If I missed him, there was no harm done, I was the nearer Paris. If I found and kept his trail, it was hard if I could not put some stick in his machinery, and at the worst I could promise myself interesting scenes and revelations.
In such a mixed humour, I made up what it pleases me to call my mind, and once more involved myself in the story of Carthew and the Flying Scud. The same night I wrote a letter of farewell to Jim, and one of anxious warning to Dr. Urquart begging him to set Carthew on his guard; the morrow saw me in the ferry-boat; and ten days later, I was walking the hurricane deck on the City of Denver. By that time my mind was pretty much made down again, its natural condition: I told myself that I was bound for Paris or Fontainebleau to resume the study of the arts; and I thought no more of Carthew or Bellairs, or only to smile at my own fondness. The one I could not serve, even if I wanted; the other I had no means of finding, even if I could have at all influenced him after he was found.
And for all that, I was close on the heels of an absurd adventure. My neighbour at table that evening was a 'Frisco man whom I knew slightly. I found he had crossed the plains two days in front of me, and this was the first steamer that had left New York for Europe since his arrival. Two days before me meant a day before Bellairs; and dinner was scarce done before I was closeted with the purser.
"Bellairs?" he repeated. "Not in the saloon, I am sure. He may be in the second class. The lists are not made out, but--Hullo!
'Harry D. Bellairs?' That the name? He's there right enough."
And the next morning I saw him on the forward deck, sitting in a chair, a book in his hand, a shabby puma skin rug about his knees: the picture of respectable decay. Off and on, I kept him in my eye. He read a good deal, he stood and looked upon the sea, he talked occasionally with his neighbours, and once when a child fell he picked it up and soothed it. I damned him in my heart; the book, which I was sure he did not read--the sea, to which I was ready to take oath he was indifferent--the child, whom I was certain he would as lieve have tossed overboard --all seemed to me elements in a theatrical performance; and I made no doubt he was already nosing after the secrets of his fellow-passengers. I took no pains to conceal myself, my scorn for the creature being as strong as my disgust. But he never looked my way, and it was night before I learned he had observed me.
I was smoking by the engine-room door, for the air was a little sharp, when a voice rose close beside me in the darkness.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Dodd," it said.
"That you, Bellairs?" I replied.
"A single word, sir. Your presence on this ship has no connection with our interview?" he asked. "You have no idea, Mr. Dodd, of returning upon your determination?"
"None," said I; and then, seeing he still lingered, I was polite enough to add "Good evening;" at which he sighed and went away.
The next day, he was there again with the chair and the puma skin; read his book and looked at the sea with the same constancy; and though there was no child to be picked up, I observed him to attend repeatedly on a sick woman. Nothing fosters suspicion like the act of watching; a man spied upon can hardly blow his nose but we accuse him of designs; and I took an early opportunity to go forward and see the woman for myself. She was poor, elderly, and painfully plain; I stood abashed at the sight, felt I owed Bellairs amends for the injustice of my thoughts, and seeing him standing by the rail in his usual attitude of contemplation, walked up and addressed him by name.
"You seem very fond of the sea," said I.
"I may really call it a passion, Mr. Dodd," he replied. "And the tall cataract haunted me like a passion," he quoted. "I never weary of the sea, sir. This is my first ocean voyage. I find it a glorious experience." And once more my disbarred lawyer dropped into poetry: "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!"
Though I had learned the piece in my reading-book at school, I came into the world a little too late on the one hand--and I daresay a little too early on the other--to think much of Byron; and the sonorous verse, prodigiously well delivered, struck me with surprise.
"You are fond of poetry, too?" I asked.
"I am a great reader," he replied. "At one time I had begun to amass quite a small but well selected library; and when that was scattered, I still managed to preserve a few volumes-- chiefly of pieces designed for recitation--which have been my travelling companions."
"Is that one of them?" I asked, pointing to the volume in his hand.
"No, sir," he replied, showing me a translation of the _Sorrows of Werther_, "that is a novel I picked up some time ago. It has afforded me great pleasure, though immoral."
"O, immoral!" cried I, indignant as usual at any complication of art and ethics.
"Surely you cannot deny that, sir--if you know the book," he said. "The passion is illicit, although certainly drawn with a good deal of pathos. It is not a work one could possibly put into the hands of a lady; which is to be regretted on all accounts, for I do not know how it may strike you; but it seems to me--as a depiction, if I make myself clear--to rise high above its compeers--even famous compeers. Even in Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, or Hawthorne, the sentiment of love appears to me to be frequently done less justice to."
"You are expressing a very general opinion," said I.
"Is that so, indeed, sir?" he exclaimed, with unmistakable excitement. "Is the book well known? and who was GO-EATH? I am interested in that, because upon the title-page the usual initials are omitted, and it runs simply 'by GO-EATH.' Was he an author of distinction? Has he written other works?"
