The Pagan Madonna - Page 102/141

"Did they steal anything?"

Cunningham could positively see Cleigh's jowls redden as he shook his head

to the query.

"Sorry. You can't expect us to waste coal hunting for a scoundrel who only

borrowed your yacht."

But what was the row between Cleigh and his son? That was a puzzler. Not a

word! They ignored each other absolutely. These dinners were queer games,

to be sure. All three men spoke to the girl, but neither of the Cleighs

spoke to him or to each other. A string of glass beads!

What about himself? What had caused his exuberance to die away, his

enthusiasm to grow dim? Why, a month gone he would burst into such gales

of laughter that his eyes would fill with tears at the thought of this

hour! And the wine tasted flat. The greatest sea joke of the age, and he

couldn't boil up over it any more!

Love? He had burnt himself out long ago. But had it been love? Rather had

it not been a series of false dawns? To a weepy-waily woman he would have

offered the same courtesies, but she would not have drawn his thoughts in

any manner. And this one kept entering his thoughts at all times. That

would be a joke, wouldn't it? At this day to feel the scorch of genuine

passion!

To dig a pit for Cleigh and to stumble into another himself! In setting

this petard he hadn't got out of range quickly enough. His sense of humour

was so keen that he laughed aloud, with a gesture which invited the gods

to join him.

Jane, who had been watching the solitary figure from the corner of the

deck house and wondering who it was, recognized the voice. The cabin had

been stuffy, her own mental confusion had driven sleep away, so she had

stolen on deck for the purpose of viewing the splendours of the Oriental

night. The stars that seemed so near, so soft; the sea that tossed their

reflections hither and yon, or spun a star magically into a silver thread

and immediately rolled it up again; the brilliant electric blue of the

phosphorescence and the flash of flying fish or a porpoise that ought to

have been home and in bed.

She hesitated. She was puzzled. She was not afraid of him--the puzzle lay

somewhere else. She was a little afraid of herself. She was afraid of

anything that could not immediately be translated into ordinary terms of

expression. The man frankly wakened her pity. He seemed as lonely as the

sea itself. Slue-Foot! And somewhere a woman had laughed at him. Perhaps

that had changed everything, made him what he was.