One day he spoke of her to the waiter.
“The se?ora who sits there, she is English?”
“Yes, she is English.”
“She lives in the island?”
“Yes.”
“She does not come here every evening?”
The waiter said gravely:
“She comes when she can.”
It was a curious answer, and Llewellyn thought about it afterwards.
He did not ask her name. If the waiter had wanted him to know her name, he would have told it to him. The boy would have said: “She is the se?ora so and so, and she lives at such-and-such a place.” Since he did not say that, Llewellyn deduced that there was a reason why her name should not be given to a stranger.
Instead he asked:
“What does she drink?”
The boy replied briefly: “Brandy,” and went away.
Llewellyn paid for his drink and said good-night. He threaded his way through the tables and stood for a moment on the pavement before joining the evening throng of walkers.
Then, suddenly, he wheeled round and marched with the firm decisive tread of his nationality to the table by the coral bougainvillaea.
“Do you mind,” he said, “if I sit down and talk to you for a moment or two?”
CHAPTER two
1
Her gaze came back very slowly from the harbour lights to his face. For a moment or two her eyes remained wide and unfocused. He could sense the effort she made. She had been, he saw, very far away.
He saw, too, with a sudden quick pity, how very young she was. Not only young in years (she was, he judged, about twenty-three or four), but young in the sense of immaturity. It was as though a normally maturing rosebud had had its growth arrested by frost-it still presented the appearance of normality, but actually it would progress no further. It would not visibly wither. It would just, in the course of time, drop to the ground, unopened. She looked, he thought, like a lost child. He appreciated, too, her loveliness. She was very lovely. Men would always find her lovely, always yearn to help her, to protect her, to cherish her. The dice, one would have said, were loaded in.her favour. And yet she was sitting here, staring into unfathomable distance, and somewhere on her easy, assured happy path through life she had.got lost.
Her eyes, wide now and deeply blue, assessed him.
She said, a little uncertainly: “Oh-?”
He waited.
Then she smiled.
“Please do.”
He drew up a chair and sat.
She asked: “You are American?”
“Yes.”
“Did you come off the ship?”
Her eyes went momentarily to the harbour again. There was a ship alongside the quay. There was nearly always a ship.
“I did come on a ship, but not that ship. I’ve been here a week or two.”
“Most people,” she said, “don’t stay as long as that.”
It was a statement, not a question.
Llewellyn gestured to a waiter who came.
He ordered a Cura?ao.
“May I order you something?”
“Thank you.” she said. And added: “He knows.”
The boy bowed his head in assent and went away.
They sat for a moment or two in silence.
“I suppose,” she said at last, “you were lonely? There aren’t many Americans or English here.”
She was, he saw, settling the question of why he had spoken to her.
“No,” he said at once. “I wasn’t lonely. I find I’m-glad to be alone.”
“Oh, one is, isn’t one?”
The fervour with which she spoke surprised him.
“I see,” he said. “That’s why you come here?”
She nodded.
“To be alone. And now I’ve come and spoilt it?”
“No,” she said. “You don’t matter. You’re a stranger, you see.”
“I see.”
“I don’t even know your name.”
“Do you want to?”
“No. I’d rather you didn’t tell me. I won’t tell you my name, either.”
She added doubtfully:
“But perhaps you’ve been told that already. Everyone in the caf? knows me, of course.”
“No, they haven’t mentioned it. They understand, I think, that you would not want it told.”
“They do understand. They have, all of them, such wonderful good manners. Not taught good manners-the natural thing. I could never have believed till I came here that natural courtesy could be such a wonderful-such a positive thing.”