Tourmalin's Time Cheques

He flattered himself that the judicious attitude he was adopting to both was correcting the false impressions which might have – and for that matter actually had – been given.

He was always pleased to see them again, whichever one it was; they were simply charming friends – frank, natural, unaffected girls – and not too clever. Sometimes, indeed, he recognised, and did his best to discourage, symptoms of a dawning tenderness on their part which it was not in his power to reciprocate.

Peter was in no danger of losing his heart to either; possibly the attractions of each served as a conductor to protect him from the influence of the other. He enjoyed their society, their evident appreciation of all he said and did, but that was all; and as they recognised that there could be no closer bond than that of cordial friendship between them, he was relieved of all misgivings.

Surely it was a blameless and legitimate manner, even for a married man, of spending the idle moments which belonged properly to the days of his bachelorhood! Still, he did not confide this harmless secret of his to Sophia; he might tell her when it was all over, but not so long as her disapproval could affect his plans. And he had an instinct that such a story as he had to tell would fail to appeal to a person of her accurately logical habit of mind.

So, on one occasion when he discovered that he had lost one of the loose cheques he now carried constantly about with him, it was with a feeling very like panic that he reflected that he might have dropped it about the house, where its unusual form would inevitably provoke Sophia's curiosity; and he was much reassured when he was able to conclude, from the fact that she made no reference to it, that he must have lost it out of doors.

It must have been some time after this before his serenity again met with a slight shock: he was walking up and down the deck with Miss Davenport – it happened to be one of the days when he knew her very well indeed.

"Sometimes," she was saying, "I feel as if I must speak to somebody!"

"You know where you will always find a very willing listener!" he said, with a kind of fatherly floweriness that he felt sat well upon him.

"I didn't mean you," she said, – "to some girl of my own age, I meant."

"Oh!" said Peter, "well, that's a very natural feeling, I'm sure. I can quite understand it!"

"Then you wouldn't mind – you wouldn't be angry if I did?" she said, looking up at him with her great childishly serious eyes.

"My dear child," said Peter, getting more fatherly every moment, "how could I possibly object to your speaking to any lady on board if you want to?"

He would have liked to make one or two exceptions, perhaps; but he thought he had better not.

"I am so glad," she said, "because I did – this very morning. I did so want someone to advise me – to tell me what a girl ought to do, what she would do herself in my place."

"Ah!" said Peter, sympathetically, "it is – er – a difficult position for you, no doubt."

"And for you, too!" she said quickly; "remember that."

"And for me too, of course," said Peter, assenting, as he always did now from habit, to anything he did not understand at the moment. "My position might be described as one of – er – difficulty, certainly. And so you asked advice about yours, eh?"

"I couldn't very well help myself," she said. "There was a girl, a little older than I am, perhaps, sitting next to me on deck, and she mentioned your name, and somehow – I hardly know how it came about – but she seemed so kind, and so interested in it all, that – that I believe I told her everything… You aren't angry with me, are you, Peter?"

She had been making a confidante of Miss Tyrrell! It was awkward, extremely awkward and annoying, if, as he began to fear, her confidences were of a tender character.

"I – I am not exactly angry," he said; "but I do think you might be more careful whom you speak to. What did you tell her?"

"All!" she said, with the same little quiver in her underlip he had noticed before.

"That is no answer," said Peter (it certainly was none for him). "Tell me what you said?"

"I – I told her about you, and about me … and – and about him!"

"Oh!" said Peter, "about me, and you, and him? Well, and – and how did she take it?"

"She didn't say very much; she turned very pale. It was rather rough at the time, and I don't think she can be a very good sailor; for before I had even finished she got up and went below, and I haven't seen her since."

"But you told her about 'him'?" he persisted; "and when you say 'him,' I presume you refer to – ?"

Here he paused expectantly.

"Of course!" she answered, with a touch of impatience. "Whom else should I be likely to refer to?"

"It's excessively absurd!" said Peter, driven to candour at last. "I – I remember perfectly that you did mention all the circumstances at the time: but I've a shocking memory for names; and, just for the minute, I – I find it difficult to recall where 'he' comes in exactly. Curious, isn't it?"

"Curious?" she said, passionately; "it's abominable!"

"It is," agreed Peter; "I quite admit that I ought to know – only, I don't."

"This is cruel, unmanly!" she said, brokenly. "How could you forget – how can you insult me by pretending that you could forget such a thing as that? It is odious of you to make a – a joke of it all, when you know perfectly well that – "

"My – my dear young lady!" he declared, as she left her speech unfinished, "I am as far from any disposition to be jocular as ever I was in my life. Let me beg you to be a little more explicit. We seem to have got into a trifling misunderstanding, which, I am sure, a little patience will easily put right." …

"Put right?" said Sophia, behind him. "I was not aware, Peter, that the clock was out of order. What is the matter with it?"

He almost staggered back from the chimneypiece, upon which he had found himself leaning in an attitude of earnest persuasion.

"I – I was only thinking, my love," he said, "that it wanted regulating."

"If it does," said Sophia, "you are hardly the proper person to do it, Peter. The less you meddle with it the better, I should think!"

"Perhaps so, my dear Sophia, perhaps so!" said Peter, sitting down with the utmost docility.

He had narrowly escaped exciting suspicion. It was fortunate that there was nothing compromising in the few words she had overheard, but he must not allow himself to be caught so near the clock again.

He was not a little disturbed by the tenor of this last interview. It was bad enough that in some way he seemed to have seriously displeased Miss Davenport; but, besides that, he could not contemplate without uneasiness the probable effect which her confidences, whatever their exact purport, might have upon Miss Tyrrell. For hitherto he had seen no necessity to mention to one young lady that he was even distantly acquainted with the other. As he never by any chance drew them both together, there seemed no object in volunteering such information.

But this only made him more apprehensive of a scene when his next turn with Miss Tyrrell arrived. Perhaps, he thought, it would be wiser to keep away from the Boomerang for a week or two, and give them all time to calm down a little.

However, he had the moral, or rather the immoral, courage to present a cheque as usual at the end of the next week, with results that were even less in accordance with his anticipations than before.

It came about in this way: He was comfortably seated by the fireplace opposite Sophia in a cosy domesticated fashion, and was reading to her aloud; for he had been let off the orrery that evening. The book he was reading by Sophia's particular request was Ibsen's Doll's House, and it was not the fault of the subject (which interested her deeply), but of Peter's elocution, which was poor, that, on glancing from the text, he found that she had sunk into a profound and peaceful slumber.

It was a chance he had been waiting for all day. He was rather tired of Nora, with her innocence and her macaroons, her tarantella and her taradiddles, her forgery and her fancy dress, and he had the cheque by him in readiness; so he stole on tiptoe to the mantelpiece, slipped the paper under the clock, and was just in time to sink back into his easy-chair, before it turned out to be one of the revolving-seats in the dining-saloon on the Boomerang.

There was a tumbler of whisky-and-seltzer on the table in front of him, and he was sitting in close confabulation with his former acquaintance, Mr. Perkins, the Bank Manager.

"That's precisely what I don't know, sir, and what I'm determined to find out!" were the first words he heard from the latter gentleman, who looked flushed and angry. "But it's a scandalous thing, isn't it?"

"Very," said Peter, rather bored and deeply disappointed; for the Manager was but an indifferent substitute for the companion he had been counting upon. "Oh, very!"

"Have you happened to hear anything said about it yourself?" inquired his friend.

"Not a word!" said Peter, with the veracity he always endeavoured to maintain on these occasions.

"To go and shift a statement of that kind on to my shoulders like that, it's like the fellow's confounded impudence!"