SHORT STORY
THE SHIP
HERMIONE looked the man beside
her and her small white teeth closed with a hard snap.
"I wish I could hurt him," she thought almost venomously,
She was small and dark, with a heart- shaped face which was provocative, As well, as a general rule, her eyes held a dancing light of mischief which matched her very ready smile. She had both n sense of humour and a sense of fun and she was always popular, for though her wit was sharp it was never biting.
But as she looked away from her com- panion over the blue waters of the sunlit harbour her expression was unusual: Be- hind her the rugged mountains dipped abruptly, carrying their thick pine and olive forests almost to the water's edge.. fighting back the little colourful town of Ville Franche as it strove to clutch at the shore. Ahead lay two, long grey, battle- cruisers, sleepy and at anchor. and the white, gleaming liner from which she had only an hour before come ashore sight-seeing, trip.
on
a
Hermione, however, surveyed all with unseeing eyes. She was instead visualls- ing a leari tannéd face, greying hair which grew in an attractive line above an intel- ligent forehead, a thin-lipped mouth, which, she thought, held all that there was of cynicism in its hard outline.
She glanced at him once again.. He was far taller than she, and he wore his clothes with a careless elegance. His hands were well shaped, and he wore a wrist-watch which could, only have been the careful choice of a woman. Her gaze lingered on it, almost jealously, as she admitted to herself that he was a man with whom any woman would be glad to be seen.
And he had an irritating charm, Irritat- ing since it so clearly proclaimed its ex- perience.
Exercised upon her, she thought vicious- _Iy_that_charm was to him an amusing proclamation of his own superiority only,
no more.
THAT SAILED
"I wish I could hurt him-make him feal-something! Anything!" she thought again, coupled with a regret that she had come ashore. If she had stayed on the ship alone, she would have been bored, perhaps, when all those she knew, on the pleasure cruise had escaped gladly for a But she would not Lew hours ashore. have experienced the unexpected meeting with Dennis Forsythe as she landed on the quay,
Before she had been aware of it she had found that he had taken possession of her. His cool grey eyes had stared down at her, his hand had crooked round her arm.
"You don't want to go careering off with that lot. You must be sick of them," he had said. "If you want to see round the place, I've got a car, and as I happen to be staying here I know the best place for lunch."
Before she had been able to collect her- self in her surprise she had found herself in his car.
"We'll go up the mountain first," he told her. There's a little auberge with a terrace, We'll have a sort of cocktail in the sun, and then I'll tell you the various things that you can have to cat and the places where you can get them. When you've decided 'we'll set out."
That was when Hermione's sense of mis- chief suddenly controlled her.
"I'll play ball with him," she decided in the flash of an instant.
"You're suggesting that we spend the day together?" she asked gravely.
"Why not?" he returned equably. "Let it be an interlude of pleasure. Your ship sails at six and the sun sets at the same time; why not let us steal these few, sun- ny hours for pretence?".
**For pretence?" she said.
He nodded.
"At six, we shall part. And we shall both have-I ́hope-an amusing memory,"
"Do you," she asked with a slight edge to her tone, "ever, think of anything but "your" amusement?”” ·
He was, she thought even then, so ob-
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viously a "playboy." He had the air of one who had Inherited, with the means to indulge it, only a desire for the easiest and most decorative manner of Hving.
Wealth to him was his armour. Without it he was nothing,. could be only nothing. And therefore, womanlike, though admit- ting the attraction which was an aura to him, she despised him.
Hermione had in her enough of tho primitive woman to require from the male an impression of adequate protection, 'She did not think. Dennis Forsythe 'could or would protect a woman; she doubted his capability to protect himself in an emer- gency. He was only interested in himself, he felt only for himself. She put it to her- self:
"He's no good. .. he'll never be any good!"
She wished, in a sudden and peculiar wistfulness, that she could find, in herself respect for him.
was
But the sun was warm and his insistence
Hermione upon galety infectious. venomous, she was vicious in irritation- aв much with herself as with him, yet she knew herself succumbing to his sug- gestion of those few golden hours of pre- tence.
There was enough of the child in her for her to find the whimsical amusement he had suggested in a stolen treat. She was already assured that he intended to make the interlude a treat. There was, there could be no harm in it. Hermione told her- self: Was she not certain that she was The well able to take care of herself? ship sailed at six and away she would go-from-him-into reality. Meanwhile- why not? Had he not, himself, suggested that?
"But," Hermione promised herself, "'I'U give him a run for his money!"
She controlled her innermost feelings as she found herself on the little terrace which he had promised her. There was before her a large wine-glass with a syru- py, dark concoction, in which were im- mersed two straws with which she could sip it.
"I said a sort of cocktail!” he apologis ed. "The English and Americans don't come here. They only cater for their own' people."'
"I think its rather unwise--in fact ́im- prudent. she said slowly..
H
"Not in the least intoxicating. I assure you." he answered. "At lunch, I agree, á 'sidecar; perhaps two-but this," he pointed to her glass. "Is only an excuse to sit in the sun, to talk, and for me to express my pleasure in having the oppor- tunity to look at you."
She made a grimace at him. "You know very well that I didn't mean the drink. No, it's our being here-alone and all that. There'll be talk culties...
dim.
"Now!" he smiled at her with mockery. "Who is going to know?"
She was looking downward and he could. not see the expression of her eyes.
"So," he admonished, "why not let us try to enjoy ourselves. This moment, af- ter all, can't come again."
Hermione sipped her drink, holding the straws daintily,---
"I should like... to... lunch,!!.......... she said, rather expensively."
"We can drive to Beaulieu,” he told her. "A large fish of delicate and exquisite flavour, caught this morning at dawn, will be shown to us. It you approve they will take it away, and after many and secret, processes, present it, cooking in a bed of flaming pine needles.”
"Yes," she smiled.
"Or," he suggested, "Instead, we can go down to the cellars, where the tide washes in and out. They will give us a net and we will pick and catch our own lobster. Twenty minutes later there will be such a dish! There is a sauce also,"
"What after?” She' leaned forward' «rest- ing her elbows on the table.
She looked, he thought, like an eager child, and she licked her scarlet, aggravat- ing mouth with a fongué as dink as A kitten's.
"'Greedy!"*
"You told me," she countered, "that": you'd found out all the best places for lunch."
"To you," he said, "I cannot tell a lie. I had a special reasons for doing so.. I can claim that my time has not been wasted."
"Had you?" she said, slightly amused. "It would be, indiscreet on my part to enquire your reason?"
"It would," he agreed. “I'm only pre- pared to admit the reason is unusual,”
"Is she really?"
He looked at her but her oyes were only. mocking.
"Most!" he said with emphasis She raised her glass.
"Good luck!”
He leaned towards her;
"Do you mean that?"
She looked him full in the eyes, "Most assuredly. - With all my heart!”” "I think," he said a little flatly, a mo ment later, "we'd better start out for Iunch."
"One, úp on mat?". Hermione counted," with some satisfaction. "Not what he expected!"?
She was determined to be as intriguing and as bewildering as she could. But over their. protracted and elaborate lun- cheon she found that he was as being He was setting her n riddle, she could, not read; There was nothing too good for her. he spared neither compliment or courtesy: but she felt, all the time, that I was at a mask for his real faalbgm. What they were she could not tell. She was surpris=" ed and annoyed; nd she had been from the first moment when she had found him'on'
· the quay, and she continued to tell her self that he was incapable of sincerity.
ክር This was "an escapade with which amused himself. She meant nothing to him. To his faded mind he had, in find- Ing her, administered to himself a fillip from boredon which any other pretty wo- man at that moment could not inspire. Afterwards he would amuse himself with the memory of it. A new experience, so near to others, yet in a way different.
Again. Hermione told herself. "I'd like to hurt him.".
She knew in herself a strong desire to slap the faintly mocking smile from his clean-cut features, and in the next mo- ment Imagined; that It would be pleasant to feel his lips on hers.
་ ་
"is
"That." Hermione told herselt, merely the result of wine, good food and sunshine. Also perhaps the excitement of flirtation which has to be purely ima- ginary. One becomes carried away in a sentimental desire that it should become real."
She shrugged her shoulders, imperoep- tibly, as she told herself that sentiment had no place in her life.
"I think," she told him, "that it's time we did something else."
Ha drove her up, away from the coast, once more into the mountains, which were turning rosy in the first hirit of sunset. The gray crags ran molten copper instead of their gush of foamwhite water. From the height Hermione looked down upon a sen streaked. with long purple shadows. which cleared into a vivid ice-blue over the milky sea bottom. The white liner seemed only a toy boat..
She was leaning near to Forsythe, He was aware of the perfume' which she used and the stillness which had come over her. "Happy?" he asked, somewhat abruptly. Startled, she looked up at him.
"I believe that I am," she said.
"I thought," he told her, "when you came ashore this morning, that you look- ed the happiest person I had ever seen.""
She looked downwards at her hands ly- ing idle in her lap. She was thinking, and her thoughts surged on in utter confusion and jangling speed: Something" in
his voice had interested her.
"I can hurt him, ... I can make him feel...
Suddenly her mind cleared.
was.
She herself, provocative, mocking, polsed, She. knew what she was going to say.
"I've
· “Why,not?” she asked.
every- thing now to make me happy. I'm young. I have enough money to give me indepen- dence, I'm free, and, best of all, I've learned to make the most of my freedom." ""That, of course, he observed, “means men."
"Of course," she agreed easily. "Men can make a great difference to a woman. once she learns never to take one serious- ly. Each," she mocked him, "should be like this-an, interlude.”
"And are they?"
"Certainly. One after another, and life becomes more charming each time.”
They had been driving slowly round the hairpin bends of the mountain road, but after her reply Forsythe pulled up abrupt- ly.
"Are you telling me seriously that, you indulge in these-interludes?
For the first time he realised that he was possessed by a real, uncomprehended: anger:
"You little slut!" he said."
She turned to him, all wide-eyed and innocent.
"Please, and what business is it.. of: yours?!
"I know," he said angrily, "that it's none.
""
The Why ask me?" she demanded. He did not answer.
“Of course I've been going in for-inter-- ludos. Vuh some.men it's fun, with others exciting – Sometimes one feels that it can· belmät, dangerous. One never knows! But its annoying that in the end one is always Afraid one has been almost bored." --"'So really,"you're just promiscuous [”
His voice was dangerously even. She saw in a swift glance that his face was harder than she could have believed pos- sible.
5
"No more than, for example, you' might. be," she said, and then she found herself . carried away in a rush of bitterness,
"You! What does anything matter to you but the whim of the moment? You haven't a genuine feeling in you. When have your ever thought of anything but polo, .. or parties, or trumpery flirtations? You hurt others, but you're only indifferent to your- self. Have you ever done a decent action- with your money, except toss a coin: to an beggar? And the world's full of misery- and people hopeless for lack of a helping hand?"
She broke off abruptly.. "What's the good?" she shrugged "You've heard it all before I'
It was 'strange, she' thought, that her heart should be beating so fast and that _she knew every muscle In her body was
tense: She wondered what i return ~ he~ minht make to her deduneo, but họ đi not speak,
Instead he pressed the starter, slid Into- gear, and drove the car on;
A few minutes later he said:
I'll be able to turn the car a bit fur-- ther on, and then I'll take you back.” ) her she stared out at the sky changing A bewildering sense of fallure overcame
its vivid blue Into a rich glow and felt that tears were very near her eyea, koje
So they had met, they had passed those. sunny hours together, and they would part, She had amused him until she had ceased. to srotute him. He had played "ille-part-
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