GOOD-BYE, SIMON
Twenty minutes later, they were picked up by the _Castor_, the yacht
which by this time had passed the _Queen Mary_. As for the _Pays de
Caux_, the steamer sailing from Dieppe, subsequent enquiries proved
that the passengers and the crew had compelled the captain to flee
from the scene of the disaster. The sight of the huge waterspout, the
spectacle of the ship lifting her stern out of the waves, rearing up
bodily and falling back as though into the mouth of a funnel, the
upheaval of the sea, which seemed to have given way beneath the
assault of maniacal forces and which, within the circumference of the
frenzied circle, revolved upon itself in a sort of madness: all this
was so terrifying that women fainted and men threatened the captain
with their levelled revolvers.
The _Castor_ also had begun by fleeing the spot. But the Conte de
Bauge, detecting through his field-glasses the handkerchief which
Simon was waving, persuaded his sailors, despite the desperate
opposition of his friends, to put about, while avoiding contact with
the dangerous zone.
For that matter, the sea was subsiding. The eruption had lasted less
than a minute; and it was as though the monster was now resting,
sated, content with its meal, like a beast of prey after its kill. The
squall had passed. The whirlpool broke up into warring currents which
opposed and annulled one another. There were no more breakers, no more
foam. Beneath the great undulating shroud which the little waves,
tossing in harmless frolic, spread above the sunken vessel, the
tragedy of five hundred death-struggles was consummated.
Under these conditions, the rescue was an easy task. Isabel and Simon,
who could have held out for hours longer, were taken to the two cabins
and supplied with a change of clothing. Isabel had not even lost
consciousness. The yacht sailed away immediately. Those on board were
eager to escape from the accursed circle. The sudden subsidence of the
sea seemed as dangerous as its fury.
Nothing occurred before they reached the French coast. The
oppressive, menacing lull continued. Simon Dubosc, directly he had
changed his clothes, joined the count and his party. A little
embarrassed in respect of Miss Bakefield, he spoke of her as a friend
whom he had met by chance on the _Queen Mary_ and by whose side he had
found himself at the moment of the catastrophe.
For the rest, he was not questioned. The company on board the yacht
were still profoundly uneasy; the thought of what might happen
obsessed them. Further events were preparing. All had the impression
that an invisible enemy was prowling stealthily around them.
Twice Simon went below to Isabel's cabin. The door was closed and
there was no sound from within. But Simon knew that Isabel, though she
had recovered from her fatigue and was already forgetting the dangers
which had threatened them, nevertheless could not shake off the horror
of what she had seen. He himself was still terribly depressed, haunted
by the vision so frightful that it seemed the extravagant image of a
nightmare rather than the memory of an actual thing. Was it true that
they had one and all lost their lives: the three clergymen with their
austere faces, the four happy, cheerful boys, their father and mother,
the little girl who had cried, the child that had smiled at Isabel,
the captain and every single individual of all those who had covered
the _Queen Mary's_ decks?
About four o'clock, the clouds, unrolling in blacker and denser
masses, had conquered the heavens. Already the watchers felt the first
breath of the great squalls whose precipitous onset was at hand, whose
battalions, let loose across the Atlantic, were about to rush into the
narrow straits of the Channel and mingle their devastating efforts
with the mysterious forces rising from the depths of the sea. The
horizon was blotted out as the clouds released their contents.
But the yacht was nearing Dieppe. The Count and Simon Dubosc, each
gazing through a pair of binoculars, cried out as with one voice,
struck at the same moment by the most unexpected sight. Looking at the
row of buildings, which line the long sea-front like a tall rampart of
brick and stone, they could plainly see that the roof and upper storey
of the two largest hotels, the Imperial and the Astoria, situated in
the middle, had collapsed. And the next instant they caught sight of
other houses which were tottering, leaning forward, fissured and
half-demolished.
Suddenly a flame shot up from one of these houses. In a few minutes
there was a violent outbreak of fire; and on every side, from one end
of the sea-front to the other, a panic-stricken crowd, whose shouts
they could hear, came pouring down the streets and running to the
beach.
"There is no doubt about it," spluttered the Count. "There has been an
earthquake, a very violent shock, which must have synchronized with
the sort of waterspout in which the _Queen Mary_ disappeared."
When nearer, they saw that the sea must have risen, sweeping over the
sea-wall, for long streaks of mud marked the lawns, while the beach to
right and left was covered with stranded shipping.
And they saw too that the end of the jetty and the light-house had
disappeared, that the breakwater had been carried away and that boats
were drifting about the harbour.
The wireless telegram announcing the wreck of the _Queen Mary_ had
redoubled the panic. No one dared fly from the peril on land by
taking to the open sea. The relatives of the passengers stood massed
together, in witless and hopeless waiting, on the landing stage and
what remained of the jetty.
In the midst of all this turmoil, the yacht's arrival passed almost
unperceived. Each was living for himself, without curiosity, heedless
of all but his own danger and that of his kinsfolk. A few distraught
journalists were darting about feverishly for news; and the
port-authorities subjected Simon and the Count to a hasty and
perfunctory enquiry. Simon evaded their questions as far as possible.
Once free, he escorted Isabel to the nearest hotel, saw her
comfortably settled and asked her for permission to go in search of
information. He was uneasy, for he believed his father to be in
Dieppe.
The Duboscs' house stood at the first turning on the great slope which
climbs to the top of the cliffs on the left, itself hidden behind a
clump of trees and covered with flowers and creepers, it had a series
of terraced gardens which overlooked the town and the sea. Simon was
at once reassured on learning that his father was in Paris and would
not be home until next day. He was also told that they had felt only a
slight shake on this side of Dieppe.
He therefore went back to Isabel's hotel. She was still in her room,
however, needing rest, and sent down word that she would rather be
alone until the evening. Somewhat astonished by this reply, the full
meaning of which he was not to understand till later, he went on to
his friend Rolleston's place, failed to find him in, returned to his
own house, dined and went for a stroll through the streets of the
town.
The damage was not so widespread as he had supposed. What is usually
described as the first Dieppe earthquake, to distinguish it from the
great upheaval of which it was the forerunner, consisted at most of
two preliminary oscillations, which were followed forty seconds later
by a violent shock accompanied by a tremendous noise and a series of
detonations. As for the tidal wave, improperly called an eagre, which
rushed up the sea-front, it had but a very moderate height and a quite
restricted force. But the people whom Simon met and those with whom he
talked remembered those few seconds with a terror which the hours did
not appear to diminish. Some were still running with no idea of where
they were going, while others--and these were the greater
number--remained in a state of absolute stupefaction, making no reply
when questioned or answering only with incoherent sentences.
It was of course different in a town like this from elsewhere. In
these long-settled regions, where the soil had assumed its irrevocable
configuration hundreds and hundreds of years ago and where volcanic
manifestations were not even contemplated as possible, any phenomenon
of the kind was peculiarly alarming, illogical, abnormal, and in
violent contradiction with the laws of nature and with those
conditions of security which each of us has the right to regard as
unchanging and as definitely fixed by destiny.
And Simon, who since the previous day had been wandering to and fro in
this atmosphere of distraction, Simon, who remembered Old Sandstone's
unfinished predictions and who had seen the gigantic waterspout in
which the _Queen Mary_ was swallowed up, Simon asked himself:
"What is happening? What is going to happen? In what unforeseen
fashion and by what formidable enemy will the coming attack be
delivered?"
Though he had meant to leave Dieppe on that night or the following
morning, he felt that his departure would be tantamount to a desertion
just when his father was returning and when so many symptoms announced
the imminence of a final catastrophe.
"Isabel will advise me," he said to himself. "We will decide together
what we have to do."
Meantime night had fallen. He returned to the hotel at nine o'clock
and asked that Isabel should be told. He was amazed, almost stunned by
the news that Miss Bakefield had gone. She had come down from her room
an hour earlier, had handed in at the office a letter addressed to
Simon Dubosc and had suddenly left the hotel.
Disconcerted, Simon asked for explanations. There seemed to be none to
give, except that one of the waiters said that the young lady had
joined a sailor who seemed to be waiting for her in the street and
that they had gone off together.
Taking the letter, Simon moved away with the intention of going to a
cafe or entering the hotel, but he had not the courage to wait and it
was by the light of a street lamp that he opened the envelope and
read:
"I am writing to you with absolute confidence, feeling
happy in the certainty that everything I say will be
understood and that you will feel neither bitterness
nor resentment, nor, after the first painful shock,
any real distress.
"Simon, we have made a mistake. It is right that our
love, the great and sincere love which we bear each
other, should dominate all our thoughts and form the
object of our whole lives, but it is not right that
this love should be our only rule of conduct and our
only obligation. In leaving England we did what is
only permissible to those whose fate has persistently
thwarted all their dreams and destroyed all their
sources of joy. It was an act of liberation and
revolt, which people have a right to perform when
there is no other alternative than death. But is this
the case with us, Simon? What have we done to deserve
happiness? What ordeals have we suffered? What efforts
have we made? What tears have we shed?
"I have done a great deal of thinking, Simon. I have
been thinking of all those poor people who are dead
and gone and whose memory will always make me shudder.
I have thought of you and myself and my mother. Her
too I saw die. You remember: we were speaking of her
and of the pearls which she gave me when dying. They
are lost; and that distresses me so terribly!
"Simon, I don't want to consider this and still less
all the horrors of this awful day as warnings intended
for us two. But I do want them to help us to look at
life in a different way, to help us put up a prouder
and pluckier fight against the obstacles in our path.
The fact that you and I are alive while so many
others are dead forbids us to suffer in ourselves any
sort of weakness, untruth or shuffling, anything that
cannot face the broad light of day.
"Win me, Simon. For my part, I shall deserve you by
confidence and steadfastness. If we are worthy of each
other, we shall succeed and we shall not need to blush
for a happiness for which we should now have to
pay--as I have felt many times to-day--too high a
price of humiliation and shame.
"You will not try to find me, will you, Simon?
"Your promised wife,
"Isabel."
For a few moments Simon stood dumbfounded. As Isabel had foreseen, the
first shock was infinitely painful. His mind was full of conflicting
ideas which eluded his grasp. He did not attempt to understand nor did
he ask himself whether he approved of Isabel's action. He suffered as
he had never known that it was possible to suffer.
And suddenly, in the disorder of his mind, among the incoherent
suppositions which occurred to him, there flashed a horrible thought.
It was obvious that Isabel, determined to submit to her father before
the scandal of her flight was noised abroad, had conceived the
intention of returning to Lord Bakefield. But how would she put her
plan into execution? And Simon remembered that Isabel had left the
hotel in the most singular fashion, abruptly, on foot and accompanied
by a sailor carrying her bag. Now the landing-stage of the Newhaven
steamers was close to the hotel; and the night-boat would cast off her
moorings in an hour or two.
"Can she be thinking of crossing?" he muttered, shuddering as he
remembered the upheavals of the sea and the wreck of the _Queen Mary_.
He rushed towards the quay. Despite Isabel's expressed wish, he
intended to see her; and, if she resisted his love, he would at least
implore her to abandon the risk of an immediate crossing.
Directly he reached the quay, he perceived the funnels of the Newhaven
steamer behind the harbour railway-station. Isabel, without a doubt,
was there, in one of the cabins. There were a good many people about
the station and a great deal of piled-up luggage. Simon made for the
gangway, but was stopped by an official on duty:
"I have no ticket," said Simon. "I am looking for a lady who has gone
on board and who is crossing to-night."
"There are no passengers on board," said the official.
"Really? How's that?"
"The boat is not crossing. There have been orders from Paris. All
navigation is suspended."
"Ah!" said Simon Dubosc, with a start of relief. "Navigation is
suspended!"
"Yes; that is to say, as far as the line's concerned."
"What do you mean, the line?"
"Why, the company only troubles about its own boats. If others care to
put to sea, that is their look-out; we can't prevent them."
"But," said Simon, beginning to feel uneasy, "I suppose none has
ventured to sail just lately?"
"Yes, there was one, about an hour ago."
"Oh? Did you see her?"
"Yes, she was a yacht, belonging to an Englishman."
"Edward Rolleston, perhaps?" cried Simon, more or less at a venture.
"Yes, I believe it was, . . . Rolleston. Yes, yes, that's it: an
Englishmen who had just put his yacht in commission."
Simon suddenly realized the truth. Rolleston, who was staying at
Dieppe, happened to hear of Isabel's arrival, called at her hotel and,
at her request, gave orders to sail. Of course, he was the only man
capable of risking the adventure and of bribing his crew with a lavish
distribution of bank-notes.
The young Englishman's behaviour gave proof of such courage and
devotion that Simon at once recovered his normal composure. Against
Rolleston he felt neither anger nor resentment. He mastered his fears
and determined to have confidence.
The clouds were gliding over the town, so low that their black shapes
could be distinguished in the darkness of the night. He crossed the
front and leant upon the balustrade which borders the Boulevard
Maritime. Thence he could see the white foam of the heavy breakers on
the distant sands and hear their vicious assault upon the rocks.
Nevertheless, the expected storm was not yet unleashed. More terrible
in its continual, nerve-racking menace, it seemed to be waiting for
reinforcements and to be delaying its onslaught only to render it more
impetuous.
"Isabel will have time to reach the other side," said Simon.
He was now quite calm, full of faith in the present and the future.
In absolute agreement with Isabel, he approved of her departure; it
caused him no suffering.
"Come," he thought, "it is time to act."
He now recognized the purpose in view of which he had been preparing
for years and years: it was to win a woman who was dearer to him than
anything on earth and whose conquest would force him to claim that
place in the world which his merits deserved.
He had done with hoarding. His duty was to spend, ay, to squander,
like a prodigal scattering gold by the handful, without fear of ever
exhausting his treasure.
"The time has come," he repeated. "If I am good for anything, I must
prove it. If I was right to wait and husband my resources, I must
prove it."
He began to walk along the boulevard, his head erect, his chest
expanded, striking the ground with a ringing step.
The wind was rising to a gale. Furious showers swept the air. These
were trifles to a Simon Dubosc, whose body, clad at all times of the
year in light materials, took no heed of the rough weather and, even
at the end of a day marked by so many trials, did not betray the
slightest symptom of fatigue.
In truth, he felt inaccessible to ordinary weaknesses. His muscles
were capable of unlimited endurance. His arms, his legs, his chest,
his whole body, patiently exercised, were able to sustain the most
violent and persistent efforts. Through his eyes, ears and nostrils he
participated acutely in every vibration of the outer world. He was
without a flaw. His nerves were perfectly steady. His will responded
to every demand. He had the faculty of making up his mind at the first
warning. His senses were always on the alert, but were controlled by
his reason. He had keen intelligence and a clear, logical mind. _He
was ready._
He was ready. Like an athlete at the top of his form, he owed it to
himself to enter the lists and accomplish some feat of prowess. Now,
by a wonderful coincidence, it seemed that events promised him a field
of action in which this feat of prowess might be performed in the most
brilliant fashion. How? That he did not know. When? That he could not
say. But he felt a profound intuition that new paths were about to
open up before him.
For an hour he walked to and fro, fired by enthusiasm, quivering with
hope. Suddenly a squall leapt at the sea-front, as though torn from
the crest of the waves; and the rain fell in disorderly masses,
hurtling downwards in all directions.
The storm had broken and Isabel was still at sea.
He shrugged his shoulders, refusing to admit a return of anxiety. If
they had both escaped from the wreck of the _Queen Mary_, it was not
in order that one of them should now pay for that unexpected boon. No,
come what might, Isabel would reach the other side. Fate was
protecting them both.
Through the torrents of rain pouring across the parade and by the
flooded streets, Simon returned to the Villa Dubosc. An indomitable
energy bore him up. And he thought with pride of his beautiful bride,
who, disdainful like himself of the day's accumulated ordeals and
untiring as he, had gone forth bravely into the terrors of the night.