This was our second day out from New York on the Aquitania, and my spirits had been slightly damped by discovering that two fellow-passengers if not more were extremely miserable. One of these lived in a stateroom next to our suite. In my cabin at night I could hear her crying and moaning to herself in a fitful sleep. I had not seen her, so far as I knew, but I fancied from the sound of those sobs that she was young.
When I told Jim, he wanted to change cabins with me, so that I should not be disturbed. But I refused to budge, saying that I wasn't disturbed. My neighbour didn't cry or talk in her sleep all through the night by any means. Besides, once I had dropped off, the sounds were not loud enough to wake me. This was true enough not to be a fib, but my realest reason for clinging to the room was an odd fascination in that mysterious sorrow on the other side of the wall; sorrow of a woman I hadn't seen, might perhaps never see, yet to whom I could send out warm waves of sympathy. I felt as if those waves had colours, blue and gold, and that they would soothe the sufferer.
Her case obsessed me until, in the sunshine of a second summer day at sea, the one empty chair on our crowded deck was filled. A man was helped into it by a valet or male nurse, and a steward. My first glimpse of his face as he sank down on to carefully placed cushions made my heart jump in my breast with pity and protest against the hardness of fate.
If he'd been old, or even middle-aged, or if he had been one of those colourless characters dully sunk into chronic invalidism, I should have felt only the pity without the protest. But he was young, and though it was clear that he was desperately ill, it was clear, too, in a more subtle, psychic way, that he had not been ill long; that love of life or desire for denied happiness burned in him still.
Of course Jim was not really vexed because I discussed this man and wondered about him, but my thoughts did play round that piteously romantic figure a good deal, and it rather amused Jim to see me forget the mystery of the cabin in favour of the cushioned chair.
"Once a Brightener, always a Brightener, I suppose!" he said. Now that I'd dropped my "Princesshood" to marry James Courtenaye, I need never "brighten" any one for money again. But I didn't see why I should not go sailing along on a sunny career of brightening for love. According to habit, therefore, my first thought was: What could be done for the man in the cushioned chair?
Maybe Jim was right! If he hadn't been young and almost better than good-looking, my interest might not have been so keen. He was the wreck of a gorgeous creature—one of those great, tall, muscular men you feel were born to adorn the Guards.
The reason (the physical reason, not the psychic one) for thinking he hadn't been ill long was the colour of the invalid's face. The pallor of illness hadn't had time to blanch the rich brown that life in the open gives. So thin was the face that the aquiline features stood out sharply; but they seemed to be carved in bronze, not moulded in plaster. As for the psychic reason, I found it in the dark eyes that met mine now and then. They were not black like those of my own Jim, which contrasted so strikingly with auburn hair. Indeed, I couldn't tell whether the eyes were brown or deep gray, for they were set in shadowy hollows, and the brows and thick lashes were even darker than the hair, which was lightly silvered at the temples. Handsome, arresting eyes they must always have been; but what stirred me was the violent wish that seemed actually to speak from them.
Whether it was a wish to live, or a haunting wish for joy never gratified, I could not decide. But I felt that it must have been burnt out by a long illness.
I had only just learned a few things about the man, when there came that surprising answer to my prayer for someone to "brighten" him. My maid had got acquainted with his valet-nurse, and had received a quantity of information which she passed to me.