“Oh, I won’t lay a command on you at all; but I ask as a favour that you go below, knock at my daughter’s door, and tell her you are sorry for what has happened. Put it any way you like, or don’t do it at all if you don’t want to. After all, she is a woman, you know. You and I are men, and should stand the brunt, even if we are not entitled to it, and it may make things go a little smoother, perhaps.”
We are supposed to be an unemotional race, but I confess that the old man’s mild words touched me deeply, and made it next to impossible for me to reply to him. But, even so, my own judgment told me that a life of this desire to make things go smoothly had resulted in building up a character in his daughter which took an obstreperous advantage of the kindly old gentleman’s strong affection for her. I arose without a word, thrust forward my hand to him, which he shook somewhat shamefacedly, glancing nervously around, fearing there might be onlookers. I entirely appreciated his reserve, and wished for a moment that I had not acted upon my impulse, to his visible embarrassment. I went instantly to the saloon, along the passage, and knocked at the door of Miss Hemster’s apartment. She herself opened the door, with what seemed to me to be her usual briskness; but when I looked at her, I saw her drooping like a stricken flower, head bent, and eyes on the floor. Scarcely above a whisper, she asked with tremor-shaken voice:
“Did you wish to see me?”
“Yes, Miss Hemster,” I replied, nerving myself to the point. “I wish, since you are good enough to receive me, to apologize most abjectly for my rudeness to you this morning.”
She replied in a sad little voice, without looking up:
“I do not really mind in the least how much you play the piano, Mr. Tremorne.”
This was so unexpected a remark, so ludicrously aside from the real point at issue between us, so far from touching the hideousness of my culpability, that I looked at the girl, wondering whether or not she was in earnest. I had not come to get permission to play the piano. Her attitude, to which no other word than “wilted” so appropriately applied, continued to be one of mute supplication or dependence. Yet in the semi-darkness I fancied I caught one brief glance at my face. Then she leaned her fair head against the jam of the door and began to cry very softly and very hopelessly.
I stood there like the awkward fool I was, not knowing what to say; and finally she completed my desolation by slowly raising her two arms up toward my face. Since our contest she had removed the striking costume she then wore, and had put on a white lace fleecy garment that was partly dressing-gown, partly tea-gown, decorated with fluttering blue ribbon. This had very wide sleeves which fell away from her arms, leaving them bare and rounded, pure and white. Her two slender, shapely hands hung in helpless fashion from the wrists like lilies on a broken stem. The slow upraising of them seemed to me strange and meaningless, until the light from the inner room fell upon her wrists, and then the purport of her action became stunningly clear to me. Around that dainty forearm, delicately fashioned for the tenderest usage, showed red and angry the marks of my brutal fingers, silent accusers held up before my very eyes. Distraught as I was with self-accusation, I could not help admiring the dramatic effectiveness of the slow motion and resulting attitude. The drooping girl, with her soft, clinging draperies, her sad face so beautiful, her contour so perfect, and those soft appealing hands upraised,—hands that I could not forget had been placed with impulsive friendliness in mine on the streets of Nagasaki,—and all this accompanied by the almost silent symphony of quivering sobs that were little louder than sighs tremulously indrawn, formed a picture that has never been effaced from my memory. I had rather a man’s clenched fist had struck me to the ground than that a woman’s open palm should be so held in evidence against me. I regard that moment as the most unbearable of my life, and with a cry almost of despair I turned and fled. For once language had become impossible and utterly inadequate.
As I beat this precipitate retreat, was it my over-wrought imagination, or was it actual, that I heard an indignant word of expostulation, followed by a low sweet ripple of laughter. Had there been some one else in the room during this painful interview? I staggered like a drunken man up to the deck, and then endeavoured to walk it off and cease thinking.