I signed to a passing steward and ordered two double stengahs.
We sat in perfect silence until they came. But when Reed had swallowed his drink, after the manner of a man who needs it badly, he suddenly began to talk.
“I’m afraid I made a bit of a fool of myself just now,” he said with nervous eagerness. “The fact is, I’ve been feeling off colour all day. I’m — I’m not a very strong man, you know. A bit of a heart, as a matter of fact, though I don’t ever say anything about it.”
He paused, eyeing me rather apprehensively, as though in some doubt as to whether I should believe him. As a matter of fact, I felt perfectly certain that he had that moment invented his “heart” and the pity that he had inspired in me a few moments earlier underwent an abrupt revulsion.
I said nothing at all, and Reed swallowed once or twice, and went on talking.
“I ought to have told Mr. Leslie at once that I was feeling seedy, and that I’d do his notes for him another time. Only the ladies seemed keen about the idea of hearing him dictate then and there, and I didn’t like to make a fuss. Besides, I thought I could go through with it all right.
I’d no idea I was going to turn queer like that.”
“What sort of a hand did you make of the dictation?”
“Oh, a bit of a mess, I’m afraid,” Reed muttered uneasily.
I held out my hand for the pad, and after a moment’s hesitation he let me have it.
The thing was a horrid jumble of shorthand outlines, truncated words in longhand, and unintelligible abbreviations. It was doubtful whether anybody in the world could have made sense of it.
“Our friend’s dictation was a bit too much for you,” I suggested — to give him a chance.
“Well, of course, I’m utterly out of practice, as I told them. And shorthand is a thing you want to do every day, regularly, if you’re to keep up any speed at all.”
“I see.”
Reed looked thoroughly uneasy, although he had regained his colour, and I could almost see him revolving in his own mind what he should say next to make it sound better.
I had no wish to hear anything more from him at all and I got to my feet just as Mrs. Lewis came up to us.
“Better now, Mr Reed?”
“Yes, thanks. It must have been a touch of the sun, I think.”
I heard their first sentences, as I walked off. It hadn’t taken Reed long, I reflected grimly, to get rid of his heart trouble, and to substitute a touch of the sun.
For the remainder of the day, I played bridge and dismissed the objectionable Reed and his troubles from my conscious mind.
At dinner, however, the indefatigable Mrs. Lewis tried to reopen the subject.
“I’m sure that faintness was only a put-up job,” she declared. “We ought to make him own up to it.”
Nobody else responded. The joke had gone far enough — if it could be called a joke at all — and I changed the conversation pointedly.
Of course the story of Reed’s discomfiture spread, as stories of any kind always do spread on board a liner. I heard it being discussed, in snatches, up on deck that evening.
Reed himself put in no appearance, either at dinner or afterwards, although there was dancing and he was an enthusiastic and not unskilful dancer.
Clare Christie spent the evening with the infatuated tea-planter. I watched her once or twice, as she danced with him, and could almost have made myself believe that I had only imagined the hard, contemptuous expression that I had seen flash into that lovely, serene face of hers.
We were nearing Colombo, and it was a breathlessly hot night. I stayed up on deck late, and so did three or four other people.
Clare and her tea-planter were amongst them. I caught sight of the flounce of her white lace frock in a particularly secluded corner long after most of the passengers had gone either to the smoke-room or to their cabins.
It was past one o’clock when I got up, stretched myself, and moved almost automatically to the ship’s side, drawn by the eternal fascination of the green, glassy waves through which we were so smoothly and steadily cutting our way.
It was a perfectly still, breathless, moonlight night. I had lost myself, and all sense of my surroundings, in one of those vague, formless dreams that scarcely amount to conscious thought, when I became aware — although I could not have told by what process — that disturbance was in the atmosphere.
It was not a question of noise — the murmur that reached me was low and quite indistinguishable. Nevertheless the calm of the tropic night was threatened. That much, I knew for certain, even before I turned, instinctively, to the place where I had last seen that betraying flounce of white.
Clare Christie was on her feet, the young planter — his name was Woodward, I remember — standing close beside her, and facing them was the small figure of Reed. Even at a distance, I discerned something queer about him. He was swaying, slightly but unmistakably, and his hands were thrust into his pockets. I remember wondering whether he was the worse for drink. Almost as the thought came into my mind, he raised his voice — and the first sound of it was enough to put the question beyond any possible doubt.
“I don’t understand what you mean. I didn’t suggest this concert, or organize it in any way. If I’m asked to take part in it, naturally I do. It doesn’t matter to me, one way or the other....”
“Oh, yes it does, Teddy,” Clare put in mockingly. I had never heard her make use of his Christian name before.
“Oh, yes it does. Don’t, please, pretend. You wouldn’t be at all pleased if you’d been left out of the programme. However, that doesn’t matter. The point is, that if I’m to sing, I shall choose my own accompanist.”
She turned round and saw me.
“Mr. Benson!” she called, not at all disconcerted. “Come and help to settle a dispute.”
“It’s very late,” was all I could think of, as I came up to where the three of them stood together.
I was certain that Reed had been drinking too much, although I had never yet seen him indulge in anything more reckless than a dry Martini just before dinner. The scene in the afternoon had upset him, I knew, and thrown him off his balance. Besides, he was exactly the type of man — timid and abstemious, and physically as well as morally weak — on whom a very small amount of drink would have a disastrous effect.
Clare was speaking, coldly and without haste.
“Mr. Reed — without consulting me, I may say — has arranged to play two accompaniments for me at the concert to-morrow night. He tells me that the whole thing is settled — by whom, unless it’s himself, I really don’t know.”
“You said you’d sing,” Reed muttered.
“Certainly. But surely I can decide for myself who is to accompany me at the piano.”
“I should hope so!” broke in Woodward, with an angry laugh. “It’s extraordinarily good of you to sing at all, you know.”
He looked very young and earnest and foolish, standing staring at Clare in the moonlight.
She smiled at him — rather absent-mindedly, I thought. Certainly, Woodward hardly seemed to be a real person just then — it was so evident that the true issue lay between Clare Christie and Teddy Reed.
Reed was also staring at Clare, and there was a kind of unwilling fascination on his small, pallid face.
“I’ve often played your accompaniments before, Clare,” he said hoarsely.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“In the days when you took down shorthand at two hundred and twenty words a minute?” she suggested.
Reed grew livid. He took a step forward, and his hands were clenched almost as though he would have struck her.
“What the—”
“That’s enough, Reed — come and take a turn with me,” I interposed.
But at the same instant young Woodward broke in furiously:
“How dare you speak like that to a lady? I’ve a good mind—”
I said: “Shut up, Woodward. Don’t let’s hav
e a scene.”
I wasn’t quick enough.
Reed came close up to young Woodward and hissed between his teeth, like the villain in an old-fashioned melodrama:
“Mind your own business, Woodward. I’ve known Miss Christie very much longer than you have — and very much better, too,”
Then he swung round and faced the girl.
“Haven’t I, Clare?”
The way in which he emphasized her Christian name was an impertinence in itself.
“Please don’t call me by my name,” she said icily, and turned her back on him.
“I think I’m going to bed. Good-night.”
“I say—” began Woodward.
She smiled at him very sweetly.
“Good-night, my dear.”
If the gratuitious little familiarity was meant to madden Reed, it succeeded admirably.
He broke away from the detaining grasp that I laid on his arm, and thrust himself between Clare and the companionway.
“You were ready enough to let me call you by your name two years ago,” he incredibly exclaimed, his voice not raised, but trembling with fury and wounded vanity. “And you were ready to promise me anything in the world, when you got engaged to a wealthy man, if only I wouldn’t let on that he wasn’t the first one—”
Then Woodward struck him.
One couldn’t blame the boy — it was natural. Clare had presence of mind enough not to scream. She caught her breath sharply and then stood perfectly still, her head held very high, her eyes fixed on Reed.
I got between the two men, but it was evident that Reed was not going to retaliate. He was shaking all over, although from nervous excitement, I imagine, rather than fear.
“How — how dare you do that?” he stammered unconvincingly.
Before Woodward could answer, I interfered.
“You’re not yourself, Reed. You don’t know what you’ve been saying, and to-morrow morning you’ll have to apologize to Miss Christie. Meanwhile, the best place for you is your cabin. Come along.”
“Look here—” young Woodward began.
I told him to keep quiet.
“Can’t you see the fellow’s been drinking?” I asked, trying to render the words inaudible to Reed.
“He’s insulted Miss Christie.”
“You’re not making things any better, you young fool, by working up a scene in front of her. You’d better apologize to her yourself.”
Woodward turned eagerly to Clare, already ashamed of himself.
“I’m frightfully sorry. But when I heard him speak to you like that, I simply saw scarlet.”
“Never mind,” said Clare in a low voice.
“He shall go down on his knees to you to-morrow — when he’s sober—”
Reed, contriving to twist out of the grasp that I had laid on his shoulder, turned round again.
“You think I’m drunk,” he said with a kind of indistinct solemnity, “and so I am, perhaps — but I’m not too drunk to know what I’m saying.
It’s all quite true. Less than two years ago, she and I were secretly engaged. I gave her up, because she wanted all the things that I couldn’t have given her.”
This time I got hold of him under the arms, and put my knee into the small of his back. If necessary, I should have kicked him down below.
Clare herself stopped me.
“Just one moment, Mr. Benson please. I want to tell you and Mr. Woodward at once that there isn’t one word of truth in what you’ve just heard.”
“As if we didn’t know that!” burst from Woodward — but she disregarded him altogether.
“Naturally, I should never have spoken of this — but now I’m forced to.” She drew a long breath. “It’s true that I knew Mr. Reed at home. He was private secretary to our friend and neighbour — Sir Frederick Clay. He — he paid me some most unwelcome attentions. The end of it was that my father forbade him the house. And that — that — is what he has twisted into the account you’ve just heard.”
She looked like a lovely statute in the moonlight, the steady scorn in her low voice reflected in her whole bearing.
Reed, white and shaking, looked up at her, and then collapsed altogether, allowing me to drag him away. He never spoke a word, and I pushed him into his cabin and shut the door on him.
Then I went on deck again.
Woodward had disappeared, and Clare Christie, on her way below, paused only to say a few words that she had evidently prepared beforehand.
“You understand, that this is going to be as if it hadn’t happened? I’ve made Mr. Woodward promise. Mercifully, that — that horrid little liar leaves the ship at Colombo. Of course, I shan’t speak to him again.”
I bowed. It was difficult to know what to say.
“I ought to have taken up that line from the very first moment he came on board,” she added, looking me full in the face. “But I thought I’d give him a chance, and that he’d take it — for his own sake. He’s so terribly anxious to stand well with everyone, always — he’d never have given himself away as he has to-night, if he hadn’t been drinking.”
It was all very lucid, and quite incontrovertible.
“I suppose so,” I acquiesced. “Of course, you may rely on my discretion, Miss Christie. Good-night.”
“Good-night. And thank you,” she added, with a dazzling smile.
Thirty-six hours later, Reed, looking ghastly, disembarked with the other passengers for Colombo. No one had seen him in the interval. He had remained in his cabin, and his steward reported that he was ill. So far as I know, he exchanged no farewells with anybody on board.
The story of that scene on deck remained unknown to everyone except those who had taken part in it, and for the remainder of the voyage Woodward made all the running with the beautiful Miss Christie.
There isn’t any doubt that Reed was a liar, a boaster, a cad. The shorthand incident was only one of many. And Clare Christie was extremely lovely to look at.
I’ve sometimes wondered whether it was her loveliness, taken in conjunction with Reed’s very unattractive weaknesses of character, that weighted the scales so heavily in her favour. For after all, it was only one word against another. And she was undoubtedly a flirt and Reed undoubtedly susceptible — and it would have been in keeping with his love of posing, that he should see himself as having nobly relinquished her, when — or if —— he found himself thrown over, either because she had grown tired of him or because she had found somebody more to her liking....
Her fiancé came down to meet her at Singapore —— a big, splendid fellow, obviously very much in love.
He asked me, I remember, if we had played any poker on the way out and declared that we ought to see his Clare play a poker-hand.
“You mightn’t think it,” he added, with an adoring glance, “but Clare’s bluff is marvellous. She gets away with it every time.”
It left me wondering, quite a lot.
THE GIRL WHO TOLD THE TRUTH
“I’M not angry,” Lady Catherine said. “But I’m bitterly disappointed. Just disappointed and grieved. I’m not in the least angry.”
She was not in the least truthful either, in saying so, but of this she was not aware.
For she was in reality very angry indeed — and not wholly without reason.
Lady Catherine was a very, very busy person. Many important organizations depended largely upon her activities. She had social obligations and was punctilious about discharging them. She had — like everybody else, and on a larger scale than most people — a private and family life. And in addition to all this, she was writing a book — a long and important book of reminiscences, filled with distinguished names and dates and anecdotes — for which a famous publishing house had already advanced her a considerable sum of money.
She had reached the last quarter of the book — it was to be finished by October, and it was now July — when her secretary resigned.
The secretary had only been with her a year. She was a good
girl, competent and intelligent.
Lady Catherine had fully recognized the goodness, competence, and intelligence, had remunerated them adequately, and been lavish with praise, gratitude, and kindness.
And now Miss Palmer announced that she must go.
“I’m so very sorry, Lady Catherine,” she faltered. “But my mother hasn’t been at all well lately, and she feels she can’t manage without me any longer. I really do feel that I ought to go home.”
“Naturally, you must do as you think right,” said Lady Catherine very stiffly. “But I must say, Miss Palmer, it might have occurred to you a little sooner. Here am I, at the very busiest moment, left to hunt about for a new secretary, when I’ve not got time to fit everything into the day as it is!”
Miss Palmer repeated once more that she was very, very sorry.
Lady Catherine did not believe her.
“These girls are all alike,” she said to her friends in an embittered way. “They don’t take their work seriously. They put personal considerations first, every time.”
By good fortune, as it seemed at the time, she heard of Mrs. Fisher.
Mrs. Fisher was experienced, efficient, energetic. She had been secretary to a Member of Parliament. She entered the service of Lady Catherine with enthusiasm, learnt all that was required of her with more than reasonable quickness, and at the end of a month said that the post, to her very great regret, did not suit her.
“And why?” enquired Lady Catherine, in frozen accents.
“It’s a little bit too far from High Wycombe, Lady Catherine,” said Mrs. Fisher — as though a drawback of so obvious a nature could scarcely require putting into words.
“High Wycombe??”
“My little girl. My Diana. My Diana is at school at High Wycombe, and we both prize our week-ends so very dearly. I always spend the week-ends with her. But I find the crowded journey, at the end of a hard week’s work, is really too much. I arrive tired out. And last Saturday Diana said to me, ‘Mummie,’ she said—”
Lady Catherine ruthlessly decapitated the quotation from Mrs. Fisher’s Diana.
“But when I engaged you, Mrs. Fisher, you were perfectly well aware of the distance between Park Lane and High Wycombe. So far as I am aware,” said Lady Catherine witheringly, “it has not increased since then.”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 573
