After resisting the impulse at least half a dozen times, Grant finally found his way, after dinner that evening, to the dancing deck aft. It was a very beautifully arranged space, given over in the daytime to various games, and at night covered with a specially prepared floor for dancing. The windows opened all the way round, and in hot weather the roof rolled back. From one of the window seats he watched for some little time. Susan was, as usual, surrounded by admirers, but she was unlucky in her partners. Three or four times he saw her finish a dance a little abruptly and stroll with her companion on the open portion of the deck. After watching a particularly unsuccessful effort, he made his way towards her. Although he concealed his condition admirably, no neophyte fresh from boarding school and attending his first dance could have been more nervous.
“May I have a dance, Lady Susan?” he asked.
She looked at him without immediately replying. For a moment she was more like the Susan of Monte Carlo, even though there was something faintly resentful in her expression. It was at least feeling of a sort.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “but do you know I really can’t get my feet to go to-night? I think I must have played too much tennis. Tell me, have you heard how Mr. Blunn is this evening?”
“I haven’t enquired since dinner,” Grant replied. “I will let you know if I hear later.”
He turned away and walked out on to the open deck. There was nothing more to be done. He was in a hopeless position. There was nothing he could say to her, no complaint he could make, no excuse he could offer. He drew a wicker chair to the side of the rail, threw himself down, lit a pipe, and began to smoke. Somehow or other the tobacco tasted wrong, even the beauty of the night seemed to increase his depression. Presently he left of? smoking, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. They were playing a waltz he used to dance with Susan. He lay still and listened.
Susan, crossing the deck in search of her father, discovered him in conversation with the Prince and Princess von Diss. She stopped and was half inclined to retreat. Gertrude, however, had already turned towards her.
“Lady Susan,” she said, “I was just sending my husband to look for you. Will you come and sit with me for a moment?”
Susan glanced meaningly towards her father, who she had been told was looking for her. He mistook her appeal for help and smiled acquiescence.
“Do, Susan,” he enjoined. “I only sent for you to say that I was going to the smoke room. Von Diss and I will finish our little discussion there.”
Gertrude led the way towards a distant corner where there were two comfortable chairs. Susan walked by her side, apparently at her ease, but inwardly fuming. There was something about this woman which always made her feel young and unformed.
“Of course, my dear Lady Susan,” Gertrude began, “I know that you detest having to talk to me. But you see it really can’t be helped. My husband is meeting your father officially and, so long as my husband has decided to make me so, I am a perfectly respectable woman.”
“I have had very little experience in the ethics of such matters,” Susan replied. “I am content as a rule to follow my own judgment.”
Gertrude settled herself quite comfortably in her chair.
“Ah, well,” she sighed, “you’re very young. It is just your youth which makes your judgment so absurd. You’re very angry with Mr. Grant Slattery, aren’t you?”
“Whatever my feelings may be with regard to Mr. Slattery, or any other man,” Lady Susan rejoined quietly, “they concern—if you will forgive my saying so—myself alone.”
“Very foolish,” Gertrude murmured. “Listen to me, please. Poor Grant, he really is in a ridiculous position. If there weren’t just a spice of tragedy attached to the situation, I am sure I should never accept the role of obvious idiot which seems thrust upon me.”
“I hope you’re not going to offer me any confidences,” Susan begged. “I do not desire them.”
“My dear Lady Prig, you’re going to hear what is good for you,” Gertrude continued calmly. “You can’t get up and leave me, because I am an older woman, and it would be very rude of you. You probably think that when Mr. Slattery said good-by to you in Monte Carlo he knew that I was going to America with him. Well, the poor man didn’t know anything of the sort.”
“He didn’t know?” Susan repeated incredulously. “Why, it was the night before.”
“Precisely,” Gertrude acquiesced. “You see, I was very fond of Grant Slattery, and I couldn’t quite believe that he had lost all feeling for me. Sheer vanity of course,—for which I suffered. I knew quite well that if I had asked him to take me away he would have refused point-blank—because I had already asked him and he had refused—but I wanted to go away with him and I took a risk. I went on board his yacht as a stowaway. He hadn’t the faintest idea I was there until the yacht was a day and a half out. He wouldn’t have known, even then, if I hadn’t nearly fainted from hunger.”
Susan sat quite still for a moment. She was struggling to emulate her companion’s composure.
“It sounds incredible,” she murmured.
“It is the truth, nevertheless,” Gertrude assured her. “When I disclosed myself, he was aghast. He took no pains to hide from me the fact that my presence there was utterly undesired. For some time he considered landing me at Gibraltar. That, however, would have made the matter no better from any point of view, and I suppose he realised that it would have been a particularly brutal act. So he let me stay. He had to.”
There was a pause. Gertrude seemed to be listening to the music. Suddenly she recommenced.
“Of course, the rest of the story is absurd, as well as being humiliating. Why I tell it to you I really don’t know. I made an idiot of myself in the usual way, and I forced Grant into the usual hopeless position. I suppose because he was in love with you, he played the Sir Galahad for some time with almost ridiculous perfection. Then one night we ran into a terrible storm. I was frightened, and Grant—he is really very kind-hearted—began to realise that he had been hurting me badly every moment of the time. I became emotional and finally desperate. I will spare you the rest of the story—but I gave Grant no chance. Afterwards I understood how hideous one-sided love can be. If I had wronged my husband I paid in the suffering of those three or four days before I could get Grant to land me at Newport. I only saw him for a few minutes at meal times and afterwards when he used to come and try to make polite conversation to me, but the whole affair was ghastly. I had done the most absurd thing a woman could possibly attempt. I had tried to secure for myself the man who was in love with another woman. There were those few hours I spoke of during the storm. After that—nothing. I did not see Grant again until we met by accident on the steamer coming back to England. I had been ill in a little country place in New Hampshire and he had no idea even where I was. I wonder whether you would be very kind now and go and ask my husband to give me his arm. I think we must be somewhere near the screw. I am beginning to feel the motion.”
Susan rose to her feet. Something in her expression warned Gertrude.
“My dear child!” she exclaimed, “if you say a single word of what I can see in your face I shall scream. I am an impossible person who has told you an impossible story for an impossible reason. Please do as I ask you.”
Susan rose to her feet and conveyed his wife’s message to the Prince. Then, for a moment, she hesitated. Two or three young men moved towards her but she waved them away.
“In a minute,” she called out. “I am coming back.”
She walked out on to the open part of the deck. A few yards away Grant was still seated, gazing gloomily across the sea. She drew nearer and nearer to his chair. He heard the sound of her hesitating footsteps and turned around. Suddenly he sprang to his feet. He could scarcely believe his eyes. She was smiling at him, a little plaintively, with just a touch of appeal about her mouth.
“I was stupid, Grant,” she whispered. “Would you care to dance this?”
“Susan!” he exclaimed.
“Very stupid indeed,” she went on. “Let’s have a good long dance like we used to and then do something terribly obvious—go and look at the bows or something.”
He had sense enough to ask no questions, to accept what came to him. Gertrude watched them for a moment as she passed along, leaning on her husband’s arm.
“Really,” she remarked, “I suppose the papers are right when they call that young woman beautiful. I used to think she lacked expression.”
The Prince looked at the young couple through his horn-rimmed eye-glass.
“She does very well,” he agreed. “They have the looks, these young Englishwomen, and the figure—sometimes the wit. They move all the time, though, in a very narrow world.”
Gertrude continued her walk.
“I suppose the stony and narrow way has its compensations,” she sighed.