Nor had he suspected that her grave and quiet air came, not from a meditative spirit, but was due entirely to the malaise she always felt on shipboard. And by the time she had overcome this, had her sea legs, and was her true self again, it was too late. Five days only were needed to deprive him of all freedom. That fifth evening the blow fell.
There was no moonlight, no music, none of those things which might have put him on his guard. It was four o’clock in the afternoon—one of the most unromantic hours in the day—and he met her outside the purser’s office—surely not a romantic spot. What is more, he had been changing money and thinking about money. Then she came. She said she wanted to send a wireless message to her Uncle Tommy in London.
“I do love Uncle Tommy so!” she said.
In justice, Hughes was obliged to admit that she did not realize what she was doing. She was thinking solely of her Uncle Tommy at the moment; that misty look in her eyes was all for him. But when he saw that look, and when he heard her speak, Hughes was done for. He knew it.
A strange sort of confusion came over him, so that he saw her in a haze, her little, pointed face, her shining hair, her dark eyes, the striped scarf about her shoulders, all swimming before him in a sort of rainbow. He thought: “Good Lord! What a tender, sweet, lovely little thing! What a darling little thing! I can’t help it! I love her!”
It was a mercy that this confusion robbed him, temporarily, of all power to speak, otherwise he would have said this aloud. But all he could do was to stand there, staring at her; and her own preoccupation with Uncle Tommy prevented her from noticing the look on his face.
“You see,” she went on, “he said I’d probably never see him again. Of course he always does say that. Every year mother says we’ll probably never be able to go to England again, and every year they say good-by to each other like that. ‘Good-by, Thomas, my dear brother!’ ‘Good-by, Mary! It is not likely that we shall meet again in this world.’ I know they enjoy it,[Pg 399] but it does make me feel miserable for the first month. And just suppose we couldn’t ever afford to go over again!”
“‘Afford’?” thought Hughes. “Is she poor? Good Heaven! Is she poor—worried—not able to get what she ought to have?”
He studied both Mimi and her mother very critically after that. They didn’t look poor; indeed, they seemed to him better dressed than any other ladies in the world. But what did he know of such matters? All those charming costumes might be pathetically cheap, for all he could tell. Perhaps they made everything themselves.
And, when you looked at them carefully, you saw that both mother and child were very slender and little. They certainly were not the sort of persons who could be poor with impunity.