"It"s really quite interesting!" she said, with a reluctant smile--"I suppose it was the strange yacht that had the music on board last night. It kept me awake. I thought it was some tiresome person out in a boat with a gramophone."
I laughed.
"Oh, Miss Harland!" I exclaimed--"Surely you could not have thought it a gramophone! Such music! It was perfectly exquisite!"
"Was it?" And she drew the ugly grey woollen shawl in which she was wrapped closer about her sallow throat as she sat up in her bed and looked at me--"Well, it may have been, to you,--you seem to find delight in everything,--I"m sure I don"t know why! Of course it"s very nice to have such a happy disposition--but really that music teased me dreadfully. Such a bore having music when you want to go to sleep."
I was silent, and having a piece of embroidery to occupy my hands I began to work at it.
"I hope you"re quite comfortable on board,"--she resumed, presently--"Have you all you want in your rooms?"
I a.s.sured her that everything was perfect.
She sighed.
"I wish I could say the same!" she said--"I really hate yachting, but father likes it, so I must sacrifice myself." Here she sighed again. I saw she was really convinced that she was immolating herself on the altar of filial obedience. "You know he is very ill,"--she went on--"and that he cannot live long?"
"He told me something about it,"--I answered--"and I said then, as I say now, that the doctors may be wrong."
"Oh no, they cannot be wrong in his case," she declared, shaking her head dismally--"They know the symptoms, and they can only avert the end for a time. I"m very thankful Dr. Brayle was able to come with us on this trip."
"I suppose he is paid a good deal for his services?" I said.
"Eight hundred guineas"--she answered--"But, you see, he has to leave his patients in London, and find another man to attend to them during his absence. He is so very clever and so much sought after--I don"t know what I should do without him, I"m sure!"
"Has he any special treatment for you?" I asked.
"Oh yes,--he gives me electricity. He has a wonderful battery--he has got it fitted up here in the next cabin--and while I hold two handles he turns it on and it runs all over me. I feel always better for the moment--but the effect soon pa.s.ses."
I looked at her with a smile.
"I should think so! Dear Miss Harland, do you really believe in that way of administering electricity?"
"Of course I do!" she answered--"You see, it"s all a question of what they call bacteriology nowadays. Medicine is no use unless it can kill the microbes that are eating us up inside and out. And there"s scarcely any drug that can do that. Electricity is the only remedy. It gives the little brutes a shock;"--and the poor lady laughed weakly--"and it kills some, but not all. It"s a dreadful scheme of creation, don"t you think, to make human beings no better than happy hunting grounds for invisible creatures to feed upon?"
"It depends on what view you take of it,"--I said, laying down my work and trying to fix her attention, a matter which was always difficult--"We human beings are composed of good and evil particles. If the good are encouraged, they drive out the evil,--if the evil, they drive out the good. It"s the same with the body as the soul,--if we encourage the health-working "microbes" as you call them, they will drive out disease from the human organism altogether."
She sank back on her pillow wearily.
"We can"t do it,"--she said--"All the chances are against us. What"s the use of our trying to encourage "health-working microbes"? The disease-working ones have got the upper hand. Just think!--our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents are to blame for half our evils.
Their diseases become ours in various new forms. It"s cruel,--horrible!
How anyone can believe that a G.o.d of Love created such a frightful scheme pa.s.ses my comprehension! The whole thing is a mere business of eating to be eaten!"
She looked so wan and wild that I pitied her greatly.
"Surely that is not what you think at the bottom of your heart?" I said, gently--"I should be very sorry for you if I thought you really meant what you say."
"Well, you may be as sorry for me as you like"--and the poor lady blinked away tears from her eyes--"I need someone to be sorry for me! I tell you my life is a perfect torture. Every day I wonder how long I can bear it! I have such dreadful thoughts! I picture the horrible things that are happening to different people all over the world, n.o.body helping them or caring for them, and I almost feel as if I must scream for mercy. It wouldn"t be any use screaming,--but the scream is in my soul all the same. People in prisons, people in shipwrecks, people dying by inches in hospitals, no good in their lives and no hope--and not a sign of comfort from the G.o.d whom the Churches praise!
It"s awful! I don"t see how anybody can do anything or be ambitious for anything--it"s all mere waste of energy. One of the reasons that made me so anxious to have you come on this trip with us is that you always seem contented and happy,--and I want to know why? It"s a question of temperament, I suppose--but do tell me why!"
She stretched out her hand and touched mine appealingly. I took her worn and wasted fingers in my own and pressed them sympathetically.
"My dear Miss Harland,"--I began.
"Oh, call me Catherine"--she interrupted--"I"m so tired of being Miss Harland!"
"Well, Catherine, then,"--I said, smiling a little--"Surely you know why I am contented and happy?"
"No, I do not,"--she said, with quick, almost querulous? eagerness--"I don"t understand it at all. You have none of the things that please women. You don"t seem to care about dress though you are always well-gowned--you don"t go to b.a.l.l.s or theatres or race-meetings,--you are a general favourite, yet you avoid society,--you"ve never troubled yourself to take your chances of marriage,--and so far as I know or have heard tell about you, you haven"t even a lover!"
My cheeks grew suddenly warm. A curious resentment awoke in me at her words--had I indeed no lover? Surely I had!--one that I knew well and had known for a long time,--one for whom I had guarded my life sacredly as belonging to another as well as to myself,--a lover who loved me beyond all power of human expression,--here the rush of strange and inexplicable emotion in me was hurled back on my mind with a shock of mingled terror and surprise from a dead wall of stony fact,--it was true, of course, and Catherine Harland was right--I had no lover. No man had ever loved me well enough to be called by such a name. The flush cooled off my face,--the hurry of my thoughts slackened,--I took up my embroidery and began to work at it again.
"That is so, isn"t it?" persisted Miss Harland--"Though you blush and grow pale as if there was someone in the background."
I met her inquisitive glance and smiled.
"There is no one,"--I said--"There never has been anyone." I paused; I could almost feel the warmth of the strong hand that had held mine in my dream of the past night. It was mere fancy, and I went on--"I should not care for what modern men and women call love. It seems very unsatisfactory."
She sighed.
"It is frequently very selfish,"--she said--"I want to tell you my love-story--may I?"
"Why, of course!" I answered, a little wonderingly, for I had not thought she had a love-story to tell.
"It"s very brief,"--she said, and her lip quivered--"There was a man who used to visit our house very often when I first came out,--he made me believe he was very fond of me. I was more than fond of him--I almost worshipped him. He was all the world to me, and though father did not like him very much he wished me to be happy, so we were engaged. That was the time of my life--the only time I ever knew what happiness was. One evening, just about three months before we were to be married, we were together at a party in the house of one of our mutual friends, and I heard him talking rather loudly in a room where he and two or three other men had gone to smoke. He said something that made me stand still and wonder whether I was mad or dreaming. "Pity me when I"m married to Catherine Harland!" Pity him? I listened,--I knew it was wrong to listen, but I could not help myself. "Well, you"ll get enough cash with her to set you all right in the world, anyhow,"--said another man, "You can put up with a plain wife for the sake of a pretty fortune." Then he,--my love!--spoke again--"Oh, I shall make the best of it," he said--"I must have money somehow, and this is the easiest way. There"s one good thing about modern life,--husbands and wives don"t hunt in couples as they used to do, so when once the knot is tied I shall shift my matrimonial burden off my shoulders as much as I can.
She"ll amuse herself with her clothes and the household,--and she"s fond of me, so I shall always have my own way. But it"s an awful martyrdom to have to marry one woman on account of empty pockets when you"re in love with another." I heard,--and then--I don"t know what happened."
Her eyes stared at me so pitifully that I was full of sorrow for her.
"Oh, you poor Catherine!" I said, and taking her hand, I kissed it gently. The tears in her eyes brimmed over.
"They found me lying on the floor insensible,"--she went on, tremulously--"And I was very ill for a long time afterwards. People could not understand it when I broke off my engagement. I told n.o.body why--except HIM. He seemed sorry and a little ashamed,--but I think he was more vexed at losing my fortune than anything else. I said to him that I had never thought about being plain,--that the idea of his loving me had made me feel beautiful. That was true!--my dear, I almost believe I should have grown into beauty if I had been sure of his love."
I understood that; she was perfectly right in what to the entirely commonplace person would seem a fanciful theory. Love makes all things fair, and anyone who is conscious of being tenderly loved grows lovely, as a rose that is conscious of the sun grows into form and colour.
"Well, it was all over then,"--she ended, with a sigh, "I never was quite myself again--I think my nerves got a sort of shock such as the great novelist, Charles d.i.c.kens had when he was in the railway accident--you remember the tale in Forster"s "Life"? How the carriage hung over the edge of an embankment but did not actually fall,--and d.i.c.kens was clinging on to it all the time. He never got over it, and it was the remote cause of his death five years later. Now I have felt just like that,--my life has hung over a sort of chasm ever since I lost my love, and I only cling on."
"But surely,"--I ventured to say--"surely there are other things to live for than just the memory of one man"s love which was not love at all! You seem to think there was some cruelty or unhappiness in the chance that separated you from him,--but really it was a special mercy and favour of G.o.d--only you have taken it in the wrong way."
"I have taken it in the only possible way,"--she said--"With resignation."
"Oh, do you call it resignation?" I exclaimed--"To make a misery of what should have been a gladness? Think of the years and years of wretchedness you might have pa.s.sed with a man who was a merely selfish fortune-hunter! You would have had to see him grow colder and more callous every day--your heart would have been torn, your spirit broken--and G.o.d spared you all this by giving you your chance of freedom! Such a chance! You might have made much of it, if you had only chosen!"
She looked at me, but did not speak.
"Love comes to us in a million beautiful ways,"--I went on, heedless of how she might take my words--"The ordinary love,--or, I would say, the ordinary mating and marriage is only ONE way. You cannot live in the world without being loved--if you love!"
She moved on her pillows restlessly.