Return Journey Read online

  RETURN JOURNEY

  Ruby M. Ayres

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter

  1

  When Rocky came aboard at Toulon the ship seemed—metaphorically—to shake itself and come to life.

  She scuttled up the gangway, her hair flying and her eyes bright with excitement, clutching to her breast a big tweed coat, an overfilled handbag, a bundle of magazines, and her passport, all of which she promptly dropped as soon as she reached the deck.

  A tall young man with rather an impatient face moved reluctantly from his leaning position against the ship’s rails and stooped to recover her property.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said breathlessly. “Oh, thank you very much.” She gave him a fleeting smile, gazed beyond him and around her with lively interest before she plunged below in search of her cabin.

  She was like a bright comet racing through space, leaving a trail of glory behind her, so that more than one pair of eyes followed her interestedly before she passed out of sight.

  So far it had been a dull voyage from London; rough in the Channel, colder and rougher in the Bay, raining heavens hard at Gibraltar, so that the few passengers who were not seasick merely shivered and ignored the opportunity to go ashore, and of the men only Sir John Stannard had each night religiously conformed to convention by dressing for dinner.

  Sir John was by far the most outstanding personality of the three hundred passengers, and he sat alone at a small table almost in the centre of the dining-saloon, quizzing his fellow-men and women from behind his monocle with the half-amused, tolerant regard of the accustomed traveller.

  With one glance he had quietly summed them up, sorting them out as one might sort out a bundle of puppet figures before relegating each one to its own particular box, recognising the important or unimportant part each one would probably play in his own life.

  He had dutifully said good morning each day to the two spinster ladies, who were travelling East in search of sunshine; he had talked each evening in the smoking-room to the tall, impatient-looking young man who had stooped to recover Rocky’s equipment; he had gallantly exchanged the correct sort of smile with the gaudily dressed actress who was his immediate vis-à-vis in the dining-saloon, and after listening to the chatter of the few young people on board he had resigned himself to the fact that this was to be a dull voyage.

  Until Rocky came scuttling up the gangway at Toulon.

  She was evidently travelling alone, and he found the fact intriguing, for, although he would have said that there was nothing left for him to learn about the fair sex, Rocky was disconcertingly unlike the regulation modern type who flaunt their newly found independence and youthful arrogance in the face of middle age.

  He had caught a second glimpse of her just as the ship was moving out of Toulon Harbour, and he had heard her sweetly shrill voice demanding of someone in authority that she was given a seat at a cheerful table and not amongst the old fogies.

  Sir John had frowned slightly as he listened, and perhaps it was unconsciously that he had raised his eyes to a mirror on the wall of the lounge, wondering whether she would place him in that undistinguished category.

  And then, by queer contradiction, he had noticed that the sun was shining for the first time since they left London.

  He went down to dinner earlier than usual that evening, his iron-grey hair carefully brushed, his bow immaculately tied, and his fine shoulders held squarely erect.

  He bowed to the two spinster ladies before he sat down and glanced leisurely round the saloon, but there was no sign of the girl who had for a moment that afternoon jolted the ship into life.

  “She’ll be late, of course,” he told himself as he studied the menu, and there was a faintly amused twinkle in his eyes as he gravely weighed the relative merits of soup and fish.

  “Soup, I think,” he told the attendant steward before he leaned back in his chair with the resigned air of one who awaits the arrival of an unpunctual guest.

  The tables were filling up quickly; there on his left were the middle-aged couple who had informed him that for twenty years they had saved in order to take this trip round the world, and who, so it seemed to him, were already regretting the effort.

  Opposite to him, Gina Savoire, the French actress whose carefully broken English his experience had already suspected, was studying her face in a tiny hand-mirror and carefully patting her elaborately curled hair into place.

  She had come aboard followed by such a mountain of florists’ boxes that for the first few days it had been almost impossible to catch a glimpse of her because of the dozens of long-stemmed roses and planted baskets which crowded her table.

  “Who is she?” Sir John had enquired of the tall young man, and he had answered that she was supposed to be a French actress named Gina Savoire.

  “I’ve never heard of her before,” the tall young man added indifferently.

  Sir John had never heard of her either, although he prided himself that he knew a good deal about the French stage; but he felt vaguely sorry for her without understanding why, unless it was because of her determinedly gracious smile and because of the unmistakable signs of departing youth, which all the art in the world could not successfully disguise.

  Tonight she was wearing a sky-blue backless frock which would not have disgraced the Folies Bergères, and there was a glittering star in her hair which with the unenlightened would have passed for diamonds, and her eyes were so heavily made up that they seemed to have been clumsily added to her face for the occasion instead of being one of its natural features.

  Sir John looked away from her to the Second Officer’s table, where half a dozen young people of no particular outstanding charm had gathered together, and who were, as usual, all talking at once.

  Theirs was the noisiest table in the saloon, of which he knew the two spinster ladies strongly disapproved, but upon which the ship’s Captain always smiled benignly on the few occasions when he had dined with his passengers.

  There was an extra and unoccupied chair at this table tonight.

  “That’s where she’ll sit,” Sir John told himself, remembering her shrill instructions, and almost immediately a small pair of feet in absurd high-heeled sandals appeared at the top of the stairs which led down into the saloon, followed by a slender figure in a high-necked green frock, and finally by Rocky’s vivid face.

  She looked so very much alive, so eager, as if she was in excited search of something or of someone near at hand who had so far managed to elude her.

  The head steward hurried forward to draw out the empty chair, and the Second Officer and two other young men who shared the table rose politely to their feet, and Sir John heard Rocky say in her shrilly sweet voice: “Good evening, everybody.”

  She seemed perfectly self-possessed because she was so perfectly natural; one could see that she was prepared to like everyone, and that therefore it never crossed her mind that everyone might not find it possible to like her.

  She wore her hair in short curls, brushed straight back from her forehead, and her dark, even brows turned slightly up at the corners, giving her an enquiring look which added to her charm.

  Her eyes were grey, her nose rather short and childish, and when she smiled a dimple made an unexpected appearance in one cheek.

  That she was quite without make-up Sir John noted with satisfaction, and
also that she was to sit facing him.

  She was still looking around in that alive, eager way, as if searching for someone she hoped or expected to find, and for a moment her eyes met his and lingered with faint interest.

  Sir John was a fine-looking man, six feet in height, with an unmistakable “air” which invariably singled him out for immediate attention.

  The two spinster ladies, who secretly admired him, had decided that he was probably sixty, but agreed that with such a man age was of little moment; they loved him for his courtesy to them, and they cherished the hope that he was travelling as they were, to New Zealand. Rocky was admiring him also; she appreciated his thick iron-grey hair, and his monocle, and his air of dignity and repose, and presently she asked the Second Officer, in an undertone, who he was.

  “Sir John Stannard.”

  “Oh!” … Rocky nodded approvingly. “He looks like Ancient Lineage and Baronial Halls, and long lines of Ancestors,” she said.

  Everybody laughed, and she flushed.

  “Well, so he does,” she defended herself; and then, anxious to change the subject, she turned her attention to Gina Savoire.

  “She’s a French actress, so they say,” Constance Durham told her with an unkind little inflection. “We call her The Painted Lady.”

  Rocky’s grey eyes rested on Gina’s face.

  “She looks interesting,” she said.

  “Interesting!” The four young people round the table echoed the word in a kind of chorus, and Rocky insisted, “I think she’s got lovely eyes.” There was another outcry and the Second Officer came to her rescue.

  “How far are you going with us?” he asked.

  “To Colombo.”

  “We’re going to Australia,” Constance informed her. “Our people live there. We’ve been home staying with relations for the past year; at least I have.” She nodded across at her brother, who sat opposite. “Clive’s been up at Cambridge. Do you live in Ceylon?” she asked.

  Rocky shook her head.

  “No; I’ve never been there before—I’m just going for a holiday.” Her eyes were on their voyage of discovery again, and this time they came to rest on the tall, impatient-looking young man who had stooped to recover her property when she came on board.

  “That’s Richard Wheeler,” Constance explained. “He looks interesting, but he isn’t—at least, not very.”

  “Why not?” Rocky enquired.

  “Because he won’t talk to Constance,” Clive Durham explained with brotherly candour.

  “How silly of him,” Rocky said breezily. “I think if you want to have a good time on board ship you must make friends with everyone. I mean to, anyway.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t travelled a great deal,” Constance submitted with a little air of superiority.

  “I haven’t,” Rocky agreed. “This is my first long trip and I mean to make the most of it.”

  “What is your name?” the elder girl asked.

  “Elizabeth Chandler, but everyone calls me Rocky.” She smiled. “It was my nickname at school,” she explained. “I was called Rocky because they said I was never still.”

  “May we call you Rocky?” Clive asked daringly.

  She looked at him very directly.

  “And what shall I call you?” she enquired.

  “His name is Clive,” his sister answered. “And mine is Constance, and that’s Edith—the one next to Clive, and that’s David next to her, so now we all know one another.”

  “Yes, now we all know one another,” Rocky agreed happily, “and I think we’re going to have a grand time,” she announced.

  Constance laughed. “I wouldn’t be too sure if I were you,” she answered. “It usually pays not to make friends in too much of a hurry on board ship—in case you choose the wrong ones, and you can’t get rid of them.”

  “Oh,” Rocky said a little blankly.

  There was a short silence, then the pale-faced girl, whose name was Edith, asked in a languid voice, “Do you ever get seasick?”

  “I don’t know,” Rocky admitted. “But somehow I don’t think I shall.”

  “I do,” Edith said lugubriously. “It was awful in the Bay. I shouldn’t have cared if the ship had gone down. It just blew and blew until I longed to die.”

  “We shan’t have any more weather like that,” the Second Officer comforted her. Rocky turned to look at him.

  “Are you ever seasick?” she asked.

  He laughed and shook his head.

  “Are sailors ever seasick?” Rocky persisted.

  “Not in this ship,” he answered.

  The chorus of laughter came again, and from the opposite table Sir John Stannard smiled in sympathy. The steward spoke at Rocky’s elbow.

  “May I get you an ice, Miss?”

  “Oh yes!” she answered fervently. “I adore ices.”

  “Is there anything you don’t adore, I wonder?” the Second Officer asked in amusement.

  “Not much,” she admitted. “You see—well, I think it’s such a wonderful world.”

  “You’ve never been seasick,” Edith sighed.

  “And what do we do after dinner?” she enquired eagerly.

  “We haven’t done anything yet,” Constance said. “It’s been too rough; but you can dance if you want to—the band’s quite good.”

  Rocky’s eyes shone.

  “I love dancing.”

  “There’ll be sports now we’re in the Mediterranean,” the Second Officer told her.

  “I hate games,” Constance objected.

  Rocky looked amazed.

  “Do you? I love them. I love swimming, too, and I saw a lovely pool on deck.”

  “It seems to me, Miss Chandler,” the Second Officer said, “that you will be a great asset to this ship.”

  Rocky beamed. “You’re nice,” she thought. “Everyone is nice, and everything. It’s going to be marvellous.”

  Constance was watching her critically.

  “Do you always have a good time, wherever you go?” she asked. Rocky half sighed and then she nodded.

  “Yes—at least—well, perhaps not always, but I try to. You see, I always think that you never know when it will end.” And then, as if ashamed of the serious note that had crept into her voice, she added hurriedly, “I mean—well, we’ve all got to get old, haven’t we?” and unconsciously she looked again at Sir John Stannard as the thought went through’ her mind, “I wonder what he was like when he was young—ripping, I should think—and he’s still ripping.”

  Of course, he was elderly now, if one only counted years, although, in spite of his grey hair and the deep lines in his handsome face, there was something about him which appealed to her tremendously.

  “I’m going to like you,” she told him subconsciously.

  She gave a little start when Edith asked in her depressed voice: “Is your hair naturally curly?”

  “Yes.”

  Edith looked envious. “You seem to have all the luck,” she sighed. Constance shrugged her shoulders. She was a thin, rather odd-looking girl, and she wore her dark hair flat against her head and prided herself on the excessive whiteness of her skin.

  “It’s nice to be different,” she told Rocky later. “Today everyone has wavy hair and a complexion out of the box.”

  Edith suddenly pushed her plate away and half rose.

  “Well, I’m going to lie down,” she announced in a deadly voice. “I know it’s going to be rough again.”

  “You’ll be disappointed,” the Second Officer told her cheerfully, and Constance said:

  “Well, shall we all go, if we’ve finished?”

  “I’m going to walk round the deck,” Rocky announced.

  Both girls stared at her.

  “It’s so cold!” they objected.

  “It’s a lovely night,” Rocky insisted. “I looked out before I came down, and it’s starlight. I’ll get a wrap.”

  “Meet you at the top of the stairs in five minutes,” Clive Durham
called after her. Rocky nodded and raced away to find her cabin. She had forgotten the number and had to enquire from a steward. “No. 48 is on D deck,” he told her smilingly; people always smiled at Rocky.

  She was full of excitement as she caught up a wrap from the bed and twisted it anyhow round her shoulders. Already she felt as if she was amongst friends; she liked the Second Officer best so far, and she hoped that he would prove to be a good dancer; she liked Clive Durham, too, only differently—and she was happily convinced that when she knew Constance and Edith better they would all be great friends.

  On her way back she lost herself among the many passages of the big ship and arrived on deck at the wrong end. The wind was blowing freshly, but the sky was ablaze with stars, and she paused for a moment to lean on the rails and to stare down at the dark sea. It was lonely, she thought, and yet very wonderful, too, that the Captain, or whoever looked after the ship, could find his way through such impenetrable blackness.

  She shivered a little and drew her wrap more closely around her. She felt sorry for Edith and Constance, who both seemed so blasé and disinterested; but then, of course, they had been for other voyages and it was no novelty to them.

  And then for a moment she looked back—to Yesterday—so far away now, it seemed, and not quite a happy memory, so that quickly she pushed it from her and turned her eyes once more to the stars.

  There was a band playing somewhere on deck, and at once her little feet began to move in eager anticipation, and she moved so hurriedly to retrace her steps that she almost cannoned into a man who was walking towards her.

  She checked her speed apologetically, and she heard him laugh.

  “Are you always in such a hurry?” he asked.

  Rocky laughed, too.

  “I believe I am,” she admitted, and suddenly she felt as if he was a friend. “You see, there’s such a lot to do, isn’t there?”

  “I thought so when I was your age,” Sir John answered.

  He looked down at her, and the light from the saloon windows shone on her face, very fair and appealing in its eagerness.

  “Are you going to dance?” he enquired.

  “If anyone asks me,” she admitted, and then: “Are you going to dance?”