“Are they so dangerous?”
“Now then, young woman! Are you pulling my leg?”
The stewards had rolled away the carpets, and the passengers were beginning to dance. Miss Dean accepted the invitation of a young officer, and Mr. Arcularis watched them with envy. Odd, that last exchange of remarks—very odd; in fact, everything was odd. Was it possible that they were falling in love? Was that what it was all about—all these concealed references and recollections? He had read of such things. But at his age! And with a girl of twenty-two! It was ridiculous.
After an amused look at his old friend Polaris from the open door on the sheltered side, he went to bed.
The rhythm of the ship’s engines was positively a persecution. It gave one no rest, it followed one like the Hound of Heaven, it drove on, out into space and across the Milky Way and then back home by way of Betelgeuse. It was cold there, too. Mr. Arcularis, making the round trip by way of Betelgeuse and Polaris, sparkled with frost. He felt like a Christmas tree. Icicles on his fingers and icicles on his toes. He tinkled and spangled in the void, hallooed to the waste echoes, rounded the buoy on the verge of the Unknown, and tacked glitteringly homeward. The wind whistled. He was barefooted. Snowflakes and tinsel blew past him. Next time, by George, he would go farther still—for altogether it was rather a lark. Forward into the untrodden! as somebody said. Some intrepid explorer of his own backyard, probably, some middle-aged professor with an umbrella: those were the fellows for courage! But give us time, thought Mr. Arcularis, give us time, and we will bring back with us the nightrime of the Obsolute. Or was it Absolete? If only there weren’t this perpetual throbbing, this iteration of sound, like a pain, these circles and repetitions of light—the feeling as of everything coiling inward to a center of misery.…
Suddenly it was dark, and he was lost. He was groping, he touched the cold, white, slippery woodwork with his fingernails, looking for an electric switch. The throbbing, of course, was the throbbing of the ship. But he was almost home—almost home. Another corner to round, a door to be opened, and there he would be. Safe and sound. Safe in his father’s home.
It was at this point that he woke up: in the corridor that led to the dining saloon. Such pure terror, such horror, seized him as he had never known. His heart felt as if it would stop beating. His back was toward the dining saloon; apparently he had just come from it. He was in his pajamas. The corridor was dim, all but two lights having been turned out for the night, and—thank God!—deserted. Not a soul, not a sound. He was perhaps fifty yards from his room. With luck he could get to it unseen. Holding tremulously to the rail that ran along the wall, a brown, greasy rail, he began to creep his way forward. He felt very weak, very dizzy, and his thoughts refused to concentrate. Vaguely he remembered Miss Dean—Clarice—and the freckled girl, as if they were one and the same person. But he wasn’t in the hospital, he was on the ship. Of course. How absurd. The Great Circle. Here we are, old fellow … steady round the corner … hold hard to your umbrella.…
In his room, with the door safely shut behind him, Mr. Arcularis broke into a cold sweat. He had no sooner got into his bunk, shivering, than he heard the night watchman pass.
“But where”—he thought, closing his eyes in agony—“have I been?…”
A dreadful idea had occurred to him.
“It’s nothing serious—how could it be anything serious? Of course, it’s nothing serious,” said Mr. Arcularis.
“No, it’s nothing serious,” said the ship’s doctor urbanely.
“I knew you’d think so. But just the same—”
“Such a condition is the result of worry,” said the doctor. “Are you worried—do you mind telling me—about something? Just try to think.”
“Worried?”
Mr. Arcularis knitted his brows. Was there something? Some little mosquito of a cloud disappearing into the southwest, the northeast? Some little gnat-song of despair? But no, that was all over. All over.
“Nothing,” he said, “nothing whatever.”
“It’s very strange,” said the doctor.
“Strange! I should say so. I’ve come to sea for a rest, not for a nightmare! What about a bromide?”
“Well, I can give you a bromide, Mr. Arcularis—”
“Then, please, if you don’t mind, give me a bromide.”
He carried the little phial hopefully to his stateroom, and took a dose at once. He could see the sun through his porthole. It looked northern and pale and small, like a little peppermint, which was only natural enough, for the latitude was changing with every hour. But why was it that doctors were all alike? And all, for that matter, like his father, or that other fellow at the hospital? Smythe, his name was. Doctor Smythe. A nice, dry little fellow, and they said he was a writer. Wrote poetry, or something like that. Poor fellow—disappointed. Like everybody else. Crouched in there, in his cabin, night after night, writing blank verse or something—all about the stars and flowers and love and death; ice and the sea and the infinite; time and tide—well, every man to his own taste.
“But it’s nothing serious,” said Mr. Arcularis, later, to the parson. “How could it be?”
“Why, of course not, my dear fellow,” said the parson, patting his back. “How could it be?”
“I know it isn’t and yet I worry about it.”
“It would be ridiculous to think it serious,” said the parson. Mr. Arcularis shivered; it was colder than ever. It was said that they were near icebergs. For a few hours in the morning there had been a fog, and the siren had blown—devastatingly—at three-minute intervals. Icebergs caused fog—he knew that.
“These things always come,” said the parson, “from a sense of guilt. You feel guilty about something. I won’t be so rude as to inquire what it is. But if you could rid yourself of the sense of guilt—”
And later still, when the sky was pink:
“But is it anything to worry about?” said Miss Dean. “Really?”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Then don’t worry. We aren’t children any longer!”
“Aren’t we? I wonder!”
They leaned, shoulders touching, on the deck-rail, and looked at the sea, which was multitudinously incarnadined. Mr. Arcularis scanned the horizon in vain for an iceberg.
“Anyway,” he said, “the colder we are the less we feel!”
“I hope that’s no reflection on you,” said Miss Dean.
“Here … feel my hand,” said Mr. Arcularis.
“Heaven knows, it’s cold!”
“It’s been to Polaris and back! No wonder.”
“Poor thing, poor thing!”
“Warm it.”
“May I?”
“You can.”
“I’ll try.”
Laughing, she took his hand between both of hers, one palm under and one palm over, and began rubbing it briskly. The decks were deserted, no one was near them, everyone was dressing for dinner. The sea grew darker, the wind blew colder.
“I wish I could remember who you are,” he said.
“And you—who are you?”
“Myself.”
“Then perhaps I am yourself.”
“Don’t be metaphysical!”
“But I am metaphysical!”
She laughed, withdrew, pulled the light coat about her shoulders.
The bugle blew the summons for dinner—“The Roast Beef of Old England”—and they walked together along the darkening deck toward the door, from which a shaft of soft light fell across the deck-rail. As they stepped over the brass door-sill Mr. Arcularis felt the throb of the engines again; he put his hand quickly to his side.