"That is what I am going to do," he said very seriously, "when I get to England. I am resigning the navy." At that instant there flashed through my mind Mrs. Falchion's words: "You are going to be that—you!"
Then he explained to me that he had been studying for two years, and expected to go up for deacon's orders soon after his return to England. I cannot say that I was greatly surprised, for I had known a few, and had heard of many, men who had exchanged the navy for the Church. It struck me, however, that Galt Roscoe appeared to view the matter from a stand- point not professional; the more so, that he expressed his determination to go to the newest part of a new country, to do the pioneer work of the Church. I asked him where he was going, and he said to the Rocky Mountains of Canada. I told him that my destination was Canada also. He warmly expressed the hope that we should see something of each other there. This friendship of ours may seem to have been hastily hatched, but it must be remembered that the sea is a great breeder of friendship. Two men who have known each other for twenty years find that twenty days at sea bring them nearer than ever they were before, or else estrange them.
It was on this evening that, in a lull of the conversation, I casually asked him when he had known Mrs. Falchion. His face was inscrutable, but he said somewhat hurriedly, "In the South Sea Islands," and then changed the subject. So, there was some mystery again? Was this woman never to be dissociated from enigma? In those days I never could think of her save in connection with some fatal incident in which she was scathless, and some one else suffered.
It may have been fancy, but I thought that, during the first day or two after leaving Aden, Galt Roscoe and Mrs. Falchion were very little together. Then the impression grew that this was his doing, and again that she waited with confident patience for the time when he would seek her—because he could not help himself. Often when other men were paying her devoted court I caught her eyes turned in his direction, and I thought I read in her smile a consciousness of power. And it so was. Very soon he was at her side. But I also noticed that he began to look worn, that his conversation with me lagged. I think that at this time I was so much occupied with tracing personal appearances to personal influences that I lost to some degree the physician's practical keenness. My eyes were to be opened. He appeared to be suffering, and she seemed to unbend to him more than she ever unbent to me, or any one else on board. Hungerford, seeing this, said to me one day in his blunt way: "Marmion, old Ulysses knew what he was about when he tied himself to the mast."
But the routine of the ship went on as before. Fortunately, Mrs. Falchion's heroism at Aden had taken the place of the sensation attending Boyd Madras's suicide. Those who tired of thinking of both became mildly interested in Red Sea history. Chief among these was the bookmaker. As an historian the bookmaker was original. He cavalierly waved aside all such confusing things as dates: made Moses and Mahomet contemporaneous, incidentally referred to King Solomon's visits to Cleopatra, and with sad irreverence spoke of the Exodus and the destruction of Pharaoh's horses and chariots as "the big handicap." He did not mean to be irreverent or unhistorical. He merely wished to enlighten Mrs. Callendar, who said he was very original, and quite clever at history. His really startling points, however, were his remarks upon the colours of the mountains of Egypt and the sunset tints to be seen on the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. To him the grey, and pink, and melancholy gold only brought up visions of a race at Epsom or Flemington—generally Flemington, where the staring Australian sun pours down on an emerald course, on a score of horses straining upon the start, the colours of the jockeys' coats and caps changing in the struggle like a kaleidoscope, and making strange harmonies of colour. The comparison between the mountains of Egypt and a race-course might seem most absurd, if one did not remember that the bookmaker had his own standards, and that he thought he was paying unusual honour to the land of the Fellah. Clovelly plaintively said, as he drank his hock and seltzer, that the bookmaker was hourly saving his life; and Colonel Ryder admitted at last that Kentucky never produced anything quite like him.
The evening before we came to the Suez Canal I was walking with Miss Treherne and her father. I had seen Galt Roscoe in conversation with Mrs. Falchion. Presently I saw him rise to go away. A moment after, in passing, I was near her. She sprang up, caught my arm, and pointed anxiously. I looked, and saw Galt Roscoe swaying as he walked.
"He is ill—ill," she said.
I ran forward and caught him as he was falling. Ill?
Of course he was ill. What a fool I had been! Five minutes with him assured me that he had fever. I had set his haggard appearance down to some mental trouble—and I was going to be a professor in a medical college!
Yet I know now that a troubled mind hastened the fever.