Alice Lauder/Part 1/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
THOSE two seem to be getting on very well,” observed the captain to Lady May. There was the smallest soupçon of bitterness in his tone. As captain of the “Suez” he knew his social rights, and he did not feel flattered when Lady May temporarily adopted him, now and then, as a substitute for another.
Through the open door of the deck music-saloon they could see the two artists absorbed in working their passage through a difficult sonata of Beethoven; while good Mrs. Wigs sat sentinel at the outer door (for the sake of coolness), but so placed that no syllable should escape her attentive ear. Sometimes Alice would leave off playing and vigorously beat time for a bar or two, with a vindictive air; sometimes she would stop altogether, and, throwing her hands up over her ears, would rock herself to and fro with an agonized expression, when some mistake in her companion’s part was more than usually heartrending. Campbell always cheerfully acquiesced in her reproaches, tuned his instrument, and began again with renewed energy. While playing he leaned up against the wall, his fine head and square-made figure standing out like a portrait by Vandyke against the yellow decorations of the cabin.
“Oh, he does not mean anything. He never does. That’s the worst of those London men. It’s not the first time he has played a duet with a pretty girl, and won’t be the last if I know anything about him. But I expect his mother will look out for a big match for him. They haven’t much money, but they have the dearest old house down in Greenshire; just the place those American heiresses would give their eyes for!But he may do better than that, perhaps, by-and-by; for he is very sweet, isn’t he, captain?”
“Well , I don’t know about his sweetness , but he’s got a good head. I suppose he means to go into politics.”
“Oh yes, his Uncle Lanetop will give him a leg-up by-and-by. You know Lord Lanetop?—he’s always in the papers. He is very fond of Arthur; quite looks on him as a son, and his own son has turned out such a black sheep, more’s the pity. Why do we all have relations, and why are they invariably black sheep? as Miss Sewell says in one of her dear old novels. That’s what I have often wondered in my own mind. Now if we could all be born without a relation in the world, what a mercy it would be! Don't you think so?”
Lady May had a little habit of suddenly bringing you up with a sharp turn of “Don’t you think so?” just as your attention was beginning to wander and you were getting lulled into forgetfulness by her easy conversational ambling.
“Well, I don’t know. I am not sure that I quite catch your thought,” said the good captain, conscientiously puzzling it out. “Would you call husbands and wives relations, for instance?”
“Oh, by no manner of means! I would not live a day with my husband, if he was a relation. He’s very fond of Arthur, too, and will be overjoyed when he hears that I have had some one to look after me. It was splendid the way I caught the boy and tied him to my apron-strings for the voyage. I met him one day in Brisbane; so I said at once, ‘Now I’ve got you, and I don’t mean to let you go. Here I am wandering about alone and unprotected, with nobody but Smithson to speak a word to. So you will please come along and take my tickets and count my boxes, and keep your eye on my Rosella parrot and three grey cockatoos.’ So he came, quite meekly. You see I know all his people, and he likes to talk about them—particularly about his mother. He thinks all the world of me, but———”
“Oh, that won’t do, that won’t do at all! We must give up Beethoven, he is too big for us.” These words came in sorrowful tones from the music-saloon.
“Well, let us try back to Mozart then. Those little roulades you play on the piano are delightful, and I really do know my Mozart—even you will admit that.”
“Oh yes, you have got the hang of some things very well, very well indeed; but you want work—all you amateurs do. You don’t know what work is. You ought to peg away—I mean practise—clean them up! As our old ’cello used to say, ‘Battle, battle! it’s the only way.’”
“But I haven’t time.”
“You seem to have time for other things.” The speaker’s eye rested for an instant on Lady May’s substantial figure, clothed in the most delicate, dazzling efflorescence of white cambric and embroidery, reposing in a gracefully studied attitude S. by E., and resting her neat bronze toes on the bamboo footstool of her deck-chair. Only a woman could have guessed what that dress would cost to “do up” alone. Alice Lauder’s frock had, alas! been done up several hundred times; the iron had entered into its soul, as it were. But it was clean and cool, and if a couple of buttons had come off in the wash, and if a bunch of “gathers” had been hastily tucked in under the waistband, what are unconsidered trifles like these compared with an artistic soul?
Alice began to strike the keys with emphatic realization of Miriam’s song:
The horse and his rider hath he cast into the sea.”
From the expression of her eyes and fingers you might have imagined that she was condemning some unseen foe to the fate of the horse and his rider. What she really thought was this—“Bronze silk stockings, too, to match her shoes—what extravagances! And yet they look nice, perhaps!”
“Won’t you try Mozart again?” said Campbell, as she paused in following out Miriam’s song of triumph; for he was always wanting to try something again. And so the sonata went on d. c. till lunch time.
It was just about this time that the passengers began to discover, in twos and threes, that this would never do, and that they couldn’t imagine any good could come of it, and they hadn’t expected Miss Lauder would turn out that sort of girl. Poor Alice was really very far from wishing to be that sort of person. She liked playing with Campbell, mainly because he had a musician’s fellow-feeling in his soul, and also because it was fun to take him away from the leading lady, who had treated her with very scant politeness. Alice knew very well that she had only to touch the keys and Campbell’s black head would appear beside her, just as surely as the “cold crowned snake” yields to the immemorial wisdom of the charmer; and it cannot be denied that she liked using her power when the mood was on her. But there was not the shadow of what we diplomatically call love-making in the hours they passed together, and the critical little world which reviews all our actions and motives gratis in the liberal free-press of gossip would have found very little to condemn could it have overheard the innocent “music-shop” of these two enthusiasts, as the stars slowly changed their places in the azure above, and the ship flew with foam-winged sandals over the azure plain below towards the snow-laden Old World and the winter fields of England just breaking into chilly premonitory impulses of spring.