Commercial House breaking her heart against the hardness of life in what
at first seemed utterly futile endeavour to live by her own efforts,
asking nothing more of the man who had given her his name. To make
herself worthy of that name, so that, living or dead, he might have no
cause to be ashamed of her or to regret the burden he had assumed: this
was the explanation of her fierce striving, her undaunted renewal of the
struggle in the face of each successive defeat, her renunciation of the
competence his forethought had provided for her. So also--since she
would take nothing from her husband--pride withheld her from asking
anything of her family or her friends. She cut herself off utterly from
them all, fought her fight alone.
He learned of the lean years of drifting from one theatrical
organization to another, forced to leave them one by one by conditions
impossible and intolerable, until Ember found her playing ingenue parts
in a mean provincial stock company; of the coming of Max, his interest
in her, the indefatigable pains he had expended coaching her to bring
out the latent ability his own genius divined; of the initial
performance of "Joan Thursday" before a meagre and indifferent audience,
her instant triumph and subsequent conquest of the country in half a
dozen widely dissimilar roles; finally of her decision to leave the
stage when she married, for reasons comprehensible, demanding neither
exposition nor defence.
"It doesn't matter any longer," she commented, concluding: "I loved and
I hated it. It was deadly and it was glorious. But it no longer matters.
It is finished: Sara Law is no more."
"You mean never to go back to the stage?"
"Never."
"And yet--" he mused craftily.
"Never!" She fell blindly into his trap. "I promised myself long ago
that if ever I became a wife--"
"But you are no wife," he countered.
"Hugh!"
"You are Mrs. Whitaker--yes; but--"
"Dear, you are cruel to me!"
"I think it's you who would be cruel to yourself, dear heart."
She found no ready answer; was quiet for a space; then stirred,
shivering. Behind them the fires were dying; by contrast a touch of
chill seemed to pervade in the motionless air.
"I think," she announced, "we'd better go in."
She rose without assistance, moved away toward the house, paused and
returned.
"Hugh," she said gently, with a quaver in her voice that wounded his
conceit in himself; for he was sure it spelled laughter at his expense
and well-merited--"Hugh, you big sulky boy! get up this instant and come
back to the house with me. You know I'm timid. Aren't you ashamed of
yourself?"
"I suppose so," he grumbled, rising. "I presume it's childish to want
the moon--and sulk when you find you can't have it."
"Or a star?"
He made no reply; but his very silence was eloquent. She attempted a
shrug of indifference to his disapproval, but didn't convince even
herself; and when he paused before entering the house for one final look
into the north, she waited on the steps above him.
"Nothing, Hugh?" she asked in a softened voice.
"Nothing," he affirmed dully.
"It's strange," she sighed.
"Lights enough off beyond the lighthouse yonder," he complained: "red
lights and green, bound east and west. But you'd think this place was
invisible, from the way we're ignored. However...."
They entered the kitchen.
"Well--however?" she prompted, studying his lowering face by lamplight.
"Something'll have to be done; if they won't help us, we'll have to help
ourselves."
"Hugh!" There was alarm in her tone. He looked up quickly. "Hugh, what
are you thinking of?"
"Oh--nothing. But I've got to think of something."
She came nearer, intuitively alarmed and pleading. "Hugh, you wouldn't
leave me here alone?"
"What nonsense!"
"Promise me you won't."
"Don't be afraid," he said evasively. "I'll be here--as always--when you
wake up."
She drew a deep breath, stepped back without removing her gaze from his
face, then with a gesture of helplessness took up her lamp.
"Good night, Hugh."
"Good night," he replied, casting about for his own lamp.
But when he turned back, she was still hesitating in the doorway. He
lifted inquiring brows.
"Hugh...."
"Yes?"
"I trust you. Be faithful, dear."
"Thank you," he returned, not without flavour of bitterness. "I'll try
to be. Good night."
She disappeared; the light of her lamp faded, flickering in the draught
of the hall, stencilled the wall with its evanescent caricature of the
balustrade, and was no longer visible.
"Hugh!" her voice rang from the upper floor.
He started violently out of deep abstraction, and replied inquiringly.
"You won't forget to lock the door?"
He swore violently beneath his breath; controlled his temper and
responded pleasantly: "Certainly not."
Then he shut the outside door with a convincing bang.
"If this be marriage...!" He smiled his twisted smile, laughed a little
quietly, and became again his normal, good-natured self, if a little
unusually preoccupied.
Leaving the kitchen light turned low, he went to his own room and, as on
the previous night, threw himself upon the bed without undressing; but
this time with no thought of sleep. Indeed, he had no expectation of
closing his eyes in slumber before the next night, at the earliest; he
had no intention other than to attempt to swim to the nearest land. In
the illusion of night, his judgment worked upon by his emotions, that
plan which had during the afternoon suggested itself, been thoroughly
considered, rejected as too desperately dangerous, and then reconsidered
in the guise of their only possible chance of escape at any reasonably
early date, began to assume a deceptive semblance of feasibility.
He did not try to depreciate its perils: the tides that swept through
that funnel-shaped channel were unquestionably heavy: heavier than even
so strong a swimmer as he should be called upon to engage; the chances
of being swept out to sea were appallingly heavy. The slightest error in
judgment, the least miscalculation of the turn of the tide, and he was
as good as lost.
On the other hand, with a little good luck, by leaving the house shortly
after moonrise, he should be able to catch the tide just as it was
nearing high water. Allowing it to swing him northwest until it fulled,
he ought to be a third of the way across by the time it slackened, and
two-thirds of the distance before it turned seawards again. And the
distance was only three miles or so.
And the situation on the island had grown unendurable. He doubted his
strength to stand the torment and the provocation of another day.
Allow an hour and a half for the swim--say, two; another hour in which
to find a boat; and another to row or sail back: four hours. He should
be back upon the island long before dawn, even if delayed. Surely no
harm could come to her in that time; surely he ought to be able to
reckon on her sleeping through his absence--worn down by the stress of
the day's emotions as she must certainly be. True, he had given her to
understand he would not leave her; but she need not know until his
return; and then his success would have earned him forgiveness.
An hour dragged out its weary length, and the half of another while he
reasoned with himself, drugging his conscience and his judgment alike
with trust in his lucky star. In all that time he heard no sound from
the room above him; and for his part he lay quite unstirring, his whole
body relaxed, resting against the trial of strength to come.
Insensibly the windows of his room, that looked eastward, filled with
the pale spectral promise of the waning moon. He rose, with infinite
precaution against making any noise, and looked out. The night was no
less placid than the day had been. The ruins of his three beacons shone
like red winking eyes in the black face of night. Beyond them the sky
was like a dome of crystal, silvery green. And as he looked, an edge of
silver shone on the distant rim of the waters; and then the moon,
misshapen, wizened and darkling, heaved sluggishly up from the deeps.
Slowly, on tiptoes, Whitaker stole toward the door, out into the hall;
at the foot of the stairs he paused, listening with every nerve tense
and straining; he fancied he could just barely detect the slow, regular
respiration of the sleeping woman. And he could see that the upper
hallway was faintly aglow. She had left her lamp burning, the door open.
Last night, though the lamp had burned till dawn, that door had been
closed....
He gathered himself together again, took a single step on toward the
kitchen; and then, piercing suddenly the absolute stillness within the
house, a board squealed like an animal beneath his tread.
In an instant he heard the thud and patter of her footsteps above, her
loud, quickened breathing as she leaned over the balustrade, looking
down, and her cry of dismay: "Hugh! Hugh!"
He halted, saying in an even voice: "Yes; it is I." She had already seen
him; there was no use trying to get away without her knowledge now;
besides, he was no sneak-thief to fly from a cry. He burned with
resentment, impatience and indignation, but he waited stolidly enough
while the woman flew down the stairs to his side.
"Hugh," she demanded, white-faced and trembling, "what is the matter?
Where are you going?"
He moved his shoulders uneasily, forcing a short laugh. "I daresay
you've guessed it. Undoubtedly you have. Else why--" He didn't finish
save by a gesture of resignation.
"You mean you were going--going to try to swim to the mainland?"
"I meant to try it," he confessed.
"But, Hugh--your promise?"
"I'm sorry, Mary; I didn't want to promise. But you see ... this state
of things cannot go on. Something has got to be done. It's the only way
I know of. I--I can't trust myself--"
"You'd leave me here while you went to seek death--!"
"Oh, it isn't as dangerous as all that. If you'd only been asleep, as I
thought you were, I'd've been back before you knew anything about it."
"I should have known!" she declared passionately. "I _was_ asleep, but I
knew the instant you stirred. Tell me; how long did you stand listening
here, to learn if I was awake or not?"
"Several minutes."
"I knew it, though I was asleep, and didn't waken till the board
squeaked. I knew you would try it--knew it from the time when you
quibbled and evaded and wouldn't give me a straight promise. Oh, Hugh,
my Hugh, if you had gone and left me...!"
Her voice shook and broke. She swayed imperceptibly toward him, then
away, resting a shoulder against the wall and quivering as though she
would have fallen but for that support. He found himself unable to
endure the reproach of those dark and luminous eyes set in the mask of
pallor that was her face in the half-light of the hallway. He looked
away, humbled, miserable, pained.
"It's too bad," he mumbled. "I'm sorry you had to know anything about
it. But ... it can't be helped, Mary. You've got to brace up. I won't be
gone four hours at the longest."
"Four hours!" She stood away from the wall, trembling in every limb.
"Hugh, you--you don't mean--you're not going--_now_?"
He nodded a wretched, makeshift affirmation.
"It must be done," he muttered. "Please--"
"But it must not be done! Hugh!" Her voice ascended "I--I can't let you.
I won't let you! You ... It'll be your death--you'll drown. I shall have
let you go to your death--"
"Oh, now, really--" he protested.
"But, Hugh, I _know_ it! I feel it here." A hand strayed to rest,
fluttering, above her heart. "If I should let you go ... Oh, my dear
one, don't, don't go!"
"Mary," he began hoarsely, "I tell you--"
"You're only going, Hugh, because ... because I love you so I ... I am
afraid to let you love me. That's true, isn't it? Hugh--it's true?"
"I can't stay ..." he muttered with a hang-dog air.
She sought support of the wall again, her body shaken by dry sobbing
that it tore his heart to hear. "You--you're really going--?"
He mumbled an almost inaudible avowal of his intention.
"Hugh, you're killing me! If you leave me--"
He gave a gesture of despair and capitulation.
"I've done my best, Mary. I meant to do the right thing. I--"
"Hugh, you mean you won't go?" Joy from a surcharged heart rang vibrant
in every syllable uttered in that marvellous voice.
But now he dared meet her eyes. "Yes," he said, "I won't go"--nodding,
with an apologetic shadow of his twisted smile. "I can't if ... if it
distresses you."
"Oh, my dear, my dear!"
Whitaker started, staggered with amaze, and the burden of his wife in
his arms. Her own arms clipped him close. Her fragrant tear-gemmed face
brushed his. He knew at last the warmth of her sweet mouth, the dear
madness of that first caress.
The breathless seconds spun their golden web of minutes. They did not
move. Round them the silence sang like the choiring seraphim....
Then through the magical hush of that time when the world stood still,
the thin, clear vibrations of a distant hail:
"_Aho-oy!_"
In his embrace his wife stiffened and lifted her head to listen like a
startled fawn. As one their hearts checked, paused, then hammered
wildly. With a common impulse they started apart.
"You heard--?"
"Listen!" He held up a hand.
This time it rang out more near and most unmistakable:
"Ahoy! The house, ahoy!"
With the frenzied leap of a madman, Whitaker gained the kitchen door,
shook it, controlled himself long enough to draw the bolt, and flung out
into the dim silvery witchery of the night. He stood staring, while the
girl stole to his side and caught his arm. He passed it round her,
lifted the other hand, dumbly pointed toward the northern beach. For the
moment he could not trust himself to speak.
In the sweep of the anchorage a small white yacht hovered ghostlike,
broadside to the island, her glowing ports and green starboard lamp
painting the polished ebony of the still waters with the images of many
burning candles.
On the beach itself a small boat was drawn up. A figure in white waited
near it. Issuing from the deserted fishing settlement, rising over the
brow of the uplands, moved two other figures in white and one in darker
clothing, the latter leading the way at a rapid pace.
With one accord Whitaker and his wife moved down to meet them. As they
drew together, the leader of the landing party checked his pace and
called:
"Hello there! Who are you? What's the meaning of your fires--?"
Mechanically Whitaker's lips uttered the beginning of the response:
"Shipwrecked--signalling for help--"
"Whitaker!" the voice of the other interrupted with a jubilant shout.
"Thank God we've found you!"
It was Ember.
XX
TEMPERAMENTAL
Seldom, perhaps, has an habitation been so unceremoniously vacated as
was the solitary farm-house on that isolated island. Whitaker delayed
only long enough to place a bill, borrowed from Ember, on the kitchen
table, in payment for what provisions they had consumed, and to
extinguish the lamps and shut the door.
Ten minutes later he occupied a chair beneath an awning on the after
deck of the yacht, and, with an empty glass waiting to be refilled
between his fingers and a blessed cigar fuming in the grip of his teeth,
stared back to where their rock of refuge rested, brooding over its
desolation, losing bulk and conformation and swiftly blending into a
small dark blur upon the face of the waters.
"Ember," he demanded querulously, "what the devil is that place?"
"You didn't know?" Ember asked, amused.
"Not the smell of a suspicion. This is the first pleasure, in a manner
of speaking, cruise I've taken up along this coast. I'm a bit weak on
its hydrography."
"Well, if that's the case, I don't mind admitting that it is No Man's
Land."
"I'm strong for its sponsors in baptism. They were equipped with a
strong sense of the everlasting fitness of things. And the other--?"
"Martha's Vineyard. That's Gay Head--the headland with the lighthouse.
Off to the north of it, the Elizabeth Islands. Beyond them, Buzzards
Bay. This neat little vessel is now standing about west-no'th-west to
pick up Point Judith light--if you'll stand for the nautical patois.
After that, barring a mutiny on the part of the passengers, she'll swing
on to Long Island Sound. If we're lucky, we'll be at anchor off East
Twenty-fourth Street by nine o'clock to-morrow morning. Any kick
coming?"
"Not from me. You might better consult--my wife," said Whitaker with an
embarrassed laugh.
"Thanks, no: if it's all the same to you. Besides, I've turned her over
to the stewardess, and I daresay she won't care to be interrupted. She's
had a pretty tough time of it: I judge from your rather disreputable
appearance. Really, you're cutting a most romantical, shocking figger."
"Glad of that," Whitaker remarked serenely. "Give me another drink.... I
like to be consistent--wouldn't care to emerge from a personally
conducted tour of all hell looking like a George Cohan chorus-boy....
Lord! how good tobacco does taste after you've gone without it a few
days!... Look here: I've told you how things were with us, in brief; but
I'm hanged if you've disgorged a single word of explanation as to how
you came to let Drummond slip through your fingers, to say nothing of
how you managed to find us."
"He didn't slip through my fingers," Ember retorted. "He launched a
young earthquake at my devoted head and disappeared before the dust
settled. More explicitly: I had got him to the edge of the woods, that
night, when something hit me from behind and my light went out in a
blaze of red fire. I came to some time later with a tasty little gag in
my mouth and the latest thing in handcuffs on my wrists, behind my
back--the same handcuffs that I'd decorated Drummond with--and several
fathoms of rope wound round my legs. I lay there--it was a sort of open
work barn--until nearly midnight the following night. Then the owner
happened along, looking for something he'd missed--another ass, I
believe--and let me loose. By the time I'd pulled myself together, from
what you tell me, you were piling up on the rocks back there."
"Just before dawn, yesterday."
"Precisely. Finding you'd vacated the bungalow, I interviewed Sum Fat
and Elise, and pieced together a working hypothesis. It was easy enough
to surmise Drummond had some pal or other working with him: _I_ was
slung-shotted from behind, while Drummond was walking ahead. And two men
had worked in the kidnapping of Mrs. Whitaker. So I went sleuthing;
traced you through the canal to Peconic; found eye-witnesses of your
race as far as Sag Harbor. There I lost you--and there I borrowed this
outfit from a friend, an old-time client of mine. Meanwhile I'd had a
general alarm sent out to the police authorities all along the
coast--clear to Boston. No one had seen anything of you anywhere. It was
heavy odds-on, that you'd gone to the bottom in that blow, all of you;
but I couldn't give up. We kept cruising, looking up unlikely places.
And, at that, we were on the point of throwing up the sponge when I
picked up a schooner that reported signal fires on No Man's Land.... I
think that clears everything up."
"Yes," said Whitaker, sleepily. "And now, without ingratitude, may I ask
you to lead me to a bath and my bunk. I have just about fifteen minutes
of semi-consciousness to go on."
Nor was this exaggeration; it was hard upon midnight, and he had been
awake since before dawn of a day whose course had been marked by a
succession of increasingly exhaustive emotional crises, following a
night of interrupted and abbreviated rest; add to this the inevitable
reaction from high nervous tension. His reserve vitality seemed barely
sufficient to enable him to keep his eyes open through the rite of the
hot salt-water bath. After that he gave himself blindly into Ember's
guidance, and with a mumbled, vague good night, tumbled into the berth
assigned him. And so strong was his need of sleep that it was not until
ten o'clock the following morning, when the yacht lay at her mooring in
the East River, that Ember succeeded in rousing him by main strength and
good-will.
This having been accomplished, he was left to dress and digest the fact
that his wife had gone ashore an hour ago, after refusing to listen to a
suggestion that Whitaker be disturbed. The note Ember handed him
purported to explain what at first blush seemed a singularly ungrateful
and ungracious freak. It was brief, but in Whitaker's sight eminently
adequate and compensating.
"DEAREST BOY: I won't let them wake you, but I must run away. It's
early and I _must_ do some shopping before people are about. My
house here is closed; Mrs. Secretan is in Maine with the only keys
aside from those at Great West Bay; and I'm a _positive fright_ in
a coat and skirt borrowed from the stewardess. I don't want even
you to see me until I'm decently dressed. I shall put up at the
Waldorf; come there to-night, and we will dine together. Every
fibre of my being loves you.
"MARY."
Obviously not a note to be cavilled at. Whitaker took a serene and
shining face to breakfast in the saloon, under the eyes of Ember.
Veins of optimism and of gratulation like threads of gold ran through
the texture of their talk. There seemed to exist a tacit understanding
that, with the death of Drummond, the cloud that had shadowed the career
of Sara Law had lifted, while her renunciation of her public career had
left her with a future of glorified serenity and assured happiness. By
common consent, with an almost superstitious awe, they begged the
question of the shadowed and inexplicable past--left the dead past to
bury itself, bestowing all their fatuous concern with the to-day of
rejoicing and the to-morrow of splendid promise.
Toward noon they parted ashore, each taking a taxicab to his lodgings.
The understanding was that they were to dine together--all three,
Whitaker promising for his wife--upon the morrow.
At six that evening, returning to his rooms to dress, Whitaker found
another note awaiting him, in a handwriting that his heart recognized
with a sensation of wretched apprehension.
He dared not trust himself to read it in the public hall. It was agony
to wait through the maddeningly deliberate upward flight of the
elevator. When he at length attained to the privacy of his own
apartment, he was sweating like a panic-stricken horse. He could hardly
control his fingers to open the envelope. He comprehended its contents
with difficulty, half blinded by a swimming mist of foreboding.
"MY DEAR: I find my strength unequal to the strain of seeing you
to-night. Indeed, I am so worn out and nerve-racked that I have had
to consult my physician. He orders me immediately to a sanatorium,
to rest for a week or two. Don't worry about me. I shan't fail to
let you know as soon as I feel strong enough to see you. Forgive
me. I love you dearly.
"MARY."
The paper slipped from Whitaker's trembling hand and fluttered unheeded
to the floor. He sprang to the telephone and presently had the Waldorf
on the wire; it was true, he learned: Mrs. Whitaker had registered at
the hotel in the morning, and had left at four in the afternoon. He was
refused information as to whether she had left a forwarding address for
her mail.
He wrote her immediately, and perhaps not altogether wisely, under
stress of distraction, sending the letter by special delivery in care of
the hotel. It was returned him in due course of time, embellished with a
pencilled memorandum to the effect that Mrs. Whitaker had left no
address.
He communicated at once with Ember, promptly enlisting his willing
services. But after several days of earnest investigation the detective
confessed himself baffled.
"If you ask me," he commented at the conclusion of his report, "the
answer is: she means to be let alone until she's quite ready to see you
again. I don't pin any medals on myself for this demonstration of
extraordinary penetration; I merely point out the obvious for your own
good. Contain yourself, my dear man--and stop gnawing your knuckles like
the heavy man in a Third Avenue melodrama. It won't do any good; your
wife promised to communicate with you as soon as her health was
restored. And not only is she a woman who keeps her promise, but it is
quite comprehensible that she should have been shaken up by her
extraordinary experience to an extent we can hardly appreciate who
haven't the highly sensitive organization of a woman to contend with.
Give her time."
"I don't believe it!" Whitaker raged. "She--she loved me there on the
island. She couldn't change so quickly, bring herself to treat me so
cruelly, unless some infernal influence had been brought to bear upon
her."
"It's possible, but I--"