Part 10 (1/2)

He leaned against the bulwarks, and made a helpless, despairing motion with his hand. ”No, no!” he said; and added with a bitter laugh: ”Not to begin the world again, but to end it as profitably and silently as I can. ... But you will listen to me, my wife? You will say at least that you forgive me the blight and ill I brought upon you?”

She had listened to him unmoved outwardly. Her reply was instant. ”You are more melodramatic than I thought you capable of being--from your appearance,” she said in a hard tone. ”Your acting is very good, but not convincing. I cannot respond as would become the unity and sequence of the play.... I have no husband. My husband is dead--I buried him years ago. I have forgotten his name--I buried that too.”

All the suffering and endured scorn of years came to revolt in him. He leaned forward now, and caught her wrist. ”Have you no human feeling?”

he said ”no heart in you at all? Look. I have it in me here suddenly to kill you as you stand. You have turned my love to hate. From your smooth skin there I could strip those rags, and call upon them all to look at you--my wife--a felon's wife; mine to have and to hold--to hold, you hear!--as it was sworn at the altar. I bare my heart to you, repenting, and you mock it, torture it, with your undying hate and cruelty. You have no heart, no life. This white bosom is all of you--all of your power to make men love you--this, and your beauty. All else, by G.o.d, is cruel as the grave!”

His voice had sunk to a hoa.r.s.e whisper. She had not sought to remove his hand, nor struggled in the least; and once it seemed as if this new development of his character, this animal fierceness, would conquer her: she admired courage. It was not so. He trembled with weakness before he had finished. He stopped too soon; he lost.

”You will find such parts exhausting to play,” she murmured, as he let her arm fall. ”It needs a strong physique to endure exaggerated, nervous sentiment. And now, please, let us perform less trying scenes.” Then, with a low, cold anger, she continued: ”It is only a coward that will dog a woman who finds his presence insupportable to her. This woman cannot, if she would, endure this man's presence; it is her nature.

Well, why rush blindly at the impossible? She wishes to live her spoiled life alone. The man can have no part in it--never, never! But she has money. If in that way--”

He stretched out his hand protestingly, the fingers spread in excitement. ”No more--not another word!” he said. ”I ask for forgiveness, for one word of kindness--and I am offered money! the fire that burned me to eat, instead of bread! I had a wife once,” he added in a kind of troubled dream, looking at her as if she were very far away, ”and her name was Mercy--her name was Mercy--Mercy Madras. I loved her.

I sinned for her sake. A message came that she was dead to me; but I could not believe that it was so altogether, for I had knelt at her feet and wors.h.i.+pped her. I went to her, but she sent me away angrily. Years pa.s.sed. 'She will have relented now,' I said, and I followed her, and found her as I thought. But it was not she; it was a wicked ghost in her beautiful body--nothing more. And then I turned away and cursed all things, because I knew that I should never see my wife again. Mercy Madras was dead. ... Can you not hear the curses?”

Still she was unmoved. She said with a cruel impatience in her voice: ”Yes, Mercy Madras is dead. How then can she forgive? What could her ghost--as you call her--do, but offer the thing which her husband--when he was living--loved so well that he sold himself into bondage, and wrecked his world and hers for it--Money? Well, money is at his disposal, as she said before--”

But she spoke no more. The man in him straight way shamed her into silence with a look. She bowed her head, yet not quite in shame, for there was that in her eyes which made her appear as if his suffering was a gratuitous infliction. But at this moment he was stronger, and he drew her eyes up by the sheer force of his will. ”I need no money now,” he coldly declared. ”I need nothing--not even you; and can you fancy that, after waiting all these years for this hour, money would satisfy me?

Do you know,” he continued slowly and musingly, ”I can look upon you now--yes, at this moment--with more indifference than you ever showed to me? A moment ago I loved you: now I think you horrible; because you are no woman; you have a savage heart. And some day you will suffer as I do, so terribly that even the brazen serpent could not cure you. Then you will remember me.”

He was about to leave her, but he had not taken two steps before he turned, with all the anger and the pa.s.sion softened in his eyes, and said, putting his hand out towards yet not to touch her, ”Good-bye--for the last time.” And then the look was such as might be turned upon a forgiven executioner.

”Good-night,” she replied, and she did not look into his eyes, but out to sea. Her eyes remained fixed upon its furtive gloom. She too was furtive and gloomy at this moment. They were both sleek, silent, and remorseless. There was a slight rustle to her dress as she changed her position. It was in grim keeping with the pitiless rustle of the sea.

And so they parted. I saw him move on towards the companion-way, and though I felt instinctively that all had gone ill with him, I was surprised to see how erect he walked. After a minute I approached her.

She heard me coming, and presently turned to me with a curious smile.

”Who is Mr. Charles Boyd?” she asked. ”I did not pierce his disguise.

I could not tell whether I had met him on board before. Have I? But my impression is that I had not seen him on the s.h.i.+p.”

”No, you had not seen him,” I replied. ”He had a fancy to travel, until yesterday, with the second-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers. Now he has a first-cla.s.s cabin--in his proper place, in fact.”

”You think so--in his proper place?” The suggestion was not pleasant.

”a.s.suredly. Why do you speak in that way?” was my indignant reply.

She took my arm as we moved on. ”Because he was slightly rude to me.”

I grew bold, and determined to bring her to some sort of reckoning.

”How rude were you to him?”

”Not rude at all. It is not worth while being so--to anybody,” was her chilly answer.

”I was under the impression you had met him before,” I said gravely.

”Indeed? And why?” She raised her eyebrows at me. I pushed the matter to a conclusion. ”He was ill the other day--he has heart trouble. It was necessary for me to open the clothes about his neck. On his breast I saw a little ivory portrait of a woman's head.”

”A woman's head,” she repeated absently, and her fingers idly toyed with a jingling ornament in her belt. In an idle moment I had sketched the head, as I remembered it, on a sheet of paper, and now I took it from my pocket and handed it to her. We were standing near a port-hole of the music saloon, from which light streamed.