I met his shifty brown eyes, and he dropped them quickly.
"I know nothing about it,"--I answered--"Except this--that the cure of any mind trouble must come from within--not from without. And I"m not a Christian Scientist either?"
He smiled cynically. "Really not? I should have thought you were!"
"You would make a grave error if you thought so," I responded, curtly.
A keen and watchful interest flashed over his dark face.
"I should very much like to know what your theories are"--he said, suddenly--"You interest me greatly."
"I"m sure I do!" I answered, smiling.
He looked me up and down for a moment in perplexity--then shrugged his shoulders.
"You are a strange creature!" he said--"I cannot make you out. If I were asked to give a "professional" opinion of you I should say you were very neurotic and highly-strung, and given over to self-delusions."
"Thanks!"--and I made him a demure little curtsy. "I look it, don"t I?"
"No--you don"t look it; but looks are deceptive."
"There I agree with you,"--I said--"But one has to go by them sometimes. If I am "neurotic," my looks do not pity me, and my condition of health leaves nothing to desire."
His brows met in a slight frown. He glanced at his watch.
"I must go,"--he said--"Miss Harland will be waiting."
"And the electricity will get cold!" I added, gaily. "See if you can feel my "neurotic" pulse!"
He took the hand I extended--and remained quite still. Conscious of the secret force I had within myself I resolved to try if I could use it upon him in such a way as to keep him a prisoner till I chose to let him go. I watched him till his eyes began to look vague and a kind of fixity settled on his features,--he was perfectly unconscious that I held him at my pleasure,--and presently, satisfied with my experiment, I relaxed the spell and withdrew my hand.
"Quite regular, isn"t it?" I said, carelessly.
He started as if roused from a sleep, but replied quickly:
"Yes--oh yes--perfectly!--I had almost forgotten what I was doing. I was thinking of something else. Miss Harland--"
"Yes, Miss Harland is ready for you by this time"--and I smiled. "You must tell her I detained you."
He nodded in a more or less embarra.s.sed manner, and turning away from me, went rather slowly down the saloon stairs.
I gave a sigh of relief when he was gone. I had from the first moment of our meeting recognised in him a mental organisation which in its G.o.dless materialism and indifference to consequences, was opposed to every healthful influence that might be brought to bear on his patients for their well-being, whatever his pretensions to medical skill might be. It was to his advantage to show them the worst side of a disease in order to accentuate his own cleverness in dealing with it,--it served his purpose to pamper their darkest imaginings, play with their whims and humour their caprices,--I saw all this and understood it. And I was glad that so far as I might be concerned, I had the power to master him.
V
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
To spend a few days on board a yacht with the same companions is a very good test of the value of sympathetic vibration in human a.s.sociations.
I found it so. I might as well have been quite alone on the "Diana" as with Morton Harland and his daughter, though they were always uniformly kind to me and thoughtful of my comfort. But between us there was "a great gulf fixed," though every now and again Catherine Harland made feeble and pathetic efforts to cross that gulf and reach me where I stood on the other side. But her strength was not equal to the task,--her will-power was sapped at its root, and every day she allowed herself to become more and more pliantly the prey of Dr. Brayle, who, with a subconscious feeling that I knew him to be a mere medical charlatan, had naturally warned her against me as an imaginative theorist without any foundation of belief in my own theories. I therefore shut myself within a fortress of reserve, and declined to discuss any point of either religion or science with those for whom the one was a farce and the other mere materialism. At all times when we were together I kept the conversation deliberately down to commonplaces which were safe, if dull,--and it amused me not a little to see that at this course of action on my part Mr. Harland was first surprised, then disappointed and finally bored. And I was glad. That I should bore him as much as he bored me was the happy consummation of my immediate desires. I talked as all conventional women talk, of the weather, of our minimum and maximum speed, of the newspaper "sensations" and vulgarities that were served up to us whenever we called at a port for the mails,--of the fish that frequented such and such waters, of sport, of this and that millionaire whose highland castle or shooting-box was crammed with the "elite" whose delight is to kill innocent birds and animals,--of the latest fool-flyers in aeroplanes,--in short, no fashionable jabberer of social inanities could have beaten me in what average persons call "common-sense talk,"--talk which resulted after a while in the usual vagueness of attention accompanied by smothered yawning. I was resolved not to lift the line of thought "up in the air"
in the manner whereof I had often been accused, but to keep it level with the ground. So that when we left Tobermory, where we had anch.o.r.ed for a couple of days, the limits of the yacht were becoming rather cramped and narrow for our differing minds, and a monotony was beginning to set in that threatened to be dangerous, if not unbearable.
As the "Diana" steamed along through the drowsy misty light of the summer afternoon, past the jagged coast of the mainland, I sat quite by myself on deck, watching the creeping purple haze that partially veiled the mountains of Ardnamurchan and Moidart, and I began to wonder whether after all it might not be better to write to my friend Francesca and tell her that her prophecies had already come true,--that I was beginning to be weary of a holiday pa.s.sed in an atmosphere bereft of all joyousness, and that she must expect me in Inverness-shire at once. And yet I was reluctant to end my trip with the Harlands too soon. There was a secret wish in my heart which I hardly breathed to myself,--a wish that I might again see the strange vessel that had appeared and disappeared so suddenly, and make the acquaintance of its owner. It would surely be an interesting break in the present condition of things, to say the least of it. I did not know then (though I know now) why my mind so persistently busied itself with the fancied personality of the unknown possessor of the mysterious craft which, as Captain Derrick said, "sailed without wind," but I found myself always thinking about him and trying to picture his face and form.
I took myself sharply to task for what I considered a foolish mental att.i.tude,--but do what I would, the att.i.tude remained unchanged. It was helped, perhaps, in a trifling way by the apparently fadeless quality of the pink bell-heather which had been given me by the weird-looking Highland fellow who called himself Jamie, for though three or four days had now pa.s.sed since I first wore it, it showed no signs of withering.
As a rule the delicate waxen bells of this plant turn yellow a few hours after they are plucked,--but my little bunch was as brilliantly fresh as ever. I kept it in a gla.s.s without water on the table in my sitting-room and it looked always the same. I was questioning myself as to what I should really do if my surroundings remained as hopelessly inert and uninteresting as they were at present,--go on with the "Diana" for a while longer on the chance of seeing the strange yacht again--or make up my mind to get put out at some point from which I could reach Inverness easily, when Mr. Harland came up suddenly behind my chair and laid his hand on my shoulder.
"Are you in dreamland?" he enquired--and I thought his voice sounded rather weak and dispirited--"There"s a wonderful light on those hills just now."
I raised my eyes and saw the purple shadows being cloven and scattered one after another, by long rays of late sunshine that poured like golden wine through the dividing wreaths of vapour,--above, the sky was pure turquoise blue, melting into pale opal and emerald near the line of the grey sea which showed little flecks of white foam under the freshening breeze. Bringing my gaze down from the dazzling radiance of the heavens, I turned towards Mr. Harland and was startled and shocked to see the drawn and livid pallor of his face and the anguish of his expression.
"You are ill!" I exclaimed, and springing up in haste I offered him my chair--"Do sit down!"
He made a mute gesture of denial, and with slow difficulty drew another chair up beside mine, and dropped into it with an air of heavy weariness.
"I am not ill now,"--he said--"A little while ago I was very ill. I was in pain--horrible pain! Brayle did what he could for me--it was not much. He says I must expect to suffer now and again--until--until the end."
Impulsively I laid my hand on his.
"I am very sorry!" I said, gently--"I wish I could be of some use to you!"
He looked at me with a curious wistfulness.
"You could, no doubt, if I believed as you do,"--he replied, and then was silent for a moment. Presently he spoke again.
"Do you know I am rather disappointed in you?"
"Are you?" And I smiled a little--"Why?"
He did not answer at once. He seemed absorbed in troubled musings. When he resumed, it was in a low, meditative tone, almost as if he were speaking to himself.
"When I first met you--you remember?--at one of those social "crushes"
which make the London season so infinitely tedious,--I was told you were gifted with unusual psychic power, and that you had in yourself the secret of an abounding exhaustless vitality. I repeat the words--an abounding exhaustless vitality. This interested me, because I know that our modern men and women are mostly only half alive. I heard of you that it did people good to be in your company,--that your influence upon them was remarkable, and that there was some unknown form of occult, or psychic science to which you had devoted years of study, with the result that you stood, as it were, apart from the world though in the world. This, I say, is what I heard--"
"But you did not believe it,"--I interposed.
"Why do you say that?" he asked, quickly.
"Because I know you could not believe it,"--I answered--"It would be impossible for you."
A gleam of satire flashed in his sunken eyes.
"Well, you are right there! I did not believe it. But I expected--"
"I know!" And I laughed--"You expected what is called a "singular"
woman--one who makes herself "singular," adopts a "singular" pose, and is altogether removed from ordinary humanity. And of course you are disappointed. I am not at all a type of the veiled priestess."