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MRS. KEITH'S CRIME

 

 

 

CHAPTER X

 

BEFORE we have been long on board we make acquaintance with one of the passengers. She sits down, and in the course of an hour, in a dull, mechanical sort of way, tells us all about herself. She is a young woman, pale and quiet. She has the air of a nursery governess, and something in her manner suggests that she is an orphan. She is companion to a Mrs. Greenside, who is not very well and in her cabin.

            ' Mrs. Greenside is always getting ill,' Miss Martin says softly; ' that is why she goes about so much.'

            ' And does it do her good? ' I ask.

            ' No; I don't think so. She never says that she is better, ' Miss Martin answers.

            ' Perhaps she likes travelling,' I say, just for the sake of saying something, and not because I feel particularly interested in Miss Martin or in Mrs. Greenside.

            ' Yes, perhaps she does,' Miss Martin says, and the utter want of interest in her manner and the dull tones of her voice make one sorry for her.

            ' And you--do you like travelling?' I ask her.

            ' Oh yes, sometimes; only I always get tired of the places, and it is tiresome to be always packing.'

            She is not a companion of the lady description, but of the respectable young person type. She does not say 'ma'am,' but for all that she brushes Mrs. Greenside's hair, and does the packing, and probably get scolded if anything is left behind.

            ' Are you not looking forward to seeing your home?' I ask; for she looks at me in the pauses, as if meekly waiting to be questioned. She told me a few minutes since that she and Mrs. Greenside had been abroad for some months.

            ' No,' she answers; 'I don't think about it much.'

            ' I thought, perhaps, you had friends or relations, and were longing to see them. People get so anxious about relations when they are far away.'

            ' Oh yes; I have relations, of course,' she says. 'I suppose I shall be glad to see them when the time comes; but it is no good looking forward or thinking of meeting them beforehand. They may be ill, or a dozen things. Are you going all the way to Bordeaux by this ship?'

            The questions is evidently only put to make conversation of some sort. She is no more curious concerning us than interested in herself.

            ' No; only to Malaga, to winter there. My child is ill,' I add, looking towards Molly, who is anxiously watching the man at the wheel.

            ' I see,' she answers placidly, as if she thinks a child's illness as good a reason as any other for coming abroad. 'That gentlemen is going to Malaga,' she says, indicating a tall man a little way off; 'I saw it on his luggage. His name is George Murray.'

            ' Murray? Why, that is the name of the doctor to whom I have an introduction; but it can't be the same, for his name is John Taylor Murray.' I look at him curiously as he slowly passes us. 'He has a good face,' I remark.

            ' He has?' she answers. 'I have not looked at him; people are so much alike abroad. I never look at them now; but I always notice the names on their luggage. I knew yours was Mrs. Keith before you came on board. I saw your trunks coming up the gangway.'

            Molly runs up to us, her eyes bright with pleasure, her cheeks tinged with a colour that looks like health.

            ' I do so like being in a ship! ' she exclaims. ' It is so funny to think that, even if it stops, there is nothing but water to get out on. It would not do to get off the ship, would it, mother?'

            ' No, my child; it wouldn't,' I laugh, and look up at Miss Martin; but she seems a little bored, and looks over the side of the ship at the waves for a moment or two, and then absently moves away.

            When the dinner-bell rings, I find that my place at table is next to Mr. Murray, so conclude that, like myself, he is a recent comer. We soon begin to talk, for on board ship it is an easy matter to get on friendly terms in even a few minutes; but there is no time to ask him whether he is related to the doctor at Malaga, for I have to hurry away from the table, because it is the hour at which Molly goes to bed. When she is sleeping, I creep upstairs in the twilight, and stand watching the water and the long track the ship leaves on the waves behind us. It is a little cold, and I pull my shawl tighter round me and sit down and think. But I cannot bear it long; the sea is too full of memories and all the shadows of meaning, and the darkness and the silence frighten me. Oh, the silence! how terrible it is. There is no eloquence in this living world so terrible as silence; but it is the eloquence of the dead. I cannot bear it longer, and turn and go to the cabin where Molly is, and sleep on the sofa beneath the window, opposite her berth, so that when day breaks I may open my eyes to look upon her face. And so the night passes.

            Molly awakes early, and cries, ' Mother!' It is like the voice of a bird calling from a branch. I open my tired eyes, and blow kisses to her, and call her my pretty one and my dickie-bird; and she laughs and talks, and looks like a fresh-blown rose, as if in the night all sickness and weakness had fled away.

            ' We will go on deck and see the waves,' I say, and begin to dress her.

            Sometimes I feel sorry for men. More greatness is theirs in life, but more sweetness is ours--the sweetness that is gained from little things, especially from the daily service given to those we love. I think this as I put on Molly's clothes, while even my finger-tips are sensible of the happiness there is in touching each thing that is hers.

            It is a bright, happy morning, and every wave and ripple rejoices in it. Molly looks round, and gives a little shout for joy as we go on deck, and holds my hand a little tighter just because she feels how lovely it all is, and has no other way of expressing herself. Perhaps they expressed themselves so in the beginning of the world, when beauty and happiness were born, but words were not. They did well enough without them, and again I think how eloquent is silence. There is a blissful silence for the living as well as a terrible one for the dead. But I will forget everything concerning death and sorrow on this sweet morning. The sea does not appal me as it did last night, and the memories it brings are less vivid than they have ever been before. For Molly is looking well, and she and I are together in the sunshine, and there is the aching and longing for happiness in my heart, and a half-promise seems in the air--a promise that perhaps, softly and unexpectedly, happiness may come stealing back.

            ' And now,' Molly says, when we are tired of walking about, and have sat down in some still sleeping passenger's chair, for it wants nearly an hour to breakfast, and no one is on deck but ourselves--' and now tell me a story.'

            I protest that I don't know one, but she declares I do, and at last I give way, and ask what it shall be, for I seldom tell her new stories, but the old ones over and over again. She seems to think that it is slighting her old friends to like the new ones too well.

            ' Tell me the story of the white rabbit,' she says.

            So I begin the story of the white rabbit. '"Once upon a time there was a white rabbit, and he lived down a hole in the woods at the foot of the snow mountains,"' and I do patiently on, until at last, with a sad shake of his little white tail, he disappears in the snow palace, and is seen no more.

            ' It is such a pretty story,' she says, with a long sigh of satisfaction; and then we laugh, for we both--she as well as I--know how ridiculous it is.

            Suddenly we look up and see Mr. Murray. He is watching Molly, as only a man really fond of children watches a child. We soon get into coversation, while Molly goes to inspect the wheel-house again, and I discover that he is brother to the Malaga doctor.

            ' I am to take his patients while he goes to England for the winter,' he says, ' for I am also a doctor.'

            ' Then you will look after Molly?' I answer, feeling a sudden interest in him.

            ' Yes, certainly I will, if you wish it. There is another English doctor at Malaga now, so that my brother is no longer the only one.' There is something honest in this communication. He looks at Molly, and adds, ' The climate will do everything for her.'   

            ' Dr. Finch was not very hopeful,' I say sadly; and tell him what the great doctor has said about her.

            ' I have seen some strange recoveries,' he answers. ' A child has the most wonderful faculty for outgrowing things, and there is simply no knowing what climate will not do. We have never till lately taken it sufficiently into account. You must make up your mind that she is going to live. A child will outgrow anything, remember.'  And so, when the breakfast-bell rings, it finds me with a happier face and a lighter heart than I have worn this long time.

            Before the day is out I know all about our doctor. He has been in Ceylon, looking after a coffee estate that had belonged to his mother, and at the same time investingating the disease in the coffee plant; but he has done some practising as well. He took an excellent degree at Cambridge, and was at one of the London hospitals before going abroad. Now he on  his way to take his brother's practice for the winter, and later on he means to devote himself to the scientific study of medicine. He is very clever, I hear, a little eccentric, very kind-hearted, and fond of children. To look at, he is fair, with soft, kind, grey eyes. He is well but slightly built, and perhaps two or three and thirty years of age. There is something about him that it is impossible to help liking, a manliness and frankness, a certain simple confidence in other people and in the best side of all things that wins one, and makes one feel that  he is, above all things, a man to trust and believe in.

 

            How quickly these days have passed. In half an hour we shall be at Malaga, or rather we shall have landed, for we have already dropped anchor, and as soon as the usual formalities are over we shall be allowed to go on shore. All the passengers are on deck, and we who are soon to leave the ship stand looking anxiously at the Spanish land. Malaga itself looks ugly enough, though its setting is splendid. The houses are white, and the windows many--square black windows, like blank, staring eyes with no white lids to soften them, staring for ever out at the sea. There are tall, smoky chimneys, and the port is dirty and ugly; but for all this there is compensation in the sun, which is shining over everything. Beyond the city the Sierra de Antequera rises far up into the sky; and on the other side is a great mountain gorge. Along the shore we can see the sugar-canes, and stretching far back are palms and what we take to be prickly pears and all the strange vegetation that belongs to the southern land. The water beneath us is still and blue, the air is warm and soft; we hear the dip of the boatman's oars as they crowd round the ship, and the not very eager voices of the boatmen, offering to take passengers on shore. The stillness around is intense stillness, and every sound that breaks it, whether it be a sailor's voice or the dip of an oar, is clear and distinct. Now and then we see movements on shore, but there are few people about ; the whole place seems to be drowsy and sleepy from overmuch sunshine.

            Suddenly Miss Martin comes up to me. Mrs. Greenside is not very well. She is afraid to go on, and thinks of landing here. Would I mind coming and speaking to her for a moment? So I leave Molly sitting on a pile of wraps on the top of one of the boxes, and go to the deck-chair a little way back.

            Mrs. Greenside is eight-and-forty perhaps, and overmuch wrinkled for her age. She has very white hands with many rings on them ; among them  is a lozenge-shaped diamond one. I see it flashing as I go up to her, and wonder if she bought it, or if in bygone years some one loved her very much and gave her all her rings--some one who is now gone. She is not an interesting woman, and one does not care much about her ; but, poor thing, this does not make her pains less keen, or her anxieties less real, and I go toward her feeling this, and wishing she did not bore me. There is something about her that is rather overpowering ; she takes possession of you, she appeals too obviously to your sympathies, so that, though she is ill and alone, you half grudge them. She gives you the impression that she is capable of shams of many nervous kinds, and yet that she is one of those women who, when they are roused, will take any trouble, push themselves anywhere, do anything, give anything, to attain an object not merely for themselves, but for any one who will come before them at the right moment. I am very uncharitable to her.

            ' Mrs. Keith,' she says, and her voice is that of one who has really suffered, and makes me sorry for her in a moment, ' I want to ask your advice. You are so clever, and you must have so much courage to travel all alone with your delicate little child, I am sure you will advise me.' She always asks advice about things in the most earnest manner, but she never takes it. She always seems to have made up her mind from the beginning what she is going to do, but you only find this out after she has listened to all you have to say. ' Don't you think I had better stay at Malaga? The voyage from Marseille has tired me so.'

            ' And you don't feel well?' I ask, wondering why she consults me.

            ' No, indeed,' and she sighs. ' I am never well ; am I, Miss Martin?'

            She looks up at her companion. Miss Martin is listlessly watching the boatmen rowing round the ship ; but she turns and answers like a machine, ' No ; Mrs. Greenside is never well,' and watches the boatmen again.

            ' Do you like the doctor?' she asks anxiously. ' I understand he is going to take his brother's practice at Malaga.'

            ' Yes, certainly I like him ; but I have only known him since we came on board.'

            ' Oh, but you have evidently so much discernment of character.'

            This is the sort of thing she always says ; she seems to believe in the wisdowm of every one about her ; but it is absurd to believe in mine, for she must know much better than I do about most things. Perhaps it comforts her, poor soul, to lean even on the weakest props, for it must be miserable to be alone seeking health, and to have none she loves beside her.

            ' How far were you going by this ship?' I ask.

            ' To Gilbraltar. I expect to meet my brother there, and his dear motherless girl. She is just like my own child. I never had any children of my own,' she adds, shaking her head sadly ; and my heart aches for her. ' I never had any children,' she repeats ; ' perhaps it is as well, with my wretched health ; and this dear girl is just like my own.'

            ' But if you stop here, will you not miss seeing your brother and niece?' I ask. ' Are they at Gilbraltar now?'

            ' I am not sure whether they have arrived yet, ' she answers. ' They have been yachting in the Mediterranean, and expected to put into Gilbraltar about the middle of the month, and I promise to wait for them there. My poor brother is still grieving over his wife's deatrh, and there is no one but me now to take care of his motherless girl.'

            ' But will you not miss them by going to Malaga?' I ask.

            ' Oh, if I telegraph, telling them the state. I am in, they will instantly come to me,' she answers, with a little smile, which seems to say that their devotion to her is unbounded. ' I can't go back to England this winter ; it would kill me to face the cold and fog. You know that, don't you, Miss Martin?'

            ' Yes, I know that, Mrs. Greenside,' Miss Martin says, turning from the boats again for a minute.

            ' I should only stay a few weeks at most at Malaga, but it would be a break in my long exile' --she says the word exile as if it meant Siberia-- ' and the doctor seems to be a clever man, he might do me a world of good ; it is so very difficult to come across a good doctor abroad.'

            ' I dare say you will find it very pleasant at Malaga, Mrs. Greenside,' I say, ' and I hope it will do you good. Perhaps Miss Martin will like seeing Spain too?' I add looking up at her.

            ' Oh!' Mrs. Greenside exclaims softly, with a little expression round her mouth that says it really does not matter in the least what Miss Martin likes.

            ' It is always interesting to see places,' the companion answers, ' only they are so much alike.'

            ' I think we will arrange to land,' Mrs. Greenside says nervously. ' Thank you so much for your help, Mrs. Keith. Do tell me where you are going to stop ; it would be such a comfort to go to the same place.'

            I tell her the name of the hotel picked haphazard out of Bradshaw, and then she appears to be satisfied, and proceeds to make arrangements for going on shore.

            Presently, when I am in the saloon getting Molly a glass of water, I run against Miss Martin, with her arms full of wraps and a dressing-bag and half a dozen other things.

            ' Let me help you carry these up,' I say ; and suddenly something makes me ask, ' Miss Martin, is Mrs. Greenside a Jewess?'

            ' I don't know ; she was once. She is not strong enough to trouble about it now ; perhaps she is something else. I never thought about it,' the companion else. I never thought about it,' the companion answers in her usual voice with her usual expression of face, or I might think that she was joking.

            Now I understand what had puzzled me about Mrs. Greenside. I have been wondering if I had met her before. Her face, the pale faded face, that is not thin, yet full of lines and traces of sickness ; the large dull eyes ; the dark hair pushed back ; the diamond rings ;--all had seemed familiar to me, but it was not the individual, but the type that I had recognized.

            Mrs. Greenside is quite overcome when she sees that I have helped to bring up her belongings.

            ' Oh Mrs. Keith!' she exclaims, ' you are too kind. You should have let Miss Martin do this ; she is quite used to it. What a sweet child your little girl is ; I have been watching her most intently. She is the image of you, Mrs. Keith.' She looks at me and gives a long sigh, and adds, slowly, ' she is very beautiful.' And then she opens a bag and gives Molly some chocolate, and watches her eat with a solemn interest that is almost touching. She is evidently a very kind woman. I am glad we are going to the same hotel.

 

 

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