The captain got to his feet and pulled out her chair. “Come in, Lady Mary. It’s good to see you at last. We’ve been waitin’ these three days.”
He was a Scotsman, the burr heavy on his tongue. She gave him a glint of a smile then and walked slowly toward his table. And suddenly, as she passed Rann’s table, the ship gave a great lurch, hit by a huge wave, the seventh wave of a seventh wave, the second mate had told him, and she would have fallen had he not leaped to his feet to catch her in his arms and keep her steady.
“Thank you,” she said in a clear soft voice.
She clung to his arm nevertheless until she reached her seat. Then he returned to his own place, aware only of the softness of her slender body under the green satin dress. Yet she was not very young, he thought, trying not to look at her though glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. Her profile was turned to him, a lovely profile, too strong perhaps for strict beauty, but somehow very beautiful. And if she was not young, neither was she old—perhaps thirty or thirty-five? But that was twice as old as he, though not old enough, not really, to be his mother. He could not imagine her being a mother. Lady Mary, the captain had called her, and that meant she was English and perhaps even lived in a castle somewhere. But it was not likely that she would notice a boy. Nor did he indeed wish for her notice. He was too young, too young except to see, as he saw everything, the vividness of her coloring and her supple grace. She was listening to something the captain was saying, a half smile on her lips. She was eating, too, with a frank appetite that somehow surprised him because she was so slender.
People were talking again, accustomed now to her presence, but he scarcely listened, except as he always listened, saying little himself but storing away unconsciously the sound of these voices, the changing expressions of their faces, their postures, their ways of eating, all details of life while though useless, it seemed, in themselves, he could not help accumulating because it was how he lived.
He would have forgotten Lady Mary, perhaps, as no more than part of the ship’s life, this small contained world, confined between sea and sky, except that the next day, a windy bright morning, when he stood at his usual place at the ship’s prow, he felt a hand on his arm, and turning saw her there, buttoned from neck to knees in a silver gray mackintosh.
“You have my place, boy,” she said at his ear. “Whenever I’m on a ship, my place is here at the prow.”
He was so startled that he stepped back and trod on her foot. She grimaced and then laughed.
“What a heavy-footed lad you are,” she cried against the wind.
“I’m sorry—so sorry,” he stammered, but she only laughed and, tucking her hand in his elbow, she drew him with her.
“There’s room for the two of us, surely,” she said, and held him there, her hand still in his arm and her bright hair flying back from her face.
He stood there then, linked to her, the strong west wind pressing her against him, and together and yet completely separate and in total silence they gazed across the sea. It might have been an hour before either of them moved or spoke, but he was conscious of her in a strange new way, shy and not shy together. Then she stepped back, releasing her hold on his arm.
“I’m going below,” she said. “I’ve letters to write. I hate writing letters, don’t you?”
“I have only my mother and my grandfather, and I haven’t written them,” he said.
“Ah, but you should and you must,” she told him. “Put your letters in the ship’s post and they’ll be mailed as soon as we land. I’ll give you some English stamps.”
She nodded and turned away and left him standing there and feeling strangely alone and somehow restless. He did not want to stay there alone. It had not really occurred to him to write his mother or his grandfather until he reached England. There would then be so much more to tell—London, for example. But now he felt she was right—he should write them. The letters could be mailed that much earlier. He went below and found a quiet corner in the dining saloon and wrote two letters, each surprisingly long. There was something pleasurable in trying to put into written language some of the sights of the sea and sky and ship. Of Lady Mary he wrote not a word, not knowing, indeed, what to say. If he singled her out, what would they think? And for that matter, why should he single her out, a woman nearly old enough to be his mother? But not quite—
“AND SO WHERE WILL YOU BE GOING in England?” she inquired abruptly.
It was the last day on the ship. Next morning, before noon, they would be landing at Southampton. There he would take the train to London. His grandfather had given him specific directions.
“To London. My grandfather gave me the name of a place—a small hotel, very clean,” he told her now.
“It’s odd, your being alone,” she said.
“My father and mother were coming too,” he told her, “but he died. Then she thought he’d have wanted me to come anyway. I’m—rather young for college, you see.”
“How old are you?” she asked in her pretty, silvery English voice.
“Sixteen,” he said reluctantly, half-ashamed to be so young.
“Sixteen! Oh, I say—not really!” she cried. He nodded and she stared at him.
“But you’re so—enormously tall! I’d have said twenty, at least. American men look so young anyway—yes, twenty—maybe twenty-two. Good Heavens, you child! Why, you can’t go wandering about alone! Where are you bound for?”
“China,” he said simply.
She gasped and then broke into bright laughter. “China! Oh, nonsense! Why ever China?”
“My grandfather lived there for seven years and he says they’re the wisest, most civilized people on Earth.”
“But you don’t speak Chinese, surely?”
“I can learn languages very easily.”
“What do you speak now?” she demanded.
“English, French, German, Italian—some Spanish. I was going to take it this year. I would have before, but my father thought the literatures in the other languages were more important. Besides, I might go to Spain. There it would be very easy for me to pick it up. Of course, I don’t count Latin—it’s basic anyway.”
She looked at him with a curious, penetrating gaze, her eyes very dark.
“Look here,” she said decisively. “You are not going to London to some small hotel alone. You are coming home with me. I’ve a place outside of London and you’ll learn about England from there.”
“But—”
“No buts—you’ll do what I say! I live quite alone since my husband was killed in the war—Sir Moresby Seaton. It will cheer me up to have someone young in the house. I can’t bear relatives. Who knows? I might even go to China with you. I went to America, and that’s almost as odd. I went quite alone, too—and had a marvelous time. Americans are such talkers, aren’t they—not you, though! You’re a silent lad.”
“I like listening,” he said, “and watching.”
“But it is a very old castle,” she continued, “and it has quite a history in my husband’s family. He was the last male, and we had no children, alas. His fault or mine, who knows—or cares? And he was rather old-fashioned—‘traditional’ would be a better word, perhaps, for he loved sports—hunting and all that sort of thing, but he believed if one had no children, well, one hadn’t them. And so when I die the castle will go to a nephew—a nice chap, older than you by twenty years, married and with three sons, so there’ll always be a Seaton in the castle, and that’s all that matters. Curiously enough, I’m glad now that I have no children. I can be myself—not divided. Children do divide a woman, in an odd sort of way. One’s never quite whole after the division. There’s always something gone. And I shan’t marry again—ever! I’ve made up my mind on that. Not sentimentally, either—but because I find I like being alone. I don’t believe in a one-and-only—though I was frightfully in love with my husband. Oh, yes—I was happily married—happily enough, that is.”