III

“Do look at Mrs. Lexton! Isn’t she absolutely lovely, Miles?”

“Yes, Bella⁠—and as good as she is pretty, I really do believe,” was the half-joking answer.

Look at her? Rushworth had done very little else since Ivy had come out of her stateroom this morning.

The two speakers were standing on the deck of the Dark Lady, and three yards away Ivy Lexton, lying back in a deck-chair, was talking animatedly to one of her fellow-guests, a good-looking young man named Quirk, who after having done well in the war, had been very nearly down and out by 1921, when he had been found and succoured by Rushworth. He now had his own plane, his air-taxi as he called it, and, thanks again to Rushworth, he never lacked good customers.

It was true that Mrs. Lexton looked lovely today. All the lovelier because she was thoroughly enjoying her new role, that of a perfectly turned out yachtswoman.

But Miles Rushworth had already told himself more than once, in the last hour, that he would be cool, detached, impartial, when considering this special guest.

“I suppose you couldn’t say a word to her, just pointing out that she’s quite pretty enough to do without lipstick and rouge? I wish you’d tell her they don’t look, somehow, the right thing on a yacht.”

Bella Dale smiled and shook her head. “If you want me to make friends with her, that would be a very poor beginning⁠—”

He said suddenly, “I am afraid Lady Dale doesn’t care for Mrs. Lexton?”

The colour deepened in his companion’s cheeks, and she looked embarrassed.

“Mother hasn’t had much of a chance of talking to her yet.”

Bella Dale was uncomfortably aware that her mother had taken an instant dislike to Ivy Lexton on the evening they had first met at the Savoy; and she knew that Lady Dale’s feeling had increased, rather than lessened, since the Lextons had joined Miles Rushworth’s yacht, for she had exclaimed to her daughter in the privacy of their stateroom: “It’s foolish to be too good-natured, Bella. That young woman is a regular little minx!”

But Bella Dale, at this time of her life, saw everything through Miles Rushworth’s eyes. She liked what he liked, admired what he admired, and at any rate tried to believe good what he believed good. He had asked her earnestly to make friends with Mrs. Lexton, and he had told her something of the struggle the poor, pretty, little thing had gone through. Also he had let her see how great was his contempt for Ivy’s worthless, extravagant, idle husband.⁠ ⁠…

Rushworth had always had from childhood a passion for the sea. His had been an old-fashioned home, and everything had been done by his parents to promote what they thought was for his happiness from the day he was born; but not once had he been asked what he wished to do in life. His path had been marked out for him almost, it may be said, before his birth. His father would have been surprised as well as dismayed to learn that, both as a child and as a youth, his great wish had been to enter the Navy. During the war he had given to naval charities what would have crippled a lesser fortune than his own.

His fine yacht was his one personal extravagance, and on the Dark Lady he spent by far the happiest hours of his life. But he had deliberately so arranged the accommodation that it was impossible for him to have a really big party aboard. Eight to ten, including himself, was his limit, and the same people were generally asked by him each year. Lady Dale and her daughter, together with an old-fashioned couple belonging to a rather older generation than himself, who looked forward the whole year through to this August yachting fortnight, always came. To these he had added this summer the flying man, the latter’s bride, and the Lextons.

Acting as hostess was a middle-aged spinster cousin of his mother’s, who, like himself, had a passion for the sea. Charlotte Chattle was a pleasant woman of the world, speaking both French and Italian well, and clever in organising expeditions for those of his guests who cared for land jaunts. But the only people who counted in Rushworth’s mind on this summer cruise were Lady Dale and her daughter, and Ivy Lexton and Ivy Lexton’s husband.

Ivy’s half-presentiment at the Savoy had been perhaps a case of thought transference, for Miles Rushworth, just about that time, had been thinking seriously of marrying Bella Dale. Indeed, had that meeting with the Lextons not taken place, he would almost certainly have been engaged by now to Bella, and he still so far deceived himself as to wish that the girl he thought he loved, and whom he intended to become Mrs. Miles Rushworth, should make friends with Ivy Lexton.

Bella Dale had done her best in the last three days to fall in with his wishes, but she found it difficult to get further than a mild acquaintanceship with Miles Rushworth’s beautiful guest. She knew nothing of the night club, dancing, racing life, which was all that both the Lextons knew and thought worth living for. And Ivy, on her side, was entirely ignorant of, and would have despised, had she known of them, the manifold social and general interests which filled the life of even so quiet a girl as Bella Dale. Also Bella, who was no fool, realised with some discomfort that Mrs. Lexton had very quickly become aware that Lady Dale did not like or approve of her.

And Ivy herself? Ivy was counting the hours⁠—to her intense relief they had now become hours instead of days⁠—to the time when Lady Dale and her daughter would leave the yacht at Dieppe.

During the three weeks that had elapsed since their memorable meeting at the Savoy, Ivy Lexton and Miles Rushworth had been constantly together. It had all been very much above board⁠—indeed, quite as often as not, Jervis Lexton had been of the company when the two lunched or dined, went to the play, or, pleasanter still, motored down to Ranelagh to spend an enchanting evening.

But Rushworth had a definite philosophy of life. To pursue a woman who, whatever the undercurrents to her life might be, appeared happily married, would have seemed to him a despicable, as well as a cruel and unmanly thing to do. Also, he prided himself on being able, when he chose to do so, to resist temptation, and he felt convinced he could handle what might become a delicate situation not only with sense, but even with comfort to himself. This was made the easier to him because he put Ivy Lexton on a pedestal. God alone knew how he idealised her, how completely he believed her soul matched her delicately perfect, ethereal-looking body.

While Ivy was chatting gaily to her companion, she was yet almost painfully aware of the two who stood talking together in so earnest and intimate a way. She was feeling what she had never felt in her life of twenty-six years: that is, bitterly, angrily jealous of a girl whom she thought stupid, dull, and unattractive.

Miles Rushworth’s attitude to herself disconcerted her. She could not, to use her own jargon, get the hang of him. It was so strange, in a sense so disturbing, that he never made love to her. Then, now and again, she would remember Mrs. Thrawn, and Mrs. Thrawn’s predictions.

She had followed the fortune-teller’s advice with regard to Roger Gretorex. She had insisted that it would be better for them both neither to see nor to write to each other till she came back to London in September; and he had had perforce to agree to her conditions.

The yacht made Dieppe the next morning, and at breakfast there rose a discussion as to how the party could spend their time on shore to the best advantage. Rushworth at once observed that he would not be able to take part in any expedition ashore. He had received important business telegrams, and he had a number of letters to dictate to a stenographer whose services he had already secured.

Miss Chattle, who knew he would value a quiet working day, suggested a motor expedition to a celebrated shrine a hundred kilometres inland from Dieppe. She declared that if they started at once they could be back in comfortable time for dinner.

And then it was that Ivy, as in a lightning flash, made up her mind as to how she would spend today.

“I get so tired motoring, so I’d rather stay behind.” She turned to her host, “While you’re doing your work, I can take a walk in the town. Though I’ve been to Paris two or three times, I’ve never been anywhere else in France.”

“That’s a good idea! We might meet at the Hotel Royal about one o’clock, and have lunch together.”

Half an hour later Miss Chattle shepherded the rest of the party into two roomy cars, while Rushworth escorted Lady Dale and her daughter on to the quay, where a carriage was waiting for them.

Lady Dale went forward to speak to the driver, and Rushworth turned to the girl he still intended should be his wife.

“If we don’t meet again before the end of September, I do want just to say one thing to you, Bella.”

He spoke in so peculiar, and in so very earnest, a tone, that Bella’s heart began to beat.

“What is it you want to say?” she asked, her voice sinking almost to a whisper.

“I’ve said it before, and now I want to say it again⁠—”

Bella looked at him fixedly. Thank God, she hadn’t betrayed herself. But what was this he was saying?

“I do want you to make real friends with Mrs. Lexton⁠—I mean, of course, after you and Lady Dale are back at Hampton Court, when Jervis Lexton will have begun work in my London office. His wife, poor little soul, hasn’t any real friends, from what I can make out.”

“Yet she seems to know a good many people, Miles. When we were looking through those picture papers yesterday, she seemed to know almost everyone who had been snapshotted at Goodwood!”

“I was thinking of real friends⁠—not of those stupid gadabouts who are here, there, and everywhere,” he said with a touch of irritation.

And then they heard Lady Dale’s voice.

“I think we ought to be off, Bella. It’s nearly half-past ten, and you know they lunch early at the château.”

Rushworth wrung Bella’s hand. “I’m sorry you’ve had to leave the yacht so soon.”

But his voice had become perceptibly colder. He was disappointed, even a little hurt. He had always thought his friend Bella not only kind, but full of sympathy and understanding. Yet she had spoken of his new friend with a curious lack even of liking, let alone sympathy.

When Miles Rushworth came back from seeing the Dales off, he found Ivy Lexton sitting on the now deserted deck. There was a pile of newspapers on the little table which had been brought up close to her deck-chair, and she was pretending to read the Paris New York Herald. Convinced that Miles Rushworth intended to be with her the whole of the long sunny morning, she was not only surprised, but also very disappointed, when he said cheerfully:

“Well, lovely lady, I’ve a hard mornin’s work before me, for there’s a whole pile of letters and telegrams waiting to be answered. Cook’s man has found me an excellent shorthand writer, so I hope to be through in a couple of hours.”

Her face suddenly became overcast, and he felt tempted, for a moment, to throw aside his work. But he resisted the temptation.

“Would you rather laze about here or take a walk and meet me at the Royal?”

“I’ll go into the town. There are one or two little things I want to buy. What time shall I be at the hotel?”

He hadn’t meant to meet her till one o’clock. But for once the old Adam triumphed.

“Let me see? It’s half-past ten now, let’s meet at twelve-thirty. We’ll have an early French lunch, and then we’ll go for a motor drive, or do anything else that you feel like doing. From what I can make out, the others can’t be back till seven, if then.”

Ivy waited till she had seen him disappear into the stateroom which was the one retreat on the yacht where Rushworth never asked any of his guests to join him, and about which they all felt a certain curiosity. Then she put down the paper she still held in her hand, and, closing her eyes, she began to think.

What manner of man was this new friend of hers? He must “like” her surely? “Like” was the ambiguous term Ivy Lexton used to herself when she meant something very different from “liking.” Yet he had never said to her the sort of thing that the men she met almost always did say, and on the shortest acquaintance. Stranger still, he had never asked anything of her in exchange for what had become considerable and frequent benefactions. True, Rushworth’s gifts had almost always been useful gifts. He had never, so to speak, “said it with flowers.” That had puzzled her a little, made her sometimes wonder as to what his real feelings could be. Never once⁠—she had made a note of it in her own mind⁠—had he mentioned Bella Dale during the three weeks when they had been so much together in London.

So it had been a disagreeable shock to find Lady Dale and her daughter already established on the yacht, and on the happiest terms of old friendship with everyone on board. Again and again during the week’s cruise, Ivy had asked herself anxiously whether Miles Rushworth could really “like” such a dowdy, matter-of-fact girl as was Miss Dale? Yet now and again when she saw them together, talking in an intimate, happy way, and when she heard them alluding to events which had happened long before she knew Rushworth, there would come over her a tremor of icy fear, for well she knew that, from her point of view, a man friend married was a man friend marred.

It was to her a new experience to be in close touch with such a real worker as was Miles Rushworth. There was nothing in common between him and the idle, often vicious, and for the most part mindless young men who drifted in and out of the spendthrift world in which she and Jervis had both been so popular as long as their money had lasted.

She got up at last, and went into her luxurious stateroom to fetch a parasol. It was a charming costly trifle, matching the blue coat and skirt she was wearing, but large enough to shelter her face from the sun. Her quaint little sailor hat, a throwback to a mode of long ago, while very becoming, was quite useless from that point of view.

She walked slowly along the deck, hoping against hope that Rushworth would see her and, leaving his work, join her; but as she passed his stateroom she heard his voice dictating.

The French of all ages and both sexes are lovers of beauty, so in a small way Ivy Lexton’s progress through the picturesque old town of Dieppe was a triumphal progress. Most of the people she passed turned and looked after her with unaffected admiration and one man⁠—she felt instinctively that he was some important person⁠—followed her for quite a long way. But it was very hot, and in time she grew weary of the crowded streets. Taking as her guides a couple who were carrying their bathing costumes and towels, she went after them up a shady byway and so through the old gateway leading to the wide lawns along the seafront, which are the great charm of Dieppe.

What an amusing, lively, delightful place! Against the deep blue sky rose the white Casino, and the parking place was crowded with serried rows of motors. Along the front groups of Frenchwomen, for the most part wearing white coats and skirts, strolled about with their attendant cavaliers.

Her spirits bounded up; she felt herself to be once more what she had not felt herself to be at all on Rushworth’s yacht, in her own natural atmosphere again. And, to add to her satisfaction, she soon spied out the Hotel Royal, brilliant with flowers and blue and white sun-blinds.

The Angelus chimes rang out from one of the old churches, and the gay crowd began to move slowly towards the villas and hotels which form the seafront side of the incongruously-named Boulevard de Verdun.

Ivy walked into the cool hall of the hotel, and sat down in an easy chair with a sigh of pleasure.

How she wished she was staying here instead of on the yacht! She delighted in the atmosphere of gay bustle and carefree wealth and prosperity of all the happy-looking people who were strolling past her on their way to the restaurant. She enjoyed the glances of covert, and in some cases of insolent, admiration thrown her way; in fact she was kept so well amused that she gave quite a start when she heard Rushworth’s voice exclaim, “So here you are, little lady! I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I thought you’d be out of doors.”

She got up, and then he said something which filled her with dismay.

“Among my letters this morning there was one from a very old friend of mine, a man with whom I worked during the war. He and his wife have a room in some back street, for they’re not at all well off. So I thought it would be a good plan to take them for a drive this afternoon. I felt sure you wouldn’t mind?”

“Of course not!”

She felt bitterly disappointed, but she would have been more than disappointed had she known that Rushworth had deliberately asked these old friends to join them, in order to put temptation out of his way.

He added, a little quickly, “I felt rather a brute not asking them to lunch, but I was so looking forward to my lunch alone with you.”

“I’d been looking forward to it, too,” she said in a low voice.

And then there did come across him a sharp, unavailing pang of regret that he had been so stupidly quixotic, and instantly he made up his mind that their drive should not last more than two hours. After all, he and Ivy were both decent people, and dear friends to boot; why shouldn’t they go back to the yacht to spend a quiet happy hour or two, alone together, before the others returned?

They had a delicious lunch, the sort of lunch that Ivy enjoyed, in an airy room full of chattering, merry, prosperous-looking couples.

Then, after they had had coffee, they went out and slowly sauntered to the little garden at the foot of a great cliff on which stands an ancient stronghold. It was cool and quiet there, and the only person with whom they shared the garden was an old lady exercising her Persian cat on a lead.

They sat down in silence. Rushworth was smoking a cigar, Ivy a cigarette. Suddenly he threw away his cigar, for there had come over him a wild, mad impulse to put his arms round her. But, instead, he moved a little farther away.

She, too, suddenly flung away her cigarette, and turned to him, “I sometimes wonder, Mr. Rushworth, if you know how awfully grateful I am to you for all you’ve done for me⁠—and for Jervis.”

He saw that tears were in her eyes, and he took her hand and clasped it closely. He was saying to himself, “Poor little darling, it would be the act of a cad, of a cur, to take advantage of her gratitude and⁠—and loneliness.”

“You’ve nothing to be grateful for,” he said quietly, and then he released the soft hand he held. “It’s a great privilege to meet someone who really deserves a little help. A man who is known to have money is there to be shot at,” he smiled a little grimly. “Any number of what are called deserving objects are presented to his view. The real problem is to find the people who want helping, and who won’t ask for help.”

He sincerely believed that the woman to whom he was addressing those words fell within that rare category.

Suddenly he got up. “I see the Actons,” he exclaimed. “I told them three o’clock in front of the Casino⁠—they’re a little before their time.”

It was a wonderful drive to Tréport, and Ivy, rather to her own surprise, enjoyed it. Partly, perhaps, because Rushworth’s old friend, James Acton, “fell for” her at once, to the amusement of his good-humoured, clever, middle-aged wife. They stopped at the Trianon Hotel on their way back and had some early tea; but even so it was only five o’clock when they returned to Dieppe and dropped the Actons.

Dismissing the car, they began walking towards the harbour. At last⁠—at last they were alone.

In the Grande Rue Ivy stopped, instinctively, before a minute shop, a branch of a famous house of the same name at Cannes and Deauville.

The window contained but one object, to Rushworth’s masculine eyes a rather absurd-looking trifle, for it consisted of a lady’s vanity bag which looked like a tiny bolster of mother-of-pearl. The clasp consisted of a large emerald set with pearls.

“What a lovely little bag!” exclaimed Ivy ecstatically.

“D’you like it?” Rushworth was filled with a kind of tender amusement. What a baby she was, after all!

“Like it? I adore it!”

“Then I’ll give it you⁠—for next Christmas!”

“You mustn’t! It must be fearfully expensive,” she cried.

But he had already gone into the shop. With something like awe, she watched him from the pavement shovelling out bundles of thousand franc notes on to the narrow counter behind which stood a white-haired woman.

How rich, how enormously rich Miles Rushworth must be!

As he joined her, Ivy saw that the precious bag was now enclosed in a soft leather case which had evidently been made for its protection. He put his delightful gift into her eager hands, and said, smiling:

“The elegant old dame in there⁠—she looked like a marquise herself⁠—declares that the clasp of this bag was once a brooch belonging to the Princesse de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette’s friend.”

“How wonderful!”

He looked at her quizzically, “I said I hoped it wouldn’t bring you bad luck! She quite understood the allusion,” which was more than Ivy did.

“It was made, it seems, to the order of a lady who supplied the jewel for the clasp. She’s suddenly gone into mourning, and as they had made it they consented to try and sell it for her. It was being sent on to their Deauville branch this very afternoon. It’s been here a week, and the old lady admitted that she hadn’t had a single inquiry for it!”

Ivy had now opened, the case and taken out the wonderful little bag, her eyes dancing with pleasure and gratitude. She told herself with satisfaction, that, given the right kind of frock, she could use it by day as well as by night.

There was a very practical, shrewd side to Mrs. Jervis Lexton. But it was a side of her nature which she was slow to reveal to her men friends.

As they went on board the yacht a telegram was handed to Rushworth. Carelessly he tore it open, read it through, and then handed it to his guest:

Tremendous affair taking place here tomorrow midday. French President unveiling monument to fallen. We propose staying the night in excellent hotel. Shall be back by teatime.

Ivy looked up. There was joy in Rushworth’s face⁠—and more than joy, for the eager, half-shamed look Ivy had so often seen on a man’s face was there also. But all he said was:

“This means that we shall have a quiet little dinner alone together, you and I.”

“That will be very nice,” she answered quietly.

“I’ve a good deal more work to get through so shall we say half-past eight? We might have dinner in what I call my sea-study. I always dine there, when I’m alone on the yacht.”

Just as she was leaving him, she turned and said gently:

“Don’t you think you ought to have a little rest after all the work you did this morning? Why not wait till tomorrow?”

There was such a sweet solicitude in the tone in which she uttered those words that Rushworth felt touched.

“Work’s the only thing that makes time go by quickly,” he answered, and then, in a low, ardent tone, he added, “When I’m not with you, I’d far rather be working than idling⁠—”

A sensation of intense, secret triumph swept over Ivy Lexton. She felt that the gateless barrier Miles Rushworth had thrown up between them was giving way at last. Tonight would surely come her opportunity of lifting their ambiguous relationship from the dull plane of friendship to the exciting plane of what she called love.

She turned away, and then, a moment later, she stayed her steps, and looked back to where he was still standing.⁠ ⁠…

Small wonder that during the three hours that followed that informal parting, Rushworth, while mechanically dictating business letters, was gazing inwardly at a lovely vision⁠—an exquisite flower-like face and beseeching, beckoning eyes.