Conversation was rather easier coming back, perhaps because I felt in higher spirits and could play my absurd part with more gusto. Still, the girl remained a little disquieting. She was now in a very smiling and friendly mood, and a man who blinked through gold rimmed glasses and giggled through a dyed beard ought to have felt exceedingly flattered. But now I was saying to myself that for a girl of fastidious taste she was really too nice to such a fellow. And then I remembered that O’Brien had a black beard too, and the thought struck me,
“Can she have such pleasant recollections of black beards that I am providing her with reminiscent romance?”
I think it was just as this idea occurred to me that she roused me very sharply from my meditations.
“I suppose you have heard of the mysterious man who appeared here last summer?” she enquired.
It took Mr. Hobhouse all this time to adjust himself to this question, but I think he managed it not unsuccessfully.
“The—ah? Oh, yes, oh, yes. The doctor told me the story. Most mysterious—most mysterious! What do you make of it yourself, Miss Rendall?”
“Did the doctor tell you that I once walked with him along this very shore? It was at night too, and he was armed with a pistol!”
A single stare of astonishment was fortunately able to cover two emotions. My own was expressed in the thought, “What the devil is she driving at now?” Mr. Hobhouse’s was expressed otherwise.
“You don’t say so! God bless me; what a risk to run! He didn’t—er—shoot at you, I hope?”
“No,” she said, “he seemed pretty harmless.”
“Ah, but you shouldn’t run such risks, my dear young lady; you really shouldn’t! Now I remember a young lady whom I used to know—” And thereupon Mr. Hobhouse launched into an improbable anecdote which tried his inventive powers considerably. However, he was able to make it, and the comments thereupon lasted till they were back at the house.
The fact was that my hardihood was not quite sufficient to stand a conversation about my own self behind my own back. It might have been amusing, and it might have been instructive, but it would certainly have been embarrassing. However the incident served to reassure me that whatever she suspected me of (and I could not get that sense of being watched out of my head), it was not the correct suspicion. Had she guessed the truth I could see no point at all in her reminiscence of the mysterious stranger, unless it were sheer pointless mischief, and she did not seem a pointless lady. Besides, when I glanced at myself in the drawing room mirror, I said to myself, “Who could possibly guess!”
After that walk, tea and a talk with her father were unexciting episodes. She kept very much in the background, but when we parted I seemed to note again that flicker of a very alluring smile.
“Can it be that she has a morbid taste for inebriates?” I wondered. “One has heard of women with curiously diseased fancies. Or perhaps she has simply a passion for reforming them. One of those smiles for every sober hour would be a distinct inducement to behave!”
But this was not business and as I walked home I turned my thoughts sternly to that scythe blade.
VIII
H.M.S. Uruguay
As I neared my bleak sanatorium I said to myself,
“If only something would happen!”
Week after week spent within those walls or in wandering over this limited space of muddy roads and sodden fields, with nothing to show for it, was an unexhilarating prospect. Perhaps the recollection of the comfortable house and the pleasant company I had just left accentuated this feeling, and the swift disappearance of our glimpse of crispness and sunshine did nothing to raise the heart. In that low-lying isle one got the most extraordinary views of the weather and could see storms approaching when they were still leagues away, and portents of rain or wind hours ahead of their coming. This evening the frost had vanished, the sun was sinking into a grey-blue bank, little filaments of wind clouds were reaching all over the sky, and a stiff chilly breeze was already blowing in from the sea.
“We are going to have a change,” I thought.
And we were indeed going to have a change; and of more than weather. Those storm clouds were blowing up the something I wanted to happen, though how promptly would I have changed my wish had I but guessed! But Fate had loosed that nor’west gale and there was no stopping the order of things now.
In the night I remember waking once or twice to hear the wind shouting down the chimney, and to feel very snug in bed. When I got up it was still blowing a full gale, and looking out of my window I could just catch a glimpse of the masts and funnels of a large steamer which seemed to be lying under the lee side of the island for shelter. What she was precisely I could not see enough of her to say, nor when we met at breakfast, did the doctor know more about her.
Like many a storm that springs up very suddenly, this one began to subside as fast, and in the course of the morning I set out to have a closer look at the strange ship. Quarter of an hour’s walk in that direction told me all I wanted to know about her. In fact I recognised her as no stranger at all but an old acquaintance, H.M.S. Uruguay, a great
