VI
It was the last day of the voyage, and Clement Seadon, supremely conscious of the fact, was feeling baffled.
Again Heloise Reys was proving unapproachable. Again he was finding it difficult to get near her because of the crowd about her. The blockade of the first days of the trip was resumed.
But now Clement could not view this blockade with equanimity. He could not smile and bide his time—there was no time. Already they were passing up the mighty river St. Lawrence, already the end of the voyage was in sight. A few hours only were all that were left to him. He must get her alone.
He could not get her alone—not for a moment. And as the day relentlessly advanced, a further, a more disturbing thought was born in upon him—she did not want to be left alone with him. He began to realize this with a sense of dismay. It was she who was putting barriers between them. It was she who kept her companion close at her side, who actually invited the big man to fill the vacancy when the companion went away. It was not the pair shutting him out; it was Heloise herself deliberately shutting him out with the pair.
He could not understand it. She had left him in perfect friendliness last night. There was no hint of misunderstanding—estrangement. Why had she changed? What was causing her to stand so aloof from him? Was it the doing of that precious rascally pair? Was it anything he himself had done or said? Was it, perhaps, the way he had talked about the mining venture? He did not think so. He knew that had pained her—that could not be helped; but it had not offended her. She had left him, well, in such a manner that he had felt confident of winning her as a lover....
No, it wasn’t that—but what was it? Some deep and cunning game of those rogues. Something subtle and devilish emanating from the brain of that master villain Neuburg—that was the only explanation. But what it was he could not find out. And the fact that there was so little time to find out, win back her confidence—that and the real ardor he felt for her, robbed his wits of their habitual steadiness, made them unstable, in a crisis.
And the crisis came. It came with an unfair abruptness. It could not be aught else, for Heloise’s wits were also in something of a whirl. She was dreading the moment of confronting Clement, just as she was determined that she would do so. Her mind had been an affair of veering unstability all day. Now she believed him to be underhand, now she disbelieved. Now she hated him, now she thought he could do nothing dishonorable. Now she made up her mind to go to him, now she held back. She was a mass of hesitations and decisions; she was hot, and she was cold.
She made up her mind only a few minutes before the dressing-bugle sounded. Clement had tramped past her in dark loneliness, had turned and passed round the end of the deck. She felt, “I must do it now or never.” With an indefinite gesture, more than half an appeal for support, to her companion, she rose and went after him.
She expected to see him on the other side of the deck, and she would call him and hand him his letter.... But when she reached the end of the deck she actually ran into him. He had swung round on his heel, returned in his tracks.... As a matter of fact, he had made up his mind to talk to her, to demand an explanation from her.
They met. It was a shock. They stared at each other a little breathless. Then, “This is your letter,” said Heloise.
Clement took it, looked at it, frowned.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “But how on earth....” Heloise wasn’t going to trouble about trivial explanations.
“I looked at it because Rigby & Root are my lawyers as well as your own—did you know that?”
Clement was too honest, as well as too startled, to tell anything but the truth.
“Yes, I did know it,” he said.
Heloise’s breath caught in something like a sob. There was a sudden blaze of contempt and anger in her heart; she had trusted this man ... and liked him.
“And you knew about me ... about the reason of my voyage?”
“Miss Reys——” he began.
“Did you?” she cried. “Did you?”
“Yes, I knew, but——”
“You knew,” she cried at him, and her face was white. “And you were acting in the interests of—of Mr. Hard?...”
Clement stared at her. This sudden attack had left his wits woolly and bewildered. And, of course, he was, in a sense, acting in the interests of Mr. Hard. If he said he wasn’t he would be lying. And yet Mr. Hard wasn’t the whole of the thing ... but the whole of the thing.... How could he explain it to her in this unsympathetic mood, in the presence of her archenemy and his, Miss Méduse?... He couldn’t explain. He could only temporize. He cried, “Miss Reys ... there is an explanation behind it all....”
He got no further. Heloise read his hesitation correctly. He was acting for Mr. Hard. He had, under the guise of friendship, been conspiring against her....
She turned about. Clutching the arm of the clever Miss Méduse Smythe she walked away, left him.