The Beach of Dreams | Page 6

of some

forty thousand pounds a year derived from speculations of her late
husband conducted during the war with Germany in 1870, yet was
never known to give a sou to charity; her hands were all but the hands
of a skeleton and covered with jewels, she smoked cigarettes
incessantly. She was one of those old women whose energy seems to
increase with age, tireless as a gnat she was always the last in bed and
the first on deck, though lying in her bunk half the night reading French
novels of which she had a trunkful and smoking her eternal cigarettes.
Beside her sat her niece, Cléo de Bromsart, English on the mother's
side and educated 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