They were flying south now, and every day the air grew more balmy and the sea smoother. The emigrants, boys and girls, fathers and mothers, used to lie out on the deck in the sun, and a very pretty picture they made; the children rolling about laughing and playing, and the mothers, most of them were young mothers, looking on and regarding them with pride.
There was scarcely an emigrant mother on board that ship who had not confided her story, her hopes and her fears to Wyndham, before the voyage was over.
Soon that thing happened which had happened long ago at Jewsbury-on-the-Wold, which had happened in the small house in Park-lane, which had happened even with the odds against him to his wife—everybody loved Wyndham. Hearts warmed as he came near, eyes brightened when they looked at him. He was in the position of a universal favorite. That sometimes is a dangerous position. But not in his case, for he was too unselfish to make enemies.
All this time, while his life was apparently drifting, while the hours were apparently gliding on to no definite or especial goal, to a landing at Melbourne—to a journey across a new Continent—while his days were going by to all intents and purposes like anybody else's days, he knew that between him and them lay an immeasurable gulf. He knew that he was not drifting, but going very rapidly down a hill. The fact is, Wyndham knew that the end, as far as he was concerned, was near.
His father-in-law had planned one thing, but he had planned another. He told no one of this, he never whispered this to a living creature, but his own mind was inexorably made up. He knew it when he bade his father good-bye that last Sunday; when he looked at Lilias and Marjory, and the other children, he knew it; he knew it when he kissed his wife's cheek that last morning when she slept. In his own way he could be a man of iron will. His will was as iron in this special matter. Only once had his determination been shaken, and that was when he pleaded with Valentine, and when he hoped against hope that she would listen to his prayer. The last lingering sparks of that hope died away when the captain refused to touch at Plymouth. After that moment his own fixed will never wavered.
His father-in-law had asked him for half a death; he should have a whole one. That was all. Many another man had done what he meant to do before. Still it was the End—the great End. No one could go beyond it.
He made his plans very carefully; he knew to effect his object he must be extremely careful. He would die, but it must never be supposed, never breathed by mortal soul that he had passed out of this world except by accident. He knew perfectly what the captain thought of him during the first couple of days of his residence on board the Esperance.
"Captain Jellyby is positive that I am touched in the head," thought Wyndham. "I must undo that suspicion."
He took pains, and he succeeded admirably. Wyndham was not only a favorite on board, but he was cheerful, he was gay. People remarked not on his high but on his good spirits.
"Such a merry, light-hearted fellow," they said of him.