THE COLONEL’S FUNERAL.
On entering my berth I threw myself into my bunk and sat in it in such
a despondent condition of mind as I had never before been sensible
of. This, to be sure, signified no more than reaction following the
wild excitement I had been under all the morning. But, let the cause
be what it might, whilst the fit was on me I felt abjectly miserable,
and a complete wretch. It then occurred to me that hunger might have
something to do with my mood, seeing that no food had crossed my lips
since dinner time on the preceding day.
It was about two o’clock in the afternoon. I entered the cabin and
found a cold lunch upon the table, not a dish of which had been
touched, proving that there were others besides myself who were
fasting. I was without appetite, but I sat down resolutely, and calling
to the steward--who seemed thankful to have an order to attend to--to
bring me a bottle of Burgundy, I fell to, and presently found myself
tolerably hearty; the fountain of my spirits unsealed afresh, and
beginning leisurely to bubble into the channel that had run dry. There
is no better specific in the world for a fit of the blues than a bottle
of Burgundy. No other wine has its art of tender blandishments. It does
not swiftly exhilarate, but courts the brain into a pleasing serenity
by a process of coaxing at once elegant and convincing.
Whilst I sat fondling my glass, leaning back in my chair with my eyes
fixed upon the delicate, graceful paintings on the cabin ceiling,
and my mind revolving, but no longer blackly and weepingly, the grim
incidents which had crowded the morning, I heard my name pronounced
close at my ear, and, whipping round, found Miss Laura at my elbow.
‘I have been most anxious to see you,’ she exclaimed. ‘What is the
news?’
‘Have you not heard?’ I inquired.
‘I have heard nothing but two pistol shots. I have seen nobody of whom
I could ask a question.’
‘Wilfrid has shot Colonel Hope-Kennedy through the heart,’ said I, ‘as
he declared he would, and the body lies yonder;’ and I pointed to the
recess that Muffin had formerly occupied.
‘Colonel Hope-Kennedy killed!’ she exclaimed, in a low, breathless,
terrified voice; and she sank into a chair beside me, and leant her
face on her hand speechless, and her eyes fixed upon the table.
‘Better that he should have been shot than Wilfrid,’ said I. ‘But he
is dead; of him, then, let us speak nothing since we cannot speak
good. I have just succeeded in fighting myself out of a hideous mood
of melancholy with the help of yonder bottle. Now you must let me
prescribe for you. You have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday. I
therefore advise a glass of champagne and a slice of the breast of
cold fowl;’ and that she might not say no, I put on an air of bustle,
called to the steward to immediately open a pint bottle of champagne,
helped her to a little piece of the fowl, and, finding her still
reluctant, gently insinuated a knife and fork into her hands. ‘We are
homeward bound,’ said I; ‘see! the sun has slipped t’other side of the
yacht. Our bowsprit points directly for dear old Southampton Water.
So,’ said I, filling a glass of champagne and handing it to her, ‘you
must absolutely drink to our prosperous voyage, not only to the ship
that goes, but to the wind that blows, whilst,’ said I, helping myself
to another small dose of Burgundy, ‘I’ll drink the lass that loves a
sailor.’
She could not forbear a slight smile, drank, and then ate a little, and
presently I saw how much good it did her by the manner in which she
plucked up her heart. I asked her where Lady Monson was.
‘In my cabin,’ she answered; ‘she will not speak to me; she asks my
maid for what she requires; she will not even look at me.’
‘It is all too fresh yet,’ said I. ‘A little patience, Miss Jennings.
The woman in her will break through anon; there will be tears, kisses,
contrition. Who knows?’
She shook her head. Just then I caught sight of the maid, beckoned
to her, exclaiming to Miss Laura, ‘Your sister must not be allowed
to starve. I fear she will have known what hunger is aboard Captain
Crimp’s odious old barque, where the choicest table delicacy probably
was rancid salt pork. Here,’ said I to the maid, ‘get me a tray.
Steward, open another bottle of champagne. You will smile at the
cook-like view I take of human misery, Miss Jennings,’ said I; ‘but let
me tell you that a good deal of the complexion the mind wears is shed
upon it by the body.’
I filled the tray the maid brought, and bade her carry it to her
ladyship, and to let her suppose it was prepared by the steward. I then
thought of Wilfrid, and told Miss Laura that I would visit him. ‘But
you will stop here till I return,’ said I. ‘I want you to cheer me up.’
I went to my cousin’s cabin and knocked very softly. The berth occupied
by Lady Monson was immediately opposite, and the mere notion of her
being so near made me move with a certain stealth, though I could not
have explained why I did so. There was no response, so, after knocking
a second time very lightly and obtaining no reply, I entered. Wilfrid
lay in his bunk. The porthole was wide open, and a pleasant draught of
air breezed into the cabin. He lay in his shirt, the collar of which
was wide open, and a pair of silk drawers, flat on his back, his arms
crossed upon his breast, like the figure of a knight on a tomb, and
his eyes closed. I was startled at first sight of him, but quickly
perceived that his breast rose and fell regularly, and that, in short,
he was in a sound sleep. Quite restful his slumber was not, for whilst
I stood regarding him he made one or two wry faces, frowned, smiled,
muttered, but without any nervous starts or discomposure of his placid
posture. I was seized with a fit of wonder, and looked about me for
some signs of an opiate or for any hint of liquor that should account
for this swift and easy repose, but there was nothing of the sort to
be seen. He had fallen asleep as a tired child might, or as one who,
having accomplished some great object through stress of bitter toil and
distracting vigil, lightly pillows his head with a thanksgiving that he
has seen the end. I returned to Miss Jennings marvelling much, and she
was equally astonished.
‘Conceive, Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed, ‘that the whole may have passed
out of his memory!’
‘I wish I could believe it,’ said I. ‘No, he has just lain down as a
boy might who is tired out and dropped asleep. A man is to be envied
for being wrongheaded sometimes. If _I_ had shot the Colonel---- but we
agreed not to speak of him. Miss Jennings, you are better already. When
you arrived just now you were white, your eyes were full of worry and
care, you looked as if you would never smile again. Now the old sparkle
is in your gaze, and now you smile once more, and your complexion has
gathered afresh that golden delicacy which I must take the liberty of
vowing as a friend I admire as a most surprising perfection in you.’
‘Oh, Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed softly, with one of those little pouts
I was now used to and glad to observe in her again, whilst something of
colour came into her cheeks, ‘this is no time for compliments.’
Nevertheless she did not seem ill pleased, spite of her looking
downwards with a gravity that was above demureness. At that moment
Cutbill and Crimp came down the companion ladder, pulling off their
caps as they entered. The big sailor had a roll of what resembled
sailcloth under his arm. They passed forward and disappeared in the
cabin that had been occupied by Muffin. Miss Laura noticed them,
but made no remark. It was impossible that she should suspect their
mission. But the sight of them darkened the brighter mood that had
come to me out of the companionship of the girl, and I fell grave on a
sudden.
‘Will you share your cabin with your sister?’ I asked.
‘No; she cannot bear my presence. My maid will prepare for me the berth
adjoining my old one. She must be humoured. Who can express the agonies
her pride is costing her?’
‘I fear Wilfrid sleeps rather too close to her ladyship,’ said I.
‘There’s a cabin next mine. I should like to see him in it. Figure his
taking it into his head in an ungovernable fit of temper to walk in
upon his wife----’
‘If such an impulse as that visited him,’ she answered, ‘it would be
all the same even if he should sleep amongst the crew forward. Do not
anticipate trouble, Mr. Monson. The realities are fearful enough.’
I smiled at her beseeching look. ‘Lucky for your sister,’ said I, ‘that
you are on board. She arrives without a stitch saving what she stands
up in, and here she finds your wardrobe, the two-score conveniences of
the lady’s toilet table, and a maid on top of it all, with pins and
needles and scissors, bodkins and tape--bless me! what a paradise after
the “’Liza Robbins.”’ And then I told her how the ‘Shark’ was lost,
giving her the yarn as I had it from Finn. ‘Anyway,’ said I, ‘Lady
Monson is rescued. Your desire is fulfilled.’
‘But I did not wish her--I did not want Colonel Hope-Kennedy killed,’
she exclaimed with a shudder.
‘Yet you could have shot him,’ said I; ‘do you remember our chat that
night off the Isle of Wight?’
‘Yes, perfectly well,’ she answered. ‘But now that he is dead--oh, it
is too terrible to think of,’ she added with a sob in her voice.
‘It must always be so with generous natures,’ I exclaimed. ‘What is
abhorrent to them in life, death converts into a pathetic appeal. Best
perhaps to leave old Time to revenge one’s wrongs. And now that her
ladyship is on board, what is Wilfrid going to do with her?’
‘She is never likely to leave her cabin,’ she replied.
‘When the “Bride” arrives home, then?’
‘I cannot tell.’
‘Had Wilfrid’s misfortune been mine this is the consideration that
would have stared me in the face from the very start and hindered me
from taking any step that did not conduct me straight to the Divorce
Court.’
Here her maid arrived and whispered to her, on which, giving me a
pretty little sad smile, she rose and went to her cabin. I mounted
to the deck and found the wide ocean shivering and flashing under a
pleasant breeze of wind, whose hot buzzing as it hummed like the vast
insect life of a tropic island through the rigging and into the canvas,
was cooled to the ear by the pleasant noise of running waters on either
hand. My first look was for the ‘’Liza Robbins,’ and I was not a little
surprised to find her far away down upon our lee quarter, a mere dash
of light of a moonlike hue. Finn was pacing the quarterdeck solemnly
with a Sunday air upon him. On seeing me he approached with a shipshape
salute and exclaimed:
‘I suppose there is no doubt, sir, his honour designs that we should be
now steering for home?’
‘For what other part of the world, captain?’
‘Well, sir, at sea one wants instructions. Maybe Sir Wilfrid _knows_
that we’re going home?’
‘He lies sleeping as soundly and peacefully, Finn, as a little boy in
his cabin, and knows nothing.’
‘Lor’ bless me!’ cried Finn.
‘But you may take me as representing him,’ said I, ‘and I’ll be
accountable for all misdirections. About the funeral now. I observed
Cutbill and Crimp pass through the cabin. They’ve gone to stitch the
body up.’
‘Yes, sir. His honour told me to get it done at once. ’Sides, ’tain’t a
part of the ocean in which ye can keep the like of them things long.’
‘When do you mean to bury him?’
‘Well, I thought to-night, sir, in the first watch. Better make a
quiet job of it, I allow, for fear of----’ and screwing up his face
into a peculiar look, he pointed significantly to the deck with clear
reference to Lady Monson.
‘You are right, Finn. We have had “scenes” enough, as scrimmages are
called by women.’
‘Will your honour read the orfice?’
‘D’ye mean the burial service? It will be hard to see print by lantern
light.’
‘I’ve got it, sir, in a book with the letters as big as my forefinger.’
I considered a little and then said, ‘On reflection, no. You are
captain of this ship, and it is for you, therefore, to read the
service. I will be present, of course.’
He looked a trifle dismayed, but said nothing more about it, and, after
walking the deck with him for about half an hour, during which our
talk was all about the ‘Shark’ and the incidents of the morning, what
the crew thought of the duel and the like, I went below to my berth,
and lay down, feeling tired, hot, and again depressed. I was awakened
out of a light sleep by the ringing of the first dinner bell. Having
made ready for dinner I entered the cabin as the second bell sounded,
and found the table prepared, but no one present. I was standing at
the foot of the companion ladder, trying to cool myself with the wind
that breezed down of a fiery hue with the steadfast crimsoning of the
westering sun, when Wilfrid came from his cabin. He was dressed as
if for a ball--swallow-tail coat, patent leather boots, plenty of
white shirt sparkling with diamond studs, and so forth. Indeed, it was
easily seen that he had attired himself with a most fastidious hand,
as though on a sudden there had broken out in him a craze of dandyism.
I was much astonished, and stared at him. There had never been any
ceremony amongst us; in point of meals we had made a sort of picnic of
this marine ramble, and dined regardless of attire. Indeed, in this
direction Wilfrid had always shown a singular negligence, often in cold
weather sitting down in an old pilot coat, or taking his place during
the hot days in white linen coat and small-clothes or an airy camlet
jacket.
‘Why, Wilf,’ said I, running my eye over him, ‘you must give me ten
minutes to keep you in countenance.’
‘No, no,’ he cried, ‘you are very well. This is a festal day with me,
a time to be dignified with as much ceremony as the modern tailor will
permit. Heavens! how on great occasions one misses the magnificence of
one’s forefathers. I should like to dine to-day in the costume of a
Raleigh, a doublet bestudded with precious gems, a short cloak of cloth
of gold. Ha, ha! a plague on the French Revolution--’tis all broadcloth
now. Where’s Laura?’ He asked the question with a sudden breaking away
from the substance of his speech that startlingly accentuated the wild
look his eyes had and the expression of countenance that was a sort of
baffling smile in its way.
‘I do not know,’ I answered.
‘Oh, she must dine with us,’ he cried; ‘I want company. I should like
to crowd this table. Steward, call Miss Jennings’ maid.’
The man stole aft and tapped on the cabin next to the room occupied
by Lady Monson. Miss Jennings opened the door and looked out. Wilfrid
saw her, and instantly ran to her, with his finger upon his lip. He
took her by the hand and whispered. She was clearly as much amazed as
I had been to behold him attired as though for a rout. There was a
little whispered talk between them; she apparently did not wish to join
us; then on a sudden consented, and he led her to the table, holding
her hand with an air of old-world ceremony that must have provoked a
smile but for the concern and anxiety his looks caused me. We took
our places, and he fell to acting the part of host, pressing us to
eat, calling for champagne, talking as if to entertain us. He laughed
often, but softly, in a low-pitched key, and one saw that there was
a perpetual reference in his mind to the existence of his wife close
at hand, but he never once mentioned her nor referred to the dead
man whose proximity put an indescribable quality of ghastliness into
his hectic manner, the crazy air of conviviality that flushed, as
with a glow of fever, his speech, and carriage, and behaviour of high
breeding. Not a syllable concerning the events of the morning, the
objects of our excursion, its achievement, the change of the yacht’s
course escaped him. He drank freely, but without any other result than
throwing a little colour upon his high cheek-bones and rendering yet
more puzzling the conflicting expressions which filled with wildness
his large, protruding, near-sighted gaze at one or the other of us. I
saw too clearly how it was with the poor fellow to feel shocked. Miss
Laura’s tact served her well in the replies she made to him, in the
interest with which she seemed to listen to his conversation, in her
well-feigned ignorance of there being anything unusual in his apparel
or manner. But it failed her in her efforts to conceal her deep-seated
apprehension, that stole like a shadow into her face when she looked
downwards in some interval of silence that enabled her to think, or
when her eyes met mine.
After dinner my cousin fetched his pipe and asked me to join him on
deck. I took advantage of his absence to say swiftly to Miss Laura, ‘We
must not forget that Lady Monson is on board. Upon my word, I believe
you are right in your suggestion this afternoon that Wilfrid has
forgotten all about it, or surely he would have made some reference to
her dining.’
‘I’ll take care that she is looked after, Mr. Monson,’ she answered. ‘I
purposely abstained from mentioning her name at dinner. I am certain,
by the expression in his face, that he would have been irritated by the
lightest allusion to her, and unnatural as his mood is after such a
morning as we have passed through,’ here she glanced in the direction
of the cabin where the Colonel’s body lay, ‘I would rather see him as
he is than sullen, scowling, silent, eating up his heart.’
He returned with his pipe at that moment, and we were about to proceed
on deck when he stopped and said to his sister-in-law, ‘Come along,
Laura, my love.’
‘I have a slight headache, Wilfrid, and I have to see that my cabin is
prepared.’
I thought this answer would start him into questioning her, but he
looked as if he did not gather the meaning of it. ‘Pooh, pooh!’ he
cried, ‘there are two stewards and a maid to see to your cabin for you.
If they don’t suffice we’ll have Muffin aft; that arthritic son of a
greengrocer, whose genius as a valet will scarcely be the worse for the
tar that stains his hands. Muffin for one night only!’ He delivered one
of his short roars of laughter and slapped his leg.
By Jupiter! thought I, Lady Monson will hear that and take it as an
expression of his delight at her presence on board! Does she know, I
wondered, that her colonel lies dead? But I had found no opportunity of
inquiring.
‘Come along, Laura,’ continued Wilfrid; ‘I’ll roll you up as pretty a
cigarette as was ever smoked by a South American belle.’
She shook her head, forcing a smile.
‘Perhaps Miss Jennings will join us later,’ said I, distrustful of his
temper, and passing my hand through his arm, I got him on deck.
‘Laura is a sweet little woman,’ said he, pausing just outside the
hatch to hammer at a tinder-box.
‘Ay, sweet, pretty, and good,’ said I.
‘You’re in love with her, I think, Charles.’
‘My dear Wilf, let us talk of this beautiful night,’ I exclaimed.
‘Why of a beautiful night in preference to a beautiful woman?’ cried he.
But I was determined to end this, so I called to a figure standing to
leeward of the main boom, ‘Is that you, Finn?’
‘No, it’s me,’ answered Crimp’s surly note; ‘the capt’n’s a-laying
down, but he’s guv orders to be aroused at four bells.’
‘Why?’ inquired Wilfrid.
Crimp probably supposed the question put to me, for which I was
thankful. ‘He may mistrust the weather, perhaps,’ I answered softly,
that old Jacob might not hear. ‘Yet the sky has a wonderfully settled
look too. Let’s go right aft, shall we, Wilf? The downdraught here is
emptying my pipe.’
We strolled together to the grating abaft the wheel and seated
ourselves. I cannot tell how much it affected me to find him so easily
thrown off the line of his thoughts. It had been dark some time, for
in those parallels night treads on the skirts of the glory which the
departing sun trails down the western slope of the sea. There would
be no moon sooner than ten o’clock or thereabouts, and it was now a
little after eight--for my cousin’s strange humour had made a much
longer sitting than usual of the dinner. There was a refreshing sound
of rushing wind in the star-laden dusk, a noise as of the sweeping of
countless pinions, with a smooth hissing penetrating from the cutwater
that made one think of the shearing of a skater over ice. The cabin
lamps glowing into the skylight shed a yellow, satin-like sheen upon
the foot of the mainsail, the cloths of which soared the paler for
that lustre till the head of the gaff topsail looked like the brow of
some height of vapour dissolving against the stars. We sat on a line
with the side of the deck on which he had shot Colonel Hope-Kennedy.
The gloom worked the memory of the incident to me into a phantasm,
and I remember a little shiver creeping over me at the vision of that
tall, noble figure with face upturned to heaven a moment or two as
though he watched the flight of his spirit, then falling dead with
the countenance of a man in easy slumber. But Wilfrid had not a word
to say about it. I could not reconcile his extraordinary silence with
his attire and manner, which at all events indicated the recollection
of the duel as strong in him. He chatted volubly and intelligently,
without any of his customary breakings away from his train of thought;
but not of his wife, nor of the Colonel, nor of his infant, nor of this
ocean chase that was now ended so far as the fugitives were concerned.
He talked of his estate; how he intended to build a wing to his house
that should contain a banqueting room, how he proposed to convert some
acres of his land into a market garden, and so on and so on. His face
showed pale in the starlight; his evening costume gave him an unusual
look to my eye; though he talked carelessly on twenty matters of small
interest, I could yet detect an undue energy in the tone of his voice,
comparatively subdued as it was, and in his vehement manner of smoking,
puffing out great clouds rapidly and filling the bowl afresh with hasty
fingers. It would have vastly eased my mind had he made some reference
to the morning. You felt as if the memory of it must be working in him
like some deadly swift pulse, and I confess I could have shrunk from
him at moments when I thought of the character of the source whence he
drew the strength that enabled him to mask himself with what might well
have passed for a mere company face.
When three bells, half-past nine, were struck, I made a move as though
to go below.
‘Going to turn in?’ he asked.
‘It has been a long, tiring day,’ said I evasively.
‘A grand day,’ he exclaimed; ‘the one stirring, memorable day of our
voyage. Come, I will follow you, and we will pledge it in a bumper
before parting.’
We entered the cabin; it was deserted. Wilfrid asked where Miss Laura
was, and the steward replied that he believed she was gone to bed.
‘She should be with us, Charles,’ cried my cousin, with a light of
excitement in his eyes, his face flushed, though above it had looked
marble in the starlight, and a half smile of malicious triumph riding
his lips.
‘No, no,’ said I. ‘The poor child is tired. What is our drink to be,
Wilf? I want to see you turned in, my dear boy.’
‘Pooh, pooh; hang turning in! I feel myself of forty-spirit power
to-night, just in the humour, if I were a member, to go down to the
House and terrify the old ladies in it who call themselves Sir Johns
and Sir Thomases, and who wear swallow-tailed coats and broad-brimmed
hats, with a passionate attack on the British Constitution.’
He called for brandy and seltzer. However, we had not been sitting
twenty minutes when his mood changed; his dinner-party face darkened.
He folded his arms and lay back in his chair, looking downwards with a
gathering scowl upon his brow. I rose.
‘Good-night, Wilfrid,’ said I.
He viewed me with an absent expression, said ‘Good-night,’ and at once
went, but in a mechanical way, governed by habit without giving his
mind to the action, to his berth, at the door of which I saw him stand
a moment whilst he gazed hard at the cabin abreast him; then rubbing
his brow with the gesture of one who seeks to clear his brain, he
disappeared.
Four bells were struck forward. I quietly stepped on deck, and whilst I
stood looking into the binnacle Finn came up to me.
‘Shall we tarn to now, sir,’ said he, ‘and get this here melancholy job
over?’
‘Yes,’ said I, ‘the sooner the better. Sir Wilfrid has gone to his
cabin. Tell your people to be quick and secret.’
He trudged forward, and presently returned with Cutbill and another
seaman. The three of them went below, leaving Crimp to get the gangway
rigged and lighted. A couple of globular lamps, such as might be used
for riding lights, were suspended against the bulwarks, and between
them a seaman rested a grating of the length of a stretcher. The moon
was rising at this moment on our starboard beam, an arch of blood
defining the indigo-black line of the horizon there that on either
hand of her went melting out into a blending of starladen sky, with
the dark and gleaming ocean brimming to the yacht, vast as the heavens
themselves looked. Presently up through the hatch rose the figures
of Captain Finn and the two men, swaying under the weight of the
canvas-shrouded form they bore. The watch on deck came aft and gathered
about the gangway, where they glimmered like visionary creatures to
the dull, yellow shining of the lamps. Face after face seemed to
come twisting and wriggling out of the dusk--visions of hairy salts,
rendered lifelike and actual by the dull illumination that glanced upon
their shadowy lineaments. The wind filled the rigging with melancholy
noises, there was a yearning sob in the sound of the water as it washed
aft, broken and hissing serpent-like from the bow. The canvas rose
dark, but it was now gathering to its loftier cloths a faint, delicate,
pinkish tinge from the red moonbeam, though in a few minutes, when the
planet had lifted her ill-shapen face clear of the black line of brine,
all would be of a snow-white softness above us, and a sparkling line of
bulwark-rail and glittering constellations in the skylight glass and a
wake of floating and heaving silver rolling fan-shaped to us.
A couple of seamen caught hold of the grating and raised it level with
the bulwarks, one end supported by the rail. The body was placed upon
it, and ghostly it looked in that spectral commingling of starlight and
lamplight and moonlight not yet brightening out of its redness--ghastly
in the nakedness of its canvas cover, though, to be sure, there was
no need at that hour to conceal it under a flag. Finn pulled a thin
volume from his pocket and opened it close against one of the lanterns,
peering into it hard and coughing hoarsely as though loath to begin. At
last he mustered up courage and made a start. He pronounced many of the
words oddly, and there was a deep sea-note in his delivery. I watched
his long face twitching and working to his recital as he brought his
eyes in a squint to the page with the lantern-light touching his skin
into a hue of sulphur that made one think of it as the likeness of a
human countenance wrought in yellow silk upon black satin. But the
mystery of death was with us; it seemed to breathe--hot as the night
was--in an ice-cold air off the dark surface of the sea, and a man’s
sense of humour must have been of the featherweight quality of an
idiot’s to flutter in the presence of the pallid, motionless bundle
upon the grating, whose chill, secret subduing inspirations were
unspeakably heightened by the eyes of the sailors round about gleaming
out of the weak glimmer of their countenances vaguely shaped by the
rays of the oil-flames upon the obscurity, by the silver gaze of the
countless equinoctial heaven surveying us over the yardarms and through
the squares of the ratlines and amid the exquisite tracery of the gear,
and by the steadfast watching of stars low down in the measureless dark
distances of the west and north and south, as though they were the
eyes of giant spirits standing on tiptoe behind the horizon to observe
us, and by the slow soaring of the moon that was now icing her crimson
visage with crystal, and diffusing a soft cloud of white light over
the eastern sky with an edging already of brilliant glory under her
upon a short length of the dark sea-line there that made the water in
that direction look as though its boundary were beating in ivory foam
against the wall of sky.
I was standing with my back to the companion hatch; my eyes were rooted
upon the white form which in a few moments now would be tilted and sent
flashing with a heavy cannon-ball at its feet into the black depths on
which we were floating. The man, in life, had acted a scoundrel’s part,
and had richly merited the end he had met; but he lay dead; his grave
was this mighty wilderness of waters; not a hole in the earth to which
those who mourned him could repair and say, pointing downwards, ‘What
remains of him is here;’ but a tomb rivalling the heavens in immensity,
a material eternity that would absorb him and his memory as though his
form, waiting there to be launched, was but a drop of the dew that
glittered in the moonshine upon the grating that supported him.
That bundle was a text to fill me with melancholy musings, and I was
thinking of the man as I beheld him in the morning, worn indeed by
shipwreck and privation, but stately, erect, soldierly; his cheek
crimsoning to the blow that Wilfrid had dealt him; life and passion
strong in him; when I was startled out of my thoughts by Finn ceasing
to read. I glanced at him and observed that he was peering over the
top of his book, goggling some object with eyes that protruded from
their sockets. I looked to see what had called off his attention, and
remarked a tall female figure attired in a light dress, but with her
face concealed by a long dark veil, standing close beside the head of
the grating, perfectly motionless, save for such movements as came to
her by the swaying of the yacht. She had appeared amongst us with the
stealthiness of a ghost, and she looked like one in that conflicting
light, with the faint gleam of her eyes showing through the veil,
and the stitched-up form on the grating to give a darker and more
thrilling accentuation to her presence than she could have got from
an empty grave or a ruptured coffin. The sailors backed away from
her, shouldering one another into the gloom with much wiping of their
leather lips upon the backs of their hands. I was startled on beholding
her, but quickly rallied to a sense of deep disgust that possessed me
on contrasting this illustration of emotion with her language and
treatment of Wilfrid that morning.
‘Proceed,’ I exclaimed to Finn. ‘Read on man, and shorten the service,
too, if you can.’
He croaked out afresh, but the poor fellow was exceedingly nervous.
The ceremony, so far as it had gone, had been chill, doleful,
depressing enough before; but a character almost of horror to my
mind now came into it with the tall, stately, motionless apparition
that stood--scarce won by the lamplight and the moonlight from the
shadowiness that clothed her with unreality--at the head of that
ashen-tinctured length lying prone and resembling a hammock upon the
grating. It was the moral her ladyship’s presence put into the occasion
that made the ceremony all on a sudden so hideously gaunt, so wild, so
inhuman, striking ice-like to the heart. For _this_ she had quitted
her child, as she believed, for ever; for _this_ she had abandoned
her husband, had pricked the bubble of her honour, extinguished the
inspiration of her womanhood’s purest, truest, deepest, holiest
feelings! What but an affrighting vision could that dead man wrapped
in his sea-shroud convert her ladyship’s dream of passion and pleasure
into! Something, one should think, to blind the very eyes of her soul.
But, Lord, how I hated her then for the base dishonour she did herself
by this subtle, sneaking attendance at the funeral of her shame with
the ghost of it to slip with her to her cabin again, and to act, maybe,
as a sentinel to her for the rest of her natural life, stalking close
at her heels, so steadfast there as to make her presently dread to look
behind her!
Finn’s croaking delivery ceased.
‘Overboard with it,’ he rumbled, for his gesture to tilt the grating
had been unobserved by the two men who held it, or else not understood.
The sailors raised their arms; the glimmering bundle sped like a small
cloud of smoke from the side to the accompaniment of the noise of a
long creaming wash of water simmering aft from the bow, through which
I caught the note of a half-stifled shriek from Lady Monson. She flung
her hands to her face and reeled, as if she would fall. I sprang to her
assistance, but on freeing her eyes and seeing who I was, she waved me
from her with a motion of which the passionate haughtiness, disdain,
and dislike were too strong for me to miss, confusing as the lights
were. She then walked slowly aft.
I believed she was going below again, and said to Finn, ‘Shut the book.
Make an end now. The man is buried, and thank God for it.’
Lady Monson, however, walked to the extreme end of the vessel, kneeled
upon the little grating abaft the wheel, and overhung the taffrail,
apparently gazing into the obscurity astern where the Colonel’s body
was sinking and where the white wake of the yacht was glittering like
a dusty summer highway running ivory-like through a dark land on
a moonlit night. I watched her with anxiety, but without daring to
approach her. The sailors unhitched the lanterns and took them forward
along with the grating.
I said to Finn: ‘I hope she does not mean to throw herself overboard.’
His head wagged in the moonlight. ‘Sir,’ he answered, ‘the likes of her
nature ain’t quick to kill themselves. If she were the wife of the gent
that’s gone, I’d see to it. But _she’ll_ not hurt herself.’
Nevertheless, I kept my eye upon her. The awning was off the deck;
the planks ran white as the foam alongside under the moon that was
now brilliant, and all objects showed sharp upon that ground, whilst
the flitting of the ebony shadows to the heave of the deck was like
a crawling of spectral life. I spied the fellow at the glistening
wheel turn his head repeatedly towards the woman abaft him, as though
troubled by that wrapped, veiled, kneeling presence. Finn’s rough,
off-hand indifference could not reassure me. The fear of death, all
horror induced by the cold, moonlit, desolate, weltering waters upon
which her eyes were fixed might languish in the heat of some sudden
craze of remorse, of grief, of despair. There were shapes of eddying
froth striking out upon the dark liquid movement at which she was
gazing--dim, scarce definable configurations of the sea-glow which to
her sight might take the form of the man whose remains had just sped
from the yacht’s side; and God knows what sudden beckoning, what swift,
endearing, caressing gesture to her to follow him she might witness in
the apparition, real, sweet, alluring as in life to the gaze of her
tragic eyes, which in imagination I could see glowing against the moon.
It was with a deep sigh of relief that, after I had stood watching
her at least ten minutes in the shadow of the gangway, I observed her
dismount from the shadow of the grating and walk to the companion, down
which she seemed to melt away as ghostly in her coming as in her going.
Twenty minutes later I followed her, found the cabin empty, and went
straight to bed.