He thought of her now and then, but always with the same curious sense of remoteness—or unreality, as of a figure seen in a dream. Were it not for the substantial tokens of her actuality he possessed she would have seemed to him like the heroine of a play. He would have reproached himself for disloyalty if the intensity of each minute as he had to meet it had not been an excuse for him. The time would come when the pressure of the instant would be less great, and he should be able to get back the emotion with which he left her. Perhaps if she had been "his type of girl," her image would not have faded so quickly.
There was but one thing for which he was not grateful to her. She had fixed the name of Herbert Strange upon him in such a way that he was unable to shake it off. His own first name was the unobjectionable monosyllable John—though he had always been known by his less familiar middle name, Norrie—and as John Ford he could have faced the world with a certain amount of bluff. He meant to begin the attempt immediately on reaching London, but the difficulty of appearing in a hotel under one name while everything he brought with him bore another was patent to him at once. Similarly, he could not receive the correspondence incidental to his outfit and his passage under the name of Ford in a house where he was known as Strange. Having applied for his passage as Strange, he knew it would create comment if he asked to be put down in the books as Ford. Do what he would he was obliged to appear on the printed list of second-cabin passengers as Herbert Strange, and he had made at least one acquaintance who would expect to call him so after they reached land.
This was a little, clean-shaven man, in the neighborhood of sixty, always dressed at sea as he probably dressed on shore. He wore nothing but black, with a white shirt and a ready-made black bow-tie. He might have been a butler, an elderly valet, or a member of some discreet religious order in street costume. Ford had heard a flippant young Frenchman speak of him as an "ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise"; and indeed there was about him that stamp of the ecclesiastic which is sometimes ineffaceable.
"I call myself Durand," he said to Ford, using the conveniently ambiguous French idiom, "je m'appelle Durand."
"Et je m'appelle Strange, I call myself Strange," Ford had replied, claiming the name for the first time without hesitation, but feeling the irrevocable nature of the words as soon as he had uttered them.
Out of the crowd of second-rate Europeans of all races who made up the second cabin, the man who called himself Strange had selected the man who called himself Durand by some obscure instinct of affinity. "He looks like an old chap who could give one information," was Strange's own way of putting it, not caring to confess that he was feeling after a bit of sympathy. But the give and take of information became the basis of their friendship, and imparted the first real stimulus to the young man's awkward efforts to use his mind.
Monsieur Durand had been thirty years in the Argentine, observing the place and the people, native and foreign, with the impartial shrewdness only possible to one who sought little for himself. It was a pleasure to share the fruits of his experience with one so eager to learn, for young men were not in the habit of showing him deference. He could tell Mr. Strange many things that would be to his advantage—what to do—what to avoid—what sort of place to live in—what he ought to pay—and what sort of company to keep.
Yes, he knew the firm of Stephens and Jarrott—an excellent house. There was no Mr. Stephens now, only a Mr. Jarrott. Mr. Stephens had belonged to the great days of American enterprise in the southern hemisphere, to the time of Wheelwright, and Halsey, and Hale. The Civil War had put an end to that. Mr. Jarrott had come later—a good man, not generally understood. He had suffered a great loss a few years ago in the death of his brother-in-law and partner, Mr. Colfax. Mrs. Colfax, a pretty little woman, who hadn't old age in her blood either—one could see that—had gone back to the United States with her child—but a child!--blond as an angel—altogether darling—tout à fait mignonne. Monsieur Durand thought he remembered hearing that Mrs. Colfax had married again, but he couldn't say for certain. What would you? One heard so many things. He knew less of the family since the last boy died—the boy to whom he gave lessons in Spanish and French. Death hadn't spared the household—taking the three sons one after another and leaving father and mother alone. It was a thousand pities Mrs. Colfax had taken the little girl away. They loved her as if she had been their own—especially after the boys died. An excellent house! Mr. Strange couldn't do better than seek an entry there—it is I who tell you so—c'est moi qui vous le dis.
All this was said in very good English, with occasional lapses into French, in a soft, benevolent voice, with slow benedictory movements of the hands, more and more suggestive of an ecclesiastic en civile—or under a cloud. Strange stole an occasional glance into the delicate, clear-cut face, where the thin lips were compressed into permanent lines of pain, and the sunken brown eyes looked out from under scholarly brows with the kind of hopeful anguish a penitent soul might feel in the midst of purifying flames. He remembered again that the flippant young Frenchman had said, "Un ancien curé, qui a fait quelque bêtise." Was it possible that some tragic sin lay under this gentle life? And was the four-funnelled, twin-screwed Parana but a ghostly ship bearing a cargo of haunted souls into their earthly purgatory?
"But listen, monsieur," the old man began next day. But listen! There would be difficulties. Stephens and Jarrott employed only picked men, men with some experience—except for the mere manual labor such as the Italians could perform. Wouldn't it be well for Mr. Strange to qualify himself a little before risking a refusal? Ah, but how? Monsieur Durand would explain. There was first the question of Spanish. No one could get along in the Argentine without a working knowledge of that tongue. Monsieur Durand himself gave lessons in it—and in French—but in the English and American colonies of Buenos Aires exclusively. There were reasons why he did not care to teach among Catholics, though he himself was a fervent one, and he hoped—repentant. He pronounced the last word with some emphasis, as though to call Strange's attention to it. If his young friend would give him the pleasure of taking a few lessons, they could begin even now. It would while away the time on the voyage. He had his own method of teaching, a method based on the Berlitz system, but not borrowed from it, and, he ventured to say, possessing its own good points. For example: el tabaco—la pipa—los cigarillos. Que es esto? Esto es la pipa. Very simple. In a few weeks' time the pupil is carrying on conversations.