Fenton's Quest - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (snow like ashes series TXT) 📗

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-passenger, 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 assured the anxious passenger 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 passenger 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-class fare on board a first-class 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 passenger, 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 passenger 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 ashore 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 passage 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.

"Mr. Nowell, I believe," said the sick man, as the other looked up at him with consummate coolness. Whatever his feelings might be with regard to his daughter's husband, he had had ample time to prepare himself for an encounter with him.

"Yes, my name is Nowell. But I have really not the honour to----"

"You do not know me," answered John Saltram. "No, but it is time you did so. I am your daughter's husband, John Holbrook."

"Indeed. I have heard that she has been persecuted by the messages of some person calling himself her husband. You are that person, I presume."

"I have tried to persuade my wife to see me. Yes; and I mean to see her before this vessel arrives in port."

"But if the lady in question refuses to have anything to say to you?"

"We shall soon put that to the test. I have been too ill to stir ever since I came on board, or you would have heard of me before this, Mr. Nowell. Now that I can move about once more, I shall find a way to assert my claims, you may be sure. But in the first place, I want to know by what right you stole my wife away from her home--by what right you brought her on this voyage?"

"Before I answer that question, Mr.--Mr. Holbrook, as you choose to call yourself, I'll ask you another. By what right do you call yourself my daughter's husband? what evidence have you to produce to prove that you are not a bare-faced impostor? You don't carry your marriage-certificate about with you, I daresay; and in the absence of some kind of documentary evidence, what is to convince me that you are what you pretend to be--my daughter's husband?"

"The evidence of your daughter's own senses. Place me face to face with her; she will not deny my identity."

"But how, if my daughter declines to see you, as she does most positively? She has suffered enough at your hands, and is only too glad to be released from you."

"She has suffered--she is glad to be released! Why, you most consummate scoundrel!" cried John Saltram, "there never was an unkind word spoken between my wife and me! She was the best, most devoted of women; and nothing but the vilest treachery could have separated us. I know not what villanous slander you have made her believe, or by what means you lured her away from me; but I know that a few words between us would let in the light upon your plot. You had better make the best of a bad position, Mr. Nowell. As my wife's father, you know, you are pretty sure to escape. Whatever my inclination might be, my regard for her would make me indulgent to you. You'll find candour avail you best in this case, depend upon it. Your daughter has inherited a fortune, and you want to put your hand upon it altogether. It would be wiser to moderate your desires, and be content with a fair share of the inheritance. Your daughter is not the woman to treat you ungenerously, nor am I the man to create any hindrance to her generosity."

"I can make no bargain with you, sir," replied Mr. Nowell, with the same cool audacity of manner that had distinguished him throughout the interview; "nor am I prepared to admit your claim to the position you assume. But if my daughter is your wife, she left you of her own free will, under no coercion of mine; and she must return to you in the same manner, or you must put the machinery of the law in force to compel her. And _that_, I flatter myself, in a free country like America, will be rather a difficult business."

It was hard for John Saltram to hear any man talk like this, and not be able to knock him down. But in his present condition Marian's husband could not have grappled a child, and he knew it.

"You are an outrageous scoundrel!" he said between his set teeth, tortured by that most ardent desire to dash his clenched fist into Mr. Nowell's handsome dissolute-looking face. "You are a most consummate villain, and you know it!"

"Hard words mean so little," returned Mr. Nowell coolly, "and go for so little. That kind of language before witnesses would be actionable; but, upon my word, it would be mere child's play on my part to notice it, especially to a man in your condition. You'd better claim your wife from the captain, and see what he will say to you. I have told him that