feverish for hours; but falling asleep at last, I had the most vivid
and delicious dream. I felt myself irresistibly called by something--I
don't know what, the murmur of the sea, perhaps; and I thought I
escaped from that entombment, and walked in my night-gown down a long
corridor, to a door at the other side of the house. The door yielded,
in that ridiculous way in which all obstacles yield in dreams, and I
went through a room which I should know again among ten thousand rooms,
to the window--a big window thrown wide open; and through it the
sea--the sea--the sea! Such a sea! As effulgent, moon-silvered,
glorious, as we may look on in Paradise, Berthalina, if God hears the
"silly sailor-folk," as Kipling has undertaken that He will.
Ah! The sea, as revealed by the coffee-room window, sparkling in
sunshine, dotted with fishing-boats, the white bathing-machines
defining its margin, is but a vulgar thing, compared with the sea of my
dream.
"Do you believe in ghosts?" The man opposite put the question quite
unconcernedly, but I was back in the description of your triumphant
dinner-party, and was unpleasantly startled. I answered with a little
temper, therefore, that of course I believed in them; and I did not
encourage him to further conversation by a glance in his direction.
Had I seen any? he inquired; and I answered "Hundreds." After a minute,
repenting of my incivility, I put your letter down, and told him that
that was why he saw me getting my breakfast before him. And I even
explained--for why need a self-respecting woman be disagreeable even to
an unknown colonial in an ill-made flannel suit, and with rough
hair?--that I had been working too hard lately, and that the shades of
people, dead or in distant lands, well-known and half-forgotten, had
taken to appearing before me, when I lifted my eyes from my book.
"In fact, I have come here to get rid of ghosts," I told him; and he
said he hoped I had not come to the wrong place. "Why, you surely don't
think 'The Continental' haunted?" I inquired.
Then he told me, with an appearance of perfect gravity, that a ghost
had visited him last night.
"It is just possible that _my_ ghosts have lost their way in this
bewildering place and have strolled in to you, by mistake," I
suggested.
"You don't happen to have seen any since you came here?"
"I only came last night."
"And you didn't see one?"
"No! Do I look as if I had?"
"Not the ghost of a terrified man, for instance, flying up in bed?"
"Good gracious, no! Why?"
"I thought you might have done," he said, and went on with his
breakfast.
You'll say he talked such nonsense to get me to look at him,
Berthalina; and of course I did. He has not the appearance of a seer of
ghosts: a huge, heavy man, with a hump on a big, characterful nose; a
powerful jaw, and very quick, blue eyes beneath shaggy eyebrows. The
talk of ghosts seemed out of place on such firm lips.
"Was your ghost that of a terrified man, etc.?" I asked him, in spite
of myself.
He gave a vigorous shake of his head. "Thank heavens, no!" he said. "In
that case I shouldn't have given it two thoughts."
"Of what then?"
"Of a beautiful woman."
He spoke with much deliberation, and his eyes upon my face were
serious.
"What was she like? Describe her."
He turned away to reach a bit of bread from a neighbouring table. "She
was very much like you," he said.
You may be sure I let him see then that he had gone too far.
* * * * *
I was standing by the door of my disgraceful little bedroom, dressed
for walking, when I saw him again. He was mounting the broad stairs
with his head bent, and not wishing to pass the man on my way down, I
waited till he had disappeared within the door of his room. That door,
with the width of the house between, was directly opposite mine. As it
opened, there came to me the first glimmer of the light which was to
burst on me in all its terrible force a minute later.
When he had reappeared, in his great loose grey flannels, his straw hat
on his head, a book in his hand, and had gone downstairs, I flew along
the corridor and pushed open the door of the room he had left.
Berthalina, it was the room of my dream! Those details which had
impressed themselves so clearly on my sleeping vision last night were
here in the flesh--well not exactly in the flesh, but--. I stood at the
window, wide open from the bottom; the sea lay sparkling in the
sunlight--
Of course, you remember the time when I stayed with you, my dear
friend, after that crisis in my stupid life of which you and only one
other knew? You haven't forgotten how I terrified you nearly to death
by walking in my sleep to your room? and how, afterwards, you insisted
on keeping the key of my bedroom door under your own pillow? To the
best of my belief I have never sleep-walked either before or since that
time. The certainty came to me now, as I stood at the man's window,
that I had done it again last night!
* * * * *
"And what have you been doing with yourself, all day?"
I had turned my back on the pier bands, on the crowds of the esplanade,
and had wandered as far as my legs would carry me along the beach--a
hard, smooth beach of yellow sand--and was sitting there, with only the
waves for company, when the voice of the man I had successfully dodged
all day spoke at my back.
"You were not at lunch, nor at the table d'hote, to-night," he added;
and I did not consider that the statement demanded comment.
He came and sat beside me, and gathered up his knees into his arms and
looked out to sea. "I suppose the beach is free to all?" he remarked;
and my silence did not gainsay him.
"I am like you," he went on: "I care nothing for all that," he jerked
his head in the direction of the town and the populace. "I'm never
afraid of my own company. And you?"
"I prefer it to all other company," I assured him, and told the lie
with the acrimony of truth.
"And you have been by the sea all day?"
"I have been tramping the town looking for rooms."
"You are not comfortable at the hotel?"
"I prefer apartments."
"Perhaps for a young woman, alone, it is better."
Now for my opportunity.
"I have not been alone until this morning," I told him steadily. "My
sister left me by the early train; before breakfast."
"You probably miss her very much?"
"I do. She scarcely ever leaves me. We have everything in common. She
is my twin-sister. You could scarcely tell the one from the other,
apart."
The information did not flow from me as I desired, but was, rather,
gasped out--or so it seems to me on looking back.
I felt him turn his eyes on me--they look absurdly blue and youthful in
his sun-reddened, middle-aged face--but I think I mentioned this
before. You know how I love a man's hair clipped to the bone,
Berthalina? My dear, this one wears his in a mop! I must admit,
however, it is a soft kind of hair, and does not arrange itself badly.
"We even share the same bed," I went on. I had to twist my fingers
together painfully to maintain the necessary levelness of the
indifferent voice. "But that is a matter of precaution."
"Of precaution?"
"My sister is--a sleep-walker," I said, and waited, with the sound of
the sea and the band and the multitude in the near distance booming in
my head. "Even last night--I awoke to find our door open," I added.
"She had wandered in her sleep."
I had said it; but I declare to you, Berthalina, the effort left me
weak as a baby. Before you make up your mind to a career of perfidy,
dear, go through a course of physical training. You want the strength
of a Sandow, I assure you.
I waited with inward trembling for his comment. He made none, but
pointed out to me instead the colour of the brown sail of a little
fishing-boat almost stationary on the placid sea, the light of the
sinking sun upon it. A big steamer came into sight upon the
horizon-line. A bare-legged man, pushing a shrimping-net before him,
waded through the shallow waters, close inshore.
"This is very pleasant," he said. "You did not mention if you were
successful in obtaining rooms?"
I shook my head. "But I leave here in four days."
"And until then?"
"I must remain at the hotel--where I think it is about time I
returned."
He rose, as I did. "Have you any objection to my walking at your side?"
he asked, and walked there without waiting for permission. "I am a
lonely man, and a stranger here," he volunteered. "And you?"
I told him that I was used to being alone; that there was no one now
belonging to me--
"With the exception of your twin sister who never leaves you," he
reminded me, and went on at once to tell me of his life, which had been
passed for many years in Australia. His sister who lived with him died
there eight years ago, he is forty years old, he has made money, and
has come home for a holiday.
All this, and much more I learnt. He seems quite eager to impart
personal information--or perhaps I did not learn it all then, but
afterwards. For there has been no getting away from the man,
Berthalina; you may believe that my will was good.
At night, I got the chambermaid to lock me in that atrocious little
cabin of mine. (Oh, I know you are laughing, Berthalina; good gracious!
what a fool I feel about it all.) I knew that he was an early riser,
and I did not go down the next morning till I felt sure that he would
be enjoying the sea-breezes, and that the coffee-room would be nearly
empty. There he was, patiently keeping guard over the table in the
window! He strode across to me (he is so huge and self-assured and
important-looking, that everyone turns to watch him, and the waiters
fly at a glance). "I have kept our table," he said, "and I have taken
the liberty to order for you the same breakfast you had yesterday."
After that, I gave up trying to avoid him. I had put everything right
in his mind, and it was only for four days! Then I must be getting
back, and looking out for ways and means to earn the money I have
borrowed to pay my fees and keep me at the hospital. Oh dear! How it
all weighs on my mind!
"And so you are going to be a doctor?" he said once, I don't know at
which meeting. How can I tell--there were so many!
"I am a doctor," I corrected him.
"Well, I am a doctor too," he said. "And perhaps that is the reason I
loathe the thought of any woman meddling in that profession."
"I don't particularly like it myself," I told him. "It was necessary
for me to be something, and I had enthusiasm enough to begin with;
but----"
"What is your sister?" he asked me suddenly; it took me by surprise,
but I told him, with blushes, that she was a doctor too.
"I wonder what my brother will say to that?" he pondered. "You look
surprised. Is there any reason I should not have a brother? He is a
doctor like myself, and shares my prejudices."
"Those prejudices don't affect my sister," I took courage to remark.
"They should. No decent woman can afford to despise the prejudices of a
decent man. The place of a young and beautiful woman is not----"
"I did not tell you she was young or beautiful. I--she--we are thirty
years old; and 'pretty,' 'interesting,' 'fine-looking,' are the most
complimentary epithets which have ever been applied to us."
"We don't all see with the same eyes," the man said.
It was on our last evening that I sate on a chair in the hotel gardens;
he came and smoked his cigar beside me.
"You go to-morrow?" he said.
I nodded.
"And you don't purpose to tell me where you go?"
I shook my head. How can I have him coming to my place with that story
of my sister--?
"So here, for ever, we say good-bye. I go back to my practice in
Sydney; and you----?"
I said nothing to fill up the pause.
"Four days!" he mused, and was silent.
The band was playing on the pier; the strains of that pretty thing
Hayden Coffin sings in _The Greek Slave_ came sorrowfully to us across
the sea and the sand. The people in their smart seaside costumes went
trooping past.
"Not a face I know in all these thousands," he said, and waved the hand
which held the cigar to include pier, parade, beach. "Not a face known
to you. Under such circumstances two people get to know each other in
four days as well as in years of ordinary intercourse. When I say
good-bye to you, I shall feel that I am parting with a very dear
friend. A friend I shall hardly know how to replace, or even to live
without. After four days! Absurd, is it not?"
"May I tell you about my brother?" This was after a long pause, during
which I had been inwardly shrinking from the dreary struggle before me,
and wishing--wishing--wishing that life was all holiday. "He is my twin
brother. Curious, isn't it? You don't think so? Oh, of course we know
there are twin brothers as well as twin sisters; but--. Still, let me
tell you a rather curious fact with regard to him.
"The night before that morning when I had the happiness to meet you, he
was staying in this hotel--he left by that convenient train before
breakfast, you know, the early one--and he had a strange experience. He
was lying awake in bed--the moon was very bright, it was that which
kept him awake--when the door of his room opened, and a woman, young
and beautiful, in her night-gear, with her dark hair, 'straight as
rain,' hanging down her back and over her shoulders, and with eyes full
of all my brother loves to see in a woman's eyes, came into his room.
He is not a nervous man, and he saw at once the woman, who in the
moonlight was lovely as a vision, walked in her sleep. He held his
breath, fearing to disturb her. She went to the window, stretched out
her arms to the sea, bathed her hands and her adorable face in the
moonlight, drank in, in grateful breaths, the cool sea air, and passing
silently through his room, left him as she came.
"You think that an interesting experience for my brother, do you not?
But I have not quite finished.
"My brother is a man not without sentiment, although he has attained to
middle life without marrying. He has more sentiment, in fact, than in
his young days, when he decided it was best for man to live alone. He
has seen cause to doubt the wisdom of that creed. He is not without
regrets and longings, thoughts of what might have been, and what might
yet be. Fairly successful and happy in his career, he has yet come to
think that a woman's love and companionship are perhaps just those
things he has missed which might have crowned his life.
"Having arrived at such a pass, he was moved by that vision of the
night--mightily moved. And he swore to himself that the woman who had
come to him like that--a living, breathing, beautiful woman, and yet
almost in an angel's guise--was the woman he would seek out and marry,
if he could prevail on her to have him.
"Tell me what you think of that resolve of my brother's," he asked me
presently. He turned from watching the passing crowd and looked for the
first time in my face; and then he got upon his feet. "You will perhaps
give me your opinion later?" he said. "You will think about it, and let
me hear when I come back?"
I did not wait for his coming back. I went to my room and stayed there.
I don't know if he looked for me at our table in the window next
morning, for I did not go to the coffee-room for breakfast. And by
eleven o'clock I was sitting in the ladies' drawing-room--empty as
Sahara at that hour--with my hotel bill in my hand, wondering how it
was possible that such a little, little holiday should have cost so
very much.
Then he came into the room. He sat down opposite to me at the round
table, and I saw that he had a telegram in his hand.
"I have bad news for you," he said. "Your twin sister is dead."
"Oh!" I breathed. What could I do but sit there turning red and white,
and looking like a fool before him?
"It is a sad and curious coincidence that my twin brother expired at
the same instant. What is there for us to do but to console each
other?"
He reached out a hand, palm upwards, to me across the table. "You will
find life pleasanter as a doctor's wife than as a doctor," he said.
"And----"
But I have told you enough till next mail, Berthalina. By that time,
perhaps, you will have prepared yourself for the rest of what he said
to me, and what I answered.
I wonder if you will think I have been a sensible and self-restrained
woman all my life to act like a rash, precipitate fool in the finish?
I wonder!
AUNTIE
"And _now_, pray, what are you gnashing your teeth about? You never
rested until I'd made Auntie promise to stay with us. I didn't wish for
her; she didn't wish to come; but, as she's here, the least we can do
is to behave decently to her."
"Who said we shouldn't behave decently to her?"
"Well, to see you standing there cursing and gnashing your teeth while
you brush your hair!"
"I don't curse, or gnash my teeth, or even brush my hair in public, do
I?"
"Oh, of course, it's the wife who has the monopoly of all such pleasing
demonstrations!" the wife said. Then she pushed her arms through the
short sleeves of the blouse she was going to wear, in honour of Auntie,
at dinner that night, and presented her back to Augustus Mellish in
order that he might perform a husband's part and fasten the garment.
"You, who have never been in her delightful home at Surbiton, don't
know the luxurious sort of life Auntie leads," Mrs Mellish went on.
"Travels with her maid, generally; but I told her we could not put her
up. Keeps four servants; never does a thing for herself, but is
pampered and made much of in every way. Money, of course. There isn't
anything in _Auntie_ to call forth all that devotion."
"Money is a useful thing," the husband said. "I wish your infernal
dressmaker wouldn't make your things so tight. That's the second nail
I've broken, confound it!"
"Gnashing again! If I were to swear and go on in that ridiculous way
over every little thing I do for you, I wonder what you'd think of it!
Brushing your hats, ironing your ties, putting your trousers into
stretchers--and if I ask you to fasten a few buttons, you blaspheme. If
you had the worries on your shoulders I have on mine! Cook's in one of
her tempers to-day, just because I was anxious for things to go without
a hitch, for Auntie. There's a piece of salmon, at half-a-crown a
pound, bought because Auntie would think just nothing of the price, and
is all the year round _accustomed_ to salmon; cook is certain to send
it in bleeding or to boil it to a rag. You, at your office all day
long, with nothing to think about, and when you come home everything
running on oiled wheels----"
"Oh, I've heard all that before. My life is all perfect joy, according
to you," Augustus said. And in such inspiring intercourse the Mellishes
passed the few minutes of their _tete-a-tete_.
In the drawing-room, Auntie awaited them: a large, matronly-looking
spinster, with a heavy face and frame, a non-intelligential gaze from
dull brown eyes. Not a promising visitor, from a social point of view.
She was expensively attired, her garments rustling richly when she
moved. Her dark hair was fashionably piled on the top of her head.
She sat in a chair farthest from the window which she regarded
distrustfully, it being slightly open. In the railway carriage coming
down she had felt sure there was a draught, and now her neck was a
little stiff.
She thought slightingly of Grace's drawing-room; indeed, the whole
establishment wore a paltry air, to her thinking, who had a
predilection for the ornately massive in style. But if Grace had been
foolish enough to marry a lawyer, in a town already too full of
lawyers, and he young, and with his way to make, what could she expect?
Alfred's daughter should surely have done better than that, Auntie said
to herself.
Still, later on, she was bound to admit that the lawyer and his wife
did their best to make her comfortable, and showed her every attention.
Augustus, or Gussie, as Grace instructed her to call him, seemed an
agreeable person, although no one could consider him a good-looking
one--not half good-looking enough for Grace, who had been considered a
beauty. So black he was about the shaven portion of his face, his
close-cropped hair, and great eyes, so white everywhere else. Auntie,
who associated health with a brick-red complexion like her own, decided
that he could not be a strong man. She spoke to her niece about him
after dinner.
"He's chalk-white," she said.
Grace was not at all alarmed for her husband's health. "He's always
like that," she said. "He's never had a day's illness. I do hope you
and Gussie will like each other, Auntie. I can tell you, he's bent on
pleasing you."
"He seemed agreeable," Auntie said. "Has he got nerves?" she asked.
"Nerves!" repeated Grace, opening her eyes. "Dear, no! Only like other
people's. Why?"
"I only asked the question," Auntie said. "When he isn't talking or
eating, his mouth still works; and when he smiles he shows his gums. I
thought it was nerves."
"Oh, that's just a habit he's got. He only does it when strangers are
present."
"I hope Henry won't catch it," Auntie said. "Children are imitative."
"No fear about Henry. Henry takes after me--colour and all," Mrs
Mellish said. She was a brown-haired woman, with cheeks like a damask
rose, and Henry was the only child of the house, and was away at a
boarding-school.
During the evening a neighbour and his wife came in. He and she and the
two ladies played bridge, while Gussie looked on or fidgeted aimlessly
about the room, taking up and putting down again books and papers,
looking into empty ornamental jars, continually comparing his own watch
with the drawing-room clock.
"To tell you the truth, he always goes out in the evening," Grace
informed Auntie, while seeing her to her bedroom. "He has his club, you
know. They play rather high. I don't think he cares for our careful
little game. If you don't mind, I think I shall tell him to go there
to-morrow night. He does worry me so when he prowls about the
drawing-room."
"Let him go, by all means. I don't mind at all," Auntie acquiesced.
"I knew she'd win. They always do, when they've money, and don't want
to," Mellish said to his wife, talking over the evening's game. "Played
threepence a hundred, didn't she?"
"Isn't it mean of her!" Grace said. "With a purse full of
sovereigns--for I saw them when she gave it to me to pay the cab--and
thirty more, she told me, in her jewel-case. By the way, the servants
asked for their wages again to-day, Gussie."
"Oh, I daresay! Ask your aunt to pay them."
"I should like to see myself stooping to ask such a thing of Auntie!"
"You don't mind stooping to ask money of me every time you open your
mouth."
"I wonder you can dare to say it! I haven't had a penny from you, for a
week. I hadn't even the half-crown to buy the child the new paint-box
he wrote for."
"Henry? Does he want a paint-box? He shall have it, poor little chap. I
will see about it tomorrow."
* * * * *
"Once he's gone to the office, don't you see him any more, all day?"
Auntie asked, as the front door closed on the master of the house, next
morning.
"Not till dinner. He has a biscuit for his lunch, or goes without it.
He isn't a man to care for food at any time."
"No. He isn't what I call a restful man," Auntie said, and spread
herself more at her ease in her chair. "He isn't one, I should say, to
enjoy the comforts of home."
"Oh, as for that, I don't care for a man always in your way among the
chairs and tables," Mrs Mellish said. "Gussie isn't a woman's man, you
see, Auntie. He's about as clever as they're made, Gussie is; and when
they're like that they're _men's_ men; and I like them better so."
Grace's red cheeks were redder. She was a quick-tempered, high-spirited
young woman. "Hands off! he's mine," her manner, more than her words,
said to Auntie, who would have liked to listen to a few wifely
confidences as she and her niece sat _tete-a-tete_ through the long
morning.
* * * * *
They lived in a provincial town, and on the second night of Auntie's
stay they went to the theatre, at which a London company happened to be
performing.
Grace loved the play, and was in high spirits, making an extra toilette
for the occasion. She was not half through it when her husband, who had
hurried over his dressing, left her and went downstairs. He had heard
Auntie, who was always too early for everything, and made a merit of
it, leave her room. He found her in the drawing-room, pulling a pair of
long white gloves over her large hands and arms.
"I have been stupid enough to leave myself short of cash," Mellish
said, beginning lightly at once, almost before he had closed the door
behind him. "I wonder if you could oblige me, Auntie, with a few pounds
for a couple of days? Say ten or fifteen? Just to carry me on till my
money-ship comes in."
Auntie, working on her tight gloves, looked at him; his tone was
carefully careless, but his face, which she had called chalk-white, was
surely whiter yet. His question being asked, his lips still moved.
"How Grace can bear to sit opposite to him at meals every day, I don't
know!" Auntie said to herself. "He gives me the creeps."
She drew in her lower lip loosely beneath her teeth, her gaze grew
blanker; never a clever-looking woman, now she looked a fool. Slowly
she shook her head.
"No. I am afraid I can't," she said. "I'm afraid I can't spare it. I
only brought as much as I should want to get me back home again."