"Does it matter how I feel?" she asked in a tone that cast a gloom over
his face. He answered with repressed violence which she did not expect:
"No, it does not matter, because I cannot go without you. I've told you
. . . You know it. You don't think I could."
"I assure you I haven't the slightest wish to evade my obligations," she
said steadily. "Even if I could. Even if I dared, even if I had to die
for it!"
He looked thunderstruck. They stood facing each other at the end of the
saloon. Anthony stuttered. "Oh no. You won't die. You don't mean it.
You have taken kindly to the sea."
She laughed, but she felt angry.
"No, I don't mean it. I tell you I don't mean to evade my obligations. I
shall live on . . . feeling a little crushed, nevertheless."
"Crushed!" he repeated. "What's crushing you?"
"Your magnanimity," she said sharply. But her voice was softened after a
time. "Yet I don't know. There is a perfection in it--do you understand
me, Roderick?--which makes it almost possible to bear."
He sighed, looked away, and remarked that it was time to put out the lamp
in the saloon. The permission was only till ten o'clock.
"But you needn't mind that so much in your cabin. Just see that the
curtains of the ports are drawn close and that's all. The steward might
have forgotten to do it. He lighted your reading lamp in there before he
went ashore for a last evening with his wife. I don't know if it was
wise to get rid of Mrs. Brown. You will have to look after yourself,
Flora."
He was quite anxious; but Flora as a matter of fact congratulated herself
on the absence of Mrs. Brown. No sooner had she closed the door of her
state-room than she murmured fervently, "Yes! Thank goodness, she is
gone." There would be no gentle knock, followed by her appearance with
her equivocal stare and the intolerable: "Can I do anything for you,
ma'am?" which poor Flora had learned to fear and hate more than any voice
or any words on board that ship--her only refuge from the world which had
no use for her, for her imperfections and for her troubles.
* * * * *
Mrs. Brown had been very much vexed at her dismissal. The Browns were a
childless couple and the arrangement had suited them perfectly. Their
resentment was very bitter. Mrs. Brown had to remain ashore alone with
her rage, but the steward was nursing his on board. Poor Flora had no
greater enemy, the aggrieved mate had no greater sympathizer. And Mrs.
Brown, with a woman's quick power of observation and inference (the
putting of two and two together) had come to a certain conclusion which
she had imparted to her husband before leaving the ship. The morose
steward permitted himself once to make an allusion to it in Powell's
hearing. It was in the officers' mess-room at the end of a meal while he
lingered after putting a fruit pie on the table. He and the chief mate
started a dialogue about the alarming change in the captain, the sallow
steward looking down with a sinister frown, Franklin rolling upwards his
eyes, sentimental in a red face. Young Powell had heard a lot of that
sort of thing by that time. It was growing monotonous; it had always
sounded to him a little absurd. He struck in impatiently with the remark
that such lamentations over a man merely because he had taken a wife
seemed to him like lunacy.