Stand Fast, Craig-Royston! (Volume III). William Black
come, tell me what the news of the ship is!"
Vincent could not very well refuse; though the result of her open preference and selection was that her other obsequious admirers fell away one by one, under some pretence of playing rope-quoits or shovel-board: so that, eventually, he and she were left alone together, for Miss Martinez did not return.
"Now," said the young grass-widow, whose very pretty chin was cushioned on abundant furs, "I am going to make you happy. But first of all I must tell you – you are in love."
"Oh, really?" said Vincent.
"Ah, yes, yes, yes," she said, with a charming insistence. "I have watched you. I know. You keep apart; you look far away; you speak to no one. And then I said to myself that I would make you happy. How? By asking you to tell me all about her."
Whereupon Vincent said to himself, 'You're a very impertinent woman – although you've got pretty eyes.' And again he said, 'But after all you are a woman; and perhaps from you I may learn something more about Maisrie.' So he said aloud —
"The deck of a steamer is hardly the place for secrets."
"Why not?" she protested. "Besides, it is no secret – to anyone with eyes. Come, tell me all about her – and be happy! I wish to interest you; I wish you to interest me; and so let us talk about the only thing that is worth talking about – that is, love. No, there are two things, perhaps – love, and money; but love is so full of surprises; it is the perpetual miracle that no one can understand; it is such a wonderful, unexpected, desperate kind of thing, that it will always be the most interesting. Now!"
"Well," said he – for there was something catching in the mad audacity of this young matron – "it must be secret for secret. My story for yours!"
She laughed long and heartily – until her merriment brought tears to her eyes.
"Why, I'm an old married woman!" she exclaimed. "Ah, I see what your bargain means. You only want to put me off. You think the time and place are not romantic enough; some night – out in mid-Atlantic – with perhaps a moon – and you'll be more communicative, when you forsake the smoking-room for half-an-hour, and send me a little message to meet you. Very well. Perhaps there are too many people tramping up and down. Shall we have a tramp too? Sitting still so stiffens one. There – can you pull off the rugs, do you think? They've swathed me up like a mummy. Now give me your arm; and mind you don't let me go flying – I'm never steady on my feet for the first day or two."
Well, he found the grass-widow a most charming companion – bright, loquacious, and happy, until, indeed, they steamed into the entrance to Cork Harbour. Here, as most of the passengers were going on board the tender, for a scamper ashore, while the ship waited for the mails to arrive, Mrs. de Lara began to look a little wistful. All of a sudden it occurred to him that he ought, if only in common gratitude for her marked condescension, to ask her if she would care to go also.
"Oh – Mrs. de Lara," said he, "wouldn't you like to go ashore, and have a look round Queenstown?"
Her face lighted up in an instant; but there was a curious, amused expression in her eyes.
"I couldn't go alone with you, you know," said she.
"Why not?" said he.
She did not answer that question.
"If you like to ask Miss Martinez as well as myself," she continued, "I'm sure we should be delighted – and it would be very kind of you."
"Of course I will!" he said – and at once he went off in search of the needful companion. A few minutes thereafter the three of them were on board the tender, along with the rest of this crowd of eager, chattering passengers.
And a very pleasant visit it was they paid to the picturesque watering-place and its wide-stretching bay. First of all he took his two guests to a hotel, and gave them an excellent lunch, at which Mrs. de Lara made merry like an enfranchised schoolgirl; then he got an open carriage, and they were driven all about the place; and he bought them such fruit and flowers as he could find, until they were quite laden by the time they got back to the tender. They were in plenty of time; the mails were late. When they eventually returned on board the steamer, Vincent was on the whole very well pleased with that little excursion; only he hoped that the new acquaintanceship that had been formed had not been too conspicuously displayed, for people are given to talking during the longueursof an Atlantic voyage.
And indeed it very soon appeared that after this little adventure ashore Mrs. de Lara meant to claim him as her own. When she came on deck for the usual promenade before dinner, she sent for him (though there were plenty of gentlemen only too anxious to wait on her), and she took his arm during that perfunctory march up and down. Then she said to him —
"Would you think me very rude if I asked you to come and sit at our table? The fact is, I want somebody to be good to me, and to look after me; and the Captain, although he is a most delightful man when he happens to be there, is nearly always away, on duty, no doubt. I hate sitting next an empty chair – that throws me on to Miss Martinez and she and I have exhausted all our subjects long ago. You've no particular friend, have you? Come to our table!"
"But I couldn't think of turning anybody out!" he protested.
"Oh, that's all right!" she made answer, cheerfully enough. "Miss Martinez will get a place somewhere else – Mr. Collins will arrange that – I dare say she will be rather pleased to be set free."
And so it came to pass that at dinner Vincent found himself in the seat that had been vacated by the useful Isabel; and perhaps his promotion provoked a few underhand comments and significant glances at certain of the other tables, for very small trifles are noted on board ship. At all events he only knew that Mrs. de Lara was as engaging, and complaisant, and loquacious as ever; and that she talked away with very little regard as to who might overhear her. Nor was she any longer the merry, rattle-pated creature of the Queenstown hotel. Oh, no. Her conversation now was of a quite superior order. It was literary; and she had caught up plenty of the phrases of the rococo school; she could talk as well as another of environments, conditions, the principal note, style charged with colour, and the like. Nay, she adventured upon an epigram now and again – or, at least, something that sounded like an epigram. "England," she said, "was a shop; France a stage; Germany a camp; and the United States a caucus." And again she said, "There are three human beings whom I wish to meet with before I die: a pretty Frenchwoman, a modest American, and an honest Greek. But I am losing hope." And then there was a tirade against affectation in writing. "Why should the man thrust himself upon me?" she demanded. "I don't want to know him at all. I want him to report honestly and simply what he has seen of the world and of human nature, and I am willing to be talked to, and I am willing to believe; but when he begins to posture and play tricks, then I become resentful. Why should he intrude his own personality at all? – he was never introduced to me; I have no wish for his acquaintance. So long as he expresses an honest opinion, good and well; I am willing to listen; but when he begins to interpose his clever little tricks and grimaces, then I say, 'Get away, mountebank – and get a red-hot poker ready for pantaloon.'" And in this way she went on, whimsical, petulant, didactic by turns, to the stolid astonishment of a plethoric and red-faced old lady opposite, who contributed nothing to the conversation but an indigestion cough, and sate and stared, and doubtless had formed the opinion that any one who could talk in that fashion before a lot of strangers was no better than she should be.
But it was not of literature that Mrs. de Lara discoursed when Vincent returned that evening to the saloon, after having been in the smoking-room for about an hour, watching the commercials playing poker and getting up sweepstakes on the next day's run. When she caught sight of him, she immediately rose and left the group of newly-formed acquaintances with whom she had been sitting – in the neighbourhood of the piano – and deliberately came along and met him half-way.
"Let us remain here," said she; "and then if we talk we shan't interfere with the music."
She lay back in her chair as if waiting for him to begin; he was thinking how well her costume became her – her dress of black silk touched here and there with yellow satin – the sharp scarlet stroke of her fan – the small crescent of diamonds in her jet-black hair. Then the softened lamplight seemed to lend depth and