Hetty had spread a shawl on the forward end of the house, and, with her
arm resting on the slide of the companionway, sat with an unopened book
in her lap and looked out across the shining sea. It was three bells
or more, and the morning sun was warm upon her face, and painted with
rainbow hues the spray that the fresh northwest wind clipped from every
toppling wave. The brig was sliding down the seas like a boy let loose
from school, now dipping her nose into a long roller with chuckling
hawse-pipes, now sinking into the blue hollows, sending the sheeted
spray outward for yards as her counter came home with a jarring thud.
The spars whined unceasingly, but the sails, bellying in the steady
breeze, made scarcely a sound, save when a sudden lurch spilled the
wind from the canvas, and it snapped like a great whip.
The scene, with the vividness of its new sensations, now for the first
time experienced, impressed itself upon Drew's mind as something wholly
mysterious and strangely moving. After the first night, when there had
been no sea, he had remained steadily below, too ill to rise; but the
sickness had now passed, and it was with only the uncertainty of gait
of one not yet accustomed to the motion of the vessel that he had made
his way to the deck and looked out over the watery world.
[Illustration: "The brig was sliding down the seas like a boy let loose
from school"]
With a sense of aloofness, of absolute separation, from all that he had
ever known, he gazed about him. The words,
"Look'd at each other with a wild surmise.
Silent, upon a peak in Darien,"
flashed through his mind: the perfect poem seemed strangely
interpretative of his mood. Then his gaze came back from the notched
and leaping horizon to the silent figure of Hetty, and, with the
lifting spirit of a mind released from the oppression of a strange and
portentous solitude, he clumsily made his way to her side, glad for
companionship.
She looked up brightly.
"Oh," she said, "I was wishing for some one to enjoy it with. I tried
to get my mother, but she would not come up. She said she could _feel_
it; that was enough for her. I hope it is not enough for you."
"No," he answered; "there is more in seeing it: it is strange and
overwhelming. I am inland-bred, you know: I feel as if all known things
had passed away."
"To me it is like coming home," she declared. "I cannot remember when
it was not familiar. Now it is like lifting the latch of the door at
home after a long absence."
He shook his head, smiling.
"I cannot imagine any one thinking of it as companionable, as a part of
actual experience. I need hills and old trees and remembered turns in
roads to feel the intimacy of the world. This is strange and beautiful,
but leaves me an alien. It is like a kaleidoscope: nothing is twice the
same."
"I do not care for things that are twice the same," she told him. "Here
something is always likely to happen. The only certain thing I know of
to-morrow is that we shall have plum-duff." She laughed.
He looked at her, gravely smiling.
"A certain noble discontent--you know the thought--is well; but--"
he was thinking of her mother's concern, and her words carried him
toward it; yet he hesitated, doubtful if it might not be too soon to
speak--"but constant change means lack of purpose, doesn't it? If you
set your heart on something,--something vastly different from anything
you have ever known,--it will be fruitless of good unless persisted
in--unless it wears grooves in your life. A mere impulse for change is
to be distrusted." He smiled and added: "Don't think that I cannot give
over preaching."
"I know what you mean," replied the girl, looking seaward with troubled
eyes. "I suppose mother has told you what I wish. But it isn't a mere
desire for change, and everybody's disapproval only makes me more eager
to go. Isn't that a proof that the desire is something to be obeyed--a
real call? How can I be sure that it is not, unless I try? Do you think
me a silly person?" She looked at him with a suggestion of defiance,
but smilingly, too.
"I should be the last one to think that," he told her. "Only look at it
from all sides--that is all your friends can ask."
"Not father," she answered laughingly. "If I can be made to look at
it from his point of view, he will willingly spare me the rest. Poor
father! But let's not speak of it," she went on. "Look! the Mother
Carey's chicken!"
She pointed to the bird, the black-and-white little creature which
always seems to be hurrying home, wherever it may be. Far to the
southeast a trail of smoke from an unseen steamer blotched the white
sky. On the main-deck the second mate and a sailor were patching a
topsail; from the galley drifted aft the cheerful whistling of the
steward, like a flock of blackbirds, and the homelike sound of rattling
pans. Only the man at the wheel was aft, now bending to the spokes, now
glancing at the binnacle, and now turning his eye aloft to the luff of
the mainsail. It was the morning of the third day out.
Drew was silent so long that she turned a troubled face to him.
"You must not think that I do not care for your advice," she said
gently; "I do--shall some day. Just now I cannot bear to speak of my
disappointment. It wasn't a sudden impulse; it was a part of my life,
and it must be given up, perhaps. After a little, when I can collect my
scattered forces, if you can help me--" She smiled uncertainly.
"I know, I know," he hastened to say. "But I was really thinking of
something quite different--that three days ago I had not even seen you;
now our lives seem intimately near. Only at sea could that happen."
"Yes," she agreed; "people grow into friendship quickly at sea--and
grow apart as quickly. I have heard my father say that is a reason
for the cruelty and harshness on shipboard--that men's tempers become
warped when they cannot escape from one another and they find no common
ground for companionship. He says there have been times when he fairly
hated a mate of his. On shore they might have been intimate for years
without an unpleasant thought."
"Let us hope that we may escape that disaster," he said, with a smile.
He wondered if Medbury had been in her thoughts. They had scarcely
spoken, he had observed. He himself had seen little of the younger
man, and he was quite prepared to rate him her inferior, in spite of
his physical attractiveness. He seemed a mere boy in his impulses;
he doubted not that he would keep his boyishness to the end of life.
Certainly, he told himself, he was lacking in her capacity for growth.
Meanwhile his own first opinion of her beauty had not changed; it
was as apparent as ever, he told himself, and had taken on an added
grace with his widening knowledge of her many changing moods. As he
gazed at her now, he had an impression of distinction, but distinction
united with a certain gentleness that, he told himself, was rare. Her
face was in profile, and the mouth, clear-cut and undrooping, had the
softness of outline that he associated with good temper. Her eyes,
though now sad, had the same gentle look. He liked her thick brown
hair and the clear oval of her face: they gave him the impression of
harmony. In spite of his first feeling of attraction for Medbury, he
felt that the girl hesitated wisely; he could see no road by which
the two could travel as equal companions. That Medbury's hopes seemed
destined to be shattered did not move him greatly; for rarely to the
masculine onlooker is the disappointed lover a tragic figure. One has
seen him play his game and lose; now let him bear the loss manfully.
They did not speak of her desire again that day; indeed, eight days
passed before he ventured to refer to it. Meanwhile they had become
great friends. The pleasant weather had held, and they had rolled down
the long, smooth seas, which daily seemed to grow bluer, under a sky
that remained cloudless.
It was morning again, the morning of the eleventh day out, and they
sat in the same place, with much the same scene about them, though now
with a tropical softness flooding the world, and less heeded as their
thoughts turned more to themselves. He had been reading aloud while she
worked at some trifle, but suddenly he closed the book.
"That is enough of other men's dreams," he said. "What of yours?"
She did not even look up as she replied:
"Mine are poor enough; I prefer those of others. Besides, I have
scarcely thought of them for days."
"Are they less insistent?" he asked.
"Don't!" she appealed. "Don't! I am not yet ready to face them. I have
lost my courage."
"I will say no more," he said; "but I had thought that you seemed
different--ready to surrender. I had hoped so."
She looked up now.
"Are you against me, too?" she demanded.
"Can you believe that?" he asked. "I had thought that I was for you--as
we all are."
She smiled.
"You are all making it very hard for me," she told him.
A step sounded on the forward companionway, and Medbury appeared. He
glanced past them to the man at the wheel, looked aloft, then walked
slowly to the break of the deck. Suddenly he came back and seated
himself on the corner of the house near them. Apparently he had wearied
of self-suppression.
He was manifestly trying to appear wholly at ease, and he began to
talk at once, and very rapidly, like one repeating a speech that had
been learned by heart. He spoke of the wind and the run of the vessel,
and he told them that they had not touched a sheet for more than sixty
hours. He said he hoped that it would last, though he added that he
doubted it.
"When ought we to get out, Tom?" asked Hetty. She bit off her thread
as she spoke, and, spreading her work on her lap, examined it
absent-mindedly.
"If the wind holds, in four or five days," he answered; "but I'm afraid
it won't. The sea's beginning to look oily now; the snap has gone out
of the wind. We'll be slatting and rolling in a dead calm by the middle
of the afternoon. I noticed the change in my bunk, and couldn't sleep."
"I thought sailors could always sleep." This was Hetty's contribution
to the conversation as she still studied her work.
"Well, I couldn't," he answered.
"Then we may be three weeks going out," said Drew. "It seems like a
long time."
"I was a hundred and twenty days on my last voyage--from Singapore,"
said Medbury.
"I am beginning to grasp the reason for the sailor's rapt, far-seeing
look," said Drew. "It is not strange that he never loses it, with his
constant study of invisible signs and meanings. But a hundred and
twenty days! What changes may take place in that time!"
"We find changes enough," Medbury answered. "Sometimes I think we
sailors are the only things that do not change, except to grow older
and sadder. We always hope to find everything just as we left it, but
we never do."
Hetty looked steadily seaward, and a fine flush came to her face; but
Drew was struck with the philosophy of the situation.
"That surely ought to be true," he acquiesced--"that the sailor is the
most unchanging of men. One should come back wiser in sea-lore, but
solitude and the singleness of his purpose should keep him untouched by
all the distractions that change other men. I've noticed in Blackwater
the freshness of spirit, almost boyishness, of old men."
Hetty's face was turned forward, and now she leaped to her feet.
"What _is_ that, Tom?" she exclaimed. "We are running on a sand-bar!"
A hundred yards ahead of them stretched a great golden-brown field
that looked like a salt-meadow in April. Above it wheeled a flock of
sea-birds.
Medbury scarcely turned his head.
"Sargasso weed," he answered, and grinned. "It's always waltzing about
in these latitudes."
The girl walked to the main-rigging, and, leaning across the
sheer-pole, watched the yellow plain with wondering eyes. A moment
later, as they plunged into it, she caught her breath; it seemed
incredible to her that there should be no shock.
Instantly the sounds of the sea were hushed; there was only the soft
hissing of the weed as it swept past the side of the brig.
"Come up to the forecastle-deck and see it pile up on the bow," Medbury
said to the girl.
She did not stir.
"Won't you come?"
"No," she answered.
He leaned across the sheer-pole with her a moment in silence. The bell
forward struck four sharp strokes; it was like a cry in the night. Then
a sailor came lurching aft to relieve the man at the wheel.
"Is it always going to be like this, Hetty?" Medbury asked her in a low
voice.
"I suppose so."
"You want it so?"
"I said, 'I suppose so.'"
"It's the same thing," he remarked drearily, and sighed.
The sigh seemed to irritate her, for she turned upon him suddenly.
"Why did you speak like that--before a stranger?"
"Like what?" he asked, in astonishment.
"About coming home unchanged, and finding nothing as you had left it.
Of course he knew what you meant. And it wasn't true, for I have not
changed. I could have sunk through the deck for shame."
"Oh, _that_," he replied. "_He_ didn't understand; he thought it was a
text."
"A text!" She turned away in scorn.
A moment he stood looking outboard with unseeing eyes; then he stooped
and drew a boat-hook from the slings beneath the rail.
"Wouldn't you like to have a piece?" he asked, pointing to the seaweed.
She hesitated a moment, and then came back to his side.
"Yes," she said.
He drew in a great bunch and spread it at her feet, and she picked up a
bit with dainty fingers.
"It's no longer beautiful," she said in disappointment, and dropped it
on the house.
"No," he answered soberly, and tossed the weed back into the sea.
V
The wind died out, as he had predicted, and all the afternoon the brig
rolled on the long swells, which hourly grew heavier. They leaped
against the horizon, swung onward beneath the keel, and swept past with
the unrelenting persistency that seemed the embodiment of vindictive
hate. A gale can be combated, but, in the grasp of a calm, man is
helpless. Every part of the vessel cried out in protest. The canvas
slatted and flapped like the wings of a huge bird vainly trying to rise
from the waves; every block rattled and croaked; the main-boom, hauled
chock aft, snatched at its sheets with a viciousness that threatened
to part them at every roll and made their huge blocks crash; from
the pantry below came the constant rattle of crockery; and the blue
sea, dipped up through the scuppers, swashed back and forth across the
main-deck. By eight bells every stitch of canvas had been furled or
clewed up to save it, and the brig lay rolling in the dark hollows like
a drunken sailor reeling home.
At dusk Hetty made her way to the forward companionway, and, seating
herself on the sill, with her hands clasped about the guard-rail,
looked out across the watery waste. The line of her eyes, parallel with
the deck, saw the stars fly downward till they seemed to vanish in
the sea, which suddenly seemed to tower like a huge black wall above
the brig; then suddenly it dropped away, and the stars flew up again,
and she saw them fairly overhead. Out of the swashing flood of the
main-deck, in a momentary lull, Medbury appeared.
"Is that you, Hetty?" he said.
"Yes," she answered. "It's awful, isn't it?"
"It's a nasty roll, and no mistake. There's dirty weather knocking
about somewhere."
"You mean a storm?"
"Yes."
"Shall we get it?" she asked.
"We may and may not," he answered. "It's hard to say."
"Could it be a hurricane coming?" she asked with awe.
He laughed.
"Haven't you ever heard the sailors' rhymes about hurricanes in the
West Indies?" he asked.
"'July,
Stand by;
August,
Look out you must;
September,
Remember;
October,
All over.'
That anchors March squarely in the middle of the safe months; so we're
all right, you see. No, it isn't a hurricane."
He seated himself on the deck, and, leaning against the door-jamb,
braced himself to the roll. For a while they sat in silence, and
watched the long rollers infold them--three great ones, then a
succession of lower ones, in an ever-recurring sameness that moved the
girl with a growing nervousness. At last she turned to him and said:
"I wanted to explain to you that I had no reason to be ugly this
morning. But what is the use? Father would always oppose; besides, I am
not sure myself. I want to be friends, nothing more."
"Well! that is a wooden tale," he said disappointedly.
"I never said anything different at any time, Tom," she protested.
"Oh, I know. You always had a pair of skittish heels, Hetty." He
turned his face to her suddenly. "Is there any one else?"
"No," she said.
"All right," he answered; "I'll hope on. I've been doing that a long
time; I'm not going to stop now." He was silent a moment, and then he
said: "Do you know how long that's been, Hetty? Fourteen years. We were
in school then, and it began the day of that big snow-storm, when I
drew you home on my sled. You wore a red jacket, and your cheeks were
almost as red. I can see you sitting there now, and smiling whenever
I looked back. You were the shyest little thing! When we reached your
gate, you just slipped off and ran into the house without turning."
"Oh, do you remember that!"
"I've thought of it under every star in the sky, I think. I guess
that's the way it will always be with you--slipping away and not
looking back." He laughed a little dolefully.
"I'm not like that," she said in a low voice. "I may go away, but I
shall look back. I am no longer a child."
"Then don't go away," he said eagerly; but she stopped him.
"Don't, Tom!" she pleaded. "Don't speak of it any more--now. Just be
friends."
"All right, Hetty. It will be as you say. I don't nag my--friends." He
smiled forlornly.
In silence they watched the swells racing in. They were like living
things, of incredible speed, insatiable, pitiless, rushing on to infold
them. As the brig rolled in their grasp, the girl instinctively moved
her body against the roll: it was as if she thought to lessen the awful
dip of the deck with her puny weight; and whenever the great rollers
passed, and the vessel, like a tired thing, lay for an instant almost
at peace in the lower levels of the sea, an involuntary sigh of relief
escaped her. Medbury heard her and looked up.
"You're not afraid, Hetty, are you?" he asked. "It's disagreeable;
that's all."
"No, not _really_, I think," she answered; "but I wish it would stop."
"It's a regular cradle--as peaceful as that," he assured her. "Only
we're a little old for cradles, I guess," he added.
"I am," she said.
Over them the stars raced back and forth; for there were no clouds,
only a soft haze that made the stars seem large and near, but without
brightness. Close down to the sea a whitish film seemed to spread,
making the curtain of the night above it intensely black. Once, as they
dipped to port, Hetty's eyes caught sight of a deep-red glow suffusing
the lifted wave near the bow. She clutched at Medbury's arm.
"What is that, Tom--there--like blood?" she gasped.
"That? Why, the reflection of our port light. You poor thing!" he said
pityingly. "Hadn't you better go below? It's queer, but on a night like
this, or in thick weather, if you once lose your nerve, you see the
queerest things. Come, you'll be all right below."
She dropped her face to her hands and laughed.
"No," she said; "now I will stay. There!"--she straightened herself and
looked at him smilingly,--"now, I'll be sensible. Why do you look at me
like that?" she asked abruptly.
He turned his face away.
"Can't I even look at you? A friend could do that."
"But that was different," she answered. "It was--" The look of yearning
love upon his face moved her strangely. She felt the impatient tears
flood her eyes. Meanwhile he hastened to speak of other things.
"Do you remember how you used to tie your hair up in two tight little
braids?" he asked--"always tied with red ribbon?"
"Mother did that," she answered promptly. "I hated it. I used to tell
her they made my head ache. I've forgotten now whether they did or not.
But it wasn't always red ribbon."
"Wasn't it?" he asked. "That's what I remember."
"Some things you've forgotten, you see," she told him. "It is easy to
forget, after all."
The door of the passage below them opened, and some one stumbled toward
them. It was Drew. Medbury slipped away, vexed at the interruption, but
Hetty turned a relieved face to the newcomer. In this difference lay
the measure of their love.
Reaching the deck, Drew almost dropped in the place where Medbury
had been sitting. He removed his cap from his head, and passed his
hand across his forehead. From the forecastle floated aft, above the
jangling noises of the brig, the faint strains of an accordion.
"Just at this moment I have no higher ambition than to sit out there
and play like that," said Drew, turning his head to listen.
"It sounds rather nice at sea," said the girl. "Maybe it's because I've
always heard it there that I like it."
"Oh, it isn't that," he replied. "It's the care-free touch I envy.
Care-free--with all our fixed beliefs tumbling about us! See those
stars! And we have been taught to call them steadfast!"
She laughed, and looked at him mischievously.
"You're seasick again," she said. "I knew it by the way you dropped to
the deck."
"I am," he promptly admitted.
"Well, you're honest; you ought to be proud of that," she told him.
"Most men refuse to confess to seasickness until the fact confesses
itself." She laughed.
"I might be proud of being honest if I were not too much ashamed of
being ill. The lesser feeling is lost in the greater."
"You would feel better if you would not watch the rail. It's the worst
thing you can do."
"You are watching it," he said.
"But I am never affected," she replied. "Besides, I'm feeling reckless
to-night."
He turned and looked at her smilingly.
"You reckless! You are self-control itself," he declared.
It is strange, but there are times when to be called self-controlled is
like an accusation.
"That sounds like calling me hard and unfeeling," she said.
"Rather say it's calling you happy. I think there is no happiness
without self-control," he replied.
"Do you call it happiness," she cried--"rolling like this? I think it
is dull."
"All happiness is more or less dull," he declared. "It's the price it
pays to discontent, which is supposed to know all the ups and downs of
life."
"I should not like to think that," she said soberly.
"Then I hope your whole life may prove it false," he answered.
In the silence that followed, his eyes, searching the night with the
fascination in the thought of discovery that the sea gives even to the
sighting of a sail, came back to her face and lingered there. For a
moment he looked at her with the intent, impersonal gaze that he had
directed toward the horizon. She was leaning against the guard-rail,
with her hands clasped over her knees, and her eyes turned up to
the stars. Her head was uncovered, and her hair looked black above
the gleaming whiteness of her face, which wore the intense look of
abounding vitality that pallor sometimes gives in a larger measure than
vivid coloring. As he watched her face in the dim light, he became
distinctly alive to a new impression--the impression that he was
becoming strangely drawn to her. The knowledge came upon him suddenly,
like a ship looming above him in the night.
It was inevitable that his first thought should be of Medbury; but
whatever he might later come to think of his own ethical implication,
in this first moment of self-discovery the thought was little more
than that he should have a care. In a rush of mental restlessness he
rose to his feet and walked to the rail. He could hear the second mate
as he tramped steadily back and forth on the quarter-deck, passing
like a shuttle from darkness to light as he crossed the glow from the
binnacle-lamp. The thump of the wheel jumping in its becket was almost
continuous; it irritated him as the louder noises of the sea and the
vessel had not done. In the east a red light shone and vanished; again
it appeared for a moment. He called Hetty's attention to it, but she
did not rise. When it appeared again it was farther to the north.
"It's a steamer going home," she said. "It's like your happiness--just
a dull light moving uncertainly through darkness."
"You mustn't think that," he said gently.
"Oh, it's true," she persisted; "I can see it's true. I wanted to go
away, but it was only discontent. If I had gone, it would have been the
same. I should have been broken in the first struggle."
"To-morrow the wind will blow again, and you will see things in a
different light. Nothing will matter then," he assured her.
"Do you think I should have succeeded if I had gone?" She turned toward
him sharply while she waited for his answer.
He had seated himself again, and he paused a moment before he replied.
"I think you would have put your whole heart into your work," he said
at last. "When we do that, we need not think of results--or fear
them--need we?"
"I shall always feel that it was right for me to go," she said, after a
pause. "The regret will remain."
"It is hard to say what is right, we owe allegiance in so many ways.
A week ago your going was simply an interesting thought to me. Now I
cannot bear to think of it."
She caught her breath sharply.
"There's your steamer again," she exclaimed. "It's almost gone."
It came to him vividly, with her conscious refusal to follow his
leading, that he was not having a care; and he added in haste: "I can
see the tragic significance of such a decision, now that I am no longer
a stranger--this putting away of all your old life--your father and
mother. Think what it means to them! Life has many facets: we've got to
look at them all."
"Yes," she said slowly, as if she were looking at them all in turn;
then she continued: "But if we study them too closely, isn't there
danger of being simply irresolute and accomplishing nothing?"
"To crown the present hour--might that not be the hardest, and
therefore the noblest, task?" he asked smilingly. "A nature that is
overwhelmed by its first disappointment will not be likely to succeed
in any path. That is not yours, I am sure."
"It is easy for you to say that," she answered, with a touch of
impatience; "you have found your chosen work; I must stay at home.
What can we women in seaports do? We tremble through storms, and then
wait in fear for the marine news." She laughed at her own exaggeration.
"It makes strong, hopeful women," he declared stoutly.
"Is that all you ask of your work--to be made strong and hopeful?" she
demanded. "It makes me think of life as a gymnasium."
"No," he answered frankly; "but I have not found my chosen work, or,
rather, my chosen field."
"May I ask what that is? Do you mind telling me?"
"I shall be glad," he replied. "It is simply to work among the poor
in a large town or city. I cannot go among the little children of the
crowded streets without a heartache. That is where my work calls me.
I love the people of Blackwater, and I can be happy there when I can
forget for a time; but I am not needed. Sometimes I feel that no one
is needed, they are so firmly fixed in their beliefs, so hopelessly
certain of themselves. But the little children of the crowded streets!"
He broke off suddenly.
They heard the bell forward ring out sharply. Both counted the strokes
in silence.
"Eight bells," she murmured, as it ceased.
The forecastle door opened, and a shaft of light flashed like an
opening fan along the wet, shining deck. Shadowy forms began to move
about, and vanished in the darkness. Then the door was shut, and the
deck was dark again; only the clamor of the rolling vessel and the sea
about her went on unceasingly.
"I am glad you told me," Hetty said at last in a low voice that had in
it a tremor of exaltation. She did not turn to him as she spoke, but
kept her eyes fixed upon the lines of whitened waves glimmering in the
dark.
"It was little to tell," he said, with a laugh.
"It was much to know," she answered gently.
He wondered at the touch of feeling in her tone, for he could not know
that, having condemned him for a seemingly Laodicean contentment with
life, with as little reason she was now prepared to exalt him unduly,
seeing in his desired course a form of martyrdom at once moving and
heroic. It was in the line of her own desire, and the thought flashed
upon her that here was something even she might be permitted to do.
They had come tremblingly to the heights of emotion: a little thing
might send the streams of their life together, or bear them farther and
farther apart.