing smirking impishly at him from its perch on the opposite seat. He was vexed to exasperation by the consciousness that he couldn’t guess why or by whom it had been so cavalierly thrust into his keeping. Consequently he cudgelled his wits unmercifully in exhaustive and exhausting attempts to clothe it with a plausible raison d’être.
He believed firmly that the Maison Lucille had acted in good faith; the name of Staff was too distinctive to admit of much latitude for error. Nor was it difficult to conceive that this or that young woman of his acquaintance might have sent him the hat to take home for her – thus ridding herself of a cumbersome package and neatly saddling him with all the bother of getting the thing through the customs. But …! Who was there in London just then that knew him well enough so to presume upon his good nature? None that he could call to mind. Besides, how in the name of all things inexplicable had anybody found out his intention of sailing on the Autocratic, that particular day? – something of which he himself had yet to be twenty-four hours aware!
His conclusions may be summed up under two heads: (a) there wasn’t any answer; (b) it was all an unmitigated nuisance. And so thinking, divided between despair and disgust, Mr. Staff gave the problem up against his arrival on board the steamship. There remained to him a single gleam of hope: a note of explanation had been promised; he thought it just possible that it might have been sent to the steamship rather than to his lodgings in London.
Therefore, the moment he set foot aboard the ship, he consigned his hand-luggage to a steward, instructing the fellow where to take it, and hurried off to the dining-saloon where, upon a table round which passengers buzzed like flies round a sugar-lump, letters and telegrams for the departing were displayed. But he could find nothing for Mr. Benjamin Staff.
Disappointed and indignant to the point of suppressed profanity, he elbowed out of the thronged saloon just in time to espy a steward (quite another steward: not him with whom Staff had left his things) struggling up the main companionway under the handicap of several articles of luggage which Staff didn’t recognise, and one which he assured himself he did: a bandbox as like the cause of all his perturbation as one piano-case resembles another.
Now if quite out of humour with the bandbox and all that appertained thereunto, the temper of the young man was such that he was by no means prepared to see it confiscated without his knowledge or consent. In two long strides he overhauled the steward, plucked him back with a peremptory hand, and abashed him with a stern demand:
“I say! where the devil do you think you’re going, my man?”
His man showed a face of dashed amazement.
“Beg pardon, sir! Do you mean me?”
“Most certainly I mean you. That’s my bandbox. What are you doing with it?”
Looking guiltily from his face to the article in question, the steward flushed and stammered – culpability incarnate, thought Staff.
“Your bandbox, sir?”
“Do you think I’d go charging all over this ship for a silly bandbox that wasn’t mine?”
“But, sir – ”
“I tell you, it’s mine. It’s tagged with my name. Where’s the steward I left it with?”
“But, sir,” pleaded the accused, “this belongs to this lidy ’ere. I’m just tikin’ it to ’er stiteroom, sir.”
Staff’s gaze followed the man’s nod, and for the first time he became aware that a young woman stood a step or two above them, half turned round to attend to the passage, her air and expression seeming to indicate a combination of amusement and impatience.
Precipitately the young man removed his hat. Through the confusion clouding his thoughts, he both foreglimpsed humiliation and was dimly aware of a personality of force and charm: of a well-poised figure cloaked in a light pongee travelling-wrap; of a face that seemed to consist chiefly in dark eyes glowing lambent in the shadow of a wide-brimmed, flopsy hat. He was sensitive to a hint of breeding and reserve in the woman’s attitude; as though (he thought) the contretemps diverted and engaged her more than he did who was responsible for it.
He addressed her in a diffident and uncertain voice: “I beg pardon…”
“The box is mine,” she affirmed with a cool and even gravity. “The steward is right.”
He choked back a counterclaim, which would have been unmannerly, and in his embarrassment did something that he instantly realised was even worse, approaching downright insolence in that it demanded confirmation of her word: he bent forward and glanced at the tag on the bandbox.
It was labelled quite legibly with the name of Miss Eleanor Searle.
He coloured, painfully contrite. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I – ah – happen to have with me the precise duplicate of this box. I didn’t at first realise that it might have a – ah – twin.”
The young woman inclined her head distantly.
“I understand,” she said, turning away. “Come, steward, if you please.”
“I’m very sorry – very,” Staff said hastily in intense mortification.
Miss Searle did not reply; she had already resumed her upward progress. Her steward followed, openly grinning.
Since it is not considered good form to kick a steward for knowing an ass when he meets one, Staff could no more than turn away, disguise the unholy emotions that fermented in his heart, and seek his stateroom.
“It had to be me!” he groaned.
Stateroom 432-433 proved to be very much occupied when he found it – chiefly, to be sure, by the bandbox, which took up most of the floor space. Round it were grouped in various attitudes of dejection sundry other pieces of travelling-gear and Mr. Iff. The latter was sitting on the edge of the lower berth, his hands in his pockets, his brow puckered with perplexity, his gaze fixed in fascination to the bandbox. On Staff’s entrance he looked up.
“Hello!” he said crisply.
“Afternoon,” returned Staff with all the morose dignity appropriate to severely wounded self-esteem.
Iff indicated the bandbox with a delicate gesture.
“No wonder,” he observed mildly, “you wanted the ship to yourself.”
Staff grunted irritably and, picking his way through and over the mound of luggage, deposited himself on the transom opposite the berths.
“A present for the missis, I take it?” pursued Iff.
“You might take it, and welcome, for all of me… Only it isn’t mine. And I am not married.”
“Pardon!” murmured Mr. Iff. “But if it isn’t yours,” he suggested logically, “what the deuce-and-all is it doing here?”
“I’m supposed to be taking it home for a friend.”
“Ah! I see… A very, very dear friend, of course…?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Staff regarded the bandbox with open malevolence. “If I had my way,” he said vindictively, “I’d lift it a kick over the side and be rid of it.”
“How you do take on, to be sure,” Iff commented placidly. “If I may be permitted to voice my inmost thought: you seem uncommon’ peeved.”
“I am.”
“Could I soothe your vexed soul in any way?”
“You might tell me how to get quit of the blasted thing.”
“I’ll try, if you’ll tell me how you got hold of it.”
“Look here!” Staff suddenly aroused to a perception of the fact that he was by way of being artfully pumped. “Does this matter interest you very much indeed?”
“No more, apparently, than it annoys you… And it is quite possible that, in the course of time, we might like to shut the door… But, as far as that is, I don’t mind admitting I’m a nosey little beast. If you feel it your duty to snub me, my dear fellow, by all means go to it. I don’t mind – and I dessay I deserve it.”
This proved irresistible; Staff’s humour saved his temper. To the twinkle in Iff’s faded blue eyes he returned a reluctant smile that ended in open laughter.
“It’s just this way,” he explained somewhat to his own surprise, under the influence of an unforeseen gush of liking for this good-humoured wisp of a man – “I feel I’m being shamelessly imposed upon. Just as I was leaving my rooms this morning this hat-box was sent to me, anonymously. I assume that some cheeky girl I know has sent it to me to tote home for her. It’s a certificated nuisance – but that isn’t all. There happens to be a young woman named Searle on board, who has an exact duplicate of this infernal contraption. A few moments ago I saw it, assumed it must be mine, quite naturally claimed it, and was properly called down in the politest, most crushing way imaginable. Hence this headache.”
“So!” said Mr. Iff. “So that is why he doesn’t love his dear little bandbox!.. A Miss Earle, I think you said?”
“No – Searle. At least, that was the name on her luggage.”
“Oh – Searle, eh?”
“You don’t happen to know her, by any chance?” Staff demanded, not without a trace of animation.
“Who? Me? Nothing like that,” Iff disclaimed hastily.
“I just thought you might,” said Staff, disappointed.
For some moments the conversation languished. Then Staff rose and pressed the call-button.
“What’s up?” asked Iff.
“Going to get rid of this,” said Staff with an air of grim determination.
“Just what I was going to suggest. But don’t do anything hasty – anything you’ll be sorry for.”
“Leave that to me, please.”
From his tone the assumption was not unwarrantable that Staff had never yet done anything that he had subsequently found cause to regret. Pensively punishing an inoffensive wrist, Iff subsided.
A steward showed himself in the doorway.
“You rang, sir?”
“Are you our steward?” asked Staff.
“Yes, sir.”
“Your name?”
“Orde, sir.”
“Well, Orde, can you stow this thing some place out of our way?”
Orde eyed the bandbox doubtfully. “I dessay I can find a plice for it,” he said at length.
“Do, please.”
“Very good, sir. Then-Q.” Possessing himself of the bandbox, Orde retired.
“And now,” suggested Iff with much vivacity, “s’pose we unpack and get settled.”
And they proceeded to distribute their belongings, sharing the meagre conveniences of their quarters with the impartiality of courteous and experienced travellers…
It was rather late in the afternoon before Staff found an opportunity to get on deck for the first time. The hour was golden with the glory of a westering sun. The air was bland, the sea quiet. The Autocratic had settled into her stride, bearing swiftly down St. George’s Channel for Queenstown, where she was scheduled to touch at midnight. Her decks presented scenes of animation familiar to the eyes of a weathered voyager.
There was the customary confusion of petticoats and sporadic displays of steamer-rugs along the ranks of deck-chairs. Deck-stewards darted hither and yon, wearing the harassed expressions appropriate to persons of their calling – doubtless to a man praying for that bright day when some public benefactor should invent a steamship having at least two leeward sides. A clatter of tongues assailed the ear, the high, sweet accents of American women predominating. The masculine element of the passenger-list with singular unanimity – like birds of prey wheeling in ever diminishing circles above their quarry – drifted imperceptibly but steadily aft, toward the smoking-room. The two indispensable adjuncts to a successful voyage had already put in their appearance: item, the Pest, an overdressed, overgrown, shrill-voiced female-child, blundering into everybody’s way and shrieking impertinences; item, a short, stout, sedulously hilarious gentleman who oozed public-spirited geniality at every pore and insisted on buttonholing inoffensive strangers and demanding that they enter an embryonic deck-quoit tournament – in short, discovering every known symptom of being the Life and Soul of the Ship.
Staff dodged both by grace of discretion and good fortune, and having found his deck-chair, dropped into it with a sigh of content, composing himself for rest and thought. His world seemed very bright with promise, just then; he felt that, if he had acted on impetuous impulse, he had not acted unwisely: only a few more hours – then the pause at Queenstown – then the brief, seven-day stretch across the Atlantic to home and Alison Landis!
It seemed almost too good to be true. He all but purred with his content in the prospect.
Of course, he had a little work to do, but he didn’t mind that; it would help immensely to beguile the tedium of the voyage; and all he required in order to do it well was the moral courage to shut himself up for a few hours each day and to avoid as far as possible social entanglements…
At just about this stage in his meditations he was somewhat rudely brought back to earth – or, more properly, to deck.
A voice shrieked excitedly: “Why, Mr. Staff!”
To be precise, it miscalled him “Stahf”: a shrill, penetrating, overcultivated, American voice making an attempt only semi-successful to cope with the broad vowels of modern English enunciation.
Staff looked up, recognised its owner, and said beneath his breath: “O Lord!” – his soul crawling with recognition. But nothing of this was discernible in the alacrity with which he jumped up and bent over a bony but bedizened hand.
“Mrs. Ilkington!” he said.
“R’ally,” said the lady, “the world is ve-ry small, isn’t it?”
She was a lean, angular, inordinately vivacious body whose years, which were many more than forty, were making a brave struggle to masquerade as thirty. She was notorious for her execrable taste in gowns and jewelry, but her social position was impregnable, and her avowed mission in life was to bring together Society (meaning the caste of money) with the Arts (meaning those humble souls content to sell their dreams for the wherewithal to sustain life).
Her passion for bromidioms always stupefied Staff – left him dazed and witless. In the present instance he could think of nothing by way of response happier than that hoary banality: “This is indeed a surprise.”
“Flatterer!” said Mrs. Ilkington archly. “I’m not surprised,” she pursued. “I might have known you’d be aboard this vessel.”
“You must be a prophetess of sorts, then,” he said, smiling. “I didn’t know I was going to sail, myself, till late yesterday afternoon.”
“Deceiver,” commented the lady calmly. “Why can’t you men ever be candid?”
Surprise merged into some annoyance. “What do you mean?” he asked bluntly.
“Oh, but two can play at that game,” she assured him spiritedly. “If you won’t be open with me, why should I tell all I know?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re driving at, Mrs. Ilkington.”
“Would it improve your understanding” – she threatened him gaily with a gem-encrusted forefinger – “if I were to tell you I met a certain person in Paris last week, who talked to me about you?”
“It would not,” said he stiffly. “Who – ?”
“Oh, well, if you won’t be frank!” Mrs. Ilkington’s manner implied that he was a bold, bad butterfly, but that she had his entomological number, none the less. “Tell me,” she changed the subject abruptly, “how goes the great play?”
“Three acts are written,” he said in weariness of spirit, “the fourth – ”
“But I thought you weren’t to return to America until it was quite finished?”
“Who told you that, please?”
“Never mind, sir! How about the fourth act?”
“I mean to write it en voyage,” said he, perplexed. From whom could this woman possibly have learned so much that was intimate to himself?
“You have it all mapped out, then?” she persisted.
“Oh, yes; it only needs to be put on paper.”
“R’ally, then, it’s true – isn’t it – that the writing is the least part of play construction?”
“Who told you that?” he asked again, this time amused.
“Oh, a very prominent man,” she declared; and named him.
Staff laughed. “A too implicit belief in that theory, Mrs. Ilkington,” said he, “is responsible for the large number of perfectly good plays that somehow never get written – to say nothing of the equally large number of perfectly good playwrights who somehow never get anywhere.”
“Clever!” screamed the lady. “But aren’t you wasteful of your epigrams?”
He could cheerfully have slain her then and there; for which reason the civil gravity he preserved was all the more commendable.
“And now,” he persisted, “won’t you tell me with whom you were discussing me in Paris?”
She shook her head at him reprovingly. “You don’t know?”
“No.”
“You can’t guess?”
“Not to save me.”
“R’ally?”
“Honestly and truly,” he swore, puzzled by the undertone of light malice he thought to detect in her manner.
“Then,” said she with decision, “I’m not going to get myself into trouble by babbling. But, if you promise to be nice to me all the way home – ?” She paused.
“I promise,” he said gravely.
“Then – if you happen to be at the head of the companion-ladder when the tender comes off from Queenstown tonight – I promise you a huge surprise.”
“You won’t say more than that?” he pleaded.
She appeared to debate. “Yes,” she announced mischievously; “I’ll give you a leading hint. The person I mean is the purchaser of the Cadogan collar.”
His eyes were blank. “And what, please, is the Cadogan collar?”
“You don’t mean to tell me you’ve never heard of it?” She paused with dramatic effect. “Incredible! Surely, everybody knows about the Cadogan collar, the most magnificent necklace of pearls in the world!”
“Everybody, it seems, but myself, Mrs. Ilkington.”
“R’ally!” she cried, and tapped his arm playfully. “You are as stupid as most brilliant men!”
A bugle sang through the evening air. The lady started consciously.
“Heavens!” she cried. “Time to dress for dinner: I must fly!.. Have you made your table reservation yet?”
“Yes,” he said hastily.
“Then do see the second-steward at once and get transferred to our table; we have just one vacant chair. Oh, but you must; you’ve promised to be nice to me, you know. And I do so want you to meet one of my protégées – such a sweet girl – a Miss Searle. I’m sure you’ll be crazy about her – at least, you would be if there were no Alison Landis in your cosmos. Now, do attend to that right away. Remember you’ve promised.”
Staff bowed as she fluttered away. In his heart he was thoroughly convinced that this were a sorry scheme of things indeed did it not include a special hell for Mrs. Ilkingtons.
What had she meant by her veiled references to this mysterious person in Paris, who was to board the steamer at Queenstown? How had she come by so much personal knowledge of himself and his work? And what did she know about his love for Alison Landis?
He swore thoughtfully, and went below to dress, stopping on the way to make arrangements with the second-steward to have his seat changed, in accordance with his exacted promise.
IV
QUEENSTOWN
Immediately he had allowed himself to be persuaded, Staff felt sure he should not have agreed to change his seat to the table occupied by Mrs. Ilkington’s party, especially if he meant sincerely to try to do any real work aboard the Autocratic; and it wasn’t long after he had taken his place for the first dinner that he was convinced that he had blundered beyond remedy or excuse.
The table was round and seated seven, though when the party had assembled there remained two vacant places. Staff was assigned the chair on Mrs. Ilkington’s right and was sensitive to a not over subtle implication that his was the seat of honour. He would cheerfully have exchanged it for a place on the lady’s left, which would have afforded a chance to talk to Miss Searle, to whom he earnestly desired to make an explanation and such amends as she would permit. But a male person named Bangs, endowed with impressive self-assurance, altogether too much good-looks (measured by the standards of the dermatological institute advertisements) and no excess baggage in the way of intellect, sat on Mrs. Ilkington’s left, with Miss Searle beyond him. The latter had suffered Staff to be presented to her with (he fancied) considerable repressed amusement. Not that he blamed her, but …
His position was rendered unhappy to the verge of being impossible, however, by the lady on his own right, a Mrs. Thataker: darkly temperamental and buxom, a divorcée and (she lost no time in telling him) likewise a playwright. True, none of her plays had ever been produced; but that was indisputably due to a managerial conspiracy; what she really needed was a friend at court – some clever man having “the ear of the manager.” (Staff gathered that a truly clever man could warm up a play and pour it into the ear of the managers like laudanum and sweet-oil.) With such a man, he was given to understand, Mrs. Thataker wouldn’t mind collaborating; she had manuscripts in her steamer-trunk which were calculated to prove a number of things …
And while he was easing away and preparing to run before the wind to escape any such hideous complication, he was abruptly brought up all-standing by the information that the colour of the lady’s soul was pink. She knew this to be a fact beyond dispute, because she never could do her best work save when garbed exclusively in pink. She enumerated several articles of wearing apparel not customarily discussed between comparative strangers but which – always provided they were pink – she held indispensable to the task of dramatic composition.
In his great agony, happening to glance in Miss Searle’s direction, he saw her with head bent and eyelids lowered, lips compressed, colour a trifle heightened, shoulders suspiciously a-quiver.
Incongruously, the impression obtruded that they were unusually handsome shoulders.
For that matter, she was an unusually handsome young woman: tall, fair, with a face featured with faint, exquisite irregularity, brown eyes and brows in striking contrast to the rich golden colour of her hair; well-poised and balanced – sure but not too conscious of herself …
Staff heard himself saying “Beg pardon?” to a third repetition of one of Mrs. Thataker’s gratuitous revelations.
At this he took fright, drew back into his reserve for the remainder of the meal, and as soon as he decently could, made his excuses and fled to join Iff in the smoking-room…
He found the little man indulging his two passions; he was drinking whiskey-and-sodas and playing bridge, both in the most masterly fashion. Staff watched the game a while and then, the opportunity offering, cut in. He played till ten o’clock, at which hour, wearied, he yielded his seat to another, leaving Mr. Iff the victor of six rubbers and twelve whiskey-and-sodas. As Staff went out on deck the little man cut for the seventh and ordered the thirteenth. Neither indulgence seemed to have had any perceptible effect upon him.
Staff strolled forward, drinking in air that seemed the sweeter by contrast with the reeking room he had just quitted. The wind had freshened since nightfall; it blew strong and cool, but not keen. And there was more motion in the seas that sang overside, wrapped in Cimmerian blackness. The sky had become overcast; there were no stars: only the ’longshore lights of Ireland twinkled, small, bright, incredibly distant over the waters. The decks were softly aglow with electric lights, lending a deeper shade of velvety denseness to the night beyond the rails.
He hadn’t moved far forward when his quick sight picked out the shimmer of a woman’s hair, like spun gold, about amidships in the rank of deck-chairs. He made sure it was Miss Searle; and it was. She sat alone, with none near her, her head resting against the back of the chair, her face turned a trifle forward; so that she was unaware of his approach until he stopped before her.
“Miss Searle – ” he began diffidently.
She looked up quickly and smiled in what he thought a friendly way.
“Good evening,” said she; and moved her body slightly in the deck-chair, turning a little to the left as if expecting him to take the vacant chair on that hand.
He did so without further encouragement, and abruptly found himself wholly lacking words wherewith to phrase what he had in mind to say. In such emergency he resorted to an old, tried and true trick of his and began to talk on the first subject, unrelated to his dilemma, that popped into his head.
“Are you a good sailor?” he enquired gravely.
The girl nodded. “Very.”
“Not afraid of seasickness?”
“No. Why?”
“Because,” said Staff soberly, “I’ve been praying for a hurricane.”
She nodded again without speaking, her eyes alone questioning.
“Mrs. Thataker,” he pursued evenly, “confided to me at dinner that she is a very poor sailor indeed.”
Miss Searle laughed quietly. “You desire a punishment to fit the crime.”
“There are some crimes for which no adequate punishment has ever been contrived,” he returned, beginning to see his way, and at the same time beginning to think himself uncommonly clever.
“Oh!” said Miss Searle with a little laugh. “Now if you’re leading up to a second apology about that question of the bandbox, you needn’t, because I’ve forgiven you already.”
He glanced at her reproachfully. “You just naturally had to beat me to that, didn’t you?” he complained. “All the same, it was inexcusable of me.”
“Oh, no; I quite understood.”
“You see,” he persisted obstinately, “I really did think it was my bandbox. I actually have got one with me, precisely like yours.”
“I quite believed you the first time.”
Something in her tone moved him to question her face sharply; but he found her shadowed eyes inscrutable.
“I half believe you know something,” he ventured, perplexed.
“Perhaps,” she nodded, with an enigmatic smile.
“What do you know?”
“Why,” she said, “it was simple enough. I happened to be in Lucille’s yesterday afternoon when a hat was ordered delivered to you.”
“You were! Then you know who sent it to me?”
“Of course.” Her expression grew curious. “Don’t you?”
“No,” he said excitedly. “Tell me.”
But she hesitated. “I’m not sure I ought …”
“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.”