Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905

“Do you mean lost at sea?” she asked, in a steady voice – toneless but perfectly clear.

He shook his head.

“No – on land. He was hunting – it must have been the very hunt we were talking about – and wandered from his party. A fog came on, and they were unable to find him. Lopez telegraphs that they sent out search parties for a fortnight, but could find no trace.”

He longed for a word from her, but none came.

“At last they abandoned hope,” he concluded. “The expedition is now on its way home.”

She had turned her back upon him, and he waited in misery to hear her sob, to see her shoulders shake with her weeping; but, instead, the whole figure seemed to stiffen, and, wheeling round, she faced him with blazing eyes.

“The cowards!” she cried. “To abandon a man to starvation! What are they made of to do such a barbarous thing!”

“We must not judge them unheard,” Stephen ventured. “Their search may have been exhaustive – they may have risked their own lives gladly – and you know,” he added, gently, “that beyond a certain time it would have been useless from the standpoint of saving life.”

“It was inhuman to sail away and leave him,” she went on, beating her hands together in a sort of rage. “How can you defend them! You, who sent him off on this horrible journey – how can you sleep in your bed when you know Simeon in perishing by inches! I should think you would be on your way now – this moment – to search for him! Oh, do something – don’t just accept it in this awful way. Haven’t you any pity?” Unconsciously she laid her hand on his shoulder, as if she would push him from the room.

Stephen bore her reproaches with a meekness that exasperated her.

“Are there no cables to Magellan?” she asked. “There must be somebody there who for money would do your bidding. Don’t waste time,” she answered, stamping her foot.

Stephen kept his temper. Perhaps he was shrewd enough to see that it was pity rather than love that gave the fierceness to her mood. It was the frenzy of a tender-hearted woman at hearing of an act of cruelty rather than the agony of one who suffers a personal bereavement.

“Deena,” he said, not even knowing he had used her name, “do you really want me to go on this hopeless errand? Think of its utter uselessness – the time that has elapsed, the impossibility of penetrating into such a country in the advancing winter. It is the first of February, and I could not get there before March; it would be already their autumn. By this time he has either reached help or he is beyond it.”

At the beginning of his speech Deena’s pale face flushed, but as he went on setting forth the obstacles to his going she seemed to harden in her scorn.

“Oh, yes,” she sneered. “Let him die! It is cold in Patagonia for a gently nurtured person like Mr. French. Simeon is poor in friends – he only had one besides his wife, and that one is a fair-weather friend. But I’ll go – I am not afraid of privation. I’ll entreat the Argentine Government for help – I’ll make friends with the Indians – I’ll – ”

“Hush,” he said, “you have said enough – I will go.”

Having gained her point, she burst into tears.

“I am cruel,” she said, “selfishly cruel to you, who have been so good to me – but whom can I turn to except to you? How can we abandon Simeon without raising a finger to save him? Say you forgive me.”

He held out his hand in mute acquiescence. Her sneers had stung him to the quick, but her appeal to his manhood for help in her distress moved him deeply.

“Perhaps,” she went on, half to herself, “perhaps if I had been a better wife – if I had loved him more, I could bear it better – but it is so pitiful. He has always been alone in life, and now he is dying alone.”

Stephen, who was pacing the floor, tried not to listen. He knew she was not thinking of him when she was confessing her shortcomings to her own conscience, but the admission that she felt herself lacking in love to Simeon filled him with a deep joy. He did not dare to linger.

“I am going,” he said, gently. “Good-by, Deena. Will you pray God to send you back the man who loves you?”

She stood staring at him dumb with misery, but as the door shut between them a cry of anguish burst from her very soul.

“Come back!” she cried. “Oh, Stephen, come back! I can’t bear it! I can’t let you go! Don’t you know I love you? – and I have sent you off to die!”

She knew that he had gone – that her appeal was to the empty air, and she flung herself on the sofa in a frenzy of sobs. But the cry reached Stephen in the hall, where he stood battling with himself against his yearning for one more look, one more word to carry with him, and at the sound his resolution melted like wax in the flame of his passion. With a bound he was back in the room, on his knees beside her, soothing her with tenderest endearments – pouring out the fullness of his love.

“Must I go, Deena?” he pleaded. “Must I leave you when I know you love me? And for what? – a search for the dead!”

At his words her conscience woke with a stab of shame.

“Yes, go!” she said. “Go quickly. A moment ago I sent you in the name of compassion; now I send you in expiation for this one intolerable glimpse of Heaven.”

Stephen, eager to do her bidding, went straight to Mrs. Star’s house to take leave of the only person to whom he owed the obligations of family affection, and found that redoubtable lady on a sofa in her dressing room. In answer to his expressions of regret at this intimation of invalidism, she gave an angry groan.

“Oh, yes!” she said. “Our medical friend has succeeded in providing another doctor with as pretty a case of water-on-the-knee – to say nothing of other complications – as he could desire. My only comfort is, he didn’t get the charge himself.”

“But you have seen a specialist, surely?” exclaimed French, who feared her hatred of physicians might have prevented her calling in proper aid.

“Don’t distress yourself,” she answered. “McTorture has me fast in his clutches; and for how long do you suppose? Two months! He will promise nothing short of two months, and even then objects to my going abroad, and the yacht ready to start this very week! I am waiting for Bob to come into lunch, to get him to send for the sailing master and break the news to him. He’ll be a disappointed man!”

“I will take the yacht off your hands,” said Stephen, casually.

“You!” she exclaimed. “Are you running away from or with anybody, that you suddenly annex an ocean steamer? You were prosing only yesterday afternoon about work and duty, as if nothing could separate you from Harmouth. Is the attraction going to bolt with you, Stevie?”

Stephen could have killed her as she lay there, allowing her tongue free play with his most intimate concerns, but the respect due to an old woman, to say nothing of an aunt, restrained his anger, and he answered, coldly:

“If you want to get rid of the yacht for the rest of the year, say so. My friend, Simeon Ponsonby, is lost in the wilderness of Patagonia, and I am organizing a party to search for him. I shall have to resign my work at Harmouth, but I feel responsible for poor Ponsonby’s fate; I sent him on the expedition.”

“Ah! did you?” she said, laughing wickedly. “Poor Uriah has been disposed of, and now the lady sends you to look for his bones. Don’t look too hard, Stevie, you might find he wasn’t lost, after all!”

“Stop!” cried French, springing to his feet. “How dare you make a jest of other people’s misfortunes? Is there so little decency among your associates that you no longer recognize it when you see it?”

She had the grace to look ashamed.

“Take the yacht, my dear,” she said, kindly, “and if the expense is too great for your income, you can draw on me for what you like. Can’t you stand a little teasing from your old aunt?”

“I will take the yacht, and pay for it,” said French. “As for the teasing, we seem to have different ideas about what is amusing.”

“Then forgive me,” she pleaded, and there were tears in her eyes, “and be careful of yourself, my dear boy, in this dismal expedition. Take plenty of furs, and beware of the cannibals.”

She won a smile from him as he bent over her sofa to kiss her good-by, but she reserved further comments upon his errantry for Bob.

“Quixotic nonsense!” she declared. “Was there ever a man so wise that a woman couldn’t make a fool of him?”

CHAPTER IX

Could there be a crueler irony of fate than to be absolutely convinced of the widowhood of her you love and to be unable, practically, to establish the fact?

Stephen French had expatriated himself, resigned the work he valued, put the seas between himself and Deena, only to be baffled at every turn. For two months he had used his utmost acumen in prosecuting the search without even finding a clew, and when finally he made his great discovery, it was by yielding to the impulse of the moment rather than the suggestions of reason.

From March to May Mrs. Star’s great ocean-going yacht had steamed along the southeastern shores of Patagonia. Sometimes within the confines of the Straits, sometimes rounding its headlands into the Atlantic, and dropping anchor wherever the line of coast gave any facility for landing an exploring party, until the hopelessness of the quest was patent to everybody except Stephen.

On his way down he had stopped at Buenos Ayres, where he provided himself with the charts and surveys made by the newly returned expedition, and secured Simeon’s personal effects left on the Tintoretto, together with his diary, scientific memoranda and specimens, which had been carefully preserved, and were of rare value, from a botanist’s point of view.

French was fortunate enough to induce both Lopez and the captain of the Tintoretto to accompany him as guests, and they proved invaluable allies, especially the captain, whose topographical knowledge and recent experience were always to be relied upon. From him Stephen learned all the particulars of Simeon’s disappearance, though the last home letter dispatched by the poor fellow, on the eve of the guanaco hunt, covered the first part of the story. It appeared that Ponsonby had landed with a surveying party from the ship, one morning in January, on the Patagonian side of the Straits, and set out to botanize while his companions worked. He had climbed a steep bank, in order to secure a particular shrub just in flower, when he saw on the plain beyond a party of Indians gathered by the shore of a small, fresh-water lake. Most of them were watering their horses, but half a dozen were grouped round a man lying on the ground, apparently injured. Their sharp eyes quickly marked Simeon filling his vasculum with the coveted specimens, and, waving their hands in friendly greeting, two of them advanced at a gallop. One spoke fairly good Spanish, and explained that the son of their chief had broken his leg by a fall from his horse, and he begged Simeon – whom he conceived, from his occupation of gathering simples, to be a medicine man – to come to their assistance.