Mrs. Falchion Part 3

These conclusions were pursued at the expense of speech on my part.

At first she did not appear to regard my silence. She seemed to have thoughts of her own; but she shook them off with a little firm motion of the shoulders, and, with the a.s.sumption of a demureness of manner and an airy petulance, said: "Well, amuse me."

"Amuse you?" was my reply. "Delighted to do so if I can. How?"

"Talk to me," was the quick response.

"Would that accomplish the purpose?" This in a tone of mock protest.

"Please don't be foolish, Dr. Marmion. I dislike having to explain. Tell me things."

"About what?"

"Oh, about yourself--about people you have met, and all that; for I suppose you have seen a good deal and lived a good deal."

"About hospital cases?" I said a little maliciously.

"No, please, no! I abhor everything that is sick and poor and miserable."

"Well," said I, at idle venture, "if not a hospital, what about a gaol?"

I felt the hand on my arm twitch slightly, and then her reply came.

"I said I hated everything that was wretched and wicked. You are either dense, or purposely irritating."

"Well, then, a college?"

"A college? Yes, that sounds better. But I do not wish descriptions of being 'gated,' or 'sent down,' or 'ploughed,' and that kind of commonplace. I should prefer, unless your vanity leads you irresistibly in that direction, something with mature life and amus.e.m.e.nt; or, at least, life and incident, and good sport--if you do not dwell on the horrors of killing."

On the instant there came to me the remembrance of Professor Valiant's wife. I think it was not what she wanted; but I had a purpose, and I began:

"Every one at St. Luke's admired and respected Professor Valiant's wife, she was so frank and cordial and prettily downright. In our rooms we all called her a good chap, and a dashed good chap when her husband happened to be rustier than usual. He was our professor in science. It was the general belief that he chose science for his life-work because it gave unusual opportunities for torture. He was believed to be a devoted vivisectionist; he certainly had methods of cruelty, masterly in their ingenuity. He could make a whole cla.s.s raw with punishment in a few words; and many a scorching bit of Latin verse was written about his hooked nose and fishy eye.

"But his highest talents in this direction were reserved for his wife.

His distorted idea of his own importance made him view her as a chattel, an inferior being; the more so, I believe, because she brought him little money when he married her. She was too much the woman to pretend to kneel to him, and because she would not be his slave, she had a hard time of it. He began by insisting that she should learn science, that she might a.s.sist him in his experiments. She knew that she had no taste for it, that it was no part of her wifely duty, and she did what suited her better--followed the hounds. It was a picture to see her riding across country. She could take a fence with a sound hunter like a bird.

And so it happened that, after a time, they went their own ways pretty well; he ignoring her, neglecting her, deprecating her by manner, if not by speech, and making her life more than uncomfortable.

"She was always kind to me. I was the youngest chap in the college, and was known as 'Marmy' by every one; and because I was fonder of science than most other men in the different years, Valiant was more gracious to me than the rest, though I did not like him. One day, when I called, I heard her say to him, not knowing that I was near: 'Whatever you feel, or however you act towards me in private, I will have respect when others are present.'

"It was the custom for the professors to invite each student to luncheon or dinner once during term-time. Being somewhat of a favourite of both Professor and Mrs. Valiant however, I lunched with them often. I need hardly say that I should not have exceeded the regulation once had it not been for Mrs. Valiant. The last time I went is as clear in my memory as if it were yesterday. Valiant was more satirical and cold-blooded than usual. I noticed a kind of s.h.i.+ning hardness in his wife's eyes, which gave me a strange feeling; yet she was talkative and even gay, I thought, while I more than once clinched my fist under the table, so much did I want to pummel him; for I was a lover of hers, in a deferential, boyish way.

"At last, knowing that she liked the hunt, I asked her if she was going to the meet on the following Sat.u.r.day, saying that I intended to follow, having been offered a horse. With a steely ring to her voice, and a further brightening of the eyes, she said: 'You are a stout little sportsman, Marmy. Yes, I am going on Major Karney's big horse, Carbine.'

"Valiant looked up, half sneering, half doubtful, I thought, and rejoined: 'Carbine is a valuable horse, and the fences are stiff in the Garston country.'

"She smiled gravely, then, with her eyes fixed on her husband, said: 'Carbine is a perfect gentleman. He will do what I ask him. I have ridden him.'

"'The devil you have!' he replied.

"'I am sure,' said I, as I hoped, bravely, and not a little enthusiastically, 'that Carbine would take any fence you asked him.'

"'Or not, as the case might be. Thank you, Marmy, for the compliment,'

she said.

"'A Triton among minnows,' remarked Valiant, not entirely under his breath; 'horses obey, and students admire, and there is no end to her greatness.'

"'There is an end to everything, Edward,' she remarked a shade sadly and quietly.

"He turned to me and said: 'Science is a great study, Marmion, but it is sardonic too; for you shall find that when you reduce even a Triton to its original elements--'

"'Oh, please let me finish,' she interrupted softly. 'I know the lecture so well. It reads this way: "The place of generation must break to give place to the generated; but the influence spreads out beyond the fragments, and is greater thus than in the ma.s.s--neither matter nor mind can be destroyed. The earth was molten before it became cold rock and quiet world." There, you see, Marmy, that I am a fellow-student of yours.'

"Valiant's eyes were ugly to watch; for she had quoted from a lecture of his, delivered to us that week. After an instant he said, with slow maliciousness: 'Oh, ye G.o.ds, render me worthy of this Portia, and teach her to do as Brutus's Portia did, ad eternum!'

"She shuddered a little, then said very graciously, and as if he had meant nothing but kindness: 'Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.' I will leave you now to your cigarettes; and because I must go out soon, and shall not, I fear, see you again this afternoon, good-bye, Marmy, till Sat.u.r.day--till Sat.u.r.day.' And she left us.

"I was white and trembling with anger. He smiled coolly, and was careful to choose me one of his best cigars, saying as he handed it: 'Conversation is a science, Marmion. Study it; there is solid satisfaction in it; it is the only art that brings instant pleasure.

Like the stage, it gets its immediate applause.'

"Well, Mrs. Valiant did ride Carbine on that Sat.u.r.day. Such a scene it was! I see it now--the mottled plump of hounds upon the scent, the bright sun showing up the scarlet coats of the whips gloriously, the long stride of the hunters, ears back and quarters down! She rode Carbine, and the fences WERE stiff--so stiff that I couldn't have taken half of them. Afterward I was not sorry that I couldn't; for she rode for a fall that day on Carbine, her own horse, she had bought him of Major Karney a few days before,--and I heard her last words as she lay beside him, smiling through the dreadful whiteness of her lips.

'Goodbye, Marmy,' she whispered. 'Carbine and I go together. It is better so, in the full cry and a big field. Tell the men at Luke's that I hope they will pa.s.s at the coming exams.... I am going up--for my final--Marmy.--I wonder--if I'll--pa.s.s.' And then the words froze on her lips.

"It was persecution that did it--diabolical persecution and selfishness.

That was the worst day the college ever knew. At the funeral, when the provost read, 'For that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world,' Big Wallington, the wildest chap among the grads, led off with a gulp in his throat, and we all followed. And that gold-spectacled sneak stood there, with a lying white handkerchief at his eyes.

"I laid myself out to make the college too hot for him. In a week I had every man in the place with me, and things came to such a pa.s.s that all of us must be sent down, or Valiant resign. He resigned. He found another professors.h.i.+p; but the thing followed him, and he was obliged to leave the country."

When I finished the story, Mrs. Falchion was silent for a time, then, with a slight air of surprise, and in a quite critical way, she said: "I should think you would act very well, if you used less emotion. Mrs.

Valiant had a kind of courage, but she was foolish to die. She should have stayed and fought him--fought him every way, until she was his master. She could have done it; she was clever, I should think. Still, if she had to die, it was better to go with a good horse that way. I think I should prefer to go swiftly, suddenly, but without the horror of blood and bruises, and that sort of thing.... I should like to meet Professor Valiant. He was hard, but he was able too.... But haven't we had enough of horror? I asked you to amuse me, and you have merely interested me instead. Oh!--"

This exclamation, I thought, was caused by the voice of the quartermaster humming:

"I'm a-sailing, I'm a-sailing on the sea, To a harbour where the wind is still"--

Almost immediately she said: "I think I will go below." Then, after a slight pause: "This is a liberal acquaintance for one day, Dr. Marmion; and, you know, we were not introduced."

"No, Mrs. Falchion, we were not introduced; but I am in some regards your host, and I fear we should all be very silent if we waited for regular introductions here. The acquaintance gives me pleasure, but it is not nearly so liberal as I hope it may become."

She did not answer, but smiled at me over her shoulder as she pa.s.sed down the staircase, and the next instant I could have bitten my tongue for playing the cavalier as I had done; for showing, as I think I did, that she had an influence over me--an influence peculiar to herself, and difficult to account for when not in her presence.

I sat down, lit a cigar, and went over in my mind all that had been said between us; all that had occurred in my cabin after dinner; every minute since we left Colombo was laid bare to its minutest detail. Lascars slipped by me in the half-darkness, the voices of two lovers near alternated with their expressive silences, and from the music saloon there came the pretty strains of a minuet, played very deftly. Under the influence of this music my thoughts became less exact; they drifted. My eyes s.h.i.+fted to the lights of the 'Porcupine' in the distance, and from them again to the figures pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing me on the deck. The "All's well" of the look-out seemed to come from an endless distance; the swish of water against the dividing hull of the 'Fulvia' sounded like a call to silence from another world; the phosph.o.r.escence swimming through the jarred waters added to the sensation of unreality and dreams. These dreams grew, till they were broken by a hand placed on my shoulder, and I saw that one of the pa.s.sengers, Clovelly, an English novelist, had dropped out from the promenade to talk with me. He saw my mood, however, and said quietly: "Give me a light for my cigar, will you? Then, astride this stool, I'll help you to make inventory of the rest of them. A pretty study; for, at our best, 'What fools we mortals be!'"

"'Motley is your only wear,'" was my reply; and for a full half-hour, which, even for a man, is considerable, we spoke no word, but only nodded when some one of the promenaders noticed us. There was a bookmaker fresh from the Melbourne races; an American, Colonel Ryder, whose eloquence had carried him round the world; a stalwart squatter from Queensland; a pretty widow, who had left her husband under the sods of Tasmania; a brace of girls going to join their lovers and be married in England; a few officers fleeing from India with their livers and their lives; a family of four lanky la.s.ses travelling "home" to school; a row of affable ladies, who alternated between envy and gaiety and delight in, and criticism of, their husbands; a couple of missionaries, preparing to give us lectures on the infamous G.o.ds of the heathen,--G.o.ds which, poor harmless little creatures! might be bought at a few annas a pint at Aden or Colombo,--and on the Exodus and the Pharaohs--pleasures reserved for the Red Sea; a commercial traveller, who arranged theatricals, and cast himself for all the princ.i.p.al parts; a humorous and naive person who industriously hinted at the opulence of his estates in Ireland; two stately English ladies of t.i.tle; a cheerful array of colonial knights and judges off to Europe for a holiday; and many others, who made little worlds unto themselves, called cliques by blunt people.

"To my mind, the most interesting persons on the s.h.i.+p," said Clovelly at last, "are the bookmaker, Miss Treherne, and the lady with whom you have just been talking--an exceptional type."

"An unusual woman, I fancy," was my reply. "But which is Miss Treherne?

I am afraid I am not quite sure."