Dunham followed Staniford to their room, and helped him off with his
wet clothes. He tried to say something ideally fit in recognition of
his heroic act, and he articulated some bald commonplaces of praise, and
shook Staniford's clammy hand. “Yes,” said the latter, submitting; “but
the difficulty about a thing of this sort is that you don't know whether
you haven't been an ass. It has been pawed over so much by the romancers
that you don't feel like a hero in real life, but a hero of fiction.
I've a notion that Hicks and I looked rather ridiculous going over the
ship's side; I know we did, coming back. No man can reveal his greatness
of soul in wet clothes. Did Miss Blood laugh?”
“Staniford!” said Dunham, in an accent of reproach. “You do her great
injustice. She felt what you had done in the way you would wish,--if you
cared.”
“What did she say?” asked Staniford, quickly.
“Nothing. But--”
“That's an easy way of expressing one's admiration of heroic behavior.
I hope she'll stick to that line. I hope she won't feel it at all
necessary to say anything in recognition of my prowess; it would be
extremely embarrassing. I've got Hicks back again, but I couldn't stand
any gratitude for it. Not that I'm ashamed of the performance. Perhaps
if it had been anybody but Hicks, I should have waited for them to
lower a boat. But Hicks had peculiar claims. You couldn't let a man
you disliked so much welter round a great while. Where is the poor old
fellow? Is he clothed and in his right mind again?”
“He seemed to be sober enough,” said Dunham, “when he came on board; but
I don't think he's out yet.”
“We must let Thomas in to gather up this bathing-suit,” observed
Staniford. “What a Newportish flavor it gives the place!” He was
excited, and in great gayety of spirits.
He and Dunham went out into the cabin, where they found Captain Jenness
pacing to and fro. “Well, sir,” he said, taking Staniford's hand,
and crossing his right with his left, so as to include Dunham in his
congratulations, “you ought to have been a sailor!” Then he added, as if
the unqualified praise might seem fulsome, “But if you'd been a sailor,
you wouldn't have tried a thing like that. You'd have had more sense.
The chances were ten to one against you.”
Staniford laughed. “Was it so bad as that? I shall begin to respect
myself.”
The captain did not answer, but his iron grip closed hard upon
Staniford's hand, and he frowned in keen inspection of Hicks, who at
that moment came out of his state-room, looking pale and quite sobered.
Captain Jenness surveyed him from head to foot, and then from foot
to head, and pausing at the level of his eyes he said, still holding
Staniford by the hand: “The trouble with a man aboard ship is that he
can't turn a blackguard out-of-doors just when he likes. The Aroostook
puts in at Messina. You'll be treated well till we get there, and then
if I find you on my vessel five minutes after she comes to anchor, I'll
heave you overboard, and I'll take care that nobody jumps after you. Do
you hear? And you won't find me doing any such fool kindness as I did
when I took you on board, soon again.”
“Oh, I say, Captain Jenness,” began Staniford.
“He's all right,” interrupted Hicks. “I'm a blackguard; I know it; and I
don't think I was worth fishing up. But you've done it, and I mustn't go
back on you, I suppose.” He lifted his poor, weak, bad little face, and
looked Staniford in the eyes with a pathos that belied the slang of his
speech. The latter released his hand from Captain Jenness and gave it to
Hicks, who wrung it, as he kept looking him in the eyes, while his
lips twitched pitifully, like a child's. The captain gave a quick snort
either of disgust or of sympathy, and turned abruptly about and bundled
himself up out of the cabin.
“I say!” exclaimed Staniford, “a cup of coffee wouldn't be bad, would
it? Let's have some coffee, Thomas, about as quick as the cook can make
it,” he added, as the boy came out from his stateroom with a lump of wet
clothes in his hands. “You wanted some coffee a little while ago,” he
said to Hicks, who hung his head at the joke.
For the rest of the day Staniford was the hero of the ship. The men
looked at him from a distance, and talked of him together. Mr. Watterson
hung about whenever Captain Jenness drew near him, as if in the hope
of overhearing some acceptable expression in which he could second his
superior officer. Failing this, and being driven to despair, “Find the
water pretty cold, sir?” he asked at last; and after that seemed to
feel that he had discharged his duty as well as might be under the
extraordinary circumstances.
The second mate, during the course of the afternoon, contrived to pass
near Staniford. “Why, there wa'n't no _need_ of your doing it,” he said,
in a bated tone. “I could ha' had him out with the boat, _soon enough_.”
Staniford treasured up these meagre expressions of the general
approbation, and would not have had them different. From this time,
within the narrow bounds that brought them all necessarily together in
some sort, Hicks abolished himself as nearly as possible. He chose often
to join the second mate at meals, which Mr. Mason, in accordance with
the discipline of the ship, took apart both from the crew and his
superior officers. Mason treated the voluntary outcast with a sort of
sarcastic compassion, as a man whose fallen state was not without its
points as a joke to the indifferent observer, and yet might appeal to
the pity of one who knew such cases through the misery they inflicted.
Staniford heard him telling Hicks about his brother-in-law, and dwelling
upon the peculiar relief which the appearance of his name in the
mortality list gave all concerned in him. Hicks listened in apathetic
patience and acquiescence; but Staniford thought that he enjoyed, as
much as he could enjoy anything, the second officer's frankness. For his
own part, he found that having made bold to keep this man in the world
he had assumed a curious responsibility towards him. It became his
business to show him that he was not shunned by his fellow-creatures,
to hearten and cheer him up. It was heavy work. Hicks with his joke was
sometimes odious company, but he was also sometimes amusing; without
it, he was of a terribly dull conversation. He accepted Staniford's
friendliness too meekly for good comradery; he let it add, apparently,
to his burden of gratitude, rather than lessen it. Staniford smoked with
him, and told him stories; he walked up and down with him, and made a
point of parading their good understanding, but his spirits seemed to
sink the lower. “Deuce take him!” mused his benefactor; “he's in love
with her!” But he now had the satisfaction, such as it was, of seeing
that if he was in love he was quite without hope. Lydia had never
relented in her abhorrence of Hicks since the day of his disgrace. There
seemed no scorn in her condemnation, but neither was there any mercy.
In her simple life she had kept unsophisticated the severe morality of a
child, and it was this that judged him, that found him unpardonable and
outlawed him. He had never ventured to speak to her since that day, and
Staniford never saw her look at him except when Hicks was not looking,
and then with a repulsion which was very curious. Staniford could have
pitied him, and might have interceded so far as to set him nearer right
in her eyes; but he felt that she avoided him, too; there were no more
walks on the deck, no more readings in the cabin; the checker-board,
which professed to be the History of England, In 2 Vols., remained a
closed book. The good companionship of a former time, in which they had
so often seemed like brothers and sister, was gone. “Hicks has smashed
our Happy Family,” Staniford said to Dunham, with little pleasure in his
joke. “Upon my word, I think I had better have left him in the water.”
Lydia kept a great deal in her own room; sometimes when Staniford came
down into the cabin he found her there, talking with Thomas of little
things that amuse children; sometimes when he went on deck in the
evening she would be there in her accustomed seat, and the second mate,
with face and figure half averted, and staying himself by one hand on
the shrouds, would be telling her something to which she listened with
lifted chin and attentive eyes. The mate would go away when Staniford
appeared, but that did not help matters, for then Lydia went too. At
table she said very little; she had the effect of placing herself more
and more under the protection of the captain. The golden age, when they
had all laughed and jested so freely and fearlessly together, under her
pretty sovereignty, was past, and they seemed far dispersed in a common
exile. Staniford imagined she grew pale and thin; he asked Dunham if he
did not see it, but Dunham had not observed. “I think matters have taken
a very desirable shape, socially,” he said. “Miss Blood will reach her
friends as fancy-free as she left home.”
“Yes,” Staniford assented vaguely; “that's the great object.”
After a while Dunham asked, “She's never said anything to you about your
rescuing Hicks?”
“Rescuing? What rescuing? They'd have had him out in another minute,
any way,” said Staniford, fretfully. Then he brooded angrily upon the
subject: “But I can tell you what: considering all the circumstances,
she might very well have said something. It looks obtuse, or it looks
hard. She must have known that it all came about through my trying to
keep him away from her.”
“Oh, yes; she knew that,” said Dunham; “she spoke of it at the time. But
I thought--”
“Oh, she did! Then I think that it would be very little if she
recognized the mere fact that something had happened.”
“Why, you said you hoped she wouldn't. You said it would be
embarrassing. You're hard to please, Staniford.”
“I shouldn't choose to have her speak for _my_ pleasure,” Staniford
returned. “But it argues a dullness and coldness in her--”
“I don't believe she's dull; I don't believe she's cold,” said Dunham,
warmly.
“What _do_ you believe she is?”
“Afraid.”
“Pshaw!” said Staniford.
The eve of their arrival at Messina, he discharged one more duty by
telling Hicks that he had better come on to Trieste with them. “Captain
Jenness asked me to speak to you about it,” he said. “He feels a little
awkward, and thought I could open the matter better.”
“The captain's all right,” answered Hicks, with unruffled humility,
“but I'd rather stop at Messina. I'm going to get home as soon as I
can,--strike a bee-line.”
“Look here!” said Staniford, laying his hand on his shoulder. “How are
you going to manage for money?”
“Monte di Pietà,” replied Hicks. “I've been there before. Used to have
most of my things in the care of the state when I was studying medicine
in Paris. I've got a lot of rings and trinkets that'll carry me through,
with what's left of my watch.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure.”
“Because you can draw on me, if you're going to be short.”
“Thanks,” said Hicks. “There's something I should like to ask you,” he
added, after a moment. “I see as well as you do that Miss Blood isn't
the same as she was before. I want to know--I can't always be sure
afterwards--whether I did or said anything out of the way in her
presence.”
“You were drunk,” said Staniford, frankly, “but beyond that you were
irreproachable, as regarded Miss Blood. You were even exemplary.”
“Yes, I know,” said Hicks, with a joyless laugh. “Sometimes it takes
that turn. I don't think I could stand it if I had shown her any
disrespect. She's a lady,--a perfect lady; she's the best girl I ever
saw.”
“Hicks,” said Staniford, presently, “I haven't bored you in regard to
that little foible of yours. Aren't you going to try to do something
about it?”
“I'm going home to get them to shut me up somewhere,” answered Hicks.
“But I doubt if anything can be done. I've studied the thing; I am a
doctor,--or I would be if I were not a drunkard,--and I've diagnosed the
case pretty thoroughly. For three months or four months, now, I shall
be all right. After that I shall go to the bad for a few weeks; and I'll
have to scramble back the best way I can. Nobody can help me. That
was the mistake this last time. I shouldn't have wanted anything at
Gibraltar if I could have had my spree out at Boston. But I let them
take me before it was over, and ship me off. I thought I'd try it. Well,
it was like a burning fire every minute, all the way. I thought I
should die. I tried to get something from the sailors; I tried to steal
Gabriel's cooking-wine. When I got that brandy in Gibraltar I was wild.
Talk about heroism! I tell you it was superhuman, keeping that canteen
corked till night! I was in hopes I could get through it,--sleep it
off,--and nobody be any the wiser. But it wouldn't work. O Lord, Lord,
Lord!”
Hicks was as common a soul as could well be. His conception of life was
vulgar, and his experience of it was probably vulgar. He had a good mind
enough, with abundance of that humorous brightness which may hereafter
be found the most national quality of the Americans; but his ideals were
pitiful, and the language of his heart was a drolling slang. Yet his
doom lifted him above his low conditions, and made him tragic; his
despair gave him the dignity of a mysterious expiation, and set him
apart with all those who suffer beyond human help. Without deceiving
himself as to the quality of the man, Staniford felt awed by the
darkness of his fate.
“Can't you try somehow to stand up against it, and fight it off? You're
so young yet, it can't--”
The wretched creature burst into tears. “Oh, try,--try! You don't
know what you're talking about. Don't you suppose I've had reasons for
trying? If you could see how my mother looks when I come out of one of
my drunks,--and my father, poor old man! It's no use; I tell you it's no
use. I shall go just so long, and then I shall want it, and _will_ have
it, unless they shut me up for life. My God, I wish I was dead! Well!”
He rose from the place where they had been sitting together, and held
out his hand to Staniford. “I'm going to be off in the morning before
you're out, and I'll say good-by now. I want you to keep this chair, and
give it to Miss Blood, for me, when you get to Trieste.”
“I will, Hicks,” said Staniford, gently.
“I want her to know that I was ashamed of myself. I think she'll like to
know it.”
“I will say anything to her that you wish,” replied Staniford.
“There's nothing else. If ever you see a man with my complaint fall
overboard again, think twice before you jump after him.”
He wrung Staniford's hand, and went below, leaving him with a dull
remorse that he should ever have hated Hicks, and that he could not
quite like him even now.
But he did his duty by him to the last. He rose at dawn, and was on deck
when Hicks went over the side into the boat which was to row him to the
steamer for Naples, lying at anchor not far off. He presently returned,
to Staniford's surprise, and scrambled up to the deck of the Aroostook.
“The steamer sails to-night,” he said, “and perhaps I couldn't raise the
money by that time. I wish you'd lend me ten napoleons. I'll send 'em to
you from London. There's my father's address: I'm going to telegraph
to him.” He handed Staniford a card, and the latter went below for the
coins. “Thanks,” said Hicks, when he reappeared with them. “Send 'em to
you where?”
“Care Blumenthals', Venice. I'm going to be there some weeks.”
In the gray morning light the lurid color of tragedy had faded out of
Hicks. He was merely a baddish-looking young fellow whom Staniford had
lent ten napoleons that he might not see again. Staniford watched the
steamer uneasily, both from the Aroostook and from the shore, where he
strolled languidly about with Dunham part of the day. When she sailed in
the evening, he felt that Hicks's absence was worth twice the money.