She had noticed that none of the officers came to the public lounge after dinner. They walked and talked with passengers at any time of the day when they happened to be off duty, and doubtless when there was dancing on deck they joined in the fun. But only the Captain used the lounge, and he restricted his visits to a single hour after dinner, when he made himself pleasant to a passenger here and there. He seemed to have met several of them on previous voyages. Lisa got the impression that he unbent simply from a sense of duty. Even if he enjoyed Astra’s company it would appear odd if he sat with her each evening, and Lisa was convinced that Captain Kennard would avoid committing the smallest act which might be misconstrued.
She supposed the sea had hardened him; the sea and his position as head of the little world of his ship. It seemed natural that a man of his sort would outgrow emotionalism, but it was all wrong that mockery and sarcasm should be permitted to take its place. Men of the sea married and had families; they were kindly and had pictures of their wives and children in their cabins. No one had told her that Captain Kennard was unmarried, but she knew it intuitively; knew, too, that he had no time for the tender type of woman, no time for love.
Lisa pulled up in her thoughts. The Captain’s private life was no concern of hers.
She wandered slowly up the deck, out of the brilliantly-lit section near the lounge into the region of the bows. Now, the strong headwind whipped at her short hair and sent delightful shivers across her shoulders. She didn’t hear a step behind her, but the wind subtracted nothing from the firm voice.
“I thought a butterfly had lost its way and settled on deck for a breather. You look as if the breeze could easily lift you over the side.”
Her heart distinctly missed three beats, then hurried to make up for the loss. “I’m quite a solid person, really more so than you think, Captain.”
He came beside her with his hands in his pockets, his square, disciplined shoulders level with her eyes. “I shan’t believe that without proof,” he said. “Has Jeremy forsaken you?”
Something stirred within Lisa, something which had in it only a small spark of hostility towards this man; for the rest it was an uneasy complexity of sensations, and completely incomprehensible. “You meant him to, didn’t you?” she asked. “You set out to show me that shipboard affairs are fleeting, that he could easily be diverted to other channels.”
“Clever child. But don’t worry about losing Jeremy. We have several more like him, and you may as well lend your sympathetic ear to a different story now and then. They’re apt to become awfully boring otherwise.”
“It’s kind of you to take such a paternal interest,” she said demurely. “Is that part of the ship’s service?”
“Not exactly. Normally we allow young things to break their hearts without interfering, but you strike me as having fewer defences than most, and possibly your heart is correspondingly fragile.” He shrugged away the subject. “Seeing that this is your first trip I expect you’re looking forward to the Canaries?”
“Yes, I am. When do we reach Las Palmas?”
“On Tuesday—probably early in the afternoon. If you’re keen to look over the place you’d better go for one of the conducted tours. The purser will tell you all about them; in fact, he might be pleased to take you himself. I believe he has a way with the ladies.”
She gave him a curious, slanting glance. “Do you allow that, on your ship?”
“Why not? The purser is entitled to relaxation, and the merchant navy is always accommodating.” On the same slightly jeering note he added, “Even the pimply purser’s clerk has more about him than the Jeremy Carnes of this world. Young as he is, he’s been places and seen things.”
“And you’ve seen so much more,” she said steadily. “I daresay that’s why you make people like me feel awfully insignificant.”
“I was referring to men,” he told her, a trifle brusquely. “What one approves in a man one often condemns in a woman. After all, the sexes haven’t everything in common.”
Defending her contemporaries rather hotly, Lisa said, “My generation of women has had to be self-reliant. Even you of the navy were thankful for the regiments of women during the war.”
“You’re mixing your services,” he mentioned kindly. “But never mind—you’re well intentioned, and I do like to hear a girl stick up for her sisters. To ease your mind, I’ve the utmost respect for a woman who follows a career. I’d even go so far as to say they make the best wives, too.”
For some reason Lisa found this unpalatable. She let a minute or two elapse while she listened, not very attentively, to the wash of the sea against the speeding ship’s side. Then she said, firmly, “I don’t agree with you. The career woman gives only half of herself to her husband and home. She can’t help it, of course, but I shouldn’t think any man would genuinely want that.”
“Perhaps,” he said in those infuriatingly considerate tones which made her feel about sixteen, “I regard the question solely from the seafaring man’s viewpoint. Obviously, if three parts of a man’s life is spent at sea his wife must have some absorbing interest outside her home. Children alone aren’t enough for an intelligent woman.”
“When he is home,” she argued stoically, “he needs her more than other men need their wives. But you can’t drop a career and become an ever-present and loving helpmeet every couple of months.”
“My good girl,” he answered amusedly, “you have the quaintest old-fashioned notions. Why should the woman drop her work every time the husband shows up for a few days? I, personally, shouldn’t know what to do with a loving helpmeet, and I doubt if there are many sea-going men who would. We’re horribly sane, you know. You can’t fight big seas on periodical doses of romance; in fact they might be a definite hindrance.”
“Then you’d prefer to have your staff and crew only half alive,” she retorted bravely. “Because that’s what it amounts to.”
“Unfortunately,” he said serenely, “I have no jurisdiction over the men’s private lives. Most of them, you will be pleased to know, are married.”
“And are the married ones inefficient?” she countered.
“Not noticeably. They know I wouldn’t tolerate inefficiency.”
She looked at him quickly, searchingly, and put a question she wouldn’t have dreamed she could ever voice to the master of the ship. “Have you always been like this?”
“Like what?”
“So unshakable and calculating. I can’t imagine that you were ever a grubby little boy who climbed trees and smudged his exercise books.” Hastily, she tacked on, “Don’t answer that.”
He laughed briefly. “It’s rather longer since I was a grubby little boy than it is since you were a child with whitish pigtails and a bulge of toffee in your cheek. But I believe I was very normal—all those years ago.”
“Were you happy when you were young?”
His smile now was ironical. “I’m not senile, you know. I still have it in me to be happy, even if my ideas of enjoyment don’t entirely line up with yours. It’s not every man who needs a little woman and the regulation family of three to be happy.”
She had an urge to ask about his childhood, where he had lived and what his parents were like, whether he had had brothers and sisters and what it was that had made him take to the sea. She wanted a background for him, a setting which was less impersonal than the steel bridge where he worked and slept.
But he was looking up professionally at the black heavens, and after a moment or two he said, “The clouds are loosening up. Watch closely to the right there and you’ll see a star.”
“ ‘To see a star with my love,’ ” she quoted, and stopped suddenly.
“ ‘A star to dream on, with hands entwined and blended hearts; a pool of light...” he broke off with a short, taunting laugh. “So you read French poetry. I might have guessed it.”
"I wouldn’t have guessed it of you,” she returned quickly.
“I first met that sonnet years ago, whe
n Astra Carmichael was studying at the Academy. She used to assume various character parts and declaim it. She could make it sound either sucrose or evil.”
Nettled, she said, “That may have been clever, but I still think it’s a good poem and worth remembering.” She saw the star, a diamond on a dark bed with a mist of cloud passing over it. “A star to dream on, with hands entwined and blended hearts.” A single, lovely star shining steadfastly over the heaving sea and the forging vessel.
Lisa’s face, as she stared, was small and palely lit, her eyes large and her hair white and satiny. Her mouth, as she turned to him, was parted and sweetly curved. “It’s beautiful,” she said softly. “Beautiful as a promise after such a wild day.”
“Yes, isn’t it.” His voice had gone as cool and stinging as the sea spray. “It’s nippy and your shoulders are bare. I’m sure the doc. wouldn’t care to have a pneumonia case on his hands. Run along inside. Goodnight.” He went at once. She saw him swing round the foot of a companion-way and mount towards the bridge, and she quivered with the chill he had left behind. Slowly, she made her way into the tempered warmth of the cabin deck, and along to her cabin, where a tiny electric night-light glowed on the dressing chest near the lower bunk. Undressing, she recalled word for word the Captain’s comments. Though, factually, he had told her nothing about himself, what he had said had been slightly revealing.
His devotion to his job was unremarkable, for a man doesn’t become the master of a luxury liner until he has proved himself. But his convictions about women showed him maddeningly casual on the subject of marriage. It was, one gathered, a condition to which he would not take easily, and if he ever did consider tethering himself he would choose a woman of intellect who had much to occupy her besides his well-being. A woman whose preoccupation with herself would keep her from interfering with his way of life.
She recollected his face in the dimness of the deck; the strong, high cheekbones and his eyes which had lost some of the ice and become kinder, even if the kindness had to be tinctured with mockery. It would be dreadful, she thought soberly, to fall in love with such a man. Dreadful, but dangerously exciting, so long as one roused some sort of response in him. Altogether too devastating; though, for one so innocent about men as Lisa Maxwell.
Thank goodness she was level-headed, Lisa reflected drowsily. Another girl might lose her head at being singled out for a few minutes’ talk by the Captain, but not she. She did not intend to lose any sleep over Mark Kennard.
Nevertheless, all had been quiet for a long, long time before Lisa at last slipped from the state of drowsiness into her first slumber.
CHAPTER THREE
Jeremy was first at the breakfast table, but contrary to his custom he ordered only coffee and rolls. He was unsettled; a condition to which his ego did not take kindly. He tried very hard, though, to forget Astra’s allure and remember only the facts of their long tete-a-tete last night. After all, she had merely suggested a private test in her cabin. He might turn out to be a complete dud, and if that were the case Astra had promised that no one need be any the wiser. Sporting of her, really, to take so much trouble.
During a somewhat unquiet night he had regretfully decided not to take Lisa into his confidence till after the session with Astra; she could be disconcertingly candid, and she might easily come out with some good-humored remark which would completely put him off. Perhaps later they would be able to laugh together at his foolishness. He almost hoped so, though failure to please Astra would be a spear to his pride. It was the deuce to want two opposing things so badly.
Despondently, he ate a small piece of roll with a large wad of butter. The butter reminded him of home, where all good things were plentiful, but one must needs have a vast supply of cash to procure them.
On their few, farmed acres outside Durban his mother had kept fowls and a couple of cows so that the three boys should be well-nourished. They had always come first with her, and when his brothers had perished all her love had become concentrated on Jeremy. He couldn’t tell the old lady that he didn’t want it. Had it been a selfish love he could have shrugged her out of his thoughts, but it was a gentle, sacrificing love which asked nothing in return but his satisfaction and happiness. In her simplicity she did not know what a whale of a job it was to achieve happiness.
Jeremy was well aware that he would never be the model son his ageing parents deserved but he also knew that they would feel pleased and fulfilled if he took up the technical post in Durban. What a break it would be if he could wake up one morning secure in the knowledge that there was nothing else he’d rather do. But what a hope!
Fortunately, Lisa showed up just then, smiling in the way she always did as she came to the table, and exuding the clean, ordinary scent of lavender bath cubes.
Jeremy seated her. “You’re always behind time. I began to think you weren’t coming.”
“Nancy grazed her wrist and she does love bandages—big professional ones.” She cast a swift glance at the round table before starting on the grapefruit which the waiter had put before her. “I hear they’re filling the swimming pool today. Can’t you feel a new softness in the air, Jeremy? It’s Sunday, too. Had you forgotten?”
“It won’t make much difference at sea. I used to loathe the English Sunday, particularly in the winter. I mostly spent them in a boarding house parlor among damp green plush and a bevy of china dogs. The landlady’s daughter used to eat peppermint creams with her young man.”
She laughed. “Poor Jeremy. It must feel really grand to be going home.”
“Home is a long way off yet. I’d rather be making a lasting impression on you.”
“It’s far too early in the day for compliments,” she protested.
“It’s never too early for facts,” he stated moodily.
“You are down.” She tasted the coffee he had poured. “I haven’t seen you like this before.”
“I haven’t been like it for a long time—not since I flopped in my first exam. Lisa, I’m a heel.”
For a second she stared at him, startled. Then the smile came back. “You mean what Nancy calls a cad. I haven’t noticed it but have it your own way. I always think it’s best when you’re low to admit the worst. Then what comes after is a gradual rebuilding of one’s natural pride. You’ll improve presently. I’m taking you to church.”
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed in some alarm. Then: “Well, I believe I might even go with you ill hadn’t made a promise which will keep me occupied elsewhere most of the morning.” Hastily he tacked on, “That sports committee chap, you know.”
Lisa hadn’t much appetite, either, but she wasn’t unhappy. Nor was she deeply concerned about Jeremy. He mostly seemed able to get the best from life, and a little dejection, whatever the cause, could do him no harm. She finished her coffee.
“I’m going to the library for a book. See you at lunch, Jeremy.”
And she was gone, leaving him uncertain and quite a bit angry. He had waited for her knowing she had the power to say the words which would put him right with his conscience, and within the space of a few minutes she had breezed in and out uncaring that he had a problem. “Hell!” he said aloud, to the waiter’s astonishment.
Lisa, of course, was totally unaware that Jeremy was sunk in a man-size dilemma. She had seen merely a little grumpiness allied with an incongruous hang-dog look. Even had she known that his trouble was indecision as to how far along the gilded path he should go with Astra, Lisa would have forborne to offer advice. Jeremy was twenty-five and far more experienced in the ways of the world than she. Besides, it was a matter she could not take very seriously. Jeremy was an engineer, not a young man of the chorus.
Upon the advice of the chief deck steward, she chose a new historical novel for herself and a tale about ponies for. Nancy, who had been hanging around the locked book-cases till Lisa should come and work the adult magic which opened all doors.
Nancy liked to select her own reading matter, and was rebellious at Lisa’
s choice. “I hate stories about horses. I don’t mind dogs and cats, or even jungle animals, but horses are too smug and understanding in books. I won’t read that one, Lee!”
Lisa shepherded her out of the reading room. It’s a famous book, so it must be true to life. he ponies in it are real—it says so on the dust cover.”
“I don’t care. I won’t read about horses.”
By now they were on deck where chairs were lined up facing the sea, and passengers were readjusting the notches to their individual requirements. Regardless of onlookers, Nancy took a determined stance in the middle of the deck.
“When did you last read one?” asked Lisa patiently.
“Oh, a year or so ago. It was sludgy.”
“You must have been unlucky, and anyway, your taste in literature will have developed since then.”
“Will it?” This was a novel item to learn about oneself. “If that’s true I expect I shall like them even less now.”
“Not necessarily. One sometimes acquires tolerance and the critical faculty at the same time.” Lisa warmed slightly to the topic, though she knew better than to sound in the least dogmatic. “I read somewhere that children always like books about ponies, and it reminded me that I was never keen on them when I was young. I wondered if I’d missed something worthwhile. I tell you what, Nancy. Read this book and see if you can genuinely pick it to pieces.”
“It’s a waste of time when there are so many nicer books.” But the opposition was weakening. “I dislike children who talk to horses as if they were human.”
“So do I,” agreed Lisa, with more diplomacy than truth. “But let’s be absolutely fair. You prefer dogs and cats, and maybe in Africa they make pets of monkeys. There happen also to be children who love horses. You believe in pleasing yourself about such things, don’t you?”
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