Tourmalin's Time Cheques

"Are you sure," she said, with her eyes demurely lowered – "are you sure that there is nobody who might object to our being on quite such intimate terms as that?"

Peter started. Could she possibly have guessed, and how much did she know?

"There could be nothing for anybody to object to," he said. "Are you – er – referring to any person in particular?"

She still kept her eyes down, but then she was occupied just at the moment in removing a loose splinter of bamboo from the arm of her chair.

"You mustn't think me curious or – or indiscreet, if I tell you," she said; "but before I knew you to speak to, I – I couldn't help noticing how often, as you sat on deck, you used to pull something out of your pocket and look at it."

"My watch?" suggested Peter, feeling uncomfortable.

"No, not your watch; it looked more like – well, like a photograph."

"It may have been a photograph, now you mention it," he admitted. "Well, Miss Tyrrell?" "Well," she said, "I often amuse myself by making up stories about people I meet – quite strangers, I mean. And, do you know, I made up my mind that that photograph was the portrait of someone – some lady you are engaged to. I should so much like to know if I was right or not?"

Here was Peter's opportunity of revealing his real status, and preventing all chance of future misunderstanding. It was not too late; but still it might be best and kindest to break the news gradually.

"You were partly right and partly wrong," he said: "that was the portrait of a lady I was – er —once engaged to."

Unless Peter was very much mistaken, there was a new light in her face, an added brightness in her soft grey eyes as she raised them for an instant before resuming her labours upon the wicker-chair.

"Then you mean," she said softly, "that the engagement is broken off?"

Peter began to recognise that explanation was a less simple affair than it had seemed. If he said that he was no longer engaged but married to the original of that photograph, she would naturally want to know why he had just led her to believe, as he must have done, that he was still a careless and unattached bachelor: she would ask when and where he was married; and how could he give a straightforward and satisfactory answer to such questions?

And then another side of the case struck him. As a matter of fact he was undeniably married; but would he be strictly correct in describing himself as being so in this particular interview? It belonged properly to the time he had made the voyage home, and he was certainly not married then.

In the difficulty he was in, he thought it best to go on telling the truth until it became absolutely impossible, and then fall back on invention.

"The fact is, Miss Tyrrell," he said, "that I can't be absolutely certain whether the engagement is ended or not at this precise moment."

Her face was alive with the sweetest sympathy.

"Poor Mr. Tourmalin!" she said, "how horribly anxious you must be to get back and know!"

"Ah!" said Peter, "yes, I – I shall know when I get home, I suppose."

And he sighed; for the orange recurred once more to his reluctant memory.

"Don't tell me if it pains you too much," she said gently. "I only ask because I do feel so sorry for you. Do you think that, when you do get home, you will find her married?"

"I have every reason for believing so," he said.

"That will be a terrible blow for you, of course?"

"A blow?" said Peter, forgetting himself. "Good gracious me, no! Why should it be? I – I mean, I shall be prepared for it, don't you know!"

"Then it's not so bad after all?" she said.

"It's not at all bad!" said Peter, with a vague intention of loyalty to Sophia. "I like it!"

"I think I understand," she said slowly: "you will not be sorry to find she has married; but she may tell you that she never had the least intention of letting you go so easily?"

"Yes," said Peter, "she may tell me that, certainly" – ("if she finds out where I've been," he added, mentally).

"And," she continued, "what would you do then?"

"I suppose," he said – "I suppose I should have to do whatever she wished."

"Yes!" she agreed warmly, "you will do that, even if it costs you something, won't you? Because it will be the only right, the only honourable course to take – you will be the happier for it in the end, Mr. Tourmalin, I am sure you will!"

After all, it seemed to him that she must understand about the Time Cheques – or, why should she urge him to give them up if Sophia demanded such a sacrifice?

"No, I shall not," he said; "I shall miss these times terribly. You don't know what they are to me, or you wouldn't speak like that!"

"Mr. Tourmalin!" she cried, "I – I must not listen to you! You can't possibly mean what you seem to mean. It is wrong – wrong to me, and wrong to her – to say things that – that, for all you know, you are not free to say! Don't let me think badly of you!"

Peter was absolutely horrified! What had he said to agitate her like that? He had merely meant to express the pleasure he found in these brief and stolen visits to the Boomerang; and she had misconstrued him like this! At all hazards, he must explain now, if it took him days to make it clear.

"My dear Miss Tyrrell," he protested earnestly, "you quite misunderstood me – you did, indeed! Pray be calm, and I will endeavour to make my position a little clearer than I'm afraid I have done. The worst of it is," he added, "that the whole thing has got into such a muddle that, for the life of me, I can't exactly make out what my position is at the present moment!"

"You can if you will only recollect that you are this mourning-pin," said a familiar voice; and, with the abruptness characteristic of the Time Cheque system, he was back in his study, staring at the ground glass globe of the lamp and the transfixed orange. The clock behind him was striking nine, and Sophia was offering him a pin with a big black head.

"Oh! am I the mourning-pin?" he repeated, helplessly.

"Really, Peter," said Sophia, "I think the pin, just at this moment, has the more intelligent expression of the two. Do try to look a little less idiotic! Now, see; you stick the pin into the orange to represent your point of view, and then keep on twirling it slowly round."

So Peter twirled the orange slowly round for the remainder of the evening, though his thoughts were far away with Miss Tyrrell. He was wondering what she could have thought of him, and, worse still, what she would think if she could see him as he was employed at that moment?

"I tell you what we must do, Peter, – when you get a little more advanced," said Sophia, enthusiastically, that evening, "we must see if we can't pick up a small secondhand orrery somewhere – it would be so nice to have one!"

"Oh, delightful!" he said, absently.

He was not very clear as to what an orrery was, unless it was the dusty machine that was worked with handles at sundry Assembly-room lectures he had attended in early youth. But of one thing he felt grimly certain – that it was something which would render it necessary to draw more Time Cheques!

CHAPTER V.

Periodic Drawings

Whether it was natural sin on Peter's part, or an excusable spirit of revolt against the oppression of an orrery which Sophia succeeded in picking up a great bargain at an auction somewhere, his drafts on the Anglo-Australian Joint Stock Time Bank Limited did not end with the one recorded in the preceding chapter.

And, which was more discreditable still, he no longer pretended to himself that he meant to stop until his balance was completely exhausted. His only care now was to economise, to regulate his expenditure by spreading his drawings over as long a period as possible. With this object he made a careful calculation, and found there were still several hours to his credit; whereupon, lest he should yield to the temptation of drawing too much at any one time, he made out a number of cheques for fifteen minutes apiece, and limited himself to one a week – an allowance which, even under the severest provocation, he rarely permitted himself to exceed.

These weekly excursions, short as they were, were a source of the greatest comfort to him, especially now that he had thrown off any idea of moral responsibility.

By degrees he possessed himself of most of the back-numbers, if they may be so termed, of his dual romance. At one time, he found himself being presented by the grateful Sir William to his daughter; and now that he knew what service he had rendered the Judge, he was less at sea than he would certainly have been otherwise. Another time, he discovered himself in the act of dragging Miss Davenport unceremoniously back from the bulwarks; but here again his memory furnished him with the proper excuse for conduct which, considering that he was not supposed to be acquainted with her, he might have found it difficult to account for satisfactorily. So, after all, there did seem to be a sort of method in the operation of the Time Cheques, arbitrary as it appeared.

One fact that went far to reconcile him to his own conscience was the circumstance that, though the relations he stood in towards both young ladies varied at each interview with the most bewildering uncertainty, so that one week he would be upon the closest and most confidential terms, and the next be thrown back into the conventional formality of a first introduction – these relations never again approached the dangerous level of sentiment which had so alarmed him.