CHAPTER XVIII

No, it is useless to pretend she does not know the man.

If he were alone, such a course, though desperate, might perhaps be attempted, even if the chances of its succeeding were small indeed. Still, with some hard lying and a brazen play at indignation, something might possibly come of it.

But, unfortunately Dick Baynes has a chum with him, and what he finds a little difficulty in saying to this fine young lady and her officer companion he manages to express more easily to his own bluejacket friend.

"Bill, this is that young lady I was telling you of," he says, dragging forward his chum--who does not at all appear to appreciate being forced into a conversation with such company, "the young lady who helped the other young lady to nurse my little Sheila when she was so sick. Very good to us, she was, and I shall be ever grateful for all she did--she _and_ the other young lady."

"Many's the time I've 'eard you say so, Dick," says Bill rather sheepishly, as if he is not quite certain what is the correct thing to say under the circumstances; and then, judging that he is called upon to make some appropriate remark to the young lady in question, he adds, "Your servant, Miss." Which is an entirely non-committal statement, showing politeness and a desire to please, and fitting well into any and every sort of circumstance.

Norah ignores the well-meant effort, and turns upon Dick Baynes with a question. Forgetting that he began by asking her a very similar one with regard to her own movements, she voices her surprise and consternation in the query:

"How do you come to be here? I thought you said you were going to the Mediterranean?"

Anything to prolong the time and put off the evil moment when she must be presently left alone with Stapleton! Anything to confuse the details and conceal, if possible, the worst of the truth under a mass of empty talk.

"And I thought you were going to Ireland, Miss," answers the man. "So it seems we were both of us a little out of our reckoning. But I'm glad indeed to meet you again and thank you for all you did for me last week. I was able to look in at Glasgow for a few hours on my way up, and you'll be surprised to find what a difference there is in my little Sheila. She's as bright and bonny as if she had never been ill at all--'tis wonderful how quickly children will recover from an illness, isn't it?--and she is always asking, so her grandma tells me, for Miss Netta and Mr. Sheridan, and you."

Stapleton can keep silence no longer. He has listened to the amazing revelations of this talk quite dumbfounded; scarcely understanding its import at first, till little by little the full meaning of it dawns upon his mind. And he has been looking from Norah to Baynes and from Baynes to Norah with consternation written on every line of his face. At last he breaks out, unable to keep back the question that rises to his lips, and, alas, unable anymore to keep back his growing doubt of Norah.

His voice, as he opens his lips to speak, sounds dry and unnatural; it is the voice of a man suddenly subjected to a terrible mental strain.

"What is this you are saying, my man," he questions, addressing himself to able seaman Baynes; "did I understand you to state that this lady was in Glasgow last week, and that you saw her there?"

Norah, like a drowning man clinging to a straw, has only one last hope, one almost impossible chance remaining. She seizes it in her desperation, and with a frown and a shake of her head, unseen by Stapleton, endeavours to extract from Baynes a denial which she fondly hopes may sound plausible, Dick Baynes is an intelligent man--to a certain extent. That is to say, he is quite able to grasp the fact that the frowning lady whose mouth is silently shaping a "no" for his instruction expects him to contradict everything he has so far said; but his intelligence does not go quite so far as to enable him to invent on the spur of the moment some contradictory statement which can carry conviction with it.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" he stammers. This at least gives him a few seconds more for further thought. And Norah is still making signs to him behind Stapleton's back. Her face, Baynes notices, is very white, white even to the lips.

"You heard what I said perfectly well," snaps out the imperious voice of the officer. "Was this lady staying in Glasgow last week, or was she not?"

Norah's lips are shaping the words "last month; last month." And Baynes is not slow to grasp the significance of this lip-signalling; it is not for nothing that he has been in his youth a frequenter of the picture houses.

His face lights up with relief at being thus helped out of his difficulty; and taking the cue he at once repeats aloud:

"Last month, sir, not last week. Did I say last week, sir? It must have been a slip of the tongue on my part. I meant to say last month."

It is so obviously overdone, this explanation. This is just where Baynes' intelligence fails him; he has not the necessary culture for the higher flights of lying, and ought never to make the attempt.

Stapleton, as was to be expected, sees through the transparent subterfuge at once, and brushes the man and his denial aside with a contemptuous exclamation.

He turns to the other man, whom he has up to now ignored and scarcely even glanced at, overcome as he is by so many conflicting emotions. And, looking at him now, recognises in him a man he has often met and talked to, a seaman employed at one of the signalling stations on the island.

"You, Gibbons, at any rate will tell me the truth," he says almost appealingly. "I want to know exactly what this man has told you about this lady. Keep silence, you," turning sharply upon Baynes who has opened his mouth to attempt some further confused explanation.

"Well, it's like this 'ere, sir," begins the sailor whom Stapleton has addressed as Gibbons; the poor man, evidently at a loss as to how he can satisfy at the same time both his chum and this stern-looking officer, removes his cap and passes the fingers of his brawny hand through his thick, clustering brown hair, combing it into the resemblance of a quickset hedge. "It's like this 'ere, sir. Baynes an' me has been chums for a very long time, sir, ever since we was little boys at the same school, sir. An' I don't want to say nothin' as is contrary to what he might be wishful for me to say, sir."

"I only want you to tell me the truth. I insist upon your telling me," orders the voice of authority. "What I want to know is simply this; has this man Baynes told you that he saw this lady in Glasgow or has he not?"

"He has, sir."

"And _when_ did he tell you he saw her? Was it last week, or was it last month?"

"Well, you see, sir----"

"Answer me."

"Well, sir, as I understood him to say, it was last week. But then, sir, I might 'ave been labouring under a mis--mishapre'ension like."

"That will do. I don't wish to hear any more. You can go now, both of you."

The two sailors, saluting, turn about and move off without another word; neither of them feeling exactly sorry to get away from a situation in which they have felt the very reverse of comfortable. But they are sorry enough for the white-faced lady they have left behind them; and Baynes, for his part, feels rather that he has not played up to her quite as well as he might have done.

The other man is almost equally disturbed about the affair, though with less understanding of its real meaning. He can grasp the fact, though, that there is something more serious than an ordinary lovers' quarrel.

"I wouldn't like to be in 'er shoes, Dick," he blurts out, "and 'im so precious angry. They looks like Othello an' Desdemona in the play. Wot's she done, old man? Wot's all the row about?"

"Oh, hold your tongue, man," curtly answers Baynes. He is grieved for the girl who has befriended him, and fears that trouble is in store for her; though he little knows how bitter the trouble is.

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