The Masque of Love/Chapter 1
I
A BELL clanged in the distance, and, coming on down the passage in a crescendo of clamorous insistence, aroused an answering buzz of voices and the unsteady clatter of feet unaccustomed to the dimensions of ship accommodation. Just outside the promenade deck at the door of cabin number eleven a young couple took despairing farewell of each other.
“After all, it's only a month, darling!”
“But if anything happened!”
“It won't. Why should it?”
They kissed. A man standing inside the deck cabin immediately behind them methodically sorted out some papers from his wallet by the light of the open window and grinned sardonically.
“Beautiful, isn't it? Touching. Ever felt like that, Monkhouse?”
The questioner, receiving no answer, glanced back over his shoulder with a half-humorous, half-sneering lift of the heavy eyebrows. “No, I don't suppose you ever did. Couldn't imagine it of you somehow, my dear fellow. But it's that which you lack to make you quite irresistible—the human touch, shall we call it?'
The man Monkhouse sneered back, and the expression, passing over his face like a gust of wind over a sullen stretch of water, left his features with their normal impassivity. He was ugly, and his ugliness was no negative, and inoffensive thing. It thrust itself upon the attention by its vigor and its open, truculent revelation of the man himself. He looked like a fighter who knew no laws, who had fought often; perhaps always, and had given and received blows that had left scars. There was gray mixed with the black hair on his temples, and the big forehead with the massive brows was marked with three furrows, drawn deep and straight as though; by the hand of an expert craftsman. But he yielded no suggestion of age. It would have been difficult to guess his years, The vigorous carriage of the square, unwieldy body, the tilt of the ugly chin, the occasional flash of the eyes which could be called no color, since they changed with every change of thought, spoke of an unsapped, inexhaustible vitality. It was part of his ugliness—as a death-dealing machine becomes more repellent as it wakes to action.
“No, I am not made on those lines, apparently,” he said. “So much the better for me. Hadn't you better be clearing? I suppose you don't mean to make the journey, too?”
The other shook his head.
“Thanks. I can't give you the pleasure. Here are all the papers. You had better be careful with them. When do you expect to let me know?”
“The House opens on the Fourth. Say on the Thirtieth?”
“That's first-rate, You don't seem to suffer from doubts or fears or any other of our mortal weaknesses.” He looked up again with his contemptuous good-humor, tinged now with a rather distrustful curiosity. “I've often wondered, you know, whether you don't get nerves sometimes—behind the backs of us all. It must be pretty nervy work one way or another. If anything came out—”
Monkhouse made a slight movement which somehow seemed to express amusement, though his face remained grave.
“My dear friend, I have chosen to live dangerously, and for the good reason that danger is all that I care about in this world. I pursue it of my own free will, and if one day it turns on me there will be a stiff tussle and I shall go down as I want to go down. To die as we wish is about the greatest blessing life offers us.”
“Thanks!” His companion smiled satirically. “A comforting philosophy. Well, I'll be off. Good voyage to you and all the luck. I'll make my adieux now. We don't want these infernal reporters nosing round. Our intimacy need not be shouted from the housetops.”
“It would not be desirable,” Monkhouse admitted in his frigid way.
He held the door open, but they did not shake hands; and though they left the cabin together, they remained silent and parted at the gangway with a curt, scarcely perceptible nod. It was high time. An impatient steward hustled the visitor down the gangway and a pallid-faced reporter, notebook in hand, had barely time to stammer: “Mr. Monkhouse, sir, if you'd just give us your ideas on the Tariff business—” before he, too, was jostled off the boat. Monkhouse leaned over the rail, watching the gesticulating journalist with a mirthless amusement that, trivial as was the cause, seemed both malicious and cruel in its deliberation. One person noticed it. She stood a little apart, apparently intent on the busy quay. Once or twice, however, she had glanced in Monkhouse's direction and seeing the unpleasant twist of the lips shivered a little. Neither the warm June morning nor the soft breeze blowing off the land were responsible for that shuddering movement of her shoulders, and thereafter she kept her head resolutely turned from him, unconscious of the fact that she, too, was under observation. Two men standing idly in the companion-way passed comments on her with the insolent condescension of their type. The man Monkhouse also attracted their attention and they compared the two jestingly.
“Beauty and the beast, eh? I wonder who she is. Actress, I should imagine. Pretty in her picture-postcard way and well-dressed. Shade too well-dressed, perhaps. Musical comedy. What's the betting?”
“Too poor to take risks like that, Haig,” the other laughed. “But the man, now—I could guess at him.”
“Don't trouble. I know. It's Monkhouse—no, not John Monkhouse, M.P., bless you—his brother, Brian—Blackguard Brian. Ugly Brian. Ugly brute, isn't he? And hated by everyone, but confoundedly clever, and has a beautiful daughter, as I know, too. Would have been something else besides a very smart financier—only—only—”
“Only what?”
There was no answer for a moment. Brian Monkhouse had turned away from the taffrail and was coming towards them, and, instinctively aware that he was the subject of their conversation, he turned his eyes in their direction, flashing a glance, which was curiously disconcerting, over their weedy dandyism. Then he passed on. The girl by the taffrail had also turned and watched him till he disappeared.
The man who had been addressed as Haig laughed.
“Not the sort of person to meet on a dark night. As I was saying, he's a might-have-been. A big scandal—a woman, of course, the mother of the girl I spoke of. It all came out on the eve of the John Monkhouse election and nearly did for him. Shame, wasn't it?”
“Beastly. Brother got in all right, though, so there were no bones broken.”
“Only this brute's—and the girl's. Now he has money enough to buy up most of us; but there are rumors—rather shady ones, too. And they wouldn't have him in Parliament, not for all his cleverness. He did for himself.”
“And looks as though he wanted to make someone pay for it,” the other laughed. “Have a brandy?”
They sauntered off to the bar, leaving the way clear for the chattering, flustered crowd of passengers who were still busy settling themselves down for their five days on the Atlantic. The girl at the taffrail resumed her steadfast gaze on the fading landmarks. The land breeze had shifted round to the southeast and blew sharply against her face, brushing the fair hair into her eyes and beating a more vivid color into the delicately tinted cheeks. No one spoke to her, no one seemed to know her. Presently, when land had faded into the horizon, she turned quietly as one who has accomplished a self-imposed task and went below deck.
Gradually the uneasy, restless groups of passengers scattered and vanished and the great liner settled down to her task. The breeze stiffened, and the quiet of the harbor waters changed to a crestless, sullen swell. As night crept out in pursuit of the flying traveler, thin, ghost-like lines of white flashed through the yellow stream of ship's lights, and far forward at lessening intervals there sounded a dull, menacing boom of awakened monsters.
“A rough night,” someone called cheerily along the passage.
The girl in the single-cabin went across to her porthole and looked out. Every movement of her slim body was balanced, accustomed, responsive to every movement of the vessel. She might have been in the bedroom of an ordinary hotel, looking out casually on the storm-swept, city streets. Then, with the same careless comfort, she slipped out of the sable coat and began to unpack. The contents of the trunk were curious, however—two elaborate evening-dresses, an expensive-looking afternoon gown, two hats—visibly the possessions of wealth and an exquisite taste for the beautiful and costly—the rest were little more than rags. It was almost as though two personalities had been jumbled together by a ridiculously inconsequent hand. The girl chose out the more ornate evening dress of the two, then uncoiling her long fair hair began a toilette whose elaborateness suggested some great social function. Yet an hour later when she entered the dining-saloon of the Atlantic it was to confront an oppressive desolation; the rising storm had, in fact, proved too much for the vast majority, and only a handful of the two hundred first-class passengers had taken their places. Amongst these were the man Brian Monkhouse and, some seats further down the long, empty table, Gilbert Haig and his companion. The two latter glanced up at the newcomer as she entered and a certain vague look of puzzlement dawned in Haig's openly curious stare. He made an irresolute bow, but she appeared not to see him, and took her place quietly opposite Monkhouse, ignoring him as he ignored her. Throughout the meal she remained thus coldly unconscious of her human surroundings. Neither the dull, menacing boom of the seas as they flung themselves on the great liner in their flight before the wind nor the vessel's shuddering rise from beneath their blows seemed to arouse her even to a recognition of their significance. She sat undisturbed, eating with the deliberate relish of a gourmet, and between the courses her eyes passed unconcernedly round the gaudily ornate saloon, resting for an instant on every outstanding detail, but seeing no one. But from the moment of her entry she had become the center of a curiously antagonistic curiosity. She was incongruously beautiful, somewhat insolently indifferent in her isolation. Only men were present, and they had not troubled to change into evening clothes, relying on their nautical superiority to assure them a go-as-you-please freedom from convention. And she sat amongst them as a challenging comment, her loveliness surrounding her with a wall of white-hot light which at once attracted and repelled. Even Monkhouse, moodily engrossed in his food, was constrained to glance up at her, and as he did so something passed over his features, a fleeting look of recollected trouble which passed instantly. He did not look at her again. But Haig, with his eyes on her face, leaned towards his companion, and spoke openly of her.
“Of course, now I remember—couldn't place her for the moment. It's Ray East—from the Broadway. I was at a supper party with her and a whole flight of other birds of the same feather. She got a gold bracelet off me. Pretty, isn't she, but couldn't act for nuts, and as chilly as an iceberg. I suppose they've sacked her. A pretty face isn't everything, you know.”
It is better than nothing on a five days' sea journey, however, and half an hour later Haig sought for it in the drawing-room and afterwards in all the most sheltered portions of the ship. He found Ray East where he least expected to find her, near the stern of the vessel, her fragile dress protected by the sable coat, but her head bare to the flying wind. Haig came up to her and spoke to her, but the call of the coming storm drowned his voice and he touched her on the arm. She turned and looked at him. The dim light of a ship's lantern was on his face, but her expression was blank, showing no sign of recognition.
“You don't remember me,” he said, leaning forward so as to make himself audible; “but I remember you. You're Ray East.”
“Yes, I am Miss East,” she returned gravely.
He laughed.
“Oh, come, that's rather stiff, isn't it? I'm Gilbert Haig. We had supper together at the Martinique last fall and—”
“I have forgotten,” she interrupted with a cold significance.
“Don't be a little idiot.” He came closer, clinging to the taffrail as the ship lurched heavily. “You always were stiff, dear girl, but it's really rather too much of a thing, cutting an old pal. Why, I used to send you flowers, loads of them, and jolly pleased you were to get them. It encouraged the management.”
She drew away from him.
“I do remember you,” she said with a stifled gasp as the wind flung past her in a spasm of renewed fury, “and you were always insolent, Mr. Haig.”
“Thanks.” He was getting angry. Having made very sure of this much entertainment over a boring period of inactivity, the rebuff, taken together with the tempest, pricked his good-humored self-satisfaction to a petulant resentment. “And you were always rude, Miss East. Only in those days you were more careful.”
“As you insinuated—there was the management to be considered,” she returned.
“You bore with the flowers, then, for the management's sake?”
She nodded, and he made a last effort to appear composed. “I suppose you accepted that bracelet you are wearing for the same reason?”
“I won it in a wager,” she retorted. “You know that as well as I do.”
She turned her head to look at him, and what she saw written on his pale, dissipated face seemed to decide her. She leaned back against the taffrail and unfastened the gold bracelet with steady fingers. For an instant she held the yellow, shining chain at arm's length over the boiling water beneath them and let it fall. It passed like a tiny flash of light.
“I think that ends the subject,” she said.
“By God—” He lost his temper suddenly and completely, and caught her roughly by the wrist. She wrenched herself free, and the rolling of the ship separated them. Before Haig could recover his balance a shadow had fallen between them and instinctively both turned. The light was too uncertain for the recognition of the intruder's features, but the great shoulders cut in silhouette against the dim halo of a lantern were unmistakable. He said nothing, though he stood so close that his outstretched hand could have reached Haig's shoulder, and apparently he was gazing past the man and woman before him with a sightless indifference. Yet he remained standing there with a cool determination that was also brutal and mannerless and wholly effective. Haig stared at him in helpless fury, then shrugged his shoulders.
“A friend of yours, Miss East? I intrude?” Receiving no answer he lifted his hat with an exaggerated courtesy. “As you say—that closes the subject.” And swinging on his heel he fought his way back to the shelter of the companion-way.
Brian Monkhouse remained sightless and indifferent. Ray East had turned her back on him, her face to the biting wind, her eyes intent on the storm-lashed darkness, and suddenly her resolution seemed to get the better of his. He took a step forward so that he confronted her, sheltering her from the hurricane.
“Ought I to apologize?” he asked curtly. “I have been trying to make up my mind. Some women—like that sort of thing.”
She looked up at him. The fitful light was on his face, throwing black shadows into the eyes and into the furrows which took on the jagged, ugly look of scars. Her own face was set with something more than anger.
“If that is your opinion of women, I can understand your hesitation,” she said. “I only wonder that you interfered.”
“I dislike that type of man,” he returned imperturbably. “It amused me to annoy him.”
“In that case, since I played no part in your consideration, I owe you no thanks, and you owe me no apologies.”
Still he stood there looking down at her, and she loosened her grip of the taffrail and turned with a movement of repugnance and impatience. The next moment a giant wave rising up out of the darkness boomed against the vessel's side and flung along sheet of flying spray into her face. She recoiled and Monkhouse caught her and held her. The attack had been so sudden and violent that both were in danger of losing their footholds, and it was only as the vessel steadied from the shock that Ray East freed herself from her companion's grip. She was panting, and the hand which brushed the wet hair from her face trembled.
“I don't apologise, he said grimly.
“You don't need to,” she returned breathlessly. “It's rather an irony of fate—but I do thank you.”
He looked at her with a puzzled frown, then held out his arm.
“I am going to see you below deck,” he announced. “It's getting too rough for either of us and I am not going to leave you here, Miss East.”
“Do you know my name, then?”
“As you know mine.”
A faint smile relieved the hard line of her lips.
“How do you know I know?”
“By the way you shrink from my assistance—that is the attitude of all decent people who either know me or of me. Blackguard Brian—I am called by most of my friends.”
She laid her hand on his arm.
“We had better go,” she said. “I am not above receiving help from anyone.”
He made no answer. He guided her securely over the slippery decks to the companion-way, and once out of reach of the storm he released her and drew away from her with an elaborate significance.
“You don't need to bow to me to-morrow on this account,” he said sneeringly. “I make no charge.”
“Do you wish me to bow?” she asked. Her eyes shone at him from under the fine brows. There was something in her expression, in the wild disarray of her fair hair that made her seem the very spirit of the tempest they had fled from. He met her gaze as though it were a challenge.
“I have not spoken like this to a woman like you for twenty years,” he said. “Yes—I do wish it.”
“I only ask of you to remember your wish,” she returned more lightly.
“Oh, I shall remember—if that is any compensation to you for the sacrifice. Good night, Miss East.”
“Good night.”
She appeared, however, not to have seen the hand he held out toward her. She ran down the companion-stairs and he stood looking after her, his ugly face once more shadowed by a puzzled, painful recollection.