Lady Throbbing and Mrs. Blackwater, those twin sisters whose portrait by Millais auctioned recently at Christie’s made a record in rock-bottom prices, were sitting on one of the teak benches eating apples and drinking what Lady Throbbing, with late Victorian chic, called “a bottle of pop,” and Mrs. Blackwater, more exotically, called “champagne,” pronouncing it as though it were French.
“Surely, Kitty, that is Mr. Outrage, last week’s Prime Minister.”
“Nonsense, Fanny, where?”
“Just in front of the two men with bowler hats, next to the clergyman.”
“It is certainly like his photographs. How strange he looks.”
“Just like poor Throbbing … all that last year.”
“… And none of us even suspected … until they found the bottles under the board in his dressing-room … and we all used to think it was drink …”
“I don’t think one finds quite the same class as Prime Minister nowadays, do you think?”
“They say that only one person has any influence with Mr. Outrage …”
“At the Japanese Embassy …”
“Of course, dear, not so loud. But tell me, Fanny, seriously, do you think really and truly Mr. Outrage has it?”
“He has a very nice figure for a man of his age.”
“Yes, but his age, and the bull-like type is so often disappointing. Another glass? You will be grateful for it when the ship begins to move.”
“I quite thought we were moving.”
“How absurd you are, Fanny, and yet I can’t help laughing.”
So arm in arm and shaken by little giggles the two tipsy old ladies went down to their cabin.
Of the other passengers, some had filled their ears with cotton wool, others wore smoked glasses, while several ate dry captain’s biscuits from paper bags, as Red Indians are said to eat snake’s flesh to make them cunning. Mrs. Hoop repeated feverishly over and over again a formula she had learned from a yogi in New York City. A few “good sailors,” whose luggage bore the labels of many voyages, strode aggressively about smoking small, foul pipes and trying to get up a four of bridge.
Two minutes before the advertised time of departure, while the first admonitory whistling and shouting was going on, a young man came on board carrying his bag. There was nothing particularly remarkable about his appearance. He looked exactly as young men like him do look; he was carrying his own bag, which was disagreeably heavy, because he had no money left in francs and very little left in anything else. He had been two months in Paris writing a book and was coming home because, in the course of his correspondence, he had got engaged to be married. His name was Adam Fenwick-Symes.
Father Rothschild smiled at him in a kindly manner.
“I doubt whether you remember me,” he said. “We met at Oxford five years ago at luncheon with the Dean of Balliol. I shall be interested to read your book when it appears—an autobiography, I understand. And may I be one of the first to congratulate you on your engagement? I am afraid you will find your father-in-law a little eccentric—and forgetful. He had a nasty attack of bronchitis this winter. It’s a draughty house—far too big for these days. Well, I must go below now. It is going to be rough and I am a bad sailor. We meet at Lady Metroland’s on the twelfth, if not, as I hope, before.”
Before Adam had time to reply the Jesuit disappeared. Suddenly the head popped back.
“There is an extremely dangerous and disagreeable woman on board—a Mrs. Ape.”
Then he was gone again, and almost at once the boat began to slip away from the quay towards the mouth of the harbour.
Sometimes the ship pitched and sometimes she rolled and sometimes she stood quite still and shivered all over, poised above an abyss of dark water; then she would go swooping down like a scenic railway train into a windless hollow and up again with a rush into the gale; sometimes she would burrow her path, with convulsive nosings and scramblings like a terrier in a rabbit hole; and sometimes she would drop dead like a lift. It was this last movement that caused the most havoc among the passengers.
“Oh,” said the Bright Young People. “Oh, oh oh.”
“It’s just exactly like being inside a cocktail shaker,” said Miles Malpractice. “Darling, your face—eau de Nil.”
“Too, too sick-making,” said Miss Runcible, with one of her rare flashes of accuracy.
Kitty Blackwater and Fanny Throbbing lay one above the other in their bunks rigid from wig to toe.
“I wonder, do you think the champagne … ?”
“Kitty.”
“Yes, Fanny, dear.”
“Kitty, I think, in fact, I am sure I have some sal volatile. … Kitty, I thought that perhaps as you are nearer … it would really hardly be safe for me to try and descend … I might break a leg.”
“Not after champagne, Fanny, do you think?”
“But I need it. Of course, dear, if it’s too much trouble?”
“Nothing is too much trouble, darling, you know that. But now I come to think of it, I remember, quite clearly, for a fact, that you did not pack the sal volatile.”
“Oh, Kitty, oh, Kitty, please … you would be sorry for this if I died … oh.”
“But I saw the sal volatile on your dressing-table after your luggage had gone down, dear. I remember thinking, I must take
