... Rashly,
And praised be rashness for it....
Up from my cabin,
My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark
Groped I to find out them... making so bold,
My fears forgetting manners.
Give me leave: here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good.
Let us know
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well
... and that should learn us
There's a divinity that shapes our ends
Rough-hew them how we will.—Hamlet.
ASINGLE cry of terror was all that Daireen uttered as she fell back upon her berth. An instant more and she was standing with white lips, and hands that were untrembling as the rigid hand of a dead person. She knew what was to be done as plainly as if she saw everything in a picture. She rushed into the saloon and mounted the companion to the deck. There sat the little group astern just as she had seen them an hour before, only that the doctor had fallen asleep under the influence of one of the less pointed of the major's stories.
“God bless my soul!” cried the major, as the girl clutched the back of his chair.
“Good heavens, Miss Gerald, what is the matter?” said Harwood, leaping to his feet.
She pointed to the white wake of the ship.
“There—there,” she whispered—“a man—drowning—clinging to something—a wreck—I saw him!”
“Dear me! dear me!” said the major, in a tone of relief, and with a breath of a smile.
But the special correspondent had looked into the girl's face. It was his business to understand the difference between dreaming and waking. He was by the side of the officer on watch in a moment. A few words were enough to startle the officer into acquiescence with the demands of the “special.” The unwonted sound of the engine-room telegraph was heard, its tinkle shaking the slumbers of the chief engineer as effectively as if it had been the thunder of an alarum peal.
The stopping of the engine, the blowing off of the steam, and the arrival of the captain upon the deck, were simultaneous occurrences. The officer's reply to his chief as he hurried aft did not seem to be very satisfactory, judging from the manner in which it was received.
But Harwood had left the officer to explain the stoppage of the vessel, and was now kneeling by the side of the chair, back upon which lay the unconscious form of Daireen, while the doctor was forcing some brandy—all that remained in the major's tumbler—between her lips, and a young sailor—the one who had been at the rail in the morning—chafed her pallid hand. The major was scanning the expanse of water by aid of his pilot glass, and the quartermaster who had been steering went to the line of the patent log to haul it in—his first duty at any time on the stopping of the vessel, to prevent the line—the strain being taken off it—fouling with the propeller.
When the steamer is under weigh it is the work of two sailors to take in the eighty fathoms of log-line, otherwise, however, the line is of course quite slack; it was thus rather inexplicable to the quartermaster to find much more resistance to his first haul than if the vessel were going full speed ahead.
“The darned thing's fouled already,” he murmured for his own satisfaction. He could not take in a fathom, so great was the resistance.
“Hang it all, major,” said the captain, “isn't this too bad? Bringing the ship to like this, and—ah, here they come! All the ship's company will be aft in a minute.”
“Rum, my boy, very rum,” muttered the sympathetic major.
“What's the matter, captain?” said one voice.
“Is there any danger?” asked a tremulous second.
“If it's a collision or a leak, don't keep it from us, sir,” came a stern contralto. For in various stages of toilet incompleteness the passengers were crowding out of the cabin.
But before the “unhappy master” could utter a word of reply, the sailor had touched his cap and reported to the third mate:
“Log-line fouled on wreck, sir.”
“By gad!” shouted the major, who was twisting the log-line about, and peering into the water. “By gad, the girl was right! The line has fouled on some wreck, and there is a body made fast to it.”
The captain gave just a single glance in the direction indicated. .
“Stand by gig davits and lower away,” he shouted to the watch, who had of course come aft.
The men ran to where the boat was hanging, and loosened the lines.
“Oh, Heaven preserve us! they are taking to the boats!” cried a female passenger.
“Don't be a fool, my good woman,” said Mrs. Crawford tartly. The major's wife had come on deck in a most marvellous costume, and she was already holding a sal-volatile bottle to Daireen's nose, having made a number of inquiries of Mr. Harwood and the doctor.
All the other passengers had crowded to the ship's side, and were watching the men in the boat cutting at something which had been reached at the end of the log-line. They could see the broken stump of a mast and the cross-trees, but nothing further.
“They have got it into the boat,” said the major, giving the result of his observation through the binocular.
“For Heaven's sake, ladies, go below!” cried the captain. But no one moved.
“If you don't want to see the ghastly corpse of a drowned man gnawed by fishes for weeks maybe, you had better go down, ladies,” said the chief officer. Still no one stirred.
The major, who was an observer of nature, smiled and winked sagaciously at the exasperated captain before he said:
“Why should the ladies go down at all? it's a pleasant night, and begad, sir, a group of nightcaps like this isn't to be got together more than once in a lifetime.” Before the gallant officer had finished his sentence the deck was cleared of women; but, of course, the luxury of seeing a dead body lifted from the boat being too great to be missed, the starboard cabin ports had many faces opposite them.
The doctor left Daireen to the care of Mrs. Crawford, saying that she would recover consciousness in a few minutes, and he hastened with a kaross to the top of the boiler, where he had shouted to the men in the boat to carry the body.
The companion-rail having been lowered, it was an easy matter for the four men to take the body on deck and to lay it upon the tiger-skin before the doctor, who rubbed his hands—an expression which the seamen interpreted as meaning satisfaction.
“Gently, my men, raise his head—so—throw the light on his face. By George, he doesn't seem to have suffered from the oysters; there's hope for him yet.”
And the compassionate surgeon began cutting the clothing from the limbs of the body.
“No, don't take the pieces away,” he said to one of the men; “let them remain here Now dry his arms carefully, and we'll try and get some air into his lungs, if they're not already past work.”
But before the doctor had commenced his operations the ship's gig had been hauled up once more to the davits, and the steamer was going ahead at slow speed.
“Keep her at slow until the dawn,” said the captain to the officer on watch. “And let there be a good lookout; there may be others floating upon the wreck. Call me if the doctor brings the body to life.”
The captain did not think it necessary to view the body that had been snatched from the deep. The captain was a compassionate man and full of tender feeling; he was exceedingly glad that he had had it in his power to pick up that body, even with the small probability there was of being able to restore life to its frozen blood; but he would have been much more grateful to Providence had it been so willed that it should have been picked up without the necessity of stopping the engines of the steamer for nearly a quarter of an hour. It was explained to him that Miss Gerald had been the first to see the face of the man upon the wreck, but he could scarcely understand how it was possible for her to have seen it from her cabin. He was also puzzled to know how it was that the log-line had not been carried away so soon as it was entangled in such a large mass of wreck when the steamer was going at full speed. He, however, thought it as well to resume his broken slumbers without waiting to solve either of these puzzling questions.
But the chief officer who was now on watch, when the deck was once more deserted—Daireen having been taken down to her cabin—made the attempt to account for both of these occurrences. He found that the girl's cabin was not far astern of the companion-rail that had been lowered during the day, and he saw that, in the confusion of weighing anchor in the dimness, a large block with its gear which was used in the hauling of the vegetable baskets aboard, had been allowed to hang down the side of the ship between the steps of the rail; and upon the hook of the block, almost touching the water, he found some broken cordage. He knew then that the hook had caught fast in the cordage of the wreck as the steamer went past, and the wreck had swung round until it was just opposite the girl's cabin, when the cordage had given way; not, however, until some of the motion of the ship had been communicated to the wreck so that there was no abrupt strain put on the log-line when it had become entangled. It was all plain to the chief officer, as no doubt it would have been to the captain had he waited to search out the matter.
So soon as the body had been brought aboard the ship all the interest of the passengers seemed to subside, and the doctor was allowed to pursue his experiments of resuscitation without inquiry. The chief officer being engaged at his own business of working out the question of the endurance of the log-line, and keeping a careful lookout for any other portions of wreck, had almost forgotten that the doctor and two of the sailors were applying a series of restoratives to the body of the man who had been detached from the wreck. It was nearly two hours after he had come on watch that one of the sailors—the one who had been kneeling by the side of Daireen—came up to the chief officer presenting Doctor Campion's compliments, with the information that the man was breathing.
In accordance with the captain's instructions, the chief officer knocked at the cabin door and repeated the message.
“Breathing is he?” said the captain rather sleepily. “Very good, Mr. Holden; I'm glad to hear it. Just call me again in case he should relapse.”
The captain had hitherto, in alluding to the man, made use of the neuter pronoun, but now that breath was restored he acknowledged his right to a gender.
“Very good, sir,” replied the officer, closing the door.
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape.
What may this mean
That thou, dead corse, again...
Revisit'st thus...?
I hope your virtues
Will bring him to his wonted way again.—Hamlet.
IT was the general opinion in the cabin that Miss Gerald—the young lady who was in such an exclusive set—had shown very doubtful taste in being the first to discover the man upon the wreck. Every one had, of course, heard the particulars of the matter from the steward's assistants, who had in turn been in communication with the watch on deck. At any rate, it was felt by the ladies that it showed exceedingly bad taste in Miss Gerald to take such steps as eventually led to the ladies appearing on deck in incomplete toilettes. There was, indeed, a very pronounced feeling against Miss Gerald; several representatives of the other sections of the cabin society declaring that they could not conscientiously admit Miss Gerald into their intimacy. That dreadful designing old woman, the major's wife, might do as she pleased, they declared, and so might Mrs. Butler and her daughter, who were only the near relatives of some Colonial Governor, but such precedents should be by no means followed, the ladies of this section announced to each other. But as Daireen had never hitherto found it necessary to fall back upon any of the passengers outside her own set, the resolution of the others, even if it had come to her ears, would not have caused her any great despondency.
The captain made some inquiries of the doctor in the morning, and learned that the rescued man was breathing, though still unconscious. Mr. Harwood showed even a greater anxiety to hear from Mrs. Crawford about Daireen, after the terrible night she had gone through, and he felt no doubt proportionately happy when he was told that she was now sleeping, having passed some hours in feverish excitement. Daireen had described to Mrs. Crawford how she had seen the face looking up to her from the water, and Mr. Harwood, hearing this, and making a careful examination of the outside of the ship in the neighbourhood of Daireen's cabin, came to the same conclusion as that at which the chief officer had arrived.
Mrs. Crawford tried to make Mr. Glaston equally interested in her protégée, but she was scarcely successful.
“How brave it was in the dear child, was it not, Mr. Glaston?” she asked. “Just imagine her glancing casually out of the port—thinking, it maybe, of her father, who is perhaps dying at the Cape”—the good lady felt that this bit of poetical pathos might work wonders with Mr. Glaston—“and then,” she continued, “fancy her seeing that terrible, ghastly thing in the water beneath her! What must her feelings have been as she rushed on deck and gave the alarm that caused that poor wretch to be saved! Wonderful, is it not?”
But Mr. Glaston's face was quite devoid of expression on hearing this powerful narrative. The introduction of the pathos even did not make him wince; and there was a considerable pause before he said the few words that he did.
“Poor child,” he murmured. “Poor child. It was very melodramatic—terribly melodramatic; but she is still young, her taste is—ah—plastic. At least I hope so.”
Mrs. Crawford began to feel that, after all, it was something to have gained this expression of hope from Mr. Glaston, though her warmth of feeling did undoubtedly receive a chill from his manner. She did not reflect that there is a certain etiquette to be observed in the saving of the bodies as well as the souls of people, and that the aesthetic element, in the opinion of some people, should enter largely into every scheme of salvation, corporeal as well as spiritual.
The doctor was sitting with Major Crawford when the lady joined them a few minutes after her conversation with Mr. Glaston, and never had Mrs. Crawford fancied that her husband's old friend could talk in such an affectionate way as he now did about the rescued man. She could almost bring herself to believe that she saw the tears of emotion in his eyes as he detailed the circumstances of the man's resuscitation. The doctor felt personally obliged to him for his handsome behaviour in bearing such testimony to the skill of his resuscitator.
When the lady spoke of the possibilities of a relapse, the doctor's eyes glistened at first, but under the influence of maturer thought, he sighed and shook his head. No, he knew that there are limits to the generosity of even a half-strangled man—a relapse was too much to hope for; but the doctor felt at that instant that if this “case” should see its way to a relapse, and subsequently to submit to be restored, it would place itself under a lasting obligation to its physician.
Surely, thought Mrs. Crawford, when the doctor talks of the stranger with such enthusiasm he will go into raptures about Daireen; so she quietly alluded to the girl's achievement. But the doctor could see no reason for becoming ecstatic about Miss Gerald. Five minutes with the smelling-bottle had restored her to consciousness.
“Quite a trifle—overstrung nerves, you know,” he said, as he lit another cheroot.
“But think of her bravery in keeping strong until she had told you all that she had seen!” said the lady. “I never heard of anything so brave! Just fancy her looking out of the port—thinking of her father perhaps”—the lady went on to the end of that pathetic sentence of hers, but it had no effect upon the doctor.
“True, very true!” he muttered, looking at his watch.
But the major was secretly convulsed for some moments after his wife had spoken her choice piece of pathos, and though he did not betray himself, she knew well all that was in his mind, and so turned away without a further word. So soon as she was out of hearing, the major exchanged confidential chuckles with his old comrade.
“He is not what you'd call a handsome man as he lies at present, Campion,” remarked Mr. Harwood, strolling up later in the day. “But you did well not to send him to the forecastle, I think; he has not been a sailor.”
“I know it, my boy,” said the doctor. “He is not a handsome man, you say, and I agree with you that he is not seen to advantage just now; but I made up my mind an hour after I saw him that he was not for the forecastle, or even the forecabin.”
“I dare say you are right,” said Harwood. “Yes; there is a something in his look that half drowning could not kill. That was the sort of thing you felt, eh?”
“Nothing like it,” said the mild physician. “It was this,” he took out of his pocket an envelope, from which he extracted a document that he handed to Harwood.
It was an order for four hundred pounds, payable by a certain bank in England, and granted by the Sydney branch of the Australasian Banking Company to one Mr. Oswin Markham.
“Ah, I see; he is a gentleman,” said Harwood, returning the order. It had evidently suffered a sea-change, but it had been carefully dried by the doctor.
“Yes, he is a gentleman,” said the doctor. “That is what I remarked when I found this in a flask in one of his pockets. Sharp thing to do, to keep a paper free from damp and yet to have it in a buoyant case. Devilish sharp thing!”
“And the man's name is this—Oswin Markham?” said the major.
“No doubt about it,” said the doctor.
“None whatever; unless he stole the order from the rightful owner, and meant to get it cashed at his leisure,” remarked Harwood.
“Then he must have stolen the shirt, the collar, and the socks of Oswin Markham,” snarled the doctor. “All these things of his are marked as plain as red silk can do it.”
“Any man who would steal an order for four hundred pounds would not hesitate about a few toilet necessaries.”
“Maybe you'll suggest to the skipper the need to put him in irons as soon as he is sufficiently recovered to be conscious of an insult,” cried the doctor in an acrid way that received a sympathetic chuckle from the major. “Young man, you've got your brain too full of fancies—a devilish deal, sir; they do well enough retailed for the readers of theDominant Trumpeter, but sensible people don't want to hear them.”
“Then I won't force them upon you and Crawford, my dear Campion,” said Harwood, walking away, for he knew that upon some occasions the doctor should be conciliated, and in the matter of a patient every allowance should be made for his warmth of feeling. So long as one of his “cases” paid his skill the compliment of surviving any danger, he spoke well of the patient; but when one behaved so unhandsomely as to die, it was with the doctorDe mortuis nil nisi malum. Harwood knew this, and so he walked away.
And now that he found himself—or rather made himself—alone, he thought over all the events of the previous eventful day; but somehow there did not seem to be any event worth remembering that was not associated with Daireen Gerald. He recollected how he had watched her when they had been together among the lovely gardens of the island slope. As she turned her eyes seaward with an earnest, sad,questioninggaze, he felt that he had never seen a picture so full of beauty.
The words he had spoken to her, telling her that the day he had spent on the island was the happiest of his life, were true indeed; he had never felt so happy; and now as he reflected upon his after-words his conscience smote him for having pretended to her that he was thinking of the place where he knew her thoughts had carried her: he had seen from her face that she was dreaming about her Irish home, and he had made her feel that the recollection of the lough and the mountains was upon his mind also. He felt now how coarse had been his deception.
He then recalled the final scene of the night, when, as he was trying to pursue his own course of thought, and at the same time pretend to be listening to the major's thrice-told tale of a certain colonel's conduct at the Arradambad station, the girl had appeared before them like a vision. Yes, it was altogether a remarkable day even for a special correspondent. The reflection upon its events made him very thoughtful during the entire of this afternoon. Nor was he at all disturbed by the information Doctor Campion brought vo him just when he was going for his usual smoke upon the bridge, while the shore of Palma was yet in view not far astern.
“Good fellow he is,” murmured the doctor. “Capital fellow! opened his eyes just now when I was in his cabin—recovered consciousness in a moment.”
“Ah, in a moment?” said Harwood dubiously. “I thought it always needed the existence of some link of consciousness between the past and the present to bring about a restoration like this—some familiar sight—some well-known sound.”
“And, by George, you are right, my boy, this time, though you are a 'special,'” said the doctor, grinning. “Yes, I was standing by the fellow's bunk when I heard Crawford call for another bottle of soda. Robinson got it for him, and bang went the cork, of course; a faint smile stole over the haggard features, my boy, the glassy eyes opened full of intelligence and with a mine of pleasant recollections. That familiar sound of the popping of the cork acted as the link you talk of. He saw all in a moment, and tried to put out his hand to me. 'My boy,' I said, 'you've behaved most handsomely, and I'll get you a glass of brandy out of another bottle, but don't you try to speak for another day.' And I got him a glass from Crawford, though, by George, sir, Crawford grudged it; he didn't see the sentiment of the thing, sir, and when I tried to explain it, he said I was welcome to the cork.”
“Capital tale for an advertisement of the brandy,” said Harwood.
Then the doctor with many smiles hastened to spread abroad the story of the considerate behaviour of his patient, and Harwood was left to continue his twilight meditations alone once more. He was sitting in his deck-chair on the ship's bridge, and he could but dimly hear the laughter and the chat of the passengers far astern. He did not remain for long in this dreamy mood of his, for Mrs. Crawford and Daireen Gerald were seen coming up the rail, and he hastened to meet them. The girl was very pale but smiling, and in the soft twilight she seemed very lovely.
“I am so glad to see you,” he said, as he settled a chair for her. “I feared a great many things when you did not appear to-day.”
“We must not talk too much,” said Mrs. Crawford, who had not expected to find Mr. Harwood alone in this place. “I brought Miss Gerard up here in order that she might not be subjected to the gaze of those colonists on the deck; a little quiet is what she needs to restore her completely from her shock.”
“It was very foolish, I am afraid you think—very foolish of me to behave as I did,” said Daireen, with a faint little smile. “But I had been asleep in my cabin, and I—I was not so strong as I should have been. The next time I hope I shall not be so very stupid.”
“My dear Miss Gerald,” said Harwood, “you behaved as a heroine. There is no woman aboard the ship—Mrs. Crawford of course excepted—who would have had courage to do what you did.”
“And he,” said the girl somewhat eagerly—“he—is he really safe?—has he recovered? Tell me all, Mr. Harwood.”
“No, no!” cried Mrs. Crawford, interposing. “You must not speak a word about him. Do you want to be thrown into a fresh state of excitement, my dear, now that you are getting on so nicely?”
“But I am more excited remaining as I am in doubt about that poor man. Was he a sailor, Mr. Harwood?”
“It appears-not,” said Harwood. “The doctor, however, is returning; he will tell all that is safe to be told.”
“I really must protest,” said Mrs. Crawford. “Well, I will be a good girl and not ask for any information whatever,” said Daireen.
But she was not destined to remain in complete ignorance on the subject which might reasonably be expected to interest her, for the doctor on seeing her hastened up, and, of course, Mrs. Crawford's protest was weak against his judgment.
“My dear young lady,” he cried, shaking Daireen warmly by the hand. “You are anxious to know the sequel of the romance of last night, I am sure?”
“No, no, Doctor Campion,” said Daireen almost mischievously; “Mrs. Crawford says I must hear nothing, and think about nothing, all this evening. Did you not say so, Mrs. Crawford?”
“My dear child, Doctor Campion is supposed to know much better than myself how you should be treated in your present nervous condition. If he chooses to talk to you for an hour or two hours about drowning wretches, he may do so on his own responsibility.”
“Drowning wretches!” said the doctor. “My dear madam, you have not been told all, or you would not talk in this way. He is no drowning wretch, but a gentleman; look at this—ah, I forgot it's not light enough for you to see the document, but Harwood there will tell you all that it contains.”
“And what does that wonderful document contain, Mr. Harwood?” asked Mrs. Crawford. “Tell us, please, and we shall drop the subject.”
“That document,” said Harwood, with affected solemnity; “it is a guarantee of the respectability of the possessor; it is a bank order for four hundred pounds, payable to one Oswin Markham, and it was, I understand, found upon the person of the man who has just been resuscitated through the skill of our good friend Doctor Campion.”
“Now you will not call him a poor wretch, I am sure,” said the doctor. “He has now fully recovered consciousness, and, you see, he is a gentleman.”
“You see that, no doubt, Mrs. Crawford,” said Harwood, in a tone that made the good physician long to have him for a few weeks on the sick list—the way the doctor had of paying off old scores.
“Don't be sarcastic, Mr. Harwood,” said Daireen. Then she added, “What did you say the name was?—Oswin Markham? I like it—I like it very much.”
“Hush,” said Mrs. Crawford. “Here is Mr. Glaston.” And it was indeed Mr. Glaston who ascended the rail with a languor of motion in keeping with the hour of twilight. With a few muttered words the doctor walked away.
“I hear,” said Mr. Glaston, after he had shaken hands with Daireen—“I hear that there was some wreck or other picked up last night with a man clinging to it—a dreadfully vulgar fellow he must be to carry about with him a lot of money—a man with a name like what one would find attached to the hero of an East End melodrama.”
There was a rather lengthened silence in that little group before Harwood spoke.
“Yes,” he said; “it struck me that it showed very questionable taste in the man to go about flaunting his money in the face of every one he met. As for his name—well, perhaps we had better not say anything about his name. You recollect what Tennyson makes Sir Tristram say to his Isolt—I don't mean you, Glaston, I know you only read the pre-Raphaelites—
“Let be thy Mark, seeing he is not thine.”
But no one seemed to remember the quotation, or, at any rate, to see the happiness of its present application.
It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.
... Weigh what loss
If with too credent ear you list his songs
Or lose your heart...
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it.—Hamlet.
IT could hardly be expected that there should be in the mind of Daireen Gerald a total absence of interest in the man who by her aid had been rescued from the deep. To be sure, her friend Mrs. Crawford had given her to understand that people of taste might pronounce the episode melodramatic, and as this word sounded very terrible to Daireen, as, indeed, it did to Mrs. Crawford herself, whose apprehension of its meaning was about as vague as the girl's, she never betrayed the anxiety she felt for the recovery of this man, who was, she thought, equally accountable for the dubious taste displayed in the circumstances of his rescue. She began to feel, as Mr. Glaston in his delicacy carefully refrained from alluding to this night of terror, and as Mrs. Crawford assumed a solemn expression of countenance upon the least reference to the girl's participation in the recovery of the man with the melodramatic name, that there was a certain bond of sympathy between herself and this Oswin Markham; and now and again when she found the doctor alone, she ventured to make some inquiries regarding him. In the course of a few days she learned a good deal.
“He is behaving handsomely—most handsomely, my dear,” said the doctor, one afternoon about a week after the occurrence. “He eats everything that is given to him and drinks in a like proportion.”
The girl felt that this was truly noble on the part of the man, but it was scarcely the exact type of information she would have liked.
“And he—is he able to speak yet?” she asked.
“Speak? yes, to be sure. He asked me how he came to be picked up, and I told him,” continued the doctor, with a smile of gallantry of which Daireen did not believe him capable, “that he was seen by the most charming young lady in the world,—yes, yes, I told him that, though I ran a chance of retarding his recovery by doing so.” This was, of course, quite delightful to hear, but Daireen wanted to know even more about the stranger than the doctor's speech had conveyed to her.
“The poor fellow was a long time in the water, I suppose?” she said artfully, trying to find out all that the doctor had learned.
“He was four days upon that piece of wreck,” said the doctor.
The girl gave a start that seemed very like a shudder, as she repeated the words, “Four days.”
“Yes; he was on his way home from Australia, where he had been living for some years, and the vessel he was in was commanded by some incompetent and drunken idiot who allowed it to be struck by a tornado of no extraordinary violence, and to founder in mid-ocean. As our friend was a passenger, he says, the crew did not think it necessary to invite him to have a seat in one of the boats, a fact that accounts for his being alive to-day, for both boats were swamped and every soul sent to the bottom in his view. He tells me he managed to lash a broken topmast to the stump of the mainmast that had gone by the board, and to cut the rigging so that he was left drifting when the hull went down. That's all the story, my dear, only we know what a hard time of it he must have had during the four days.”
“A hard time—a hard time,” Daireen repeated musingly, and without a further word she turned away.
Mr. Glaston, who had been pleased to take a merciful view of her recent action of so pronounced a type, found that his gracious attempts to reform her plastic taste did not, during this evening, meet with that appreciation of which they were undoubtedly deserving. Had he been aware that all the time his eloquent speech was flowing on the subject of the consciousness of hues—a theme attractive on account of its delicacy—the girl had before her eyes only a vision of heavy blue skies overhanging dark green seas terrible in loneliness—the monotony of endless waves broken only by the appearance in the centre of the waste of a broken mast and a ghastly face and clinging lean hands upon it, he would probably have withdrawn the concession he had made to Mrs. Crawford regarding the taste of her protégée.
And indeed, Daireen was not during any of these days thinking about much besides this Oswin Markham, though she never mentioned his name even to the doctor. At nights when she would look out over the flashing phosphorescent waters, she would evermore seem to see that white face looking up at her; but now she neither started nor shuddered as she was used to do for a few nights after she had seen the real face there. It seemed to her now as a face that she knew—the face of a friend looking into her face from the dim uncertain surface of the sea of a dream.
One morning a few days after her most interesting chat with Doctor Campion, she got up even earlier than usual—before, in fact, the healthy pedestrian gentleman had completed his first mile, and went on deck. She had, however, just stepped out of the companion when she heard voices and a laugh or two coming from the stern. She glanced in the direction of the sounds and remained motionless at the cabin door. A group consisting of the major, the doctor, and the captain of the steamer were standing in the neighbourhood of the wheel; but upon a deck-chair, amongst a heap of cushions, a stranger was lying back—a man with a thin brown face and large, somewhat sunken eyes, and a short brown beard and moustache; he was holding a cigar in the fingers of his left hand that drooped over the arm of the chair—a long, white hand—and he was looking up to the face of the major, who was telling one of his usual stories with his accustomed power. None of the other passengers were on deck, with the exception of the pedestrian, who came into view every few minutes as he reached the after part of the ship.
She stood there at the door of the companion without any motion, looking at that haggard face of the stranger. She saw a faint smile light up his deep eyes and pass over his features as the major brought out the full piquancy of his little anecdote, which was certainly notvirginibus puerisque. Then she turned and went down again to her cabin without seeing how a young sailor was standing gazing at her from the passage of the ship's bridge. She sat down in her cabin and waited until the ringing of the second bell for breakfast.
“You are getting dreadfully lazy, my dear,” said Mrs. Crawford, as she took her seat by the girl's side. “Why were you not up as usual to get an appetite for breakfast?” Then without waiting for an answer, she whispered, “Do you see the stranger at the other side of the table? That is our friend Mr. Oswin Markham; his name does not sound so queer when you come to know him. The doctor was right, Daireen: he is a gentleman.”
“Then you have——”
“Yes, I have made his acquaintance this morning already. I hope Mr. Glaston may not think that it was my fault.”
“Mr. Glaston?” said Daireen. .
“Yes; you know he is so sensitive in matters like this; he might fancy that it would be better to leave this stranger by himself; but considering that he will be parting from the ship in a week, I don't think I was wrong to let my husband present me. At any rate he is a gentleman—that is one satisfaction.”
Daireen felt that there was every reason to be glad that she was not placed in the unhappy position of having taken steps for the rescue of a person not accustomed to mix in good society. But she did not even once glance down towards the man whose standing had been by a competent judge pronounced satisfactory. She herself talked so little, however, that she could hear him speak in answer to the questions some good-natured people at the bottom of the table put to him, regarding the name of his ship and the circumstances of the catastrophe that had come upon it. She also heard the young lady who had the peculiar fancy for blue and pink beg of him to do her the favour of writing his name in her birthday book.
During the hours that elapsed before tiffin Daireen sat with a novel in her hand, and she knew that the stranger was on the ship's bridge with Major Crawford. The major found his company exceedingly agreeable, for the old officer had unfortunately been prodigal of his stories through the first week of the voyage, and lately he had been reminded that he was repeating himself when he had begun a really choice anecdote. This Mr. Markham, however, had never been in India, so that the major found in him an appreciative audience, and for the satisfactory narration of a chronicle of Hindustan an appreciative audience is an important consideration. The major, however, appeared alone at tiffin, for Mr. Markham, he said, preferred lying in the sun on the bridge to eating salad in the cabin. The young lady with the birthday book seemed a little disappointed, for she had just taken the bold step of adding to her personal decorations a large artificial moss-rose with glass beads sewed all about it in marvellous similitude to early dew, and it would not bear being trifled with in the matter of detaching from her dress.
Whether or not Mrs. Crawford had conferred with Mr. Glaston on the subject of the isolation of Mr. Markham, Daireen, on coming to sit down to the dinner-table, found Mrs. Crawford and Mr. Markham standing in the saloon just at the entrance to her cabin. She could feel herself flushing as she looked up to the man's haggard face while Mrs. Crawford pronounced their names, and she knew that the hand she put in his thin fingers was trembling. Neither spoke a single word: they only looked at each other. Then the doctor came forward with some remark that Daireen did not seem to hear, and soon the table was surrounded with the passengers.
“He says he feels nearly as strong as he ever did,” whispered Mrs. Crawford to the girl as they sat down together. “He will be able to leave us at St. Helena next week without doubt.”
On the same evening Daireen was sitting in her usual place far astern. The sun had set some time, and the latitude being only a few degrees south of the equator, the darkness had already almost come down upon the waters. It was dimmer than twilight, but not the solid darkness of a tropical night. The groups of passengers had all dispersed or gone forward, and the only sounds were the whisperings of the water in the wake of the steamer, and the splashing of the flying fish.
Suddenly from the cabin there came the music of the piano, and a low voice singing to its accompaniment—so faint it came that Daireen knew no one on deck except herself could hear the voice, for she was sitting just beside the open fanlight of the saloon; but she heard every word that was sung:
When the vesper gold has waned:
When the passion-hues of eve
Breathe themselves away and leave
Blue the heaven their crimson stained,
But one hour the world doth grieve,
For the shadowy skies receive
Stars so gracious-sweet that they
Make night more beloved than day.
From my life the light has waned:
Every golden gleam that shone
Through the dimness now las gone.
Of all joys has one remained?
Stays one gladness I have known?
Day is past; I stand, alone,
Here beneath these darkened skies,
Asking—“Doth a star arise?”
IT ended so faintly that Daireen Gerald could not tell when the last note had come. She felt that she was in a dream and the sounds she had heard were but a part of her dream—sounds? were these sounds, or merely the effect of breathing the lovely shadowy light that swathed the waters? The sounds seemed to her the twilight expressed in music.
Then in the silence she heard a voice speaking her name. She turned and saw Oswin Markham standing beside her.
“Miss Gerald,” he said, “I owe my life to you. I thank you for it.”
He could hardly have expressed himself more simply if he had been thanking her for passing him a fig at dinner, and yet his words thrilled her.
“No, no; do not say that,” she said, in a startled voice. “I did nothing—nothing that any one else might not have done. Oh, do not talk of it, please.”
“I will not,” he said slowly, after a pause. “I will never talk of it again. I was a fool to speak of it to you. I know now that you understand—that there is no need for me to open my lips to you.”
“I do indeed,” she said, turning her eyes upon his face. “I do understand.” She put out her hand, and he took it in his own—not fervently, not with the least expression of emotion, his fingers closed over it. A long time passed before she saw his face in front of her own, and felt his eyes looking into her eyes as his words came in a whisper, “Child—child, there is a bond between us—a bond whose token is silence.”
She kept her eyes fixed upon his as he spoke, and long after his words had come. She knew he had spoken the truth: there was a bond between them. She understood it.
She saw the gaunt face with its large eyes close to her own; her own eyes filled with tears, and then came the first token of their bond—silence. She felt his grasp unloosed, she heard him moving away, and she knew that she was alone in the silence.