by Peggy Gaddis
It was like a well-mannered, carefully brought up child who wishes to leave the table before its elders, and the captain cleared his throat before he could answer. When he did his voice was gruff, yet somehow gentle as though he, too, had been deeply touched.
“Of course, child, of course.”
She got to her feet and turned toward the doorway, and instantly MacEwen was on his feet, following her, leaving a silence behind them that no one seemed in any hurry to break.
Captain Rodolfson got to his feet at last and looked the length of the table and said stiffly, “So that’s it, I suppose, until whatever authorities the line wishes to send aboard at our next port of call. You’ll hold yourself in readiness, Major, for whatever questions they wish to ask; they will probably wish to question all of you again.”
Chapter Eighteen
Claire came upon MacEwen just outside Vera’s cabin, and he was scowling blackly. As he saw her, he came swiftly to meet her, his scowl lifting slightly.
“Look, here, Claire, you’ve got to make her see reason,” he burst out swiftly. “She has some crazy idea that because her mother was — well, not quite what she seemed, I should have nothing more to do with her. As if it made any difference to me what her mother was. It’s Nora I love and want to marry.”
“Oh, Mac, you must give her a little time to pull herself together after this horrible shock,” Claire pointed out.
“Well, sure, I’ll give her all the time in the world, only I want to help her! She needs me, and I want to be with her, see her through. I don’t think she realizes what this investigation is going to mean. She’s going to be right in the center of it, and it could be pretty rough. She mustn’t go through it alone. She’s got to let me look after her, stand up for her — ”
“Oh, Mac, that’s good of you!” said Claire, and felt tears in her throat.
MacEwen glared at her as though she had offered him some deadly insult.
“Good, nothing,” he exploded. “I love her! Can’t you get that through your thick head?”
He broke off, colored, and said brusquely, “Sorry, I didn’t mean that, of course — that you have a thick head. It’s just that it burns me up that you don’t realize that I love her, that I want to marry her and take care of her for the rest of her life!”
“That’s wonderful, Mac, and I’ll talk to her,” Claire promised him.
“Just get her to let me talk to her, that’s all I’m asking you,” he growled, and strode off down the corridor.
Claire watched him go, and told herself that in spite of all the ugly disclosures, in spite of all the revelations about her mother, Nora was a very lucky girl. Then she turned and rapped softly at the locked door.
“Nora, darling, it’s Claire,” she said through the locked panel.
There was silence for a moment, and then the key turned in the lock, the door swung open and Nora stood there, head up, her face swollen with tears, but with a courage that Claire found quite touching.
“It’s no use, Claire,” she said, her voice husky with tears. “I won’t let Mac get involved in all this mess. I am never going to see him again.”
“Well, does that mean that I can’t come in and talk with you, Nora?” asked Claire gently, smiling.
Nora stepped back and turned her face away.
“I’m surprised anybody would want to so much as speak to me now,” she said huskily, and turned swiftly, head high. “It was all true, you know, what that little Major Lesley said. She was — she did — oh, it’s all so horrible.”
She burst into tears, and Claire drew her close and held her until the fury of the wild sobbing lessened. And then Nora lifted her head once more, and there was fear and a touch of panic in her eyes.
“What will they do to me, Claire?” she asked uneasily.
Claire hesitated, and then she answered honestly, “I don’t know, honey. But you told them at the table you knew nothing about what was going on.”
“I didn’t, Claire, truly I didn’t!” Nora said earnestly. “There always seemed to be plenty of money to live any way we liked. And she said my father had left it to us. I suppose I was all kinds of a fool to have been so stupid!”
“She didn’t want you to suspect, Nora,” Claire said quietly. “She was very clever, Major Lesley said; and she told me once that all she had wanted in life was to see you supplied with everything you could possibly want.”
Nora nodded slowly. “And everything she did was for me,” she finished Claire’s thought, and once more the tears came. “She was so happy when we were able to get this passage. She’d been telling me that as soon as I graduated, she was going to take me on a long cruise and we’d see all sorts of fabulous places. So when she told me that we were leaving immediately and that she had managed to buy a passage that had been canceled at the last minute, but we had to go then — oh, Claire, Claire, I wish I hadn’t fought her then. I wanted so to stay and graduate — ”
Claire held her and made small, soothing murmurs and let her pour out the whole story. Her grief and her shame were deep, and Claire knew that to talk them out was good therapy. When at last Nora lay exhausted on her bed, Claire bent above her and drew the thin cover over her.
“You rest now, darling, and after dinner, you must let Mac tell you what he has in mind,” she began.
“Oh, no, no, Claire! Mac mustn’t get involved! He mustn’t! I won’t let him,” Nora protested wildly.
“I’m afraid you haven’t much to do about that,” Claire reminded her wryly. “He’s already involved, by his own wish, and you’re going to have your hands full. You see, he’s determined to marry you.”
“After I come out of prison? He’s going to wait for me? Now isn’t that just dandy!” Nora’s sneer was distinctly wobbly.
“You don’t know yet whether you’ll go to prison, you silly child,” Claire scolded her gently. “Personally, I strongly doubt that you will, unless they can prove that you were a willing accomplice, and I’m quite sure they can’t”
Nora looked up from the bed at her, a dawning hope in her eyes.
“Do you really believe that, Claire?” she asked with a husky eagerness.
“That you won’t go to prison?”
“That I wasn’t a willing accomplice?”
“Well, of course I do, Nora,” Claire told her quite honestly. “You aren’t a good enough actress to have gotten away with it, even if you had wanted to, which I’m sure you wouldn’t. Now you rest and relax, and I’ll stop in to see you again before dinner.”
Claire wandered to where MacEwen stood leaning against the railing, morose and sullen.
“Oh, it’s you,” he greeted her in a tone that was definitely unfriendly. “Pull up a chair and set a spell, if you must.”
“The warm graciousness of your greeting overwhelms me,” Claire told him icily.
MacEwen straightened and eyed her carefully.
“You, too, huh?” he mused aloud.
“What do you mean, ‘you, too’?” she snapped.
“Just that you seem to be in the same mood I’m in, so shall we sheath our weapons and try to kill a few minutes with idle chatter?” he drawled, and added, “I take it you talked to Nora. She wouldn’t let me.”
Claire nodded. “I’m going to take her home with me for a visit with my parents — ” she began.
“Oh, no, you’re not!” MacEwen protested sharply. “I’m going to marry her and take her home with me — for keeps, whether she likes the idea or not.”
Claire studied him curiously.
“That poses an interesting problem,” she commented dryly. “What do you propose to do? Drag her by the hair, screaming and fighting, to the nearest minister and hold a gun on her while she says, ‘I do’?”
MacEwen’s jaw was set and hard.
“If I have to, I’ll do exactly that,” he said grimly. “She loves me, I love her, we’re both quite alone in the world without a family. So why shouldn’t we get married and start a family of our o
wn?”
“No reason at all, as far as I can see, except that Nora feels she will disgrace you if she marries you.”
“Disgrace me? What sort of idiotic nonsense is that?” snorted MacEwen.
“She’s Vera Barclay’s daughter. This will make quite a display in the newspapers, I am afraid. A suicide at sea and the reason for it — ” Claire tried to point out.
“That doesn’t have to affect Nora. She won’t be Nora Barclay, she will be Mrs. MacEwen Russell, and any disgrace to be brought on the name will be my own affair,” MacEwen told her curtly.
Claire studied him for a moment, and suddenly she asked, “Just who are you, anyway, Mac?”
MacEwen grinned at her tautly.
“Don’t you mean what am I?” he mocked her.
“Well, frankly, I do mean just that. You’re not a writer, that much I know.”
“Oh, do you now?” His tone was mocking, derisive, but not offensively so. He sounded honestly curious.
“I should have said you haven’t done any writing aboard, or if you have it’s been in longhand.”
“And you don’t think writers ever write without a typewriter?”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“Well, it so happens that I am a writer, but I’m on leave at the moment,” he told her as though he had tired of the mocking, derisive game. “I’ve just delivered a book to my publishers on which I’ve worked for four years. And I don’t want to see a typewriter for at least another year. I want to relax, forget writing, let my mind fill up with new impressions, new ideas, different backgrounds. If you’re worried about how I’ll support Nora, you needn’t. I’m quite solvent financially and can give her anything she wants, within reason. And with it, I can give her something far more than just financial security. I can give her the assurance that she will never again be slapped around or beaten.”
Claire asked quietly, “Do you really believe her mother abused her, Mac?”
“Don’t you?” His tone was dry, ugly.
Claire hesitated for a moment, and then she said thoughtfully, “I find it hard to believe, Mac.”
“Do you now?” His tone was mocking, and now there was a definite offensiveness in it. “Then why do you think Nora tried to do away with herself? You can’t deny that she did.”
“But Vera told me that she loved the girl, that everything she had ever done was for Nora.”
“Considering the way she cheated and swindled anybody who trusted her, right and left, if that funny little squirt of a Lesley is right, that is hardly a compliment to Nora, is it?”
“No, I suppose not,” Claire agreed reluctantly. “But she wanted nice things for Nora: a good education, clothes, all the things girls that age want.”
“There’s only one thing a decent, straightforward, honest girl like Nora wants, Claire. And that’s to be loved and cherished,” Mac said grimly. “And from me that’s exactly what she’s going to get. She’s the only girl I ever wanted to marry and I intend to.”
Claire said, “Well, hooray for you!”
Mac looked at her, and a faint, reluctant grin touched his stern mouth.
“Oh, you’ve been swell to Nora, and believe me, I’m grateful,” he told her with the air of one who wanted to be perfectly fair. “But I’m taking over from here on out.”
“I’m very glad, Mac, because she needs you.”
“Not half as much as I need her,” Mac said swiftly. “I’ve batted around on my own since I was knee-high to a tadpole. I suppose I must have had a father and mother somewhere. Most people do. But I never knew either of them. I was just me, Mac, the Lone Wolf! Well, now the Lone Wolf has found a mate, and nothing on earth, above it or beneath it, is going to take her away from me!”
And as though the fervor of emotion in his voice had embarrassed him, he stood up and strode away, hands jammed into his jacket pockets.
Chapter Nineteen
Dinner that night was a rather strained affair. Curt, taking his accustomed place, was a little late. As he seated himself, he glanced at the captain’s empty place and said courteously, “Captain asks to be forgiven for not being here. He is quite busy in his quarters with various formalities that must be attended to before we dock tomorrow.”
Mrs. Burke leaned forward and glanced at Nora’s and at MacEwen’s empty chairs.
“But where is the girl, and that nice young man? Aren’t they coming to dinner?” she asked curiously.
Curt smiled at her. “Captain has invited them to dinner in his own quarters. There are some things he thinks Nora can shed some light on.”
“Well, I suppose that’s true,” Mrs. Burke admitted, and added, “And Mr. Russell? Was he in on all this ugly mess?”
“Oh, no, MacEwen first met Nora when they came aboard,” Curt answered, and his smile warmed faintly. “He seems to be determined to stand by her in any emergency that may develop.”
“Then he is in love with her. Isn’t that wonderful?” Mrs. Burke beamed happily and glanced across at Mrs. Hennessy. “I told you so, Amy. I’m rarely ever wrong about such things.”
Curt said briskly, “The formal inquiry tomorrow, as soon as we dock, will take care of all this. Have any of you been through the Canal? It’s quite an interesting experience.”
And he launched into a long and detailed account of what they would shortly experience. He had not once glanced at Claire since he had taken his place at the table, and his manner was cool, aloof, as though she were not there within the reach of his hand, the sound of his lowest whisper.
Gradually the table talk became general, and eventually the meal was over. As they rose from the table and congregated in small groups preparing for the nightly card games, Claire followed Curt out of the salon. In the corridor, as he was walking away from her, she called to him.
He turned back, glancing at her with a cool, detached look as though she had been someone he had never seen before.
“Yes, Miss Frazier?” he said with cold courtesy.
“Curt, please — I have to talk with you.”
“Of course, Miss Frazier.”
Claire searched his face, his cold, hostile eyes.
“If you aren’t too busy — ” Her voice stumbled.
“Why, how could I ever be too busy to entertain a feminine passenger, my dear Miss Frazier?” he mocked. “Remember me? I’m the line’s glamour boy, whose duty it is to entertain all the feminine passengers at any time. You said so yourself.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Curt,” she stammered. “That’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“I didn’t think you’d left anything unsaid.”
Major Lesley emerged from the salon, gave them a startled glance and scurried like a small rabbit out of the corridor to the deck.
“Could we go out on the deck, Curt?” Claire pleaded.
“Why not? Tropic moonlight, flying fish, the phosphorescence on the water — all very romantic and part of the lines’ service to feminine passengers,” Curt drawled. And his tone made the words a derisive taunt as he bowed and motioned for her to precede him.
Out on the deck, Claire lifted her hot, shamed face gratefully to the fresh, salt-tangy wind and moved forward to the railing where, in the shadow of a lifeboat, she turned to look up at him.
“Curt, I’m sure you know what I want to say,” she began huskily.
“I’m afraid I haven’t the vaguest idea.”
“Oh, Curt, don’t be like that!” she wailed. “I’m so terribly sorry about everything I said. I didn’t mean it, Curt. What I did mean was what I said in the captain’s quarters last night, not what I said this morning. I do love you, Curt — I know it now.”
There was a small, taut silence in which she held her breath, waiting for him to take her into his arms, to forgive her, to make things right between them. Instead he leaned on the rail and looked out over the dark water, with the phosphorescent trail visible here and there as the sturdy old ship plodded her slow way along.
; “I don’t think you do, Claire,” said Curt after what seemed to her an endless wait. “If you had loved me, you wouldn’t have jumped to the wrong conclusion when you thought you saw me leaving Mrs. Barclay’s room. You wouldn’t have hidden in your own room, placing the worst possible construction on what you saw. You would have taken it for granted that I had some logical, decent reason for being there. You might have offered to help, in case I needed your help. Instead you just skulked into your own cabin, and then this morning blasted me with every ugly thing you could think of to say. No, Claire, you’re not in love with me. Not the smallest, infinitesimal bit. You can’t be in love with someone without trusting him. And you showed me with insulting clarity just how little trust you had in me.”
There was so much truth in what he was saying that she could only shrink, as though the words had been physical blows, and feel her heart dying within her.
After a long moment she moistened her dry lips and managed words.
“You expect an awful lot, don’t you, Curt?”
He straightened and turned toward her; in the shadow of the lifeboat she could only guess at his expression.
“Why, yes, Claire, I suppose I do,” he agreed at last. “I’m not a callow kid, you know. A man doesn’t reach my age without learning a little something about women. As you so sweetly pointed out, aboard the Highland Queen part of my duty is entertaining the feminine passengers. A fellow learns quite a bit that way. I’d never been in love before; I’d rather side-stepped it. I was wary, suspicious if you like, but then you came along and I thought, I’ve found her at last — my girl! I was as sure you trusted me as I was that I trusted you. It didn’t occur to me for a moment that your love was such a cheap and flimsy thing that it would come apart the first moment any stress was placed on it.”
Claire winced beneath the scathing indictment, and then she realized that if ever she was going to put things right between them, she had to fight now, that minute.