“You’re always in command, aren’t you—of yourself and everyone else! You say what you like, and don’t care who’s hurt.”
“Be quiet, Lisa. If I hurt you, I’m sorry. I certainly didn’t mean to. You’re letting yourself go because you’re tired.”
Hands behind her gripping the rail and her whole being held stiff to avoid trembling, Lisa tilted her chin. Blood drummed in her ears and throbbed in her tensed muscles, but somehow she spoke intelligibly, if bitterly.
“Yes, I’m tired. Tired of your fraternal interest, and horribly tired of being put in my place in the beastliest manner you can contrive. Being captain of the ship doesn’t make you guardian of the souls on board. We all got along without you before and will do so again. I suppose it was pure bad luck that of all the ships which sail to Africa I should have picked on the Wentworth.”
“Bad luck for both of us,” he said crisply. “I think we’ll leave it there.”
She thought he would have gone then, but he hesitated and addressed her with a curious inflexion, “Lisa do I really make you unhappy? Was it through me that you missed the play-reading last night?”
This was perilous ground. To admit it was also to admit his power over her, and Mark might.be merciless to a woman whom he knew himself to hold in the hollow of his palm. She forced herself to relax a little and to smile with a semblance of flippancy.
“If I’d really wanted to witness the much-publicized play-reading I’d have stuck it out, in spite of your proximity. The fact was, I was feeling a need of the sleep I hadn’t had the night before, when we shared a pot of tea in the surgery. Remember?”
“Yes, I remember.” He sounded curt and speculative, but his face was dark and unreadable. “I remember other things, too.” On a metallic note he added, “There’s no accounting for some of the changes which overtake us, is there? Goodnight.”
For a few minutes Lisa stayed on there, alone. Her mind went after him, saw him having a word with the officer of the watch, writing a few notes at the big desk before lying down in the inner cabin for a brief rest in readiness to take over again on the bridge.
Already he would have forgotten Lisa, but she would never forget those clipped, frosty words of his: “Bad luck for both of us!” Meaning, of course, that her presence on his ship had brought him only trouble. Well, it was true, she reflected wearily. Neither had done much good for the other; there had always been just a shade more enmity than friendliness between them, often a great deal more than a shade.
When she undressed in her cabin that night Lisa at once hung up the green frock and dropped over it the flowered cotton dress-cover which had protected the aquamarine. She would have liked never to have to look at it again.
Cape Town, when Lisa first saw it through her porthole, was a scintillating mass of lights in the pre-dawn darkness. Then morning broke and the sun came up flamboyantly over the horizon to show the big, sprawling city at the foot of the flat-topped mountain which is recognized with affection by sailors from all the ends of the earth. After so many days of boundless sea, it was a sight to catch the breath, but Lisa looked upon it dispassionately. She seemed fated to be robbed of the excitement of the journey.
The Wentworth moved in from the Bay to the quay soon after eight, and almost at once a batch of customs and immigration officers came aboard. This being the port of entry into the Union, everyone’s papers had to be cleared, a tedious business which rather stretched the passengers’ leave-taking into absurdity.
It was nearly eleven when Mrs. Basson carried Nancy off for the day to Muizenberg, and Lisa and Jeremy took a taxi along the King’s Way into the town. Here, Jeremy proudly displayed his knowledge. He was on home ground, and glad of it.
After the springy timber of the decks, the pavements were hard and unyielding, but Lisa overcame a tendency to sway with the ship and deliberately put all thought of Mark behind her. This was to be a day away from the Wentworth, away from all its associations.
Jeremy was buoyant as the breeze. “Look at the fruit in the shops, Lee! I’d almost forgotten what a guava looks like. And those wrinkled things are passion fruit, so-called because the outside is tough and the juice heavenly but pippy.” The homemade simile amused him and he laughed. “Let’s buy some of everything and take them to the Gardens. What we don’t eat we can throw to the squirrels.”
Lisa looked at the shops packed with good things to eat and to wear. She looked at the people who crowded the pavements; Malays, Indians, Colored with a Hottentot cast, a few Chinese, and pure natives from inland. The white women were dressed in the newest fashions, the white men wore light suits and appeared to have all the time in the world at their disposal.
Jeremy sniffed in the conglomeration of smells and closed his eyes. “Ecstasy,” he murmured. "I’m walking in South Africa with you. Just wait till you see Durban.”
Lisa became infected. She sat in the Botanic Gardens and let the squirrels run over her lap; she marvelled at the gargantuan tropic trees, the massive gold and pink lilies foaming over one of the ponds, the flowering shrubs and the bright, chittering birds. Jeremy ducked under a wire fence, vanished for a minute among the bushes and reappeared bearing three great speckled orchids.
“Flowers for my love,” he said, “whisking a pin from his own lapel to secure the blooms to hers.
“Did you steal them?”
“They sat waiting under a tree, all sad in the dark. Don’t tell me there’s an orchid anywhere that wouldn’t prefer a short life near milady’s heart, to an unloved, drawn-out existence in the shadows!”
She laughed with him and when his swinging hand caught hers she let him keep it. He had forgiven her for walking out on the play-reading.
Somehow, they didn’t get as far as the Castle. There was so much to stop and see, so many things to exclaim over, so many jokes to share. Indeed, they were only just on time for the lunch appointment which Jeremy had made by telephone with his aunt and uncle.
The hotel in which, these affluent relatives of his were staying was cool and spacious, though it overlooked a busy thoroughfare. Lisa came into the vestibule blinking a little and smiling with relief at leaving the sun for a while. A rubicund, white-haired man got up from a chair and extended a hand.
“Well, Jeremy, my boy. So you’re back in the homeland!”
“Hello, Uncle Charles.” Jeremy bent to give a solicitous peck at the papery brown cheek of his aunt. “Auntie Bess, you look younger every year!” He straightened. “I told you I’d bring Lisa, and here she is. Isn’t she sweet!”
An unconventional introduction, but the old couple loved it. It occurred to Lisa that Jeremy could be very wise in his handling of people; no doubt that was how he had so far got through with Astra, without committing himself.
The uncle and aunt were dears. Lisa sat next to the old lady, talked a bit about the trip and listened to experiences which had been Auntie Bess’s over forty years before, when South Africa was still largely without made roads. There had been a wagon trek, from the Cape to the Transvaal which had taken four months, and disasters galore which had moulded the character of earlier generations. Everything, one gathered, was much too easy nowadays.
“So you got your degree, Jeremy,” boomed his uncle. “Your mother wrote us about it. She was overjoyed.”
As if there were not, and never had been, any suggestion of another type of career, Jeremy answered blithely, “I felt good about it too. Lisa’s all for technical men, aren’t you, darling?”
At the endearment the aunt’s eyes glowed and she patted Lisa’s wrist. This, apparently, was even better than she had hoped for.
The luncheon went well. Uncle Charles put leading questions and his wife put dozens which seemed to lead nowhere yet caused much sprightly conversation. Lisa and Jeremy must drive out to Sea Point with them that afternoon, and for dinner that evening they were having guests who would all remember Jeremy and be only too happy to meet Lisa.
Lisa said nothing about her appointment
at the Monarch Hotel. “I’ll have to go back to the ship and change, and see that Nancy’s taken care of,” she told them, knowing that the date at the Monarch would have to be thought over before then.
“That’s easily arranged. I’d like to meet the little girl, too.”
“She’s a brat,” said Jeremy good-humoredly, “but you’ll probably like her. She has immense respect for women.”
They had coffee and came, in leisurely style, back to the vestibule where Lisa and Jeremy were to wait while his aunt and uncle went to their suite for hats and a camera. But as all four awaited the lift, something happened which, Lisa decided much later, might have altered and decided the course of her life.
The lift was sighing its way down from the eighth floor, a colored attendant stood at attention nearby and Uncle Charles was humming to himself. These unimportant details had impressed themselves upon Lisa when she heard a small exclamation from Jeremy.
“Oh, oh!” he said under his breath, and managed to look his most nonchalant.
At once Lisa’s gaze turned to follow his. A faint dew came to her temples, but there was nothing else to show that the brightness she had conjured had now disintegrated like mist in a gale. It was too bad that of all the hotels in Cape Town, Mark and Astra should have chosen this one for a tete-a-tete lunch.
The two came across just as the lift clanged to a halt. Jeremy smiled disarmingly at no one in particular, and spoke to his aunt.
“This is Miss Carmichael ... my aunt, Mrs. Redding. Captain Kennard is the master of the Wentworth.”
“Really?” Auntie Bess beamed at Mark with eager eyes which obviously regretted that he was not in uniform. “I always have the utmost respect for men who navigate big ships. I think I shall always have a fondness for the Wentworth, too. It brought Lisa and my nephew together.”
Mark bowed suavely. “It was an honor, but I’m afraid shipboard friendships have a habit of fading out.”
“Most of them.” The grey head nodded. “Perhaps not this one, though. They haven’t divulged anything but I suspect a secret engagement.”
“How interesting,” said Mark, his expression unchanged.
In an attempt to hasten through the awkward moments, Jeremy again cast about him an ingenuous smile. Then he gave Lisa’s arm a gentle shake. “Don’t go white, darling. It’s the usual thing to blush.”
“Possibly Miss Maxwell's fortitude is somewhat strained,” suggested Mark clearly but casually. Will you excuse us? I’ve spent a long time upon business in town and we’re rather late for lunch.”
His tone was baffling, intended, thought Lisa, to put if distance between himself and two chance-met passengers. But the meeting was too fraught with a mixture of agonies for Lisa to analyze meanings and inflexions. Astra had not said a word; her eyes were cold above her smiling mouth, as she turned to accompany Mark to the hotel dining room. The lift whirred the uncle and aunt to the upper regions, and Jeremy ostentatiously mopped his brow.
“Phew! I was scared stiff that one of them would refer to this acting business. I’ll be relieved to get out of here.”
“When your aunt mentioned an engagement you might have denied it,” said Lisa warmly.
“Sorry, my sweet, but my chief anxiety was to end the session. Neither Kennard nor Astra will believe we’re engaged—not that I’d mind if they did. You’re almost too easy to fall in love with.”
Lisa felt hot and cold and uncertain in the head, as if she were sickening for something. She was unequal to an argument with Jeremy.
It was some time later, when four of them were seated in a tea garden overlooking an expanse of beach washed by the white combers of the incredibly blue Indian' Ocean, that she at last permitted her thoughts to dwell upon Mark’s dinner invitation.
After the words they had had last night, and today’s, encounter, he could hardly be expecting her at the Monarch Hotel. In any case, she did not want to be one of his party. Astra would inevitably be there, and Lisa was hollowly certain that Miss Carmichael had guessed that her offer of a secretaryship was going to be turned down. Mark alone had become difficult enough to bear, but with Astra acting hostess the dinner party would be beyond endurance. Ungoverned, her thoughts went back to the picture those two had made in the dark-panelled vestibule of the hotel. Mark, tall and insolently handsome in the light suit; and Astra, tall, too, for a woman, wearing a tan silk outfit with cream ruffles at the throat, and a tan silk beret ornamented with a diamond-encrusted silver feather. The tan had given rich auburn tints to the burnt-brown hair and made emeralds of her eyes.
So Astra was in on the business deal. At least, it was to her Mark had turned as soon as the all-important board meeting was over, and it was safe to assume that he would tell her a little, if not all, of what had transpired. As an actress-producer Astra was something of a business woman herself. She and Mark had very much in common.
Upon which thought Lisa began to long, quite desperately, for the end of the voyage.
CHAPTER NINE
The Wentworth was at sea again, but no longer travelling south. Twelve hundred miles ahead round the tip of Africa and a short distance up the east coast lay Durban, where the ship would rest and stock up for two days before returning to England over the same route.
For three days Lisa had not seen Mark alone. She had contrived to send a message to him excusing herself from the dinner at the Monarch Hotel, but what his reaction had been she was unable to gauge.
Their first night out from Cape Town he had behaved in a fashion which was typically Mark. Lisa and Jeremy were no sooner seated at table than a steward brought champagne in a bucket of ice “with the Captain’s compliments.” Involuntarily, Lisa had twisted and caught Mark’s sardonic, thin-lipped smile. His head slightly inclined, he raised his own glass and said something which from the economical movements of his mouth she took to be the word “Congratulations.”
Her first impulse, mercifully controlled, was to take the bottle by the neck and smash it against the pillar. Her second was to tell the steward to return the thing to the Captain “without compliments.”
But Jeremy gave a light laugh. “He’s getting at us for pretending to be engaged. Free champagne! Let’s drink some, Lee.”
So, after all, they had perhaps done the wisest thing. Jeremy had filled the two glasses, they had touched rims and sipped, smiling at each other. And deep inside Lisa had ached and smarted as if the sparkling wine were salt rubbed into a heart’s wound.
Jeremy was still spending the mornings in Astra’s cabin, and he reported that the actress would be demanding no decision from either of them till the last moment.
“I wish I knew what to say to her,” he groused to Lisa. “If ever a man was torn two ways, it’s me. Honestly, Lee, I don’t see how it’s possible to wade into a job at an engineering works on the first of next month, knowing I could be having a high time in the theatre at Johannesburg.”
Lisa answered only the first part of his speech. “You’ve only to be candid with her, Jeremy. She’ll just have to accept it.”
“But the work she’s put in on me! I hate like the deuce to let her down.”
She didn’t repeat her opinion that his parents had first claim to his loyalty. “Don’t worry about the training she’s given you. It’s saved her days and days of boredom and probably helped her to see the task in front of her much more clearly. You can be sure she’s had all she can get out of you.”
“But I’ve the bleak conviction she thinks she’s won. This morning she spoke as if you were in the bag, too. I got the impression that she has a card up her sleeve.”
“If she has it won’t affect me,” said Lisa positively, “and you mustn’t let it make any difference to you.” Jeremy would make no promises. Perhaps his vanity was touched by Lisa’s dislike of the “engagement” jest, or maybe his conscience was growing weary of the struggle; it had never before had to work so hard and continuously. He was very glad they could get ashore a couple of times during the week
.
As it happened, Lisa was unable to leave the ship at East London. While tucking Nancy into her bunk the night before, she had slipped from one of the rungs of the metal ladder and in an attempt to save herself, had strained her arm. After a night of tossing with pain, she paid an early morning visit to the surgery and was advised to rest for the day.
Nancy had no objection to staying on board. As is the way with most children, she had come to regard the ship as her home and she was always thankful to re-embark after a few hours on land. Today, she gave what she could see of East London a completely uninterested stare, and retired to the floor in a corner of the cabin, first with an exercise book in which Lisa had set an arithmetic test, and afterwards with the book which was the favorite of the moment.
Jeremy had a telegram to send and a distant relative to call on, so Lisa and Nancy sat in the quietness of the cabin with the wind pouring off the sea into the porthole.
The steward brought them a salad for lunch, and Nancy ate her portion where she sat.
“It’s glorious,” she said. “Like picnicking but not half the trouble. Are you longing to reach Durban, Lee?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“I don’t know, either. Aren't we silly?”
Lisa looked at the child thoughtfully. From now on, for a week or two, Nancy would need gentler handling. Life in her father’s house was going to be a complete change from anything she had known. It was unlikely he would understand the intricacies of her mind as Lisa did, nor would a housekeeper who had probably never before had contact with an English child be able to enter at once into an amicable relationship with her.
Lisa knew she ought to be preparing Nancy, yet just how to set about it was obscure. She was such a highly individual young person, and really very independent.
Breaking a roll, she said, “I expect you’ll love living with your Daddy.”
“Oh, yes.” This was said eagerly, but a frown straightaway pleated her brow. “I don’t fancy a new school, though. They’ll think I’m prissy because I’m no good at games.”
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