Fenton's Quest Part 58

The vessel steamed put of the Mersey, and John Saltram, indifferent to the last glimpse of his native land, was still roaming hither and thither, in quest of the familiar face he longed with such a pa.s.sionate yearning to see; but up to this point he sought for his wife in vain.

Mrs. Holbrook had evidently retired at once to her cabin. There was nothing for him to do but to establish a channel of communication with her by means of the stewardess.

He found this official with some trouble, and so desperately busy that it was no easy matter to obtain speech with her, pursued as she was by forlorn and distracted female pa.s.sengers, clamorously eager to know where she had put that "waterproof cloak," or "Maud," or "travelling-bag," or "dressing-case." He did at last contrive to enlist her services in his behalf, and extort some answer to his questions.

"Yes," she told him, "Mrs. Holbrook was on board--state-room number 7.

She had gone to her room at once, but would appear at dinner-time, no doubt, if she wasn't ill."

John Saltram tore a blank leaf from his pocket-book, and wrote one hasty line:

"I am here, Marian; let me see you for G.o.d's sake.

"JOHN HOLBROOK."

"If you'll take that to the lady in number 7, I shall be exceedingly obliged," he said to the stewardess, slipping half-a-crown into her willing hand at the same time.

"Yes, sir, this very minute, sir."

John Saltram sat down upon a bench outside the ladies' cabin, in a sort of antechamber between the steward's pantry and store-rooms, strongly perfumed with the odour of grocery, and waited for Marian's coming. He had no shadow of doubt that she would come to him instantly, in defiance of any other guardian or counseller. Whatever lies might have been told her--however she might have been taught to doubt him--he had a perfect faith in the power of his immediate presence. They had but to meet face to face, and all would be well.

Indeed, there was need that things should be well for John Saltram very speedily. He had set nature at defiance so far, acting as if physical weakness were unknown to him. There are periods in a man's life in which nothing seems impossible to him; in which by the mere force of will he triumphs over impossibility. But such conquests are apt to be of the briefest. John Saltram felt that he must very soon break down. The heavily throbbing heart, the aching limbs, the dizzy sight, and parched throat, told him how much this desperate chase had cost him. If he had strength enough to clasp his wife's hand, to give her loving greeting and tell her that he was true, it would be about as much as he could hope to achieve; and then he felt that he would be glad to crawl into any corner of the vessel where he might find rest.

The stewardess came back to him presently, with rather a discomfited air.

"The lady says she is too ill to see any one, sir," she told John Saltram; "but under any circ.u.mstances she must decline to see you."

"She said that--my wife told you that?"

"Your wife, sir! Good gracious me, is the lady in number 7 your wife? She came on board with her father, and I understood they were only two in party."

"Yes; she came with her father. Her father's treachery has separated her from me; but a few words would explain everything, if I could only see her."

He thought it best to tell the woman the truth, strange as it might seem to her. Her sympathies were more likely to be enlisted in his favour if she knew the actual state of the case.

"Did Mrs. Holbrook positively decline to see me?" he asked again, scarcely able to believe that Marian could have resisted even that brief appeal scrawled upon a sc.r.a.p of paper.

"She did indeed, sir," answered the stewardess. "Nothing could be more positive than her manner. I told her how anxious you seemed--for I could see it in your face, you see, sir, when you gave me the paper--and I really didn't like to bring you such a message; but it was no use. 'I decline to see him,' the lady said, 'and be sure you bring me no more messages from this gentleman;' and with that, sir, she tore up the bit of paper, as cool as could be. But, dear me, sir, how ill you do look, to be sure!"

"I have been very ill. I came from a sick-room to follow my wife."

"Hadn't you better go and lie down a little, sir? You look as if you could scarcely stand. Shall I fetch the steward for you?"

"No, thanks. I can find my way to my berth, I daresay. Yes, I suppose I had better go and lie down. I can do no more yet awhile."

He could do no more, and had indeed barely strength to stagger to his sleeping-quarters, which he discovered at last with some difficulty. Here he flung himself down, dressed as he was, and lay like a log, for hours, not sleeping, but powerless to move hand or foot, and with his brain racked by torturing thoughts. "As soon as I am able to stand again, I will see her father, and exact a reckoning from him," he said to himself again and again, during those long dreary hours of prostration; but when the next day came, he was too weak to raise himself from his narrow bed, and on the next day after that he was no better. The steward was much concerned by his feeble condition, especially as it was no common case of sea-sickness; for John Saltram had told him that he was never sea-sick.

He brought the prostrate traveller soda-water and brandy, and tried to tempt him to eat rich soups of a nutritious character; but the sick man would take nothing except an occasional draught of soda-water.

On the third day of the voyage the steward was very anxious to bring the ship's surgeon to look at Mr. Saltram; but against this John Saltram resolutely set his face.

"For pity's sake, don't bore me with any more doctors!" he cried fretfully. "I have had enough of that kind of thing. The man can do nothing for me. I am knocked up with over exertion and excitement--that's all; my strength will come back to me sooner or later if I lie quietly here."

The steward gave way, for the time being, upon this appeal, and the surgeon was not summoned; but Mr. Saltram's strength seemed very slow to return to him. He could not sleep; he could only lie there listening to all the noises of the ship, the perpetual creaking and rattling, and tramping of footsteps above his head, and tortured by his impatience to be astir again. He would not stand upon punctilio this time, he told himself; he would go straight to the door of Marian's cabin, and stand there until she came out to him. Was she not his wife--his very own--powerless to hold him at bay in this manner? His strength did not come back to him; that wakeful prostration in which the brain was always busy, while the aching body lay still, did not appear to be a curative process. In the course of that third night of the voyage John Saltram was delirious, much to the alarm of his fellow-pa.s.senger, the single sharer of his cabin, a nervous elderly gentleman, who objected to his illness altogether as an outrage upon himself, and was indignantly desirous to know whether it was contagious.

So the doctor was brought to the sick man early next morning whether he would or not, and went through the usual investigations, and promised to administer the usual sedatives, and a.s.sured the anxious pa.s.senger that Mr. Saltram's complaint was in nowise infectious.

"He has evidently been suffering from serious illness lately, and has been over-exerting himself," said the doctor; "that seems very clear. We shall contrive to bring him round in a few days, I daresay, though he certainly has got into a very low state."

The doctor said this rather gravely, on which the pa.s.senger again became disturbed of aspect. A death on board ship must needs be such an unpleasant business, and he really had not bargained for anything of that kind. What was the use of paying first-cla.s.s fare on board a first-cla.s.s vessel, if one were subject to annoyance of this sort? In the steerage of an overcrowded emigrant ship such a thing might be a matter of course--a mere natural incident of the voyage--but on board the _Oronoco_ it was most unlooked for.

"He's not going to die, is he?" asked the pa.s.senger, with an injured air.

"O dear, no, I should hope not. I have no apprehension of that sort,"

replied the surgeon promptly.

He would no doubt have said the same thing up to within an hour or so of the patient's decease.

"There is an extreme debility, that is all," he went on quite cheerfully; "and if we can induce him to take plenty of nourishment, we shall get on very well, I daresay."

After this the nervous pa.s.senger was profoundly interested in the amount of refreshment consumed by the patient, and questioned the steward about him with a most sympathetic air.

John Saltram, otherwise John Holbrook, was not destined to die upon this outward voyage. He was very eager to be well, or at least to be at liberty to move about again; and perhaps this impatient desire of his helped in some measure to bring about his recovery. The will, physiologists tell us, has a great deal to do with these things.

The voyage was a prosperous one. The good ship steamed gaily across the Atlantic through the bleak spring weather; and there was plenty of eating and drinking, and joviality and flirtation on board her, while John Saltram lay upon his back, very helpless, languishing to be astir once more.

During these long dreary days and nights he had contrived to send several messages to the lady in the state-cabin, feeble pencil scrawls, imploring her to come to him, telling her that he was very ill, at death's door almost, and desired nothing so much as to see her, if only for a moment.

But the answer--by word of mouth of the steward or stewardess always--was unfailingly to the same effect:--the lady in number 7 refused to hold any communication with the sick gentleman.

"She's a hard one!" the steward remarked to the stewardess, when they talked the matter over in a comfortable manner during the progress of a snug little supper in the steward's cabin, "she must be an out-and-out hard-hearted one to stand out against him like that, if he is her husband, and I suppose he is. I told her to-day--when I took his message--how bad he was, and that it was a chance if he ever went ash.o.r.e alive; but she was walking up and down deck with her father ten minutes afterwards, laughing and talking like anything. I suppose he's been a bad lot, Mrs. Peterson, and deserves no better from her; but still it does seem hard to see him lying there, and his wife so near him, and yet refusing to go and see him."

"I've no common patience with her," said the stewardess with acrimony; "the cold-hearted creature!--flaunting about like that, with a sick husband within a stone's throw of her. Suppose he is to blame, Mr.

Martin; whatever his faults may have been, it isn't the time for a wife to remember them."

To this Mr. Martin responded dubiously, remarking that there were some carryings on upon the part of husbands which it was difficult for a wife not to remember.

The good ship sped on, unhindered by adverse winds or foul weather, and was within twenty-four hours of her destination when John Saltram was at last able to crawl out of the cabin, where he had lain for some eight or nine days crippled and helpless.

The first purpose which he set himself to accomplish was an interview with Marian's father. He wanted to grapple his enemy somehow--to ascertain the nature of the game that was being played against him. He had kept himself very quiet for this purpose, wishing to take Percival Nowell by surprise; and on this last day but one of the voyage, when he was able for the first time to rise from his berth, no one but the steward and the surgeon knew that he intended so to rise.

He had taken the steward in some measure into his confidence; and that official, after helping him to dress, left him seated in the cabin, while he went to ascertain the whereabouts of Mr. Nowell. Mr. Martin, the steward, came back after about five minutes.

"He's in the saloon, sir, reading, quite alone. You couldn't have a better opportunity of speaking to him."

"That's a good fellow. Then I'll go at once."

"You'd better take my arm, sir; you're as weak as a baby, and the ship lurches a good deal to-day."

"I'm not very strong, certainly. I begin to think I never shall be strong again. Do you know, Martin, I was once stroke in a university eight. Not much vigour in my biceps now, eh?"

It was only a few paces from one cabin to the other; but Mr. Saltram could scarcely have gone so far without the steward's supporting arm. He was a feeble-looking figure, with a white wan face, as he tottered along the narrow pa.s.sage between the tables, making his way to that end of the saloon where Percival Nowell lounged luxuriously, with his legs stretched at full length upon the sofa, and a book in his hand.