XIX
After breakfast next morning I went to see Chanler. He was sitting up in bed, and he had changed greatly overnight. His face was puffed and gray-looking, and the swollen eyelids were parted only enough to disclose a slit of blood-shot eyes. Dr. Olson was with him, whisky-glass in hand, but he was watching Chanler shrewdly.
“I’ve got him filled up with bromides,” whispered the doctor to me. “If we can’t get him to sleep he’ll have the D. T.’s.”
Chanler slowly turned his head toward me and endeavored to open his eyes wide. The effort was too much for him and his face became distorted with a drunken smile.
“There he is—li’l Gardy, the foe of rum,” he murmured sleepily. “Model young man. Gardy, know wha’ I’d like see? Like see you stewed to zenith. Like see you spiff-iflicated. Oh, wha’ ’n ez’bition you’d be! Horr’ble, horr’ble!” He shook his head slowly. “Nay, nay! Don’ catch Gardy spiff-iflicated. Don’ catch Gardy putting things in’s brain to steal his mouth away, do they, Gard’? Noshirr-rr! Noshir-r! Let George do ’t, eh, Gardy? Let George—let——”
His head fell forward. With an effort he raised it, but his eyes were closed.
“Gardy—you—you——”
He collapsed slowly upon the pillow and was sound asleep.
Dr. Olson set his glass down and wiped his forehead.
“That’s good,” he said. “But he’s going to be a very sick man.”
“Of course,” I said. “But now that you have got him asleep we are going to stop his drinking and get him straightened up.”
The doctor looked at Chanler’s puffed face.
“What’s the use?” he said with a shrug of his thin shoulders. “Besides, he doesn’t want to do anything of the sort.”
“What he wants doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “He’s got to be straightened up. What can you do for him?”
The little man looked at me with a weary smile.
“Why this eagerness, Pitt? If I put Chanler on his feet——”
“Then that’s settled,” I interrupted. “You admit you can put him on his feet, therefore you’ve got to do it. Your word?”
“My word,” he said solemnly, and went to work.
Miss Baldwin was waiting for me as I came from Chanler’s stateroom.
“I saw you just as you went in,” she said. “Well?”
“He’s sleeping now,” I replied. “He’ll be all right—or, at least better—when he wakes. George will straighten up.”
She looked at me in that wonderful quiet way of hers.
“Are you so loyal to all your friends, Mr. Pitt?” she said.
“George will straighten up,” I repeated. “He is in Dr. Olson’s hands. He will make amends when he is himself again.”
She turned away, a wistful—perhaps bitter—smile faintly touching her lips.
“Miss Baldwin!” I cried apologetically. “Have I said anything to hurt you, to give you pain?”
“You?” she said, smiling brightly. “Of course you haven’t. How could you think that? I—I merely happened to think of how different George was a few months ago. No, no! Don’t grow sad out of sympathy, please, Mr. Pitt. I’m not unhappy. Do I look it? I cared for George. I know it now. Maybe I could have learned to care for him deeply if he had cared for me truly. But he didn’t, and I’m glad I found it out.”
“You mustn’t say that, Miss Baldwin. You must give him another chance when he’s himself again.”
“Loyal Mr. Pitt!” she laughed. “Well, I can scarcely help giving George another chance, can I? Here on the same yacht with him. Mr. Pitt, I’ll bet I know what you think of me?”
“And that is?”
“That I’m an awful fool to be here?”
I smiled.
“I knew it!” she cried.
“You’re wrong!” I protested. “I do not think so at this moment.”
“But you have thought so?”
“I have thought you—well, not quite as cautious——”
“Prevaricator! You’ve thought: ‘What sort of a silly madcap is this girl!’ I know it. Well, I guess you’re right. It was a foolish thing to do; it’s foolish to be glad at the prospect of adventure. Other girls wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t think of it. They’d think a girl queer who did. That proves it’s foolish, doesn’t it? It isn’t done. I can’t help it, though; I’ve needed something like this.”
“It is the day of restlessness among American women,” I said fatuously.
“Restlessness? Is it? Yes, I suppose it is. But my restlessness doesn’t take the regular, honest truth road, you know. Lots of my girl friends have felt they wanted to do something, but they’ve wanted to go suff’ing, or paint, or write, or teach folk-dances, or something like that. I didn’t, not any more than I wanted to be considered a doll in pretty clothes all my life.
“I wanted to break away. Well, I did. Here I am. And, scandalous as it may sound, I’m enjoying every minute. Now, Mr. Pitt, there’s my whole confession. I have acted foolishly, and I know it, but really, I feel as if I had broken loose from something that had held me down. I feel as if it was the beginning of a new life for me—of my real life.”
“A new life?” I said. “Why, that’s what Captain Brack said last night.”
She looked away.
“Yes, so he did,” she said slowly.
And I thought she shivered a little.
I am afraid I cursed poor George Chanler in unchristian fashion during the rest of that run up to Kalmut Fiord. For during those days Captain Brack wooed Miss Baldwin steadily. At each meal he sat at her side; his eyes were upon her, his magic words were for her alone. And even while he spoke to her I saw in his eyes that terrible, ruthless look I knew so well.
“What does the hidden country of Kalmut Fiord hold?” he speculated one evening. “Ah, Miss Baldwin, if we knew our interest would be discounted. It is a primitive spot, surely; a primal piece of earth. Let us pray that it holds Romance, without which there can be no beginning of a new life.” Once more he repeated: “Hidden country! There’s some in all of us, and until we explore it we don’t live.”
The effect of his efforts was apparent upon Miss Baldwin. She seemed to dread each meeting with him, yet she sat beneath his spell in a state of fascination. So I cursed poor Chanler. Had he been the man Miss Baldwin had hoped she would have had no attention for Brack.
Near dusk on the third day after changing our course we sighted land over our bows, a tiny gray smudge on the horizon. Our speed was cut down to a crawl at once. The captain, after studying the land through his glasses, ordered our course changed to west by nor’west, and through the thickening darkness we moved at a foot-pace, gradually drawing nearer a harboring, fir-lined coast line.
That night, while most of us slept soundly, we slipped into Kalmut Fiord. The cessation of the yacht’s motion aroused me in the morning, and half awake I dressed and stumbled out on deck to learn the cause.
In the darkness I had a jumbled impression that the Wanderer was lying in a small lake surrounded by a circle of small, craggy mountains. Then, my senses clearing, I realized that I had stepped into the midst of events of sinister portent.