Part 31 (1/2)
”She is very young,” she faltered at length, and was unwise enough to add, ”and pretty.”
These being two heinous offences in the eyes of Mrs. Stanislaw, she proceeded at once to hang, draw, and quarter the criminal. But her voice was tenderer than before.
”Yes, isn't it a pity? . . . and so foolishly indiscreet. Do you know, they tell me that she is spoken of by all the men on the s.h.i.+p as the April Fool, a parody on her name, which is April Poole.”
Pleasant hearing for her listener, who flushed scarlet.
”Can you imagine any one who has a living to earn being so unwise? I find it difficult to believe she is going to the Cape to teach someone's children. I only hope that the story of her indiscretions will not precede her, poor girl.”
April was dumb. Mrs. Stanislaw came to the conclusion that she was dull and rather lacking in feminine sweetness, and after a while went away to bargain with a native for some embroideries. She would have been delighted to know what a poisoned barb she had implanted and left quivering in the side of the so-called Lady Diana.
Beneath the folded V of filmy lace on April's bosom her heart was beating pa.s.sionately, and the rose-wreathed hat fortunately drooped enough to hide the tears of mortification that filled her eyes. _Her_ name to be parodied and bandied about the s.h.i.+p on men's lips! A poor thing, but her own! One that for all her ups and downs she had striven and contrived to keep untarnished. How dared Diana Vernilands do this thing to her? What foolishness had she herself been guilty of to put it in another's power to thus injure her?
Her eyes were so blurred with tears that she did not notice at what particular moment another occupant had usurped the chair of Major Sarle.
It was a man this time. April hastily seized a book and began to read.
He must have stolen up with the silence of a tiger, and he reminded her of tigers somehow, though she could not quite tell why, except that he was curiously powerful and graceful looking. His hair, which grew in a thick short mat, was strongly sprinkled with silver, but his skin, though brick-red, was unlined. She judged him to be a sailor-man, for he had the clear and innocent eye of one who has looked long on great s.p.a.ces.
These were her conclusions, made while diligently reading her book. He, too, was busy reading in the same fas.h.i.+on, but, manlike, was slower in his deductions. By the time she had finished with his hair he had not got much further than her charming ankles. Certainly, he had ascertained that she was a pretty woman before he took possession of his chair, but that was merely instinct, the fulfilling of a human law. Detail, like destruction, was to come after. He lingered over the first detail. They were such very pretty ankles. It did not seem right that they should be resting on the hard deck instead of on a canvas foot-rest. He remembered that his own chair had a foot-rest, but it was in his cabin.
Should he go and fetch it? Dared he offer it to her? He was on hail-fellow-well-met terms with lions and tigers, as April had curiously divined, but having enjoyed fewer encounters with women, was slightly shy of them. However, being naturally courageous, he might presently have been observed emerging from a deck cabin with a canvas foot-rest in his hand, and it was only the natural sequence of events that while attempting to hitch it on his chair his guileless gaze should discover that April's feet were without support. He looked so shy and kind for such a sun-bitten, weather-hardened creature, that she had no heart to refuse the friendly offer, even had she felt the inclination. Besides, the advances made to her in the role of Lady Diana were very different to those she had so often been obliged to repulse as April Poole.
She felt, too, that here was a man not trying to make friends with any ulterior motive, but just because on this pleasant, delightful morning it was pleasant and delightful to talk to someone and share the pleasure.
Vereker Sarle had made the voyage to South Africa so many times that he had lost count of them, and knew Madeira so well that it bored him to go ash.o.r.e there any more.
”We have the best of it from here, in spite of a little coal dust,” he told her, for with a great deal of rattling, banging, and singing on the lower decks the s.h.i.+p was taking on her voyage ration of coal. ”Still, you should go ash.o.r.e and see it some time. It is worth a visit for the sake of the gardens, the breakfast of fresh fish at the hotel on the hilltop, and the b.u.mping rush down again in the man-drawn sleighs.”
He took it for granted that she was a woman travelling for pleasure and likely to be back this way soon. While she gave a little inward sigh, wondering whether she would ever have the money to return to England, or if it would be her fate to live in exile for ever.
Sarle presented her with one of his simple maxims of life.
”All good citizens of the world should do everything once and once only,”
he averred, with his frank and disarming smile. ”If we stuck to that rule life would never go stale on us.”
”I'm afraid it would hardly apply to everyday life and all the weary things we have to do over and over again.”
”I was thinking of the big things,” he said slowly. ”Like potting your first elephant or falling in love. I don't know what equivalents women have for these things.”
April could not forbear a little ripple of laughter.
”I believe they fall in love, too, sometimes,” she said. But Sarle, with his sea-blue gaze on her, answered gravely:
”I know very little about them.”
It was hard to decide whether he was an expert flirt with new methods, or really and truly a man with a heart as guileless as his eyes. But, at any rate, he was amusing, and April forgot her tears and anger completely in the pleasant hour they spent together until the pa.s.sengers, recalled by the s.h.i.+p's siren, began to return from ash.o.r.e.
Diana and her bodyguard were the last to arrive, the men laden with fruit, flowers, and numerous parcels, and the girl more openly careless of the rest of the world than before. They took possession of a group of chairs that did not belong to them, and scattered their possessions upon the deck. Pomegranates, nectarines, and bananas began to roll in every direction, to the inconvenience of the pa.s.sers-by, but what did that matter? Diana lit a cigarette, declaring that it was too hot for words, and that she _must_ have a John Collins. They all ordered John Collinses. The handsome man fanned Diana with a large palm leaf, and she looked at him with languorous eyes.
April grew hot inside her skin. Conversation interrupted by the noise around them, both she and Sarle had immersed themselves once more in their books. But April, at least, was profoundly conscious of everything said and done by the neighbouring group, and she longed to take Diana Vernilands by the shoulders and give her a sound shaking. As for the three men who were encouraging and abetting the little minx, it would have been a pleasure to push them separately and singly overboard. She did not know how she could have managed to sit so still, except that Sarle was there reading by her side, silent and calm, apparently noticing nothing extraordinary in the behaviour of their neighbours.
A steward brought the John Collinses--four tall gla.s.ses of pale liquid and ice, some stuff red as blood floating on the top. No sooner had Diana tasted hers than she set up a loud wail that there was not enough Angostura in it. One of the men hurried away to have this grave defect remedied, and the moment he was out of sight Diana took up his as yet untouched gla.s.s, and with two long straws between her lips, skilfully sucked all the red stuff from the top of the drink and replaced the gla.s.s. Above the delighted laughter of her companions, April heard a woman's scornful remark further down the deck: