“I’m afraid my things are in your way,” she said, and crossing the deck took up a bag and looked round where to put it.
The clergyman was beside her in a stride.
“Allow me. I’ll stow it away for you,” he said.
He spoke with a smile, but with an air of complete decision and quiet command, and with a murmur of thanks she yielded the bag almost automatically. As he moved off with it, it struck her that here was a clergyman apparently accustomed to very prompt obedience from his flock.
They had been standing just aft of the deck-house, and with the bag in his hand he passed by this to where a pile of lighter luggage had been arranged on the deck. As he went he looked at the bag curiously, and then before putting it down he glanced over his shoulder. The lady was not in sight, and very swiftly but keenly he studied it more closely. It was a suitcase made of an unusual brown, light material. Turning one end up quickly he read on a little plate this assurance by the makers, “Garantirt echt Vulcanfibre.” And then slowly, and apparently rather thoughtfully, he strolled back.
“You’ll find it among the other luggage, just beyond the deck-house,” he said, and then with an air of sudden thought added, “Perhaps I ought to have put it with your other things, wherever they are.”
“I have practically nothing else,” said she, “except a trunk in the hold.”
“You are travelling very light,” he remarked. “That wasn’t a very substantial suitcase.”
For a moment she seemed to be a little doubtful whether to consider him a somewhat forward stranger. Then she said with a frank smile—
“No; it was made in Germany.”
As she spoke he glanced at her with a curious sudden intensity, that might have been an ordinary trick of manner.
“Oh,” he said with a smile. “Before the war, I presume?”
“Yes,” she answered briefly, and looked round her as though wondering whether she should move.
But the clergyman seemed oblivious to the hint.
“Do you know Germany well?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Do you?”
He nodded.
“Yes, pretty well—as it was before the war, of course. I had some good friends there at one time.”
“So had I,” she said.
“All in the past tense now,” said he.
“I suppose so,” she answered; “yet I sometimes find it hard to believe that they are all as poisoned against England and as ignorant and callous as people think. I can’t picture some of my friends like that!”
She seemed to have got over her first touch of resentment. There was certainly an air of good-breeding and even of distinction about the man, and after all, his extreme assurance sat very naturally on him. It had an unpremeditated matter-of-course quality that made it difficult to remain offended.
“It is hard to picture a good many things,” he said thoughtfully. “Were you long in Germany?”
She told him two years, and then questioned him in return; but he seemed to have a gift for conveying exceedingly little information with an air of remarkable finality—as though he had given a complete report and there was an end of it. On the other hand, he had an equal gift for putting questions in a way that made it impossible not to answer without churlishness. For his manner never lacked courtesy, and he showed a flattering interest in each word of her replies. She felt that she had never met a man who had put her more on her mettle and made her instinctively wish more to show herself to advantage.
Yet she seemed fully capable of holding her own, for after half an hour’s conversation it would have been remarkably difficult to essay a biographical sketch of Miss Eileen Holland. She had spent a number of years abroad, and confessed to being a fair linguist; she was going to the Islands “to stay with some people”; and she had previously done “a little” war work—so little, apparently, that she had been advised to seek a change of air, as her companion observed with a smile.
“Anyhow, I have not done enough,” she said with a sudden intensity of suppressed feeling in her voice.
The keen-faced clergyman glanced at her quickly, but said nothing. A minute or two later he announced that he had some correspondence to look over, and thereupon he left her with the same air of decision instantly acted on with which he had first addressed her. He passed through the door of the deck-house, and she got a glimpse of his head going down the companion. Her face remained quite composed, but in her eyes there seemed to be the trace of a suggestion that she was unused to see gentlemen quit her side quite so promptly.
A few minutes later she went down herself to the ladies’ cabin. Coming out, the foot of the companion was immediately opposite, and beyond stretched the saloon. At the far end of this sat the clergyman, and at the sight of him Miss Holland paused for a moment at the foot of the ladder and looked at him with a face that seemed to show both a little amusement and a little wonder. He sat quite by himself, with a bundle of papers on the table at his elbow. One of these was in his hand, and he was reading it with an air of extraordinary concentration. He had carelessly pushed back his black felt hat, and what arrested her was the odd impression this produced. With his hat thus rakishly tilted, all traces of his clerical profession seemed mysteriously to have vanished. The white dog-collar was there all right, but unaided it seemed singularly incapable of making him into a conventional minister. Miss Holland went up on deck rather thoughtfully. The little mail boat was now far out in the midst of a waste of waters. The ill-omened tideway was on its best
