‘I do not know,’ I answered.
‘Oh, she must dine with us,’ he cried; ‘I want company. I should like to crowd this table. Steward, call Miss Jennings’ maid.’
The man stole aft and tapped on the cabin next to the room occupied by Lady Monson. Miss Jennings opened the door and looked out. Wilfrid saw her, and instantly ran to her, with his finger upon his lip. He took her by the hand and whispered. She was clearly as much amazed as I had been to behold him attired as though for a rout. There was a little whispered talk between them; she apparently did not wish to join us; then on a sudden consented, and he led her to the table, holding her hand with an air of old-world ceremony that must have provoked a smile but for the concern and anxiety his looks caused me. We took our places, and he fell to acting the part of host, pressing us to eat, calling for champagne, talking as if to entertain us. He laughed often, but softly, in a low-pitched key, and one saw that there was a perpetual reference in his mind to the existence of his wife close at hand, but he never once mentioned her nor referred to the dead man whose proximity put an indescribable quality of ghastliness into his hectic manner, the crazy air of conviviality that flushed, as with a glow of fever, his speech, and carriage, and behaviour of high breeding. Not a syllable concerning the events of the morning, the objects of our excursion, its achievement, the change of the yacht’s course escaped him. He drank freely, but without any other result than throwing a little colour upon his high cheek-bones and rendering yet more puzzling the conflicting expressions which filled with wildness his large, protruding, near-sighted gaze at one or the other of us. I saw too clearly how it was with the poor fellow to feel shocked. Miss Laura’s tact served her well in the replies she made to him, in the interest with which she seemed to listen to his conversation, in her well-feigned ignorance of there being anything unusual in his apparel or manner. But it failed her in her efforts to conceal her deep-seated apprehension, that stole like a shadow into her face when she looked downwards in some interval of silence that enabled her to think, or when her eyes met mine.
After dinner my cousin fetched his pipe and asked me to join him on deck. I took advantage of his absence to say swiftly to Miss Laura, ‘We must not forget that Lady Monson is on board. Upon my word, I believe you are right in your suggestion this afternoon that Wilfrid has forgotten all about it, or surely he would have made some reference to her dining.’
‘I’ll take care that she is looked after, Mr. Monson,’ she answered. ‘I purposely abstained from mentioning her name at dinner. I am certain, by the expression in his face, that he would have been irritated by the lightest allusion to her, and unnatural as his mood is after such a morning as we have passed through,’ here she glanced in the direction of the cabin where the Colonel’s body lay, ‘I would rather see him as he is than sullen, scowling, silent, eating up his heart.’
He returned with his pipe at that moment, and we were about to proceed on deck when he stopped and said to his sister-in-law, ‘Come along, Laura, my love.’
‘I have a slight headache, Wilfrid, and I have to see that my cabin is prepared.’
I thought this answer would start him into questioning her, but he looked as if he did not gather the meaning of it. ‘Pooh, pooh!’ he cried, ‘there are two stewards and a maid to see to your cabin for you. If they don’t suffice we’ll have Muffin aft; that arthritic son of a greengrocer, whose genius as a valet will scarcely be the worse for the tar that stains his hands. Muffin for one night only!’ He delivered one of his short roars of laughter and slapped his leg.
By Jupiter! thought I, Lady Monson will hear that and take it as an expression of his delight at her presence on board! Does she know, I wondered, that her colonel lies dead? But I had found no opportunity of inquiring.
‘Come along, Laura,’ continued Wilfrid; ‘I’ll roll you up as pretty a cigarette as was ever smoked by a South American belle.’