There was humour rather than tragedy in the inevitable meeting between Cornelius Blunn and Grant on the Katalonia. On the morning after their departure, Grant, while promenading the deck, heard a feeble tapping against the glass which enclosed the small promenade of one of the magnificent private suites, for which the vessel was famous. Inside Mr. Cornelius Blunn, almost unrecognisable, swathed in rugs, with a hot-water bottle at his feet and a servant by his side, was gazing out at the world with lack-lustre eyes. Grant obeyed his summons, pushed back the sliding door, and stepped inside.
“So you are here, my young friend,” Cornelius Blunn said weakly. “What does it matter? I am sick in the stomach. I do not think that I shall live till we reach Southampton.”
“Not so bad as that, I hope,” Grant ventured.
“It is worse,” Blunn groaned, “because I am beginning to hope that I shall not. Go away now. I am going to be ill. I wanted to be sure that I was not already seeing ghosts. If this were only your yacht!”
Grant hurried out with a word of sympathy.
“An object lesson in proportionate values,” he reflected, as he walked down the deck,—and then, his little effort at philosophy deserted him. He himself found great events dwarfed by small ones. His heart was pounding against his ribs. He was face to face with Gertrude von Diss!
His first impulse was ludicrously conventional. He hastened to relieve her of the rug she was carrying. Behind her came a maid with coat, pillows, and other impedimenta of travel.
“Gertrude!” he exclaimed, as he stood with the rug upon his arm. “Where have you come from? Where have you been?”
“Stateroom number eighty-four,” she replied, “and I am on my way to that chair, and please don’t ask me whether I have been ill. Come and tuck me up as a well-meaning fellow passenger should.”
He obeyed at once. The maid assisted his efforts, a deck steward supplemented them. Presently Gertrude declared herself comfortable and her entourage faded away. Grant sat by her side.
“I am going to break orders,” he said gently. “I am afraid that you have been ill.”
There were hollows in her cheeks. The freshness of her exquisite complexion had departed. Her eyes seemed to have receded. She was thin and fragile.
“Yes,” she admitted. “I have been ill. A nervous breakdown, accompanied by great weakness of the heart was all that the doctor could find to say about it. I might have helped his diagnosis.”
“Don’t, Gertrude!” he begged.
“My dear man, don’t be afraid that I am going to break into reproaches! There is nothing more illogical in the world than the position of the woman who complains of a man because he doesn’t care for her. It is no sin of yours that you didn’t love me, Grant. It was most certainly no sin of yours that, for a few hours, I made you pretend to. That was entirely my affair,—entirely my cunning scheme, which went wrong. Some idiot once wrote that ‘love begets love!’ I thought that with my arms around your neck I could have brought about a sort of transfusion, forced a little of what was in my heart into yours,—and you see I couldn’t. In the morning I knew. You were very dutiful. Your lips were there for me if I wanted them. Your arms were ready for my body if I had been content to come. You were prepared to take advantage of all the nice and proper little arrangements which the circumstances had placed at my disposal. And of love there was not a scrap. I had made my venture and lost.”
“Gertrude, this is terrible,” he groaned.
“It is terrible because it is the truth,” she continued. “We have that much in common, we two. We both love the truth. I have prayed for this moment, that it might come about just as it has done, that these few plain words might be spoken, and that for the rest of our Uves, we should know!”
“I was a brute,” he muttered. “I tried, Gertrude.”
“What a horrible condemnation,” she laughed bitterly. “And so true—so damnably true. You did try. I watched you trying hour by hour. I watched you drink champagne at night. You tried to pretend. It was I who had to make the excuses—because I knew. I who had to pretend not to see your look of relief. You never deceived me for a single moment, Grant. It was I who gambled and lost.”
“I am sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she enjoined. “Now, I will tell you something. Notwithstanding the great humiliation through which I have passed, I am glad. I am glad that it all happened. When this pain is lightened, I shall be more glad still. I was restless and unhappy whilst I believed that I could reawaken your love. Now, I am every day more rested, more content. And here is the wickedness of me, Grant—I am glad about it. I do not regret for a single moment my experiment. The only regret I have is that I failed.”
“You know why?” he ventured.
“You were very frank about it,” she admitted, “but somehow or other I couldn’t believe that you knew, yourself. You are a man of parts, even a little older than your years, and Susan Yeovil, for all her charm, is young. I used my brain upon the matter—foolishly—the one thing brain has nothing to do with. Finished, my dear Grant! That rug a little more closely round my left foot, please. And don’t imagine for a moment that I am going to offer you my eternal friendship. About some matters my sentimentalism is not of the sloppy order. There’s a jagged edge about our relations and always must be. But that’s no reason why you shouldn’t make the deck steward bring me some of that delicious bouillon.”
“Where have you been and where are you going?” Grant asked, as soon as he had ministered to her wants.
“I’ve been in New Hampshire,” she told him, “staying with one of the neglected aunts of my family. A wonderful spot amongst the hills. Incidentally I was ill there.”
“And now?”
“Well—I have plans but they are not concluded. My book, please, and then you can continue that swinging walk of yours. Afterwards pay me the little attentions one fellow passenger may offer to another, if you like. But rest assured that your liberation is complete.”
Grant chose another deck for his promenade. The magnificent and primitive selfishness of his sex had asserted itself. He found nothing but relief in this meeting with Gertrude. He could, at least, go to Susan with his hands free, so far as he ever could be free. The trouble of it was that, for all her worldliness, he feared her standards, feared that vein of idealism which he had once or twice detected in her. Of course there was something artificial about the whole outlook. A thing which she knew, that everybody else knew, ranked a little differently to that nebulous past which, by common consent, was somewhere locked away in the back chambers of a man’s life. Yet, with it all, Susan’s common sense was admirable. There was her father to guide her.
Later in the day he revisited Cornelius Blunn and found little improvement in his condition. The only moment when a spark of his old spirit showed itself was when, with a pitiful groan, he murmured:
“And to think that I must return!”
“You are coming back to the States, then?” Grant asked quickly.
For a single moment the man’s self-control reasserted itself. He shook his head feebly.
“I have too many affairs on hand,” he said, “to make plans. Maybe at once, maybe in many months.
“One thing is very certain. I shall not stay in England long. My own country I love. America I love. But England, no. Excuse me, Mr. Slattery. I can talk no longer. I find it exhausting. Your look of health offends me. You look as though you were on your way to eat a hearty meal, and that offends me more. Come and see me when I am stronger, Muller!”
Grant strolled away, smiling. It was a very harmless and helpless Cornelius Blunn, this. But for how long?