"I must say I'm still pretty wide-awake. We might have a night-cap on board, what?"
Carl, motioning to the Captain to precede him, smiled inwardly. It sounded as though tonight would indeed be the night.
It had started, like all English love-making, as a series of merry jokes and timid ventures. How about a good-night drink, ha! ha! My wife seems to be busy, ha! ha! More cosy in your cabin, what? Ha! Ha! Let's put the lights out and enjoy the view, ha! ha! Perhaps we'll be more comfortable on the bed, ha! ha! ha! But from then on, helped by alcohol and judicious favours, Beckwith had gained courage and a certain crude insistence; and his last throw of the dice—"Better lock the door, what?"—had been made with hard-breathing authority. She had locked both doors, and pushed the key out of sight behind a pile of magazines. Then she turned, and in the light of the bedside lamp found that the action was about to be joined.
Sir Hubert Beckwith was discarding his trousers. Even this, he managed to do as if he were conferring nobility upon some female peasant. He had a monogram on his under-pants. The time had clearly come.
Kathy sat down on the bed, and said, in a very distinct voice: "What in hell are you doing?"
Sir Hubert started. Above the hum of the engines, and the creaking noises the Alcestis always made at sea, Kathy's words had rung out with electrifying clarity. He straightened up, a lanky and ridiculous figure in his striped under-pants, and said, in a nervous whisper:
"Sh! Not so loud, for heaven's sake! Someone will hear."
"I should damn well hope so!" said Kathy, with the same clarity and force. "What do you think this is? The locker-room at the Y?"
Irresolute, not equipped to argue from so weak a position, he said: "But I thought . . . Good heavens, we were just talking about it! I mean, not in so many words, but ... I thought when you kissed me—"
"Have you gone completely nuts? I asked you down for a drink, and you suddenly start undressing! What do you think you're going to do?"
It was sufficiently clear what Sir Hubert had thought he was going to do, and equally clear that he could quickly lose his appetite for it. Already he had picked his trousers up, with a kind of sulky grandeur, and was drawing them on again. He must, thought Kathy, have felt himself excessively vulnerable, if it had taken so little to unnerve him; fear of scandal, warring briefly with desire, had overrun the position and dictated a most prompt retreat. It was worth remembering. . . . Adjusting his scarlet braces, he said, in tones of majestic reproof:
"You seem to have changed your mind. Quite extraordinary!'*'
Kathy waited. Her disgust at the situation was almost dispelled! by its humour; it was all she could do not to burst out laughing in his face. Finally, when he was fully dressed again, and preparing; aloofly to leave, she said:
"Not quite so fast. Do you think you can get away with this?/ Wait till my stepfather hears about it!"
"I hope," said Sir Hubert, in perceptible alarm, "that you will not be silly enough to tell him."
"Tell him?" Kathy forced a full measure of indignation into her voice. "I won't need to tell him! He'll find out, soon enough! And so will your wife."
Sir Hubert started again, more violently, as if a painful nerve had been touched. It was the first time he had reacted naturally, without reserve or hauteur; both seemed to be melting away. "My wife has nothing whatever to do with this," he said, in a thoroughly uncertain voice.
"Not yet, she hasn't," answered Kathy. "She's up on the bridge with my stepfather and some of the others, seeing the sunrise. You know that, darn well." Her voice took on a crisp inflexion. "But soon it'll be light, and then they'll all come down."
"Well?" But he knew the answer already.
"Your wife will come looking for you, And my stepfather will find us here, with the door locked."
"But nothing's happened."
"Try and tell him that!"
"Why should he come here, anyway?"
"This is his cabin."
Sir Hubert, who was obviously not at his best, took a few moments to work the situation out. But when it hit him, it was a mortal wound.
"My God!" he said. "You planned this whole thing."
"Yes."
"What is it you want?"
"Money."
Sir Hubert swallowed, as if he had something very unusual to admit. Finally he admitted it. "I haven't any."
"Don't give me that," said Kathy crudely. "You can't have come on a cruise like this, and not have money. Look at those cuff-links. Look at that cigarette-case. You've got plenty! Give some to me."
"I mean, I never carry any money with me."
"Then you'd better leave me the links and the case, while you go and get some." As he advanced a step towards her, she said: "Don't try anything rough, or I'll start ringing bells and screaming the place down."
"Let me out of here," said Sir Hubert stoutly. But his front was crumbling from moment to moment; there was now a wildness in his look which was a long way from the noble suavity which had been his most detested hall-mark. He turned, and tried the doorknob. "Where's the key? Give me the key."
"Give me the money," she countered, "and you'll get the key. You won't get it otherwise!"
"It's my word against yours!" His voice had sharpened a full octave of hysteria.
"Maybe. But do you really want my stepfather knocking on that door? What are you going to say to him? What are you going to tell your wife? The door locked itself? You were afraid of burglars? You'd better pay up, and damn' quickly!"
Sir Hubert stood looking at her for a full half-minute, the sweat gleaming dull on his forehead. It was clear that he was beginning to be terrified; the idea of his wife finding him in the cabin, or even hearing about it afterwards, must have seemed in the realm of irretrievable disaster. He tried the door again, with furtive, futile energy; the fact that it was still locked seemed to push him over the edge of self-control. Turning away, he collapsed into a chair, and covered his face with his hands. From there, he mumbled indistinctly:
"I haven't any money. It's all my wife's."
They were getting on, thought Kathy; he had made the big admission, breaching the dyke of his enormous self-esteem, and soon he would
204
make others as well. The important thing was to keep him on the run.
"Of course it's all your wife's," she answered roughly. "Who do you think you've been fooling? Everyone in the ship knows you're a full-time phoney! But you can still get some money. From her. Can't you?"
Sir Hubert would no longer look at her. By the ebbing of alcohol, by the terror of discovery, he was reduced to a small ashamed voice in a collapsing world. "She keeps me very short," he said finally. "A sort of allowance. I can't possibly ask for more. I have to account for every penny of it, as it is." After a moment he added: "You can't imagine what it's like."
Kathy stared at him. If he was acting, it was a very good act; but she knew that he was telling the truth. Only a desperate fear would have made him admit such pitiful facts. She hardened her heart, determined to make some advantage out of it.
"O.K., have it your own way. We'll just stay here till something happens. I'm not giving you the key until you pay, that's for sure."
"But I can't pay." His voice was now dull, as if many shameful blows were falling on him at the same time. "I haven't any money left. Literally none at all."
"How much does she give you?" asked Kathy curiously.
"It varies with—with how she feels. Last week it was ten dollars."
Between pity and disgust, she was almost ready to write the whole thing off, and let him go. She was using a lever against a vacuum; there was nothing to be gained from this insect of a man. . . . But before she could make up her mind, Beckwith was speaking again; the words suddenly began to pour out, and though his head was still bowed and he was talking to the floor, she knew that he was aiming directly at her heart, out of his terrible need.