WILFRID’S DELUSION.
It was pleasant to learn next morning that the breeze which had been
slipping us nimbly through it since we had trimmed sail for our
homeward bound run had not only blown steadily all night, giving us an
average of some seven knots an hour, but had gathered a little increase
of weight at sunrise, so that I awoke to as much life in the vessel
in the resonant humming from aloft, the quick wash and eager seething
of recoiling seas, the straining noises of strong fastenings to the
sloping of the spars as though the north-east trades were pouring full
upon the starboard bow, and we were buzzing through the cool Atlantic
parallels within a distance of soundings that would render talk about
Southampton and arriving home reasonable.
For my part, ever since we had penetrated these ‘doldrums’ as they are
called I was dreading the long dead calms of the frizzling belt where
a catspaw is hailed in God’s name and where the roasting eye of the
sun sucks out the very blue of the atmosphere till the heavens go down
in a brassy dazzle to the ocean confines as though one were shut up in
a huge, burnished bell with a white-hot clapper for light. My spirits
were good as I sprang out of my bunk and made for the bath-room. It was
not only that the fresh wind whistling hot through the open scuttle of
my berth caused me to think of home as lying at last fairly over the
bow instead of over the stern as it had been for weeks; the object of
this trip, such as it was, had been achieved; there was nothing more to
keep a look-out for; nothing more to hold one’s expectations tautened
to cracking point. Everything that was material had happened on the
preceding morning, and the toss of the Colonel’s body last night over
the gangway by lantern-light with Lady Monson looking on was like the
drop of the black curtain; it was the end of the tragedy; the orchestra
had filed out, the lights were extinguished, and we could now pass
into heaven’s invigorating air and live again the old easy life of
commonplaces.
So ran my thoughts as I emerged from my berth with a very good appetite
and made my way to the sparkling breakfast-table. I seated myself on a
couch waiting for Wilfrid and Miss Laura; the stewards hung about ready
to serve the meal. I called the head one to me and said, ‘Is there any
chance of Lady Monson joining us at table, do you know?’
‘I think not, sir,’ he answered.
‘Who attends to her--I mean as regards her meals?’
‘Miss Jennings’ maid, sir. She told me this morning her ladyship’s
orders are that a separate tray should be prepared for her for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Her breakfast was taken to her about ten
minutes ago.’
‘So I may presume,’ said I, ‘that she finds herself pretty well this
morning? And my cousin, steward?’
‘I was to tell you, sir,’ he answered, ‘that Sir Wilfrid will not come
to table.’
‘How is he?’
‘He didn’t complain, sir; just said, “I’ll breakfast in my cabin this
morning”!’
‘All right,’ said I, and the man retired.
There was nothing unusual in Wilfrid breakfasting in his cabin. I was
glad to hear that he did not complain; as a rule he was very candid if
in suffering; owned freely to whatever troubled him however trifling,
and made much of it.
In a few minutes Miss Laura came from her berth. Her face had the
delicacy of look that in her at all events I took to express a troubled
or sleepless night. Her eyelids were a little heavy; her lips wanted
their dewy freshness of hue. Yet no woman, I thought, could ever show
sweeter than she as she advanced and took my hand smiling up at me and
subtly incensing the atmosphere with a flower-like fragrance that had
nothing whatever to do with the scent-bottle. I told her that Wilfrid
would not breakfast with us, and we seated ourselves.
‘He is well, I hope?’
‘Oh, I should think so, if I may judge from what the steward tells me.
I’ll look in upon him after breakfast. Have you seen Lady Monson this
morning?’
‘No,’ she answered, ‘I sent my maid with a message and the reply was
that Lady Monson wishes to be alone.’
‘Now, Miss Jennings,’ said I, gently but with some emphasis ‘you must
let nothing that Lady Monson does vex you. You have done your duty;
she is on board this yacht; I shall grow fretful if I think you intend
to waste a single breath of the sweetness of your heart upon the arid
air of Madame Henrietta’s desert nature. I dare say you have scarcely
closed your eyes all night through thinking about her.’
‘About her and other things.’
‘Why tease yourself? A sister is a sister only so long as she
chooses to act and feel as one. It is indeed a tender word--a sweet
relationship. But if a woman coolly cuts all family ties----’
She shook her head, smiling. ‘Your views are too hard, Mr. Monson. You
would argue of a sister as you would of a wife. We must bear with the
shame, the degradation, the wickedness of those we have loved, of those
we still love spite of bitter repulse. There is no one, I am sure,
would dare kneel down in prayer if it was believed that God’s mercy
depended upon our own actions. All of us would feel cut off.’
Not all, I thought, looking at her, but I sat silent awhile, feeling
rebuked. I was a young man then; I can turn back now, scarred as I am
by many years of life’s warfare, and see that I was hard, too hard
in those thoughtless days of mine; that knowing little or nothing of
suffering myself, I knew little or nothing of the deep and wondrous
vitality of human sympathy. You find many corridors in human nature
when you enter, but sympathy is the only way in; and to miss that door
is merely to go on walking round the edifice.
I ate for a little in silence and then said, ‘I suppose, as you have
seen almost nothing of your sister, you are unable to form an opinion
of her state of mind?’
‘She is naturally of a cold nature,’ she answered; ‘dispositions such
as hers, I think, do not greatly vary, let what will happen to them.
Though one knows not what passion, feeling, emotion may have its fangs
buried in such hearts, yet suffering has to pass through too many wraps
to find expression.’
I smiled. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I know what you mean. She is like a person
who lies buried in half a dozen coffins; a shell, then lead, then oak
and so on. Nothing but the last trumpet could influence the ashes
inside.’
‘But why did you ask that question, Mr. Monson?’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘you know that we buried the Colonel last night?’
She started. ‘I did not know!’ she exclaimed.
‘Yes,’ I continued. ‘We slung a couple of lanterns and Finn read the
service. Just before the body was launched your sister arrived, rising
like a ghost amongst us.’
She looked greatly shocked. ‘Was Henrietta really present?’ she
exclaimed. ‘How could she have known--what could the men have thought
of her? What madness of bad taste!’
‘The forefinger follows the thumb,’ said I, ‘and when you come to the
little finger you must begin again. All’s one with some people when
they make a start. Am I too hard on human nature in saying this?’
But she merely exclaimed, as though talking to herself, ‘How could she
be present? How could she be present?’
‘Well, now, mark what follows, Miss Jennings,’ said I; ‘when the body
had vanished your sister walked right aft, kneeled upon the grating and
in that posture of supplication continued to watch the dark waters for
upwards of ten minutes. Meanwhile I was gazing at her from the gangway,
where I stood in the dusk fidgeting exceedingly. For what was in my
mind? Suppose she should fling herself overboard!’
Her violet eyes rested thoughtfully upon my face. ‘I should not have
been afraid,’ she exclaimed, with a faint touch of scorn which made
wonderfully sapid her voice that was low and colourless.
‘Of course you know your own sister,’ said I. ‘Finn took your view. I
mentioned my misgiving, and his long head waggled most prosaically in
the moonlight.’
‘Women who behave as my sister has, Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed with the
gravity of a young philosopher, ‘are too selfish, too cowardly, too
much in love with themselves and with life to act as you seem to fear
my sister might. They may go mad, and then to be sure there is an end
of all reasoning about them; but whilst they have their senses they
may be trusted so far as they themselves are concerned. In perfectly
sane people many noble qualities go to impulses or resolutions which
are deemed rash and impious by persons who falter over the mere telling
of such deeds. My sister has not a single noble quality in her. She
may poison the lives of others, but she will be extremely careful to
preserve her own.’
‘Now if I had said that----’ said I.
‘Oh,’ she answered, with the little colour that had come into her
cheeks fading out of them, ‘I will never reproach you for telling the
truth.’
After breakfast I went to Wilfrid’s cabin and found him up and dressed,
sitting in an easy chair reading his diary, which I took the book to
be. He held the volume close to his face; his legs were crossed, his
feet in slippers, his right hand grasped his big meerschaum pipe which
was filled with yellow tobacco not yet lighted. The cabin window was
open and the draperies of the handsome little apartment stirred to the
pouring of the rich, hot ocean breeze through the orifice.
‘You look vastly comfortable, Wilf,’ said I. ‘Glad to find you well.
But it must be a bit dull here though?’
‘Not at all,’ said he, putting down the book and lighting his pipe.
‘Sit and smoke with me.’
‘Why not on deck?’ I answered, sitting, nevertheless. ‘A wide view in
hot weather takes the place of a cool atmosphere. The sight is sensible
of the heat as well as other organs. It may be cooler down here in
reality than it is under the awning above, but these cribbed and
coffined bulkheads make it very hot to the eye, spite of that pleasant
gushing of wind there.’
He quietly sucked at his pipe, looking at me through the wreathes of
tobacco smoke which went up from his bowl. I lighted a cigar, furtively
observing his face as I did so. He was pale: there was nothing novel
in that, but I noticed an expression of anxiety in his eyes that was
new to me: a look of sane concern as though some difficulty novel and
surprising, yet not of a character to strike deep, had befallen him.
I glanced at the breakfast tray that was upon the table near which
he was seated and easily guessed by what remained that he had made
a good meal. His manner was quiet, even subdued; no symptoms of the
old jerkiness, of the odd probing gestures of head with a thrust of
his mind, as it were, into one’s face as if his intellect were as
short-sighted as his eyes. He was airily clothed in white, a coloured
shirt wide open at the collar, and a small silk cap of a jockey pattern
was perched upon his head.
‘Has Finn removed the five-guinea piece from the mainmast? said he?’
‘I don’t know, Wilf.’
‘I must send word to him to take charge of it, and to tell the men that
the money will be distributed among them on our arrival. I shall be
glad to get home.’
‘And so shall I, upon my word.’
‘The ceaseless motion of the sea,’ he continued, talking quietly and
with a more sensible look in his face than I had witnessed in him since
the hour of our start, ‘grows so distractingly monotonous after a time,
that I can readily believe it affects weak heads. This trip has about
exhausted my love of seafaring. I shall sell the “Bride.”’
I nodded.
‘How long should the run home occupy us?’ he asked.
‘Let us call it a month, or five weeks at the outside, for everybody’s
sake,’ I answered.
He smoked for a minute in silence with a thoughtful face and then said,
‘Five weeks in one’s cabin is a long imprisonment.’
I imagined he referred to his wife, and that he was feeling his way
in this roundabout fashion to talk about her. ‘There is no necessity
to be imprisoned for five weeks,’ said I. ‘Your yacht is not an ocean
liner full of passengers whose stares and whispers might indeed prove
embarrassing. So far as I am concerned I am quite willing to promise
very honestly never even to look. Miss Jennings is all tenderness
and sweetness and sympathy; there could be nothing to found a plea
for seclusion upon in her presence. As to the sailors,’ I continued,
noticing without comprehending an air of bewilderment that was growing
upon his face as I talked, ‘Jack meets with so many astonishments in
his vocation that surprise and curiosity are almost lost arts with him.
The crew will take one long thirsty stare; then turn their quids and
give what passes aft no further heed whatever.’
‘I don’t follow you,’ he exclaimed, poising his pipe, with his eyes
intently fixed on me; ‘what are you talking about?’
‘You were speaking of the tediousness of a five weeks’ imprisonment!’
‘Quite right,’ said he, ‘and tedious it is if it’s to last five weeks.’
‘But, my dear Wilfrid, I was endeavouring to point out that the
imprisonment to which you refer is unnecessary; in fact, after last
night----’ But here I suddenly bit my lip to the perception that it
would be rash and unwise on my part to let him know that his wife had
been present at Colonel Hope-Kennedy’s burial. ‘What I mean is,’ I
continued, talking rapidly, ‘if it’s a mere question of sensitiveness
or pride recoiling from observation, why not imitate the great Mokanna:
“O’er his features hung
The Veil, the Silver Veil which he had flung
In mercy there to hide from human sight
His dazzling brow till men could bear its light.”
In our case we have no dazzling brow, and consequently require no
silver veils; but in Miss Laura’s wardrobe there should be----’
He was now gaping at me, and cried out, ‘Your brain wanders this
morning, Charles. Do you mean that _I_ should go veiled?’
‘You!’ I exclaimed; ‘certainly not. I am not talking of you.’
‘But I am talking of myself, though,’ he cried.
I looked at him with amazement. ‘You do not mean to say that _you_
intend to imprison yourself in this cabin till we get home?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t imprison myself,’ he answered, ‘I am
imprisoned.’
‘By whom, pray?’
‘Can’t you see?’
I ran my eyes round the cabin.
‘No, no!’ he shouted, ‘look at _me_. Don’t you perceive that I can’t
get out? How am I to pass through that door?’
‘How are you to pass through that door?’ I exclaimed; ‘Why, by walking
through it, of course. How else!’
‘Ay, and that’s just what I can’t do,’ said he with a melancholy shake
of the head.
‘But why not, Wilfrid?’ I cried, scarcely yet understanding how it was
with him.
‘Because,’ he answered petulantly, looking down himself, then at his
arms and legs, ‘I am too big.’
I perceived now what had come to him, and felt so dismayed, so grieved,
so pained, I may say to the very heart, that for some moments I was
unable to speak. However, with a violent effort I pulled myself
together, and lighting my cigar afresh in a demonstrative way, for the
mere sake of obtaining what concealment I could get out of my gestures
and my puffing of the tobacco clouds, I said, ‘Big you always were,
Wilfrid; but never so big--and not _now_ so big--as not to be able
to pass through that door. See! let me go first; put your two hands
just above my hips and you’ll follow me through as easily as reeving a
rope’s end through the sheave hole it belongs to.’
I rose, but he waved me off with an almost frantic gesture. ‘My God,
man!’ he shouted, ‘What is the use of talking? I could no more get
through that door than I could pass through that porthole.’
‘But don’t you think we might manage to haul you through?’ said I.
‘You’d tear me to pieces,’ he answered. ‘Sit down, my dear fellow,’ he
continued, speaking with an almost cheerful note in his voice, ‘it is a
very grave inconvenience, but it must be met. This cabin is commodious,
and with you and Laura to come and keep me company, and with the
further solace of my pipe and books, why I shall be very nearly as well
off as if I could get on deck. Besides,’ he added, lifting his finger
and addressing me with that old air of cunning I have again and again
referred to, made boyish and pathetic by the quivering of his eyelids
and the knowing look his mouth put on, ‘even if I was not too much
swelled to pass through that door,’ he glanced at it as if it were a
living thing that demanded respectful speech from him, ‘I should never
be able to get through the companion hatch.’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘it no doubt is as you say. A little patience and you
will find yourself equal, I am sure, to leaving your cabin. If not, and
you fear the idea of a squeeze, there is always your carpenter at hand.
A few blows dealt at yonder bulkhead would make room for an elephant.’
‘Ay, that would be all very well,’ said he, ‘so far as this cabin is
concerned. But would you have me order the carpenter to rip up the deck
with leagues of Atlantic weather right ahead of us?’
I feigned to agree. No useful result could possibly follow any sort
of reasoning with him whilst this extraordinary fancy possessed his
brain. I watched him attentively to remark if he moved or acted as if
his hallucination involved physical conditions, as if, in short he was
sensible of the weight and unwieldiness of excessive growth in his body
and limbs: for I remembered the case of a man I once heard of, who,
believing himself to have grown enormously corpulent in a single night,
acted the part of an immensely fat man by breathing pursily and with
labour, by grasping his stomach as though it stood out a considerable
distance ahead of him, and by other samples of behaviour which in his
madness he might imagine properly belonged to the obese. But I could
detect no conduct of this sort in Wilfrid outside that inspection of
himself which I mentioned when he first told me that he had grown too
big to quit his cabin.
I changed the subject and sat talking with him for a long half-hour.
He asked no questions about his wife, nor as to the disposal of the
Colonel’s body, nor reverted to the extent of the faintest implication
to the incidents of the preceding day. Yet he conversed with perfect
rationality; his manners were bland, with something of dignity in them;
it seemed, indeed, as if the poor fellow’s craziness had localised
itself in this new and astounding fancy of his being unable to squeeze
his way through on deck, leaving his mind in all other directions
clear and serene; yet mad as was the notion that had now seized him,
I could not but secretly feel that there was more madness yet in his
insensibility to what had happened, as though, indeed, the light of
memory in him had been extinguished and he was conscious of nothing but
what was actually passing before his eyes.
I held my peace on this new and astonishing craze, fancying that at
any hour I might find him on deck and his delusion gone. At dinner,
however, that day Miss Laura noticed his absence. My silence, I
suppose, convinced her that there was something wrong with him. She
questioned me and I told her the truth. Her eyes filled with sadness.
‘He grows worse,’ she said. ‘I fear he will never recover.’
‘This marriage,’ I answered, ‘on top of what was congenital in him, has
proved too much. Have you seen your sister to-day?’
‘No.’
‘Does she intend to keep her cabin until we reach England?’
‘I cannot say. She declines to see me.’
‘Yet she has turned you out of your berth, and does not scruple, I
suppose, to use everything that you possess. Well, we are a queer
little ship, I must say; the husband self-imprisoned by fancy on one
side, and a wife self-imprisoned by heaven knows what emotions on the
other side; and both doors within kick of a foot from either threshold.
It is a picture to encourage an ingenuous mind fired with matrimonial
resolutions!’
‘Men are fools to get married!’ she exclaimed piquantly.
‘And women?’ said I.
‘Oh, it is the business of women to make men fools,’ she answered.
Her clear eye rested serenely on mine, and she spoke without archness
or sarcasm.
‘I don’t think,’ said I, ‘that women make fools of men, but that it is
men who make fools of themselves. Yet this I vow before all the gods:
if I had married a woman like your sister and she had served me as she
has served her husband, I should wish to be mad as Wilfrid is. He does
not ask after her, seems to have utterly forgotten her and the fellow
who was sent to his rest yesterday. Oh, how delightful! Why, you hear
of women like Lady Monson driving their spouses into hideous courses of
life, forcing them to search for oblivion in drink, gambling, and so
on until they end as penniless miscreants, as broken-down purple-nosed
rogues, and all for love, forsooth! But how is Wilfrid served? Some
wild-eyed imagination slips into his brain, turns all the paintings to
the wall, and with nimble hands falls to work to garnish the galleries
inside his skull with tapestry hangings which engage his mind to the
forgetting of all things else.’
‘But, Mr. Monson,’ cried she, ‘surely with some little trouble one
might succeed in persuading him, whilst feigning to admit he has
increased in size, that he is not too big to pass through his door.’
‘Let us pay him a visit,’ said I.
She at once rose. We had finished dinner some time. I had been chatting
with her over such slender dessert as a yacht’s stores in those days
supplied--figs, nuts, raisins, biscuits, and the like. The westering
sun coloured the cabin with a ruby atmosphere amid which the wines
on the table glowed in rich contrast with the snow-white damask and
the icy sparkle of crystal, whilst red stars trembled in the silver
lamps with a soft crimson lustre, flaking, as it seemed, upon the eye
out of the mirrors. The humming wind gushed pleasantly through the
open skylight and down the hatchway, and set the leaves of the plants
dancing and the ferns gracefully nodding. To think of the woman for
whom all this show was designed, for whom all these elegancies were
heaped together, the mistress indeed of the gallant and beautiful
little fabric that was bearing us with a pretty sauciness over this sea
of sapphir, and under this reddening equinoctial heaven, sulking in her
cabin, a disgraced, a degraded, a socially ruined creature, imprisoned
by her own hand, and pride acting the part of turnkey to her! But
Miss Jennings was making her way to Wilfrid’s cabin, and there was no
leisure now for moralising.
We entered. The remains of the dinner my cousin had been served with
were still upon his table, and I gathered that he had done exceedingly
well. This did not look as though he suspected that eating had anything
to do with his sudden astonishing growth. He had emptied one pint
bottle of champagne, and another about a quarter full stood at his
elbow with a bumper, just poured out apparently, alongside it. He had
attired himself in dress clothes again, and sat with an air of state
and dignity in his armchair, toying with a large cigar not yet lighted.
‘How d’ye do, Laura, my dear? Sit down. Sit, Charles. There is plenty
of room for slender people like you.’
I placed a chair for Miss Jennings and vaulted into Wilfrid’s bunk,
for though the cabin was roomy in proportion to the burthen of the
yacht, the accommodation was by no means ample owing to the furniture
that crowded the deck. His high cheek-bones were flushed, a sort
of glassiness coated his eyes, but this I readily ascribed to the
champagne; the interior was hot, and Miss Laura cooled her sweet face
with a black fan that hung at her waist. My cousin watched her uneasily
as if he feared she would see something in him to divert her.
‘Do you feel now, Wilfrid,’ said I, ‘as if you could get on deck?’
‘Oh, certainly not,’ he answered warmly, ‘I wonder that you should ask
such a question. Compare my figure with that door.’
He looked at Miss Laura with a shrug of his shoulders as though he
pitied me.
‘Surely, Wilfrid,’ she exclaimed, ‘you could pass through quite easily,
and without hurting yourself at all.’
‘Quite easily! Yes, in pieces!’ he cried scornfully. ‘But it is not
that you are both blind. Your wish is to humour me. Please do nothing
of the sort. What I can see, you can see. Look at this bulk.’ He put
down his cigar to grasp his breast with both hands. ‘Look at these,’
he continued, slapping first an arm, then a leg. ‘It is a most
fortunate thing that I should have broadened only. Had I increased
correspondingly in height, I should not have been able to stand upright
in this cabin,’ and he directed a glance at the upper deck or ceiling,
whilst a shiver ran through him.
I thought now I would sound his mind in fresh directions, for though
whilst his present craze hung strong in him it was not likely he would
quit his cabin, yet if his intellect had failed in other ways to the
extent I found in this particular hallucination he would certainly
have to be watched, not for his own security only, but for that of
all others on board. Why, as you may suppose, his craziness took the
wildest and most tragic accentuation when one thought of where one
was--in the very heart of the vast Atlantic, a goodly company of us
on board, a little ship that was as easily to be made a bonfire of
as an empty tar-barrel, with gunpowder enough stowed somewhere away
down forward to complete in a jiffy the work that the flames might be
dallying with.
‘You do not inquire after Lady Monson, Wilfrid,’ said I.
Miss Jennings started and stared at me.
‘Why should I?’ he answered coldly, and deliberately producing his
little tinder-box, at which he began to chip. ‘I’ll venture to say she
doesn’t inquire after _me_.’
I was astonished by the rationality of this answer and the air of
intelligence that accompanied its delivery.
‘No, I fear not,’ said I, much embarrassed. ‘As she only came on board
yesterday----’
‘Well?’ he exclaimed, finding that I paused.
‘Oh,’ said I with a bit of a stammer, ‘it just occurred to me you might
have forgotten that she was now one of us, journeying home.’
‘Tut, tut!’ said he, waving his hand at me, but without turning his
head. ‘Laura, you are looking after her, my dear?’
‘My maid sees that she has all she requires,’ answered the girl. ‘She
declines to have anything to say to me--to meet me--to hear of me.’
He nodded his head slowly and gravely at her, and lowering his voice
said, ‘Can she hear us, do you think?’
‘No,’ I exclaimed, ‘not through the two bulkheads, with the width of
passage between.’
He smoked leisurely whilst he kept his eyes thoughtfully bent on Miss
Laura. ‘My cousin,’ said he, addressing her as though I were absent,
‘has on more than one occasion said to me, “Suppose you recover your
wife, what are you going to do with her?” I have recovered her and
now I will tell you my intentions. Laura, you know I adored her.’
She inclined her head. ‘What term would you apply to a woman,’ he
proceeded, ‘who should abandon a devoted husband that worshipped
the ground she walked upon? who should desert the sweetest little
infant’--I thought his voice would falter here, but it was as steady
as the fixed regard of his eyes--‘that ever came from heaven to fill a
mother’s heart with love? who should forfeit a position of distinction
and opulence,--who should stealthily creep like a thief in the night
from a home of beauty, of elegance, and of splendour; who should do
all this for an end of such depravity that it must be nameless?’ his
forefinger shot up with a jerk and his eyes glowed under the trembling
of the lids. ‘What is the term you would apply to such a woman?’ he
continued, now scowling and with an imperious note in his voice.
I guessed the word that was in his mind and cried, ‘Why, mad of course.’
‘Mad!’ he thundered violently, slapping his knee and breaking into
a short, semi-delirious laugh. He leaned forward as though he would
take Miss Laura into his strictest confidence, and putting his hand to
the side of his mouth he whispered, ‘She is mad. We none of us knew
it, Laura. My first act, then, when we reach home will be to confine
her. But not a word, mind!’ He held his finger to his lips and in that
posture slowly leaned back in his chair again, with a face painful with
its smile of cunning and triumph.
I saw that the girl was getting scared; so without ado I dropped out of
the bunk on to my feet.
‘An excellent scheme, Wilfrid,’ said I; ‘in fact the only thing
to be done. But, my dear fellow, d’ye know the atmosphere here is
just roasting. I’ll take Miss Jennings on deck for a turn, and when
I am cooled down a bit I’ll look in upon you for another yarn for
half-an-hour before turning in.’
‘All right,’ he exclaimed. ‘Laura looks as if she wants some fresh
air. Send one of the stewards to me, will you, as you pass through the
cabin? But mind, both of you--hush! Not a word; you understand?’
‘Trust us,’ said I, and sick at heart I took Miss Laura’s hand and led
her out of the cabin. As I closed the door she reeled and would have
fallen but for the arm I passed round her. I conducted her to a couch
and procured a glass of water. The atmosphere here was comparatively
cool with the evening air breezing down through the wide skylight, and
she quickly recovered.
‘It is terrible!’ she exclaimed, pressing her fingers to her eyes and
shaking her head. ‘I should fall crazy myself were I much with him.
His sneers, his smiles, his looks, the boyish air of his face too! The
thought of his misery, his injury, the irreparable wrong done him--poor
Wilf, poor Wilf!’ Her tender heart gave way and she wept piteously.
When she was somewhat composed she fetched a hat and accompanied me on
deck. The dusk down to the horizon was clear and fine, richly spangled
to where the hard black line of the ocean ruled the firmament. On high
sailed many meteors, like flying-fish sparking out of the dark velvet;
some of them scoring under the trembling constellations a silver wake
that lingered long on the eye and resembled a length of moon-coloured
steam slowly settling away before the breath of a soft air. There were
many shooting stars, too, without the comet-like grace of the meteoric
flights; sharp, bounding sparkles that made one think of the flashing
of muskets levelled at the ocean by visionary hands in the hovering,
star-laden gloom. The wind was failing; the yacht was sailing with
erect masts with a rhythmic swinging of the hollows of her canvas to
the light weather rolls of the vessel on the tender undulations. It
was like the regular breathing of each great white breast. The dew was
heavy and cooled the draught as a fountain the atmosphere round about
it. A little sleepy noise of purring froth came from the bows. All was
hushed along the decks, though as the yacht lifted forward I could make
out some figures pacing the forecastle, apparently with naked feet, for
no footfall reached the ear.
‘Alas,’ said I, ‘the wind is failing. I dread the stagnation of these
waters. I have heard of ships lying becalmed here for two and three
months at a stretch; in all those hideous days of frying suns and
steaming nights scarce traversing twenty leagues.’
‘We were becalmed a fortnight on the Line,’ said Miss Laura, ‘on our
passage to England. It seemed a year. Everybody grew quarrelsome, and I
believe there was a mutiny amongst the crew.’
‘Oh, I hate the dead calm at sea!’ I cried. ‘Yet I fear we are booked.
Look straight up, Miss Jennings, you will behold a very storm of
shooting stars. When I was in these waters, but much more west and east
than where we now are, I took notice that whenever the sky shed meteors
in any abundance a calm followed, and the duration of the stagnant time
was in proportion to the abundance of the silver discharge. But who is
that standing aft by the wheel there?’
My question was heard and answered. ‘It’s me--Capt’n Finn, sir.’
‘We’re in for a calm, I fear, Finn.’
‘I fear so, sir,’ he answered, slowly coming over to us. ‘Great pity
though. I was calculating upon the little breeze to-day lasting to draw
us out of this here belt. Them shooting stars too ain’t wholesome. Some
says they signifies wind, and so they may to the norrards, but not down
here. Beg pardon, Mr. Monson, but how is Sir Wilfrid, sir? Han’t seen
him on deck all day. I hope his honour’s pretty well?’
‘Come this way, Finn,’ said I.
The three of us stepped to the weather rail, somewhat forward, clear of
the ears of the helmsman.
‘Captain,’ said I, ‘my cousin’s very bad and I desire to talk to you
about him.’
‘Sorry to hear it, sir,’ he answered in a voice of concern; ‘the heat’s
a-trying him, may be.’
‘He refuses to leave his cabin,’ said I, ‘and why, think you? Because
he has got it into his head that he has grown too broad to pass through
the door or even to squeeze through that hatch there.’
‘Gor bless me!’ he exclaimed, ‘what a notion to take on. And yet it
ain’t the first time I’ve heard of such whims. I was once shipmate with
a man who believed his nose to be a knife. I’ve seen him a trying to
cut up tobacco with it. There’s no arguing with people when they gets
them tempers.’
‘But don’t you think, Captain Finn,’ said Miss Jennings, ‘that with
some trouble Sir Wilfrid might be coaxed into coming on deck? If he
could be induced to pass through his door he would find the hatch easy.
Then, when on deck, confidence would return to him and his crazy notion
leave him.’
‘Won’t he make the heffort, miss?’ inquired Finn.
I answered ‘No. He says that it would tear him to pieces to be dragged
through.’
‘Then, sir,’ exclaimed the skipper with energy, ‘if he says it you may
depend upon it he believes it, sir, and if he believes it then I dorn’t
doubt that physical force by way of getting him out of his cabin would
be the most dangerous thing that could be tried. It’s all the narves,
sir. Them’s an arrangement fit to bust a man open by acting upon his
imagination. Mr. Monson, sir, I’ll tell’ee what once happened to me.
I had a fever, and when I recovered, my narves was pretty nigh all
gone. I’d cry one moment like a baby, then laugh ready to split my
sides over nothen at all. I took on a notion that I might lay wiolent
hands on myself if the opportunity offered. It wasn’t that I wanted to
hurt myself, but that I was afeered I _would_. I recollect being in my
little parlour one day. There was a bit of a sideboard agin the wall
with a drawer in which my missus kep’ the table knives we ate with. The
thought of them knives gave me a fright. I wanted to leave the room,
but to get to the door I should have to pass the drawer where them
knives were, and I couldn’t stir. Your honour, such was the state of my
narves that the agony of being dragged past that door would have been
as bad as wrenching me in halves. So I got out through the window, and
it was a fortnight afore I had the courage to look into that parlour
again.’
‘My father knew a rich gentleman in Melbourne,’ said Miss Jennings,
‘who lost his mind. He believed that he had been changed into a cat,
and all day long he would sit beside a little crevice in the wainscot
of his dining-room waiting for a mouse to appear.’
‘But when it comes to imaginations of this kind,’ said I, ‘one is never
to know what is going to follow. Captain Finn, my cousin may mend--I
pray God he will do so, and soon----’ ‘Amen,’ quoth Finn in his deepest
note. ‘Meanwhile,’ I continued, ‘I am of opinion that he should be
watched.’
‘You think so, sir!’ he exclaimed.
‘Why, man, consider where we are. Send your eye into that mighty
distance,’ I cried, pointing to the black junction of scintillant
gloom and the spread of ocean coming to us thence in ink. ‘Think of
our loneliness here and the condition that a madman’s act might reduce
us to. That is not all. Lady Monson, this young lady, and her maid
sleep close to his cabin. Who shall conjecture the resolution that may
possess a diseased brain on a sudden? Sir Wilfrid must be watched,
Finn.’
‘I agree with you, sir,’ he answered thoughtfully, ‘but--but who’s
to have the ordering of it? ’Tain’t for the likes of me, sir----’ He
paused, then added, ‘He’s master here, ’ee know, sir.’
‘I’ll make myself responsible,’ I exclaimed; ‘the trouble is to have
him watched with the delicacy that shall defy the detection of his
most suspicious humour should he put his head out of his berth or quit
it--which he is not likely to do _yet_. Of course an eye would have to
be kept upon him from without. Name me two or three of your trustiest
seamen.’
‘Why sir, there’s Cutbill, a first-class man; and there’s two others,
Jonathan Furlong and William Grindling, that you may put your fullest
confidence in.’
‘Then,’ said I, ‘I propose that these men should take a spell of
keeping a lookout turn and turn about. The stewards would have been fit
persons, but they are wanting in muscle. Let the man who keeps watch
in the cabin so post himself that he may command the passage where Sir
Wilfrid’s berth is. You or Crimp, according as your watch comes round,
will see that the fellow below, whoever he may be, keeps awake. Pray
attend to this, Finn. I am satisfied that it is a necessary measure.’
‘I shall have to tell old Jacob the truth, sir, and the men likewise,’
said he, ‘and also acquaint the stewards with what’s wrong, otherwise
they’ll be for turning the sailor that’s sent below out of the cabin.’
‘By all means,’ said I. ‘I’ll stand your lookout whilst you are making
the necessary arrangements. But see that you provide your men with some
ready and quite reasonable excuse for being in the cabin should Sir
Wilfrid chance to come out during the night and find one of his seamen
sitting at the table.’
‘Ay, ay, sir; that’s to be managed with a little thinking,’ answered
Finn, and forthwith he marched towards the forecastle into the darkness
there.
‘It is fortunate,’ I said to Miss Jennings, ‘that I am Wilfrid’s
cousin. If I were simply a guest on board I question if Finn would do
what I want.’
We fell to pacing the deck. Even as we walked the light breeze weakened
yet, till here and there you’d catch sight of the gleam of a star in
some short fold of black swell running with a burnished brow. The
dew to the fluttering of the canvas aloft fell to the deck with the
pattering sound of raindrops.
‘Oh,’ groaned I to Miss Laura, ‘for a pair of paddle-wheels!’
We stepped to the open skylight to observe if aught were stirring
below, but gladly recoiled from the gush of hot air there rising with
a fiery breath stale with the smell of the dinner table spite of the
sweetness put into it by the flowers. Heavens, how my very heart
sickened to the slopping sounds of water alongside lifting stagnantly
and sulkily, melting out into black ungleaming oil! We seated ourselves
under the fanning spread of mainsail, talking of Wilfrid, of his wife,
of features of the voyage, until little by little I found myself slowly
sliding into a sentimental mood. My companion’s sweet face, glimmering
tender and placid to the starlight, came very near into courting me
into a confession of love. The helmsman was hidden from us, we seemed
to be floating alone upon the mighty shadow that stretched around. A
sense of inexpressible remoteness was inspired by the trembling of
the luminaries and the sharp shooting of the silver meteors as though
all the life of this vast hushed universe of gloom were up there, and
we had come to a pause upon the very verge of creation, with no other
vitality in the misty confines save what the beating of our two hearts
put into them.
On a sudden she started and said, ‘See! there is my sister.’
The figure of Lady Monson rose, pale and veiled, out of the companion
hatch. She did not observe us, and approached the part of the deck
where we were seated, courted haply by the deeper dye the shadow of the
mainsail put into the atmosphere about it. I was struck by the majesty
of her gait, by the tragic dignity of her carriage as she advanced,
taking the planks with a subtlety of movement that made her form look
to glide wraith-like. The sweet heart at my side shrank with so clear
a suggestion of alarm in her manner that I took her hand and held it.
Lady Monson drew close--so close without seeing us that I believed she
was walking in her sleep, but she caught sight of us then and instantly
flung, with an inexpressible demeanour of temper and aversion, to the
other side of the deck, which she paced, going afterwards to the rail
and overhanging it, motionless as the quarter-boat that hung a little
past her.
‘She frightens me!’ whispered Laura; ‘ought I to join her? Oh, cruel,
cruel, that she should hate me so bitterly for her own acts!’
‘Why should you join her? She does not want you. The heat has driven
her on deck, and she wishes to muse and perhaps moralise over the
Colonel’s grave. Why are you afraid of her?’
‘Because I am a coward.’
Just then Finn came along. He went up to Lady Monson and I saw his
figure stagger against the starlight when he discovered his mistake. He
peered about and then came over to us, breathing hard and polishing his
forehead.
‘Nigh took the breath out of my body, sir,’ he exclaimed in a hoarse
whisper; ‘actually thought it was your honour, so tall she be. Well,
I’ve arranged everything, sir, and a lookout’ll be established soon
arter the cabin light’s turned down.’
Laura suddenly rose and wished me good-night. I could see that Lady
Monson’s presence rendered her too uneasy to remain on deck, so I did
not press her to stay, though I remember heartily wishing that her
ladyship was still on board the ‘’Liza Robbins.’ She continued to hold
her stirless posture at the bulwark rail as though she were steadily
thinking herself into stone. But for her contemptuous and insolent
manner of turning from us, I believe I should have found spirit enough
to attempt a conversation with her. It was not until four bells that
she rose suddenly from her inclined attitude as though startled by the
clear echoing chimes. Past her the sky was dimly reddening to the moon
whose disc still floated below the horizon, and against the delicate
almost dream-like flush, I perceived her toss up her veil and press
her hands to her face. She then veiled herself afresh, came to the
companion and disappeared. Was it remorse working in her, or grief
for her foundered colonel, or some anguish born of the thought of her
child? Easier, I thought, to fathom with the sight the mysteries of the
ooze of the black, vaporous-looking surface that our keel was scarce
now wrinkling than to penetrate the secrets of a heart as dark as hers!
Half-an-hour later I quitted the deck, and as I passed through
the cabin nodded to Cutbill, who sat awkwardly and with a highly
embarrassed air with his back upon the cabin table, commanding the
after cabins--a huge salt, all whisker, wrinkles, and muscle.