III

WITH her eyes on the grey pinnacles of the Scillies, Katya Lascarides rose from her deck-chair, saying to Mrs. Van Husum:

“I am going to send a marconigram.”

Mrs. Van Husum gave a dismal but a healthy groan. It pleased Katya, since it took the place of the passionately pleading “Oh, don’t leave me—don’t leave me!” to which Katya Lascarides had been accustomed for many months. It meant that her patient had arrived at a state of mind so normal that she was perfectly fit to be left to the unaided care of her son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Clement P. Van Husum junior, who resided at Wantage. Indeed, Mrs. Van Husum’s groan was far more the sound of an elderly lady recovering from the troubles of sea-sickness than that which would be made by a neurotic sufferer from the dread of solitude.

Katya, with her tranquil and decided step, moved along the deck and descended the companion forward to where the Marconi installation sent out its cracklings from a little cabin surrounded by what appeared a schemeless jumble of rusty capstans and brown cables. With the same air of pensive introspection and tranquil resolve she leaned upon the little slab that was devoted to the sender of telegrams, and wrote to her sister Ellida, using the telegraphic address of her husband’s office:

“Shall reach London noon to-morrow. Beg you not to meet ship or to come to hotel for three days. Writing conditions.”

And, having handed in this message through the little shutter to the invisible operator, she threaded her way with the same pensiveness between the capstans and the ropes up the companion and on to the upper deck where, having adjusted the rugs around the dozing figure of Mrs. Van Husum in her deck-chair, she paused, with her grey eyes looking out across the grey sea, to consider the purplish islands, fringed with white, the swirls of foam in the greeny and slate-coloured waters, the white lighthouse, and a spray-beaten tramp-steamer that, rolling, undulating, and battling through the long swell between them and the Scillies, was making its good departure for Mexico.

Tall, rounded, in excellent condition, with slow but decided actions, with that naturally pale complexion and clean-cut run of the cheek-bone from chin to ear which came to her with her Greek parentage, Katya Lascarides was reflecting upon the terms of her letter to her sister.

From the tranquillity of her motions and the determination of her few words, she was to be set down as a person, passionless, practical, and without tides of emotion. But her eyes, as she leant gazing out to landwards, changed colour by imperceptible shades, ranging from grey to the slaty-blue colour of the sea itself, and her brows from minute to minute, following the course of her thoughts, curved slightly upwards above eyes that expressed tender reminiscences, and gradually straightened themselves out until, like a delicate bar below her forehead, they denoted, stretched and tensile, the fact that she had arrived at an inflexible determination.

In the small and dusky reading-room, that never contained any readers, she set herself slowly to write.

“MY DEAR ELLIDA” (her letter ran),

“I have again carefully read through your report of what Dr. Tressider says of Kitty’s case, and I see no reason why the dear child should not find it in her to speak within a few weeks—within a month even. Dr. Tressider is certain that there is no functional trouble of the brain or the vocal organs. Then there is just the word for it—obstinacy. The case is not so very uncommon: the position must be regarded psychologically rather than by a pathologist. On the facts given me I should say that your little Kitty is indulging in a sort of dramatic display. You say that she is of an affectionate, even of a jealously affectionate, disposition. Very well, then; I take it that she desires to be fussed over. Children are very inscrutable. Who can tell, then, whether she has not found out (I do not mean to say that she is aware of a motive, as you or I might be)—found out that the way to be fussed over is just not to speak. For you, I should say, it would be almost impossible to cure her, simply because you are the person most worried by her silence. And similarly with the nurses, who say to her: ‘Do say so-and-so, there’s a little pet!’ The desire to be made a fuss of, to occupy the whole mind of some person or of many persons, to cause one’s power to be felt—are these not motives very human? Is there any necessity to go to the length of putting them down to mental aberration?”

Katya Lascarides had finished her sheet of paper. She blotted it with deliberate motions, and, leaving it face downwards, she placed her arms upon the table, and, her eyelashes drooping over her distant eyes, she looked reflectively at her long and pointed hands. At last she took up her pen and wrote upon a fresh sheet in her large, firm hand:

“I am diagnosing my own case!”

Serious and unsmiling she looked at the words; then, as if she were scrawling idly, she wrote:

“Robert.”

Beneath that:

“Robert Hurstlett Grimshaw.”

And then:

“σας ἀγαπω!”

She heaved a sigh of voluptuous pleasure, and began to write, “I love you! I love you! I love you ...” letting the words be accompanied by deep breaths of solace, as a very thirsty child may drink. And, having written the page full all but a tiny corner at the bottom, she inscribed very swiftly and in minute letters:

“Oh, Robert Grimshaw, why don’t you bring me to my knees?”

She heaved one great sigh of desire, and, leaning back in her chair, she looked at her words, smiling, and her lips moving. Then, as it were, she straightened herself out; she took up the paper to tear it into minute and regular fragments, and, rising, precise and tranquil, she walked out of the doorway to the rail of the ship. She opened her hand, and a little flock of white squares whirled, with the swiftness of swallows, into the discoloured wake. One piece that stuck for a moment to her forefinger showed the words:

“My own case!”

She turned, appearing engrossed and full of reserve, again to her writing.

“No,” she commenced, “do not put down this form of obstinacy to mental aberration. It is rather to be considered as a manifestation of passion. You say that Kitty is not of a passionate disposition. I imagine it may prove that she is actually of a disposition passionate in the extreme. But all her passion is centred in that one desire—the desire to excite concern. The cure for this is not medical; it is merely practical. Nerve treatment will not cure it, nor solicitude, but feigned indifference. You will not touch the spot with dieting; perhaps by ... But there, I will not explain my methods to you, old Ellida. I discussed Kitty’s case, as you set it forth, very fully with the chief in Philadelphia, and between us we arrived at certain conclusions. I won’t tell you what they were, not because I want to observe a professional reticence, but simply so that, in case one treatment fails, you may not be in agonies of disappointment and fear. I haven’t myself much fear of non-success if things are as you and Dr. Tressider say. After all, weren’t we both of us as kiddies celebrated for fits of irrational obstinacy? Don’t you remember how one day you refused to eat if Calton, the cat, was in the dining-room? And didn’t you keep that up for days and days and days? Yet you were awfully fond of Calton.... Yes; I think I can change Kitty for you, but upon one condition—that you never plead for Robert Grimshaw, that you never mention his name to me. Quite apart from any other motive of mine—and you know that I consider mother’s example before anything else in the world—if he will not make this sacrifice for me he does not love me. I do not mean to say that you are to forbid him your house, for I understand he dines with you every other day. His pleadings I am prepared to deal with, but not yours, for in you they savour of disrespect for mother. Indeed, disrespect or no disrespect, I will not have it. If you agree to this, come to our hotel as soon as you have read it. If you disagree—if you won’t, dear, make me a solemn promise—leave me three days in which to make a choice out of the five patients who wish to have me in London, and then come and see me, bringing Kitty.

“Not a word, you understand—not one single word!

“On that dreadful day when Robert told us that father had died intestate and that other—I was going to add ‘horror,’ but, since it was mother’s doing, she did it, and so it must have been right—when he told us that we were penniless and illegitimate, I saw in a flash my duty to mother’s memory. I have stuck to it, and I will stick to it. Robert must give in, or I will never play the part of wife to him.”

She folded her letter into the stamped envelope, and, having dropped it deliberately into the ship’s letter-box, she rejoined Mrs. Van Husum, who was reading “The Mill on the Floss,” on the main deck.