Collected works of e m d.., p.572
Collected Works of E M Delafield, page 572
Someone asked her if she knew anything about Reed’s past. He had given various accounts of himself, as a free-lance journalist, a tremendous antiquarian, a Bohemian amongst Bohemians — and even a man-about-town — and we all knew, long before the ship left Port Said, that Reed was one of those unfortunate natural liars in whom the truth, apparently, is not.
Clare Christie said, after a moment’s hesitation:
“I don’t know much about him, really. He was secretary, for a time, to our Member. I used to meet him there a year or two ago, and he — he had lunch at our house, once or twice, I think. Then he left and — I don’t think I know what happened to him next.”
“Been in prison, perhaps,” someone suggested facetiously.
“Or in the Secret Service.”
“Or giving Pierrot concerts on the East Coast.”
“Don’t,” said Clare, laughing all the same. “Poor little creature, he really isn’t so bad. I believe he was quite a good secretary.”
“He told me the other day that he’s taught himself to write shorthand, and that he could take it down at the rate of two hundred and ten words a minute,” said the American girl in a voice of scornful incredulity.
Young Howard, of the Colonial Service, looked up for a moment from his book.
“That’s a pretty high speed,” he said quietly. “Our very best clerk in the office at Colombo doesn’t reckon to do anything like that.”
“Let’s set Mr. Reed a test,” maliciously suggested Mrs. Lewis, the young-looking widow who was travelling with her daughter.
Somebody else giggled.
“Oh, could we?”
“Of course, why not? If he does it all right, then he covers himself with honour and glory, which he’ll enjoy, and if he can’t, — why then it serves him right for swanking.”
“Isn’t it rather a shame?” protested Clare, although her blue eyes were laughing and dancing as she spoke.
“He’s brought it on himself,” I pointed out, for I disliked Reed quite as much as everybody else, and had, moreover, a sneaking curiosity to see how he would get out of the difficulty. It wasn’t, certainly, a very kind or generous attitude of mind; but the voyage had been extraordinarily dull and uneventful, except, I suppose, for the people who were in love with Clare Christie, which I wasn’t.
(I had purchased my immunity, expensively enough, during a hot-weather season in Hong Kong, ten years before. Besides, she wasn’t my type. Too sophisticated and cool, for all her gentleness.)
Mrs. Lewis was chattering animatedly.
“I know. We’ll say we want to get up a Ship’s Magazine — it’s often done — and then somebody must dictate something, very fast indeed, and ask him to take it all down, and then transcribe it — isn’t that the proper term? — and the purser or somebody will get it typed out for us.”
“But who’s going to dictate something, very fast indeed, out of their own head?” protested the American girl, opening her eyes very wide.
“Oh — !” Mrs. Lewis was clearly nonplussed, but she rallied at once.
“Why, Mr. Howard, of course. He’s quite used to dictating.”
Howard shook his head.
“Not that kind of thing, anyway. Besides, it’s too hot. I haven’t any brains.”
“You do it, Mummie,” suggested her daughter, who had evidently been trained to believe her parent all-accomplished.
“I couldn’t, darling. No — the thing would be, I believe, to get Mr. Leslie to do it.”
Leslie was the distinguished novelist.
“Oh, what a splendid idea! Of course. He’d be the very man.”
“But would he?”
“We can but ask,” a youthful tea-planter remarked optimistically.
“The question is, who’s going to bell the cat?” said Mrs. Lewis, laughing gaily. “I won’t, I know. I’m much too frightened of you clever people with brains.”
“Clare can ask him. He’ll do anything for her,” said the tea-planter confidently.
Several voices acclaimed the suggestion.
“Oh, yes, that’s splendid. Clare can explain the whole thing, and get him to agree.”
“Come on, Miss Christie; don’t fail us.”
“We count on you, remember.”
She laughed and protested.
“No, no, I couldn’t. Besides, I’m not at all sure that I want to see the poor little man shown up.”
“That proves that you know he isn’t speaking the truth,” said the American girl quickly.
Howard snorted.
“Even Miss Christie’s kindness has never denied plain facts.”
“Look out,” hissed Mary Lewis between her teeth.
Reed was coming round the corner, straight towards our group. He always walked with an absurdly long stride, as if to compensate for the fact that he was under-sized and puny.
He smiled brightly as he came up to us. No one, excepting Clare Christie, responded.
“Heard about the concert?” he enquired genially.
“Oh Lord, are we in for that?” said Howard — purposely ungracious, I felt certain.
Teddy Reed instantly veered round, as he always did, to the point of view that he suspected of being the popular one.
“I suppose it’s inevitable, isn’t it? One never gets through a sea voyage without it,” he rejoined, although I strongly suspected that he knew very little about sea voyages, except from hearsay. But it was part of his eternal posing, never to admit ignorance or inexperience about anything whatever.
“Who’s going to perform?” enquired the American girl, not without malice.
Reed walked into the trap at once.
“I believe, as a matter of fact,” he said, with his self-conscious little laugh, “that I’m to fill up part of the programme — I’m sure I don’t know why. People seem to think that I ought to sing a couple of songs or so, and I’ve undertaken to vamp a bit at the piano — that kind of thing.”
There was a silence, then Howard said, “I see,” rather dryly, and resumed his book.
Teddy Reed looked round the group. Like many very vain people, he was abnormally sensitive to atmosphere, and clearly realized that the present one was unfavourable to himself. Smiling rather wistfully — his face was as expressive as that of a child — he murmured the catchword of the moment, “Well, see you later,” and walked away.
We all looked at one another, and somebody laughed shortly.
Then Mrs. Lewis said:
“Clare, you really must. The little horror has got to be taught a lesson. Get hold of Mr. Leslie and get him to say, in front of all of us, that he’d give anything for somebody to take down an article, or a story, or something — or a letter, that’s better still. Then somebody else must say: ‘Oh, what about Mr. Reed? He can do it easily — two hundred and ten words a minute, and so on.’ As I said before, if Reed can do it, so much the better for him, and if he can’t — well —— — —”
She paused.
“Yes,” said Clare, “if he can’t?”
“If he can’t, he’s convicted out of his own mouth,” declared the widow smartly, “and let’s hope it’ll teach him a lesson. He needs it badly enough.”
“I agree,” said the American girl.
“Come on, Clare; be a sport. It all depends on you. No one else knows Mr. Leslie half as well as you do.”
That was true enough. Clare was the only woman on board of whom H. A. Leslie had taken any notice at all.
I think it’s a shame,” protested Clare.
It isn’t. He’s brought it on himself.”
They were all urging her. I didn’t say anything; I was watching with a good deal of curiosity. Clare’s reluctance was, I thought, genuine, and it surprised me a little, because she’d never struck me as being particularly tender-hearted. But I felt pretty sure she’d yield in the end, and do as they asked her.
Sure enough, she did.
The victory was hailed with cries of triumph.
“Go now — Leslie’s in the smoke-room. There’s no one else there.”
Laughing and hustling, half a dozen of them escorted her to the smoke-room door, and she went inside.
I heard no more of the scheme until after the ubiquitous bugle had summoned us to the dining-saloon for lunch. I was at the same table as the Lewises, and Mrs. Lewis leant forward eagerly to catch my eye.
“Mr. Benson — Mr. Benson! She’s done it! Miss Christie has got H. A. Leslie to — you know what. The plot thickens!”
She was really rather intolerable.
I made the shortest answer that courtesy permitted, and devoted my attention to haricot-mutton — out of a tin. In reality, I was sufficiently eager to see the little comedy played out to take advantage of Mary Lewis’s information that Reed was to be asked to join them — and H. A. Leslie — for tea on deck.
The Lewises and Clare Christie had established a prescriptive right to a certain corner, and it was there that the deck-steward brought them a tea-tray every afternoon. When I found my way there, at four o’clock, quite a number of the passengers had assembled.
The atmosphere was self-conscious to a degree.
Reed, who, as I have said, was susceptible to atmosphere, seemed to be talking less than usual. I don’t mean that he was ever voluble, or noisily self-assertive — on the contrary, he spoke usually in a quiet little drawl, with an Oxford accent — but he seemed to be withdrawn from the group, almost as if waiting to find out what mood was the prevalent one, so that he might accommodate his own to it.
The novelist, Leslie, his hat tilted well over his eyes, sat in a deck-chair drawn up close to the one occupied by Clare Christie.
She was looking particularly lovely, in a frock of some bright rose-coloured material, with her beautiful hair uncovered. I wasn’t surprised that Howard, and one or two of the other men, seemed unable to keep their eyes off her, nor that Leslie directed his conversation exclusively to her.
Like most celebrities, he was fond of talking about himself.
Everybody listened respectfully enough, and Teddy Reed, from time to time, threw in a word or two evidently intended to make it obvious that he had read, pondered intelligently, and profoundly appreciated, the works of the author.
Leslie took the inferred compliment to himself, as well as the implication of Reed’s literary discernment, with coolness.
Indeed, he so thoroughly ignored the little man that I began to wonder whether the projected expose would ever take place at all.
Quite suddenly, however, Leslie unmasked his batteries.
“By the way, Mr. Reed, I’m told you know something about shorthand writing.”
“Just a little,” Reed admitted, smiling.
“Pitman’s, of course?”
“Oh, of course. It’s much the most widely used.”
“Is it difficult?” enquired Mary Lewis, with pseudo-innocence.
“Well — I suppose it is, rather. Most people take three or four months to master it, I believe.”
Reed paused, and Mary obligingly asked the question for which he was patiently waiting.
“How long did it take you?”
“In point of fact, I passed the usual speed-tests in rather a short time. A month, to be exact. I taught myself the theory, and worked at it by myself, and then I got a teacher at one of the Commercial Colleges to give me a couple of tests.”
“And you passed them?” Clare Christie enquired, with deceptive gentleness.
“Yes,” said Teddy Reed simply. “I got up to about two hundred and twenty words a minute, I believe.”
One or two people exchanged glances.
“You’re the very fellow I want,” said H. A. Leslie, with a horrid heartiness. “I’ve got some notes here that I simply must get typed before we reach Colombo, so as to send them off by the first possible mail. No one on earth can read my writing.”
“I’m rather good at deciphering handwriting,” Reed asserted.
“No, no — you wouldn’t make head or tail of this. But if you’ll just jot it down, and then write it out afterwards, the purser says he can get it typed for me all right.”
“Of course, I’ll be delighted, though I expect I’m a bit rusty. It’s years since I’ve touched shorthand.”
“Not since you were with Sir Frederick Clay, the summer before last?” suggested Clare Christie very gently.
“Oh, I didn’t do very much shorthand for Sir Frederick. Hardly any, in fact.”
“Still, you used to do some, I remember,” Clare countered thoughtfully.
“Mr. Leslie, do let’s hear you dictating. Is it awfully indiscreet of me?” Mrs. Lewis exclaimed, with a very artificial air of innocence.
I’ve always so wanted to see a real author at work.”
Leslie smiled rather grimly.
“Nothing easier, Mrs. Lewis, I assure you. My notes are here, and if the talented Mr. Reed will honour me with his attention—” He paused, and everybody looked expectantly at Reed.
The little man seemed to have turned several shades more sallow than usual.
“I say, I’m really not sure how much shorthand I remember,” he protested feebly. “It’s such ages since I’ve done any. And it’s a thing one forgets so very easily, if one doesn’t practise it regularly.”
“But surely, if you could do two hundred and twenty words a minute—” said Mrs. Lewis, with simulated perplexity.
“That was when I was doing it regularly.”
“For Sir Frederick, you mean,” Clare put in.
“Yes — or rather — Well, I did more be fore I was with Sir Frederick — not so much with him—” stammered Reed. It was evident that he was getting badly rattled, and more than suspected a trap.
Much as I longed to kick the little blighter, I was beginning to feel that the baiting had gone far enough. Leslie, however, was ruthless.
“Never mind, never mind,” he said breezily. “I shan’t go as quickly as all that. Just take it down at your best speed, and let’s see what you make of it.”
Relentlessly he handed a pencil and pad across to Reed, and pulled an untidy sheaf of notes from his own pocket.
“Ready?”
The Lewises and three or four others were pressing forward, their eyes fixed on Reed.
He swallowed hard once or twice.
The novelist began to dictate in a loud, rapid voice. Whether he had prepared the stuff on purpose or not, I have no idea. But it was something amazingly dull and full of amazingly technical expressions that — as far as I remember — were principally concerned with the law of International Copyright, and every other word at least seemed to be four-syllabled. Leslie spouted it forth at tremendous speed, never pausing for more than an instant to take breath.
Reed had the pad on his knee, his head was bent over it, and one hand was curved round the paper as though to conceal it from the onlookers. The other hand, grasping the pencil, was moving jerkily up and down, backwards and forwards.... It seemed to me, although it was impossible to make certain, that every now and then he was frantically scribbling down words in longhand. It was, at all events, abundantly evident that he was finding it almost impossible to take down more than about one-third of the sentences that were being hurled at him by the novelist. For about five breathless minutes, he stuck to it — they must have seemed more like five hours to him.
Then he raised his face, and I could see the sweat shining on his upper lip and little dents coming and going at the corners of his nostrils.
“I’m so frightfully sorry, but I’m not feeling quite up to the mark — the heat, I expect—” He closed his eyes and put back his head. Certainly he was a ghastly colour.
“Put your head down, not up, if you’re feeling queer,” said H. A. Leslie sharply. “Right down, between your knees, man!”
Reed obeyed, and for a moment there was silence, whilst he sat with his small, sleek head clasped in his hands, bending towards the deck. Young Howard was the first person to move.
“Well, that’s that, I suppose,” he remarked cryptically, and got up and walked away.
Mrs. Lewis, I am sure, was disappointed — and perhaps rather sceptical, too — but she had evidently made up her mind that a display of either feeling would be out of place. She said:
“It’s a touch of the sun, I expect. Poor Mr. Reed! Is there anything I can do?”
There wasn’t, of course. And after a few more ejaculations she, too, moved away, followed by her dutiful Mary.
I looked at Clare Christie, and for one fleeting second caught an expression on her face that she had, I am very sure, never consciously shown to any of her admirers.
Her mouth was drawn into a hard line, her brows close together, and if ever I saw contempt and anger pouring from a woman’s eyes, I saw them then.
I experienced, in that flash of time, a curious feeling of surprise: — not at the revelation of Clare’s personality that I had just received — that, somehow, did not astonish me in the least — but that she should find Teddy Reed worth it.
The look was gone, in one instant, but not, as it happened, before Reed had seen it. He raised his head and met her eyes in full, and his own face grew livid.
“Are you feeling better?” said Clare coolly.
She got up without waiting for an answer, and then, stooping swiftly, picked up the pad with the unlucky shorthand notes that had fallen onto the deck.
I saw Reed make a futile gesture, as if to stop her, and then let his hand drop by his side again.
Clare looked at the page she held, and I wondered if some scathing comment would fall from her. Nothing would have surprised me less, after that look on her face. Actually, what did happen seemed to me more cruel than any gibe.
She raised her eyebrows mockingly, and then handed the pad back to Reed with a laugh that must have cut his wincing vanity like the lash of a whip. Then, without a word, she walked away.
I lacked the presence of mind to follow her example. Instead I said politely:
“Will you have a drink, Reed? I’m going to, and it’ll do you good.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Thanks — I think I will.”
