The Tragedy of Ida Noble

by William Clark Russell

Here I might have complimented her, but I was an off-hand sailor, without any talent for drawing-room civilities.

I need not dwell at length upon what passed between Miss Noble and me on this our first opportunity for enjoying a long chat. It was natural that we should again and again travel over the same ground. Though she did not repeat her question whether she had been out of her mind, I noticed, in her references to her state of catalepsy or stupor, a haunting uneasiness, as though the shadow of some black dream lay upon her in tormenting shapelessness and illusiveness. I can fancy that it resembled one of those ideas which visit most of us in our life-time—the idea that we have felt, suffered, or done something in another sphere of being.

She was clearly a lady of strong constitution. She showed no traces of the condition she had been in for nearly a week. One would have thought to see her haggard, bloodless, famine-pinched, with pale lips and unlighted eyes; but, making due allowance for the costume of crimson dressing-gown and for the absence of divers finishing details of toilet, I could not conceive that she, at any time in her life, could have looked much better than she now did. May be her profound sleep had cleansed her countenance of the dreadful marks which the talons of the fiend Madness commonly grave upon the human face. Be this as it may, her health seemed excellent as I sat conversing with her at that breakfast-table; her calm voice had the true music of good breeding; her remarks exhibited no common order of perception and good sense, and to my mind—though it is said that sailors are easy to please—she needed no other face than her own, with its soft brown eyes, and purely feminine lineaments, and dark red hair, massive, abundant, and glowing, to be as fascinating a lady as a man could hope to meet with in English or any other society.

I had, in the course of our conversation, told her very honestly what the sailors intended to do. I added that they were right in endeavoring to escape from the consequences of a wrong into the perpetration of which they had been basely betrayed by the lies of Don Christoval and his friend. I had then explained that I should be left alone in the schooner with the negro boy, but that I had not the least doubt of promptly obtaining all the help I needed to carry the vessel safely and comfortably home. This made her ask how long it might take us to reach home.

"Eight or ten days," I answered.

"What, meanwhile, am I to do for clothes?" said she; and, with something of unconsciousness in her manner, as though her fingers were governed by a thought in her head, she opened her dressing-gown and revealed herself in ball attire.

Though she had been thus appareled for a week there seemed to be nothing soiled, nothing faded, in this aspect of her. It was the suddenness of the revelation, I dare say, that gave to her form the brilliance I found in it. Then, there was also the contrast of the rich crimson dressing-gown to heighten this instant splendor of attire and the incomparable whiteness of her neck and shoulders, though these were still defaced by several long, ugly black scratches. She buttoned the dressing-gown to her throat again, and said, with a smile full of self-possession, but sweetened by a little expression of sadness:

"This is not the kind of dress that one would wear at sea, Mr. Portlack."