“He stands in the group near the door of the captain’s cabin, there. His name is Galt Roscoe, I think.”
A slight exclamation escaped her. There was a chilly smile on her lips, and her eyes sought the group until it rested on Galt Roscoe. In a moment she said “You have met him?”
“In the cemetery this morning, for the first time.”
“Everybody seems to have had business this morning at the cemetery. Justine Caron spent hours there. To me it is so foolish, heaping up a mound, and erecting a tombstone over—what?—a dead thing, which, if one could see it, would be dreadful.”
“You would prefer complete absorption—as of the ocean?” I brutally retorted.
She appeared not to notice the innuendo. “Yes, what is gone is gone. Graves are idolatry. Gravestones are ghostly. It is people without imagination who need these things, together with crape and black-edged paper. It is all barbaric ritual. I know you think I am callous, but I cannot help that. For myself, I wish the earth close about me, and level green grass above me, and no one knowing of the place; or else, fire or the sea.”
“Mrs. Falchion,” said I, “between us there need be no delicate words. You appear to have neither imagination, nor idolatry, nor remembrances, nor common womanly kindness.”
“Indeed!” she said. “Yet you might know me better.” Here she touched my arm with the tips of her fingers, and, in spite of myself, I felt my pulse beat faster. It seemed to me that in her presence, even now, I could not quite trust myself. “Indeed!” she repeated. “And who made you omniscient, Dr. Marmion? You hardly do yourself justice. You hold a secret. You insist on reminding me of the fact. Is that in perfect gallantry? Do you know me altogether, from your knowledge of that one thing? You are vain. Or does the secret wear on you, and—Mr. Hungerford? Was it necessary to seek HIS help in keeping it?”
I told her then the true history of Hungerford’s connection with Boyd Madras, and also begged her pardon for showing just now my knowledge of her secret. At this she said, “I suppose I should be grateful,” and was there a slightly softer cadence to her voice?
“No, you need not be grateful,” I said. “We are silent, first, because he wished it; then because you are a woman.”