“I hope you won’t make my little ship giddy, ma’am,” he said kindly. “You must wear veils. All ladies has to, when they come on deck. You know, ma’am——” He sat down at the foot of the table. “I seen a ship quite lose her head one time. And the girl who done it wasn’t to be compared, not to you.”
“You see, Olivia,” said Margaret, “a sailor loses no time.”
“You must come on deck and see the moon by and by, ma’am,” said Cammock kindly. “And bring your husband. It’s nice and fresh up on the deck. It’ll do you good before turning in, I dare say,” he went on. “I dare say you’ve never seen the sea at night. Not all round you. No? Well, you come up.”
Olivia thanked him for his invitation.
“I’ve lived by the sea all my life,” she said; “but I was never on it in a ship before, except when I went to France.”
The words were very hard to speak; for as she spoke, with a rush, with a flash, burningly, as tears come, came the memory of her sheltered life at home, with her old servants, and her garden full of flowers, over which now, at this moment, the moon was rising, lighting the moths to their honey. She was homesick; she longed for that old life. Life had gone very smoothly there; and now she was at sea in a ship, among rough men, amid noise and bawling and the roaring of wind. She kept a brave face upon it, but her heart was wretched; she wondered why her husband did not understand. She longed for the peace of her quiet room at home, full of the scent of flowers, and of that vague scent, pleasant, and yet morbid, which hangs about all houses where there has been a fine tradition of life. Old things, old beautiful things, seem to give out this scent, the scent of the dead sweet pea-blossom. Wherever that vague perfume lingers, something of the old world lives, something beautiful, stately, full of sweet care. Olivia was made for that life of lovely order. Her life had been passed in the gathering of flowers, in the playing of music, in dances, in the reading of poems. All sweet and lovely and gracious things had wrought her; but they had not fitted her for this. Something was wrong with the justice of the world; for surely such as she should have been spared. She was not for the world; not at least for the world of men. She was the idea of woman; she should have been spared the lot of women. Her beautiful grace, her beautiful refinement, surely they were beautiful enough for her to be spared. Now this violence had happened; this brutal rearrangement of her life, needing further violence to remedy. At the time she understood nothing of what had happened. She was stunned and surprised, as a flower dug up and transplanted must be surprised and stunned. She drooped and pined; this alien soil made her shrink. As she sat there, ignorant of the world, highly ignorant, even, of the nature of sea-sickness, she wondered why her husband made no effort to cheer her, to comfort her, to be about her, like a strong wall, shutting out the world. In her home by the sea, by lamplight, over her music, she had often dreamed of the lover who would fill her life. She had thought of him as of one who would live her life by imaginative sympathy, thinking her thoughts, feeling with her own fineness of tact, following each shy, unspoken thought in the passing of shadow or smile, in the change of the voice, in the gesture, or even without such help, by an extreme unselfish sensitiveness. She found comfort in the thought that her husband must be debating the wisdom of this cruise, which, only a few hours ago, had seemed so wise, so noble, so right in every way.
Captain Margaret broke the silence which had followed her last words.
“Captain Cammock,” he said, “we’re making a new arrangement in the cabins. Mr. and Mrs. Stukeley will have my double cabin to starboard here. I shall have the spare bunk in Mr. Perrin’s cabin. I shall want you to beat up to Falmouth, captain.”
“You’ll run some risk of gaol, Charles,” said the petulant friend on the locker-tops. “You’ll probably be wanted by this time to-morrow all over the west of England.”
“You were always a pessimist,” said Margaret.