XVIII
Captain Brack was sitting in Chanler’s chair when we went in to dinner that evening and Miss Baldwin’s place was beside him. Dr. Olson and myself—neither Riordan nor Wilson had appeared—sat opposite.
Brack was dressed with the care of a captain of a popular trans-Atlantic liner, and his attitude toward Miss Baldwin was solely that of a captain solicitous for his passenger’s comfort and pleasure. The yacht might have been the Mauretania, our little party the dinner crowd of the liner’s first saloon. Brack’s personality, polished and radiant for the time being, his flashing conversation, filled and illumined the room. It was difficult not to forget young Larson as one sat beneath his spell.
“An apology is necessary, Miss Baldwin, for my absence from luncheon,” he said. “It is not etiquette to fail to welcome a passenger to her first meal on board. It was necessary, however, that I stay on the bridge until I was sure that the Wanderer had reached her limit of speed and that we were holding true on our course. I have stolen thirty minutes from that duty this evening to fulfil my social obligation as captain.”
“Then we are in a hurry, Captain Brack?” she asked.
His eyes were upon her—those eyes with their compelling power—and her manner was subdued.
“The crew is in a desperate hurry, Miss Baldwin,” he said with one of his flashing smiles. “Men are always in a hurry when they hear of gold. And, really—” he bowed to her deferentially—“we have much to thank you for, Miss Baldwin, for relieving a tense situation this morning. I do not mean that there was the slightest danger of any trouble. No, no! But the situation was a trifle uncomfortable when you appeared and voted that we go hunting for gold instead of bones.” He laughed softly. “I have wondered why you did that, Miss Baldwin; is it presumptuous to ask?”
Miss Baldwin toyed with her spoon.
“I thought that this—going gold-hunting—was so much more alive.”
“Good!” he said earnestly. “That is why I voted for it, too. To be alive while we are living—that is more important than to unearth old skeletons. Isn’t that your idea, Miss Baldwin?”
“Yes,” she said with a strange smile.
“And to be alive means to live in the open, free and untrapped.”
She looked up at him, and by her expression I knew that she saw only his eyes.
“You don’t look as if you would be contented indoors, captain,” she said with a little laugh.
“Are you?” he said, and looked straight at her.
She smiled in puzzled fashion without replying.
“No, you are not,” he answered for her. “For you are very, very much alive, and so must naturally have longings for the free life, which means life outdoors. Am I not right?”
“Yes.”
“Life—we can make it a free, glorious thing, or a gray, trapped affair, just as we choose. It is all a matter of courage. There is still much room in the world. It is not crowded except in spots. If we choose to remain in one of those crowded spots, or rather, if we are afraid to leave them, we must, of necessity, become one of the gray, trapped crowd, existing through a certain span of years without ever knowing what it is to be truly alive. But in the great open spaces people live—they are alive. They are natural, they are hand-in-hand with Nature, and Nature gives them more reward for living than does what man calls civilization.
“As one who has lived under both conditions, Miss Baldwin, I assure you that it is only in the uncrowded spaces that man may get close enough to the root of Life to experience the sensation of immortality. Haven’t you felt something like that yourself?”
“Yes,” she said again, and her eyes were puzzled and full of wonder.
“You will learn,” he said, nodding his head gravely. “You are one of those who will learn quickly the message that the open has for you. You are free-born. You would not be here unless the call to freedom had come to you. Isn’t that so?”
“I—I have always longed for an experience like this. How did you know?”
“It is written upon you as plain as print; you are finding your true sphere. Tell me truthfully: do you not at this moment feel stirred as you never did before in your life?”
She looked up at him quickly; it seemed as if he had frightened her.
“How could you know that?” she faltered.
He smiled, leaning toward her, his eyes holding hers.
“That and many more things you will learn, Miss Baldwin,” he said impressively. “You are beginning a new life. The new impulses you feel are the commands of your true spirit, stricken free of the bonds of civilization. Obey them. Remember, they are your true self; there can be for you no realization of the full possibilities of life save along the way they lead you. There is hidden country in all of us, and until we explore it we don’t know what it is to live.”
He sat back in his chair, smiling, satisfied.
“And now you must excuse me; my thirty minutes are up and I have promised Riordan thirty minutes to dine.” As he bowed and rose his glance went across the table to me. “Now, Mr. Pitt, I will wager, never has felt a call to be free—to explore any hidden country.”
I did not reply.
“No, Mr. Pitt is not one of us. But, Miss Baldwin,” he concluded, bending over her as he passed out, “you are. Your true life is about to begin.”
And she followed him with her eyes as he left the room, though there was that in her expression which suggested that she did so unwillingly.
“Ah!”
The faintest exclamation of relief escaped her lips as the captain disappeared. She sank back in her chair as if suddenly released. She looked around; our eyes met. She excused herself in a dazed sort of fashion and went to her room.
Hours afterward I was pacing the deck. It was another pitch-dark night, and to one fresh from the glare of New York, the darkness was well-nigh appalling. The Wanderer’s searchlight seemed only a thin knife-gash, parting the darkness before us. On either side of its beam the blackness of night stood like a wall. There were no stars to be seen above. East, north, south and west, naught but the dead night; below, only the hiss of unseen waters through which we were rushing toward—what?
I shuffled to and fro on the deck, caring neither where nor how I was going. The scene between Brack and Miss Baldwin at the dinner-table repeated itself again and again, each time with a new, sinister significance. I know what power lay within Brack’s eyes. Had they not roused me and thrilled me and made me fighting mad, which was exactly what Brack, in idle sport wished to do? What would be the effect of his will, gleaming through his glances, on a woman, on a young, inexperienced girl like Miss Baldwin? For after all, she was nothing but an inexperienced girl. Yes, I told myself, she was so inexperienced, so ignorant, through the sheltered life she had lived, that she did not know enough to recognize a distressing situation when she met it. She was brave because she didn’t have sense enough to be cautious.
“Mr. Pitt,” called a voice softly, “is that you?”
I swung around. I was near a cabin porthole and by its light I made out Miss Baldwin coming toward me.
“I’m glad,” she said. “Don’t stop, please; let us walk.
“I came out,” she continued, as we fell into step, “because I didn’t like to be alone.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I seemed lonesome. It was nice to come out here and find you.”
I made no response, and our walk was silent for a long time.
“I wanted to speak to you about something,” she said at last, “about Captain Brack.”
“Yes?”
She hesitated.
“Is—is he as wonderful as he seems?”
“Captain Brack is a remarkable man,” I replied.
“I thought he was wonderful when he was speaking,” she said falteringly. “But when he was gone I—it seemed different.”
“How different?”
“I don’t know just. I loved to listen while he was talking. But after he’d gone I felt relieved. It frightened me a little. That’s why I came out. What do you know about him?”
I was at loss for a reply. To tell her what I knew of Brack, of my first sight of him in the Seattle saloon, of what I had learned aboard the Wanderer, would serve to alarm her in an uncomfortable manner.
“Chanler selected him as his captain,” I said.
She gave an impatient toss to her shoulders as we walked on.
“Oh, that doesn’t mean anything. What sort of a man is he?”
“Very strong.”
“I know that.”
“Very capable.”
“Yes.”
“And entirely unscrupulous.”
She nodded her head, not in the least surprised.
“I thought so,” she said.
There was a moment of silence. We heard the murmur of waters against our bows.
“He’s something like that,” she said, pointing out over the dark sea. “A blind, remorseless force; isn’t he?”
“But more subtle.”
“Oh! Is he?”
“As subtle as he is strong.”
She gave a little gasp, as if she had caught herself in an error.
“I didn’t know that. I didn’t realize—I must be going in. You’ll excuse me. Good night, Mr. Pitt. Pleasant dreams.”
Pleasant dreams! It was past one in the morning before I ceased my troubled pacing of the Wanderer’s promenade, and such sleep as weariness finally brought to me was beset by a jumble of nightmares, dominated by Brack’s eyes and smile.