CHAPTER XXVI. WILFRID’S DELUSION.

It was pleasant to learn next morning that the breeze which had been slipping us nimbly through it since we had trimmed sail for our homeward bound run had not only blown steadily all night, giving us an average of some seven knots an hour, but had gathered a little increase of weight at sunrise, so that I awoke to as much life in the vessel in the resonant humming from aloft, the quick wash and eager seething of recoiling seas, the straining noises of strong[248] fastenings to the sloping of the spars as though the north-east trades were pouring full upon the starboard bow, and we were buzzing through the cool Atlantic parallels within a distance of soundings that would render talk about Southampton and arriving home reasonable.

For my part, ever since we had penetrated these ‘doldrums’ as they are called I was dreading the long dead calms of the frizzling belt where a catspaw is hailed in God’s name and where the roasting eye of the sun sucks out the very blue of the atmosphere till the heavens go down in a brassy dazzle to the ocean confines as though one were shut up in a huge, burnished bell with a white-hot clapper for light. My spirits were good as I sprang out of my bunk and made for the bath-room. It was not only that the fresh wind whistling hot through the open scuttle of my berth caused me to think of home as lying at last fairly over the bow instead of over the stern as it had been for weeks; the object of this trip, such as it was, had been achieved; there was nothing more to keep a look-out for; nothing more to hold one’s expectations tautened to cracking point. Everything that was material had happened on the preceding morning, and the toss of the Colonel’s body last night over the gangway by lantern-light with Lady Monson looking on was like the drop of the black curtain; it was the end of the tragedy; the orchestra had filed out, the lights were extinguished, and we could now pass into heaven’s invigorating air and live again the old easy life of commonplaces.

So ran my thoughts as I emerged from my berth with a very good appetite and made my way to the sparkling breakfast-table. I seated myself on a couch waiting for Wilfrid and Miss Laura; the stewards hung about ready to serve the meal. I called the head one to me and said, ‘Is there any chance of Lady Monson joining us at table, do you know?’

‘I think not, sir,’ he answered.

‘Who attends to her—I mean as regards her meals?’

‘Miss Jennings’ maid, sir. She told me this morning her ladyship’s orders are that a separate tray should be prepared for her for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Her breakfast was taken to her about ten minutes ago.’

‘So I may presume,’ said I, ‘that she finds herself pretty well this morning? And my cousin, steward?’

‘I was to tell you, sir,’ he answered, ‘that Sir Wilfrid will not come to table.’

‘How is he?’

‘He didn’t complain, sir; just said, “I’ll breakfast in my cabin this morning”!’

‘All right,’ said I, and the man retired.

There was nothing unusual in Wilfrid breakfasting in his cabin. I was glad to hear that he did not complain; as a rule he was very candid if in suffering; owned freely to whatever troubled him however trifling, and made much of it.

In a few minutes Miss Laura came from her berth. Her face[249] had the delicacy of look that in her at all events I took to express a troubled or sleepless night. Her eyelids were a little heavy; her lips wanted their dewy freshness of hue. Yet no woman, I thought, could ever show sweeter than she as she advanced and took my hand smiling up at me and subtly incensing the atmosphere with a flower-like fragrance that had nothing whatever to do with the scent-bottle. I told her that Wilfrid would not breakfast with us, and we seated ourselves.

‘He is well, I hope?’

‘Oh, I should think so, if I may judge from what the steward tells me. I’ll look in upon him after breakfast. Have you seen Lady Monson this morning?’

‘No,’ she answered, ‘I sent my maid with a message and the reply was that Lady Monson wishes to be alone.’

‘Now, Miss Jennings,’ said I, gently but with some emphasis ‘you must let nothing that Lady Monson does vex you. You have done your duty; she is on board this yacht; I shall grow fretful if I think you intend to waste a single breath of the sweetness of your heart upon the arid air of Madame Henrietta’s desert nature. I dare say you have scarcely closed your eyes all night through thinking about her.’

‘About her and other things.’

‘Why tease yourself? A sister is a sister only so long as she chooses to act and feel as one. It is indeed a tender word—a sweet relationship. But if a woman coolly cuts all family ties——’

She shook her head, smiling. ‘Your views are too hard, Mr. Monson. You would argue of a sister as you would of a wife. We must bear with the shame, the degradation, the wickedness of those we have loved, of those we still love spite of bitter repulse. There is no one, I am sure, would dare kneel down in prayer if it was believed that God’s mercy depended upon our own actions. All of us would feel cut off.’

Not all, I thought, looking at her, but I sat silent awhile, feeling rebuked. I was a young man then; I can turn back now, scarred as I am by many years of life’s warfare, and see that I was hard, too hard in those thoughtless days of mine; that knowing little or nothing of suffering myself, I knew little or nothing of the deep and wondrous vitality of human sympathy. You find many corridors in human nature when you enter, but sympathy is the only way in; and to miss that door is merely to go on walking round the edifice.

I ate for a little in silence and then said, ‘I suppose, as you have seen almost nothing of your sister, you are unable to form an opinion of her state of mind?’

‘She is naturally of a cold nature,’ she answered; ‘dispositions such as hers, I think, do not greatly vary, let what will happen to them. Though one knows not what passion, feeling, emotion may have its fangs buried in such hearts, yet suffering has to pass through too many wraps to find expression.’

[250]

I smiled. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I know what you mean. She is like a person who lies buried in half a dozen coffins; a shell, then lead, then oak and so on. Nothing but the last trumpet could influence the ashes inside.’

‘But why did you ask that question, Mr. Monson?’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘you know that we buried the Colonel last night?’

She started. ‘I did not know!’ she exclaimed.

‘Yes,’ I continued. ‘We slung a couple of lanterns and Finn read the service. Just before the body was launched your sister arrived, rising like a ghost amongst us.’

She looked greatly shocked. ‘Was Henrietta really present?’ she exclaimed. ‘How could she have known—what could the men have thought of her? What madness of bad taste!’

‘The forefinger follows the thumb,’ said I, ‘and when you come to the little finger you must begin again. All’s one with some people when they make a start. Am I too hard on human nature in saying this?’

But she merely exclaimed, as though talking to herself, ‘How could she be present? How could she be present?’

‘Well, now, mark what follows, Miss Jennings,’ said I; ‘when the body had vanished your sister walked right aft, kneeled upon the grating and in that posture of supplication continued to watch the dark waters for upwards of ten minutes. Meanwhile I was gazing at her from the gangway, where I stood in the dusk fidgeting exceedingly. For what was in my mind? Suppose she should fling herself overboard!’

Her violet eyes rested thoughtfully upon my face. ‘I should not have been afraid,’ she exclaimed, with a faint touch of scorn which made wonderfully sapid her voice that was low and colourless.

‘Of course you know your own sister,’ said I. ‘Finn took your view. I mentioned my misgiving, and his long head waggled most prosaically in the moonlight.’

‘Women who behave as my sister has, Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed with the gravity of a young philosopher, ‘are too selfish, too cowardly, too much in love with themselves and with life to act as you seem to fear my sister might. They may go mad, and then to be sure there is an end of all reasoning about them; but whilst they have their senses they may be trusted so far as they themselves are concerned. In perfectly sane people many noble qualities go to impulses or resolutions which are deemed rash and impious by persons who falter over the mere telling of such deeds. My sister has not a single noble quality in her. She may poison the lives of others, but she will be extremely careful to preserve her own.’

‘Now if I had said that——’ said I.

‘Oh,’ she answered, with the little colour that had come into her cheeks fading out of them, ‘I will never reproach you for telling the truth.’

[251]

After breakfast I went to Wilfrid’s cabin and found him up and dressed, sitting in an easy chair reading his diary, which I took the book to be. He held the volume close to his face; his legs were crossed, his feet in slippers, his right hand grasped his big meerschaum pipe which was filled with yellow tobacco not yet lighted. The cabin window was open and the draperies of the handsome little apartment stirred to the pouring of the rich, hot ocean breeze through the orifice.

‘You look vastly comfortable, Wilf,’ said I. ‘Glad to find you well. But it must be a bit dull here though?’

‘Not at all,’ said he, putting down the book and lighting his pipe. ‘Sit and smoke with me.’

‘Why not on deck?’ I answered, sitting, nevertheless. ‘A wide view in hot weather takes the place of a cool atmosphere. The sight is sensible of the heat as well as other organs. It may be cooler down here in reality than it is under the awning above, but these cribbed and coffined bulkheads make it very hot to the eye, spite of that pleasant gushing of wind there.’

He quietly sucked at his pipe, looking at me through the wreathes of tobacco smoke which went up from his bowl. I lighted a cigar, furtively observing his face as I did so. He was pale: there was nothing novel in that, but I noticed an expression of anxiety in his eyes that was new to me: a look of sane concern as though some difficulty novel and surprising, yet not of a character to strike deep, had befallen him. I glanced at the breakfast tray that was upon the table near which he was seated and easily guessed by what remained that he had made a good meal. His manner was quiet, even subdued; no symptoms of the old jerkiness, of the odd probing gestures of head with a thrust of his mind, as it were, into one’s face as if his intellect were as short-sighted as his eyes. He was airily clothed in white, a coloured shirt wide open at the collar, and a small silk cap of a jockey pattern was perched upon his head.

‘Has Finn removed the five-guinea piece from the mainmast? said he?’

‘I don’t know, Wilf.’

‘I must send word to him to take charge of it, and to tell the men that the money will be distributed among them on our arrival. I shall be glad to get home.’

‘And so shall I, upon my word.’

‘The ceaseless motion of the sea,’ he continued, talking quietly and with a more sensible look in his face than I had witnessed in him since the hour of our start, ‘grows so distractingly monotonous after a time, that I can readily believe it affects weak heads. This trip has about exhausted my love of seafaring. I shall sell the “Bride.”’

I nodded.

‘How long should the run home occupy us?’ he asked.

[252]

‘Let us call it a month, or five weeks at the outside, for everybody’s sake,’ I answered.

He smoked for a minute in silence with a thoughtful face and then said, ‘Five weeks in one’s cabin is a long imprisonment.’

I imagined he referred to his wife, and that he was feeling his way in this roundabout fashion to talk about her. ‘There is no necessity to be imprisoned for five weeks,’ said I. ‘Your yacht is not an ocean liner full of passengers whose stares and whispers might indeed prove embarrassing. So far as I am concerned I am quite willing to promise very honestly never even to look. Miss Jennings is all tenderness and sweetness and sympathy; there could be nothing to found a plea for seclusion upon in her presence. As to the sailors,’ I continued, noticing without comprehending an air of bewilderment that was growing upon his face as I talked, ‘Jack meets with so many astonishments in his vocation that surprise and curiosity are almost lost arts with him. The crew will take one long thirsty stare; then turn their quids and give what passes aft no further heed whatever.’

‘I don’t follow you,’ he exclaimed, poising his pipe, with his eyes intently fixed on me; ‘what are you talking about?’

‘You were speaking of the tediousness of a five weeks’ imprisonment!’

‘Quite right,’ said he, ‘and tedious it is if it’s to last five weeks.’

‘But, my dear Wilfrid, I was endeavouring to point out that the imprisonment to which you refer is unnecessary; in fact, after last night——’ But here I suddenly bit my lip to the perception that it would be rash and unwise on my part to let him know that his wife had been present at Colonel Hope-Kennedy’s burial. ‘What I mean is,’ I continued, talking rapidly, ‘if it’s a mere question of sensitiveness or pride recoiling from observation, why not imitate the great Mokanna:
“O’er his features hung
The Veil, the Silver Veil which he had flung
In mercy there to hide from human sight
His dazzling brow till men could bear its light.”

In our case we have no dazzling brow, and consequently require no silver veils; but in Miss Laura’s wardrobe there should be——’

He was now gaping at me, and cried out, ‘Your brain wanders this morning, Charles. Do you mean that I should go veiled?’

‘You!’ I exclaimed; ‘certainly not. I am not talking of you.’

‘But I am talking of myself, though,’ he cried.

I looked at him with amazement. ‘You do not mean to say that you intend to imprison yourself in this cabin till we get home?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t imprison myself,’ he answered, ‘I am imprisoned.’

‘By whom, pray?’

‘Can’t you see?’

[253]

I ran my eyes round the cabin.

‘No, no!’ he shouted, ‘look at me. Don’t you perceive that I can’t get out? How am I to pass through that door?’

‘How are you to pass through that door?’ I exclaimed; ‘Why, by walking through it, of course. How else!’

‘Ay, and that’s just what I can’t do,’ said he with a melancholy shake of the head.

‘But why not, Wilfrid?’ I cried, scarcely yet understanding how it was with him.

‘Because,’ he answered petulantly, looking down himself, then at his arms and legs, ‘I am too big.’

I perceived now what had come to him, and felt so dismayed, so grieved, so pained, I may say to the very heart, that for some moments I was unable to speak. However, with a violent effort I pulled myself together, and lighting my cigar afresh in a demonstrative way, for the mere sake of obtaining what concealment I could get out of my gestures and my puffing of the tobacco clouds, I said, ‘Big you always were, Wilfrid; but never so big—and not now so big—as not to be able to pass through that door. See! let me go first; put your two hands just above my hips and you’ll follow me through as easily as reeving a rope’s end through the sheave hole it belongs to.’

I rose, but he waved me off with an almost frantic gesture. ‘My God, man!’ he shouted, ‘What is the use of talking? I could no more get through that door than I could pass through that porthole.’

‘But don’t you think we might manage to haul you through?’ said I.

‘You’d tear me to pieces,’ he answered. ‘Sit down, my dear fellow,’ he continued, speaking with an almost cheerful note in his voice, ‘it is a very grave inconvenience, but it must be met. This cabin is commodious, and with you and Laura to come and keep me company, and with the further solace of my pipe and books, why I shall be very nearly as well off as if I could get on deck. Besides,’ he added, lifting his finger and addressing me with that old air of cunning I have again and again referred to, made boyish and pathetic by the quivering of his eyelids and the knowing look his mouth put on, ‘even if I was not too much swelled to pass through that door,’ he glanced at it as if it were a living thing that demanded respectful speech from him, ‘I should never be able to get through the companion hatch.’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘it no doubt is as you say. A little patience and you will find yourself equal, I am sure, to leaving your cabin. If not, and you fear the idea of a squeeze, there is always your carpenter at hand. A few blows dealt at yonder bulkhead would make room for an elephant.’

‘Ay, that would be all very well,’ said he, ‘so far as this cabin is concerned. But would you have me order the carpenter to rip up the deck with leagues of Atlantic weather right ahead of us?’

[254]

I feigned to agree. No useful result could possibly follow any sort of reasoning with him whilst this extraordinary fancy possessed his brain. I watched him attentively to remark if he moved or acted as if his hallucination involved physical conditions, as if, in short he was sensible of the weight and unwieldiness of excessive growth in his body and limbs: for I remembered the case of a man I once heard of, who, believing himself to have grown enormously corpulent in a single night, acted the part of an immensely fat man by breathing pursily and with labour, by grasping his stomach as though it stood out a considerable distance ahead of him, and by other samples of behaviour which in his madness he might imagine properly belonged to the obese. But I could detect no conduct of this sort in Wilfrid outside that inspection of himself which I mentioned when he first told me that he had grown too big to quit his cabin.

I changed the subject and sat talking with him for a long half-hour. He asked no questions about his wife, nor as to the disposal of the Colonel’s body, nor reverted to the extent of the faintest implication to the incidents of the preceding day. Yet he conversed with perfect rationality; his manners were bland, with something of dignity in them; it seemed, indeed, as if the poor fellow’s craziness had localised itself in this new and astounding fancy of his being unable to squeeze his way through on deck, leaving his mind in all other directions clear and serene; yet mad as was the notion that had now seized him, I could not but secretly feel that there was more madness yet in his insensibility to what had happened, as though, indeed, the light of memory in him had been extinguished and he was conscious of nothing but what was actually passing before his eyes.

I held my peace on this new and astonishing craze, fancying that at any hour I might find him on deck and his delusion gone. At dinner, however, that day Miss Laura noticed his absence. My silence, I suppose, convinced her that there was something wrong with him. She questioned me and I told her the truth. Her eyes filled with sadness.

‘He grows worse,’ she said. ‘I fear he will never recover.’

‘This marriage,’ I answered, ‘on top of what was congenital in him, has proved too much. Have you seen your sister to-day?’

‘No.’

‘Does she intend to keep her cabin until we reach England?’

‘I cannot say. She declines to see me.’

‘Yet she has turned you out of your berth, and does not scruple, I suppose, to use everything that you possess. Well, we are a queer little ship, I must say; the husband self-imprisoned by fancy on one side, and a wife self-imprisoned by heaven knows what emotions on the other side; and both doors within kick of a foot from either threshold. It is a picture to encourage an ingenuous mind fired with matrimonial resolutions!’

‘Men are fools to get married!’ she exclaimed piquantly.

[255]

‘And women?’ said I.

‘Oh, it is the business of women to make men fools,’ she answered.

Her clear eye rested serenely on mine, and she spoke without archness or sarcasm.

‘I don’t think,’ said I, ‘that women make fools of men, but that it is men who make fools of themselves. Yet this I vow before all the gods: if I had married a woman like your sister and she had served me as she has served her husband, I should wish to be mad as Wilfrid is. He does not ask after her, seems to have utterly forgotten her and the fellow who was sent to his rest yesterday. Oh, how delightful! Why, you hear of women like Lady Monson driving their spouses into hideous courses of life, forcing them to search for oblivion in drink, gambling, and so on until they end as penniless miscreants, as broken-down purple-nosed rogues, and all for love, forsooth! But how is Wilfrid served? Some wild-eyed imagination slips into his brain, turns all the paintings to the wall, and with nimble hands falls to work to garnish the galleries inside his skull with tapestry hangings which engage his mind to the forgetting of all things else.’

‘But, Mr. Monson,’ cried she, ‘surely with some little trouble one might succeed in persuading him, whilst feigning to admit he has increased in size, that he is not too big to pass through his door.’

‘Let us pay him a visit,’ said I.

She at once rose. We had finished dinner some time. I had been chatting with her over such slender dessert as a yacht’s stores in those days supplied—figs, nuts, raisins, biscuits, and the like. The westering sun coloured the cabin with a ruby atmosphere amid which the wines on the table glowed in rich contrast with the snow-white damask and the icy sparkle of crystal, whilst red stars trembled in the silver lamps with a soft crimson lustre, flaking, as it seemed, upon the eye out of the mirrors. The humming wind gushed pleasantly through the open skylight and down the hatchway, and set the leaves of the plants dancing and the ferns gracefully nodding. To think of the woman for whom all this show was designed, for whom all these elegancies were heaped together, the mistress indeed of the gallant and beautiful little fabric that was bearing us with a pretty sauciness over this sea of sapphir, and under this reddening equinoctial heaven, sulking in her cabin, a disgraced, a degraded, a socially ruined creature, imprisoned by her own hand, and pride acting the part of turnkey to her! But Miss Jennings was making her way to Wilfrid’s cabin, and there was no leisure now for moralising.

We entered. The remains of the dinner my cousin had been served with were still upon his table, and I gathered that he had done exceedingly well. This did not look as though he suspected that eating had anything to do with his sudden astonishing growth. He had emptied one pint bottle of champagne, and another about[256] a quarter full stood at his elbow with a bumper, just poured out apparently, alongside it. He had attired himself in dress clothes again, and sat with an air of state and dignity in his armchair, toying with a large cigar not yet lighted.

‘How d’ye do, Laura, my dear? Sit down. Sit, Charles. There is plenty of room for slender people like you.’

I placed a chair for Miss Jennings and vaulted into Wilfrid’s bunk, for though the cabin was roomy in proportion to the burthen of the yacht, the accommodation was by no means ample owing to the furniture that crowded the deck. His high cheek-bones were flushed, a sort of glassiness coated his eyes, but this I readily ascribed to the champagne; the interior was hot, and Miss Laura cooled her sweet face with a black fan that hung at her waist. My cousin watched her uneasily as if he feared she would see something in him to divert her.

‘Do you feel now, Wilfrid,’ said I, ‘as if you could get on deck?’

‘Oh, certainly not,’ he answered warmly, ‘I wonder that you should ask such a question. Compare my figure with that door.’

He looked at Miss Laura with a shrug of his shoulders as though he pitied me.

‘Surely, Wilfrid,’ she exclaimed, ‘you could pass through quite easily, and without hurting yourself at all.’

‘Quite easily! Yes, in pieces!’ he cried scornfully. ‘But it is not that you are both blind. Your wish is to humour me. Please do nothing of the sort. What I can see, you can see. Look at this bulk.’ He put down his cigar to grasp his breast with both hands. ‘Look at these,’ he continued, slapping first an arm, then a leg. ‘It is a most fortunate thing that I should have broadened only. Had I increased correspondingly in height, I should not have been able to stand upright in this cabin,’ and he directed a glance at the upper deck or ceiling, whilst a shiver ran through him.

I thought now I would sound his mind in fresh directions, for though whilst his present craze hung strong in him it was not likely he would quit his cabin, yet if his intellect had failed in other ways to the extent I found in this particular hallucination he would certainly have to be watched, not for his own security only, but for that of all others on board. Why, as you may suppose, his craziness took the wildest and most tragic accentuation when one thought of where one was—in the very heart of the vast Atlantic, a goodly company of us on board, a little ship that was as easily to be made a bonfire of as an empty tar-barrel, with gunpowder enough stowed somewhere away down forward to complete in a jiffy the work that the flames might be dallying with.

‘You do not inquire after Lady Monson, Wilfrid,’ said I.

Miss Jennings started and stared at me.

‘Why should I?’ he answered coldly, and deliberately producing his little tinder-box, at which he began to chip. ‘I’ll venture to say she doesn’t inquire after me.’

[257]

I was astonished by the rationality of this answer and the air of intelligence that accompanied its delivery.

‘No, I fear not,’ said I, much embarrassed. ‘As she only came on board yesterday——’

‘Well?’ he exclaimed, finding that I paused.

‘Oh,’ said I with a bit of a stammer, ‘it just occurred to me you might have forgotten that she was now one of us, journeying home.’

‘Tut, tut!’ said he, waving his hand at me, but without turning his head. ‘Laura, you are looking after her, my dear?’

‘My maid sees that she has all she requires,’ answered the girl. ‘She declines to have anything to say to me—to meet me—to hear of me.’

He nodded his head slowly and gravely at her, and lowering his voice said, ‘Can she hear us, do you think?’

‘No,’ I exclaimed, ‘not through the two bulkheads, with the width of passage between.’

He smoked leisurely whilst he kept his eyes thoughtfully bent on Miss Laura. ‘My cousin,’ said he, addressing her as though I were absent, ‘has on more than one occasion said to me, “Suppose you recover your wife, what are you going to do with her?” I have recovered her and now I will tell you my intentions. Laura, you know I adored her.’ She inclined her head. ‘What term would you apply to a woman,’ he proceeded, ‘who should abandon a devoted husband that worshipped the ground she walked upon? who should desert the sweetest little infant’—I thought his voice would falter here, but it was as steady as the fixed regard of his eyes—‘that ever came from heaven to fill a mother’s heart with love? who should forfeit a position of distinction and opulence,—who should stealthily creep like a thief in the night from a home of beauty, of elegance, and of splendour; who should do all this for an end of such depravity that it must be nameless?’ his forefinger shot up with a jerk and his eyes glowed under the trembling of the lids. ‘What is the term you would apply to such a woman?’ he continued, now scowling and with an imperious note in his voice.

I guessed the word that was in his mind and cried, ‘Why, mad of course.’

‘Mad!’ he thundered violently, slapping his knee and breaking into a short, semi-delirious laugh. He leaned forward as though he would take Miss Laura into his strictest confidence, and putting his hand to the side of his mouth he whispered, ‘She is mad. We none of us knew it, Laura. My first act, then, when we reach home will be to confine her. But not a word, mind!’ He held his finger to his lips and in that posture slowly leaned back in his chair again, with a face painful with its smile of cunning and triumph.

I saw that the girl was getting scared; so without ado I dropped out of the bunk on to my feet.

[258]

‘An excellent scheme, Wilfrid,’ said I; ‘in fact the only thing to be done. But, my dear fellow, d’ye know the atmosphere here is just roasting. I’ll take Miss Jennings on deck for a turn, and when I am cooled down a bit I’ll look in upon you for another yarn for half-an-hour before turning in.’

‘All right,’ he exclaimed. ‘Laura looks as if she wants some fresh air. Send one of the stewards to me, will you, as you pass through the cabin? But mind, both of you—hush! Not a word; you understand?’

‘Trust us,’ said I, and sick at heart I took Miss Laura’s hand and led her out of the cabin. As I closed the door she reeled and would have fallen but for the arm I passed round her. I conducted her to a couch and procured a glass of water. The atmosphere here was comparatively cool with the evening air breezing down through the wide skylight, and she quickly recovered.

‘It is terrible!’ she exclaimed, pressing her fingers to her eyes and shaking her head. ‘I should fall crazy myself were I much with him. His sneers, his smiles, his looks, the boyish air of his face too! The thought of his misery, his injury, the irreparable wrong done him—poor Wilf, poor Wilf!’ Her tender heart gave way and she wept piteously.

When she was somewhat composed she fetched a hat and accompanied me on deck. The dusk down to the horizon was clear and fine, richly spangled to where the hard black line of the ocean ruled the firmament. On high sailed many meteors, like flying-fish sparking out of the dark velvet; some of them scoring under the trembling constellations a silver wake that lingered long on the eye and resembled a length of moon-coloured steam slowly settling away before the breath of a soft air. There were many shooting stars, too, without the comet-like grace of the meteoric flights; sharp, bounding sparkles that made one think of the flashing of muskets levelled at the ocean by visionary hands in the hovering, star-laden gloom. The wind was failing; the yacht was sailing with erect masts with a rhythmic swinging of the hollows of her canvas to the light weather rolls of the vessel on the tender undulations. It was like the regular breathing of each great white breast. The dew was heavy and cooled the draught as a fountain the atmosphere round about it. A little sleepy noise of purring froth came from the bows. All was hushed along the decks, though as the yacht lifted forward I could make out some figures pacing the forecastle, apparently with naked feet, for no footfall reached the ear.

‘Alas,’ said I, ‘the wind is failing. I dread the stagnation of these waters. I have heard of ships lying becalmed here for two and three months at a stretch; in all those hideous days of frying suns and steaming nights scarce traversing twenty leagues.’

‘We were becalmed a fortnight on the Line,’ said Miss Laura, ‘on our passage to England. It seemed a year. Everybody grew quarrelsome, and I believe there was a mutiny amongst the crew.’

[259]

‘Oh, I hate the dead calm at sea!’ I cried. ‘Yet I fear we are booked. Look straight up, Miss Jennings, you will behold a very storm of shooting stars. When I was in these waters, but much more west and east than where we now are, I took notice that whenever the sky shed meteors in any abundance a calm followed, and the duration of the stagnant time was in proportion to the abundance of the silver discharge. But who is that standing aft by the wheel there?’

My question was heard and answered. ‘It’s me—Capt’n Finn, sir.’

‘We’re in for a calm, I fear, Finn.’

‘I fear so, sir,’ he answered, slowly coming over to us. ‘Great pity though. I was calculating upon the little breeze to-day lasting to draw us out of this here belt. Them shooting stars too ain’t wholesome. Some says they signifies wind, and so they may to the norrards, but not down here. Beg pardon, Mr. Monson, but how is Sir Wilfrid, sir? Han’t seen him on deck all day. I hope his honour’s pretty well?’

‘Come this way, Finn,’ said I.

The three of us stepped to the weather rail, somewhat forward, clear of the ears of the helmsman.

‘Captain,’ said I, ‘my cousin’s very bad and I desire to talk to you about him.’

‘Sorry to hear it, sir,’ he answered in a voice of concern; ‘the heat’s a-trying him, may be.’

‘He refuses to leave his cabin,’ said I, ‘and why, think you? Because he has got it into his head that he has grown too broad to pass through the door or even to squeeze through that hatch there.’

‘Gor bless me!’ he exclaimed, ‘what a notion to take on. And yet it ain’t the first time I’ve heard of such whims. I was once shipmate with a man who believed his nose to be a knife. I’ve seen him a trying to cut up tobacco with it. There’s no arguing with people when they gets them tempers.’

‘But don’t you think, Captain Finn,’ said Miss Jennings, ‘that with some trouble Sir Wilfrid might be coaxed into coming on deck? If he could be induced to pass through his door he would find the hatch easy. Then, when on deck, confidence would return to him and his crazy notion leave him.’

‘Won’t he make the heffort, miss?’ inquired Finn.

I answered ‘No. He says that it would tear him to pieces to be dragged through.’

‘Then, sir,’ exclaimed the skipper with energy, ‘if he says it you may depend upon it he believes it, sir, and if he believes it then I dorn’t doubt that physical force by way of getting him out of his cabin would be the most dangerous thing that could be tried. It’s all the narves, sir. Them’s an arrangement fit to bust a man open by acting upon his imagination. Mr. Monson, sir, I’ll tell’ee what once happened to me. I had a fever, and when I recovered, my narves was pretty nigh all gone. I’d cry one moment like a[260] baby, then laugh ready to split my sides over nothen at all. I took on a notion that I might lay wiolent hands on myself if the opportunity offered. It wasn’t that I wanted to hurt myself, but that I was afeered I would. I recollect being in my little parlour one day. There was a bit of a sideboard agin the wall with a drawer in which my missus kep’ the table knives we ate with. The thought of them knives gave me a fright. I wanted to leave the room, but to get to the door I should have to pass the drawer where them knives were, and I couldn’t stir. Your honour, such was the state of my narves that the agony of being dragged past that door would have been as bad as wrenching me in halves. So I got out through the window, and it was a fortnight afore I had the courage to look into that parlour again.’

‘My father knew a rich gentleman in Melbourne,’ said Miss Jennings, ‘who lost his mind. He believed that he had been changed into a cat, and all day long he would sit beside a little crevice in the wainscot of his dining-room waiting for a mouse to appear.’

‘But when it comes to imaginations of this kind,’ said I, ‘one is never to know what is going to follow. Captain Finn, my cousin may mend—I pray God he will do so, and soon——’ ‘Amen,’ quoth Finn in his deepest note. ‘Meanwhile,’ I continued, ‘I am of opinion that he should be watched.’

‘You think so, sir!’ he exclaimed.

‘Why, man, consider where we are. Send your eye into that mighty distance,’ I cried, pointing to the black junction of scintillant gloom and the spread of ocean coming to us thence in ink. ‘Think of our loneliness here and the condition that a madman’s act might reduce us to. That is not all. Lady Monson, this young lady, and her maid sleep close to his cabin. Who shall conjecture the resolution that may possess a diseased brain on a sudden? Sir Wilfrid must be watched, Finn.’

‘I agree with you, sir,’ he answered thoughtfully, ‘but—but who’s to have the ordering of it? ’Tain’t for the likes of me, sir——’ He paused, then added, ‘He’s master here, ’ee know, sir.’

‘I’ll make myself responsible,’ I exclaimed; ‘the trouble is to have him watched with the delicacy that shall defy the detection of his most suspicious humour should he put his head out of his berth or quit it—which he is not likely to do yet. Of course an eye would have to be kept upon him from without. Name me two or three of your trustiest seamen.’

‘Why sir, there’s Cutbill, a first-class man; and there’s two others, Jonathan Furlong and William Grindling, that you may put your fullest confidence in.’

‘Then,’ said I, ‘I propose that these men should take a spell of keeping a lookout turn and turn about. The stewards would have been fit persons, but they are wanting in muscle. Let the man who keeps watch in the cabin so post himself that he may command the passage where Sir Wilfrid’s berth is. You or Crimp, according as[261] your watch comes round, will see that the fellow below, whoever he may be, keeps awake. Pray attend to this, Finn. I am satisfied that it is a necessary measure.’

‘I shall have to tell old Jacob the truth, sir, and the men likewise,’ said he, ‘and also acquaint the stewards with what’s wrong, otherwise they’ll be for turning the sailor that’s sent below out of the cabin.’

‘By all means,’ said I. ‘I’ll stand your lookout whilst you are making the necessary arrangements. But see that you provide your men with some ready and quite reasonable excuse for being in the cabin should Sir Wilfrid chance to come out during the night and find one of his seamen sitting at the table.’

‘Ay, ay, sir; that’s to be managed with a little thinking,’ answered Finn, and forthwith he marched towards the forecastle into the darkness there.

‘It is fortunate,’ I said to Miss Jennings, ‘that I am Wilfrid’s cousin. If I were simply a guest on board I question if Finn would do what I want.’

We fell to pacing the deck. Even as we walked the light breeze weakened yet, till here and there you’d catch sight of the gleam of a star in some short fold of black swell running with a burnished brow. The dew to the fluttering of the canvas aloft fell to the deck with the pattering sound of raindrops.

‘Oh,’ groaned I to Miss Laura, ‘for a pair of paddle-wheels!’

We stepped to the open skylight to observe if aught were stirring below, but gladly recoiled from the gush of hot air there rising with a fiery breath stale with the smell of the dinner table spite of the sweetness put into it by the flowers. Heavens, how my very heart sickened to the slopping sounds of water alongside lifting stagnantly and sulkily, melting out into black ungleaming oil! We seated ourselves under the fanning spread of mainsail, talking of Wilfrid, of his wife, of features of the voyage, until little by little I found myself slowly sliding into a sentimental mood. My companion’s sweet face, glimmering tender and placid to the starlight, came very near into courting me into a confession of love. The helmsman was hidden from us, we seemed to be floating alone upon the mighty shadow that stretched around. A sense of inexpressible remoteness was inspired by the trembling of the luminaries and the sharp shooting of the silver meteors as though all the life of this vast hushed universe of gloom were up there, and we had come to a pause upon the very verge of creation, with no other vitality in the misty confines save what the beating of our two hearts put into them.

On a sudden she started and said, ‘See! there is my sister.’

The figure of Lady Monson rose, pale and veiled, out of the companion hatch. She did not observe us, and approached the part of the deck where we were seated, courted haply by the deeper dye the shadow of the mainsail put into the atmosphere about it. I was struck by the majesty of her gait, by the tragic dignity of[262] her carriage as she advanced, taking the planks with a subtlety of movement that made her form look to glide wraith-like. The sweet heart at my side shrank with so clear a suggestion of alarm in her manner that I took her hand and held it. Lady Monson drew close—so close without seeing us that I believed she was walking in her sleep, but she caught sight of us then and instantly flung, with an inexpressible demeanour of temper and aversion, to the other side of the deck, which she paced, going afterwards to the rail and overhanging it, motionless as the quarter-boat that hung a little past her.

‘She frightens me!’ whispered Laura; ‘ought I to join her? Oh, cruel, cruel, that she should hate me so bitterly for her own acts!’

‘Why should you join her? She does not want you. The heat has driven her on deck, and she wishes to muse and perhaps moralise over the Colonel’s grave. Why are you afraid of her?’

‘Because I am a coward.’

Just then Finn came along. He went up to Lady Monson and I saw his figure stagger against the starlight when he discovered his mistake. He peered about and then came over to us, breathing hard and polishing his forehead.

‘Nigh took the breath out of my body, sir,’ he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper; ‘actually thought it was your honour, so tall she be. Well, I’ve arranged everything, sir, and a lookout’ll be established soon arter the cabin light’s turned down.’

Laura suddenly rose and wished me good-night. I could see that Lady Monson’s presence rendered her too uneasy to remain on deck, so I did not press her to stay, though I remember heartily wishing that her ladyship was still on board the ‘’Liza Robbins.’ She continued to hold her stirless posture at the bulwark rail as though she were steadily thinking herself into stone. But for her contemptuous and insolent manner of turning from us, I believe I should have found spirit enough to attempt a conversation with her. It was not until four bells that she rose suddenly from her inclined attitude as though startled by the clear echoing chimes. Past her the sky was dimly reddening to the moon whose disc still floated below the horizon, and against the delicate almost dream-like flush, I perceived her toss up her veil and press her hands to her face. She then veiled herself afresh, came to the companion and disappeared. Was it remorse working in her, or grief for her foundered colonel, or some anguish born of the thought of her child? Easier, I thought, to fathom with the sight the mysteries of the ooze of the black, vaporous-looking surface that our keel was scarce now wrinkling than to penetrate the secrets of a heart as dark as hers!

Half-an-hour later I quitted the deck, and as I passed through the cabin nodded to Cutbill, who sat awkwardly and with a highly embarrassed air with his back upon the cabin table, commanding the after cabins—a huge salt, all whisker, wrinkles, and muscle.