CHAPTER III.
"BEWARE SUCH UNHOLY SPELLS!"
The sway of Lilith Ormskirk over the saloon and quarter-deck of the_Persian_ was as complete as any woman's sway ever is. From the grizzledcaptain--nominally under whose charge she was making the voyage--down tothe newly emancipated schoolboy going out to seek employment, the maleelement was, with scarcely an exception, her collective slave. Among thewomen, of course, her rule was less complete; those who were furthestfrom all possibility of rivalling her in attractiveness of person orcharm of manner being, of course, the most virulent in their jealousyand the expression thereof. Lilith, however, cared nothing for this, or,if she did, gave no sign. She was never bitter, even towards those whomshe knew to be among her worst detractors, never spiteful. She was notfaultless, not by any means, but her failings did not lie in thedirection of littleness. But she always seemed bright and happy, andfull of life--too much so, thought more than one of her perfervidadorers, who would fain have monopolized her.
She was in the mid-twenties--that age when the egotism and rather narrowenthusiasms and prejudices of the girl shade off into the graciousnessand _savoir-vivre_ of womanhood. She could look back on more than onefoolishness, from whose results she had providentially escaped, with anuneasy shudder, followed by a heartfelt thankfulness, and a sense ofhaving not only learnt but profited by experience, which sense enlargedher mind and her sympathies, and imparted to her demeanour aself-possession and serenity beyond her years.
We said the male element, with scarce an exception, was her collectiveslave. Such an exception was Laurence Stanninghame.
Without being a misogynist, he had no great opinion of women. He ownedthey might be delightful--frequently were--up to a certain point, andthis was the point at which you began to take them seriously. But totreat any one of them as though the sun had ceased to shine because herpresence was withdrawn, struck him as sheer insanity. It might be allright for youngsters like Holmes or Swaynston, the licensed fool of thesmoking room, or Dyson, to whose senile enthusiasm for the mazy rout wehave heard allusion made--the latter on the principle of "no fool likean old fool"; but not for him--not for a man in the matured vigour ofhis physical and mental powers. Wherefore, when forced himself toacknowledge the spell which Lilith had begun to weave around him, heunhesitatingly set it down to impaired nerves.
As a direct result, he avoided the cause. It was a cowardly course ofaction, he told himself. He was afraid of her. If she could throw themagic of her sorcery over him during a brief ten minutes ofconversation, what the very deuce would happen if he allowed himself tobe drawn into anything approaching the easy-going shipboardintimacy--deck-walking by moonlight, chairs drawn up in a snug cornerduring the heat of the day, and so forth! Who knew what latentcapacities for being made an ass of might not develop themselves withinhim. He felt really alarmed.
Let it not be supposed that any scruple on the ground ofconventionality, obligation, what not, entered into his misgivings. ForLaurence Stanninghame had been clean disillusioned all along the line.He hadn't the shred of an illusion left. He had started life with a fairstock-in-trade of good intentions and straight ideas, and, indeed, hadacted up to them honestly, and in good faith. But now?--"I've had ah----l of a time!" he would exclaim to himself, during one of thosemeditative gazes out seaward, for which we heard his younger friendtaking him to task. "Yes--just that." And now, only touching middlelife, he believed in nothing and nobody. He had become a cold, keen,strong-headed, selfish cynic. If ever his mind reverted to the fresherand more generous impulses or actions of his younger days, it was with acontemptuous self-pity. His view of the morality of life now was justthe amount of success, of advantage, of gratification to be got out ofit. He thoroughly indorsed the principle of the old _roue's_ advice tohis grandson: "Be good, and you _may_ be happy--but you'll have d----dlittle fun," taking care to italicise the word "may." For he had foundthat the first clause of the saw had brought him neither happiness norfun.
With his fellow-passengers on board the _Persian_ he was neitherpopular nor the reverse. Among the men, some liked him, others didn't.He was genial enough, and good company in the smoking room, but wouldn'tdo anything in the way of promoting the general amusement--and thatvoyage was a particularly lively one in the matter of getting things up.The fair section of the saloon was puzzled, and could not make up itsmind whether to dislike him or not. For the first, he consistently,though not ostentatiously, avoided it, instead of laying himself out tomake himself agreeable--though indications were not wanting that hecould so make himself if he chose. For the second, the fact that heremained an unknown quantity was in his favour, if only that theunfamiliarity of reserve--mystery--never fails to appeal strongly to theminds of women--and savages.
It was not so difficult for him to avoid Lilith Ormskirk, if only thatuntil that morning he had hardly exchanged a hundred words with her at atime. Wherefore the upshot of his resolve was noticeable neither by itsobject nor by the passengers at large. Holmes, indeed, who, havingrecovered from his consternation, had been secretly watching his friend,was anticipating the fun of seeing the latter fall headlong into the pitwhose brink he had so boldly skirted, so openly derided. But he wasdisappointed. Laurence, if he referred to Lilith again, did so in thesame casual, indifferent way as before, nor did he ever terminate any ofhis dreamy and seaward-gazing meditations in order to open converse withher, even with such inducement as solitary propinquity on more than oneoccasion.
"By Jove! the fellow is a cross between an icicle and a stone," quothHolmes to himself, in mingled wonder and disgust.
It was night--warm, sensuous, tropical night. There was dancing in thesaloon, and the glare from the skylight and the banging of the piano andchatter of voices gave forth strange contrast to the awesome stillnessof the great liquid plain, the dewy richness of the air, the starshanging in golden clusters from a black vault, the fiery eye of somelarger planet rolling and flashing among them as the revolving beacon ofa lighthouse. Here the muffled throb of the propeller, and the rushinghiss of water as the prow of the great steamer sheared through theplacid surface, furrowing up on either side a long line ofphosphorescent wave. Such a contrast he who stood alone in the darkness,leaning over the taffrail, could appreciate nicely.
There were quick, light footsteps. Somebody else was walking the deck.Well, whoever it was, he himself was screened by the stem of one of theship's boats swung in and resting on chocks. They would not see him,which was all right, for he was in a queer mood and not inclined totalk. After a turn or two, the footsteps paused, then something brushedhis elbow in the darkness, as suddenly starting away, while ahalf-frightened voice exclaimed:
"Oh, I beg your pardon. I couldn't see anything in the dark, just comingup out of the light of the saloon, too. Why, it's Mr. Stanninghame!"
To one who had been out of doors even a few minutes it was not verydark, for the stars were shining with vivid brilliancy. It needed notthe sense of sight, that of hearing was enough. Nay, more, a subtilesixth sense, whatever it might be, had warned Laurence Stanninghame ofthe identity of the intruder.
"No case of mistaken identity here," he said. "But how is it you are allby yourself?"
"Oh, I got tired of all the whirl and chatter. I craved for some freshair, and so I stole away," said Lilith. "Why, how heavy the dew is herein these tropical seas!" she added, withdrawing her arm from thetaffrail upon which she had begun to lean.
The man, watching her furtively, said nothing for a moment. That samechord within him thrilled to her voice, her propinquity. Doubtless hisnerves, high strung with recent worry, were playing the fool with him.He was conscious of a kind of envenomed resentment, almost aversion; yethis chief misgiving at that moment, which he recognized with addedwrath, was lest she should leave him as quickly as she had come.
"All by yourself as usual!" she went on, flashing at him a bright smile."Thinking, I suppose?"
"I don't know that I was. I believe I was trying to realize theimmensity and silence of
the midnight ocean, as far as that tin-potracket down there would allow one to realize anything. Then it occurredto me how long it would take for the intense solitude to drive a man madif he were cast away alone in it."
"Not long, I should think," answered Lilith, gazing seriously out overthe smooth, oily sea. "The horror of it would soon do that for me."
"And yet why should it have such an effect at all?" he went on. "Thegrandeur of the situation ought to counterpoise any such weakness. Givenenough to support life without undue stinting, with a certainty ofrescue at the end, and, I think, a fortnight as castaway in thesewaveless seas would be an uncommonly interesting experience."
"What? A fortnight? A whole fortnight in ghastly solitude! Silence onlybroken by the splash or snort of Heaven knows what horrible sea monster!Any consideration of peril apart, I am sure that one night of it wouldturn me into a raving, gibbering lunatic."
"Perhaps. People are differently built. For my part, discounting the'sea monster,' I am certain I should enjoy the experience. For onething, there would be no post."
"But no more there is here on board," she said, struggling with thelaugh which the dry irrelevancy had brought to her lips.
"No--but there's--Swaynston."
This time the laugh came rippling outright, and through it came thesound of footsteps.
"Oh, here you are, Miss Ormskirk. I've been looking for you everywhere.This is our dance."
Lilith, catching the satirical twinkle in the other's eyes in thestarlight, did not know which way to turn to control an overmasteringimpulse to laugh uninterruptedly for about five minutes, the cruel partof it being that the interrupter was Swaynston himself.
The latter, a pursy individual, was holding out an arm somewhat in theattitude of a seal's flipper; but Lilith did not take it.
"Do be very good-natured and excuse me," she said. "I don't want todance any more to-night; the noise and heat have made my head ache."
"Really, really? I'll find you a chair then, in some quiet corner,"fussed Swaynston. But Lilith seemed not enthusiastic over thatallurement, and finally, with some difficulty, she got rid of him; hegrinning "from the teeth outwards," but consumed with fury nevertheless.
So that was why she had stolen away from them all, to slip up and talkin a quiet corner with that fellow Stanninghame, who was probably someabsconding swindler, with a couple of detectives and a warrant waitingfor him in Table Bay? Thus Swaynston.
Nor would it have tended to allay his irritation could he have heard theobject of it after his departure.
"So you think he is worse than the post?" she said, with a laugh in hereyes. "Yet he is one of the most devoted of my--poodles."
The demure malice of her tone no more disconcerted the other than thatformer endeavour to show him she had overheard his remarks by quotinghis own words.
"Oh, yes," was the unconcerned reply. "He sits up on his hind legs alittle better than any of them."
For a few moments she said nothing, seeming to have become infectedwith her companion's dreamy meditativeness. Then:
"And you are not tired of the voyage yet? You were saying the other daythat its monotony was enjoyable."
"I say so still. Look!" he broke off, pointing to the sea.
A commotion was going on beneath its surface. Their grisly shapes vividin the disturbed phosphorescence, drawing a wake of flame behind them,rushed two great sharks. Hither and thither they darted, every detail oftheir ugly forms discernible on the framing of the phosphorescent blaze,even the set glare of the cruel eye; and, no less nimble in swiftdoubling flashes, several smaller fish were trying to evade the laws ofnature--the absorption of the weakest, to wit. There was somethingindescribably horrible in the fiery rush of the sea-demons beneath theoily blackness of the tropical waters.
"How awful! how truly awful!" murmured Lilith, with a strong shudder ofrepulsion, yet gazing as one fascinated at the weird sight.
"Yet it is the perfection of an object lesson, one that comes in just intime to point the moral to my answer," he said. "If those fish, now inprocess of being eaten, were caught and kept in an aquarium tank, itmight be more monotonous for them than furnishing fun and food to thefirst comer in the way of bigger fish. Possibly they might yearn for theexcitement of being harried, though I doubt it. That sort of philosophyis reserved for us humans. If we knock our heads against a brick wall wehowl; if we haven't got a brick wall to knock them against we howllouder."
"And the moral is?"
"_Dona nobis pacem._"
"I see," she said at last, for it took her a little while to thoroughlygrasp the application, partly distracted as her thinking powers were intrying to find a deeper meaning than the one intended. "Yet peace is athing that no one can enjoy in this world. How should they when the lawof life is struggle--struggle and strife?"
"Precisely. That, however, is due to the faultiness of human nature. Thephilosophy of the matter is the same. Its soundness remains untouched."
"Yet you are not consistent. You were implying just now that, failing abrick wall to knock our heads against, we started in search of one. Nowdoes not that apply to those who go out into the world--to the other endof the world--instead of remaining peacefully at home?" she added, a slysort of "I-have-you-there" inflection in her tone.
"Pardon me. My consistency is all right. Begging a question will notshatter it."
"Begging a question?"
"Of course. For present purposes the said begging is comprised in theword 'peacefully.' See?"
"Ah!"
Again she was silent. The other, watching the flash of the starlight onthe meditative upturned eyes, the clearly marked brows, the firm settingof the lips, was more conscious than ever of the latent witchery in thesweet, serene face. He would not flee from its spells now, he decided.He would meet them boldly, and throw them off, coil for coil, howeversubtilely, however dexterously they were wound about him. Meanwhile, twothings had not escaped him: She had yielded the point gracefully, andconvinced, instead of launching out into a voluble farrago of irrelevantrubbish, as ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have done in orderto have "the last word." That argued sense, judgment, tact. Further, shehad avoided that vulgar commonplace, instinctive to the crude andunthinking mind, of whatever sex, of importing a personal applicationinto an abstract discussion. This, too, argued tact and mentalrefinement, both qualities of rarer distribution among her sex than iscommonly supposed--qualities, however, which Laurence Stanninghame waspeculiarly able to appreciate.
Then she talked about other things, and he let her talk, just throwingin a word here and there to stimulate the expansion of her ideas. Andthey were good ideas, too, he decided, listening keenly, and balancingher every point, whether he agreed with it or not. He was interested,more vividly interested than he would fain admit! This girl with theenthralling face and noble beauty of form, had a mind as well. All theslavish adoration she received had not robbed her of that. It was anexperience to him, as they lounged there on the taffrail together in thegold-spangled velvet hush of the tropical night. How delightfullycompanionable she could be, he thought; so responsive, so discriminatingand unargumentative. Argumentativeness in women was a detestable vice,in his opinion, for it meant everything but what the word itselfetymologically did. Craftily he drew her out, cunningly he touched upevery fallacy or crudeness in her ideas, in such wise that sheunconsciously adopted his amendments, under the impression that theywere all her own.
"But--I have been boring you all this time," she broke off at last."Confess now, you who are nothing if not candid. I have been boring yourlife out?"
"Then, on your own showing, I am nothing, for I am not candid," heanswered. "On the contrary, it is an unadvisable virtue, and onecalculated to corner you without loophole. And you certainly have notbeen boring me."
He thought, sardonically, what any one of those whom he had causticallydefined as her "poodles" would give for an hour or so of similarboredom, if it involved Lilith all to himself. Some of this must hav
ebeen reflected in his eyes, for Lilith broke in quickly:
"No, you are not candid. I accept the amendment. I can see the sarcasmin your face."
"But not on that account," he rejoined tranquilly, and at the same timedropping his hand on to hers as it rested on the taffrail. The act--aninstinctive one--was a dumb protest against the movement she had made towithdraw. And as such Lilith read it; more potent in its impulsivenessthan any words could have been. "Listen!" he went on. "I suppose thereis a sort of imp of scepticism sitting ever upon one shoulder, and thatis what you saw. Something in my thoughts suggested a droll contrast,that was all. So far from boring me, you have afforded me an intenselyagreeable surprise."
"Now you are sneering again. I will not talk any more."
He recognized in her tone a quick sensitiveness--not temper. Accordinglyhis own took on an unconscious softness, a phenomenally unwontedsoftness.
"Don't be foolish, child. You know I was doing nothing of the sort. Goon with what you were saying at once."
"What was I saying? Oh, I remember. That idea that board-ship life showspeople in their real character. Do you believe in it?"
"Only in the case of those who have no real character to show. Whereinis a paradox. Those who have got any--well, don't show it, either onboard ship or on shore."
"I believe you are right. Now, my own character, do you think it showsout more readable on board than it would on shore."
"Do you think you have me so transparently as that? What was I sayingjust now on that head?"
"I see. Really, though, I had no ulterior motive. I asked the questionin perfect good faith. Tell me--if anyone can, you can. Tell me. Shall Imake a success--a good thing of life? I often wonder."
She threw up her head with a quick movement, and the wide, serious eyes,fixed full upon his, seemed to flash in the starlight. He met the glancewith one as earnest and unswerving as her own.
"You rate my powers of vaticination too high," he said slowly, "and--youare groping after an ideal."
"Perhaps. Tell me, though, what you think, character-reader as you are.Shall I make a success of life?"
"I should think the chances were pretty evenly balanced either way,inclining, if anything, to the reverse."
"Thanks. I shall remember that."
"But you are not obliged to believe it."
"No. I shall remember it. And now I must go below; it is nearly time forputting out the saloon lights. Good-night. I have enjoyed our talk somuch."
She had extended her hand, and as he took it, the sympathetic--was itmagnetic?--pressure was mutual, almost lingering.
"Good-night," he said. "The enjoyment has not been all on one side."
Left alone, he returned to his solitary musings--tried to, rather, forthere was no "return" about the matter, because now they took anentirely new line. His late companion would intrude upon them--nay,monopolized them. She had appealed powerfully to his senses, to hismind, how long would it be before she did so to his heart? He hadavoided her--he alone--up till then, and yet now, after this firstconversation, he was convinced that of all gathered there he alone knewthe real Lilith Ormskirk as distinct from the superficial one known tothe residue. And to his mind recurred her former warning, laughinglyuttered: "Beware such unholy spells!" With a strange intoxicatingrecollection did that warning recur, together with the consciousnessthat more than ever was it needed now. But as against this was theprotecting strength of a triple chain armour. Life was only renderedinteresting by such interesting character studies as this. Oh, yes; thatwas the solution--that, and nothing more.
This was by no means the last talk they had--they two alone together.But it seemed to Laurence Stanninghame that a warning note had beensounded, and one of no uncertain nature. His tone became more acrid, hissarcasm more biting, more envenomed. One day Lilith said:
"Why do you dislike me so?"
He started at the question, thrown momentarily off his guard.
"I don't dislike you," he answered shortly.
"Then why have you such a very poor opinion of me? You never lose anopportunity of letting me see that you have. What have I done? What haveI said that you should think so poorly of me?"
There was no spice of temper, of resentment, in the tone. It was soft,and rather pleading. The serious eyes were sweet and wistful. As his ownmet their steady gaze, it seemed that a current of magnetic thoughtflashed from mind to mind.
"I hold no such opinion," he said, after a few moments of silence."Perhaps I dread those 'unholy spells,' thou sorceress. Ah! there goesthe second dinner-bell. Run away now, and make yourself more beautifulthan ever--if possible."
A bright laugh flashed in the hazel eyes, and the white teeth showed ina smile.
"I'll try--since _you_ wish it," she said over her shoulder, as sheturned away.
The Sign of the Spider Page 3
