Part 28 (2/2)

”What do you think of it all?” asked Winter.

”What a question! If you mean, have I any explanation to suggest, I haven't.”

”The captain believes every word of it.”

”That's obvious; but you know that's not the part that interests me most, whether it's true or not, and what it all means; the part that interests me is that such things should happen to such people. I wonder what there is in that commonplace little man to arouse such a pa.s.sion in that lovely creature. As I watched her, asleep there, while he was telling the story I had some fantastic idea about the power of love being able to work miracles.”

”But that's not the girl,” said Winter.

”What on earth do you mean?”

”Didn't you notice the cook?”

”Of course I did. He's the ugliest man I ever saw.”

”That's why Butler took him. The girl ran away with the Chinese cook last year. This is a new one. He's only had her there about two months.”

”Well, I'm hanged.”

”He thinks this cook is safe. But I wouldn't be too sure in his place.

There's something about a c.h.i.n.k, when he lays himself out to please a woman she can't resist him.”

VII

_Rain_

It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in sight. Dr Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a wound that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to settle down quietly at Apia for twelve months at least, and he felt already better for the journey. Since some of the pa.s.sengers were leaving the s.h.i.+p next day at Pago-Pago they had had a little dance that evening and in his ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical piano. But the deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a long chair talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he had very red hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled skin which accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face, precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very low, quiet voice.

Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there had arisen the intimacy of s.h.i.+pboard, which is due to propinquity rather than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval they shared of the men who spent their days and nights in the smoking-room playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs Macphail was not a little flattered to think that she and her husband were the only people on board with whom the Davidsons were willing to a.s.sociate, and even the doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciously acknowledged the compliment. It was only because he was of an argumentative mind that in their cabin at night he permitted himself to carp.

”Mrs Davidson was saying she didn't know how they'd have got through the journey if it hadn't been for us,” said Mrs Macphail, as she neatly brushed out her transformation. ”She said we were really the only people on the s.h.i.+p they cared to know.”

”I shouldn't have thought a missionary was such a big bug that he could afford to put on frills.”

”It's not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn't have been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot in the smoking-room.”

”The founder of their religion wasn't so exclusive,” said Dr Macphail with a chuckle.

”I've asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,”

answered his wife. ”I shouldn't like to have a nature like yours, Alec.

You never look for the best in people.”

He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not reply. After many years of married life he had learned that it was more conducive to peace to leave his wife with the last word. He was undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled down to read himself to sleep.

<script>