Beatrice Grimshaw

“ For there, at the captain's elbow, stood a tall, dark-eyed woman with graying hair, handsomely but quietly dressed, a woman who looked younger and brighter than ever the stewardess had looked, on ship or shore, and yet who was, unmistakably, the stewardess.
"Good God!" was all that Mrs. Waite could find to say at last.
"Don't have a fit," said the captain. "They don't like people to fit in expensive resting rooms, where the E-lite go shopping. Let me explain. My wife didn't have pneumonic plague at all. She had malarial fever: small wonder, in an island full of mosquitoes. ”

“ Arthurs' feet, and the men came and drew her away, and slung her into the tide-race, and the current of the reef passage snatched her out to sea. The stewardess stood on the bare rocks close to the channel, and looked curiously at the depth and force of the sea-river that rushed through it. ”

“ We're here because we're likely to get pneumonic plague, some of us or all of us. Does any one know the period of infection?"
Mrs. Waite "bridled" under her lace martingale, fanned herself with a paper fan she had made during the day, and laughed—a high, whinnying laugh.
"It is all equal to me," she said. "I do not care. We meet death as gentlemen and ladies."
"Poppycock!" said the American lad, quite rudely. "Stewardess, I guess you know something about it."
"I do, sir," said the stewardess. "Not much, but the doctor told me the the period of incubation was three days to a week." ”

“ The black death of the middle ages, which is the bubonic plague of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is mild compared with the rarer &and more terrible pneumonic disease.
There was not one of the passengers in the boat who did not know by this time what they took away with them; did not feel the presence of that other passenger, whom no one saw, as they slipped away from the liner's side—they, the contacts, and one other ... All the time, when they had been laughing, flirting, and card playing, and dreaming, on the liner, this passenger had been with them, unseen. ”

“ Of the liner there is little more to say. She lay for the prescribed time, making no signals to the shore and telling no tales. What went on on board, when the three hundred and eighty colored fourth-class passengers realized that they were shut up on a plague ship with sixty or seventy whites, death grinning in their faces, and land and safety (so they thought) just a mile of blue water away, is not in this story. But it was well for the whites, and for the ship and for the township of Port Torres, that the captain was not, after all, among the "contacts." ”

“ Agnes was so young and childish, and such a universal favorite, that nobody minded her friends, men and women, coming in from time to time. It happened that there were extremely few women on the boat, and that two of them, just at this time, went down with some small tropical ailment, and were confined to their cabins; however, the two others, Mrs. Arthurs and Mrs. Waite, also at least a dozen of the man passengers, kept coming in and out, until the stewardess put down her foot, and declared they were making the young lady worse, and must stay away. ”

“ In a week, his piety relaxed; in ten days, it had faded like hibiscus bloom plucked from the stalk. Ten days was more than enough. And his duty to the township (he was very certain) absolutely demanded that he should expose himself to no more actual risk. ”

“ Why should you die?"
"I don't understand you, Mrs. Waite," said the stewardess, coolly. She was supporting Mrs. Arthurs now—supporting her toward the brushwood house.
"Well, I'll make you!" screamed the other, beyond all control. "You'll be the next, and I shall to have nurse you—I shall have to die!"
"I guess not," said the American lad. "I'll tend to the lady myself. There isn't any Mrs. Grundy on a plague island. Stewardess, you needn't nurse that lady there, anyhow. I'll do it. I guess we can't spare our ladies, no any more of them, that is."
They all spoke of Mrs. Arthurs as dead ”

“ Mrs. Waite did not enjoy the probationary week that they had still to pass, after signaling to the doctor ashore—"No cases." The men were "perfect bears" she afterward told her friend. Especially she disliked the sharp-tongued American youth. When the launch came at last to take them off and convey them to the steamer outside the reef (not their own liner, which was far away) , she drew her skirts away from him as she stepped on board and hissed a word as she passed him, which was the last and only word she addressed to him before Sydney separated the party for good. ”

“ She would lie there for a week, and then she would steam on (as if nothing had happened on board) for her next port of call. She was in the strictest of quarantine; not a canoe was allowed to run within a hundred yards of her tall, gray sides, not any boat from the the town must approach her—except doctor's, which was free to come, but did not make use of the freedom. Dr. Coster, the man with the two beautiful black eyes, and the marvelous white teeth, and the musical, clipped accent—Dr. Coster had said it wasn't necessary. The captain could signal for him if he was wanted. ”

“ But she didn't think of that, she just went and killed herself, for the sake of the rest of the people on the island, including you, you——"
"Jack!" said the ex-stewardess, warningly.
"Well, she didn't kill herself enough, because the tide rip and her clothes floated her out to sea, and she was picked up just insensible by a steamer that was leaving the port—a steamer that had a doctor on board. And they patched her up. And there she is."
"Very interesting," said Mrs. Waite, with a factitious yawn. "And a very nice arrangement for people in your class of life. Good morning." ”

“ Some one has got to break the chain. We are taking it from each other now; the period of infection from the case on the ship is long over. I have decided that it is best for me to break it. My temperature was high last night, and is very high tonight. I feel sick, and am sure that I am taking it. When it is dark and the tide is very high, I will get into the tide race. Mrs. Waite need not have been afraid; she is safe. ”

“ Waite, still wearing the eighteenth century hair-dress, and with the "aristocrat" expression as if frozen on her face.
"I—I am not afraid," she said. "I am not canaille. For myself I have no fear. 1 speak for these others. Why, then, should they have to die? Stewardess—look here, stewardess," suddenly changing her manner. "I say, it's an awful shame that every one who goes has to kill some one else.... ”

“ You know the percentage of contacts."
"My God, you're a brave woman," said the sailor, looking at her calm, worn face.
"I've nothing to leave behind," she said, following to the cabin-door, which she opened wide. The captain stood at the other side of the passage, looking at Agnes' flushed, thin face lying on the pillow.
"If I hadn't such a set of confounded ninnyhammers as officers——" he said, impatiently. "But if the Malays take charge, there'll be the devil to pay, and no pitch hot. And they will, if——"
"Yes, sir, they will if——" said the stewardess. "Better not, sir. You can do no good. ”