Hurricane Island - H. B. Marriott Watson (ebook pdf reader for pc TXT) 📗

Morland's guidance found the cabin. Certain constitutions are peculiarly affected by the sea, and it is even undertaking a risk for some people to travel on that element. Clearly it was, as Pye hinted, for the French lady that my prescription had been required. Outside the cabin in the corridor I encountered Mr. Morland, who exhibited a troubled face unusual to one of such apparent equanimity. But he said nothing, only looked at his sister and turned away.

Inside I found a blue chamber, roomy and well lighted by electricity, an elegant broad bed affixed to the one wall, and upon it, stretched in the most wonderful _deshabille_, my patient. Mlle. Chateray was of middle height, of a pleasant fulness, and dark of feature. She had large eyes that, as I entered, were roaming in a restless way about the room, and her voice was lifted sharply abusive of her maid, a mild Frenchwoman who stood by her.

"She is in a state of collapse, Dr. Phillimore," said my guide's voice in my ear.

I knew better than that. It was hysteria, or I had never seen hysteria, and the _mal-de-mer_ had been merely provocative. I took her hand without ceremony, and, wheeling on me her lustrous eyes, she broke out in torrential French.

She would die if she remained there. They were beasts to keep her there. Why was she not put ashore at Havre? Havre was a port, as every one knew, and there were ports not only in England. I had a kind face and would do as she bade me.... Very well, then, let her be put ashore. She began to tear at her elaborate dressing-gown, and I was afraid of one of those outbreaks which are known as _crises des nerfs._ I took her hands firmly.

"You shall be put ashore as you wish," I said, "and in the meantime, while the yacht is going about, you will drink what I give you. It will comfort you."

She gazed into my eyes, ceasing to struggle, and then said more quietly: "Yes--yes, give it me quick."

It was a case for bromide, and I turned away at once to go to my surgery.

"You will lie exactly as you are, mademoiselle," I said peremptorily, "until I return."

I left the cabin and descended, and I think I was not gone more than ten minutes. When Mlle. Chateray had taken the draught, I turned to her maid: "She will be quieter now," I said. "Let me know if anything further develops," and I moved towards the door. Miss Morland stood in my way.

For the first time I observed her. Her cloak had fallen from her, leaving her fine figure in the full illumination of the light. Her head was set well back above the eloquent lines of a strong throat and the square shoulders underneath. The lace over her bosom stirred with her breathing, and to my fancy at the moment she was as a statue into which life was flowing suddenly. I saw this before I met her gaze, and the calm beauty of that confirmed my fancy. She moved then and opened the door for me.

"You have promised she shall be landed?" she said in a low voice.

"Madam, I would promise anything in such a case," I answered.

A faint smile passed over her face, for we were now outside the cabin and in the ladies' boudoir.

"You can promise relief, then, I understand?" she queried.

"She will probably be all right to-night, though I cannot say the hysteria will not recur," I replied.

An expression flitted over her face, but whether it was of pity or annoyance I could not have said.

"My brother will not put the yacht about," she said.

"I'm not going to ask him," I rejoined.

"I thank you, doctor," said she simply, "and so will he."

"It is my business," I responded indifferently.

She had spoken with distance, even coldly, and with the air of condescension. There was no necessity to thank me at all, and certainly not in that way.

Bidding her good evening, I went down again, and as I went a problem which had vaguely bothered me during my administrations recurred, now more insistently. There was something familiar in Mlle. Chateray's face. What was it?

I spent some time in the surgery, and later joined the officers at dinner. Captain Day wore a short dinner-jacket like my own, but the others had made no attempt to dress. Perhaps that was the reason why the captain devoted his attention to me. His voice was that of a cultivated man, and he seemed to converse on the same level of cultivation. He made a figure apart from the rest of the company, to which little Pye was now joined, and as I looked down and across the table (from which only Holgate was absent on duty) their marvellous unlikeness to him struck me. Even Sir John Barraclough and Lane seemed by comparison more or less of a piece, though the first officer ignored the purser quite markedly. Captain Day, I discovered, had some taste in letters, and as that also had been my consolation in my exile in Wapping, I think we drew nearer on a common hobby. I visited my patient about nine o'clock, and found her sleeping. As she lay asleep, I was again haunted by the likeness to some one I had seen before; but I was unable to trace it to its source nor did I trouble my head in the matter, since resemblances are so frequently accidental and baffling.

Pye had invited me to his room earlier in the day, and I went straight to him from the deck cabin. To find Holgate there was not unpleasing, as it seemed in a way to recall what I almost began to consider old times--the time that was in the "Three Tuns." Pye mixed the toddy, and we smoked more or less at our ease. I spoke of my patient, in answer to a question, as one suffering from sea-sickness.

"What's she like?" inquired Holgate.

"I should say handsome," I rejoined. "I understood from Mr. Pye that she is French."

"I think I heard so," said Pye, "but you could tell."

"Well, she spoke French," I said with a smile.

Pye's smile seemed to commend my reticence, but Holgate, ignoring the obvious retort on me, pursued a different subject.

"Upon my soul, I envy people like those millionaires. Here am I working like a navvy for a bare living, never been able to marry; Pye probably in the same case; and you, doctor?"

"No; I'm a bachelor," I answered.

"Well, take us three--no doubt in our different walks every bit as capable as Mr. Morland on his Wall Street, or wherever it is. It isn't a righteous distribution of this world's goods."

"It is odd," said I, speaking my thoughts, "how you came to take up this life."

"The sort of blunder," said Holgate, "that is made in three cases out of four. I hankered after it in my teens, and once out of them it was too late. Who is going to adapt a youth of twenty-one, without capital, to a commercial life, or a legal life, or a medical life? There is no changing the dice. When the hands are dealt you must abide by them."

"Yes, we are all waifs," said I sententiously, not being greatly interested in the argument.

"When I came back from my last voyage," pursued Holgate, "I was in Paris for a bit, and went into the Comedie one night, and----"

I never heard the rest of Holgate's reminiscence, for the word regarding the theatre suddenly sent a message to my memory and lighted it up instantaneously. I said aloud, and with some excitement,

"Trebizond!"

Holgate ceased talking, and Pye removed his cigarette hastily.

"What, may we venture to ask, is Trebizond?" he said presently.

I smiled foolishly. "Oh, it is only that I have made a discovery," I said, "a small discovery."

Again there was silence.

"Perhaps we are worthy to hear it," suggested Holgate equably.

Pye still held his cigarette between his fingers and looked at me out of his gold-rimmed glasses.

"Oh, nothing much," said I, and glanced at my watch. "I'm sorry, I must see my patient safe for the night. I'll look in again."

I left them and went upstairs, knocking on the boudoir door. Miss Morland opened it.

"Mlle. Chateray is still sleeping," she said formally.

"I will leave a dose with her maid," I replied, "so that if it be necessary it may be given in the night."

"You will, of course, be in attendance if required," she said coldly.

I bowed.

"I am paid for it, madam," I answered, though I must confess to a hostile feeling within my heart.

"I think, then, that is all," she said, and I took my dismissal at the hands of the arrogant beauty with an internal conflict of anger and admiration.

I did not return to Pye, but went to my own cabin in an irritable condition. It ought not to have mattered to me that the sister of a millionaire, my employer, should treat me more or less as a lackey; but it did. I threw myself on my bunk and took down a book at random from my little shelf. Out of its pages tumbled an evening news-sheet which I now remembered to have bought of a screaming boy as I hurried into the dock gates on the previous afternoon. I had not had time to look at it in my various preoccupations, but, after all, it was the last news of my native land I should have for some time, and so I opened it and began the perusal.

It was one of those half-penny journals which seem to combine the maximum of vulgarity with a minimum of news. But I passed over the blatant racing items and murder trials with less than my customary distaste, and was rambling leisurely through the columns when I was arrested by a paragraph and sat up briskly. It was the tail that interested me.

"... It is stated that Prince Frederic is in London. The name of the lady who has so infatuated him is Mlle. Yvonne Trebizond, the well-known prima donna."

I had recalled the name Trebizond during Holgate's talk, and it seemed strange now that this second discovery should fall so coincidently. The face of Mlle. Chateray had taken me back, by a sudden gust of memory, to certain pleasant days in Paris before I was banished to the East End. I had frequented the theatres and the concert-rooms, and I remembered the vivacious singer, a true _comedienne_, with her pack of tricks and her remarkable individuality. Mlle. Chateray, then, was no other than Yvonne Trebizond, and----

I looked down at the paper and read another sentence, which, ere that illumination, had had no significance, but now was pregnant with it.

"The prince has the full support and sympathy of his sister, Princess Alix."

I rose abruptly. I can keep my own counsel as well as a lawyer's clerk, but I saw no reason in the world for it now. I had left my glass untouched and my cigar unlit in Pye's cabin. I went back forthwith to finish both.

The pair were still seated as if expecting me.

"Patient all right, doctor?" inquired Holgate.

I nodded. "Mr. Pye," I said, "I find my discovery has amplified itself. When I was here it was of small