Chapter 1

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_Title:_ “Passengers Must Be On Board by Midnight”
_Date of first publication:_ 1930
_Author:_ Leslie Gordon Barnard (1890-1961)
_Date first posted:_ Aug. 14, 2020
_Date last updated:_ Aug. 14, 2020
Faded Page eBook #20200822

This eBook was produced by: John Routh & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

“Passengers Must be on Board by Midnight”
_by_
Leslie Gordon Barnard

Illustrated by Harold W. McCrea

_A story of marriage which should be subtitled:_
_Romance is dead! Long live Romance!_

The exact moment when it dawned on Sonia that the party “thrown” by
Teddy in her honor was a thing of irony, she could not quite determine.
Perhaps it was when Ellaline Holmes secured Teddy as her partner for the
fifth or was it the sixth? time.

For the moment, the couple to her right having left their salad for the
dancing floor, and Teddy being gone from the other side of her, Sonia
was alone at the table. She could think without intrusion. Ellaline
could dance divinely. Diners at the tables that circled the dancing
space forgot the immediate concerns of food to watch.

Sonia danced moderately well. There were places where Sonia shone better
than in a ballroom. Much less spectacular places. Places where one
couldn’t wear daring low-cut green with trailing green foam to the
ankles. She should have learned by now that by training, by instinct, by
inclination, she was not of this set—his set—never had been, never
would be.

They were reasonably nice to her. They did not know that once she had
overheard a conversation.

“Who’s the girl Teddy Williamson married?”

“Sonia Smith.”

“What’s she like?”

“My dear, a Juno with the soul of a frump!”

It was Ellaline who had said this unkind untruth. Was it an untruth? And
what, please, was a frump? A person who suddenly, at a party in her
honor, discovered herself to be quite alone? There was one girl over;
Jimmy Bogert had done something accidental to the detriment of one leg,
and been excused at the last moment.

Tears sprang into her eyes. She told herself it was not rudeness,
intentional; it was sheer verve, a vibrancy that she envied them. And
they had a _savoir faire_, in public places such as this, denied to her.

Did a girl have to incline her fair hair quite so close to a gentleman’s
shirt front and gaze up at him with such intimate rapture? Couldn’t
Teddy see Ellaline was a little vamp?

She mustn’t appear discomfited in the eyes of nearby diners. At her own
party! Her party! And this was Teddy’s last night; tomorrow he was
sailing—business abroad for three whole months. Tomorrow night he would
go on board.

Sonia picked a flower from the great bowl of mixed fragrance that was
flanked in the centre of the table with orchid candles rising from
fluted silver. Lilies-of-the-valley, hothouse things, but the real ones
from the moist earth of spring gardens would be out soon. A nostalgia
tore her. She saw the small town where her girlhood had had the
surroundings and intimacies of a limited but well-bred circle, where her
career in the city—brief because of Teddy—was followed with an
interest capped and crowned by the wedding of a year ago. Scarcely a
year ago.

Teddy had said the night before the wedding: “Look here, pick me some of
those lilies, Sonia. I’d rather wear them than these boughten things!”

She had reached up and put the green stalks through his buttonhole and
was swept up into his arms, her face close to that buttonhole fragrance.
The dome of sky above swung dizzily. It was blue. It was green. It was
saffron. It was spattered with pale yellow stars.

Was it necessary for yellow hair to rest so closely against a lapel,
just about the place the lilies had been put that night? Oh, it was
silly to think things like that! Silly to invoke sudden fancies now; to
recall how often opportunities had happened—or been made—for Ellaline
and him to be together. Teddy was head of some committee connected with
the Charity Fair that opened tomorrow. He’d had to drop it when this
business came to take him abroad. Quite natural that Ellaline should
have occasion to see him.

It was silly to think. . . oh, Teddy, why look like that into a girl’s
eyes here on a public dancing floor? Can’t you see, Teddy, everybody’s
watching, grinning, whispering? Oh, Teddy, don’t make a fool of yourself
before people! Never mind me, but these people! They’ll think he loves
her. One shouldn’t hold a girl that way and gaze into her eyes—except
in a garden, with the sky a breathless green, and blue, and saffron,
pricked by pale yellow stars.

The group of dance numbers was over; they were all coming back to the
tables, to the neglected dinners!

“Sonia, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were all alone here.”  She bit
her lip. Why must he call attention? And so in all this time he hadn’t
noticed?

“It’s all right, Teddy!”

She smiled. The smile was as much a social deceit as the words. She’d
rise to this! She’d be the life of the party—her party!

Ellaline Holmes said: “How terribly skimpy the orchestra is tonight!
Only two encores. Teddy and I were just getting nicely into the swing of
it. My dear,” she addressed Sonia blandly, “will you pass me the olives?
What a trip your hubby is going to have, Sonia! Aren’t you horribly
jealous? I should be, myself, if dad hadn’t promised me a run over in
June. Shall you be near London at the end of June, Teddy? What a lark if
our times clicked!” Her teeth met in the meat of an olive. The carmine
of her lips was accentuated. Too much color, thought Sonia furiously,
yet men seemed to like that kind of thing. “Sonia,” cried Ellaline,
“lend me your glass! Mine’s empty! I want to drink to Teddy’s trip. Good
lord—what is it—ginger ale? Your health, Teddy dear. . . and may a
kind fate let us meet in the Big Smoke!”