by Grant Allen
“You MUST not die, Professor,” I cried, thinking more, I will confess, of Hilda Wade than of himself. “You must live... to report this case for science.” I used what I thought the strongest lever I knew for him.
He closed his eyes dreamily. “For science! Yes, for science! There you strike the right chord! What have I not dared and done for science? But, in case I die, Cumberledge, be sure you collect the notes I took as I was sickening — they are most important for the history and etiology of the disease. I made them hourly. And don’t forget the main points to be observed as I am dying. You know what they are. This is a rare, rare chance! I congratulate you on being the man who has the first opportunity ever afforded us of questioning an intelligent European case, a case where the patient is fully capable of describing with accuracy his symptoms and his sensations in medical phraseology.”
He did not die, however. In about another week he was well enough to move. We carried him down to Mozufferpoor, the first large town in the plains thereabouts, and handed him over for the stage of convalescence to the care of the able and efficient station doctor, to whom my thanks are due for much courteous assistance.
“And now, what do you mean to do?” I asked Hilda, when our patient was placed in other hands, and all was over.
She answered me without one second’s hesitation: “Go straight to Bombay, and wait there till Sebastian takes passage for England.”
“He will go home, you think, as soon as he is well enough?”
“Undoubtedly. He has now nothing more to stop in India for.”
“Why not as much as ever?”
She looked at me curiously. “It is so hard to explain,” she replied, after a moment’s pause, during which she had been drumming her little forefinger on the table. “I feel it rather than reason it. But don’t you see that a certain change has lately come over Sebastian’s attitude? He no longer desires to follow me; he wants to avoid me. That is why I wish more than ever to dog his steps. I feel the beginning of the end has come. I am gaining my point. Sebastian is wavering.”
“Then when he engages a berth, you propose to go by the same steamer?”
“Yes. It makes all the difference. When he tries to follow me, he is dangerous; when he tries to avoid me, it becomes my work in life to follow him. I must keep him in sight every minute now. I must quicken his conscience. I must make him FEEL his own desperate wickedness. He is afraid to face me: that means remorse. The more I compel him to face me, the more the remorse is sure to deepen.”
I saw she was right. We took the train to Bombay. I found rooms at the hospitable club, by a member’s invitation, while Hilda went to stop with some friends of Lady Meadowcroft’s on the Malabar Hill. We waited for Sebastian to come down from the interior and take his passage. Hilda, with her intuitive certainty, felt sure he would come.
A steamer, two steamers, three steamers, sailed, and still no Sebastian. I began to think he must have made up his mind to go back some other way. But Hilda was confident, so I waited patiently. At last one morning I dropped in, as I had often done before, at the office of one of the chief steamship companies. It was the very morning when a packet was to sail. “Can I see the list of passengers on the Vindhya?” I asked of the clerk, a sandy-haired Englishman, tall, thin, and sallow.
The clerk produced it.
I scanned it in haste. To my surprise and delight, a pencilled entry half-way down the list gave the name, “Professor Sebastian.”
“Oh, Sebastian is going by this steamer?” I murmured, looking up.
The sandy-haired clerk hummed and hesitated. “Well, I believe he’s going, sir,” he answered at last; “but it’s a bit uncertain. He’s a fidgety man, the Professor. He came down here this morning and asked to see the list, the same as you have done. Then he engaged a berth provisionally— ‘mind, provisionally,’ he said — that’s why his name is only put in on the list in pencil. I take it he’s waiting to know whether a party of friends he wishes to meet are going also.”
“Or wishes to avoid,” I thought to myself, inwardly; but I did not say so. I asked instead, “Is he coming again?”
“Yes, I think so: at 5.30.”
“And she sails at seven?”
“At seven, punctually. Passengers must be aboard by half-past six at latest.”
“Very good,” I answered, making up my mind promptly. “I only called to know the Professor’s movements. Don’t mention to him that I came. I may look in again myself an hour or two later.”
“You don’t want a passage, sir? You may be the friend he’s expecting.”
“No, I don’t want a passage — not at present certainly.” Then I ventured on a bold stroke. “Look here,” I said, leaning across towards him, and assuming a confidential tone: “I am a private detective” — which was perfectly true in essence— “and I’m dogging the Professor, who, for all his eminence, is gravely suspected of a great crime. If you will help me, I will make it worth your while. Let us understand one another. I offer you a five-pound note to say nothing of all this to him.”
The sallow clerk’s fishy eye glistened. “You can depend upon me,” he answered, with an acquiescent nod. I judged that he did not often get the chance of earning some eighty rupees so easily.
I scribbled a hasty note and sent it round to Hilda: “Pack your boxes at once, and hold yourself in readiness to embark on the Vindhya at six o’clock precisely.” Then I put my own things straight; and waited at the club till a quarter to six. At that time I strolled on unconcernedly into the office. A cab outside held Hilda and our luggage. I had arranged it all meanwhile by letter.
“Professor Sebastian been here again?” I asked.
“Yes, sir; he’s been here; and he looked over the list again; and he’s taken his passage. But he muttered something about eavesdroppers, and said that if he wasn’t satisfied when he got on board, he would return at once and ask for a cabin in exchange by the next steamer.”
“That will do,” I answered, slipping the promised five-pound note into the clerk’s open palm, which closed over it convulsively. “Talked about eavesdroppers, did he? Then he knows he’s been shadowed. It may console you to learn that you are instrumental in furthering the aims of justice and unmasking a cruel and wicked conspiracy. Now, the next thing is this: I want two berths at once by this very steamer — one for myself — name of Cumberledge; one for a lady — name of Wade; and look sharp about it.”
The sandy-haired man did look sharp; and within three minutes we were driving off with our tickets to Prince’s Dock landing-stage.
We slipped on board unobtrusively, and instantly took refuge in our respective staterooms till the steamer was well under way, and fairly out of sight of Kolaba Island. Only after all chance of Sebastian’s avoiding us was gone for ever did we venture up on deck, on purpose to confront him.
It was one of those delicious balmy evenings which one gets only at sea and in the warmer latitudes. The sky was alive with myriads of twinkling and palpitating stars, which seemed to come and go, like sparks on a fire-back, as one gazed upward into the vast depths and tried to place them. They played hide-and-seek with one another and with the innumerable meteors which shot recklessly every now and again across the field of the firmament, leaving momentary furrows of light behind them. Beneath, the sea sparkled almost like the sky, for every turn of the screw churned up the scintillating phosphorescence in the water, so that countless little jets of living fire seemed to flash and die away at the summit of every wavelet. A tall, spare man in a picturesque cloak, and with long, lank, white hair, leant over the taffrail, gazing at the numberless flashing lights of the surface. As he gazed, he talked on in his clear, rapt voice to a stranger by his side. The voice and the ring of enthusiasm were unmistakable. “Oh, no,” he was saying, as we stole up behind him, “that hypothesis, I venture to assert, is no longer tenable by the light of recent researches. Death and decay have nothing to do directly with the phosphorescence of the sea, though they have a litt
le indirectly. The light is due in the main to numerous minute living organisms, most of them bacilli, on which I once made several close observations and crucial experiments. They possess organs which may be regarded as miniature bull’s-eye lanterns. And these organs—”
“What a lovely evening, Hubert!” Hilda said to me, in an apparently unconcerned voice, as the Professor reached this point in his exposition.
Sebastian’s voice quavered and stammered for a moment. He tried just at first to continue and complete his sentence: “And these organs,” he went on, aimlessly, “these bull’s-eyes that I spoke about, are so arranged — so arranged — I was speaking on the subject of crustaceans, I think — crustaceans so arranged—” then he broke down utterly and turned sharply round to me. He did not look at Hilda — I think he did not dare; but he faced me with his head down and his long, thin neck protruded, eyeing me from under those overhanging, penthouse brows of his. “You sneak!” he cried, passionately. “You sneak! You have dogged me by false pretences. You have lied to bring this about! You have come aboard under a false name — you and your accomplice!”
I faced him in turn, erect and unflinching. “Professor Sebastian,” I answered, in my coldest and calmest tone, “you say what is not true. If you consult the list of passengers by the Vindhya, now posted near the companion-ladder, you will find the names of Hilda Wade and Hubert Cumberledge duly entered. We took our passage AFTER you inspected the list at the office to see whether our names were there — in order to avoid us. But you cannot avoid us. We do not mean that you shall avoid us. We will dog you now through life — not by lies or subterfuges, as you say, but openly and honestly. It is YOU who need to slink and cower, not we. The prosecutor need not descend to the sordid shifts of the criminal.”
The other passenger had sidled away quietly the moment he saw our conversation was likely to be private; and I spoke in a low voice, though clearly and impressively, because I did not wish for a scene. I was only endeavouring to keep alive the slow, smouldering fire of remorse in the man’s bosom. And I saw I had touched him on a spot that hurt. Sebastian drew himself up and answered nothing. For a minute or two he stood erect, with folded arms, gazing moodily before him. Then he said, as if to himself: “I owe the man my life. He nursed me through the plague. If it had not been for that — if he had not tended me so carefully in that valley in Nepaul — I would throw him overboard now — catch him in my arms and throw him overboard! I would — and be hanged for it!”
He walked past us as if he saw us not, silent, erect, moody. Hilda stepped aside and let him pass. He never even looked at her. I knew why; he dared not. Every day now, remorse for the evil part he had played in her life, respect for the woman who had unmasked and outwitted him, made it more and more impossible for Sebastian to face her. During the whole of that voyage, though he dined in the same saloon and paced the same deck, he never spoke to her, he never so much as looked at her. Once or twice their eyes met by accident, and Hilda stared him down; Sebastian’s eyelids dropped, and he stole away uneasily. In public, we gave no overt sign of our differences; but it was understood on board that relations were strained: that Professor Sebastian and Dr. Cumberledge had been working at the same hospital in London together; and that owing to some disagreement between them Dr. Cumberledge had resigned — which made it most awkward for them to be travelling together by the same steamer.
We passed through the Suez Canal and down the Mediterranean. All the time, Sebastian never again spoke to us. The passengers, indeed, held aloof from the solitary, gloomy old man, who strode along the quarter-deck with his long, slow stride, absorbed in his own thoughts, and intent only on avoiding Hilda and myself. His mood was unsociable. As for Hilda, her helpful, winning ways made her a favourite with all the women, as her pretty face did with all the men. For the first time in his life, Sebastian seemed to be aware that he was shunned. He retired more and more within himself for company; his keen eye began to lose in some degree its extraordinary fire, his expression to forget its magnetic attractiveness. Indeed, it was only young men of scientific tastes that Sebastian could ever attract. Among them, his eager zeal, his single-minded devotion to the cause of science, awoke always a responsive chord which vibrated powerfully.
Day after day passed, and we steamed through the Straits and neared the Channel. Our thoughts began to assume a home complexion. Everybody was full of schemes as to what he would do when he reached England. Old Bradshaws were overhauled and trains looked out, on the supposition that we would get in by such an hour on Tuesday. We were steaming along the French coast, off the western promontory of Brittany. The evening was fine, and though, of course, less warm than we had experienced of late, yet pleasant and summer-like. We watched the distant cliffs of the Finistere mainland and the numerous little islands that lie off the shore, all basking in the unreal glow of a deep red sunset. The first officer was in charge, a very cock-sure and careless young man, handsome and dark-haired; the sort of young man who thought more of creating an impression upon the minds of the lady passengers than of the duties of his position.
“Aren’t you going down to your berth?” I asked of Hilda, about half-past ten that night; “the air is so much colder here than you have been feeling it of late, that I’m afraid of your chilling yourself.”
She looked up at me with a smile, and drew her little fluffy, white woollen wrap closer about her shoulders. “Am I so very valuable to you, then?” she asked — for I suppose my glance had been a trifle too tender for a mere acquaintance’s. “No, thank you, Hubert; I don’t think I’ll go down, and, if you’re wise, you won’t go down either. I distrust this first officer. He’s a careless navigator, and to-night his head’s too full of that pretty Mrs. Ogilvy. He has been flirting with her desperately ever since we left Bombay, and to-morrow he knows he will lose her for ever. His mind isn’t occupied with the navigation at all; what HE is thinking of is how soon his watch will be over, so that he may come down off the bridge on to the quarter-deck to talk to her. Don’t you see she’s lurking over yonder, looking up at the stars and waiting for him by the compass? Poor child! she has a bad husband, and now she has let herself get too much entangled with this empty young fellow. I shall be glad for her sake to see her safely landed and out of the man’s clutches.”
As she spoke, the first officer glanced down towards Mrs. Ogilvy, and held out his chronometer with an encouraging smile which seemed to say, “Only an hour and a half more now! At twelve, I shall be with you!”
“Perhaps you’re right, Hilda,” I answered, taking a seat beside her and throwing away my cigar. “This is one of the worst bits on the French coast that we’re approaching. We’re not far off Ushant. I wish the captain were on the bridge instead of this helter-skelter, self-conceited young fellow. He’s too cock-sure. He knows so much about seamanship that he could take a ship through any rocks on his course, blindfold — in his own opinion. I always doubt a man who is so much at home in his subject that he never has to think about it. Most things in this world are done by thinking.”
“We can’t see the Ushant light,” Hilda remarked, looking ahead.
“No; there’s a little haze about on the horizon, I fancy. See, the stars are fading away. It begins to feel damp. Sea mist in the Channel.”
Hilda sat uneasily in her deck-chair. “That’s bad,” she answered; “for the first officer is taking no more heed of Ushant than of his latter end. He has forgotten the existence of the Breton coast. His head is just stuffed with Mrs. Ogilvy’s eyelashes. Very pretty, long eyelashes, too; I don’t deny it; but they won’t help him to get through the narrow channel. They say it’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous!” I answered. “Not a bit of it — with reasonable care. Nothing at sea is dangerous — except the inexplicable recklessness of navigators. There’s always plenty of sea-room — if they care to take it. Collisions and icebergs, to be sure, are dangers that can’t be avoided at times, especially if there’s fog about. But I’ve been enough at
sea in my time to know this much at least — that no coast in the world is dangerous except by dint of reckless corner-cutting. Captains of great ships behave exactly like two hansom-drivers in the streets of London; they think they can just shave past without grazing; and they DO shave past nine times out of ten. The tenth time they run on the rocks through sheer recklessness, and lose their vessel; and then, the newspapers always ask the same solemn question — in childish good faith — how did so experienced and able a navigator come to make such a mistake in his reckoning? He made NO mistake; he simply tried to cut it fine, and cut it too fine for once, with the result that he usually loses his own life and his passengers. That’s all. We who have been at sea understand that perfectly.”
Just at that moment another passenger strolled up and joined us — a Bengal Civil servant. He drew his chair over by Hilda’s, and began discussing Mrs. Ogilvy’s eyes and the first officer’s flirtations. Hilda hated gossip, and took refuge in generalities. In three minutes the talk had wandered off to Ibsen’s influence on the English drama, and we had forgotten the very existence of the Isle of Ushant.
“The English public will never understand Ibsen,” the newcomer said, reflectively, with the omniscient air of the Indian civilian. “He is too purely Scandinavian. He represents that part of the Continental mind which is farthest removed from the English temperament. To him, respectability — our god — is not only no fetish, it is the unspeakable thing, the Moabitish abomination. He will not bow down to the golden image which our British Nebuchadnezzar, King Demos, has made, and which he asks us to worship. And the British Nebuchadnezzar will never get beyond the worship of his Vishnu, respectability, the deity of the pure and blameless ratepayer. So Ibsen must always remain a sealed book to the vast majority of the English people.”
