Love, The Fiddler | Page 5

and Buenos Ayres. He had grown more reserved and silent
than before; fonder of his books; keener in his taste for abstract science.
He avoided his old friends and made no new ones. The world seemed
to be passing him while he stood still. He wondered how others could
laugh when his own heart was so heavy, and he preferred to go his own
way, solitary and unnoticed, taking an increasing pleasure in his
isolation. He continued to write to Bridgeport, for there were a few old
friends whom he could not disregard altogether, though he made his
letters as infrequent as he could and as short. In return he was kept
informed of Florence's movements; of the sensation she made
everywhere; of the great people who had taken her under their wing; of
her rumoured engagements; of her triumphs in Paris and London; of
her yachts and horses and splendour and beauty. His correspondents
showed an artless pride in the recital. It was becoming their only claim
to consideration that they knew Florence Fenacre. Her dazzling life
reflected a sort of glory upon themselves, and their letters ran endlessly
on the same theme. It was all a modern fairy tale, and they fairly
bubbled with satisfaction to think that they knew the fairy princess!
Frank read it all with exasperation. It tormented him to even hear her
name; to be reminded of her in any way; to realise that she was as much

alive as he himself, and not the phantom he would have preferred to
keep her in his memory. Yet he was inconsistent enough to rage when a
letter came that brought no news of her. He would tear it into pieces
and throw it out of his cabin window. The fools, why couldn't they tell
him what he wanted to know! He would carry his ill-humour into the
engine-room and revenge himself on fate and the loss of the woman he
loved by a harsh criticism of his subordinates. A defective pump or a
troublesome valve would set his temper flaming; and then, overcome at
his own injustice, he would go to the other extreme; and, roundly
blaming himself, would slap some sullen artificer on the back and tell
him that it was all a joke. His men, amongst themselves, called him a
wild cracked devil, and it was the tattle of the ship that he drank hard in
secret. They knew something was wrong with him, and fastened on the
likeliest cause. Others said out boldly that the chief engineer was going
crazy.
One morning as they were running up the Sound, homeward-bound,
they passed a large steam yacht at anchor. Frank happened to be on
deck at the time, and he joined with the rest in the little chorus of
admiration that went up at the sight of her.
"That's the Minnehaha," said the second mate. "She belongs to the
beautiful heiress, Miss Fenacre!"
"Ready for a Mediterranean cruise," said the purser, who had been
reading one of the newspapers the pilot had brought aboard.
Frank heard these two remarks in silence. The sun, to him, seemed to
stop shining. The morning that had been so bright and pleasant all at
once overcame him with disgust. The might-have-been took him by the
throat. He descended into the engine-room to hide his dejected face in
the heated oily atmosphere below; and seating himself on a tool-chest
he watched, with hardly seeing eyes, the ponderous movement of his
machinery.
It was the anodyne for his troubles, to feel the vibration of the engines
and hear the rumble and hiss of the jacketed cylinders. It always
comforted him; he found companionship in the mighty thing he
controlled; he looked at the trembling needle in the gauge, and
instinctively noted the pressure as he thought of the trim smart vessel at
anchor and of his dear one on the eve of parting. He wondered whether
they would ever pass again, he and she, in all the years to come.

The thought of the yacht haunted him all that day. He took a sudden
revulsion against the grinding routine of his own life. It came over him
like a new discovery, that he was tired of South America, tired of his
ship, tired of everything. He contrasted his own voyages in and out,
from the same place to the same place, up and down, up and down, as
regular as the swing of a pendulum with that gay wanderer of the
raking masts who was free to roam the world. It came over him with an
insistence that he, too, would like to roam the world, and see strange
places and old marble palaces with steps descending into the blue sea
water, and islands with precipices and beaches and palm trees.