Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905
The daylight hours were now so few that little could be accomplished, and the cold was becoming severe. A violent snowstorm on the fifteenth of May decided French to give up the search and go home. Accordingly, they steamed out of the Straits of Magellan and turned the vessel northward, keeping as near the Patagonian shore as was prudent, in the hope of sighting canoes.
They had been steaming in this direction for about three hours, going slowly and keeping a sharp outlook toward the land, when the captain called French’s attention to an opening in the coast line, where the Gallegos River empties into the sea. An impulse – perhaps it might more truly be called an inspiration – induced French to order the yacht brought to anchor in the bay. Although the shore seemed deserted, several canoes filled with Indians immediately put out for the yacht, as was, indeed, their invariable custom. The boats were large, capable of holding six or eight people in the two ends, while in the middle was the inevitable clay hearth, on which smoldered the fire of hemlock. As they approached the yacht, the Indians began begging for rum and tobacco, some by gestures and some in a patois, in which Spanish and Indian words were strangely blended; and French, whose policy was always to secure their good will, invited them on board and ordered the steward to bring spirits and tobacco, and also a plentiful supply of ship biscuit and sweets.
The men were of medium size, and not bad looking, and for the most part dressed in loose-fitting mantles of guanaco skins, stained bright red. In spite of the cold, this one garment was their only protection, and even this they would offer in exchange for rum. Knowing their customs, French was astonished to find the first man who stepped on board wearing the coat of civilization under his mantle, and his astonishment gave way to alarm when he recognized an old checked cutaway of Simeon’s, which had done service for many a winter at Harmouth, and was as unmistakable as the features of its lost owner. While Stephen stared – too agitated to find a word of Spanish – the Indian tossed off half a tumbler of raw whisky at a gulp and, drawing from the pocket of poor Simeon’s coat a silver flask, he presented it to the steward to be filled with the same genial fluid. The flask was Stephen’s parting gift to Simeon, and marked with his name.
The excitement now became intense, for the Indians declared that the owner of the coat was alive, and the one who was wearing it, and who seemed to exercise some authority over the others, began an explanation in signs. He pointed to a cliff that overhung the stony beach at the mouth of the river, and, lifting his hand high above his head; brought it down with a violent gesture, as if to simulate a fall. He next motioned toward the canoes, talking volubly all the while, though his language was unintelligible to anyone except the captain of the Tintoretto, who picked out a word here and there.
The tribes of the Straits of Magellan and the adjacent coasts vary greatly in their characteristics; some have the impassive bearing we associate with the Indian, and some are imitative, reproducing sounds and gestures with surprising exactness.
It was not difficult to guess that Simeon had fallen over the cliff and been found by the Indians, who are always skirting the shore in their canoes, and the Spanish captain made out that he was now in one of their boats higher up the river. When the Indian was asked whether he would guide them to the place, he hesitated until bribed by rum and provisions, and then he agreed to go in his own canoe and bring Simeon to the yacht, where the exchange was to be effected. Why he hesitated remained a mystery, unless Ponsonby’s knowledge of herbs had made him of value to the tribe.
French immediately ordered the various tins and boxes, containing the supply of food promised, to be placed conspicuously on the deck as an earnest of his honesty in the barter, and when a small keg of rum was added, the satisfaction was complete; four or five Indians followed their leader into his canoe and paddled up the river.
They were gone so long – over three hours – that French began to curse his folly in trusting them, and he was about to follow them up in the launch, when he saw their canoe coming round a bend in the stream. At the first glance it seemed filled with Indians only, and it was not until it was actually alongside that he detected a mummy-like form lying in the stern, which he guessed to be Simeon.
Half a dozen sturdy arms made the transfer, by means of a hammock, from the canoe to the yacht, and Simeon, alive but quite unconscious, was laid on the deck. He had probably been subjected by the removal to more pain than in his enfeebled condition he could bear, and it required long and patient exertion on the part of the doctor before he was revived from his syncope.
His condition was pitiable; from an injury to the spine he was a helpless cripple, while the arm which had been broken in his fall had knit in a way to render it perfectly useless. He was fearfully emaciated, probably from the lack of palatable food, and his expression was vacant.
French gave up his own deck cabin, the most commodious in size, and before another hour had passed Simeon was lying in a comfortable bed, clean, warm, devotedly tended, but apparently dying.
For forty-eight hours they kept the yacht within the shelter of the river, fearing the effect of motion on that feeble flame of life, but the warmth and nourishment soon began to tell, and on the third day he recognized French, and tried to murmur some words of gratitude and pleasure.
That night Stephen called the doctor into his own room and shut the door. He wanted to put a very simple question, one which might have been asked anywhere out of Simeon’s hearing, and yet the effort seemed almost beyond his powers.
“Can he live?”
The words came in such a hoarse, unnatural voice that the doctor, a sensitive man, feared to deal the blow of truth. This was a very marvel of friendship; like the love of David and Jonathan, it passed the love of women.
The doctor temporized. Mr. Ponsonby had rallied wonderfully; his constitution was much stronger than he had been given to understand; it was rather soon to give a definite opinion, but —
Here Stephen interrupted him.
“Great God, man! Can’t you answer a plain question. Yes or no?”
The doctor drew himself up and, to quote his own language, “let him have it straight.”
“If he lives to get home it will be a good deal more than I expect of him.”
French nodded toward the door, and turned his back.
That night he relieved the doctor’s watch by sitting up with his friend, and, having given him his broth at midnight, was almost dozing in his chair when a whisper from Simeon roused him. The sound was so faint, he held his breath to listen.
“Stephen, I want to see Deena.”
French’s heart began thumping like the screw of his yacht. How he thanked God that he could look his friend in the face as he answered:
“So you shall, old man; just as quickly as steam can carry you to her.”
A look of satisfaction came into the tired eyes.
“It will be a race with death,” he said, “but perhaps – thank you, Stephen.” And he fell asleep.
CHAPTER X
With Deena the spring moved drearily. Her position was strangely anomalous; she was neither wife nor widow, without the right to be glad or sad – only dumbly wretched. She could not mourn for a husband who might be living, nor could she ignore the fact that he might be dead, and all the while that parting scene with Stephen burned into her conscience like a brand.
She shut herself up with Polly and the baby, and hardly went out of the house while she remained in New York. Love for the child crept deep into her heart and soothed her into patience when all else failed.
In May the house in Harmouth returned to her keeping, the lease having expired, and she left the Sixty-fifth Street household with reluctance to take up her old life. In the great city she had been but a human atom. Her conduct, her unhappiness, her very existence mattered to no one there, except, perhaps, to Ben and Polly, who were as tender and sympathetic as such vigorous people could be; but in Harmouth every creature was interested in Simeon’s fate, and watched Deena with a curiosity she found maddening.
She felt herself the main topic of conversation; she never approached two people talking in the street that they didn’t break off in guilty confusion, and comments upon her mode of dressing and daily occupations were continually repeated to her in the form of censure. Her own family were especially out of touch, for their assumption that she mourned her husband as Polly would have done made her feel like an impostor. They did not give her much of their company, for their newly found fortune made them even more self-centered than their misfortunes. Dicky was the exception; perhaps because he had started in life hard as nails, and so couldn’t grow any harder. At all events, Deena thought she discerned a reluctant affection in his greeting that was infinitely flattering.
Stephen wrote whenever he could catch the Chilian mail boats on their way through the Straits. His letters were those of a man under the strong hand of restraint; admirable letters, that filled her with respect for him and shame at her own craving for “one word more.”
On the twenty-fifth of May she had a cable that changed the face of events. It was from Montevideo.
Have found Simeon. Desperately ill. On our way home.
S. French.The news spread over the town like wildfire. The local paper issued an extra; a thing it had not done since the assassination of Mr. McKinley. As soon as Harmouth knew Mrs. Ponsonby’s exact status it became distinctly friendly. People are helpful by instinct, and offers of neighborly assistance poured in from all sides.
Deena left nothing undone that could, by anticipation, add to Simeon’s comfort. His room was ready, a nurse engaged, and all the paraphernalia belonging to the care of the sick collected long before the time due for his arrival. She counted upon seeing him four weeks from the date of the cable. The regular trip of the mail boats between Rio and New York is twenty days; from Montevideo two days more; to that must be added another day to reach Boston, and she was warned that a yacht would go more slowly than a large steamer; she therefore concluded the third week in June would bring them.
The lot of women is to wait, and they do it under a pressure of nervous strain that makes it slow torture. No turn of fortune could have surprised Deena at this crisis, for her imagination had pictured every possibility.
When a summer storm blackened the sky she saw the yacht tempest-tossed and sinking, driven before a tropical cyclone; when the sun shone, she fancied it sailing gayly into port with Simeon restored to health, expecting to find her as he left her – the willing slave, the careful housewife – and she shivered and went pale at the thought; and then in a revulsion of feeling she saw him dying, and she was ready to cast herself at his feet, and tell him all – how she had tried to do right, how she had struggled against her love for Stephen. Perhaps he would have mercy upon her and let her go away, all by herself, to wrestle with her heart.
She couldn’t eat; she couldn’t sleep. She grew so wan and thin she was like a ghost of her old self.
Her mother said:
“My dear, you must stop fretting. I am sure, under the care of that clever young doctor Mr. French took down, and with the comforts of the yacht, your husband will be quite himself by the time he gets home.”
And her father added:
“You must not be so impatient, Deena; it is mighty nasty sailing through West Indian waters, and a boat of that size doesn’t carry enough fuel for a prolonged voyage; they will have to stop for coal somewhere on their way up.”
She was growing irritable under her dread. Like Elisha, she longed to silence them with the answer:
“I know it; hold ye your peace.”
The middle of June had passed, the fourth week of the voyage had begun, and now any day, any hour, might bring news. Deena’s anxiety had made such inroads into her health that her father took alarm and called in her old friend Dr. Hassan, and he, wise man, gave her a sedative and ordered her to bed, though the afternoon was still young.
It was the first long sleep she had had for weeks, and the refreshment came at the time of her direst need, for at daybreak the summons roused her. She waked with a beating heart; wheels stopped in the street, her gate clicked, there were footsteps coming up her path – bold, hurried steps; they reached the veranda – the bell pealed.
She sprang from her bed, huddling her dressing gown round her as she ran, and, slipping back the heavy, old-fashioned bolts of the front door, she stood face to face with Stephen.
If she were pale, he was paler; his blood seemed turned to ice that summer morning.
“The yacht is at Wolfshead,” he said. “How soon can you be ready? We must go by rail – I have a special waiting for you.”
A glow from the first blush of day caught her as she stood in the frame of the doorway. She was like a mediæval saint, with her hair wound in a crown about her head, her blue gown falling in stately fold, and her bare feet showing under the hem of her nightgown. In spite of her seeming calm, her eyes blazed with excitement.
To French she seemed something holy and apart – as if those bare feet rested on a crescent, and the shadows of the old hall were floating clouds. He had schooled himself during his hurried journey, in order to meet her without emotion, but she was her own protection; to have touched her would have seemed sacrilege. Her lips tried to frame the question that consumed her with its terrors.
“Simeon – ” she began, but her voice failed.
Stephen’s haggard eyes softened.
“He is dying,” he said. “But there is time – perhaps to-day – perhaps to-morrow. His force of will has kept him alive to see you – he has cared more than you knew.”
She gave a little sob, and turned toward the staircase. Halfway up she stopped.
“I forgot to ask you to come in,” she said, “or whether you want anything I can get you? But it doesn’t matter, does it? All that matters is to do Simeon’s bidding. I shall be very quick.”
In an incredibly short time she was back, fully dressed, and carrying a bag, into which she had thrust what was indispensable to her comfort for another day. She waked the servant, left a message for her father, and then she and Stephen went out into the street, so gay with early sunlight and twittering birds, so bare of human traffic. At first a strange shyness kept her dumb; she longed to ask a thousand things, but the questions that rose to her lips seemed susceptible of misunderstanding, and Stephen’s aloofness frightened her. Did he think, she wondered, that she could forget her duty to Simeon at such a moment, that he surrounded himself with this impenetrable reserve? And all the time he was regarding her with a passionate reverence that shamed him into silence.
At the railway station their train was waiting – the locomotive hissing its impatience; they got into the car, for there was but one, and in a moment were flying seaward. A man – the steward of the yacht – was busy at the far end of the car with a cooking apparatus, and the aroma of coffee came intoxicatingly to her nostrils. She remembered she had eaten nothing since her early dinner the day before, and she was exhausted with excitement, and then she despised herself for thinking of her physical needs when Simeon lay dying. It was fortunate that French had taken a saner view of the situation, for the coffee was just what was needed to restore her equipoise.
She began to understand the delicacy of her companion’s conduct, and the simplicity of the whole situation when stripped of morbidness. The only thing that behooved her was to soothe her husband’s last hours on earth – to give out the tenderness of a pitying heart. As her common sense asserted itself she began plying Stephen with the questions that had seemed so impossible half an hour before – would Simeon know her – could he bear conversation – was he changed in appearance – had he suffered beyond relief? She demanded the whole story of his rescue and of the voyage home. She was gentle, womanly, infinitely sweet. By the time they reached their destination all constraint was gone; they were two comrades absorbed in a common interest, for Simeon occupied their every thought.
There was a narrow pier at Wolfshead, sheltered by a point of rocky shore that made a landing for small boats in good weather, and there the steam launch was waiting with its two trim sailors and its gaudy flag. The yacht was anchored about a mile from shore – her graceful outlines clearly defined against the ocean’s blue. If the purity of her white paint had suffered in the long voyage it was not apparent – red and white awnings were stretched over the deck. All looked hospitably gay. Once more Deena shrank into herself, the brilliant scene mocked the tragedy within.
All too quickly they crossed the intervening water; they were on the deck – in the saloon. She was trembling so she could hardly stand, and Stephen put her into a comfortable chair and left her, while he made her coming known. She hardly glanced at the luxurious fittings of the charming room; her eyes were fixed on the door, dreading, yet impatient, for the message.
A small, sensitive-looking man came toward her and introduced himself.
“I am Dr. Miles,” he said, “Mr. Ponsonby’s physician, and, if you will allow me, I will take you to him now. There is no question of saving his strength, Mrs. Ponsonby. We have been nursing what is left to him for days, in order that he could lavish it in this interview with you. Don’t try to curb him; let him have his say.”
She followed him to a deck cabin almost under the bridge, and stood for a moment at the threshold, to make sure of her composure. There was a narrow brass bed, a chest of drawers, a washstand, and close to the bed a wicker chair, with silk cushions, was drawn up, as if in expectation of a guest. The head of the bed was toward her, so that she couldn’t see Simeon’s face, but he heard the rustle of skirts, and called her name, and she made a step forward and sank on her knees beside him.
“Oh, Simeon,” she gasped, “how you have suffered! I am so sorry!”
He moved his hand feebly and patted her shoulder, and she, in a passion of pity, carried it to her lips. For the first time she ventured to look at him. Was this Simeon! She would have passed him in a hospital ward as an utter stranger, so completely was he changed. He had discarded his spectacles, and his eyes were dull and faded; pain had robbed them of that expression of concentrated wisdom she knew so well. He wore a short, curling beard and mustache, and his clothing, supplied from Stephen’s wardrobe, was luxurious; it was silk, of a faint color between blue and gray, and the handkerchief, protruding from the pocket, was delicately fine. Extreme neatness was characteristic of Simeon, but he disliked anything florid in dress or appearance, anything opposed to the austere simplicity that marked his manner of living. She wondered whether such things mattered to him now.
He noticed her start of surprise as her eyes met his, and fancied she was shocked by the ravages of illness, for he said, with a touch of his old irritation:
“Didn’t they tell you I was dying? Are you afraid to be left alone with me? You used to be a courageous person, Deena.”
The querulousness with which he began the sentence melted into a rallying smile.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I am not afraid. I am too sorry to be frightened.”
“There is a bell, in case you want to summon the doctor,” he continued, “but I should rather talk to you alone. I have been very homesick for you, and for the old house – sometimes the longing has been most acute – and then the anxiety of leaving you poorly provided for has been part of my distress. If I could have lived a few years more this would have been obviated, and possibly, even now, my book will add something to your income.” He made a visible effort to speak clearly. “Now, in regard to your future support; I have a life insurance of ten thousand dollars, and securities to about the same amount – and then, of course, the house. This is all I have been able to save, though I have cut our living down to bare necessities. You have been of great assistance to me, Deena – without you life would have had little flavor, but sometimes I fear that in the desire to provide for your future I was not considerate enough of your present. I ought to have been more mindful that young people need pleasure. You will have to forgive that and many other mistakes.” He looked at her almost wistfully.
Deena’s tears came, dripping plentifully over her clasped hands.
“It is I who should ask forgiveness,” she said, humbly, remembering how often she had scorned his economies. “The money is more than I shall need – don’t think of it again, Simeon. Isn’t there anything you want to tell me about your work – your book?”
His face lit up eagerly – the topic was congenial.
“My papers are safe,” he said. “All the initial work of classification and description that I did on the Tintoretto is in French’s keeping, and he and Sinclair – the man who has my place – are going to edit the book. We have had a great deal of talk about it on the way up, whenever I had a fairly quiet day. It is idle to try to put into words what I owe French.”
“And he feels nothing but self-reproach for having urged you to go,” said Deena, faintly. “Not that anyone could have foreseen the miserable outcome.”
“It isn’t miserable!” Simeon answered, almost fiercely. “In many respects it is all that I hoped. I have made a name for myself – there will not be a scientific library in the world without my book, when once it is issued. People have died for lesser achievements than that.” And then he added, more gently: “Not that it could be considered as an achievement without French’s aid.”
His mind could not detach itself from its debt of gratitude, for he suddenly broke out in passionate eulogy.
“He has sacrificed everything to me – his ambitions – his time – his comfort – his money, though that is the last thing he would begrudge, but you have no idea what it costs to run one of those large yachts! It must have made an inroad even in his large fortune. He has been a friend indeed!”
Deena turned away her face; it was hard for her to praise Stephen, although her heart echoed her husband’s words.
“He has high ideals in friendship as in everything else,” she answered, “but you must remember, Simeon, that the thought of your sufferings agonized us at home. Who could have abandoned you to such a fate? It makes me sick to think of it!”
A sort of shiver passed over him, while he said, simply:
“It was all in the day’s work. French ran the same risks, only with better luck.” Presently he added:
“I feel tired, Deena – and a little oppressed. Perhaps you had better ring the bell – but stay. Will you kiss me before you ring?”
She kissed him with a pity that wrung her heart, and he sighed contentedly and shut his eyes. He only spoke once more, just as the doctor came to his bedside.
“I should have been glad to see the old house before I die, but it is just as well as it is.”
He was dying all the afternoon, peacefully and gently, and at sunset the end came.
CHAPTER XI
Master Richard Shelton sat at the foot of his sister’s table dispensing its hospitalities chiefly to himself. Through some law unknown to science, all dishes seemed to gravitate toward the main center of Dicky’s trencher, thereby leaving the rest of the table comparatively bare.
For eighteen months Master Shelton had given Mrs. Ponsonby the advantage of his company; not so much through volition – albeit, he was well enough pleased with his quarters – as through submission to paternal authority.
Conventional ideas are apt to wilt under the blight of poverty, and to revive under the fuller harvesting of this world’s goods, and Mr. Shelton, Sr., who had, in the days of his leanness, let Polly run wild with all the college boys of Harmouth, became suddenly particular, as his bank account fattened, in regard to the niceties of conduct in his daughters. His scruples even embraced Deena; he said she was too young a widow to live alone, and a blank sight too handsome, and that either she must return to the protection of his roof or else receive her brother under her own. With the docility of the intelligent, she accepted his fiat, but chose the evil represented by a unit rather than by the sum total of family companionship.
