CHAPTER VIII.

BEWARE THE FURY OF A PATIENT MAID.

The fresh air was delicious after the confined atmosphere below; and while Captain Fordyce was helping Nina up the bridge ladder, she saw with joy that her unconscious ally had not failed her,--the first officer was at his post.

She got up on a high seat where she could look far out over the great waves plunging and tossing about in their rough sport. For half an hour she was left to her own devices; and she almost forgot her tribulations in watching the fleet porpoises tearing through the water in their headlong career, and occasional shoals of whales blowing in the distance. There were sea-gulls, too. The murky background of the sky threw out in bold relief the dazzling whiteness of their wings as they gracefully circled about the ship, and while watching their frequent darting movements she repeated half-aloud a quotation from one of her well-thumbed school-books:

“‘The silver-winged sea-fowl on high Like meteors bespangle the sky, Or dive in the gulf, or triumphantly ride Like foam on the surges, the swans of the tide.’”

“What are you saying?” asked Captain Fordyce, coming to her end of the bridge.

She shook her head obstinately.

“Ah! you will not repeat it, and that reminds me: I have forgotten to make an apology for bringing you up here against your will.”

She pressed her lips together, and from her high seat looked over his shoulder at the first officer, who was pacing up and down the bridge before them.

Captain Fordyce went on, in a lower voice: “I wanted to get you away from that man Delessert’s attentions. There is something about him that I do not like.”

“You are suspicious,” she retorted, coldly; “you have no right to assume so much authority over my movements.”

The first officer was at the other end of the bridge now, standing with his back to them, his attention fully concentrated on a distant ship. Nina wished earnestly that her last remark could be recalled, for it had transformed her husband into an ardent and determined lover.

“No right! I have the best right in the world. When I see you putting your fingers in the fire, you foolish girl, I shall be the first to pull them out.”

Nina was overawed, yet not totally subdued; and leaning forward, she saucily whispered a few words in the vicinity of his forehead: “My fingers are my own. If I choose to burn them it is none of your business.”

His black eyes met hers with a masterful light. “Try it, darling, and see; those fingers are mine;” and lightly touching them as he spoke, he went tramping away.

Nina shrugged her shoulders. It had come to the worst. He would not for an instant allow her to forget the hateful fetter that bound her to him. Their marriage, instead of being dropped, forgotten, no marriage at all, was to be made an excuse for the vilest tyranny. Oh, how angry she was! and she glared indignantly down at his collected face, for he had again approached and was saying something to her. She pulled herself together to hear it.

“I have ordered tea in the chart-room for you at eight bells. You will come, will you?”

“Not if it is to be a tea with you alone.”

He favoured her with a half-amused half-impatient shrug of his broad shoulders; then, after saying, “You flatter yourself, such a thought never came into my head,” he went away.

Not until the sweet-toned bell on the quarter-deck rang out eight strokes did he approach her again. “It is four o’clock now,” he said, lifting her down from her high seat.

They descended to the deck, and he told his servant, who was waiting for him, to go and ask Mrs. Grayley and Captain Eversleigh whether they would give him the pleasure of their company to tea in the chart-room. Then with a brief, “Are you satisfied?” he went up the steps and opened the door for her.

Nina followed him slowly and sat down on a stool in the corner.

“Will you have the kindness to take a seat farther away from me?” she said, when he turned his steps toward a stool next her own. But the request came too late; he had already seated himself.

“Nina,” he said, resting an arm on his knee, and deliberately stroking his heavy moustache while he bent forward to obtain a complete view of her, “to hear you talk at times, and to watch your actions, one would imagine that you hate me. I have been hoping that, since that ceremony two days ago, you would be different.”

“So I do hate you,” she cried, pushing his black coat sleeve aside. “I hate any man, who, forgetting that he is the natural protector of woman, becomes her persecutor.”

Then, with a passing thought that this was an uncommonly neat speech for a tyro, she launched herself fully on a tide of abuse.

She informed him that she was burdened by the grievances of a lifetime, that she was essentially practical and matter-of-fact, and that she hated a mystery as she hated sin. She had through long, long years chafed against the galling chain of circumstances that bound her to him. It was an insult to her, a creature with a will and judgment of her own, to have been born a slave, to have no means of freeing herself.

“By some means or other you got me into your power,” she uttered, in a voice of quiet, concentrated scorn; “you have tyrannised over me, married me, and in addition to this cowardly act, you have evaded your promises. You are a--”

She brought her goadings to an abrupt stop, for, with his dark face absolutely purple from some emotion, he had suddenly got up, turned his back on her, and was looking out the window.

She had made him angry. In a minute he would be demanding an apology for the plain language she had just uttered. Well, she was in for his displeasure now. She might as well free her mind of every bit of dissatisfaction, every demand for the future lurking in it.

“It is all true,” she said, sullenly; “and I won’t take it back, not a word of it. You would be a far better man to-day, if everybody had told you the truth about yourself as faithfully as I have done. I am not half as much afraid of you as--as those people you call my parents were. Heaven only knows,” desperately, “how you bewitched them, and made them take charge of me. And you have brought me on this voyage to make me fall in love with you, and strengthen your claim to me; but I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.”

She was not shrieking as she usually did in her childish fits of temper. She was progressing, yes, certainly progressing, and the man at the window wearily shrugged his shoulders. This was a more womanly rage. He preferred the childish one. It was more abusive, but not so taunting, so stinging.

Nina, exhausted and trembling as she never before had been after an explosion of wrath, had sunk back on her stool. She had won a victory. She had made him angry, and he would not trouble her again for some time. She wondered how angry he was. He could not go into a temper one minute and out of it the next as she could. Now if his resentment would only last until they got to England--

Just at that moment the not unusual sight of a pocket-handkerchief caused an entire revulsion of feeling in her quarrelsome breast. It was one with “Esteban Fordyce” stamped in one corner, and it lay on the table before her. It was beautifully white and clean, but so coarse, so very coarse. She drew hers from her pocket,--a tiny perfumed piece of muslin, with an edging of valuable lace. What a contrast! She spread it over as much of her face as it would cover, and began to cry stealthily. In a minute it was drenched. She threw it under the table, and took up the other more substantial one.

She was grieving very quietly; still the man at the window must hear her, yet he said never a word. Well, she had called him a coward, and a man does not like to hear that word even from the lips he loves best.

“’Steban,” she said, after a time, in a very low and miserable voice, “if I said anything to hurt your feelings, I am sorry for it.”

Still he did not turn his face to her, and she began to wonder whether she had been a righteously indignant victim or a base ingrate. Despite her slavery, she had certainly been well, nay, handsomely, treated. Her health, morals, and education had received enough attention to make them perfect. She had had articles of luxury that the mother of her adoption had frequently protested against as being better fitted for royalty than for a young person in her station of life; and--sharpest pang of all--to procure all this, the man before her had had to undergo not only the frightful loneliness of which he had spoken in the morning, but also toils, privations, risk of life. The thought was maddening, and she sprang from her seat and went boldly up to him.

“’Steban,” she said, with a plaintive sob, “I am ashamed of myself. Will you forgive me?”

He twisted his head away and tried to evade her, but she was resolute. She mounted a chair, leaned one hand on his shoulder, that was quivering with impatience, or restlessness, or wrath, or perhaps all three, and, bending forward, gazed curiously into his face.

One look was enough, for he was quietly and enjoyably laughing at her. She was about to get down, to beat an ignominious retreat to her own room, when he seized her with a murmured, “You small Amazon, I will talk to you by and by.” He carried her across the room. “There is some one coming--sit there,” he said, putting her in a chair. Then, with an impassive face, he held open the door.

Captain Eversleigh was just entering. He threw the flushed, panting girl a surprised glance, then picked up her cap that had fallen off during one of her bursts of eloquence. This did not add to her composure, and she intently studied the pattern of the carpet, until the entrance of Merdyce with a tray effected a diversion. Mrs. Grayley was too ill to appear, so it devolved upon her to pour out the tea.

The fear that the two men, though apparently quite taken up with each other,--Captain Eversleigh in uttering a flow of small talk, and Captain Fordyce in listening,--were in reality watching her, made her hand tremble as she put the sugar into the fragile cups with the butterfly handles. Suddenly and awkwardly she let the sugar-tongs fall into the cream-pitcher.

Captain Eversleigh was so near that the white fluid splashed over the front of his dark coat. She knew by the quick glance he cast her from under his light eyelashes that he thought she did it on purpose. This, together with her recent agitation, quite took away her remnant of fortitude, and she burst into a hysterical, Bacchante laugh. For politeness’ sake her companions tried to join her, but their share of the merriment was forced, and soon languished and died.

In her anxiety to get away, it appeared to her that they would never stop drinking tea. Captain Eversleigh’s potations seemed to her--a girl unaccustomed to the habitual drinking of tea between meals--to be positively alarming, and she ventured a faint glance of remonstrance as he passed his cup for the fourth time.

“You make tea marvellously well, Mrs. Fordyce,” he said, in a high-pitched, cheery voice; “but I shall not be inconsiderate enough to trouble you again. I see by the way you survey the teapot that we are boring you to death,” and, with deliberate haste, he finished at the same time his cup of tea and his discussion of English politics with Captain Fordyce. Then he took his leave, and Nina was about to glide after him, when her husband detained her.