Chapter Thirty One.
“Dark Roll the Deepening Days...”
In the very circumscribed limits of shipboard it is difficult enough for any two people who want to avoid each other to do so. Given, however, two who are, even in spite of themselves, animated by no such wish, the thing is well-nigh impossible.
Thus it proved to these two. Roden Musgrave, for all his steel-plated armour of pride, for all his strength of purpose, was conscious of a weak place, of a joint in his harness. Deep down in his heart was a great craving, even for a little while, for the old time as it had been. Again he reviewed all that had gone before; again he began to find excuses for her. She had been startled, shocked, horrified. She had been “got at” by Suffield, who, he feared, was at heart a bit of a sneak. Moreover, he himself had hustled, had scurried her too impetuously. A little further time for reflection, for accustoming herself to the—it must be owned rather startling—idea, and she would have acted very differently. He had expected too much—had unconsciously fallen back into the old, old blunder of his salad days, expecting to find something of the nature of an angel; discovering, of course, only a woman.
Not all at once did he come round to this change of opinion. He could not forget that she had believed the charge against him in its entirety—believed that he had treacherously slain a comrade for the sake of robbery; and a very paltry robbery at that. That she should believe him guilty of the homicide was nothing; but of theft! No, that he could never forgive.
Yet as they sat at table three times a day—sat facing each other—her demeanour was hardly that of one who believed him capable of anything so despicable; and soon, all unconsciously, the cynical ring faded from his tone; the drift of his remarks became no more than normally biting. And often, as though, by some strange, sweet magnetism, it would seem to those two that they were making conversation for themselves alone, talking to each other with a kind of subtle understanding imperceptible to the rest, even when the talk was general.
The captain was right in congratulating himself upon having a snug corner for the voyage. This is just what it was, notwithstanding the vicinity of a bore or so, providentially not quite near enough to put idiotic questions very often. And to two, at any rate, the sound of the bell was a welcome one, though for a widely different reason to that which caused the residue to hail its distracting clamour. For it brought them together for a space.
Only for a space! They might have been together all day and every day had they so wished it. Yet they were never seen together alone. Other couples in plenty, philandering in cane chairs during the torrid heat of the day, pacing the deck by starlight, or leaning against the taffrail rather close together when the moon rose over the sheeny, liquid plain; but these two, never. They would converse, but always in the presence of that third person which in such instances is jocularly supposed to constitute “a crowd.” Sometimes, indeed, the good-natured third person, actuated by the best intentions, would drop out of it, not ostentatiously either. But then it was not long before Roden found some excuse for transferring his presence elsewhere.
Now as the days went by Mona began to grow bitter and reckless. To her, too, the appearance of this man on board the Scythian had come with the shock of a mighty surprise. Her voyage to England was being undertaken indirectly through his agency, for such a depression and lowness of spirits had been the result of her high-strung efforts at unconcern as seriously to undermine her health; and, as a last resource, she had resolved upon that change which to the Colonial-born woman is the most welcome of all—a trip to the Old Country. And here on board this ship, under circumstances which would bring them together daily for at least three weeks, she had found him again, and—he would have none of her.
Had she not shown him how bitterly she repented her demeanour on that day; shown him by word, by look, by every subtle tenderness which she knew so well how to import into both? But of telling him so in plain language he seemed determined to afford her no opportunity. There were moments when she thought of punishing him by arousing his jealousy, if he had got one spark of that evil combustible within him. It was easily done; there was no lack of material to hand. But, fortunately, she recollected that he had not—except in the form of unmitigated contempt—and that however such a plan might answer with some men, with this one its only result could be to fix the gulf between them more irrevocably wide than ever. For the first time in her life Mona found herself unpopular with the opposite sex; for not by any representative of it as there gathered together could she be induced to indulge in moonlight walks, or protracted sitting out when dancing was forward, or, in short, in the barest suspicion of any approach to a flirtation whatsoever.