Some few of the Mahanaddy passengers have remarked that Mark Ruthine invariably locks his cabin-door whenever he leaves the little den that serves him for surgery and home. This is the outward sign of an inward unforgotten sore.
This, by the way, is not a moral tale. Virtue does not triumph, nor will vice be crushed. It is the mere record of a few mistakes, culminating in Mark Ruthine's blunder—a little note on human nature without vice in it; for there is little vice in human nature if one takes the trouble to sift that which masquerades as such.
It was, therefore, in old days, long ago, on an outward voyage to Madras, that Miss Norah Hood was placed under the care of the captain, hedged safely round by an engagement to an old playmate, and shipped off to the land where the Anglo-Saxon dabbles in tragedy.
Norah is fortunately not a common name. Mark Ruthine's countenance—a still one—changes ever so slightly whenever he hears the name or sees it in print. Another outward sign, and, as such, naturally small.
When the captain was introduced by a tall and refined old clergyman to Miss Norah Hood, he found himself shaking hands with a grave young person of unassertive beauty. Hers was the loveliness of the violet, which is apt to pall in this modern day—to aggravate, and to suggest wanton waste. For feminine loveliness is on the wane—marred, like many other good things, by over-education. Norah Hood was a typical country parson's daughter, who knew the right and did it, ignored the wrong and refused to believe in it.
The captain was busy with his Mahanaddy. He looked over his shoulder, and, seeing Mark Ruthine, called him by a glance.
“This is my doctor,” he said, to the scholarly parson. “He will be happy to see that Miss Hood is comfortably settled among us. I am naturally rather a busy man until we leave the Start Light behind us.”
So Mark Ruthine hovered about, and discreetly looked the other way when the moment of parting came. He suspected, shrewdly enough, that Norah was the eldest of a large family—one less to feed and clothe. An old story. As the great ship glided gently away from the quay—in those days the Mahanaddy loaded at Southampton—he went and stood beside Norah Hood. Not that he had anything to say to her; but his calling of novelist, his experience of doctor, taught him that a silent support is what women sometimes want. They deal so largely in words that a few unexplained deeds sometimes refresh them.
He stood there until the tall, slim form in the rusty black coat was no longer discernible. Then he made a little movement and spoke.
“Have you been to your cabin?” he asked. “Do you know where it is?”