Two weeks later I stood on the deck of Lucio's yacht 'The Flame,'--a
vessel whose complete magnificence filled me, as well as all other
beholders, with bewildered wonderment and admiration. She was a miracle
of speed, her motive power being electricity; and the electric engines
with which she was fitted were so complex and remarkable as to baffle
all would-be inquirers into the secret of their mechanism and potency. A
large crowd of spectators gathered to see her as she lay off
Southampton, attracted by the beauty of her shape and appearance,--some
bolder spirits even came out in tugs and row-boats, hoping to be allowed
to make a visit of inspection on board, but the sailors,
powerfully-built men of a foreign and somewhat unpleasing type, soon
intimated that the company of such inquisitive persons was undesirable
and unwelcome. With white sails spread, and a crimson flag flying from
her mast, she weighed anchor at sunset on the afternoon of the day her
owner and I joined her, and moving through the waters with delicious
noiselessness and incredible rapidity, soon left far behind her the
English shore, looking like a white line in the mist, or the pale vision
of a land that might once have been. I had done a few quixotic things
before departing from my native country,--for example, I had made a free
gift of his former home Willowsmere, to Lord Elton, taking a sort of
sullen pleasure in thinking that he, the spendthrift nobleman, owed the
restoration of his property to _me_,--to me who had never been either a
successful linen-draper or furniture-man, but simply an author, one of
'those sort of people' whom my lord and my lady imagine they can
'patronize' and neglect again at pleasure without danger to themselves.
The arrogant fools invariably forget what lasting vengeance can be taken
for an unmerited slight by the owner of a brilliant pen! I was glad too,
in a way, to realize that the daughter of the American railway-king
would be brought to the grand old house to air her 'countess-ship,' and
look at her prettily pert little physiognomy in the very mirror where
Sibyl had watched herself die. I do not know why this idea pleased me,
for I bore no grudge against Diana Chesney,--she was vulgar but
harmless, and would probably make a much more popular châtelaine at
Willowsmere Court than my wife had ever been. Among other things, I
dismissed my man Morris, and made him miserable,--with the gift of a
thousand pounds, to marry and start a business on. He was miserable
because he could not make up his mind what business to adopt, his
anxiety being to choose the calling that would 'pay' best,--and also,
because though he 'had his eye' upon several young women, he could not
tell which among them would be likely to be least extravagant, and the
most serviceable as a cook and housekeeper. The love of money and the
pains of taking care of it, embittered his days as it embitters the days
of most men, and my unexpected munificence towards him burdened him with
such a weight of trouble as robbed him of natural sleep and appetite. I
cared nothing for his perplexities however, and gave him no advice, good
or bad. My other servants I dismissed, each with a considerable gift of
money, not that I particularly wished to benefit _them_, but simply
because I desired them to speak well of _me_. And in this world it is
very evident that the only way to get a good opinion is to pay for it! I
gave orders to a famous Italian sculptor for Sibyl's monument, English
sculptors having no conception of sculpture,--it was to be of exquisite
design, wrought in purest white marble, the chief adornment being the
centre-figure of an angel ready for flight, with the face of Sibyl
faithfully copied from her picture. Because, however devilish a woman
may be in her life-time, one is bound by all the laws of social
hypocrisy to make an angel of her as soon as she is dead! Just before I
left London I heard that my old college-friend 'Boffles,' John
Carrington, had met with a sudden end. Busy at the 'retorting' of his
gold, he had been choked by the mercurial fumes and had died in hideous
torment. At one time this news would have deeply affected me, but now, I
was scarcely sorry. I had heard nothing of him since I had come into my
fortune,--he had never even written to congratulate me. Always full of
my own self-importance, I judged this as great neglect on his part, and
now that he was dead I felt no more than any of us feel now-a-days at
the loss of friends. And that is very little,--we have really no time to
be sorry,--so many people are always dying!--and we are in such a
desperate hurry to rush on to death ourselves! Nothing seemed to touch
me that did not closely concern my own personal interest,--and I had no
affections left, unless I may call the vague tenderness I had for Mavis
Clare an affection. Yet, to be honest, this very emotion was after all
nothing but a desire to be consoled, pitied and loved by her,--to be
able to turn upon the world and say "This woman whom you have lifted on
your shield of honour and crowned with laurels,--she loves _me_--she is
not yours, but _mine_!" Purely interested and purely selfish was the
longing,--and it deserved no other name than selfishness.
My feelings for Rimânez too began at this time to undergo a curious
change. The fascination I had for him, the power he exercised over me
remained as great as ever, but I found myself often absorbed in a close
study of him, strangely against my own will. Sometimes his every look
seemed fraught with meaning,--his every gesture suggestive of an almost
terrific authority. He was always to me the most attractive of
beings,--nevertheless there was an uneasy sensation of doubt and fear
growing up in my mind regarding him,--a painful anxiety to know more
about him than he had ever told me,--and on rare occasions I experienced
a sudden shock of inexplicable repulsion against him which like a
tremendous wave threw me back with violence upon myself and left me
half-stunned with a dread of I knew not what. Alone with him, as it
were, on the wide sea, cut off for a time from all other intercourse
than that which we shared together, these sensations were very strong
upon me. I began to note many things which I had been too blind or too
absorbed in my own pursuits to observe before; the offensive presence of
Amiel, who acted as chief steward on board the yacht, filled me now not
only with dislike, but nervous apprehension,--the dark and more or less
repulsive visages of the crew haunted me in my dreams;--and one day,
leaning over the vessel's edge and gazing blankly down into the
fathomless water below, I fell to thinking of strange sorceries of the
East, and stories of magicians who by the exercise of unlawful science
did so make victims of men and delude them that their wills were
entirely perverted and no longer their own. I do not know why this
passing thought should have suddenly overwhelmed me with deep
depression,--but when I looked up, to me the sky had grown dark, and the
face of one of the sailors who was near me polishing the brass
hand-rail, seemed singularly threatening and sinister. I moved to go to
the other side of the deck, when a hand was gently laid on my shoulder
from behind, and turning, I met the sad and splendid eyes of Lucio.
"Are you growing weary of the voyage Geoffrey?" he asked--"Weary of
those two suggestions of eternity--the interminable sky, the
interminable sea? I am afraid you are!--man easily gets fatigued with
his own littleness and powerlessness when he is set afloat on a plank
between air and ocean. Yet we are travelling as swiftly as electricity
will bear us,--and, as worked in this vessel, it is carrying us at a far
greater speed than you perhaps realize or imagine."
I made no immediate answer, but taking his arm strolled slowly up and
down. I felt he was looking at me, but I avoided meeting his gaze.
"You have been thinking of your wife?" he queried softly and, as I
thought, sympathetically--"I have shunned,--for reasons you know
of,--all allusion to the tragic end of so beautiful a creature. Beauty
is, alas!--so often subject to hysteria! Yet--if you had any faith, you
would believe she is an angel now!"
I stopped short at this, and looked straight at him. There was a fine
smile on his delicate mouth.
"An angel!" I repeated slowly--"or a devil? Which would you say she
is?--you, who sometimes declare that you believe in Heaven,--and Hell?"
He was silent, but the dreamy smile remained still on his lips.
"Come, speak!" I said roughly--"You can be frank with me, you
know,--angel or devil--which?"
"My dear Geoffrey!" he remonstrated gently and with gravity--"A woman is
always an angel,--both here and hereafter!"