“And I meant—dear Tony—not to give anybody any trouble—not to get in anybody’s way. But now I fear—that I may not be quite well on the voyage—at least at first. Tony!” And she looked at him despairingly. “I do feel so ill. Can I go and lie down anywhere?”
CHAPTER VIII
MISS VERINDER suffered from sea-sickness in a more or less acute form throughout the interminable voyage. The ship touched at Lisbon and Dyke wanted to put her ashore, but she refused to stir. They encountered terrible weather in the long trudge to St. Vincent; and there, in a spell of stifling heat while the ship coaled, she seemed so desperately ill that he tried again, with the aid of a German physician. She refused to move; she might be dying, but she certainly would not leave the ship. She faintly declared that of course she was not dying; very soon now she would be quite well.
With the ship in motion again, and a cool head wind in their faces, she seemed to revive a little; but she relapsed as they worked southwards towards the equator—a relapse not occasioned but perhaps intensified by the well-meant efforts of Reynolds to tempt her appetite with pork and beans, and kindred dainties. She lived on tea and biscuits—and on the sound of Dyke’s voice. He was her steward, lady’s maid, and nurse. At meal-time she liked to have the door of her cabin wide open, so that through the narrow passage she could hear him laugh and talk. Along with the sound of his voice, came perfumes of hot coarse food that made her writhe in sudden spasms of nausea; yet she never closed the door. She took what gave her joy at the cost of all that gave her torment. Indeed she never counted the cost in regard to this or any other matter that concerned her love. Not for an hour, not for a minute, did she regret that she had come with him. She merely apologized for causing him such dreadful trouble.
“Tony dear, I shall wear out even your patience. How can you forgive me?”
He used to tell her that each trifling service he had the honour to perform was like a tiny piece of flax, and that out of such pieces she had made a rope so strong as to bind him to her invincibly. He could never break loose now if he wanted to be free. And he wouldn’t want. He became husky when he spoke of her courage, and then he would laugh to cheer her; promising that she should have three happy weeks at Buenos Ayres while he and that staunch old sportsman Pedro del Sarto were preparing their jaunt to the Andes—weeks to make up for all this. “Our honey-moon, Emmie!”
Truly he served her and waited upon her with a surpassing tenderness. He had a trick of kneeling by the berth, making one arm her pillow, and with his other hand softly playing with her hair. That rough muscular hand grew light as a rose leaf while it swept back the hair and touched her face. And once, while in this attitude, perhaps because of noticing her debility and frailness, or because of thinking of what she had done for his sake, he began to weep. Then, till he recovered composure, she did really believe she might die; it seemed that in her weak state the mingled sweetness and pain of their love must surely kill her; and she thought that, for bringing tears to those eyes, she deserved death.