Love Stories Part 33

"Better than this morning. The wind's gone down, hasn't it?"

He did not answer her. He sat on the side of the chair and looked her over.

"You want to keep well," he warned her. "The whole key to your doing anything is vitality. That's the word--Life."

She smiled. It seemed so easy. Life? She was full-fed with the joy of it. Even as she sat, her active feet in their high-heeled shoes were aching to be astir.

"Working in the gymnasium?" he demanded.

"Two hours a day, morning and evening. Feel."

She held out her arm to him, and he felt its small, rounded muscle, with a smile. But his heavily fringed eyes were on her face, and he kept his hold until she shook it off.

"Who's the soldier boy?" he asked suddenly.

"Lieutenant Hamilton. He's rather nice. Don't you think so?"

"He'll do to play with on the trip. You'll soon lose him in London."

The winter darkness closed down round them. Stewards were busy closing ports and windows with fitted cardboards. Through the night the ship would travel over the dangerous lanes of the sea with only her small port and starboard lights. A sense of exhilaration possessed Edith. This hurling forward over black water, this sense of danger, visualised by precautions, this going to something new and strange, set every nerve to jumping. She threw back her rug, and getting up went to the rail. Lethway, the manager, followed her.

"Nervous, aren't you?"

"Not frightened, anyhow."

It was then that he told her how he had sized the situation up. She was a hit or nothing.

"If you go all right," he said, "you can have the town. London's for you or against you, especially if you're an American. If you go flat----"

"Then what?"

She had not thought of that. What would she do then? Her salary was not to begin until the performances started. Her fare and expenses across were paid, but how about getting back? Even at the best her salary was small. That had been one of her attractions to Lethway.

"I'll have to go home, of course," she said. "If they don't like me, and decide in a hurry, I--I may have to borrow money from you to get back."

"Don't worry about that." He put a hand over hers as it lay on the rail, and when she made no effort to release it he bent down and kissed her warm fingers. "Don't you worry about that," he repeated.

She did worry, however. Down in her cabin, not so tidy as the boy's--littered with her curiously anomalous belongings, a great bunch of violets in the wash bowl, a cheap toilet set, elaborate high-heeled shoes, and a plain muslin nightgown hanging to the door--down there she opened her trunk and got out her contract.

There was nothing in it about getting back home.

For a few minutes she was panicky. Her hands shook as she put the doc.u.ment away. She knew life with all the lack of illusion of two years in the chorus. Even Lethway--not that she minded his casual caress on the deck. She had seen a lot of that. It meant nothing.

Stage directors either bawled you out or petted you. That was part of the business.

But to-night, all day indeed, there had been something in Lethway's face that worried her. And there were other things.

The women on the boat replied coldly to her friendly advances. She had spoken to a nice girl, her own age or thereabouts, and the girl's mother or aunt or chaperon, whoever it was, had taken her away. It had puzzled her at the time. Now she knew. The crowd that had seen her off, from the Pretty Coquette Company--that had queered her, she decided. That and Lethway.

None of the girls had thought it odd that she should cross the ocean with Lethway. They had been envious, as a matter of fact. They had brought her gifts, the queer little sachets and fruit and boxes of candy that littered the room. In that half hour before sailing they had chattered about her, chorus unmistakably, from their smart, cheap little hats to their short skirts and fancy shoes. Her roommate, Mabel, had been the only one she had hated to leave. And Mabel had queered her, too, with her short-bobbed yellow hair.

She did a reckless thing that night, out of pure defiance. It was a winter voyage in wartime. The night before the women had gone down, sedately dressed, to dinner. The girl she had tried to speak to had worn a sweater. So Edith dressed for dinner.

She whitened her neck and arms with liquid powder, and slicked up her brown hair daringly smooth and flat. Then she put on her one evening dress, a black net, and pinned on her violets. She rouged her lips a bit too.

The boy, meeting her on the companionway, gasped.

That night he asked permission to move over to her table, and after that the three of them ate together, Lethway watching and saying little, the other two chattering. They were very gay. They gambled to the extent of a quarter each, on the number of fronds, or whatever they are, in the top of a pineapple that Cecil ordered in, and she won. It was delightful to gamble, she declared, and put the fifty cents into a smoking-room pool.

The boy was clearly infatuated. She looked like a debutante, and, knowing it, acted the part. It was not acting really. Life had only touched her so far, and had left no mark. When Lethway lounged away to an evening's bridge Cecil fetched his military cape and they went on deck.

"I'm afraid it's rather lonely for you," he said. "It's always like this the first day or two. Then the women warm up and get friendly."

"I don't want to know them. They are a stupid-looking lot. Did you ever see such clothes?"

"You are the only person who looks like a lady to-night," he observed. "You look lovely. I hope you don't mind my saying it?"

She was a downright young person, after all. And there was something about the boy that compelled candour. So, although she gathered after a time that he did not approve of chorus girls, was even rather skeptical about them and believed that the stage should be an uplifting influence, she told him about herself that night.

It was a blow. He rallied gallantly, but she could see him straggling to gain this new point of view.

"Anyhow," he said at last, "you're not like the others." Then hastily: "I don't mean to offend you when I say that, you know. Only one can tell, to look at you, that you are different." He thought that sounded rather boyish, and remembered that he was going to the war, and was, or would soon be, a fighting man. "I've known a lot of girls," he added rather loftily. "All sorts of girls."

It was the next night that Lethway kissed her. He had left her alone most of the day, and by sheer gravitation of loneliness she and the boy drifted together. All day long they ranged the ship, watched a boxing match in the steerage, fed bread to the hovering gulls from the stern. They told each other many things. There had been a man in the company who had wanted to marry her, but she intended to have a career. Anyhow, she would not marry unless she loved a person very much.

He eyed her wistfully when she said that.

At dusk he told her about the girl in Toronto.

"It wasn't an engagement, you understand. But we've been awfully good friends. She came to see me off. It was rather awful. She cried. She had some sort of silly idea that I'll get hurt."

It was her turn to look wistful. Oh, they were getting on! When he went to ask the steward to bring tea to the corner they had found, she looked after him. She had been so busy with her own worries that she had not thought much of the significance of his neatly belted khaki. Suddenly it hurt her. He was going to war.

She knew little about the war, except from the pictures in ill.u.s.trated magazines. Once or twice she had tried to talk about it with Mabel, but Mabel had only said, "It's fierce!" and changed the subject.

The uniforms scattered over the ship and the precautions taken at night, however, were bringing this thing called war very close to her. It was just beyond that horizon toward which they were heading.

And even then it was brought nearer to her.

Under cover of the dusk the girl she had tried to approach came up and stood beside her. Edith was very distant with her.

"The nights make me nervous," the girl said. "In the daylight it is not so bad. But these darkened windows bring it all home to me--the war, you know."

"I guess it's pretty bad."

"It's bad enough. My brother has been wounded. I am going to him."

Even above the sound of the water Edith caught the thrill in her voice. It was a new tone to her, the exaltation of sacrifice.

"I'm sorry," she said. And some subconscious memory of Mabel made her say: "It's fierce!"