THE STORM AND THE SACRIFICE
Baby Don put an end to the moment of strained silence which succeeded.
He laid hold of two of Smiles' fingers and began to pull at her, while
saying insistently, "Come down to the beach with me, Aunty Smiles, and
hear the waves ro-er." This was a favorite pastime with him.
His grandfather smiled. "The waves are 'ro-ering' as gently as any
sucking dove, to-night."
But the baby was not to be turned from his design, and tugged
persistently until Rose was obliged to rise, laughing. Muriel also
started up.
"I'll go down with you and try out the _Water Witch_ alone--unless, that
is, either of you want to come along," said Donald.
His father and Ethel refused, with a show of indignation over the
begrudging form which the invitation had taken, and he was not sorry.
Neither man nor girl could find anything to say as they walked side by
side to the beach, and the former launched the dory tender. As he put
off she waved him a cheery good-by, and sent her low voice across the
broadening water:
"Come back to us soon. And be careful. It is beginning to get rough
already."
With a note in his voice which she did not understand, he called back,
"Perhaps I'll sail straight over to France. You wouldn't care."
"Foolish man. You know that I would," she cried, and then turned to join
the children in their game of skipping pebbles.
Donald sent the skiff through the choppy waves with vigorous strokes and
shot her around at the last moment for a perfect landing. The mainsail
and jib went up with rapid jerks while the rings rattled their protest.
The strenuous physical exercise brought him temporary relief; but, when
he had cast off, taken the tiller and after a few moments of idle
jockeying back and forth in the light puffs, squared away for the run
seaward before the rising wind, his gloomy thoughts returned, to settle
like a flock of phantom harpies and feast on his brain.
Out of nothing grew a vision of Judd's chalky, troubled face, and he
felt a sudden rush of sympathy for the crude mountaineer, who had
likewise loved and lost. "Smiles wasn't to blame then. She isn't to
blame _now_. She never led either of us on," he said aloud; but his
clenched teeth cut through the end of his cigar, nevertheless. With only
his moody thought to bear him company, Donald steered seaward.
Starting slowly, the racing craft was momentarily given new impetus by
swelling wind and following wave; but the man paid no heed to the things
which should have served him as a warning--the higher heaving of the
waters, now as gray and as cloudy green as a dripping cliff, and touched
with flecks of milky spume; and the uneven tugging of the sail. When he
did become aware of the swift change which had taken place, hardly five
minutes had passed from the time he had started out, yet a quick glance
behind him disclosed a new heaven and a new earth and sea; the old had
passed away.
Where else is nature's stupendous power so evident as in the sinister
speed with which the armies of the tempest make their swift advance,
company on company, regiment on regiment, division on division?
In the moments which had passed unmarked by him in his absorption, the
whole western sky had become overcast and blackened by the vaporous army
of invasion, whose forecoursing streams of cavalry skirmishers were
already high over his head. The earth had lost its laughing colors, and
seemed to lie cowering, with its head covered with a dull mantle, and
the sea had accepted the challenge of the storm clouds and was beginning
to leap forward in swirling, gloomy waves.
With a strong steady pull on the tiller, Donald brought the little craft
around in a sweeping curve and headed into the wind, which had suddenly
become chill and moist. The boat tilted sharply, and a dash of spray
leaped the bow and, changing back to water, ran down the leeward side of
the cockpit. A drop of rain splashed on his bared forearm, and then
another and another. Through the dark, serried clouds came a dagger
thrust of fire, to be followed by a distant detonation which bore his
heart back to the shuddering fields of France.
The new picture was impressed on his mind as on the sensitized film of a
camera, and simultaneously the action of distant figures were registered
upon it. Toiling up the steep bank to the cottage was a marionette made
recognizable as Muriel by a tiny dash of red at the waist and on the
head. For an instant he wondered if Smiles and his little namesake had
already reached the house. Then he caught sight of them, still on the
beach. There was fully a quarter of a mile of water between him and the
shore, but the distance was being cut down bravely by the race-about,
whose specialty was going to windward in a blow. Steadied by her racing
keel, she cut through the waves like a knife.
The child, a mere gray dot, was apparently fleeing as fast as his sturdy
little legs could carry him from the pursuing girl.
In spite of his bitterness of soul, Donald's lips curved into a smile as
they formed the words, "Ah, the battle is on, once more. Rose has
insisted that they hurry up to the house and Don has said, 'I won't.'
Jerusalem, look at him kite it!"
At that instant a tremulous curtain of light was let down from heaven,
momentarily, and the two tiny figures were disclosed as clear as by day.
He saw the baby dodging adroitly under Smiles' outstretched arms, and
heading out onto the narrow pier, to which was attached a float for
rowboats.
"He's got his 'mad' up," thought the man, as he veered off a point so as
to get a better view. "He isn't afraid of thunder, lightning or of
rain--or anything else, and it would be just like him to run right off
the ... Great God in heaven, he's done it!" he shouted aloud and sprang
to his feet, and almost lost his grip on the straining tiller. Even as
he had been thinking, the light had grown again, and he saw the child,
halfway down the pier, with a rebellious jerk tear himself loose from
the clutching grasp on his blouse, lose his balance, stumble and roll
from the incline into the now surging water.
The _Water Witch_ luffed sharply, and her sail snapped with a report
like a pistol shot. Without taking his horrified gaze from the unreal
picture which the ghastly lightning illumined, Donald instinctively
steadied the boat, and, with his powerful body strained forward as
though he were urging the craft to greater effort. "God, God, God." The
words came through his clenched teeth, half prayer, half curse at the
Fate which held him helpless to act--and the wind snatched them from his
lips and bore them away, shrieking in malicious madness.
The darkness fell, blotting out the scene. Then the lightning flared
again, and, in the brief white second that it lasted, he saw Rose climb
onto a bench against the railing of the pier, and leap into the water.
"God, she can't swim a stroke," groaned the man, as he pounded his left
hand against the gunwale until the blood came through the abraded skin.
Plunged in darkness again, the man, whom Rose had called unimaginative,
suffered all the untold agony of soul which had been hers during the
moment in which she had been forced to make up her mind and carry out
the act, only his anguish was the more intense, for hers was the quick
action and his the forced inaction of a man bound to a stake, within
full sight of a tragedy being enacted upon a loved one. The distance
between the boat and shore was not so great but that he could see
everything that was occurring; but, with the wind dead ahead and blowing
viciously, he might as well have been in another world for aught that he
could do.
The spell of darkness, doubly black after the flash, seemed like an
eternity to Donald. In reality it was as brief as the others, yet, when
the light came, it disclosed other forms in action. A youth, whom he had
vaguely noticed working around a rowboat on the beach as he put out, was
plunging into the water, and down the steeply terraced bank, with
leaping strides, was running a tall, slender figure clad in light gray.
Minute as it was, seen from that distance, Donald recognized it. It was
Philip, and his bursting heart gave voice to a cry of welcome and hope.
Philip would save Smiles!
[Illustration: "HOLDING THE GIRL IN CLINGING WHITE CLOSE TO HIM"]
True, he would save her for himself. He could not keep the thought out
of his surge of hope; but the erstwhile bitterness was swept away.
Nothing else mattered, if Rose could be saved. Measured by the ticking
of a clock, the action was taking place with dramatic speed; but, to his
quivering mind, it dragged woefully, and the periods when the light
failed caused him to cry aloud.
Suddenly the searchlight of the sky was turned on, dazzlingly, and he
saw the unknown youth wading ashore, bearing in his arms a tiny form
whose animated arms and legs told the story of baby Don's timely rescue;
he saw Ethel running wildly toward them, to gather her offspring into
her outstretched arms; he saw Philip on the float, in the act of casting
himself prone. Then the picture faded once more and he railed at the
ensuing blackness as though it had been a wilful, animate thing. This
time it lasted longer, and the man's deep breath came in rasping sobs
before the scene was again revealed. Now there were two forms standing
unsteadily on the float; two forms that were almost one, for the man in
gray was holding the girl in clinging white close to him. Still, she
could stand; Smiles was alive, she was saved! And the watcher's lips
gave vent to a shout of relief and joy, a shout which ended in a groan.
All the power of his masterful will was not enough to make him do that
which he longed to--turn his tortured eyes from the picture which spelt
life to Rose, and death to all his golden dreams.
Now he saw them moving slowly up the pier, the girl still leaning
heavily against the man, and supported by his encircling arm. They
paused, and Rose half turned, and slowly waved her hand toward the sea
in a reassuring gesture, and Donald whispered, "God bless her. She knows
that I have been a witness to the whole thing, and she remembers, thinks
of me, even at ... at this time. I cannot see her face, but I know that
she is smiling."
The lingering effulgence from a final wave of light vanished; the two
forms toiling up the shore blended into the returning shadows; the
curtain of darkness fell, and the drama was ended.
"Why could it not have been I?" groaned Donald. The wind, already spent
from its brief fury, chortled softly among the shrouds as though it was
laughing at him, another mortal made the victim of capricious Fate.
Surely it knew that he would have served as well as its agent and would
only too gladly have given his very life for Smiles, but it had wilfully
sent him away and sent Opportunity to Philip.
Heroes and martyrs; what are they, after all, but the creatures of that
whimsical goddess? Most men and most women have within them the courage
to dare all things if the occasion comes, but to a few only, chosen, it
often seems, by chance, is that occasion granted. Yet, how often has the
history of life, both racial and individual, been changed by such an
event!
Donald knew his star had sunk below the far horizon and that Philip's
had been carried to its zenith. The lover was likewise the rescuer. It
were as though the play had been written and the stage set for no other
purpose than to bring the romance to its culmination, and, now that this
had been accomplished, the useless properties were being removed. The
storm was over, ending as quickly as it had begun; the cloud-legions
were hurrying eastward overhead to form the setting of another tragedy
or farce somewhere else, or to return to the nothing which had given
them birth. A few faint flashes and a distant rumble or two marked their
passing.
Along the western edge of the world appeared a narrow streak of ruddy
light, like burnished copper beneath the blackness above. Blazing forth
with the glory of a conqueror, the sun appeared within it, and seemed to
poise immovable for an instant 'twixt heaven and earth, while its
dazzling rays turned the living waters to molten gold. Then it slowly
sank from sight, and, like wraiths of the dying day, the night-shadows
began to creep out from the shore, deeper and deeper, nearer and nearer,
until they engulfed the little craft and its owner.
With a sudden decision, Donald played out the sheet and put the tiller
over. The boat swung around into the path of the wind and fled seaward
again. He could not go home, now. He must fight out the battle with
self, as it is always fought, alone, and what place could be more
fitting than out there in the darkness, on the face of the troubled
waters?