Homefront Horrors

by Nevins, Jess;

  Then the big trunk under my berth began to be busy, and I switched on the light to look at it. In a slow and portly way it began to lollop across the floor towards the door. It was trying to get out of the ship, and I never blamed it. But before it could reach the door a suit-case dashed out from under the couch and kicked it in the stomach. I switched off the light again, and let them fight it out in the dark.

  I recalled that an elderly pessimist in the smoking-room the night before had expressed his belief that we were overloaded and that if the ship met any heavy weather she’d break in two for sure. And then I was playing chess with a fat negress who said she was only black when she was playing the black pieces; but in the middle of it somebody knocked and said that my bath was ready.

  The last part turned out to be true. My bath was even more than ready, it was impatient; as I entered the bathroom the water jumped out to meet me and did so. Then, when the bath and I had finished with each other, my steward came slanting down the passage, at an angle of thirty degrees to the floor, without spilling my morning tea, and said that the weather was improving.

  There were very few early risers at breakfast that morning, but I was not the first. Mrs. Derrison was coming out as I entered the saloon. I thought she looked ill, but it was not particularly surprising. We said good-morning, and then she hesitated for a moment.

  “I want to speak to you,” she said. “Do you mind? Not now. Come up on deck when you’ve finished breakfast.”

  She was not an experienced traveller, and had already consulted me about various small matters. I supposed she wanted to know what was the right tip for a stewardess or something of that kind. Accordingly, after breakfast I went up, and found her wrapped in furs—very expensive furs—in her deck-chair. I could see now that she was not in the least sea-sick, but she said she had not slept all night. I moved her chair into a better position, and chatted as I wrapped the rug round her. I confessed that with the exception of an hour’s nightmare about a fat negress I also had not slept. As a rule, she would have smiled at this, for she smiled easily and readily. But now she stared out over the sea as if she had heard the words without understanding them. She was a woman of thirty-four or thirty-five, I should think, and had what is generally called an interesting face. You noticed her eyes particularly.

  “Well,” I said, “the wind’s dropping, and we shall all sleep better tonight. Look, there’s the sun coming out at last. And now, what’s the trouble? What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t think that even you can help,” she said drearily, “though you’ve done lots of kind things for me. Still, I’ve got to tell somebody. I simply can’t stand it alone. Oh, if I were only the captain of this ship!”

  “I don’t think you’d like it! Why, what would you do?”

  “Turn round and go back to New York.”

  “It couldn’t be done. The ship doesn’t carry enough coal. And we shall be at Liverpool the morning after next. But why? What’s the matter?”

  She held out one hand in the sunlight. It looked very small and transparent. It shook.

  “The matter is that I’m frightened. I’m simply frightened out of my life.”

  I looked hard at her. There was no doubt about it. She was a badly frightened woman. I resisted an impulse to pat her on the shoulder.

  “But really, Mrs. Derrison, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, this is absolute nonsense. The boat’s slower than she ought to be, and I’ll admit that she rolls pretty badly, but she’s as safe as a church all the same.”

  “Yes, I know. In any case, that is not the kind of thing that would frighten me. This is something quite different. And when I have told you it, you will probably think that I am insane.”

  “No,” I said, “I shall not think that.”

  “Very well. I told you that I was a widow. I wear no mourning, and I did not tell you that Alec, my husband, died only three months ago. Nor did I tell you, which is also the truth, that I am going to England in order to marry another man.”

  “I understand all that. Go on.”

  “Alec died three months ago. But he is on this boat. I saw him last night. I think he has come for me.”

  She made that amazing statement quietly and without excitement. But you cannot tell a ghost story convincingly to a man who is sitting in the sun at half-past nine in the morning. I neither doubted her sincerity nor her sanity. I merely wondered how the illusion had been produced.

  “Well,” I said, “you know that’s quite impossible, don’t you?”

  “Yesterday, I should have said so.”

  “So you will to-morrow. Tell me how it happened, and I will tell you the explanation.”

  “I went to my room at eleven at night. The door was a little way open—fixed by the hook arrangement—the way I generally leave it. I switched on the light and went in. He was sitting on the berth with his legs dangling, his profile towards me. The light shone on the bald place on his head. He wore blue pyjamas and red slippers—the kind that he always wore. The pocket of his coat was weighed down, and I remembered what he had told me—that when he was traveling he put his watch, money, and keys there at night. He turned his head towards me. It came round very slowly, as if with an effort. That was strange, because so far I had been startled and surprised but not frightened. When the head turned round I became really frightened. You see, it was Alec—and yet it was not.”

  “I don’t think I understand. How do you mean?”

  “Well, it was like him—a roundish face, clean-shaven, heavily lined—he was fifteen years older than I was—with his very heavy eyebrows and his ridiculously small mouth. His mouth was really abnormal. But the whole thing looked as if it had been modelled out of wax and painted. And, then, when a head turns toward you, you expect the eyes to look at you. These did not. They remained with the lids half down—very much as I remembered him after the doctors had gone. Oh, I was frightened! I fumbled with one hand behind me, trying to find the bell-push. And yet I could not help speaking out loud. I said: ‘What does this mean, Alec?’ Just then I got my finger on the bell-push. He knew I had rung—I could see that. His lips kept opening and shutting as if he were trying hard to speak. When the voice came at last, it was only a whisper. He said: ‘I want you!’ when the stewardess tapped at the door, and I did not see him any more.”

  “Did you tell the stewardess?”

  “Oh, no! I did not mean to tell anybody then. I pretended to be nervous about the ship rolling too much, and managed to keep her with me for a long time. She offered to fetch the doctor for me, so that I could ask him for a sleeping-draught, but I wouldn’t have that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was afraid to go to sleep. I wanted to be ready in case—in case it happened again. You see, I knew why it was.”

  “I don’t think you did, Mrs. Derrison. But I will tell you why it was, if you like. The explanation is very simple and very prosaic.”

  “What is it?”

  “The cause of the illusion was merely seasickness.”

  “But I’ve not felt ill at all.”

  “Very likely not. If you had been ill in the ordinary way, the way in which it has taken a good many of our friends, you would never have had the illusion. Brain and stomach act and react on one another. The motion of boat, too, is particularly trying to the optic nerves. In some cases, not very common perhaps, but quite well-known and recognized—it is the brain and not the other organ which is temporarily affected.”

  I do not know anything about it really, and had merely invented the sea-sickness theory on the spur of the moment. It was necessary to think of something plausible and very commonplace. Mrs. Derrison was suffering a good deal, and I had to stop it.

  “If I could only think that,” she said, “what a comfort it would be!”

  “Whether you believe it or not, it’s the truth,” I said. I’ve known a similar case. It won’t happen to you again, because the weather’s getting better, and so you won’t be ill.”
/>   She wanted to know all about the “similar case,” and I made up a convincing little story about it. Gradually she began to be reassured.

  “I wish I had known about it before,” she said. “All last night I sat in my room, with the light turned on, getting more and more frightened. I don’t think there’s anything hurts one so much as fear. I can understand people being driven mad by it. You see, I had a special reason to be afraid, because Alec was jealous, very jealous. He had even, I suppose, some grounds for jealousy.”

  She began to tell me her story. She had married Alec Derrison nine years before. She liked him at that time, but she did not love him, and she told him so. He said that it did not matter, and that in time she would come to love him. I dare say a good many marriages that begin in that way turn out happily, but this marriage was a mistake.

  He took her to his house in New York, and there they lived for a year without actual disaster. He was very kind to her, and she was touched by his kindness. She had been quite poor, and she now had plenty of money to spend, and liked it. But it became clear to her in that year not only that she did not love her husband but that she never would love him. And she was, I could believe, a rather romantic and temperamental kind of woman, by whom many men were greatly attracted. Alec Derrison began to be very jealous—at that time quite absurdly and without reason.

  At the end of the year Derrison took her to Europe for a holiday. And there, in England, in her father’s country rectory, she met the man whom she ought to have married—an artist of the same age as herself. The two fell desperately in love with one another. The man wanted to take her away with him and ultimately to marry her. She refused.

  There is a curious mixture of conscience and temperament which is sometimes mistaken for cowardice and is often accompanied by extraordinary courage. She went to her husband and, so to speak, put her cards on the table.

  “I love another man,” she said. “I love him in the way in which I wished to love you but cannot. I did not want this and did not look for it, but it has happened to me. I am sorry it has happened, but I do not ask you to forgive me, for you have nothing to forgive. I want to know what you mean to do.”

  His answer was to take her straight back to New York. There for the eight years before he died he treated her with kindness and gave her every luxury, but all the time he had her watched. Traps were laid for her, but in vain. He had for business reasons to go to England every year, but he never took her with him.

  When he was away, two of his sisters came to the house and watched for him.

  And yet, because in some things a woman is cleverer than a man, and also because the feminine conscience always has its limitations, during the whole of those eight years she corresponded regularly with the other man without being found out. They never met, but she had his letters. And now she was going back to marry him.

  It was, perhaps, a little curious that she should tell all this to a man whom she had known only for a few days. But intimacies grow quickly on board ship, and besides she wanted to explain her terror.

  “You see how it was,” she said. “If a dead man could come back again, then certainly he would come back. And when one begins to be frightened the fear grows and grows. One thinks of things. For instance, he crossed more than once in this very boat—I thought of that.”

  “Well, Mrs. Derrison,” I said, “the dead cannot and do not come back. But a disordered interior does sometimes produce an optical illusion. That’s all there is to it. However, if you like, I’ll go to the purser and get your room changed for another; I can manage that all right.”

  It was not a very wise suggestion, and she refused it. She said that it would be like admitting that there was something in it beyond sea-sickness.

  “Good!” I said. “I think you’re quite right. I thought it might ease your mind not to see again the room where you were frightened, but it is much better to be firm about it. In fact, you had better take a cup of soup and then go back to your room now, and get an hour’s sleep before lunch.”

  “I wonder if I could.”

  “Of course you can. You’re getting your colour back, and there’s much less motion on the boat. You won’t have another attack. You’ve had a sort of suppressed form of sea-sickness, that’s all. And I can quite understand that it scared you at the time, when you didn’t know; but there’s no reason why it should scare you now when you do know.”

  She took my advice. A woman will generally take advice from any man except her husband—because he’s the only man she really knows. She was disproportionately grateful. Gratitude is rare, but, when found, it is in very large streaks. She had also decided to believe that I knew everything, could do everything, and had other admirable qualities. When a woman decides to believe, facts do not hamper her.

  She was much better at lunch and afterwards. Next day she was apparently normal, and was taking part in the usual deck-games. I began to think that my sea-sickness theory might have been a lucky shot. I consulted the ship’s doctor about it, without giving him names or details, but he was very non-committal. He was a general practitioner, of course, and I was taking him into specialist regions. Besides, naturally enough, a doctor does not care to talk his own shop with a layman. He gave me an impression that any conclusions to which I came would necessarily be wrong. But it did not worry me much. I did not see a great deal of Mrs. Derrison, but it was quite obvious that she had recovered her normal health and spirits. I believed that the trouble was over.

  But it was not.

  On the night before we arrived, after the smoking-room had been closed, old Bartlett asked me to come to his rooms, for a chat and a whisky and soda. The old man slept badly, and was inclined to a late sitting. We discussed various subjects, and amongst them memory for faces.

  “I’ve got that memory,” he said. “Names bother me, but not faces. For instance, I remember the faces of the seventy or eighty in the first class here.”

  “I thought we were more than that.”

  “No. People don’t cross the Atlantic for fun in February. It’s a pretty light list. It’s a funny thing, too—we’ve got one man on board who’s never showed up at all. I saw him for the first time this morning—to be accurate, yesterday morning—coming from the bath, and I’ve not seen him since. He must have been hiding in his state-room all the time.”

  “Ill, probably.”

  “No, not ill. I asked the doctor. I supposed he don’t enjoy the society of his fellow-men for some reason or other.”

  “Well, now,” I said, “let’s test your memory. What was he like?”

  “You’ve given me an easy one as it happens, for he was rather a curious chap to look at, and easy to remember in consequence. A man in the fifties, I should say; medium height; wore blue pyjamas with a gold watch-chain trickling out of the pocket, and those red slippers that you buy in Cairo. But his face was what I noticed particularly. He’s got a one-inch mouth—smallest mouth I ever saw on a man. But the whole look on his face was queer, just as if it had been painted and then varnished.

  “He was bald, round-faced, wrinkled, and clean-shaven. He walked very slowly, and he looked as if he were worried out of his life. There’s the portrait, and you can check it when we get off the boat—you’re bound to see him then.”

  “Yes, you’ve a good memory. If I had just passed the man in a passage, I shouldn’t have remembered a thing about him ten minutes afterwards. By the way, have you spoken about the hermit passenger to anybody else?”

  “No. Oh, yes, I did mention it to some of the ladies after dinner! Why?”

  “I wondered if anybody besides yourself had seen him.”

  “Well, they didn’t say they had. Bless you, I’ve known men like that. It’s a sort of sulkiness. They’d sooner be alone.”

  A few minutes later I said good-night and left him. It was between one and two in the morning. His story had made a strong impression upon me. My theory of sea sickness had to go, and I was scared. Quite frankly, I was af
raid of meeting something in blue pyjamas. But I was more afraid about Mrs. Derrison. There were very few ladies on board, and it was almost certain she was in the group to whom Bartlett had told his story. If that were so, anything might have happened. I decided to go past her state-room, listening as I did so.

  But before I reached her room the door opened, and she swung out in her nightdress. She had got her mouth open and one hand at her throat. With the other hand she clutched the handle of the door, as if she was trying to hold it shut against somebody. I hurried towards her, and she turned and saw me. In an instant she was in my arms, clinging to me in sheer mad, helpless terror.

  She was hysterical, of course, but fortunately did not make much noise. She kept saying: “I’ve got to go back to him—into the sea!” It seemed a long time before I could get her calm enough to listen to me.

  “You’ve had a bad dream, and it has frightened you, poor child.”

  “No, no. Not a dream!”

  “It didn’t seem like one to you, but that’s what it was. You’re all right now. I’m going to take care of you.”

  “Don’t let go of me for a moment. He wants me. He’s in there.”

  “Oh, no! I’ll show you that he’s not there.”

  I opened the door. Within all was darkness. I still kept one arm round her, or she would have fallen.

  “I left the light on,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I said, “but your sleeve caught the switch as you came out. I saw it.” It was a lie, of course, but one had to lie.

  I switched the light on again. The room was empty. There were the tumbled bed-clothes on the berth, and a pillow had fallen to the floor. On the table some toilet things gleamed brightly. There was a pile of feminine garments on the couch. I drew her in and closed the door.