Return Journey

by Ruby M. Ayres

  “Good morning, ladies!”

  “Good morning, Sir John,” they said in chorus.

  He dragged up a chair and sat down.

  “What a perfect morning,” he said.

  “Perfect,” they agreed.

  Miss Esther fidgeted. “I’ve been playing bucket quoits,” she said, as guiltily as if she had been caught in the act of kissing the Captain.

  “Splendid!” His eyes twinkled. “And who dragged you into that monstrous frivolity?”

  Miss Esther giggled. “Rocky did—Rocky Chandler—I think it was so sweet of her, and I don’t know when I have enjoyed myself so much.”

  Sir John looked at the elder sister.

  “And did you play?” he asked.

  “I did not.”

  “That’s a pity,” he said calmly. “I think you would have enjoyed it too.”

  “I can see no enjoyment in making a fool of myself,” she answered stolidly.

  “But, Caroline, there is no need to make a fool of yourself,” her sister said eagerly. “They were all so charming! Mr. Durham always picked up the quoits for me, he wouldn’t let me do any stooping, and he showed me just where I went wrong——”

  “I expect that was all the time,” Caroline said.

  Sir John smiled at Esther’s downcast face.

  “Live and learn,” he said kindly. “Perhaps you will allow me to join in sometimes, though it’s many years since I played games.”

  Her pale face flushed again. “Oh, would you? That would be lovely. I must tell Rocky.”

  “You like Rocky?” he questioned.

  “Oh yes. She’s so unspoiled. I think she’s a dear.”

  “I think so too,” he agreed.

  Miss Caroline sniffed.

  “That is what you are both supposed to think,” she said.

  There was a little silence.

  “We were all young once, you know, Miss Pawson,” Sir John said tolerantly; to which she replied that her youth had not been such a happy one that she wished to remember it.

  “It wasn’t so very bad, Caroline,” Miss Esther said quickly. “I am sure we had some very lovely times when we lived at the Vicarage in Cheshire. We had such a lovely garden,” she told Sir John, rather pathetically. “I still remember every nook and corner of it. There was a big oak tree on the lawn which was supposed to be hundreds of years old, and in the winter I used to hang bread and bits of fat on it for the birds, and they got to know me quite well and——” Her eager voice broke as her sister said calmly:

  “You are boring Sir John, Esther.”

  “On the contrary,” he declared, “one of my own most vivid memories is of the garden we had in my boyhood days. I am afraid I did not feed the sparrows though,” he admitted with a little smile. “I am afraid I was more interested in birds’ nesting.” And then, as he saw the slightly grieved look in Miss Esther’s sensitive face, he added, “But 1 never took more than one egg from each nest, and if there was only one, I regretfully left it.”

  “That was kind of you,” she said gratefully.

  “And today the birds are all killed for the adornment of useless women,” Miss Caroline said.

  “But not the wild birds,” Miss Esther broke in.

  “If the plumage of wild birds happened to be the fashion, they would share the same fate,” Miss Caroline declared.

  Sir John looked at his watch.

  “Do you know that it is nearly lunch-time?” he enquired. “And that being so, may I offer you ladies a little cocktail?”

  “I never drink alcohol,” Miss Caroline stated.

  “And Miss Esther?” Sir John enquired with a smile.

  Miss Esther glanced at her sister.

  “I—well—I hardly know,” she faltered, but she thought wistfully that it would be rather fun to walk into the lounge or the smoking-room with this man as her escort, and daringly drink something out of a little glass with a cherry in it.

  “If you want to make your rheumatism worse, Esther,” Miss Caroline said.

  “There are plenty of cocktails which are the very thing for rheumatism,” Sir John declared. “So if Miss Esther will honour me——”

  Miss Esther rose to her feet, fluttering like a little bird.

  “I really think I might—just this once,” she said; and she felt like a heroine, as with her accustomed backward glance at her sister’s stony face she walked away with him to the smoking-room.

  They found seats at a corner table, and Sir John said, as if it was a matter of great moment, “There is a cocktail called White Lady which I think you will like. I believe it contains the minimum of alcohol, and is very pleasant.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Miss Esther breathed.

  She loosened the collar of her coat once more, because now she felt glowing with excitement.

  Sir John called the steward and gave his order, and Miss Esther said timidly: “If I may have a cherry in mine—” She had always longed for a cherry on a little stick.

  “Two cherries,” Sir John said gravely.

  Rocky came bursting into the room with Clive at her heels.

  “Oh, hullo!” she said gaily. “May we gate-crash, or is this a private party?” But without waiting for a reply, she sat down at Sir John’s table. “We’ve had three games of tennis,” she announced, “and I lost them all. This seems to be my losing morning, because Miss Esther whacked my head off at bucket quoits, didn’t you, Miss Esther?”

  “I was very lucky,” Miss Esther murmured. She moved a little to make room for Clive, looking round her with the shining eyes of a child who sees its first Christmas tree. “Isn’t it exciting?” she said.

  Rocky, glancing at her, thought a little wistfully, “She must have been quite pretty—once.”

  The steward returned.

  “We shall want two more, please,” Rocky told him. “I’ll have a gin-fizz, and you, Clive?”

  “Beer for me, please.”

  “What is a gin-fizz?” Miss Esther enquired.

  “You explain,” Rocky commanded Clive. But at the moment a diversion was created by the arrival of Gina Savoire, complete with pyjama trousers and long scarlet ear-rings.

  “Am I one too many?” she enquired.

  “We were waiting for you to complete the party,” Sir John told her, but Rocky noticed with amusement the wavering look in Miss Esther’s eyes, though she returned the Frenchwoman’s smile with a timid little bow.

  “How is the White Lady?” Sir John enquired.

  “I haven’t tasted it yet,” Miss Esther said, and she picked up the little stick with the red cherry on the end.

  “I’ll bet she feels like the worst woman in London,” Clive whispered to Rocky, to which she replied:

  “I hope so. It will do her all the good in the world.”

  Miss Esther sipped her cocktail and did her best to suppress the little shudder which went through her body.

  “It’s—nice,” she said doubtfully.

  Rocky laughed. “The second one will be better,” she declared, but Miss Esther said:

  “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly have another.”

  Gina took a little red cigarette-box from her coat pocket and offered it to the company in turn.

  Clive took one and sniffed at it.

  “Scented,” he said dubiously.

  “I’ll have it,” Rocky declared, taking it from him. “I love French cigarettes.”

  “You live in Paris—yes?” Gina asked, her head on one side.

  “No, not now. But I’ve been there,” Rocky said quickly, and then her eyes narrowed a little as Wheeler’s big figure appeared in the open doorway.

  He glanced idly round and was making for a table on the opposite side of the room when Sir John hailed him.

  “Don’t be unsociable, my dear fellow.”

  Wheeler hesitated, then came towards them.

  “Room for a little one?” he asked casually, and he sat down beside the Frenchwoman, stretching his long legs beneath the table.r />
  “Another White Lady, Miss Esther?” Sir John asked.

  “Oh no! … oh no, thank you. That was very nice, but I simply daren’t have another, besides—wasn’t that the lunch bell?”

  “Bugle,” Clive murmured.

  “Don’t go yet,” Rocky urged. “Nobody is ever punctual, and there’s lots of time.”

  “My sister likes me to be punctual,” Esther answered.

  “You spoil her,” Clive said with a smile, but Miss Esther would not be persuaded. She must go, she declared; she had enjoyed it all very much indeed—very much, but she really ought to go.

  “Not that I wouldn’t rather stay,” she added.

  “Do stay, then,” Rocky urged. “It’s the time to stay when you are enjoying yourself, isn’t it, Sir John?”

  “It certainly is,” he agreed; but Miss Esther only shook her head and hurried away.

  There was a little silence after she had gone till Clive said solemnly, “She has taken the first downward step.”

  “Upward!” Rocky insisted. “I think she’s nice. I think she’ll be great fun when we’ve given her a few more lessons.”

  “Lessons?” Wheeler said. He had been a silent onlooker until now.

  Rocky nodded. “Urn, lessons—on how to live and how to enjoy yourself; she only wants showing. I think she must have been very pretty when she was a girl.”

  “Oh, I say!” Clive objected.

  “Very pretty,” Rocky said again. “And she’d be attractive now, if she didn’t wear such dowdy clothes.”

  Gina Savoire nodded her head. “You are right—oh, you are right,” she said, casting her eyes heavenwards. “The clothes—and how to wear them—that is it.”

  Constance called to her brother from the doorway, “Aren’t you coming to lunch?”

  “Come and join us,” he called back, but she refused.

  “I’m hungry,” and she disappeared.

  “I believe I’m hungry too,” Rocky said.

  She drained her glass and set it down with a little thump. “And that nice Second Officer will be having his lunch all alone, poor darling.”

  “Is he the latest conquest?” Wheeler asked.

  She flashed him a glance.

  “He was the first,” she declared.

  “What a uniform will do,” Sir John said, smiling. “I wish I had brought my old uniform——”

  She leaned a little towards him. “Oh, were you in the army?”

  “I was—years ago.”

  “Wear your uniform at the fancy dress ball,” she urged.

  “The moths must have finished all that was left of it, long ago,” he answered.

  “You must have made a topping soldier,” she told him. Clive pushed back his chair and rose.

  “Well, what about nose-bags?” he asked.

  Everyone stood up except Gina.

  “I do not lunch,” she declared. “One meal a day—I have to think of my figure.”

  As they left the smoking-room, Rocky found herself beside Richard Wheeler.

  “What have you been doing all the morning?” she asked a little nervously.

  “Nothing very exciting.”

  “We saw you on the top deck,” she told him.

  “Did you?”

  “You know we did,” she answered exasperatedly. He stood aside when they reached the narrow passage-way to allow her to lead, and she glanced at him with a little air of petulance. “I wish you wouldn’t” she said rather pathetically.

  “Wouldn’t—what?” he asked.

  “Freeze me up so,” she said.

  “You flatter me,” he answered, with irony.

  At the head of the stairs which led down to the dining-room, she paused to look back at him.

  “You’ll be sorry,” she said challengingly.

  “Sorry?” his voice was frigidly polite.

  Her pretty face flushed.

  “For making up your mind that I can’t be any good—because— of the little you know,” she said defiantly.

  He seemed to waver, and for a moment his eyes were almost kind, then he laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

  “I know nothing,” he answered, and then, as she turned away, “Aren’t you having lunch today either?”

  “I’m going to powder my nose,” she retorted, and walked off in the opposite direction.

  When she arrived in the dining-room she was as smiling and radiant as ever.

  Miss Caroline and Miss Esther were eating their lunch in stony silence after a short exchange of words in which Miss Caroline had said: “Look at your face, Esther! I have never seen you so flushed and excited.”

  Miss Esther had flushed more deeply still.

  “I’ve had such a lovely morning,” she faltered. “And I’ve done no harm—there’s no need to be cross.”

  “You had better lie down this afternoon,” was the reply she received. “It’s absurd for a woman of your age to behave as if you were seventeen.”

  Miss Esther bit her lip to hide its trembling. She so often had her age thrown in her face that she, had grown to hate it, and when— after lunch was over and she submitted to being driven to her cabin, she shut the door and looked long and earnestly in the mirror.

  Not so old, she told herself defensively; why, if she loosened her hair a little in the prevailing fashion and added a touch of red to her lips she would look years younger! And then suddenly a very terrible thought rose in her mind. How would she look in long trousers like those which Gina Savoire wore? How would she look with dangling ear-rings?

  And then at once she was horrified.

  “How dreadful” she told herself as she hurriedly turned away from the glass. “What is happening to me?”

  And she did not realise that it was simply that she had fallen under the spell of Rocky’s high spirits and radiancy; that they were like a fire at which she was warming cold hands while she glanced back over her shoulder at the days of her own youth which had never been properly lived.

  And instead of keeping her promise to Miss Caroline to lie down and sleep, she dragged out her best frock and looked at it with dissatisfied eyes. It was grey—that peculiar shade of grey which reminds one of a rainy afternoon in a suburb.

  And Miss Esther thought, “If I only had a spray of flowers to wear with it——” And then she remembered that there were some to be bought in the barber’s shop, and some attractive little paste clips! Surely one on either shoulder would make all the difference.

  “I’ll ask Rocky,” she decided. “Rocky will know.”

  And then she took down her hair which was long and plentiful (she had never dared to have it cut short) and she re-dressed it, puffing it out on either side of her face and gathering it into a little loose knot in the nape of her neck instead of in its accustomed tight plaits, and then she put on every light in the cabin and smiled at herself in the mirror.

  Not so old, she thought again! Why, lots of women got married when they were much older than she was, and quite recently she had read an article in one of the weekly magazines which had declared there was no longer an age limit for marriage and that middle-age was often the most attractive time of all.

  And then as she heard a step in the passage-way outside she took fright and tore her hair down again, and drew the bed quilt over the grey frock in case it should be Caroline, but the footsteps passed on and died away, just as down the years the footsteps of a possible lover had always passed on and had died away. There had been a curate once—Miss Esther had thought that he rather liked her, for when he came to supper at the Vicarage he had looked at her quite often across the table and on her birthday he had once given her a copy of Browning’s poems, but he had got a living somewhere, and although he had seemed sorry to say good-bye, he had said it, and quite soon afterwards she had heard of his marriage to a widow with money.

  She had never blamed him—she knew how difficult life was on a curate’s salary—not that she would have minded being poor—and then once again she was so h
orrified at herself that she plaited her hair more tightly than usual, dragging it back more severely, and later that evening when she passed the gaily lit window of the barber’s shop she kept her eyes resolutely turned away.

  But it only showed what one White Lady could do.

  “I must never have another,” she decided.

  Chapter

  5

  To Rocky’s intense amazement, when the band was playing on deck that evening Richard Wheeler strolled across to where she was sitting.

  “Do you care to dance?” he asked.

  It was not a very enthusiastic invitation, and her first impulse was to say, “No, thanks, not with you,” but she said:

  “Yes, please,” instead, and rose to her feet.

  She was wearing a white frock this evening.

  “The frocks that girl has!” Miss Caroline had remarked during dinner. “I have not seen her in the same one twice”—quite losing sight of the fact that as yet Rocky had only been on board two days.

  It was a very pretty, simply made frock, with a rainbow sash in pastel shades tied loosely round her waist, its long ends floating to the hem of the skirt.

  As Wheeler put his arm round her she caught Clive’s gaze and gave him a naughty little wink, which he returned with interest. There was no movement at all of the ship tonight—one had only to close one’s eyes to believe that the band was playing in a London ballroom, so that even the melancholy Edith looked quite gay, and was trying to suit her unskilled steps to those of the Second Officer.

  It seemed queer to Rocky that now she was dancing with Wheeler her usual volubility seemed to desert her, so that it was quite an effort to find something to say, but she managed at last:

  “Somehow I didn’t think you would care about dancing.”

  It was not a very brilliant effort, and it was distinctly discouraging when he asked briefly: “Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—I just thought you wouldn’t. I thought you might think it silly.”

  “It’s good exercise,” he said.

  She made a little grimace at that.

  “What a dull reason for dancing,” she said.