Not a movement, the curtained figures sat as in a trance. He did not quite like it, but was not seriously alarmed; he had weathered too many a storm in that ship with that Crew, those hearts of oak.
When the Captain arrived home rather late for dinner the house was in darkness, and empty as the Marie Céleste. There were signs of recent human activity, a meal had evidently just been eaten and not cleared away, but nobody was there.
The Captain supposed that his Crew must have gone on shore. They sometimes did so of an evening and always, on these occasions, left some delectable titbit sizzling in the oven for him. But the kitchen was in darkness, the oven cold and bare. He peered into the bedroom usually occupied by Ulra to see if a sulking figure were not perhaps lolling on the bed. If so it must be stirred up, made to minister to his needs. Not only was there no sulking figure, but nylon hairbrush and broken comb had vanished from the dressing-table, crumpled underclothes no longer brimmed from half-open drawers, duffel coats and ragged ball dresses no longer bulged behind the corner curtain, there were no old shoes lying about on the deal floor and no old hats on the deal shelf. Ulra had clearly gone, and taken all her belongings. Down in the Port Royal, up beneath the Toits de Paris, the same state of affairs existed in every bedroom. The Captain’s heart sank within him. This was desertion. Mutiny he could have dealt with, his dreaded cat o’ nine tails, sarcasm, had but to be seen by the Crew for them to come to heel, but desertion was far more serious. They had almost certainly, he knew, gone off in a body to join the staff of Neoterism.
The Captain passed a sleepless night, during which he decided that there was only one course left for him to take. He must go and see Grace and persuade her to marry him. Not a bad thing, perhaps, to do it on an impulse, though he would have preferred to lead up to it with the triumphant success on the boards of Sigismond. He must try and whirl her to a registry office before either she or he had any more chance of thinking it over. Thinking it over was no good now, the time had come for action. Breakfastless, feeling rather sea-sick, the Captain set out for Queen Anne’s Gate.
Now it so happened that on this particular day Grace had woken up sadder and more hopeless than at any time since leaving Paris. Her divorce had just become absolute, and she had finished her carpet. She had made a sort of bet with herself that before these two things happened there would have been a sign from Charles-Edouard; none had come. The weather, which always affected her spirits, remained terrible, as it had been so far the whole summer. Day after day it was a question of putting on winter clothes and crowning them, for no other reason than that the month was June, with a straw hat, through which the cold wind whistled horribly. She was putting on one of these hats to go out to a dull luncheon when her maid came in and said that the Captain was downstairs. This news cheered her up.
‘Give him a glass of vodka – I’m just coming.’
The Captain was already pouring vodka down his throat in great gulps like a Russian and feeling much more confident that all would yet be well. The door opened, and, instead of Grace, Sigismond appeared.
‘Good morning, Old Salt,’ he said, too cockily for a child of his age the Captain thought, irritated. He must get rid of him, he had got to see Grace alone while the action of the vodka on his doubly empty stomach (no dinner, no breakfast) was having its excellent effect.
‘And when do I go into rehearsal, Cap?’
This was too much for the Captain’s nerves. He took Sigi by the shoulder, propelled him to the door, gave him a sharp push and said,
‘It’s your Mummy I want to see, not you. Run along to Nanny, there’s a good boy.’
Sigi gave him a very baleful glance. Aware that he had done himself no good, the Captain felt about in his pocket. He had a shilling and a fiver, and if one seemed too little the other seemed immeasurably too much. He fished out the shilling, which Sigi pocketed without a word, going furiously upstairs. Nobody had ever insulted him with so small a coin in his life before.
Grace appeared. She looked very pretty and was pleased to see the Captain, quite approachable, he thought. He took the plunge.
‘I’ve come on an impulse, to ask you to marry me, Grace.’
‘Good heavens, Captain!’
‘I suppose you think I ought to lead up to it, pave the way, break it like bad news. I don’t. We’re both grown-up people, and I think if I want to marry you the easiest thing is to say so straight out.’
‘Yes. I expect you’re quite right.’
‘And please don’t think it over. I hate the sort of people who are forever thinking things over, horrid, calculating thoughts. Say yes now – and I’ll go off and get a licence.’
Grace was seriously tempted to do so. She was feeling furious with Charles-Edouard, with his attitude of ‘come back whenever you like but don’t expect me to bother about you, or make it any easier for you’, and with his manner of conveying it to her, indirectly, through Sir Conrad. Why did he never telephone, write, or make any direct approach? It
