"My wife plays it also, and she is very strong and agile from the exercise," said Mr. Jackson; "I hope you will meet her next month when I return, as she will probably go to London with me."
I expressed pleasure at the thought, and noticed that Doctor Jackson was really quite a good-looking man, and there was no reason in the world why he should not possess a very pretty wife.
His clean-shaven face, lined, it is true, as though he had spent much time at physical exertion of the heavier sort, was handsome enough. A large, high nose, not badly shaped, set in between two steel-blue eyes, wide apart, and his mouth, although thin-lipped and hard-looking, was not ugly, and his teeth were large, even, and snow-white.
Altogether he was a man of strength and character from his appearance, and I remembered him for his kindness—and cigars.
Three weeks later, upon the return voyage, he came aboard and told me he would bring his wife aboard the next morning, and was just then seeing to his room, which was amidships, and upon the lower or main deck, just above the express room and over the steel safe.
He asked me if I thought the noise from below would disturb them, his wife being a nervous woman and irritable. I knew no sounds of any consequence would penetrate the deck, which was steel, and assured him that the voyage would be most pleasant, as the time of year was fine upon the western ocean.
The next day I was too busy to notice the couple, but when we were at sea and had made our departure, allowing me to go below to dinner, I found that Doctor Jackson and his wife were seated at my table about midway down the row of seats.
The minister nodded to me, and his wife smiled pleasantly. Her back was to the ports, and the light was bad, but I saw that she was about thirty, and very masculine in her appearance.
She had a very good complexion, rosy and healthy, but her face had a peculiar hardness, a settling about the corners of the mouth that boded ill for any one who crossed her temper. I made up my mind to feel sorry for the doctor. Her voice I could hear very indistinctly, but it had a sort of hardness, a suppressed tone of assumed smoothness which I did not like.
At eight bells that night when the day's work allowed me to get my time below, I met them as I left the bridge. The doctor introduced me to the lady, who stood tall and commanding in the darkness. She murmured something indefinite, but acknowledged me without offering her hand.