He replaced the wrenches. His mouth tasted of machine oil and he spat. The captain yet snored, and he passed through the captain’s room on his bare feet, closing the door thoughtfully so the light from the passage wouldn’t disturb the sleeper. He slipped the rod into his pocket. His hands were greasy and so he wiped them on the seat of his trousers.
He paused again at the galley door, where the steward was still busy over the sink. The steward stopped long enough to find a candle for him, then he returned to his room. He lit the candle, drew Mr. Talliaferro’s suitcase from beneath the bunk and dripping a bit of hot wax onto it, he fixed the candle upright. Then he got Mr. Talliaferro’s pigskin-enclosed shaving kit and propped the rod upon it with one end of the rod in the candle flame. His mouth still tasted of machine oil, so he climbed onto his berth and spat through the port, discovering as he did so that the port was screened. It’ll dry, though.
He touched the rod. It was getting warm. But he wanted it red hot. His mouth yet tasted of machine oil and he remembered the other cigarette. It was in the same pocket in which he had had the rod, and it too was slightly reminiscent of machinery, but the burning tobacco would soon kill that.
The rod was getting pretty hot, so he fetched the wooden cylinder from the bunk and laying the cigarette on the edge of the suitcase he picked up the rod and held its heated end firmly against the selected spot on the cylinder; and soon a thin thread of smoke rose curling into the windless air. The smoke had a faint odor like that of scorching leather in it, also. Machine oil, probably.
TEN O’CLOCK
It’s being an artist, Mrs. Maurier said to herself with helpless despondence. Mrs. Wiseman, Miss Jameson, Mark, and Mr. Talliaferro sat at bridge. She herself did not feel like playing: the strain of her party kept her too nervous and wrought up. “You simply cannot tell what they’re going to do,” she said aloud in her exasperation, seeing again Major Ayers’s vanishing awkward shape and Fairchild leaning over the rail and howling after him like a bullvoiced Druid priest at a sacrifice.
“Yes,” Mrs. Wiseman agreed, “it’s like an excursion, isn’t it? — all drunkenness and trampling around,” she added, attempting to finesse. “Damn you, Mark.”
“It’s worse than that,” the niece corrected, pausing to watch the hissing fall of cards, “it’s like a cattle boat — all trampling around.”
Mrs. Maurier sighed. “Whatever it is—” Her sentence died stillborn. The niece drifted away and a tall shape appeared from shadow and joined her, and they went on down the dark deck and from her sight. It was that queer shabby Mr. Gordon, and she knew a sudden sharp stab of conscience, of having failed in her duty as a hostess. She had barely exchanged a word with him since they came aboard. It’s that terrible Mr. Fairchild, she told herself. But who could have known that a middleaged man, and a successful novelist, could or would conduct himself so?
The moon was getting up, spreading a silver flare of moonlight on the water. The Nausikaa swung gently at her cables, motionless but never still, sleeping but not dead, as is the manner of ships on the seas of the world; cradled like a silver dreaming gull on the water. . her yacht. Her party, people whom she had invited together for their mutual pleasure. . Maybe they think I ought to get drunk with them, she thought.
She roused herself, creating conversation. The card players shuffled and dealt interminably, replying Mmmm to her remarks, irrelevant and detached, or pausing to answer sensibly with a patient deference. Mrs. Maurier rose briskly.
“Come, people, I know you are tired of cards. Let’s have some music and dance a while.”
“I’d rather play bridge with Mark than dance with him,” Mrs. Wiseman said. . “Whose trick was that?”
“There’ll be plenty of men when the music starts,” Mrs. Maurier said.
“Mmmm,” replied Mrs. Wiseman. . “It’ll take more than a Victrola record to get any men on this party. . You’ll need extradition papers. . Three without and three aces. How much is that, Ernest?”
“Wouldn’t you like to dance, Mr. Talliaferro?” Mrs. Maurier persisted.
“Whatever you wish, dear lady,” Mr. Talliaferro answered with courteous detachment, busy with his pencil. “That makes—” He totted a column of his neat figures, then he raised his head. “I beg your pardon: did you say something?”
“Don’t bother,” Mrs. Maurier said. “I’ll put on a record myself: I’m sure our party will gather when they hear it.” She wound up the portable Victrola and put on a record. “You finish your rubber, and I’ll look about and see whom I can find,” she added. Mmmm, they replied.
The Victrola raised its teasing rhythms of saxophones and drums, and Mrs. Maurier prowled around, peering into the shadows. She found the steward first, whom she dispatched to the gentlemen with a command couched in the form of an invitation. Then farther along she discovered Gordon, and her niece sitting on the rail with her legs locked about a stanchion.
“Do be careful,” she said, “you might fall. We are going to dance a while,” she added happily.
“Not me,” her niece answered quickly. “Not tonight, anyway. You have to dance enough in this world on dry land.”
“You will certainly not prevent Mr. Gordon dancing, however. Come, Mr. Gordon, we need you.”
“I don’t dance,” Gordon answered shortly.
“You don’t dance?” Mrs. Maurier repeated. “You really don’t dance at all?”
“Run along, Aunt Pat,” the niece answered for him. “We’re talking about art.”
Mrs. Maurier sighed. “Where’s Theodore?” she asked at last. “Perhaps he will help us out.”
“He’s in bed. He went to bed right after dinner. But you might go down and ask him if he wants to get up and dance.”
Mrs. Maurier stared helplessly at Gordon. Then she turned away. The steward met her. jhe gentlemen were sorry, but they had all gone to bed. They were tired after such a strenuous day. She sighed again and passed on to the companionway. There seemed to be nothing else she could do for them. I’ve certainly tried, she told herself, taking this thin satisfaction, and stopped again while something shapeless in the dark companionway unbent, becoming two; and after a while Pete said from the darkness:
“It’s me and Jenny.”
Jenny made a soft meaningless sound, and Mrs. Maurier bent forward suspiciously. Mrs. Wiseman’s remark about excursion boats recurred to her.
“You are enjoying the moon, I suppose?” she remarked.
“Yessum,” Jenny answered. “We’re just sitting here.”
“Don’t you children want to dance? They have started the Victrola,” Mrs. Maurier said in a resurgence of optimism.
“Yessum,” said Jenny again, after a while. But they made no further move, and Mrs. Maurier sniffed. Quite genteelly, and she said icily:
“Excuse me, please.”
They made room for her to pass and she descended without looking back again, and found her door. She snapped the light switch viciously. Then she sighed again.
It’s being an artist, she told herself again, helplessly.
* * *
“Damn, damn, damn,” said Mrs. Wiseman slapping her cards on the table. The Victrola record had played itself through and into an endless monotonous rasping. “Mark, stop that thing, as you love God. I’m far enough behind, without being jinxed.” The ghostly poet rose obediently and Mrs. Wiseman swept her hand amid the cards on the table, scattering them. “I’m not going to spend any more of my life putting little spotted squares of paper in orderly sequence for three dull people, not tonight, anyway. Gimme a cigarette, someone.” She thrust her chair back and Mr. Talliaferro opened his case to her. She took one and lifted her foot to the other knee and scratched a match on the sole of her slipper. “Let’s talk a while instead.”