“I’m coming round to see you.”
“My dear, you can’t possibly.”
“I was going to say good-bye—I’m going away for some time.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s a good thing.”
“Well, don’t you want me to come?”
“You’ll have to be sweet to me. You see I’ve been in rather a muddle lately. You will be sweet, darling, won’t you? I don’t think I could bear it if you weren’t.”
And later, as they lay on their backs smoking, her foot just touching his under the sheets, Angela interrupted him to say: “How would it be if, just for a little, we didn’t talk about this island?… I’m going to find things different when you’ve gone.”
“I’m mad for it.”
“I know,” said Angela. “I’m not kidding myself.”
“You’re a grand girl.”
“It’s time you went away… shall I tell you something?”
“What?”
“I’m going to give you some money.”
“Well, that is nice.”
“You see, when you rang up I knew that was what you wanted. And you’ve been sweet to-night really though you were boring about that island. So I thought that just for to-night I’d like to have you not asking for money. Before I’ve enjoyed making it awkward for you. Did you know? Well, I had to have some fun, hadn’t I, and I think I used to embarrass even you sometimes. And I used to watch you steering the conversation round. I knew that anxious look in your eye so well… I had to have something to cheer me up all these weeks, hadn’t I. You don’t do much for a girl. But to-night I thought it would be a treat just to let you be nice and no bother and I’ve enjoyed myself. I made out a cheque before you came… on the dressing table. It’s for rather a lot.”
“You’re a grand girl.”
“When d’you start?”
“Tomorrow.”
‘I’ll miss you. Have a good time.”
Next morning at twenty to ten Lady Seal rang her bell. Bradshawe drew the curtains and shut the windows, brought in the orange juice, the letters and the daily papers.
“Thank you, Bradshawe. I had a very good night. I only woke up once and then was asleep again almost directly. Is it raining?”
“I’m afraid so, my lady.”
“I shall want to see Mr. Basil before he goes out”
“Mr. Basil has gone already.”
“So early. Did he say where?”
“He did say, my lady, but I am not sure of the name. Somewhere in Africa.”
“How very provoking. I know there was something I wanted him to do to-day.”
At eleven o’clock a box of flowers arrived from Sir Joseph Mannering and at twelve Lady Seal attended a committee meeting; it was four days before she discovered the loss of her emerald bracelet and by that time Basil was on the sea.
Croydon, le Bourget, Lyons, Marseilles; colourless, gusty weather, cloud-spray dripping and trickling on the windows; late in the afternoon, stillness from the roar of the propellers; sodden turf; the road from the aerodrome to the harbour heavily scented with damp shrub; wind-swept sheds on the quay; an Annamite boy swabbing the decks; a surly steward, the ship does not sail until tomorrow, the commissaire knows of the allotment of the cabins, he is on shore, it is not known when he will return, there is nowhere to leave the baggage, the baggage room is shut and the commissaire has the key, any one might take it if it were left on deck—twenty francs—the luggage could go in one of the cabins, it will be safe there, the steward has the key, he will see to it. Dinner at the restaurant de Verdun. Basil alone with a bottle of fine Burgundy.
Next afternoon they sailed. She was an ugly old ship snatched from Germany after the war as part of the reparation; at most hours of the day two little men in alpaca coats played a fiddle and piano in the deck bar; luncheon at twelve, dinner at seven; red Algerian wine; shrivelled, blotchy dessert; a small saloon full of children; a smoking-room full of French officials and planters playing cards. The big ships do not stop at Matodi. Basil at table talking excellent French ceaselessly, in the evenings paying attention to a woman of mixed blood from Madagascar, getting bored with her and with the ship, sitting sulkily at meals with a book, complaining to the captain about the inadequacy of the wireless bulle-tins, lying alone in his bunk for hours at a time, smoking cheroots and gazing blankly at the pipes on the ceiling.
At Port Said he sent lewd postcards to Sonia, disposed of his mother’s bracelet at a fifth of its value to an Indian jeweller, made friends with a Welsh engineer in the bar of the Eastern Exchange, got drunk with him, fought him, to the embarrassment of the Egyptian policeman, and returned to the ship next morning a few minutes before the companion way was raised, much refreshed by his racket.
A breathless day in the canal; the woman from Madagascar exhausted with invitation. The Red Sea, the third class passengers limp as corpses on the lower deck; fiddle and piano indefatigable; dirty ice swimming in the dregs of lemon juice; Basil in his bunk sullenly consuming cheroots undeterred by the distress of his cabin-companion. Djibouti; port holes closed to keep out the dust, coolies jogging up the planks with baskets of coal; contemptuous savages in the streets scraping their teeth with twigs; an Abyssinian noblewoman in a green veil shopping at the French Emporium; an ill-intentioned black monkey in an acacia tree near the post office. Basil took up with a Dutch South African; they dined on the pavement of the hotel and drove later in a horse-cab to the Somali quarter where
