Vision House

CHAPTER I

ENTER MISS SOREL

It was the third day out from Liverpool on the way to New York, and people were just beginning to take an interest in each other's names and looks.

The passenger list of the Britannia was posted up close to the lift on B deck, but the weather had not encouraged curious groups to study and inwardly digest its items. In fact, digestion of all sorts had been difficult. To-day, however, the huge ship had ceased to step on and stumble over monster waves, and had slipped into a sea of silken blue. Bad sailors and lazy ones were on deck staring at their fellows as at unearthly creatures who had dropped on board since the vessel sailed, miraculously like manna from heaven. The news had flown round, as news flies in an Eastern bazaar, that there were three names of conspicuous interest on the hitherto neglected list, and that now was the moment for "spotting" their owners.

Two of these should be easy to find, for their steamer chairs, plainly labelled, stood side by side on A deck, where everyone sat or was supposed to sit. The sea dogs and dogesses who braved all weathers had nosed out those labels, but had so far watched in vain for the chairs to be occupied. They had observed, also, that corresponding places at the captain's table were vacant. There were three chairs together on deck, and in the dining-saloon, but the third did not count with the public. It was that of a mere chaperon – The Girl's mother. She was not the third of the Three Thrilling Passengers. That person happened to be a man, and he had neither chair nor label. If he had eaten a meal outside his cabin he had somehow passed unrecognised.

The stewards, questioned, said that John Garth had not applied for a seat at table. Yes, certainly, one had been assigned to him, next Mrs. Sorel, she being in the place of honour on the right of the Britannia's captain. In this position Garth would have faced Lord Severance, and sat diagonally opposite Miss Sorel, who was on the captain's left. But the favoured man had ignored his privilege. It was understood that he preferred snatching vague sandwiches and glasses of beer at odd hours in the smoking-room, or on deck; therefore it would be hard to identify him. Meanwhile, however, celebrity seekers gathered near those three chairs on the sunny port side of A deck.

By ten o'clock the crowd had thickened; but it was not till close on eleven that a tall figure in uniform, preceded by a steward with rugs, sat down in the chair ticketed "Major the Earl of Severance."

Many Americans were on board, homeward bound after months of Red Cross and other war work, and they knew in their hearts, no doubt, that titles, once valued by snobs, were absolutely out-of-date in this newly-democratised world. Nevertheless, they threw glances at Lord Severance. Their glances would not have been wasted on a mere every-day male. Of course, their excuse might have been that they'd prefer glancing at their own American Johnny Garth, who was as much a major as Lord Severance, and, being a V.C. (the one and only American V.C.), twice as much a man for them.

But then Garth wasn't in sight, and Severance was. Besides, the chair between Lord Severance's and Mrs. Sorel's was ticketed "Miss Marise Sorel." Nobody could deny that Miss Sorel was worth flocking to gaze at, had Severance not existed.

Thousands, hundred of thousands, of men and women paid good money to gaze at her in theatres. Here she could be seen free of charge. But was she coming out? the deck pilgrims wondered. And Lord Severance had an air of wondering, too. He held a book in his hand; but his eyes were often on the nearest door.

They were strikingly fine eyes, and Lord Severance was in appearance a striking man. "Stunning" was an adjective used by some American promenaders. They remarked, too, that he "wasn't a typical Englishman. You'd think he was Spanish or something."

He was not Spanish, but half of him was not English; the "something" was Greek. His mother had been a Greek heiress and beauty, but her money and looks had been lost before she died. Most valuable things were lost after they had been in the Severance family for any length of time. The beautiful Greek woman's handsome son had pale olive skin, a straight nose, full red lips under a miniature moustache like two inked finger-prints, raven hair sleekly brushed straight back from his square forehead, and immense eyes of unfathomable blackness.

He was going to "the States" on some military mission, no one knew quite what, and so, although the war had finished months ago, he was still in uniform, with the "brass hat" of a staff officer, and the gorgeous grey-lavender overcoat of the Guards. It seemed as if nobody could help admiring him, and nobody did help it, except a great, hulking chap in abominable clothes, with a khaki-coloured handkerchief round his neck instead of a collar. This beast – in a sat-on-looking cap, enough to disgrace a commercial traveller, sleeves as much too short for his red-brown wrists as were the trousers for his strapping ankles – strode to and fro along the deck as if for a wager. It was almost as if he flaunted himself in defiance of someone or something. Yet he didn't appear self-conscious. He had in his yellow-grey eyes that bored-with-humanity look of a lion in a zoo, who gazes past crowds to the one vision he desires – the desert. Only, now and then as he passed the chair of Lord Severance, his look came back for an instant from the desert, or waste of waves, to shoot scorn at a pair of well-shod feet crossed on a black fur rug. This would hardly indicate any emotion higher than jealousy, it seemed, as the boots of Major Lord Severance were perfect, and his own were vile.

When Severance had restlessly occupied his chair for fifteen minutes he suddenly sprang up. A maid, unmistakably French, was squeezing a load of rugs through a doorway. Severance ignored the offered service of a deck steward, as if the rugs were too sacred for human hands to touch. With a kind smile he himself helped the woman in black to spread the soft, furry folds over the two neighbouring chairs.

"It's like a scene on the stage in a play written for her," said one American Red Cross nurse to another. "The hero of the piece and the maid working up the woman star's entrance."

"Which is he, more like hero or villain?" the second nurse reflected aloud. "If I wrote him into a play, he'd be the villain – that dark type with red lips and a little black moustache. But the Sorel's a star all right. We ought to tune up and whistle a bar of entrance music! See how the French maid puts the brown rug on one chair and the blue rugs on the other. What'll you bet Sorel and her mother aren't dressed one in blue and one in brown? Gee! The biggest blue rug's lined with chinchilla. Can you beat it?"

Neither nurse could beat it, but the approaching vision could. She beat it with a long cloak of even more silvery chinchilla.

At the door she stood aside for an older, shorter, plumper woman to pass, she herself being very tall and exquisitely slender. She did not seem to look at anyone, or be aware that anyone looked at her. Nevertheless, all eyes were focussed upon the standing figure in the chinchilla coat and blue toque while the lady in brown and sables was being seated. Even Lord Severance had eyes only for the girl as he lent his hands to her maid to tuck in the brown rugs. But the girl's smile was for her mother, and it was not till Mrs. Sorel was settled that she moved. A charming little scene of daughterly devotion, worthy a paragraph if there were a journalist in sight!

Just as Severance, with an air of absorption, wrapped Miss Sorel's grey suède shoes in her chinchilla-lined rug, the giant in the ghastly clothes hurled himself past. The girl did not lift her lashes, so famous for their length and curl. She was hanging a gold-mesh bag on the arm of her chair. You would say that she had not noticed the fellow. But the fellow had noticed her.

The distant-desert look died. In his eyes a flame lit, and flashed at the girl in the chair. It was a light that literally spoke. It said "God! You're a beauty." Then he flung one of his glances at Severance, scornful or jealous as before. To do this he had not actually paused, yet it was as if something had happened. Whatever the thing was, Severance resented it in hot silence; and, in turn, his eyes did deadly work. They stabbed the broad back of the badly-cut, badly-fitting coat as its wearer forged away, hands deep in pockets.

Miss Sorel sat between her mother and Lord Severance. She glanced at the former as if to begin a conversation, but Mrs. Sorel had opened her lorgnettes and a novel. The girl knew the signal: "Don't talk to me. Talk to him." But she was lazy in obeying. She felt so sure of Severance, that she needn't try to hold him by any tricks. She might now treat him as she chose. Not that she had ever let him see that she was anxious to please. But there had been an anxious time. The girl didn't want to talk, so she sat deliciously still, deliciously happy. She was thinking. The restful peace of the sea after stormy days made her think of herself.

She often thought of herself; more, indeed, than of any other subject, because, like most beautiful young actresses, she had been encouraged to form the habit. But this was special – extra special.

The girl was so content with her world that she shut herself in with it by shutting her eyes. Then she faintly smiled in order that (just in case they happened to look) people shouldn't suppose she was seasick.

How odd that it should be her mother's lorgnettes which had reminded her suddenly of her own good luck – the lorgnettes, and the delicate ringed fingers grasping the tortoiseshell handle!

Once that little hand had not been so white. There had been no leisure for manicuring nails, and polishing them to the sheen of pink coral. There had been no rings – no lorgnettes monogramed with rose diamonds. That was before the "Marise" days; before clever Mums had linked together in the French way her daughter's name of Mary Louise (after father and mother) and begun training the girl into superlative beauty and grace for the stage. Oh yes, Marise owed a lot to ambitious little Mums! But at last she had been able to make generous payment for all the trouble, all the sacrifices. She, Marise, had bought the lorgnettes, and the sables, and the antique rings which Mums told everyone were heirlooms in the Sorel family, bequeathed to a great-grandfather of "poor dear Louis by a Countess Sorel beheaded in the Revolution." She, Marise, had easily earned money for all the other lovely things they both possessed.

It was like a dream to remember how, three years ago, she had been just a pretty "actorine" among other "actorines" in New York, struggling for a chance to "show what she could really do," her heart jumping like a fish at the sight of a Big Manager. Why, hadn't she literally squeaked with joy when she got a contract for "fifty per"? And hadn't she soon after nearly fallen dead when Dunstan Belloc let her understudy Elsa Fortescue in "The Spring Song"?

Of course, even at that time, she and Mums had both been sure she was born to play "Dolores," and that Elsa wasn't. Belloc hadn't been so sure. He had given her the part only because she looked irresistible when she begged for it. Oh, and perhaps a little because her dead father, Louis Sorel, had been an old friend of his. Marise had had to "make good," and she had made good.

Not that the girl had wished harm to Elsa Fortescue. But Elsa was a "Has Been," whereas "Dolores" was supposed to be in the springtime of youth, and possessed of an annihilating beauty – the beauty which draws men as the moon draws the sea. Marise didn't think it conceited to face facts, and admit that this description fitted her like a glove. These gifts had brought her sensational success in a single night, whereas the piece had simply "flivvered" with Elsa as star. The critics had been cold if not cruel, and grief mixed with grippe laid Elsa low. Then little Marise Sorel (only figuratively "little," she being one of those willowy, long-limbed nymphs who are the models and manikins of the moment), "little Marise," in whom author and manager felt scant faith, had saved the play and made herself. Both had boomed for a wonderful year, and at the end of that time England had called for "Dolores" and "The Song."

Oh, and those two years in London that followed! Never could another girl have known anything like them since the days of the great professional beauties whom crowds had mobbed in Hyde Park. Papers and people had praised Miss Sorel's looks, her voice, and her talent. It was thought quite amazing that a girl so lovely should take the trouble to act well, but Marise explained to interviewers that she couldn't help acting. It was in her blood to act – her father's blood. She didn't add that ambition was in her mother's blood, and that Mums was doing all she could to hand it on to the next generation. It wasn't necessary to mention ambition to the public. Some people considered ambition more a vice than a virtue. But Marise, who knew what poor Mums's past had been, understood the passion and even felt the thrill of it. Not only had she had the "time of her life" in those two years, but she had met people whom she couldn't have approached before her blossoming as "Dolores" in "The Spring Song." As "Dolores" she had been spoiled, fêted, adored; and she had become rich.

Now, here she was on the way back to dear New York to revive the play, which Belloc, as manager, and Sheridan, as author, expected to surpass its first success. At present Miss Sorel had the valued cachet of a London triumph added to her charms. She was more chic, she could act and sing better, than before. Isadora Duncan had coached her for the dance in the last scene, as an act of generous friendship, and this had given "The Song" a new fillip in London. It would be the same in New York.

As if this were not enough to satisfy an older "star" than she, there was the wonderful way in which the affair of Tony Severance had developed. He had strained every nerve to sail with her on the Britannia. Heaven alone knew how he'd obtained or invented the "mission" which had made his plan possible. It was entirely for her sake, and everyone was coupling their names – in a nice, proper way, of course. She was that kind of girl. And Mums was that kind of mother. Even before Severance had come into the title, he had been splendidly worth while on account of his looks, his position, and his "set," but now it seemed to Marise that every unmarried woman in England and America must be envying her.

As she sipped the honey of these thoughts, the girl felt that Severance was staring at her eyelashes, and willing her to lift them. But she would not, just yet. She went on with her thinking. She asked herself if her feeling for him were love? Of course, it wasn't the "Dolores" sort of love for "David Hardcastle," but love like that was safer on the stage than off. Marise admired Tony, and was very proud of her conquest, though she would admit that to no one except Mums. She had been horribly afraid, humiliatingly afraid for a few days, that he might change his mind if not his heart, when the earldom fell into his hands like a prize-package. If she'd not been sure before that Tony was the one man for her, she was frantically sure after the great surprise, when he was safely on board the Britannia. How pleased the cats would have been if she'd lost him – the cats who pretended to think, in the days before he was Lord Severance, that the honesty of his intentions depended upon her money.

They would see now – hateful, jealous things! For, as the Earl of Severance, though not rich, Tony would be no longer poor, and he had proved by sailing with her that life without Marise Sorel was worthless to him.

The cats would be sorry when she was the Countess of Severance, for every nasty word they'd said. She would forgive, but she would never be nice to them, of course. She would ask the creatures only to big, dull parties, just to let them see what a grande dame little Marise had become. And even if she weren't certain that she'd rather be a Countess than a stage star, Mums was certain for her – poor Mums, who had always yearned to be at the top! And it would really be nice to "belong" among the great people who had played with her for a while and made her their pet.

Marise opened her eyes. She did not, however, turn them to Severance. She gazed at the one ring which adorned her left hand. She never wore more than one ring at a time. This, and having all her jewels match each other, her dress and her mood, was a fad of hers. Céline helped her carry it out. But if Severance gave her a diamond, that would match nothing, and spoil the scheme.

"You have the longest lashes of any woman in the world," he remarked.

"One would think you'd seen them all – all the women and all the eyelashes!" She looked at him at last, and her soft, smoke-blue eyes were the colour of her sapphire brooch and chain.

"I've seen my share of fair ladies."

"So I've heard."

"You've probably heard a good deal that isn't true." Severance glanced at Mrs. Sorel, or at what he could see of her, which was mostly book, lorgnettes, and hand. She seemed absorbed. He leaned towards Marise.

"The last three days have been a hundred years long," he murmured.

"Why? Have you been seasick, poor boy?"

"No!" (This was a slight deviation from the truth.) "I've been beastly dull without you."

"If you're such a good sailor, couldn't you walk, and read, and – "

"I couldn't be bothered doing anything intelligent. I moped in my cabin." ("Moped" was one word for what he had done.) "I – "

"Oh, here comes Samson again!" Marise broke in. "Isn't that absolutely the name for him? It jumped into my head when he passed before and gave me that wild sort of look – did you notice?"

"I did," said Severance drily. "I thought you didn't. Your eyes were apparently glued to your gold bag."

"What's the good of being an actress if you can't see two things at once, especially if one of them's the biggest thing on the ship? Nobody could help noticing that – any more than if Mont Blanc suddenly waltzed down stage from off the back drop."

"Waltzed? 'Galumped' is the word in this case."

"Oh, do you think so?" Marise appealed. "He walks like a man used to wide, free spaces."

"Like a farmer, you mean. To my mind, that's his part: Hodge – not Samson."

"I've forgotten what Samson was, I'm ashamed to say, before he played opposite Delilah," confessed Marise. "I suppose he was a warrior – most men were in those days – as now. This might be one – if it weren't for the clothes. They certainly are the limit! But do you know, he could be very distinguished-looking, even handsome, decently turned out?"

"No, I don't know it, my child." Severance beat down his irritation. "The only way I can picture that ugly blighter being decently 'turned out,' is out of a respectable club."

"You talk as if you had a grudge against my provincial Samson," laughed Marise, whose blue eyes had followed the "blighter" along the deck to the point of disappearance.

"I don't want to talk about him at all," protested Severance. "I want to talk about you."

"We're always talking about me!" smiled Marise, who was honestly not aware how she enjoyed talking about herself, or how soon she tired of most other subjects. "If you won't talk of one man, let's talk of another! For instance, have you seen our V.C. passenger?"

Severance flushed slightly. "Didn't I tell you, angel girl, that I've been in my cabin the whole time?"

"You didn't say the 'whole' time. And anyhow, there's such a crowd on board, they might have stuck a fellow-soldier in with you at the last moment. Didn't they warn you that they couldn't promise a cabin to yourself? Naturally they'd have chosen a V.C. as the least insupportable person."

"Several V.C.'s I've met have been most insupportable persons," grumbled Severance.

Something in his tone made the girl suddenly face him with wide-open eyes. She saw the dusky stain of red under the olive skin, and the drawing down of the black brows. "Why, Tony, how stupid of me not to remember before!" she exclaimed.

There! It had come – the thing that was bound to come sooner or later. Severance, rawly sensitive on this subject which the girl refused to drop, had wanted it to be later.

For the first time he thought that Marise Sorel was more obstinate than a beautiful young woman ought to be. In a man he would call such persistence mulish.

CHAPTER II

EXIT THE BLIGHTER

"Stupid not to remember what?" Severance still temporised, though he knew the answer.

"Not to remember that man named Garth, in your regiment, who was promoted from a private to be an officer, and won the V.C. I think it was Mums who asked you about him one day, when she'd read something in the Daily Mail, and you said he was a cad. Is this by any chance the same Garth?"

"By evil chance, it is."

Marise was interested. She was dramatic, and liked coincidences. Mrs. Sorel was interested too, with that part of her mind – the principal part – which was not reading Wells's Joan and Peter. It was quite easy, for two reasons, to unhook her attention from the book. One reason was that as a chaperon she was reading by discretion, not inclination. The other reason was, if she had to read at all, she would secretly have preferred a "smart society" novel. But when she read in public she always selected a book which could be talked about intellectually.

She knew how strong this feeling of Lord Severance against the regimental hero had been, and she wished that Marise would show a little tact, and not vex him. He had not proposed yet!

But Marise went on. "How quaint that your Major Garth should be on board our ship!"

"For Heaven's sake, don't call him my Major Garth, dear girl! I loathe the brute."

"But why, old thing? You might tell me why."

"I did, at the time your mother mentioned him."

"If you did, I've forgotten. Do tell me again. It sounds exciting."

Mary Sorel thought that intervention would now be more useful than detachment.

"You two are talking so loudly, I can't read!" she sweetly reproved the pair. "I caught the name of Garth, and the whole conversation we had that day, about him, came back to me. We were lunching with Lord Severance at the Carlton, and I showed him a paragraph I'd clipped from the Daily Mail. I thought as it was about his regiment he might be interested if he hadn't seen it. It was headed 'Romantic Career of a Hero. British-born American Wins the Victoria Cross.' But he wasn't interested, because he explained that the man was a blot on the Brigade; very common, not a gentleman."

"Yes, it comes back to me, too," said Marise. "But if he was a hero – "

"That's all newspaper tosh!" cut in Severance. "They must have headings! It's luck more than heroism that gets a chap the Victoria Cross. Soldiers all know that. Otherwise – "

His lips said no more. Only his eyes were eloquent. The beautiful lavender-grey overcoat hid no ribbon-symbols of decorations on his breast. But how can a staff officer find the chance his soul yearns for, to show his mettle – except the metal on his expensive "brass hat"?

"Of course!" Mrs. Sorel breathed sympathetically.

"Garth was all right as a private, I dare say," Severance grudged. "Even as an officer he might have passed in some regiments. But not in the Guards. He ought never to have been let come in. And he ought certainly not to have stayed in, knowing how we felt. If he'd had any proper pride, he wouldn't have stopped a day."

"Perhaps it was pride made him stick," suggested Marise, led on somehow she hardly knew why – to defend the culprit.

"'Proper' pride was my word," Severance reminded her.

"Extraordinary that an American should be serving with the Guards, in the first place!" Mary Sorel flung herself into the breach, hoping to stop the argument. Arguments made her anxious. She thought that they led to quarrels. And not for anything on earth would she have Marise quarrel with Severance, the only earl who had ever shown symptoms of proposing. It had been well enough for the girl to pique him when he was a handsome young man about town, whose good position was counterbalanced by the star's financial and face value. But since six weeks Severance had become a great catch. Other girls were digging bait in case the fish should wriggle, or be coaxed, off Marise Sorel's hook.