Part 7 (1/2)
”It enables one to get perspective.”
”I understand,” she said; and then was silent. We walked the deck slowly for several minutes. Then we were accosted by two ladies of a committee that had the fancy-dress ball in hand. They wished to consult Mrs.
Falchion in certain matters of costume and decoration, for which, it had been discovered, she had a peculiar faculty. She turned to me half inquiringly, and I bade her good-night, inwardly determined (how easy it is after having failed to gratify ourselves!) that the touch of her fingers should never again make my heart beat faster.
I joined Colonel Ryder and Clovelly in the smoking-room. Hungerford, as I guessed gladly, was gone. I was too much the coward to meet his eye just then. Colonel Ryder was estimating the amount he would wager--if he were in the habit of betting--that the 'Fulvia' could not turn round in her tracks in twenty minutes, while he parenthetically endorsed Hungerford's remarks to me--though he was ignorant of them--that lascars should not be permitted on English pa.s.senger s.h.i.+ps. He was supported by Sir Hayes Craven, a s.h.i.+powner, who further said that not one out of ten British sailors could swim, while not five out of ten could row a boat properly. Ryder's anger was great, because Clovelly remarked with mock seriousness that the lascars were picturesque, and asked the American if he had watched them listlessly eating rice and curry as they squatted between decks; whether he had observed the Serang, with his silver whistle, who ruled them, and despised us ”poor white trash;” and if he did not think it was a good thing to have fatalists like them as sailors--they would be cool in time of danger.
Colonel Ryder's indignation was curbed, however, by the bookmaker, who, having no views, but seeing an opportunity for fun, brought up reinforcements of chaff and slang, easily construable into profanity, and impregnated with terse humour. Many of the ladies had spoken of the bookmaker as one of the best-mannered men on board. So he was to all appearance. None dressed with better taste, nor carried himself with such an air. There was even a deferential tone in his strong language, a hesitating quaintness, which made it irresistible. He was at the service of any person on board needing champions.h.i.+p. His talents were varied.
He could suggest harmonies in colour to the ladies at one moment, and at the next, in the seclusion of the bar counter, arrange deadly harmonies in liquor. He was an authority on acting; he knew how to edit a newspaper; he picked out the really nice points in the sermons delivered by the missionaries in the saloon; he had some marvellous theories about navigation; and his trick with a salad was superb. He now convulsed the idlers in the smoking-room with laughter, and soon deftly drew off the discussion to the speed of the vessel, arranging a sweep-stake immediately, upon the possibilities of the run. He instantly proposed to sell the numbers by auction. He was the auctioneer. With his eye-gla.s.s at his eye, and Bohemian pleasantry falling from his lips, he ran the prices up. He was selling Clovelly's number, and had advanced it beyond the novelist's own bidding, when suddenly the screw stopped, the engines ceased working, and the 'Fulvia' slowed down.
The numbers remained unsold. Word came to us that an accident had happened to the machinery, and that we should be hove-to for a day, or longer, to accomplish necessary repairs. How serious the accident to the machinery was no one knew.
CHAPTER V. ACCUSING FACES
While we were hove-to, the 'Porcupine' pa.s.sed us. In all probability it would now get to Aden ahead of us; and herein lay a development of the history of Mrs. Falchion. I was standing beside Belle Treherne as the s.h.i.+p came within hail of us and signalled to see what was the matter.
Mrs. Falchion was not far from us. She was looking intently at the vessel through marine-gla.s.ses, and she did not put them down until it had pa.s.sed. Then she turned away with an abstracted light in her eyes and a wintry smile; and the look and the smile continued when she sat down in her deck-chair and leaned her cheek meditatively on the marine-gla.s.s. But I saw now that something was added to the expression of her face--a suggestion of brooding or wonder. Belle Treherne, noticing the direction of my glances, said: ”Have you known Mrs.
Falchion long?”
”No, not long,” I replied. ”Only since she came on board.”
”She is very clever, I believe.”
I felt my face flus.h.i.+ng, though, reasonably, there was no occasion for it, and I said: ”Yes, she is one of the ablest women I have ever met.”
”She is beautiful, too--very beautiful.” This very frankly.
”Have you talked with her?” asked I.
”Yes, a little this morning, for the first time. She did not speak much, however.” Here Miss Treherne paused, and then added meditatively: ”Do you know, she impressed me as having singular frankness and singular reserve as well? I think I admired it. There is no feeling in her speech, and yet it has great candour. I never before met any one like her. She does not wear her heart upon her sleeve, I imagine.”
A moment of irony came over me; that desire to say what one really does not believe (a feminine trait), and I replied: ”Are both those articles necessary to any one? A sleeve?--well, one must be clothed. But a heart?--a c.u.mbrous thing, as I take it.”
Belle Treherne turned, and looked me steadily in the eyes for an instant, as if she had suddenly awakened from abstraction, and slowly said, while she drew back slightly: ”Dr. Marmion, I am only a girl, I know, and inexperienced, but I hoped most people of education and knowledge of life were free from that kind of cynicism to be read of in books.” Then something in her thoughts seemed to chill her words and manner, and her father coming up a moment after, she took his arm, and walked away with a not very cordial bow to me.
The fact is, with a woman's quick intuition, she had read in my tone something suggestive of my recent experience with Mrs. Falchion. Her fine womanliness awoke; the purity of her thoughts, rose in opposition to my flippancy and to me; and I knew that I had raised a prejudice not easy to destroy.
This was on a Friday afternoon.
On the Sat.u.r.day evening following, the fancy-dress ball was to occur.
The accident to the machinery and our delay were almost forgotten in the preparations therefor. I had little to do; there was only one sick man on board, and my hand could not cure his sickness. How he fared, my uncomfortable mind, now bitterly alive to a sense of duty, almost hesitated to inquire. Yet a change had come. A reaction had set in for me. Would it be permanent? I dared scarcely answer that question, with Mrs. Falchion at my right hand at table, with her voice at my ear. I was not quite myself yet; I was struggling, as it were, with the effects of a fantastic dream.
Still, I had determined upon my course. I had made resolutions. I had ended the chapter of dalliance. I had wished to go to 116 Intermediate and let its occupant demand what satisfaction he would. I wanted to say to Hungerford that I was an a.s.s; but that was even harder still. He was so thorough and uncompromising in nature, so strong in moral fibre, that I felt his sarcasm would be too outspoken for me just at present.
In this, however, I did not give him credit for a fine sense of consideration, as after events showed. Although there had been no spoken understanding between us that Mrs. Falchion was the wife of Boyd Madras, the mind of one was the other's also. I understood exactly why he told me Boyd Madras's story: it was a warning. He was not the man to harp on things. He gave the hint, and there the matter ended, so far as he was concerned, until a time might come when he should think it his duty to refer to the subject again. Some time before, he had shown me the portrait of the girl who had promised to be his wife. She, of course, could trust HIM anywhere, everywhere.
Mrs. Falchion had seen the change in me, and, I am sure, guessed the new direction of my thoughts, and knew that I wished to take refuge in a new companions.h.i.+p--a thing, indeed, not easily to be achieved, as I felt now; for no girl of delicate and proud temper would complacently regard a hasty transference of attention from another to herself. Besides, it would be neither courteous nor reasonable to break with Mrs. Falchion abruptly. The error was mine, not hers. She had not my knowledge of the immediate circ.u.mstances, which made my position morally untenable. She showed unembarra.s.sed ignorance of the change. At the same time I caught a tone of voice and a manner which showed she was not actually oblivious, but was touched in that nerve called vanity; and from this much feminine hatred springs.
I made up my mind to begin a course of scientific reading, and was seated in my cabin, vainly trying to digest a treatise on the pathology of the nervous system, when Hungerford appeared at the door. With a nod, he entered, threw himself down on the cabin sofa, and asked for a match.
After a pause, he said: ”Marmion, Boyd Madras, alias Charles Boyd, has recognised me.”