Tales of two people

“It was the way he did it,” she said. “Somehow I felt he was paying me a very high compliment.”

“Oh, I agree!” I laughed.

“And one I was glad to have. It must have been the way he did it. There are some people who abolish one’s moral scruples, aren’t there? He was very quiet generally, but he had a way of just moving those hands of his with a little waving gesture. And when he said that of course it wasn’t right – ”

“Oh, he admitted that?”

“Yes, but that little wave of those hands seemed to wave right and wrong right out of the way.”

“Overboard?”

“Absolutely overboard. Then he looked at me a moment and said: ‘That’s all I had to say. Thanks for listening to me, Miss Cochrane. Good-night.’ ”

“And what did you say?”

She rested her chin in her hand, looking sideways at me.

“I said: ‘Good-night, Mr Walsh. We meet at breakfast to-morrow as usual?’ ”

“The deuce you did!”

“ ‘At our table?’ he asked. And I said ‘Yes.’ He gave a little laugh, and so did I, and I held out my hand. He shook hands and left me, and I went down and read with mamma.”

“Nothing else said?”

“He said nothing else. I believe I whispered: ‘It’ll be rather fun – because you will get off!’ But I know I didn’t say anything more than that.”

There was a pause. I lit another cigarette, snatching a mean advantage by stealing a look at my friend in the light of the match. She was not looking at me, but straight ahead of her: there was a pensive smile on her lips.

“And what happened afterwards?” I asked.

“I suppose you’ll be shocked?”

“Being shocked is an emotion hostile to art – I never have it.”

“Well, then, I never had such fun. Of course we were careful, because of mamma (mamma’s idea became funny too!), and because we knew what was going to happen. But we managed to get no end of talks in quiet places – the library’s very good in fine weather – and he told me all sorts of wonderful things. It was like reading the very best detective stories, only ever so much better – so much more vivid, you know.”

“More personal interest?”

“A thousand times! And it was fun, too, at meals, and when there was a concert, and so on. I used to find him looking at me, with his eyes all full of laughter; and I looked back at him, enjoying the secret and the way he was making fools of all the rest. We were just like two children with some game that the grown-up people know nothing about.”

“He had waved your morality overboard with a vengeance,” said I.

“It was the jolliest time I ever had in my life,” said Mrs Pryce. “He recited beautifully at the concert – ‘The Ballad of Beau Brocade.’ ”

“Well done him!” I said approvingly. I began rather to like the fellow myself.

“And at the end he made a little speech, thanking the captain, and saying how sorry we should all be when the voyage ended. ‘And nobody sorrier than myself,’ he said, with one of his looks at me – such a twinkling look – and a tiny wave of those hands.”

“He must have been the most popular man on board?”

“Well, the men thought him rather standoffish; he snubbed some of them, I think. Well, you do meet some queer men on a liner, don’t you? And Mr Walsh said that out of business hours he claimed to choose his acquaintance. But the women all worshipped him – not that he ran after them, but his manner was always just right to them.”

“It’s really a pity his manner of life was so – well, so unconventional.”

“Yes, wasn’t it?” she said, welcoming my sympathy. “Because, of course, it meant that our acquaintance had to end with the voyage.”

I had, perhaps, been thinking of somewhat broader considerations, but I refrained from advancing them. In fact, we had somehow got away from ordinary standards and restraints; the memory of Slim-Fingered Jim had waved them away. We fell into silence for a moment or two, until I asked —

“And the manner of the end? Tell me that.”

“I didn’t believe in the end. I had got not to believe in it at all. I thought we might go on sailing for ever over that beautiful sea and having the most splendid fun. He could make you feel that everything was just splendid fun – that there was nothing else in the world. He made me feel that – I suppose he knew he could, or he’d never have told me his secret at all. But, of course, the end had to come.” She sighed and gave a little shiver – not that it was cold in the Major’s garden. Then she turned to me again. “I’ve told you a good deal,” she said, “and you’re not a chicken, are you?”

I ruefully admitted that I was no chicken.

“Then I needn’t say anything more about myself,” said she.

“And what about him?”

“I think he liked me tremendously; but he wasn’t in love.”

“Not at all?”

“I don’t think so. He was just the most perfect of good comrades to me – and in that way the finest gentleman I’ve ever met. Because, you know, I can see now that I gave him opportunities of being something else. Well, I was only nineteen, and – ”

“Quite so. The hands, of course!”

“It seems possible to be good and bad in – in compartments, doesn’t it? That’s rather curious!”

“If true!”

“Oh, you know it’s true!”

“Perhaps I do; but I never contradict the preacher.”

She laughed again, but now a trifle fretfully.

“In his own business I believe he’s thoroughly bad.”

“Not even the chivalrous highwayman?”

“No. Just bad – bad – bad.”

“Ah, well, business is one thing and charity another, as somebody once observed. And now for the end, please – because ends do come, even though we don’t believe in them.”

“Yes, they do; and this one came,” she said. But for an instant or two she did not begin to tell me about it; and in the silence I heard Charlie Pryce assert loudly that he had made a good shot.

III