The Beach of Dreams | Page 6

in England, a girl of twenty, unmarried, dark-haired, fragile and beautiful as a dream. She was one of the old nobility, without dilution, yet strangely enough with money, for the Bromsarts, without marrying into trade, had adapted themselves to the new times so cleverly that Eugène de Bromsart the last of his race had retired from life leaving his only daughter and the last of her race wealthy, even by the standard of wealth set in Paris. She was a sportswoman and, despite her lack of frailty, had led an outdoor life and possessed a nerve of steel.
Madame de Warens had brought the girl up after she left school, had laboured over her and found her labour in vain. Cléo had no leanings towards the People and the opinions of her aunt seemed to her a sort of disreputable madness bred on hypocrisy. Cléo looked on the lower classes just as she looked on animals, beings with rights of their own but belonging to an entirely different order of creation, and one thing certainly could be said for her--she was honest in her outlook on life.
Beside her sat Doctor Epinard, the ship's doctor, a serious young man who spoke little, and the fifth at table was Lagross, the sea painter, who had come for the sake of his health and to absorb the colours of the ocean. The vision of the Albatross with towering canvas breasting the blue-green seas in an atmosphere of sunset and storm was with him still as he sat listening to the chatter of the others and occasionally joining in. He intended to paint that picture.
It had come to him as a surprise. They had been playing cards when a quarter-master called them on deck saying that the weather had moderated and that there was a ship in sight, and there, away across the tumbling seas, the Albatross had struck his vision, remote, storm surrounded, and sunlit, almost a vision of the past in these days of mechanism.
"Now tell me, Prince," Madame de Warens was saying, "how long do you propose staying at this Kerguelen Land of yours?"
"Not more than a week," replied the Prince. "I want to take some soundings off the Smoky Islands and I shall put in for a day on the mainland where you can go ashore if you like, but I shan't stay here long. It is like putting one's head into a wolf's mouth."
"How is that?"
"Weather. You saw that sudden squall we passed through this evening, or rather you heard it, no doubt, well that's the sort of thing Kerguelen brews."
"Suppose," said the astute old lady, "it brewed one of those things, only much worse, and we were blown ashore?"
"Impossible."
"Why?"
"Our engines can fight anything."
"Are there any natives in this place?"
"Only penguins and rabbits."
"Tell me," said Lagross, "that three-master we saw just now, would she be making for Kerguelen?"
"Oh, no, she must be out of her course and beating up north. She's not a whaler, and ships like that would keep north of the Crozets. Probably she was driven down by that big storm we had a week ago. We wouldn't be where we are only that I took those soundings south of Marion Island."
"And, after Kerguelen, what land shall we see next?" asked the old lady.
"New Amsterdam, madame," replied the Prince, "and after that the Sunda Islands and beautiful Java with its sun and palm trees."
Mademoiselle de Bromsart shivered slightly. She had been silent up to this, and she spoke now with eyes fixed far away as if viewing the picture of Java with its palms and sapphire skies.
"Could we not go there now?" asked she.
"In what way?" asked the Prince.
"Turn the ship round and leave this place behind," she replied.
"But why?"
"I don't know," said she, "perhaps it is what you say about Kerguelen, or perhaps it was the sight of that big ship all alone out there, but I feel--" she stopped short.
"Yes--"
"That ship frightened me."
"Frightened you," cried Madame de Warens, "why, Cléo, what is the matter with you to-night? You who are never frightened. I'm not easily frightened, but I admit I almost said my prayers in that storm, and you, you were doing embroidery."
"Oh, I am not frightened of storms or things in the ordinary way," said the girl half laughing. "Physical things have no power over me, an ugly face can frighten me more than the threat of a blow. It is a question of psychology. That ship produced on my mind a feeling as though I had seen desolation itself, and something worse."
"Something worse!" cried Madame de Warens, "what can be worse than desolation?"
"I don't know," said Cléo, "It also made me feel that I wanted to be far away from it and from here. Then, Monsieur le Prince, with his story of desolate Kerguelen,