Fenton sat up. “Going home! O my God!” He fell back on his pillow, and the doctor nodded his head.
“I thought so. You’re homesick. Nixon isn’t going home; but if you keep on in this way, you are — in a box. This thing will kill you as sure as you live, if you don’t fight it, and if you’ve got particular reasons for living, as you intimated the other day, you’d better make the most of them. Get leave and go off somewhere for a while. Amuse yourself; try to forget about it. You can worry it off somehow. You must; and so I tell you.”
“Two days after I sailed the man who had taken care of me all my life, and been more than a father to me, died suddenly, and left his only child alone in the world,” said Fenton desperately. “How am I to worry that off? I ought to be there — to help her, to take care of her, to show the gratitude that common decency—” —
“Well, that is bad,” assented the doctor. “But she’s got friends, of course?”
“Oh, friends, yes!”
“And of course she’ll be looked after. You must try to see the bright side of it,” added the doctor. “There’s a bright side to everything.”
“Do you think so? Then I’ll tell you the bright side to this. I came away in a quarrel with them — a quarrel where I was to blame — without seeing them or saying a word to them; and I can’t ask leave to go home, because I made a point of getting ordered here. That’s the bright side of it!”
“It isn’t very dazzling,” admitted the doctor, with the smile that men put on at other men’s troubles of sentiment. “But it isn’t a thing to be morbid about. You can write home and explain. You’re a little under the influence of the climate here; you’ll see all these things differently when you’re used to it. I’d better give you some quinine. There’s no use in giving way; you’ll only make bad worse.”
The shame of having confessed to an anxiety that another seemed to find so slight was a powerful auxiliary in the effort of will that Fenton made to overcome its physical effects. He succeeded so far that he was able to go on duty again, after a week or two, and to live doggedly on from day to day in that double consciousness where the secret trouble remains a dull, incessant ache underneath all the outward conditions. It began to be a superstition with him that something must happen, some chance of escape must offer; he could not yet bring himself to the thought of the last resort, though the knowledge that at the end of all he could resign and go home continually tempted him.
Helen’s letters, as they came, were brave and hopeful, and Fenton only wrote of the time when they should meet; he instinctively wrote as if this time must be near. Then the mere lapse of days and weeks began to have its effect as it does in every human affliction; it lessened his burden by making it a thing of custom, to which his life adjusted itself. He had not less to bear, but he had learned better how to bear it; and the pride and joy which he had felt in Helen’s love, even when he felt himself least worthy of it, seemed more and more his right, and less and less his unlawful possession. Apparently she was pleasantly placed in the house which she amusingly described to him, and she was living quietly and trustfully on there, waiting for his return. She wrote him very freely about everything else, but she shrank from telling him of her experiment in decorating pottery for sale, because she would not let him know that she had ever thought herself in need. She never spoke of any need in her life except his return; she only spoke of that in answer to his letters saying that he would use every effort to get back, and then she said that they must both have patience, and that she would be content to wait all her days for him, rather than have him do anything that he would not have done if she had not wished. She said something that made Fenton smile, about her knowing that he would not dream of deserting his post of duty; and then she begged his forgiveness if she had seemed to express any fear of such a thing; and again she said that she was very well and very contented, and that he must not worry about her, and she only wished that he could look into her little room at Mrs, Hewitt’s, and see how comfortable she was.
To the next letter, which reached him a month later, she put a postscript in which she offered to give him back every word that bound him to such a helpless and foolish creature as she was, but told him that it would kill her if he consented. “If it were not for thinking of you, Robert, I should hardly have the courage to keep up. If you were ever to be unkind to me again, no matter if it were entirely my fault, I could not forgive you, but I should die in the attempt. There are some things,” she added, with subtle relevancy, “about my everyday life, and its cares and difficulties, that make me wish for your advice, but you are too far away for that; and if you were here, I should not have the troubles, and should not need the advice. It all comes from my not having any head for figures, and not calculating beforehand instead of afterwards, when it does no good; and then I have to pay a poor girl’s penalty for flinging money away as no rich girl ought.”
The day she wrote, Helen had met in the street one of the women whom she had put down on her list of the things “To be given away” before the auction, for certain tables, chairs, and bedsteads, which Captain Butler, in the use of a wise discretion, had ordered to be sold for the benefit of the estate. Mrs. Sullivan, though poor, was not proud, and she was one of those who had formerly profited by the sums which Helen saved from hack-hire. She now thanked her for a small present of old clothes, which, being sent her before Captain Butler’s agency in Helen’s charities began, had really reached her. Helen saw the expectation of future old clothes in the woman’s eye, and thought it right to cut off her vain hope.
“I’m afraid I shall not have any more clothes for you very soon,” she said coldly. “I must wear my old things myself after this.” Then, with some exasperation at being invited to an impossible beneficence, where she had already done so much, she added: “I hope you found the furniture useful, Mrs. Sullivan?”
“What foornitoor, Miss?” quavered the poor woman, reduced to destitution by the idea of the prosperity that had evaded her; and it came out that she had never received the things intended for her.
Helen did not pause to inquire how this had happened. “There has been some misunderstanding, Mrs. Sullivan,” she said loftily; “but I don’t intend that you shall be the sufferer by it.” She gave Mrs. Sullivan everything she had in her porte-monnaie except some horse-car tickets. “It may not be so much as the furniture was worth, but it’s ready money, and no doubt you can buy things with it that you would rather have.”
Mrs. Sullivan was apparently not inclined to this opinion; the loss because uncertain seemed greater; but she did not fail to invoke God’s favour upon Helen, and she asked for her washing, as an amend for the unmerited deprivation which the Sullivan family had undergone through her. Helen hurried home, and found that she had given Mrs. Sullivan all her money but ten dollars, and that now she must encroach upon her capital at last. She must go to the lawyer in whose hands Captain Butler had left her money, and ask him for some of it. She could have wept for vexation at her rashness, and shame for the necessity to which it had brought her; but the sum of her varying moods was the mood of self-pity in which she wrote that postscript to Robert.
She was sorry for it as soon as she had posted the letter, but even then she merely regretted it as the expression of a mood, which she had always said was foolish in writing a letter.
Fenton had never imagined her poor, or in need of any kind; the fancy of a lover does not deal with material circumstances; but he now made ample amends for past failure. He took unsparing blame to himself for the false delicacy that had kept him from asking in what state her father’s affairs had been left, for not making her tell him how much or how little she had. At this first vague hint of cares and difficulties, — of the necessity of saving, — which she had allowed to escape her, he saw her in a poverty that scarcely stopped short of the municipal soup-kitchen. With the distance which he had put between them, how could he hope to help her? How could he even intimate his longing to do so, without wo
unding her? He wore himself out in vain contrivance for getting his pay to her in some secret and anonymous way.
Her next letter was cheerful and happy, with no hint of trouble; but he could see nothing in it but a feint of gaiety, a pretence to keep him in heart about her; and the effect of time and will were undone in him.
“I don’t understand all this bother of yours, Fenton,” said the doctor, to whom he applied once more. “But I guess you’ve got to go home. You ‘re dying here.”
“Going home doesn’t follow,” replied Fenton.
“You’re useless, and worse than useless, as you are, here,” continued the doctor. “I know how you feel about it; you feel that it’s a disgrace to give up; but you ‘re sick, and you ‘re as irresponsibly sick as if you had the consumption. You have got to look at it in that light.”
“I can’t go,” said Fenton.
“Oh, very well,” retorted the doctor. “I can’t force a man to live.”
That night, as Fenton sat in the wardroom with two or three others, who were smoking and reading, while he pretended to read, the figure of Helen suddenly glided out of the empty air, and paused full form before him; it melted by slow degrees away, her face vanishing last, and leaving him with a sense of her strange look: it was neither sad nor reproachful, but of a peculiarly sweet and gentle archness.
He turned a ghastly countenance on the doctor, whom he found looking at him across the table. He trembled to his feet, and the doctor ran round and helped him to his room “Well?” he impatiently demanded, when they were alone in his room.
“She’s dead! I saw her ghost!” whispered Fenton. The perspiration, which stood in drops on his forehead, bathed the clammy hand with which he clutched the doctor’s warm hairy fist.
“I agree to the ghost,” the doctor answered, cheerfully, “but I guess she isn’t dead, all the same.”
“You think not?” queried Fenton with a childish submissiveness. “But — but T saw her!”
“Oh, no doubt,” replied Simmons. “If you keep on at this rate, you’ll see a ball-room full of her! It’s a phenomenon of your condition. You turn in, now, and I’ll make you up a bottle that will keep her away till to-morrow night, anyway.”
The surgeon had the professional humanity, and he would have pitied Fenton as the doctor pities his patient, even if he had felt no personal kindness for him. But he really had a liking for the young fellow; he respected him as the most striking case of nostalgia that had ever come under his notice. The case was all the more interesting from the character of the man, which was one of stubborn endurance in everything; his pride was as evident as his quick temper; and yet here he was, beaten down, perfectly broken up, by a purely moral disorder. “If I had not got that man away,” Doctor Simmons could say in imaginable boastings that were to hold future wardrooms in awe, “he would have died, sir; died of sheer home-sickness!”
Of any other sort of sickness with which the nostalgia was complicated, no intimation seemed to have penetrated to the doctor’s thickened consciousness; it was long since he had had any love affairs of his own; the passion, as he had observed it later in life, was not apt to manifest itself in any such condition as Fenton’s; he ascertained that the apparition was that of the lieutenant’s adoptive sister, and he rested in that knowledge. But the fact that patients suffering from nostalgia were sometimes haunted by y visions of absent friends was an incident of the malady noted in the books, and upon its occurrence every possible means should be made to secure their return home.
It was upon this authority and this conviction that Doctor Simmons approached the Admiral in Fenton’s behalf. He explained the case with scientific zeal, and then dwelt upon the peculiar circumstances which rendered it impossible for Mr. Fenton to apply for leave to return, while he was at the same time in such a condition of mind that to condemn him for service by medical survey, and send him home in that way, would be simply sentencing him to death. The doctor acknowledged the irregularity of his own proceeding in making this appeal; but he urged the extremity and the delicacy of the case in justification: Mr. Fenton would certainly not survive if he remained in the station; Doctor Simmons staked his professional reputation upon that, and without presuming to suggest anything, he begged the Admiral to consider whether some public interest could not be served by Mr. Fenton’s return on duty. The next day Fenton received orders to sail by the first steamer from Yokohama with despatches for Washington. It was at the time of the war between Japan and Corea, in which, as is well known, certain eventualities threatened to compromise American interests.
When Doctor Simmons visited his patient after the orders reached him, he was rewarded for the tact with which he had accomplished his difficult task by Fenton’s accusation that he had brought the result about. He expected this, and in the interest of science, he met the accusation with lies so prompt that they would have carried conviction to any mind less sore and disordered than Fenton’s. He told him that his orders were a god-send, and advised him not to trouble himself about how or why they had been given. In fact the situation admitted of nothing but obedience; upon the face of it there was no point that the most self-accusing scruples could lay hold of; and Fenton discovered with helpless shame that all the natural forces in him were fighting against his broken will. He was quite ready for the steamer that sailed in a few days for Yokohama and San Francisco; and he accepted his good fortune upon the best terms he could. When it was too late he began to realise his obligation to the man who had saved his life, and given it back to him with such hope as now rioted in his heart at every thought of Helen and of home. He was a week out from Yokohama, and he could do nothing but write a letter to the surgeon, trying to make up for his past thanklessness by a vain and remote profusion of gratitude.
He was, as he figured it, only a fortnight from San Francisco, and unless he suffered some detention at Washington, only a little over three weeks from Helen. The possibility that he might be ordered away upon some other service before he saw her occurred to him, but only as one of those disasters which each of us regards as too cruel and monstrous ever to happen to himself. He bet on the highest figures in the pools formed to guess at the run of the ship from day to day; and the lady who held the pools was not long in divining the cause of his sanguine faith in a short passage. Mrs. Bowers was going to join her husband in San Francisco; the similarity of their objects gave them a natural interest in each other, and a man of Fenton’s ordinary good sense and reserve was capable of confiding in this sympathising listener, with the lover’s ingenuous egotism, so incredible to us later in life. He talked continually of Helen to her, when perhaps she would much rather have had him talk about himself, as they walked up and down the deck together; he told her everything but Helen’s name, which she threatened she would have yet before they got to San Francisco. In the meantime they always spoke of Helen as the Mystery. It was folly, but it made Fenton transcendently happy; these confidences brought Helen nearer, they realised her; they almost, in the spiritualists’ phrase, materialised her. The time came when, the moonless night being propitious, he told Mrs. Bowers of the apparition of Helen, and asked her what she thought of it. She said that she thought it the most wonderful thing she had ever heard of: but she owned that she did not know what it meant. She added that she should always stand in awe of a person who had had such a thing happen to him; and then she pressed the arm on which she hung, and giggled; and the next moment she shrieked. There had been a sudden, violent wrench and shock; her cry was answered, after a moment’s deathly silence, by a confused clamour from all parts of the ship; and the passengers came rushing up from below, where they had been playing euchre, and singing hymns, and eating bacon and Welsh-rabbit, and implored one another to say what had happened. According to usage everywhere in cases of accident, there was no authority to turn to for information; the officers of the ship were each about his duty, and they severally and collectively underwent severe criticism from the passengers for their absence from the scene
of the common dismay and curiosity.
Fenton was the first, in virtue of his office and mission, to learn that the ship had broken her shaft, and must put back to Yokohama. He received his sentence with desperate fortitude.
“I think we might get you back in time for the next boat,” said the captain, considerate of the haste of a bearer of despatches, “but it would be only a chance. This is a sailing craft now. With a fair wind all the way, we might do it; but that’s almost too much to hope for. Of course we might meet the next boat on her way home before we make Yokohama, but that would be still more of a chance.”
“Well, I must go back with you, that’s all,” replied Fenton.
“Yes, there’s nothing else for it, that I see.”
The passengers in the saloon were divided between two minds, and inclined in about equal numbers to hold a service of song and thanksgiving for their delivery from danger, and to organise an indignation meeting for the adoption of resolutions condemning the captain for snubbing a committee of inquiry, which had presented a just interrogation as to his purposes, in view of the accident. It appeared, from the best informed, that the captain had at once put his ship about, not only without consulting the passengers’ wishes, but evidently without considering whether it was not quite as feasible to push on to San Francisco as to return to Yokohama. There were attempts to commit some of the stewards to the former hypothesis.
About noon the next day, the captain spoke a ship, which, under a full press of canvas, was making speed eastward that mocked the laggard reluctance of the steamer on her backward course. She proved to be the clipper Meteor, bound for San Francisco, for a freight of wheat to Europe. The captain invited Fenton on to the bridge.
“There’s your chance,” he said, “if you want to risk it. But you must be quick about it.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 203