‘You can imagine my astonishment as her circumlocutions finally spiralled towards the central point, which was that my fervently desired engagement—such was the dated quality of her newsgathering—was not to be. I digested this information, as well as the news that Miss Perkins had departed for Shanghai in the company of Mrs Goodnow, with some degree of heartburn, as you might imagine. But the moment I was truly threatened with reflux was when Mrs Ragsdale informed me, in a dramatically lowered whisper, that the cad, the scoundrel, the reprobate Martin Egan, whom she had always thought such an honourable gentleman and a pleasant man too, had gone and got the lass “into trouble”.’
Dumas jerked forward in his chair as though mechanically sprung. ‘No!’ he cried.
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘Egan?’
‘Egan. So she told Mrs Ragsdale, anyway. I cannot work out whether her motivation was to protect me or punish me. She’s accomplished both. Mrs Ragsdale told me that Mrs Goodnow and Miss Perkins would soon be leaving Shanghai for Japan. There, the maiden will promptly marry Martin Egan, thus averting further scandal. Egan, conveniently, is from San Francisco as well and to San Francisco they will return, accidental man and wife, him to inherit a most eminent father-in-law and, in the long run, an obscene and undeserved fortune.’
Dumas’s jaw bristled with questions. ‘So was it Egan then, do you think?’
‘In truth I am left no wiser as to whether the lucky father was Egan or myself, or perhaps even Holdsworth or someone else entirely. It could be the contagious wart Jameson for all I know. I rather doubt the lady knows herself, for all her protestations to the contrary. All I am sure of is that I am spared a future in which I would contend with Lord Bredon for the title of biggest cuckold in the Extreme Orient. That honour I shall happily concede to Egan. He can grin it away with those stupidly straight white teeth of his. And I shall go to the front. I have a ticket on a steamer departing T’ang-ku for Wei Hai Wei this very evening.’
In his cabin, Morrison smoothed the pages of his journal and secured his ink bottle. He wrote the date: the twentieth of April 1904. Then, out of long habit, he recorded the names of the crew: Captain Bennett, Engineer Malcolm. He noted various titbits of information and gossip culled from fellow passengers before turning to the topic that was closest to his heart. For almost two months, all my movements had been guided by this infatuation…
The steamer ploughed through the gulf. The view from his porthole was unedifying. Darkness above and below. Certainly the circumstantial evidence would suggest…even now, every fibre of my body thrills with passion as her image passes before me…capricious and wilful…distraught…blinding jealousy…He wrote solidly for an hour until his inkwell was nearly dry and his hand cramped with the effort of writing against the ship’s vibrations.
As a much younger man, Morrison had thought the world would end when Noelle had run off with the sinewy Italian major-domo of Montmartre’s notorious Chat Noir. There had been other devastations. And now Maysie was quitting him for Egan. Is this to be the final parting? he wondered, his chest contracting at the thought.
He reread what he had written and ripped the pages from his journal. Loping up the stairs two at a time to reach the deck, he sowed the sea with his hopes, dreams and disappointments. The white pages glowed briefly before being sucked down into the midnight waters.