IX

Caragh sat with his back to the saloon skylight, watching the

cloud-shadows racing over the soft green Irish coast.

Between him and it was a heaving space of dark blue water, crested here

and there with gleaming white.

The gale of the night was blowing itself out, but the wind still sang

against the spars that swung to and fro through a wider arc of the sky

than most of the guests on board found compatible with an appearance at

breakfast.

Woolly flocks of white cloud came up from the Atlantic, raced through

the clear blue overhead, and huddled down together behind the land.

It was a day boisterous with the joy of life, but Caragh's face showed

no appreciation of its quality. His chair slid forward and back with

the rolling deck, but his eyes were fixed gloomily upon the green

hills, and he paid no heed to his own movement.

His sombre absorption gave him the appearance of being affected by the

floundering seas; but he never suffered from sea-sickness and was

grateful to the gale for having cleared the deck of the ship's jovial

company.

He wished to be by himself, and yet it was himself that he was most

anxious to evade; it was from self-sickness that he was suffering.

He had spoken the truth in telling Laura Marton that the faith in

Lettice Nevern's eyes was his one hope of deliverance. He believed, if

he could respond to that, even with the honest dishonesty which alone

was possible--if he could, as he told her, "make a good girl's dreams

come true"--that he might in time build up for himself an artificial

constancy, and so regain his self-esteem.

That hope seemed not too high, face to face with the woman who was

doing her best to shatter it. It sustained him while he was fighting

her fascination--successfully, as he told himself; while he was

dragging his weakness in a wounded sort of triumph, out of her reach;

while he was hurrying his things on board the day after.

But there, unluckily, his victory ended. Seated apathetically in a

deck-chair on the _Candia_, watching the long coast slip by from Thanet

to the Lizard, the leaden turmoil of the Channel, and then the clouded

purples of the Kerry Hills, he learnt how superficial was his

advantage, how deeply he was in bondage.

He had, indeed, got out from England, but he had brought so little of

himself away that it seemed an impertinence to offer it to any woman in

marriage. His heart--or at least what in such affairs is called the

heart--and all those cravings of the body which go with the heart were,

and would remain, in Laura Marten's keeping.

She was right in every boast of her dominion over him. She was the

woman for whom he had not waited, of whom long ago he had despaired.

The woman who could have satisfied him body and soul, absorbing his

desires, inspiring his dreams.

No partiality in the past had persuaded him to imagine that of any

woman he had admired. They were just what they were--dainty, lovely,

brilliant, bewitching; but nothing more to him than to any one who had

a taste for them.

But here at last was the woman made for him, mad for him: warm with

that fugitive spirit of sense which was in her only and for him alone.

He knew that, though he knew not how he knew it, as certainly, as

responsively as a lock knows the wards of its key.

It was as a key that she had entered him; and within him, at her

moving, the levers of a secret life had stirred--a strange new

complexity of being which no mortal influence had disturbed before.

She had revealed to him all that life had not yielded him, all that now

it could never yield, a correlation undreamed of between man and woman.

And she had come curiously too late. That was his bitterness. He

would have sacrificed for her every other allegiance of the past, save

this one which brought him no pleasure. From Lettice Nevern he could

only come to her as a man debased for ever in his own esteem. Nothing

could excuse such a betrayal, nothing could redeem him after it was

done.

Happiness with the woman he must marry was out of the question; but

happiness without her was now for him equally uncompassable. He had a

choice only between two sorts of despair. Under such conditions it

seemed improbable that he would prove a very cheerful companion, but

such predictions were with Caragh especially difficult. His humour was

always available for his own misfortunes, and in this case his fortune

was too deplorable not to be concealed.

Since it entirely absorbed his unconscious thoughts his attention

always seemed preoccupied; an abstraction which lent however, an

agreeable effect of detachment from ordinary worries.

He was, perhaps for that reason, the serenest member of the ship's

company, and the one most obligingly at the service of other men's

affairs.

But on this windy morning he was allowed to reflect on his own

adversities, till a shout from forward called his eyes towards the

shore.

The _Candia_ had just cleared a long headland and opened the narrow bay

beyond, where, canted slightly to starboard, lay a big three-master,

the rags of her royals and a staysail slapping the wind, the long blue

rollers breaking against her in spouts of foam.

She was evidently on the rocks, and yet an impracticable distance from

the forbidding shore, which swept in a purple skirting of cliff about

her. Dark figures could be seen moving on the bridge and in the

rigging, and the flutter of a woman's skirts could be made out against

the shrouds.

The _Candia_ stood in towards the shore, and her decks were soon

crowded with excited passengers, waiting anxiously the lowering of a

boat and speculating on the way in which a rescue would be attempted.

A line of colour ran up to the barque's peak, and was answered

presently by a signal from the steamer; then the engines slowed and

stopped.

The _Candia_ rolled ponderously in the long swell while another signal

was exchanged the splash of the lead becoming suddenly audible in the

silence.

The vessels were now not more than five hundred yards apart, and every

detail could be seen upon the wreck.

Save for the few figures on the bridge and poop, all those on board her

had taken to the rigging, as the sloping decks were swept by the

heavier waves.

Several women could be seen on her, and the glass showed them to be

lashed to the shrouds, and apparently exhausted.

Each fresh evidence of urgency increased the impatience on board the

_Candia_. Yet no scheme of assistance seemed in progress. The engines

were reversed, the _Candia_ backed in a trifle closer, the roar of the

breakers began to make a continuous moil in the air, but the boats hung

undisturbed on their davits.

The captain was on the bridge and could not be questioned, but

presently Sir Anthony Palmer, who as chairman of the _Candia's_ company

was superintending the cruise, was seen coming aft with a grave face.

He said, in answer to a volley of questions, that no help could be

given till the sea went down and the tide had risen. A ledge of rocks

lay between the two ships, already defined occasionally by a thrash of

foam over which no boat could pass.

The stranger must have been carried across it at high water some hours

earlier, had struck on a second ledge between that and the shore, and

was now equally cut off from succour from the sea or from the land.

Rockets were at once suggested, but Sir Anthony explained that the

distance was too great for a rocket line to cover, and that the tides

precluded the floating in of a buoy. Nothing could be done but wait

and pray that the vessel might not break up during the next twelve

hours.

Some one asked if she were likely to, and Sir Anthony admitted that she

had signalled her fears of such an event.

"Couldn't some one swim to her?" said a voice from the taffrail.

Sir Anthony shook his head; to cross the ledge with the break of water

on it at present would be to court almost certain death.

There was a pause; all eyes were turned towards the reef, where the

vessel lay in the gay morning, like some masquerade of death, between

the lovely colours of the sea and shore.

Caragh leant back in his chair with a yawn, and looked up at the sky.

"I'll take a line to her," he said placidly.

The backs of the heads between him and the ship's side became suddenly

a ring of faces, and the first stupidity of surprise was expressed by

the question, "Can you swim?"

Caragh looked at them with no expression of interest, and Sir Anthony

shook his head.

"You couldn't do it, my dear fellow," he protested; "you couldn't do

it!"

"Perhaps not," said Maurice; "but I can have a try." Sir Anthony's

hands and head shook in voluble negation.

"The captain wouldn't permit it for a moment," he asserted.

"Well," said Caragh, "of course the captain can refuse me the use of a

line, but he can't, without being very unpleasant, prevent my going

overboard."

There was an instant's pause, and then the group about the chair burst

into simultaneous suggestion and advice.

Caragh was slapped on the shoulder; his previous performances in the

water were demanded; encouragement and remonstrance were alternately

tendered, and everything obvious on the situation was said.

"I'm not a professional performer," he explained at last, "but I can

keep afloat as long as most men, and if I'm ready to take the risks of

a swim, I don't think it should be any one's business to stop me."

This met a varied response, and with a general acclamation for the

captain the speakers were moving forward when that officer appeared,

looking for Sir Anthony, who at once put the case to him.

The captain, with a glance at Caragh still seated in his chair,

dismissed the matter with a shrug of his shoulders. But he had

miscalculated the passiveness of the man before him.

Caragh got quietly upon his feet, looked across the water at the wreck,

and then turned to the captain.

"If you can't spare me a line to take on board her, I'll have to bring

you back one of hers," he said.

"I forbid you to leave the ship," replied the other briefly.

"Of course you can do that," said Caragh, looking again across the sea,

"but it won't make a pretty story if those poor devils are drowned

under our eyes."

At that moment a sailor brought the signalling slate aft to the

captain, who looked glum and handed it to Sir Anthony.

"Tide's leaving her," he explained.

"Her back is breaking, is that it?" asked Sir Anthony.

The captain nodded.

"She won't hold together long after that?"

"Probably not," said the captain.

Caragh's offer found none but backers when the gravity of the signal

was made known.

The captain still protested its insanity, but he was persuaded in the

end to withdraw his prohibition and do what was possible to start the

venture with the best chances of success.

The ship was to be taken a little nearer the southern shore to give the

swimmer what help could be had from the tide, and the lightest line on

board was prepared while Caragh went below to strip, accompanied by a

couple of admirers, who insisted on the necessity of his being oiled

before entering the water.

As he never expected to come out of it alive he had no wish for oil,

but did desire urgently to be left alone for the next few moments.

He had made his offer from no surge of sympathy, no flush of valour.

He was not braver probably than most of those on board, nor cared

twopence more than they for the fate of the derelicts. His proposal

was but the climax of his morning thoughts. He could endure himself no

longer. The wretchedness of his passion would bear no further the

thought of the girl he was on his way to meet. Every instant in the

day-time, and night after night in his dreams, that splendid presence

possessed him to which he had for ever said good-bye. And in the fever

of that possession he could not think of a wife. Yet of what else

could he think, as every hour brought her nearer, and made sharper for

him the shame of her exultant face, and the reproach in her confiding

arms. Never for an instant had his tenderness faltered. She was

dearer to him than a sister; dearer by all she had given him, by all

she was prepared to give; dearer above all by what she believed him to

have given her.

And it was his tenderness that made unendurable the treachery of his

faithfulness, the loyalty of the lie which was to make them one.

It was at the worst of such a reflection that death suddenly appeared

to him as the escape, the release for them both; for the pledge which

he had given and for her trust in his word.

Death, a high and honourable end, making a finish to his unprofitable

life, leaving her with faith undimmed!

At that cold moment of his abasement there seemed nothing better.

Given an hour to think it over and he would probably have recoiled from

the sacrifice. There was even some measure of recoil in his mind as he

went down the reeling ladder to his cabin, though there was no change

in his determination. Death had ceased to look attractive; it was

simply something for which, like a fool, he had let himself in. Yet

under that was a dull indifference to what became of him.

He submitted to his oiling; then just as he was about to leave his

cabin a remembrance came to him. He fumbled in his berth for the

sovereign-case on his watch chain, opened it, slipped out a couple of

gold pieces, took what looked like a wafer from beneath them, and put

it into his mouth. The two men with him imagined the small gray disc

to be some kind of sustaining lozenge. It was a tiny portrait of Laura

Marton.

As he went shivering on deck Caragh made a wry mouth as his teeth met

on the picture, and he imagined the suggestions its discovery would

have offered to the woman he was to wed.

He had a hazy recollection afterwards of the close and eager crowd

which surrounded him as he fitted the clammy belt of the lifeline about

his body and climbed over the taffrail for a dive. It was a crowd warm

with enthusiasm and admiration; with little to say, but with that in

what it said which might have brought a blush to his whole body. But

he heard nothing.

Then as the vessel lurched to starboard he let his body fall forward

and shot down into the sea.

Before his head rose above the surface the cold water had changed his

indifference to life into a disgust at his own temerity.

The ship heeled over as if about to impale him with her yards. Then he

was lifted on the roller, and saw the wreck before him, looking much

further off than it had from the deck. He laid his course on a cliff

to the south which the captain had given him to steer by, and turned

over on his side. His left arm swung high and white out of the blue

water, regular and unhurried as though he were bathing, and his head

dipped under and was driven clear of the surface with every stroke.

With his face thrown back he could see the dark skirting of spectators

along the ship's side swinging into and out of the sky.

They were admiring in speech and in silence his courage and cool

indifference to the occasion, and the humour of their admiration moved

him as he thought of it almost to a laugh.

That he, with his despairs, his self-contempt, his growing disgust at

his foolhardiness, should appear to them as a heroic figure appealed to

his keen sense of parody. What pretty reading in unconscious irony

would the obituary paragraphs of his valour make for the gods of fate.

Yet valour of a sort he had, for it never once occurred to him to feign

an inability to go further, though the line he carried was beginning to

retard him at every stroke.

The ship he had left was now lost to him in each trough of the waves;

he could hear the break of the rollers over the reef, and saw that the

tide had already drifted him to windward of the wreck. The roar in

front increased as he proceeded, and at last he could see, as he rose,

the waves thirty yards beyond him suddenly flatten, flinging up a veil

of spray into the air. For a moment he hung irresolute; there, if ever

a man might see it, was death visible before him. Then, with a curious

sense of obliteration, his mind cleared. It seemed empty of thought or

fear as the open sky above him; not a shred even of anticipation

floated anywhere within it. He trod water as he gathered a dozen loops

of the lifeline in his hand, lest he should be hung up and dragged

under by it when flung over the ledge. Then he went forward. A moment

later, when the wave that had lifted him suddenly sank and smashed

before him into a terrible welter of foam above the reef, his heart

sank; but decision was past him. He knew that he was rising on the

wave that followed, heard a strange crisp noise above him, and felt the

crest dart forward like the head of a snake.

The next instant he was rolled up in the foam and flung onward like a

whirling wheel. He lost his senses for a second from sheer giddiness,

and found himself fighting for breath and the surface in almost quiet

water, with the black sides of the wreck not fifty yards ahead.

The line was coiled about his body, but his limbs were free, and he

seemed quite unhurt, and strangely unsurprised to be so, though but a

moment back he had been prepared for destruction.

He was soon on the lee side of the wreck, and after some little

difficulty was hauled on board, being too weak to lift himself from the

water.

He fell when set down upon the deck, and only then discovered that two

of the bones in his left foot were broken, and that blood was draining

from a gash nine inches long in his thigh. He also became aware that,

unlike the _Candia_, the wreck carried a mixed cargo of humanity, and

was amused even in his unhappy plight to notice that its immense relief

and gratitude quite overruled any considerations of sex.

There was no surgeon on board, the saloons were awash; but the women

tore up their petticoats to bind his wound, and, rolled in blankets

from the deck-house, he was made fast to the driest part of the poop.

There, drenched with spray and in a good deal of pain, he lay till

evening, declining to use the means of safety he had provided till all

but the captain and second mate had left the ship. The rigging up of a

traveller had proved a difficult matter with the wreck heeling over as

the tide left her, and the wind rising again after the ebb made all

other means of communication impossible.

The captain was only got on board the _Candia_ as darkness was falling,

and Caragh had some salve for his hurts in the knowledge that the wreck

slid off the reef and sank at high water before the next dawn.

He drew near Ballindra with sentiments a good deal modified by his

adventure.

Life had proved itself to be worth more to him than he had supposed,

and sheer weakness from loss of blood as he lay bandaged on the sunny

deck made the quiet certainty of a woman's love seem good in itself.

Sir Anthony had telegraphed a very picturesque account of the rescue,

and owing to the _Candia_ having to put back to land her new passengers

Lettice had read the story before Caragh arrived.

There is, perhaps, no happier moment possible to a woman than that in

which she hears the world applauding the man she loves and is about to

marry.

To Lettice, so new to love and to a near interest in any of the world's

noises, the moment was almost overwhelming. It was a pain of

happiness, a tense fear that such glad fortune could not endure.

Caragh had sent her a wire, more kind than true, to say that he was

mending splendidly, but she tortured herself with every sort of

deplorable anticipation, till she came to expect little from the

_Candia's_ arrival but her lover's body.

But she woke one morning to see the big liner, gay with flags, lying

before her windows at the mouth of the river.

She dressed at a pace that left her maid staring, and took the steepest

of short cuts to the slip. There, at that hour of the morning, not a

soul was to be seen, so she hauled in the lightest of the moored boats

and sculled herself down the river against the tide.

On the way the maiden modesty, which had so far been as breathless as

every other part of her, found a word to say.

For a moment the sculls stopped, and then dipped slowly to hold her

against the tide.

Then the boat went ahead again, but more deliberately. While she was

dressing Lettice had forgotten every one in the world but herself and

Maurice. Now, with the big ship before her, she remembered the others.

As she ran down to the slip she had thought of nothing but to get to

him as soon as possible. Now there seemed a dozen things besides, all

very important for a young lady.

But her doubts and fears were set at rest by a shout from the ship, and

she looked over her shoulder to see Caragh standing by the flag pole

waving his hat.

He was at the head of the gangway as she came up it, on a pair of

improvised crutches, looking very white, but with nothing left her to

wish for in the welcome of his eyes.

Sir Anthony, who was at his elbow, as radiant as herself, protested

fussily at his imprudence, and walked them both over to the

chart-house, which had been arranged for Caragh's use, where he left

them to order breakfast.

Lettice, fastened to her seat by the windows round her, and dumb with

happiness, could only gaze into Caragh's face. He looked back at her

with a smile, which broke at last in laughter.

"You've heard all about it?" he asked.

"Oh, I should think I had!" she breathed.

"Comic, wasn't it?"

"Comic!" she repudiated indignantly; "how _can_ you?"

"I can't," he replied ruefully; "it's comic only for me, and no one

else will ever see it. Ah, but if you knew!"

"I _do_ know," she exclaimed imposingly, "and every one else knows that

you were a hero."

"On Monday?" he queried.

"Yes," she said proudly, "on Monday."

"Heroes were cheap on Monday," he explained with a whimsical sigh, "but

I've been a hero when heroes were very, very dear."

She looked at him with the wistful misgiving which was always stirred

by his half-serious banter. "I know a hero," she said, "who is very,

very dear to-day."

He met the love in her eyes with such a tender appreciation that,

disregarding the windows, she had half risen to kiss him, when the head

steward entering, wrinkled with smiles and suffusing the joyousness of

the occasion, set a breakfast tray between them.

He greeted Lettice with the custom of an old retainer, and commented on

Caragh's health as though personally responsible for its condition.

"We're all that proud of him, miss, I can tell you," he said as he

withdrew with the covers.

But his flattery was spoilt for Lettice by the appearance of a meal

which declared the newness of the morning with such emphasis.

"Was it awful, coming at such an hour?" she begged of Caragh.

"Shocking," he said unmoved; "five minutes earlier and you'd have found

me in my bath."

"Oh!" she groaned; "I wish I'd waited for you on shore."

"In that case," he said, "I should probably have never landed."

"Never landed!"

"No," he went on; "I should have taken your absence for a sign that you

couldn't goad yourself to meet me; that you were cowering at home,

dreading my arrival, and with your heart lost to a much lovelier young

man."

"Oh, Maurice!"

"Yes," he continued; "I have never been able to believe that any

woman's flighty little soul could be worthy of my own virgin and

unchangeable affection."

"Maurice," she pleaded, "don't say things like that to-day; I want you

to be quite serious and quite yourself."

"Heaven forbid!" he protested as he took her hand.

The chief engineer had devised a sling to lower Caragh into the boat;

the purser had illuminated an inscription to him, signed by every one

on board; there seemed to be innumerable hands to shake and good wishes

to respond to before the boat was clear of the ship's side.

And then he had to wave his hat again and again to the cheers and

shouts of farewell, Lettice sitting beside him burning like a rose.

But her hour came when she had him laid at last upon a sofa by his

favourite window, and was kneeling on the floor beside him. Her mouth

had been thirsting all day to kiss him, and when he leaned his head

back and smiled at her she set her lips on his as though to drink from

them.

"Oh, my darling," she murmured, lifting her face to look once more into

his eyes, "you can't think what these last few days have been. It

didn't seem possible that you could live and come back to me after

doing all those splendid things. It was too much happiness for any

one. And I was horrid and faithless, and felt sure you'd die. I ought

to have known that God would take care of us, because you'd been so

brave and loved me so."

Despite himself there was a tinge of pain and shame that showed on

Caragh's face, and Lettice lifted her arm that had rested, ever so

lightly, across his body.

"Did I hurt you, dear?" she questioned anxiously.

"Oh, it's only just at first," was his ambiguous answer. But he drew

her face towards him and kissed it again.

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

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