THE EPISODE OF THE OFFICER WHO UNDERSTOOD PERFECTLY
After our fortunate escape from the clutches of our too-admiring Tibetan
hosts, we wound our way slowly back through the Maharajah's territory
towards Sir Ivor's headquarters. On the third day out from the lamasery
we camped in a romantic Himalayan valley--a narrow, green glen, with a
brawling stream running in white cataracts and rapids down its midst.
We were able to breathe freely now; we could enjoy the great tapering
deodars that rose in ranks on the hillsides, the snow-clad needles of
ramping rock that bounded the view to north and south, the feathery
bamboo-jungle that fringed and half-obscured the mountain torrent, whose
cool music--alas, fallaciously cool--was borne to us through the dense
screen of waving foliage. Lady Meadowcroft was so delighted at having
got clear away from those murderous and saintly Tibetans that for a
while she almost forgot to grumble. She even condescended to admire the
deep-cleft ravine in which we bivouacked for the night, and to admit
that the orchids which hung from the tall trees were as fine as any at
her florist's in Piccadilly. “Though how they can have got them out here
already, in this outlandish place--the most fashionable kinds--when we
in England have to grow them with such care in expensive hot-houses,”
she said, “really passes my comprehension.”
She seemed to think that orchids originated in Covent Garden.
Early next morning I was engaged with one of my native men in lighting
the fire to boil our kettle--for in spite of all misfortunes we still
made tea with creditable punctuality--when a tall and good-looking
Nepaulese approached us from the hills, with cat-like tread, and stood
before me in an attitude of profound supplication. He was a well-dressed
young man, like a superior native servant; his face was broad and flat,
but kindly and good-humoured. He salaamed many times, but still said
nothing.
“Ask him what he wants,” I cried, turning to our fair-weather friend,
the cook.
The deferential Nepaulese did not wait to be asked. “Salaam, sahib,” he
said, bowing again very low till his forehead almost touched the ground.
“You are Eulopean doctor, sahib?”
“I am,” I answered, taken aback at being thus recognised in the forests
of Nepaul. “But how in wonder did you come to know it?”
“You camp near here when you pass dis way before, and you doctor little
native girl, who got sore eyes. All de country here tell you is very
great physician. So I come and to see if you will turn aside to my
village to help us.”
“Where did you learn English?” I exclaimed, more and more astonished.
“I is servant one time at British Lesident's at de Maharajah's city.
Pick up English dere. Also pick up plenty lupee. Velly good business
at British Lesident's. Now gone back home to my own village, letired
gentleman.” And he drew himself up with conscious dignity.
I surveyed the retired gentleman from head to foot. He had an air of
distinction, which not even his bare toes could altogether mar. He was
evidently a person of local importance. “And what did you want me to
visit your village for?” I inquired, dubiously.
“White traveller sahib ill dere, sir. Vely ill; got plague. Great
first-class sahib, all same like Governor. Ill, fit to die; send me out
all times to try find Eulopean doctor.”
“Plague?” I repeated, startled. He nodded.
“Yes, plague; all same like dem hab him so bad down Bombay way.”
“Do you know his name?” I asked; for though one does not like to desert
a fellow-creature in distress, I did not care to turn aside from my
road on such an errand, with Hilda and Lady Meadowcroft, unless for some
amply sufficient reason.
The retired gentleman shook his head in the most emphatic fashion. “How
me know?” he answered, opening the palms of his hands as if to show
he had nothing concealed in them. “Forget Eulopean name all times so
easily. And traveller sahib name very hard to lemember. Not got English
name. Him Eulopean foleigner.”
“A European foreigner!” I repeated. “And you say he is seriously ill?
Plague is no trifle. Well, wait a minute; I'll see what the ladies say
about it. How far off is your village?”
He pointed with his hand, somewhat vaguely, to the hillside. “Two hours'
walk,” he answered, with the mountaineer's habit of reckoning distance
by time, which extends, under the like circumstances, the whole world
over.
I went back to the tents, and consulted Hilda and Lady Meadowcroft. Our
spoilt child pouted, and was utterly averse to any detour of any sort.
“Let's get back straight to Ivor,” she said, petulantly. “I've had enough
of camping out. It's all very well in its way for a week but when they
begin to talk about cutting your throat and all that, it ceases to be
a joke and becomes a wee bit uncomfortable. I want my feather bed. I
object to their villages.”
“But consider, dear,” Hilda said, gently. “This traveller is ill, all
alone in a strange land. How can Hubert desert him? It is a doctor's
duty to do what he can to alleviate pain and to cure the sick. What
would we have thought ourselves, when we were at the lamasery, if a body
of European travellers had known we were there, imprisoned and in danger
of our lives, and had passed by on the other side without attempting to
rescue us?”
Lady Meadowcroft knit her forehead. “That was us,” she said, with an
impatient nod, after a pause--“and this is another person. You can't
turn aside for everybody who's ill in all Nepaul. And plague, too!--so
horrid! Besides, how do we know this isn't another plan of these hateful
people to lead us into danger?”
“Lady Meadowcroft is quite right,” I said, hastily. “I never thought
about that. There may be no plague, no patient at all. I will go up with
this man alone, Hilda, and find out the truth. It will only take me five
hours at most. By noon I shall be back with you.”
“What? And leave us here unprotected among the wild beasts and the
savages?” Lady Meadowcroft cried, horrified. “In the midst of the
forest! Dr. Cumberledge, how can you?”
“You are NOT unprotected,” I answered, soothing her. “You have Hilda
with you. She is worth ten men. And besides, our Nepaulese are fairly
trustworthy.”
Hilda bore me out in my resolve. She was too much of a nurse, and had
imbibed too much of the true medical sentiment, to let me desert a
man in peril of his life in a tropical jungle. So, in spite of Lady
Meadowcroft, I was soon winding my way up a steep mountain track,
overgrown with creeping Indian weeds, on my road to the still
problematical village graced by the residence of the retired gentleman.
After two hours' hard climbing we reached it at last. The retired
gentleman led the way to a house in a street of the little wooden
hamlet. The door was low; I had to stoop to enter it. I saw in a moment
this was indeed no trick. On a native bed, in a corner of the one room,
a man lay desperately ill; a European, with white hair and with a skin
well bronzed by exposure to the tropics. Ominous dark spots beneath the
epidermis showed the nature of the disease. He tossed restlessly as he
lay, but did not raise his fevered head or look at my conductor. “Well,
any news of Ram Das?” he asked at last, in a parched and feeble voice.
Parched and feeble as it was, I recognised it instantly. The man on the
bed was Sebastian--no other!
“No news of Lam Das,” the retired gentleman replied, with an unexpected
display of womanly tenderness. “Lam Das clean gone; not come any more.
But I bling you back Eulopean doctor, sahib.”
Sebastian did not look up from his bed even then. I could see he
was more anxious about a message from his scout than about his own
condition. “The rascal!” he moaned, with his eyes closed tight. “The
rascal! he has betrayed me.” And he tossed uneasily.
I looked at him and said nothing. Then I seated myself on a low stool by
the bedside and took his hand in mine to feel his pulse. The wrist was
thin and wasted. The face, too, I noticed, had fallen away greatly. It
was clear that the malignant fever which accompanies the disease had
wreaked its worst on him. So weak and ill was he, indeed, that he let me
hold his hand, with my fingers on his pulse, for half a minute or more
without ever opening his eyes or displaying the slightest curiosity at
my presence. One might have thought that European doctors abounded in
Nepaul, and that I had been attending him for a week, with “the mixture
as before” at every visit.
“Your pulse is weak and very rapid,” I said slowly, in a professional
tone. “You seem to me to have fallen into a perilous condition.”
At the sound of my voice, he gave a sudden start. Yet even so, for a
second, he did not open his eyes. The revelation of my presence seemed
to come upon him as in a dream. “Like Cumberledge's,” he muttered to
himself, gasping. “Exactly like Cumberledge's.... But Cumberledge is
dead... I must be delirious.... If I didn't KNOW to the contrary, I
could have sworn it was Cumberledge's!”
I spoke again, bending over him. “How long have the glandular swellings
been present, Professor?” I asked, with quiet deliberativeness.
This time he opened his eyes sharply, and looked up in my face. He
swallowed a great gulp of surprise. His breath came and went. He
raised himself on his elbows and stared at me with a fixed stare.
“Cumberledge!” he cried; “Cumberledge! Come back to life, then! They
told me you were dead! And here you are, Cumberledge!”
“WHO told you I was dead?” I asked, sternly.
He stared at me, still in a dazed way. He was more than half comatose.
“Your guide, Ram Das,” he answered at last, half incoherently. “He came
back by himself. Came back without you. He swore to me he had seen
all your throats cut in Tibet. He alone had escaped. The Buddhists had
massacred you.”
“He told you a lie,” I said, shortly.
“I thought so. I thought so. And I sent him back for confirmatory
evidence. But the rogue has never brought it.” He let his head drop on
his rude pillow heavily. “Never, never brought it!”
I gazed at him, full of horror. The man was too ill to hear me, too ill
to reason, too ill to recognise the meaning of his own words, almost.
Otherwise, perhaps, he would hardly have expressed himself quite so
frankly. Though to be sure he had said nothing to criminate himself in
any way; his action might have been due to anxiety for our safety.
I fixed my glance on him long and dubiously. What ought I to do next?
As for Sebastian, he lay with his eyes closed, half oblivious of my
presence. The fever had gripped him hard. He shivered, and looked
helpless as a child. In such circumstances, the instincts of my
profession rose imperative within me. I could not nurse a case properly
in this wretched hut. The one thing to be done was to carry the patient
down to our camp in the valley. There, at least, we had air and pure
running water.
I asked a few questions from the retired gentleman as to the possibility
of obtaining sufficient bearers in the village. As I supposed, any
number were forthcoming immediately. Your Nepaulese is by nature a beast
of burden; he can carry anything up and down the mountains, and spends
his life in the act of carrying.
I pulled out my pencil, tore a leaf from my note-book, and scribbled a
hasty note to Hilda: “The invalid is--whom do you think?--Sebastian!
He is dangerously ill with some malignant fever. I am bringing him down
into camp to nurse. Get everything ready for him.” Then I handed it
over to a messenger, found for me by the retired gentleman, to carry to
Hilda. My host himself I could not spare, as he was my only interpreter.
In a couple of hours we had improvised a rough, woven-grass hammock as
an ambulance couch, had engaged our bearers, and had got Sebastian under
way for the camp by the river.
When I arrived at our tents, I found Hilda had prepared everything for
our patient with her usual cleverness. Not only had she got a bed ready
for Sebastian, who was now almost insensible, but she had even cooked
some arrowroot from our stores beforehand, so that he might have a
little food, with a dash of brandy in it, to recover him after the
fatigue of the journey down the mountain. By the time we had laid him
out on a mattress in a cool tent, with the fresh air blowing about him,
and had made him eat the meal prepared for him, he really began to look
comparatively comfortable.
Lady Meadowcroft was now our chief trouble. We did not dare to tell her
it was really plague; but she had got near enough back to civilisation
to have recovered her faculty for profuse grumbling; and the idea of the
delay that Sebastian would cause us drove her wild with annoyance. “Only
two days off from Ivor,” she cried, “and that comfortable bungalow! And
now to think we must stop here in the woods a week or ten days for this
horrid old Professor! Why can't he get worse at once and die like a
gentleman? But, there! with YOU to nurse him, Hilda, he'll never get
worse. He couldn't die if he tried. He'll linger on and on for weeks and
weeks through a beastly convalescence!”
“Hubert,” Hilda said to me, when we were alone once more; “we mustn't
keep her here. She will be a hindrance, not a help. One way or another
we must manage to get rid of her.”
“How can we?” I asked. “We can't turn her loose upon the mountain roads
with a Nepaulese escort. She isn't fit for it. She would be frantic with
terror.”
“I've thought of that, and I see only one thing possible. I must go on
with her myself as fast as we can push to Sir Ivor's place, and then
return to help you nurse the Professor.”
I saw she was right. It was the sole plan open to us. And I had no fear
of letting Hilda go off alone with Lady Meadowcroft and the bearers. She
was a host in herself, and could manage a party of native servants at
least as well as I could.
So Hilda went, and came back again. Meanwhile, I took charge of the
nursing of Sebastian. Fortunately, I had brought with me a good stock
of jungle-medicines in my little travelling-case, including plenty of
quinine; and under my careful treatment the Professor passed the crisis
and began to mend slowly. The first question he asked me when he felt
himself able to talk once more was, “Nurse Wade--what has become of
her?”--for he had not yet seen her. I feared the shock for him.
“She is here with me,” I answered, in a very measured voice. “She is
waiting to be allowed to come and help me in taking care of you.”
He shuddered and turned away. His face buried itself in the pillow. I
could see some twinge of remorse had seized upon him. At last he spoke.
“Cumberledge,” he said, in a very low and almost frightened tone, “don't
let her come near me! I can't bear it. I can't bear it.”
Ill as he was, I did not mean to let him think I was ignorant of his
motive. “You can't bear a woman whose life you have attempted,” I said,
in my coldest and most deliberate way, “to have a hand in nursing you!
You can't bear to let her heap coals of fire on your head! In that you
are right. But, remember, you have attempted MY life too; you have twice
done your best to get me murdered.”
He did not pretend to deny it. He was too weak for subterfuges. He only
writhed as he lay. “You are a man,” he said, shortly, “and she is a
woman. That is all the difference.” Then he paused for a minute or two.
“Don't let her come near me,” he moaned once more, in a piteous voice.
“Don't let her come near me!”
“I will not,” I answered. “She shall not come near you. I spare you
that. But you will have to eat the food she prepares; and you know SHE
will not poison you. You will have to be tended by the servants she
chooses; and you know THEY will not murder you. She can heap coals
of fire on your head without coming into your tent. Consider that you
sought to take her life--and she seeks to save yours! She is as anxious
to keep you alive as you are anxious to kill her.”
He lay as in a reverie. His long white hair made his clear-cut, thin
face look more unearthly than ever, with the hectic flush of fever upon
it. At last he turned to me. “We each work for our own ends,” he said,
in a weary way. “We pursue our own objects. It suits ME to get rid of
HER: it suits HER to keep ME alive. I am no good to her dead; living,
she expects to wring a confession out of me. But she shall not have
it. Tenacity of purpose is the one thing I admire in life. She has the
tenacity of purpose--and so have I. Cumberledge, don't you see it is a
mere duel of endurance between us?”
“And may the just side win,” I answered, solemnly.
It was several days later before he spoke to me of it again. Hilda had
brought some food to the door of the tent and passed it in to me for our
patient. “How is he now?” she whispered.
Sebastian overheard her voice, and, cowering within himself, still
managed to answer: “Better, getting better. I shall soon be well now.
You have carried your point. You have cured your enemy.”
“Thank God for that!” Hilda said, and glided away silently.
Sebastian ate his cup of arrowroot in silence; then he looked at me with
wistful, musing eyes. “Cumberledge,” he murmured at last; “after all,
I can't help admiring that woman. She is the only person who has ever
checkmated me. She checkmates me every time. Steadfastness is what I
love. Her steadfastness of purpose and her determination move me.”
“I wish they would move you to tell the truth,” I answered.
He mused again. “To tell the truth!” he muttered, moving his head up and
down. “I have lived for science. Shall I wreck all now? There are
truths which it is better to hide than to proclaim. Uncomfortable
truths--truths that never should have been--truths which help to make
greater truths incredible. But, all the same, I cannot help admiring
that woman. She has Yorke-Bannerman's intellect, with a great deal more
than Yorke-Bannerman's force of will. Such firmness! such energy! such
resolute patience! She is a wonderful creature. I can't help admiring
her!”
I said no more to him just then. I thought it better to let nascent
remorse and nascent admiration work out their own natural effects
unimpeded. For I could see our enemy was beginning to feel some sting
of remorse. Some men are below it. Sebastian thought himself above it. I
felt sure he was mistaken.
Yet even in the midst of these personal preoccupations, I saw that our
great teacher was still, as ever, the pure man of science. He noted
every symptom and every change of the disease with professional
accuracy. He observed his own case, whenever his mind was clear enough,
as impartially as he would have observed any outside patient's. “This is
a rare chance, Cumberledge,” he whispered to me once, in an interval of
delirium. “So few Europeans have ever had the complaint, and probably
none who were competent to describe the specific subjective and
psychological symptoms. The delusions one gets as one sinks into the
coma, for example, are of quite a peculiar type--delusions of wealth and
of absolute power, most exhilarating and magnificent. I think myself
a millionaire or a Prime Minister. Be sure you make a note of that--in
case I die. If I recover, of course I can write an exhaustive monograph
on the whole history of the disease in the British Medical Journal. But
if I die, the task of chronicling these interesting observations
will devolve upon you. A most exceptional chance! You are much to be
congratulated.”
“You MUST not die, Professor,” I cried, thinking more, I will confess,
of Hilda Wade than of himself. “You must live... to report this case for
science.” I used what I thought the strongest lever I knew for him.
He closed his eyes dreamily. “For science! Yes, for science! There you
strike the right chord! What have I not dared and done for science? But,
in case I die, Cumberledge, be sure you collect the notes I took as I
was sickening--they are most important for the history and etiology of
the disease. I made them hourly. And don't forget the main points to
be observed as I am dying. You know what they are. This is a rare,
rare chance! I congratulate you on being the man who has the first
opportunity ever afforded us of questioning an intelligent European
case, a case where the patient is fully capable of describing with
accuracy his symptoms and his sensations in medical phraseology.”
He did not die, however. In about another week he was well enough to
move. We carried him down to Mozufferpoor, the first large town in the
plains thereabouts, and handed him over for the stage of convalescence
to the care of the able and efficient station doctor, to whom my thanks
are due for much courteous assistance.
“And now, what do you mean to do?” I asked Hilda, when our patient was
placed in other hands, and all was over.
She answered me without one second's hesitation: “Go straight to Bombay,
and wait there till Sebastian takes passage for England.”
“He will go home, you think, as soon as he is well enough?”
“Undoubtedly. He has now nothing more to stop in India for.”
“Why not as much as ever?”
She looked at me curiously. “It is so hard to explain,” she replied,
after a moment's pause, during which she had been drumming her little
forefinger on the table. “I feel it rather than reason it. But don't you
see that a certain change has lately come over Sebastian's attitude? He
no longer desires to follow me; he wants to avoid me. That is why I wish
more than ever to dog his steps. I feel the beginning of the end has
come. I am gaining my point. Sebastian is wavering.”
“Then when he engages a berth, you propose to go by the same steamer?”
“Yes. It makes all the difference. When he tries to follow me, he is
dangerous; when he tries to avoid me, it becomes my work in life to
follow him. I must keep him in sight every minute now. I must quicken
his conscience. I must make him FEEL his own desperate wickedness. He is
afraid to face me: that means remorse. The more I compel him to face me,
the more the remorse is sure to deepen.”
I saw she was right. We took the train to Bombay. I found rooms at the
hospitable club, by a member's invitation, while Hilda went to stop with
some friends of Lady Meadowcroft's on the Malabar Hill. We waited for
Sebastian to come down from the interior and take his passage. Hilda,
with her intuitive certainty, felt sure he would come.
A steamer, two steamers, three steamers, sailed, and still no Sebastian.
I began to think he must have made up his mind to go back some other
way. But Hilda was confident, so I waited patiently. At last one morning
I dropped in, as I had often done before, at the office of one of the
chief steamship companies. It was the very morning when a packet was to
sail. “Can I see the list of passengers on the Vindhya?” I asked of the
clerk, a sandy-haired Englishman, tall, thin, and sallow.
The clerk produced it.
I scanned it in haste. To my surprise and delight, a pencilled entry
half-way down the list gave the name, “Professor Sebastian.”
“Oh, Sebastian is going by this steamer?” I murmured, looking up.
The sandy-haired clerk hummed and hesitated. “Well, I believe he's
going, sir,” he answered at last; “but it's a bit uncertain. He's a
fidgety man, the Professor. He came down here this morning and asked
to see the list, the same as you have done. Then he engaged a berth
provisionally--'mind, provisionally,' he said--that's why his name
is only put in on the list in pencil. I take it he's waiting to know
whether a party of friends he wishes to meet are going also.”
“Or wishes to avoid,” I thought to myself, inwardly; but I did not say
so. I asked instead, “Is he coming again?”
“Yes, I think so: at 5.30.”
“And she sails at seven?”
“At seven, punctually. Passengers must be aboard by half-past six at
latest.”
“Very good,” I answered, making up my mind promptly. “I only called to
know the Professor's movements. Don't mention to him that I came. I may
look in again myself an hour or two later.”
“You don't want a passage, sir? You may be the friend he's expecting.”
“No, I don't want a passage--not at present certainly.” Then I ventured
on a bold stroke. “Look here,” I said, leaning across towards him, and
assuming a confidential tone: “I am a private detective”--which was
perfectly true in essence--“and I'm dogging the Professor, who, for all
his eminence, is gravely suspected of a great crime. If you will help
me, I will make it worth your while. Let us understand one another. I
offer you a five-pound note to say nothing of all this to him.”
The sallow clerk's fishy eye glistened. “You can depend upon me,” he
answered, with an acquiescent nod. I judged that he did not often get
the chance of earning some eighty rupees so easily.
I scribbled a hasty note and sent it round to Hilda: “Pack your boxes
at once, and hold yourself in readiness to embark on the Vindhya at six
o'clock precisely.” Then I put my own things straight; and waited at
the club till a quarter to six. At that time I strolled on unconcernedly
into the office. A cab outside held Hilda and our luggage. I had
arranged it all meanwhile by letter.
“Professor Sebastian been here again?” I asked.
“Yes, sir; he's been here; and he looked over the list again; and he's
taken his passage. But he muttered something about eavesdroppers, and
said that if he wasn't satisfied when he got on board, he would return
at once and ask for a cabin in exchange by the next steamer.”
“That will do,” I answered, slipping the promised five-pound note into
the clerk's open palm, which closed over it convulsively. “Talked about
eavesdroppers, did he? Then he knows he's been shadowed. It may console
you to learn that you are instrumental in furthering the aims of justice
and unmasking a cruel and wicked conspiracy. Now, the next thing
is this: I want two berths at once by this very steamer--one for
myself--name of Cumberledge; one for a lady--name of Wade; and look
sharp about it.”
The sandy-haired man did look sharp; and within three minutes we were
driving off with our tickets to Prince's Dock landing-stage.
We slipped on board unobtrusively, and instantly took refuge in our
respective staterooms till the steamer was well under way, and fairly
out of sight of Kolaba Island. Only after all chance of Sebastian's
avoiding us was gone for ever did we venture up on deck, on purpose to
confront him.
It was one of those delicious balmy evenings which one gets only at sea
and in the warmer latitudes. The sky was alive with myriads of twinkling
and palpitating stars, which seemed to come and go, like sparks on a
fire-back, as one gazed upward into the vast depths and tried to
place them. They played hide-and-seek with one another and with the
innumerable meteors which shot recklessly every now and again across the
field of the firmament, leaving momentary furrows of light behind them.
Beneath, the sea sparkled almost like the sky, for every turn of the
screw churned up the scintillating phosphorescence in the water, so that
countless little jets of living fire seemed to flash and die away at the
summit of every wavelet. A tall, spare man in a picturesque cloak, and
with long, lank, white hair, leant over the taffrail, gazing at the
numberless flashing lights of the surface. As he gazed, he talked on in
his clear, rapt voice to a stranger by his side. The voice and the ring
of enthusiasm were unmistakable. “Oh, no,” he was saying, as we stole up
behind him, “that hypothesis, I venture to assert, is no longer tenable
by the light of recent researches. Death and decay have nothing to do
directly with the phosphorescence of the sea, though they have a little
indirectly. The light is due in the main to numerous minute living
organisms, most of them bacilli, on which I once made several close
observations and crucial experiments. They possess organs which may be
regarded as miniature bull's-eye lanterns. And these organs--”
“What a lovely evening, Hubert!” Hilda said to me, in an apparently
unconcerned voice, as the Professor reached this point in his
exposition.
Sebastian's voice quavered and stammered for a moment. He tried just at
first to continue and complete his sentence: “And these organs,” he
went on, aimlessly, “these bull's-eyes that I spoke about, are so
arranged--so arranged--I was speaking on the subject of crustaceans, I
think--crustaceans so arranged--” then he broke down utterly and turned
sharply round to me. He did not look at Hilda--I think he did not dare;
but he faced me with his head down and his long, thin neck protruded,
eyeing me from under those overhanging, penthouse brows of his. “You
sneak!” he cried, passionately. “You sneak! You have dogged me by false
pretences. You have lied to bring this about! You have come aboard under
a false name--you and your accomplice!”
I faced him in turn, erect and unflinching. “Professor Sebastian,” I
answered, in my coldest and calmest tone, “you say what is not true. If
you consult the list of passengers by the Vindhya, now posted near
the companion-ladder, you will find the names of Hilda Wade and Hubert
Cumberledge duly entered. We took our passage AFTER you inspected the
list at the office to see whether our names were there--in order to
avoid us. But you cannot avoid us. We do not mean that you shall avoid
us. We will dog you now through life--not by lies or subterfuges, as you
say, but openly and honestly. It is YOU who need to slink and cower,
not we. The prosecutor need not descend to the sordid shifts of the
criminal.”
The other passenger had sidled away quietly the moment he saw our
conversation was likely to be private; and I spoke in a low voice,
though clearly and impressively, because I did not wish for a scene.
I was only endeavouring to keep alive the slow, smouldering fire of
remorse in the man's bosom. And I saw I had touched him on a spot that
hurt. Sebastian drew himself up and answered nothing. For a minute or
two he stood erect, with folded arms, gazing moodily before him. Then he
said, as if to himself: “I owe the man my life. He nursed me through
the plague. If it had not been for that--if he had not tended me
so carefully in that valley in Nepaul--I would throw him overboard
now--catch him in my arms and throw him overboard! I would--and be
hanged for it!”
He walked past us as if he saw us not, silent, erect, moody. Hilda
stepped aside and let him pass. He never even looked at her. I knew why;
he dared not. Every day now, remorse for the evil part he had played in
her life, respect for the woman who had unmasked and outwitted him, made
it more and more impossible for Sebastian to face her. During the whole
of that voyage, though he dined in the same saloon and paced the same
deck, he never spoke to her, he never so much as looked at her. Once or
twice their eyes met by accident, and Hilda stared him down; Sebastian's
eyelids dropped, and he stole away uneasily. In public, we gave no overt
sign of our differences; but it was understood on board that relations
were strained: that Professor Sebastian and Dr. Cumberledge had been
working at the same hospital in London together; and that owing to some
disagreement between them Dr. Cumberledge had resigned--which made it
most awkward for them to be travelling together by the same steamer.
We passed through the Suez Canal and down the Mediterranean. All the
time, Sebastian never again spoke to us. The passengers, indeed,
held aloof from the solitary, gloomy old man, who strode along the
quarter-deck with his long, slow stride, absorbed in his own thoughts,
and intent only on avoiding Hilda and myself. His mood was unsociable.
As for Hilda, her helpful, winning ways made her a favourite with all
the women, as her pretty face did with all the men. For the first
time in his life, Sebastian seemed to be aware that he was shunned. He
retired more and more within himself for company; his keen eye began to
lose in some degree its extraordinary fire, his expression to forget
its magnetic attractiveness. Indeed, it was only young men of scientific
tastes that Sebastian could ever attract. Among them, his eager zeal,
his single-minded devotion to the cause of science, awoke always a
responsive chord which vibrated powerfully.
Day after day passed, and we steamed through the Straits and neared the
Channel. Our thoughts began to assume a home complexion. Everybody was
full of schemes as to what he would do when he reached England. Old
Bradshaws were overhauled and trains looked out, on the supposition that
we would get in by such an hour on Tuesday. We were steaming along the
French coast, off the western promontory of Brittany. The evening was
fine, and though, of course, less warm than we had experienced of late,
yet pleasant and summer-like. We watched the distant cliffs of the
Finistere mainland and the numerous little islands that lie off the
shore, all basking in the unreal glow of a deep red sunset. The first
officer was in charge, a very cock-sure and careless young man, handsome
and dark-haired; the sort of young man who thought more of creating an
impression upon the minds of the lady passengers than of the duties of
his position.
“Aren't you going down to your berth?” I asked of Hilda, about half-past
ten that night; “the air is so much colder here than you have been
feeling it of late, that I'm afraid of your chilling yourself.”
She looked up at me with a smile, and drew her little fluffy, white
woollen wrap closer about her shoulders. “Am I so very valuable to you,
then?” she asked--for I suppose my glance had been a trifle too tender
for a mere acquaintance's. “No, thank you, Hubert; I don't think I'll
go down, and, if you're wise, you won't go down either. I distrust this
first officer. He's a careless navigator, and to-night his head's
too full of that pretty Mrs. Ogilvy. He has been flirting with her
desperately ever since we left Bombay, and to-morrow he knows he will
lose her for ever. His mind isn't occupied with the navigation at all;
what HE is thinking of is how soon his watch will be over, so that he
may come down off the bridge on to the quarter-deck to talk to her.
Don't you see she's lurking over yonder, looking up at the stars and
waiting for him by the compass? Poor child! she has a bad husband, and
now she has let herself get too much entangled with this empty young
fellow. I shall be glad for her sake to see her safely landed and out of
the man's clutches.”
As she spoke, the first officer glanced down towards Mrs. Ogilvy, and
held out his chronometer with an encouraging smile which seemed to say,
“Only an hour and a half more now! At twelve, I shall be with you!”
“Perhaps you're right, Hilda,” I answered, taking a seat beside her and
throwing away my cigar. “This is one of the worst bits on the French
coast that we're approaching. We're not far off Ushant. I wish
the captain were on the bridge instead of this helter-skelter,
self-conceited young fellow. He's too cock-sure. He knows so much about
seamanship that he could take a ship through any rocks on his course,
blindfold--in his own opinion. I always doubt a man who is so much at
home in his subject that he never has to think about it. Most things in
this world are done by thinking.”
“We can't see the Ushant light,” Hilda remarked, looking ahead.
“No; there's a little haze about on the horizon, I fancy. See, the stars
are fading away. It begins to feel damp. Sea mist in the Channel.”
Hilda sat uneasily in her deck-chair. “That's bad,” she answered; “for
the first officer is taking no more heed of Ushant than of his latter
end. He has forgotten the existence of the Breton coast. His head is
just stuffed with Mrs. Ogilvy's eyelashes. Very pretty, long eyelashes,
too; I don't deny it; but they won't help him to get through the narrow
channel. They say it's dangerous.”
“Dangerous!” I answered. “Not a bit of it--with reasonable care. Nothing
at sea is dangerous--except the inexplicable recklessness of navigators.
There's always plenty of sea-room--if they care to take it. Collisions
and icebergs, to be sure, are dangers that can't be avoided at times,
especially if there's fog about. But I've been enough at sea in my time
to know this much at least--that no coast in the world is dangerous
except by dint of reckless corner-cutting. Captains of great ships
behave exactly like two hansom-drivers in the streets of London; they
think they can just shave past without grazing; and they DO shave past
nine times out of ten. The tenth time they run on the rocks through
sheer recklessness, and lose their vessel; and then, the newspapers
always ask the same solemn question--in childish good faith--how did
so experienced and able a navigator come to make such a mistake in his
reckoning? He made NO mistake; he simply tried to cut it fine, and cut
it too fine for once, with the result that he usually loses his own life
and his passengers. That's all. We who have been at sea understand that
perfectly.”
Just at that moment another passenger strolled up and joined us--a
Bengal Civil servant. He drew his chair over by Hilda's, and began
discussing Mrs. Ogilvy's eyes and the first officer's flirtations. Hilda
hated gossip, and took refuge in generalities. In three minutes the talk
had wandered off to Ibsen's influence on the English drama, and we had
forgotten the very existence of the Isle of Ushant.
“The English public will never understand Ibsen,” the newcomer said,
reflectively, with the omniscient air of the Indian civilian. “He is
too purely Scandinavian. He represents that part of the Continental
mind which is farthest removed from the English temperament. To him,
respectability--our god--is not only no fetish, it is the unspeakable
thing, the Moabitish abomination. He will not bow down to the golden
image which our British Nebuchadnezzar, King Demos, has made, and which
he asks us to worship. And the British Nebuchadnezzar will never get
beyond the worship of his Vishnu, respectability, the deity of the pure
and blameless ratepayer. So Ibsen must always remain a sealed book to
the vast majority of the English people.”
“That is true,” Hilda answered, “as to his direct influence; but don't
you think, indirectly, he is leavening England? A man so wholly out of
tune with the prevailing note of English life could only affect it, of
course, by means of disciples and popularisers--often even popularisers
who but dimly and distantly apprehend his meaning. He must be
interpreted to the English by English intermediaries, half Philistine
themselves, who speak his language ill, and who miss the greater part of
his message. Yet only by such half-hints--Why, what was that? I think I
saw something!”
Even as she uttered the words, a terrible jar ran fiercely through the
ship from stem to stern--a jar that made one clench one's teeth and hold
one's jaws tight--the jar of a prow that shattered against a rock. I
took it all in at a glance. We had forgotten Ushant, but Ushant had not
forgotten us. It had revenged itself upon us by revealing its existence.
In a moment all was turmoil and confusion on deck. I cannot describe the
scene that followed. Sailors rushed to and fro, unfastening ropes and
lowering boats, with admirable discipline. Women shrieked and cried
aloud in helpless terror. The voice of the first officer could be heard
above the din, endeavouring to atone by courage and coolness in the
actual disaster for his recklessness in causing it. Passengers rushed on
deck half clad, and waited for their turn to take places in the boats.
It was a time of terror, turmoil, and hubbub. But, in the midst of
it all, Hilda turned to me with infinite calm in her voice. “Where is
Sebastian?” she asked, in a perfectly collected tone. “Whatever happens,
we must not lose sight of him.”
“I am here,” another voice, equally calm, responded beside her. “You
are a brave woman. Whether I sink or swim, I admire your courage, your
steadfastness of purpose.” It was the only time he had addressed a word
to her during the entire voyage.
They put the women and children into the first boats lowered. Mothers
and little ones went first; single women and widows after. “Now, Miss
Wade,” the first officer said, taking her gently by the shoulders when
her turn arrived. “Make haste; don't keep us waiting!”
But Hilda held back. “No, no,” she said, firmly. “I won't go yet. I am
waiting for the men's boat. I must not leave Professor Sebastian.”
The first officer shrugged his shoulders. There was no time for protest.
“Next, then,” he said, quickly. “Miss Martin--Miss Weatherly!”
Sebastian took her hand and tried to force her in. “You MUST go,” he
said, in a low, persuasive tone. “You must not wait for me!”
He hated to see her, I knew. But I imagined in his voice--for I noted it
even then--there rang some undertone of genuine desire to save her.
Hilda loosened his grasp resolutely. “No, no,” she answered, “I cannot
fly. I shall never leave you.”
“Not even if I promise--”
She shook her head and closed her lips hard. “Certainly not,” she said
again, after a pause. “I cannot trust you. Besides, I must stop by your
side and do my best to save you. Your life is all in all to me. I dare
not risk it.”
His gaze was now pure admiration. “As you will,” he answered. “For he
that loseth his life shall gain it.”
“If ever we land alive,” Hilda answered, glowing red in spite of the
danger, “I shall remind you of that word. I shall call upon you to
fulfil it.”
The boat was lowered, and still Hilda stood by my side. One second
later, another shock shook us. The Vindhya parted amidships, and we
found ourselves struggling and choking in the cold sea water.
It was a miracle that every soul of us was not drowned that moment, as
many of us were. The swirling eddy which followed as the Vindhya sank
swamped two of the boats, and carried down not a few of those who were
standing on the deck with us. The last I saw of the first officer was
a writhing form whirled about in the water; before he sank, he shouted
aloud, with a seaman's frank courage, “Say it was all my fault; I accept
the responsibility. I ran her too close. I am the only one to blame for
it.” Then he disappeared in the whirlpool caused by the sinking ship,
and we were left still struggling.
One of the life-rafts, hastily rigged by the sailors, floated our way.
Hilda struck out a stroke or two and caught it. She dragged herself
on to it, and beckoned me to follow. I could see she was holding on to
something tightly. I struck out in turn and reached the raft, which was
composed of two seats, fastened together in haste at the first note
of danger. I hauled myself up by Hilda's side. “Help me to pull him
aboard!” she cried, in an agonised voice. “I am afraid he has lost
consciousness!” Then I looked at the object she was clutching in her
hands. It was Sebastian's white head, apparently quite lifeless.
I pulled him up with her and laid him out on the raft. A very faint
breeze from the south-west had sprung up; that and a strong seaward
current that sets round the rocks were carrying us straight out from the
Breton coast and all chance of rescue, towards the open channel.
But Hilda thought nothing of such physical danger. “We have saved him,
Hubert!” she cried, clasping her hands. “We have saved him! But do you
think he is alive? For unless he is, MY chance, OUR chance, is gone
forever!”
I bent over and felt his pulse. As far as I could make out, it still
beat feebly.