The facts were implicit in his manner; the suave grooming was synthetic, the coolness was plainly faked. All he really had left was an expression of public disdain. It was as if, having ceased to fool other people, he was now concentrating, with forlorn desperation, upon himself.
Captain Harmer recalled Jack Barrett's words—"He was broke; she bought him, and the title"—but he would have known the truth anyway. Sir Hubert proclaimed his status in a dozen ways; his wife proclaimed hers in one—the look she now gave the Captain as he stood in the doorway, and she snapped out, with consuming impatience:
"What is it?"
He was not going to take that, the Captain decided instantly; not from this haggard bitch, not from anyone. He came forward a couple of steps, so that they could see his uniform beyond a doubt, and said simply:
"Good afternoon."
Sir Hubert Beckwith muttered: "Afternoon," in an off-hand way, jerking his shoulders irritably as he said it. If his wife were annoyed at the interruption, then he had to be annoyed too. . .. Lady Beckwith continued to stare at her visitor as if he were a steward who had come in not only without knocking, but with a lot of his buttons undone as well. Then something in his manner, unimpressed, entirely unmoving, broke through to her; and with a flicker of a glacial smile, a second's fractional unbending, she said:
"I guess you must be the Captain."
Harmer nodded, somewhat bleakly. "Yes."
"I'm Lady Beckwith."
Her accent was curious; a basic American, overlaid with the kind of phoney gentility affected by the more refined type of English streetwalker. For a moment Captain Harmer had a wild idea that she might be a tremendously bad American actress impersonating one of the English upper classes. Then he took a second look at the chinchilla stole, and he knew that, for good or ill, Lady Beckwith was real. He said: "I know."
Lady Beckwith frowned. Clearly he had failed her; he had not fainted dead away, he had not even bowed deeply from the waist. As at many other moments of frustration, Harmer guessed, she spoke brusquely over her shoulder to her husband:
"Cigarette, Hubert!"
Sir Hubert's hand went swiftly to his trouser pocket, following, for the millionth time, his private drill-manual. Click! went the gold cigarette-case as it was opened: snap! went the gold lighter as he leant over to proffer the flame: pouf! went the elegant expulsion of breath as he extinguished it. With a curt nod, and through a cloud of blown smoke, Lady Beckwith said:
"Is it about the suite?"
"What suite is that, Lady Beckwith?" Harmer felt he could relax now; the only point of status which he wished to make had been made. "As a matter of fact, I just looked in to see if you were comfortable."
"I told them at the head office, I wanted the something Suite—" she snapped her fingers at her husband, "—what's that damn'-fool name?"
"Princess," said Sir Hubert readily.
"The Princess Suite. Isn't that supposed to be the best one in the ship?"
"It's certainly very comfortable indeed," answered the Captain reasonably. He gestured round the plush splendour of Suite A6, which was panelled in rosewood and carpeted in a soft shade of pink. "But don't you like this one?"
"That's not quite the point, is it, old boy?" said Sir Hubert, with extreme hauteur.
"Hubert!" said his wife sharply. And then: "I asked for the Princess Suite. What happened to it?"
"It was allocated to someone else."
"Who?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Tillotson."
"Never heard of them. Who are they?"
Captain Harmer looked at her. It was not his job to snap at the customers—the reverse, in fact—but sometimes the temptation was overwhelming.
"The Tillotsons are an American couple," he answered coldly. 'They also asked for the Princess Suite. Probably their application went in earlier, so they got it. First come, first served, you know." He decided, with regret, that he was doing less than justice to Myth Lines and the Alcestis. "I'm sure you'll be comfortable here," he went on. "We chose it specially for you. The Princess Suite and this one are almost identical."
"What does 'almost' mean?" asked Lady Beckwith tartly.
"You can hardly tell them apart."
"But is the other one any better?"
"It is six feet wider," answered the Captain, with sarcastic, painstaking accuracy. "It has an extra armchair. It has a fixed bar instead of a side-table. It costs four hundred dollars more. And it has a name instead of a number."
"Ah!" said Sir Hubert, as if the Captain had at last confessed his crime. "That's rather the point, what?"
"I don't quite understand," said Harmer politely.
"Hubert!" said Lady Beckwith. "Go fetch my manicure set. It's in the alligator case, someplace. And for the love of God put your coat on!"
"Yes, my sweet," said Sir Hubert, and disappeared into the cabin next door.
Lady Beckwith expelled another cloud of smoke, and looked levelly at the Captain. The light caught the jewels at her throat, and less flatteringly, the etched lines from nostrils to mouth, the collapse of pleasure into discontent.
"Not such a hell of a good start," she observed, disagreeably.
"How do you mean?"
"I'm paying top prices," said Lady Beckwith. "I expect to be looked after properly. Your ads certainly talk enough about it. . . . Now I find that the best suite, the only one I wanted, has been given to God-knows-who from Kokomo. What sort of deal is that?"
"Lady Beckwith," said the Captain firmly, "you really cannot expect me to turn people out of the accommodation assigned to them, just because you want it yourself."
Lady Beckwith looked at him as if this were just what she did expect. But the firmness of his tone forbade her to make the point; she knew she would have lost, and that would have been intolerable.
"Well, I hope they appreciate it," she said unpleasantly. "Though it doesn't exactly sound—"
Her husband appeared at the communicating door. "Sweetheart," he began hesitantly.
"What is it?"
"I can't find it."
"Look again. Get the stewardess. And I want my fur coat, too. This place is like a morgue."
"Yes, my darling."
"Well," said Captain Harmer, "I must get back to work." It would have been bliss to add: And thank God I'm not working for you, like that poor chewed-up piece of string. But there were certain luxuries which a ship's captain could not afford, and this was one of them.
Lady Beckwith suddenly came to the alert.
"Thanks for calling, Captain," she said unexpectedly.
"Not at all," said Harmer.
"We'll be seeing you at dinner," said Lady Beckwith, with unblinking confidence.
It would have been further bliss, a whole mountain of it, to have answered:Yes—I'll wave to you across the dining-saloon. But once again, it had to be foregone. Jack Barrett was right: Sir Hubert and Lady Beckwith, by virtue of their rank, had to be seated at his table, even if they appeared in rags and ate with their feet. It was unfair, it was disgusting; but it was a fixed item in that adroit social blandishment which (it must be faced) kept the Alcestis afloat. Rich people had to be flattered; people with titles had to be appeased. The end-result was a full passenger-list at the highest prices in the world: dollars for Britain, dividends for stock-holders, material joy at an official level. If it meant excruciating headaches for captains at the same time, that was what they were paid for.