The morning after the vessel left Dartmouth brought with it lovely
weather, brisk and clear, with a fresh breeze that just topped the
glittering swell with white. There was, however, a considerable roll on
the ship, and those poor wretches, who for their sins are given to
sea-sickness, were not yet happy. Presently Arthur observed the pretty
black-eyed girl—poor thing, she did not look very pretty now—creep on
to the deck and attempt to walk about, an effort which promptly
resulted in a fall into the scuppers. He picked her up, and asked if
she would not like to sit down, but she faintly declined, saying that
she did not mind falling so long as she could walk a little—she did not
feel so sick when she walked. Under these circumstances he could hardly
do less than help her, which he did in the only way at all practicable
with one so weak, namely, by walking her about on his arm.
In the midst of his interesting peregrinations he observed Mrs. Carr
gazing out of her deck cabin window, looking, he thought, pale, but
sweetly pretty, and rather cross. When that lady saw that she was
observed, she pulled the curtain with a jerk and vanished. Shortly
after this Arthur’s companion vanished too, circumstances over which
she had no control compelling her, and Arthur himself sat down rather
relieved.
But he was destined that day to play knight-errant to ladies in
distress. Presently Mrs. Carr’s cabin-door opened, and that lady
herself emerged therefrom, holding on to the side-rail. He had just
begun to observe how charmingly she was dressed, when some qualm seized
her, and she returned to re-enter the cabin. But the door had swung-to
with the roll of the vessel, and she could not open it. Impelled by an
agony of doubt, she flew to the side, and, to his horror, sprang with a
single bound on to the broad rail that surmounted the bulwark netting,
and remained seated there, holding only to a little rope that hung down
from the awning-chain. The ship, which was at the moment rolling pretty
heavily, had just reached the full angle of her windward roll, and was
preparing for a heavy swing to leeward. Arthur, seeing that Mrs. Carr
would in a few seconds certainly be flung out to sea, rushed promptly
forward and lifted her from the rail. It was none too soon, for next
moment down the great ship went with a lurch into a trough of the sea,
hurling him, with her in his arms, up against the bulwarks, and, to say
truth, hurting him considerably. But, if he expected any thanks for
this exploit, he was destined to be disappointed, for no sooner had he
set his lovely burden down, than she made use of her freedom to stamp
upon the deck.
“How could you be so foolish?” said he. “In another moment you would
have been flung out to sea!”
“And pray, Mr. Heigham,” she answered, in a cutting and sarcastic
voice, “is that my business or your own? Surely it would have been time
enough for you to take a liberty when I asked you to jump over after
me.”
Arthur drew himself up to his full height and looked dignified—he could
look dignified when he liked.
“I do not quite understand you, Mrs. Carr,” he said, with a little bow.
“What I did, I did to save you from going overboard. Next time that
such a little adventure comes in my way, I hope, for my own sake, that
it may concern a lady possessed of less rudeness and more gratitude.”
And then, glaring defiance at each other, they separated; she marching
off with all the dignity of an offended queen to the “sweet seclusion
that a cabin grants,” whilst he withdrew moodily to a bench, comforted,
however, not a little by the thought that he had given Mrs. Carr a
Roland for her Oliver.
Mrs. Carr’s bound on to the bulwarks had been the last effort of that
prince of demons, sea-sickness, rending her ere he left. When the
occasion for remaining there had thus passed away, she soon tired of
her cabin and of listening to the inarticulate moans of her beloved
Agatha, who was a most faithful subject of the fiend, one who would
never desert his manner so long as he could roll the tiniest wave, and,
sallying forth, took up her position in the little society of the ship.
But between Arthur and herself there was no attempt at reconciliation.
Each felt their wrongs to be as eternal as the rocks. At luncheon they
looked unutterable things from different sides of the table; going in
to dinner, she cut him with the sweetest grace, and on the following
morning they naturally removed to situations as remote from each other
as the cubic area of a mail steamer would allow.
“Pretty, very much so, but ill-mannered; not quite a lady, I should
say,” reflected Arthur to himself, with a superior smile.
“I detest him,” said Mrs. Carr to herself, “at least, I think I do; but
how neatly he put me down! There is no doubt about his being a
gentleman, though insufferably conceited.”
These uncharitable thoughts rankled in their respective minds about 12
A.M. What then was Arthur’s disgust, on descending a little late to
luncheon that day, to be informed by the resplendent chief-steward—
who, for some undiscovered reason, always reminded him of Pharaoh’s
butler—that the captain had altered the places at table, and that this
alteration involved his being placed next to none other than Mrs. Carr.
Everybody was already seated, and it was too late to protest, at any
rate for that meal; so he had to choose between submission and going
without his luncheon. Being extremely hungry, he decided for the first
alternative, and reluctantly brought himself to a halt next his avowed
enemy.
But surprises, like sorrows, come in battalions, a fact that he very
distinctly realized when, having helped himself to some chicken, he
heard a clear voice at his side address him by name.
“Mr. Heigham,” said the voice, “I have not yet thanked you for your
kindness to Miss Terry. I am commissioned to assure you that she is
very grateful, since she is prevented by circumstances from doing so
herself.”
“I am much gratified,” he replied, stiffly; “but really I did nothing
to deserve thanks, and if I had,” he added, with a touch of sarcasm, “I
should not have expected any.”
“Oh! what a cynic you must be,” she answered with a rippling laugh, “as
though women, helpless as they are, were not always thankful for the
tiniest attention. Did not the pretty girl with the black eyes thank
you for your attentions yesterday, for instance?”
“Did the lady with the brown eyes thank me for my attentions—my very
necessary attentions—yesterday, for instance?” he answered, somewhat
mollified, for the laugh and the voice would have thawed a human
icicle, and, with all his faults, Arthur was not an icicle.
“No, she did not; she deferred doing so in order that she might do it
better. It was very kind of you to help me, and I daresay that you
saved my life, and I—I beg your pardon for being so cross, but being
sea-sick always makes me cross, even to those who are kindest to me. Do
you forgive me? Please forgive me; I really am quite unhappy when I
think of my behaviour.” And Mrs. Carr shot a glance at him that would
have cleared the North-West Passage for a man-of-war.
“Please don’t apologise,” he said, humbly. “I really have nothing to
forgive. I am aware that I took a liberty, as you put it, but I thought
that I was justified by the circumstances.”
“It is not generous of you, Mr. Heigham, to throw my words into my
teeth. I had forgotten all about them. But I will set your want of
feeling against my want of gratitude, and we kiss and be friends.”
“I can assure you, Mrs. Carr, that there is nothing in the world I
should like better. When shall the ceremony come off?”
“Now you are laughing at me, and actually interpreting what I say
literally, as though the English language were not full of figures of
speech. By that phrase,” and she blushed a little—that is, her cheek
took a deeper shade of coral—“I meant that we would not cut each other
after lunch.”
“You bring me from the seventh heaven of expectation into a very
prosaic world; but I accept your terms, whatever they are. I am
conquered.”
“For exactly half an hour. But let us talk sense. Are you going to stop
at Madeira?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know; till I get tired of it, I suppose. Is it nice, Madeira?”
“Charming. I live there half the year.”
“Ah, then I can well believe that it is charming.”
“Mr. Heigham, you are paying compliments. I thought that you looked
above that sort of thing.”
“In the presence of misfortune and of beauty”—here he bowed—“all men
are reduced to the same level. Talk to me from behind a curtain, or let
me turn my back upon you, and you may expect to hear work-a-day
prose—but face to face, I fear that you must put up with compliment.”
“A neat way of saying that you have had enough of me. Your compliments
are two-edged. Good-bye for the present.” And she rose, leaving Arthur
—well, rather amused.
After this they saw a good deal of each other—that is to say, they
conversed together for at least thirty minutes out of every sixty
during an average day of fourteen hours, and in the course of these
conversations she learned nearly everything about him, except his
engagement to Angela, and she shrewdly guessed at that, or, rather, at
some kindred circumstance in his career. Arthur, on the other hand,
learned quite everything about her, for her life was open as the day,
and would have borne repeating in the _Times_ newspaper. But
nevertheless he found it extremely interesting.
“You must be a busy woman,” he said one morning, when he had been
listening to one of her rattling accounts of her travels and gaieties,
sprinkled over, as it was, with the shrewd remarks, and illumined by
the keen insight into character that made her talk so charming.
“Busy, no; one of the idlest in the world, and a very worthless one to
boot,” she answered, with a little sigh.
“Then, why don’t you change your life? it is in your own hands, if ever
anybody’s was.”
“Do you think so? I doubt if anybody’s life is in their own hands. We
follow an appointed course; if we did not, it would be impossible to
understand why so many sensible, clever people make such a complete
mess of their existence. They can’t do it from choice.”
“At any rate, you have not made a mess of yours, and your appointed
course seems a very pleasant one.”
“Yes; and the sea beneath us is very smooth, but it has been rough
before, and will be rough again—there is no stability in the sea. As to
making a mess of my life, who knows what I may not accomplish in that
way? Prosperity cannot shine down fear of the future, it only throws it
into darker relief. Myself I am afraid of the future—it is unknown, and
to me what is unknown is not magnificent, but terrible. The present is
enough for me. I do not like speculation, and I never loved the dark.”
And, as they talked, Madeira, in all its summer glory, loomed up out of
the ocean, for they had passed the “Desertas” and “Porto Santo” by
night, and for a while they were lost in the contemplation of one of
the most lovely and verdant scenes that the world can show. Before they
had well examined it, however, the vessel had dropped her anchor, and
was surrounded by boats full of custom-house officials, boats full of
diving boys, of vegetables, of wicker chairs and tables, of parrots,
fruit, and “other articles too numerous to mention,” as they say in the
auctioneer’s catalogues, and they knew that it was time to go ashore.
“Well, it has been a pleasant voyage,” said Mrs. Carr. “I am glad you
are not going on.”
“So am I.”
“You will come and see me to-morrow, will you not? Look, there is my
house,” and she pointed to a large, white house opposite Leeuw Rock,
that had a background of glossy foliage, and commanded a view of the
sea. “If you come, I will show you my beetles. And, if you care to come
next day, I will show you my mummies.”
“And, if I come the next, what will you show me?”
“So often as you may come,” she said, with a little tremor in her
voice, “I shall find something to show you.”
Then they shook hands and took their respective ways, she—together with
the unfortunate Miss Terry, who looked like a resuscitated corpse —on
to the steam-launch that was waiting for her, and he in the boat
belonging to Miles’ Hotel.