The Loveless Isle

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 11, 14 January 1929, Page 16

The Loveless Isle

By NORMAN PENLEY.

(CHAPTER XV.—Continued.) A Cold Beginning. For the better part of two days, Nairn, somewhat to his disappointment, saw little of Pamela. They encountered each other at odd times, but, after a pleasant word about the weather, or some other conventional topic, they went their respective ways, she showing no inclination to talk. At meals, Pamela sat at a long table headed by Miss Gedge, while Nairn,, a privileged passenger, sat at the captain's table, and when the commander was not present to provide the conversation he liked best, of ship? and ports and commerce, the financier was usually bored with a posturing actress of dubious age, or he was swamped with a torrent of talk by a wealthy dry goods merchant — these being the only other passengers to share the high places.

It was the custom of the captain when he came to the table to pass round a bulky sheaf of wireless messages containing tin news which had been picked up by the ship's wireless. With a few exceptions, the news printed on ship's news-sheets for the passengers generally, is inadequate, and, sparse as it is, appears to have been selected by someone uterly devoid of news sense. Nairn, therefore, was grateful for these more ample resources.

On the afternoon of the second day at sea, Nairn was leaning against the rail, perusing one of these sheaves of messages, when Pamela passed. He raised his cap, and, in doing so, one of the flimsy sheets, becoming detached from its moorings, fluttered away down the deck. It passed Pamela's feet, and she ran a few paces and retrieved the paper before Nairn could reach it. "There's your valuable document," she said jocularly, as she returned it to him. ''Studying business, I suppose, even in the Atlantic." He thanked her, and added: "This isn't business, Pamela. This is news." "What, British news?" '"Yes, mostly. It's the stuff picked np by the wireless men." "Really, and is there anything interesting?" He began to turn back the sheets to find some items to read to her, but the breeze made the sheets so difficult to handle that he suggested they should take two adjacent chairs. Here they sat for some time, Nairn reading to her news which he thought would interest her. Evidently, he was successful in his selection, for she listened attentively. Presently he made a pause. "Any more?" asked Pamela. "Yes," replied Nairn, and read aloud, 'British ship in collision. Buenos Ayres, Friday. A message from the liner Almeda announces that she has been in collision with an oil tanker. The captain etates that although the impact was severe, the damage was not considerable, and both vessel* are proceeding.'" "Almeda, did you Bay?" queried Pamela.

"Yes. Almeda. Do you know the ship?" "in fact, I sent a fellow away on it "Yes—well —I know of it." "I know of it, too," observed Nairn, nearly a month ago." He paused for a moment, and turned his head slightly, so that he could see her face. Then he added, casually, "a fellow named Bregg." He thought he detected a slight colouring of her face as ho uttered the name. But, if she was embarrassed, she betrayed no sign of it in her voice, for she answered, quite naturally. "Oh, yes- —Oscar." She rose as she spoke.

"Must you be going?" asked Nairn. She glanced at her watch. "I promised to play deck tennis with some of the girls at three o'clock, and they will be waiting for me on the boat deck, I expect." So she skipped away lightly, happy to escape, lest he should descern the eound of a heart that seemed to be thumping noisily. The attempt to parry in a perfectly natural manner, his remark about Bregg had not been easy. But she had met his thrust in a way he had not expected. After Pamela had left him, Nairn strolled along to his own deck-chair, and there, for a time, gazed out to sea, thinking. Hβ could not under stand Pamela's attitude. At times she treated him in a manner which suggested that she regretted his presence on the ship. Then would smile sweetly at him, but skiltully avoid conversation. He w;i3 puzzled. After all, he reasoned, there was a time when she enjoyed his company, and it was strange that, on this somewhat protracted voyage. when 3.0U13 seemed like days, she should <le-l-hs'.afdy keep away from him. 1 litre had Ik-ph no quarrel. Ami her £-Uegiance to her party of fellowstudents need not preclude her association with him, if she desired. Several of the girls, Nairn noticed, had already struck up acquaintances with men whom they had encountered for the first time on the ship, and Miss Gedge, their conductor, seemed to offer no objection. In any event, Pamela and he were old friends, and Miss Gedge knew it. Obviously then, it could only be by Pamela's wish that there was so little communication between them.

Nairn went below to his cabin, and, returning with a bundle of business papers, applied himself to matters which he more readily understood.

CHAPTER XVI. Pamela Seeks Solitude. That evening, after dinner, he wai strolling alone on the deck, when he observed a little group of men peering through the open windows of the drawing-room. Being taller than they, lie looked over their heads to discover the attraction. He could see that the rooms were full, every chair being occupied, while beside the piano stood Pamela, violin in hand, ready to play to the accompaniment of one of the girls of her party. Nairn watched and listened, though he could hear only snatches of what she played. As she finished, there was a great outburst of applause. Men left the room, hurried to the smoke room, and brought back other men to stand in the gangway and listen to the encore for which the company was clamouring. "Will ghe play again?" asked one man cjose to the window by which Nairn was standing. "Well, that was her second piece, replied his companion, and the first was pretty long." ' Still the clapping persisted.

At length, Pamela stepped to the piano again, to the obvious delight of everyone. Again, Nairn could hear only snatches of the music. This irked him. He would rather have heard none. So he went away, and mounted the stairway leading to the boat deck. Finding a sheltered seat, a long bench unoccupied, he lighted a cigar, and settled down at the far end of the seat to enjoy the beauties of a starlit night at sea. After the tear of life in London, this peaceful communing was sheer joy. For gome time he sat perfectly still, puffing his cigar slowly, with an air of complete contentment. Presently, a girl, muffled in a thick coat, walked toward the seat, as though intending to rest there. As she reached it, she saw Nairn, and steered away. She paused for a moment, as though thinking where she might go elsewhere to find a seat, and Nairn, waking from his reverie, said quietly: "All right Pamela. If you want to sit here, I'll go away." She turned quickly, and he rose. '"Oh, Russell, I had no idea it was you. In fact, I thought the seat was deserted until I was almost on top of it. Then I saw a lighted cigar, and I was about to run away." "Well, now, sit down, and I'll do the running away." "Russell, please!" pleaded Pamela. "You know I would not wish you to do that." "Well, if I may share the. seat with you, I shall, of course, be delighted. But please do not think I shall be hurt if you tell me you wish to be alone." "Please don't start an argument, Russell," Pamela replied, putting a hand to her head. The words were not uttered angrily, but as an appeal. Pamela was evidently upset and tired, and she sank rather wearily into the seat.

"I saw you playing just now," said Nairn, changing the subject as he sat down beside the girl. "I wanted to go into the drawing-room, but it was uncomfortably filled, and I had to be satislied with a view from the window. I wish I'd known earlier that you were to play. I would have gone straight in after dinner." "You didn't miss much. I played indifferently." "You seemed to please them." "Yes, I know. But any kind of music is welcome at sea, I suppose." "Pamela, you're too conscientious. Obviously you've given all those people quite a lot of pleasure, and the fact that your standard of playing may not have satisfied you, should be a secondary consideration."

"That's a comforting way of looking at it, Russell, but the affair has upset me. I didn't want to play—at least, not until I had practised a little. I wanted to put in an hour or two occasionally iu my own cabin when everyone is on deck, and then I might have played on the last two or three nights of the voyajre. But Miss Gedge is a busybody. She seems to have told,everyone that I am something wonderful as a violinist. What's more, she told them I should play to-night, without first asking me if I would. When she asked me, just before dinner this evening, she told me everyone was expecting me to play, and so I couldn't very well refuse. I've got to live with the woman for the next month, and I could hardly risk her disfavour right at the outset of the trip. Now I've played, and played badly, and they'll expect me to play every night, and having begun badly I shall probably continue."

'"Never mind, Pamela," said Nairn sympathetically, "I quite understand how you feel about it. I shouldn't worry about to-night's performance. These, people are not critical. From the remarks I heard, they thought your playing wonderful, and the little of it I heard seemed quite up to your standard. I should forget about it, if I were you. You've shown you are willing, and if you don't play again for several nights, they'll have nothing to complain about."

"I came up here to get away from them all," explained the girl, "so that I shouldn't be pressed to promise to play again to-morrow, as some of them were suggesting. I may be crochetty or temperamental, or something else unpleasant, but I do dislike playing unless I'm in the mood for it, and if I do it against my will, I do it badly, and I'm upset afterwards."

"Come, Pamela, forget it. Just look at the beautiful sky, and the stars, and the white trail of foam we're leaving behind us."

Nairn began to talk of the stars, of which he had more than a smattering of knowledge. He indicated and named the various groups and related scraps of old myths connected with them. Pamela, at first sullen, became actively interested, and very soon she seemed to have recovered from the little temperamental storm which had driven her to seek solitude. Now and then she interposed questions, and Nairn answered them. It was strange, she thought, that he, the city financier, the cold realist, should be interested in such a romantic subject as the stars. He was revealing a side of his character of which, hitherto, she had received no inkling. "How came you to know all this about the stars?" she asked. "Oh, I picked up some of it as a boy, and then, during the war, I frequently found the stars useful in finding my direction at night, so I sent home for a book on astronomy, and I tilled in a good many hours of night duty reading it, and studying the skies." "Do you think that stars influence our lives?" asked Pamela, with a woman's instinctive interest in the occult.

"Frankly, I don't. I think we make our own lives. And I think if there were less talk about occult influences, about heredity, and similar excuses, people would have a greater sense of responsibility for the conduct of their lives. They would trace various troubles and set-backs to their sources, and would find that in most instances the cause had something to do with their own stupidities and failings." "Do you ever trace your own troubles back in that way?" "I do, frequently." "And do you ever find vourself guilty of stupidity?" "Often. Lots of times." ''But that can't be true, Russell, or you would not be so successful as you are." "If I have been successful at all— and it can only be in one phase of life— it is not because I am never stupid, but because I never repeat my stupidities. I try to learn by my mistakes, by my missed opportunities."

"But if opportunity knocks only once, you are not much better if you learn that you have missed one." "That's a fallacy. Opportunity knocks more than once, Pamela—at least in most instances. Had there been no second knockings, I should have been a. relatively poor man to-day. Perhaps the strain of Scottish blood in me makes me cautious. I don't always leap at my opportunities immediately I see them. But no second knock worth hearing has gone unattended, so far as I am concerned." Pamela shivered slightly. "You're getting cold," observed Nairn. "Let's walk." They rose to walk the deck, and he slipped his arm through hers. It seemed perfectly natural, though he had never done it before. They discussed the meeting at Southampton, how much better her father was looking, and intimate little family matters like that. Presently he stopped short. "Look," he said, "a ship!" They went to the rail, and he peered out into the darkness, at a distant liner. It was miles away to the south, travelling westward, and, illuminated from bow to stern, it looked like a fairy vessel of light, on a sea of ink.

Pamela, however, gave no more than a glance at the ship, though she affected an interest. For the rest of the time that he stood peering out over the sea, she was taking a sideward survey of her companion. He was wearing evening dress. His dinner jacket was perfectly cut and suited his tall figure admirably. He looked .just as he had looked on that evening at her home, exactly the same, even to the cigar which glowed in his hand. She felt strangely happy now. Altogether a different person from the solitary, distressed girl who had come to that deck some 40 minutes earlier. She marvelled at the power which this man possessed of making one feel placid and safe. It was. thus when be was staying

at her home during the war, and when hostile aeroplanes were dropping bombs on London. Russell always allayed her fears, and gave her a feeling of'perfect security. He was guessing at the identity of the distant liner, but she was paying no heed. Her mind was back in the drawing room at "Littleholme." Presently the ship's bell struck four. "What time is that, Russell?" she asked. "Ten o'clock, Pamela." "Good gracious, I must go, or Miss Gedge will be searching for me. If she found me up here with you, she might draw wrong conclusions." "What kind of conclusions, Pamela?" "Good-night, Russell. You have been very sweet to me," was all she said, looking back as she descended the stairway to the main deck. (To be continued daily.)