AN ERRAND IN VAIN, AND HOW DR. CONRAD CAME TO KNOW. CONCERNING LLOYD'S
COFFEEHOUSE, AND THE BATTLE OF CAMPERDOWN. MARSHALL HALL'S SYSTEM AND
SILVESTER'S. SOCIAL DISADVANTAGES. A CHAT WITH A CENTENARIAN, AND HOW
ROSALIND CAME TO KNOW. THOMAS LOCOCK OF ROCHESTER. ONE O'CLOCK!
"Is that you, Dr. Conrad?" It was Rosalind who spoke, through the
half-open window of her bedroom, to the happy, expectant face of
the doctor in the little front garden below. "I'm only just up, and
they're both gone out. I shall be down in a few minutes." For she had
looked into her husband's room, and then into Sally's, and concluded
they must have gone out together. So much the better! If Sally was
with him, no harm could come to him.
"I don't see them anywhere about," said the doctor. Sally had not been
gone ten minutes, and at this moment had just caught sight of Fenwick
making for the pier. The short cut down took her out of sight of the
house. Rosalind considered a minute.
"Very likely they've gone to the hotel--the 'beastly hotel,' you
know." There is the sound of a laugh, and the caress in her voice, as
she thinks of Sally, whom she is quoting. "Gerry found a friend there
last night--a German gentleman--who was to go at seven-fifty. Very
likely he's walked up to say good-bye to him. Suppose you go to meet
them! How's Mrs. Vereker this morning?"
"Do you know, I haven't seen her yet! We talked rather late, so I
left without waking her. I've been for a walk."
"Well, go and meet Gerry. I feel pretty sure he's gone there." And
thereon Dr. Conrad departed, and so, departing towards the new town,
lost sight for the time being of the pier and the coast. He went by
the steps and Albion Villas, and as he caught a glimpse therefrom
of the pier-end in the distance, had an impression of a man running
along it and shouting; but he drew no inferences, although it struck
him there was panic, with the energy of sudden action, in this man's
voice.
He arrived at the hotel, of course without meeting either Sally or
Fenwick. He had accepted them as probably there, on perhaps too slight
evidence. But they might be in the hotel. Had the German gentleman
gone?--he asked. The stony woman he addressed replied from her
precinct, with no apparent consciousness that she was addressing a
fellow-creature, that No. 148, if you meant him, had paid and gone by
last 'bus. She spoke as to space, but as one too indifferent on all
points to care much who overheard her.
Vereker thanked her, and turned to go. As he departed he caught a
fragment of conversation between her and the waiter who had produced
the brandy the evening before. He was in undress uniform--a holland or
white-jean jacket, and a red woollen comforter. He had lost his voice,
or most of it, and croaked; and his cold had got worse in the night.
He was shedding tears copiously, and wiping them on a cruet-stand he
carried in one hand. The other was engaged by an empty coal-scuttle
with a pair of slippers in it, inexplicably.
"There's a start down there. Party over the pier-end! Dr. Maccoll
he's been 'phoned for."
"Party from this hotel?"
"Couldn't say. Porcibly. No partic'lars to identify, so far."
"They're not bringing him here?"
"Couldn't say, miss; but I should say they wasn't myself."
"If you know you can say. Who told you, and what did _he_ say? Make
yourself understood."
"Dr. Maccoll he's been 'phoned for. You can inquire and see if I
ain't right. Beyond that I take no responsibility."
The Lady of the Bureau came out; moved, no doubt, by an image of
a drowned man whose resources would not meet the credits she might
be compelled to give him. She came out to the front through the
swing-door, looked up and down the road, and seemed to go back happier.
Dr. Conrad's curiosity was roused, and he started at once for the
beach, but absolutely without a trace of personal misgiving. No doubt
the tendency we all have to impute public mishaps to a special class
of people outside our own circle had something to do with this. As he
passed down an alley behind some cottages--a short way to the pier--he
was aware of a boy telling a tale in a terrified voice to a man and an
elderly woman. It was the man with the striped shirt, and the boy was
young Benjamin. He had passed on a few paces when the man called to
him, and came running after him, followed by the woman and boy.
"I ask your pardon, sir--I ask your pardon...." What he has to say
will not allow him to speak, and his words will not come. He turns for
help to his companion. "_You_ tell him, Martha woman," he says, and
gives in.
"My master thinks, sir, you may find something on the beach...."
"Something on the beach!..." Fear is coming into Dr. Conrad's face
and voice.
"Find something has happened on the beach. But they've got him
out...."
"Got him out! Got whom out? Speak up, for Heaven's sake!"
"It might be the gentleman you know, sir, and...." But the speaker's
husband, having left the telling to his wife, unfairly strikes in
here, to have the satisfaction of lightening the communication. "But
_he's_ out safe, sir. You may rely on the yoong lad." He has made
it harder for his wife to tell the rest, and she hesitates. But Dr.
Conrad has stayed for no more. He is going at a run down the sloped
passage that leads to the sea. The boy follows him, and by some
dexterous use of private thoroughfares, known to him, but not to the
doctor, arrives first, and is soon visible ahead, running towards the
scattered groups that line the beach. The man and woman follow more
slowly.
Few of those who read this, we hope, have ever had to face a shock so
appalling as the one that Conrad Vereker sustained when he came to
know what it was that was being carried up the beach from the boat
that had just been driven stern on to the shingle, as he emerged to
a full view of the sea and the running crowd, thickening as its last
stragglers arrived to meet it. But most of us who are not young have
unhappily had some experience of the sort, and many will recognise
(if we can describe it) the feeling that was his in excess when a
chance bystander--not unconcerned, for no one was that--used in his
hearing a phrase that drove the story home to him, and forced him to
understand. "It's the swimming girl from Lobjoit's, and she's
drooned." It was as well, for he had to know. What did it matter how
he became the blank thing standing there, able to say to itself, "Then
Sally is dead," and to attach their meaning to the words, but not to
comprehend why he went on living? One way of learning the thing that
closes over our lives and veils the sun for all time is as good as
another; but how came he to be so colourlessly calm about it?
If we could know how each man feels who hears in the felon's dock the
sentence of penal servitude for life, it may be we should find that
Vereker's sense of being for the moment a cold, unexplained unit in an
infinite unfeeling void, was no unusual experience. But this unit knew
mechanically what had happened perfectly well, and its duty was clear
before it. Just half a second for this sickness to go off, and he
would act.
It was a longer pause than it seemed to him, as all things appeared to
happen quickly in it, somewhat as in a photographic life-picture when
the films are run too quick. At least, that remained his memory of
it. And during that time he stood and wondered why he could not feel.
He thought of her mother and of Fenwick, and said to himself they
were to be pitied more than he; for they were human, and _could_ feel
it--could really know what jewel they had lost--had hearts to grieve
and eyes to weep with. He had nothing--was a stupid blank! Oh, he had
been mistaken about himself and his love: he was a stone.
A few moments later than his first sight of that silent crowd--moments
in which the world had changed and the sun had become a curse;
in which he had for some reason--not grief, for he could not
grieve--resolved on death, except in an event he dared not hope
for--he found himself speaking to the men who had borne up the beach
the thing whose germ of life, if it survived, was _his_ only chance
of life hereafter.
"I am a doctor; let me come." The place they had brought it to was a
timber structure that was held as common property by the fisher-world,
and known as Lloyd's Coffeehouse. It was not a coffeehouse, but
a kind of spontaneous club-room, where the old men sat and smoked
churchwarden pipes, and told each other tales of storm and wreck, and
how the news of old sea-battles came to St. Sennans in their boyhood;
of wives made widows for their country's good, and men all sound of
limb when the first gun said "Death!" across the water, crippled for
all time when the last said "Victory!" and there was silence and the
smell of blood. Over the mantel was an old print of the battle of
Camperdown, with three-deckers in the smoke, flanked by portraits of
Rodney and Nelson. There was a long table down the centre that had
been there since the days of Rodney, and on this was laid what an hour
ago was Sally; what each man present fears to uncover the face of, but
less on his own account than for the sake of the only man who seems
fearless, and lays hands on the cover to remove it; for all knew, or
guessed, what this dead woman might be--might have been--to this man.
"I am a doctor; let me come."
"Are ye sure ye know, young master? Are ye sure, boy?" The speaker,
a very old man, interposes a trembling hand to save Vereker from what
he may not anticipate, perhaps has it in mind to beseech him to give
place to the local doctor, just arriving. But the answer is merely, "I
know." And the hand that uncovers the dead face never wavers, and then
that white thing we see is all there is of Sally--that coil and tangle
of black hair, all mixed with weed and sea-foam, is the rich mass that
was drying in the sun that day she sat with Fenwick on the beach;
those eyes that strain behind the half-closed eyelids were the merry
eyes that looked up from the water at the boat she dived from two days
since; those lips are the lips the man who stands beside her kissed
but yesterday for the first time. The memory of that kiss is on him
now as he wipes the sea-slime from them and takes the first prompt
steps for their salvation.
The old Scotch doctor, who came in a moment later, wondered at the
resolute decision and energy Vereker was showing. He had been told
credibly of the circumstances of the case, and gave way on technical
points connected with resuscitation, surrendering views he would
otherwise have contended for about Marshall Hall's and Silvester's
respective systems. Perhaps one reason for this was that auscultation
of the heart convinced him that the case was hopeless, and he may
have reflected that if any other method than Dr. Vereker's was used
that gentleman was sure to believe the patient might have been saved.
Better leave him to himself.
* * * * *
Rosalind returned to her dressing, after Dr. Conrad walked away from
the house, with a feeling--not a logical one--that now she need not
hurry. Why having spoken with him and forwarded him on to look for
Sally and Gerry should make any difference was not at all clear,
and she did not account to herself for it. She accepted it as an
occurrence that put her somehow in touch with the events of the
day--made her a part of what was going on elsewhere. She had felt
lapsed, for the moment, when, waking suddenly to advanced daylight,
she had gone first to her husband's room and then to Sally's, and
found both empty. The few words spoken from her window with her
recently determined son-in-law had switched on her current again,
metaphorically speaking.
So she took matters easily, and was at rest about her husband, in
spite of the episode of the previous evening--rather, we should have
said, of the small hours of that morning. The fact is, it was her
first sleep she had waked from, an unusually long and sound one
after severe tension, and in the ordinary course of events she would
probably have gone to sleep again. Instead, she had got up at once,
and gone to her husband's room to relieve her mind about him.
A momentary anxiety at finding it empty disappeared when she found
Sally's empty also; but by that time she was effectually waked, and
rang for Mrs. Lobjoit and the hot water.
If Mrs. Lobjoit, when she appeared with it, had been able to give
particulars of Sally's departure, and to say that she and Mr. Fenwick
had gone out separately, Rosalind would have felt less at ease about
him; but nothing transpired to show that they had not gone out
together. Mrs. Lobjoit's data were all based on the fact that she
found the street door open when she went to do down her step, and she
had finished this job and gone back into the kitchen by the time Sally
followed Fenwick out. Of course, she never came upstairs to see what
rooms were empty; why should she? And as no reason for inquiry
presented itself, the question was never raised by Rosalind. Sally
was naturally an earlier bird than herself, and quite as often as
not she would join Gerry in his walk before breakfast.
How thankful she felt, now that the revelation was over, that Sally
was within reach to help in calming down the mind that had been so
terribly shaken by it; for all her thoughts were of Gerry; on her
own behalf she felt nothing but contentment. Think what her daily
existence had been! What had she to lose by a complete removal of
the darkness that had shrouded her husband's early life with her--or
rather, what had she not to gain? Now that it had been assured to her
that nothing in the past could make a new rift between them, the only
weight upon her mind was the possible necessity for revealing to Sally
in the end the story of her parentage. What mother, to whom a like
story of her own early days was neither more nor less than a glimpse
into Hell, could have felt otherwise about communicating it to her
child? She felt, too, the old feeling of the difficulty there would be
in making Sally understand. The girl had not chanced across devildom
enough to make her an easy recipient of such a tale.
Oh, the pleasure with which she recalled his last words of the night
before: "She is _my_ daughter now!" It was the final ratification of
the protest of her life against the "rights" that Law and Usage grant
to technical paternity; rights that can only be abrogated or ignored
by a child's actual parent--its mother--at the cost of insult and
contumely from a world that worships its own folly and ignores its own
gods. Sally was hers--her own--hard as the terms of her possession had
been, and she had assigned a moiety of her rights in her to the man
she loved. What was the fatherhood of blood alone to set against
the one her motherhood had a right to concede, and had conceded, in
response to the spontaneous growth of a father's love? What claim had
devilish cruelty and treachery to any share in their result--a result
that, after all, was the only compensation possible to their victim?
We do not make this endeavour to describe Rosalind's frame of mind
with a view to either endorsing or disclaiming her opinions. We merely
record them as those of a woman whose life-story was an uncommon one;
but not without a certain sympathy for the new definition of paternity
their philosophy involves, backed by a feeling that its truth is
to some extent acknowledged in the existing marriage-law of several
countries. As a set-off against this, no woman can have a child
entirely her own except by incurring what are called "social
disadvantages." The hare that breaks covert incurs social
disadvantages. A happy turn of events had shielded Rosalind from
the hounds, or they had found better sport elsewhere. And her child
was her own.
But even as the thought was registered in her mind, that child lay
lifeless; and her husband, stunned and dumb in his despair, dared not
even long that she, too, should know, to share his burden.
"Those people are taking their time," said she. Not that she was
pressingly anxious for them to come home. It was early still, and the
more Gerry lived in the present the better. Sally and her lover were
far and away the best foreground for the panorama of his mind just
now, and she herself would be quite happy in the middle distance.
There would be time and enough hereafter, when the storm had subsided,
for a revelation of all those vanished chapters of his life in Canada
and elsewhere.
It was restful to her, after the tension and trial of the night, to
feel that he was happy with Sally and poor Prosy. What did it really
matter how long they dawdled? She could hear in anticipation their
voices and the laughter that would tell her of their coming. In a very
little while it would be a reality, and, after all, the pleasure of a
good symposium over Sally's betrothal was still to come. She and Gerry
and the two principals had not spoken of it together yet. That would
be a real happiness. How seldom it was that an engagement to marry
gave such complete satisfaction to bystanders! And, after all, _they_
are the ones to be consulted; not the insignificant bride and
bridegroom elect. Perhaps, though, she was premature in this case.
Was there not the Octopus? But then she remembered with pleasure
that Conrad had represented his mother as phenomenally genial in her
attitude towards the new arrangement; as having, in fact, a claim to
be considered not only a bestower of benign consent, but an accomplice
before the fact. Still, Rosalind felt her own reserves on the subject,
although she had always taken the part of the Octopus on principle
when she thought Sally had become too disrespectful towards her.
Anyhow, no use to beg and borrow troubles! Let her dwell on the
happiness only that was before them all. She pictured a variety of
homes for Sally in the time to come, peopling them with beautiful
grandchildren--only, mind you, this was to be many, many years ahead!
She could not cast herself for the part of grandmother while she
twined that glorious hair into its place with hands that for softness
and whiteness would have borne comparison with Sally's own.
In the old days, before the news of evil travelled fast, the widowed
wife would live for days, weeks, months, unclouded by the knowledge
of her loneliness, rejoicing in the coming hour that was to bring her
wanderer back; and even as her heart laughed to think how now, at
last, the time was drawing near for his return, his heart had ceased
to beat, and, it may be, his bones were already bleaching where the
assassin's knife had left him in the desert; or were swaying to and
fro in perpetual monotonous response to the ground-swell, in some
strange green reflected light of a sea-cavern no man's eye had ever
seen; or buried nameless in a common tomb with other victims of battle
or of plague; or, worst of all, penned in some dungeon, mad to think
of home, waking from dreams of _her_ to the terror of the intolerable
night, its choking heat or deadly chill. And all those weeks or months
the dearth of news would seem just the chance of a lost letter, no
more--a thing that may happen any day to any of us. And she would live
on in content and hope, jesting even in anticipation of his return.
Even so Rosalind, happy and undisturbed, dwelt on the days that were
to come for the merpussy and poor Prosy, as she still had chosen to
call him, for her husband and herself; and all the while _there_,
so near her, was the end of it all, written in letters of death.
They were taking their time, certainly, those people; so she would
put her hat on and go to meet them. Mrs. Lobjoit wasn't to hurry
breakfast, but wait till they came. All right!
It looked as if it would rain later, so it was just as well to get out
a little now. Rosalind was glad of the sweet air off the sea, for the
night still hung about her. The tension of it was on her still, for
all that she counted herself so much the better, so much the safer,
for that interview with Gerry. But oh, what a thing to think that
now he knew _her_ as she had known him from the beginning! How much
they would have to tell each other, when once they were well in calm
water!... Why were those girls running, and why did that young man on
the beach below shout to some one who followed him, "It's over at the
pier"?
"Is anything the matter?" She asked the question of a very old man,
whom she knew well by sight, who was hurrying his best in the same
direction. But his best was but little, as speed, though it did credit
to his age; for old Simon was said to be in his hundredth year.
Rosalind walked easily beside him as he answered:
"I oondersta'and, missis, there's been a fall from the pier-head....
Oh yes, they've getten un out; ye may easy your mind o' that." But,
for all that, Rosalind wasn't sorry her party were up at the hotel.
She had believed them there long enough to have forgotten that she
had no reason for the belief to speak of.
"You've no idea who it is?"
"Some do say a lady and a gentleman." Rosalind felt still gladder of
her confidence that Sally and Gerry were out of the way. "'Ary one of
'em would be bound to drown but for the boats smart and handy--barring
belike a swimmer like your young lady! She's a rare one, to tell of!"
"I believe she is. She swam round the Cat Buoy in a worse sea than
this two days ago."
"And she would, too!" Then the old boy's voice changed as he went on,
garrulous: "But there be seas, missis, no man can swim in. My fower
boys, they were fine swimmers--all fower!"
"But were they?..." Rosalind did not like to say drowned; but old
Simon took it as spoken.
"All fower of 'em--fine lads all--put off to the wreck--wreck o' th'
brig Thyrsis, on th' Goodwins--and ne'er a one come back. And I had
the telling of it to their mother. And the youngest, he never was
found; and the others was stone dead ashore, nigh on to the Foreland.
There was none to help. Fifty-three year ago come this Michaelmas."
"Is their mother still living?" Rosalind asked, interested. Old Simon
had got to that stage in which the pain of the past is less than
the pleasure of talking it over. "Died, she did," said he, almost as
though he were unconcerned, "thirty-five year ago--five year afower
ever I married my old missis yander." Rosalind felt less sympathy. If
she were to lose Sally or Gerry, would she ever be able to talk like
this, even if she lived to be ninety-nine? Possibly yes--only she
could not know it now. She felt too curious about what had happened
at the pier to think of going back, and walked on with old Simon,
not answering him much. He seemed quite content to talk.
She did not trouble herself on the point of her party returning
and not finding her. Ten chances to one they would hear about the
accident, and guess where she had gone. Most likely they would follow
her. Besides, she meant to go back as soon as ever she knew what had
happened.
Certainly there were a great many people down there round about
Lloyd's Coffeehouse! Had a life been lost? How she hoped not! What
a sad end it would be to such a happy holiday as theirs had been! She
said something to this effect to the old man beside her. His reply
was: "Ye may doubt of it, in my judgment, missis. The rowboats were
not long enough agone for that. Mayhap he'll take a bit of nursing
round, though." But he quickened his pace, and Rosalind was sorry that
a sort of courtesy towards him stood in her way. She would have liked
to go much quicker.
She could not quite understand the scared look of a girl to whom she
said, "Is it a bad accident? Do you know who it is?" nor why this girl
muttered something under her breath, then got away, nor why so many
eyes, all tearful, should be fixed on _her_. She asked again of the
woman nearest her, "Do you know who it is?" but the woman gasped, and
became hysterical, making her afraid she had accosted some anxious
relative or near friend, who could not bear to speak of it. And still
all the eyes were fixed upon her. A shudder ran through her. Could
that be pity she saw in them--pity for _her_?
"For God's sake, tell me at once! Tell me what this is...."
Still silence! She could hear through it sobs here and there in the
crowd, and then two women pointed to where an elderly man who looked
like a doctor came from a doorway close by. She heard the hysterical
woman break down outright, and her removal by friends, and then the
strong Scotch accent of the doctor-like man making a too transparent
effort towards an encouraging tone.
"There's nae reason to anteecipate a fatal tairmination, so far.
I wouldna undertake myself to say the seestolic motion of the heart
was...." But he hesitated, with a puzzled look, as Rosalind caught his
arm and hung to it, crying out: "Why do you tell _me_ this? For God's
sake, speak plain! I am stronger than you think."
His answer came slowly, in an abated voice, but clearly: "Because they
tauld me ye were the girl's mither."
In the short time that had passed since Rosalind's mind first admitted
an apprehension of evil the worst possibility it had conceived was
that Vereker or her husband was in danger. No misgiving about Sally
had entered it, except so far as a swift thought followed the fear
of mishap to one of them. "How shall Sally be told of this? When and
where will she know?"
Two of the women caught her as she fell, and carried her at the Scotch
doctor's bidding into a house adjoining, where Fenwick had been
carried in a half-insensible collapse that had followed his landing
from the cobble-boat in which he was sculled ashore.
* * * * *
"Tell me what has happened. Where is Dr. Vereker?" Rosalind asks the
question of any of the fisher-folk round her as soon as returning
consciousness brings speech. They look at each other, and the woman
the cottage seems to belong to says interrogatively, "The young
doctor-gentleman?" and then answers the last question. He is looking
to the young lady in at the Coffeehouse. But no one says what has
happened. Rosalind looks beseechingly round.
"Will you not tell me now? Oh, tell me--tell me the whole!"
"It's such a little we know ourselves, ma'am. But my husband will be
here directly. It was he brought the gentleman ashore...."
"Where is the gentleman?" Rosalind has caught up the speaker with
a decisive rally. Her natural strength is returning, prompted by
something akin to desperation.
"We have him in here, ma'am. But he's bad, too! Here's my husband.
Have ye the brandy, Tom?"
Rosalind struggles to her feet from the little settee they had laid
her on. Her head is swimming, and she is sick, but she says: "Let
me come!" She has gathered this much--that whatever has happened to
Sally, Vereker is there beside her, and the other doctor she knows
of. She can do nothing, and Gerry is close at hand. They let her
come, and the woman and her husband follow. The one or two others
go quietly out; there were too many for the tiny house.
That is Gerry, she can see, on the trestle-bedstead near the window
with the flowerpots in it. He seems only half conscious, and his hands
and face are cold. She cannot be sure that he has recognised her.
Then she knows she is being spoken to. It is the fisherman's wife
who speaks.
"We could find no way to get the gentleman's wet garments from him,
but we might make a shift to try again. He's a bit hard to move. Not
too much at once, Tom." Her husband is pouring brandy from his flask
into a mug.
"Has he had any brandy?"
"Barely to speak of. Tell the lady, Tom!"
"No more than the leaving of a flask nigh empty out in my boat. It did
him good, too. He got the speech to tell of the young lady, else--God
help us!--we might have rowed him in, and lost the bit of water she
was under. But we had the luck to find her." It was the owner of the
cobble who spoke.
"Gerry, drink some of this at once. It's me--Rosey--your wife!" She is
afraid his head may fail, for anything may happen now; but the brandy
the fisherman's wife has handed to her revives him. No one speaks for
awhile, and Rosalind, in the dazed state that so perversely notes and
dwells on some small thing of no importance, and cannot grasp the
great issue of some crisis we are living through, is keenly aware of
the solemn ticking of a high grandfather clock, and of the name of the
maker on its face--"Thomas Locock, Rochester." She sees it through
the door into the front room, and wonders what the certificate or
testimonial in a frame beside it is; and whether the Bible on the table
below it, beside the fat blue jug with a ship and inscriptions on it,
has illustrations and the Stem of Jesse rendered pictorially. Or is it
"Pilgrim's Progress," and no Bible at all? Who or what is she, that can
sit and think of this and that, knowing that a world--her world and her
husband's--is at stake, and that a terrible game is being played to
save it, there within twenty yards of them? If she could only have
given active help! But that she knows is impossible. She knows enough
to be satisfied that all that can be done is being done; that even
warmth and stimulants are useless, perhaps even injurious, till
artificial respiration has done its work. She can recall Sally's voice
telling her of these things. Yes, she is best here beside her husband.
What is it that he says in a gasping whisper? Can any one tell him
what it is has happened? She cannot--perhaps could not if she
knew--and she does not yet know herself. She repeats her question
to the fisherman and his wife. They look at each other and say young
Ben Tracy was on the pier. Call him in. It is something to know that
what has happened was on the pier. While young Ben is hunted up the
opportunity is taken to make the change of wet clothes for
extemporised dry ones. The half-drowned, all-chilled, and bewildered
man is reviving, and can help, though rigidly and with difficulty.
Then Ben is brought in, appalled and breathless.
The red-eyed and tear-stained boy is in bad trim for giving evidence,
but under exhortation to speak up and tell the lady he articulates his
story through his sobs. He is young, and can cry. He goes back to the
beginning.
His father told him to run and hunt round for the life-belt, and he
went to left instead of to right, and missed of seeing it. And he
was at the top o' the ladder, shooat'un aloud to his father, and the
gentleman--he nodded towards Fenwick--was walking down below. Then the
young lady came to the top stair of the ladder. The narrator threw all
his powers of description into the simultaneousness of Sally's arrival
at this point and the gentleman walking straight over the pier-edge.
"And then the young lady she threw away her hat, and come runnin'
down, runnin' down, and threw away her cloak, she _did_, and stra'at
she went for t' wa'ater!" Young Benjamin's story and his control over
his sobs come to an end at the same time, and his father, just
arrived, takes up the tale.
"I saw there was mishap in it," he says, "by the manner of my young
lad with the lady's hat, and I went direct for the life-belt, for
I'm no swimmer myself. Tom, man, tell the lady I'm no swimmer...."
Tom nodded assent, "... or I might have tried my luck. It was a bad
business that the life-belt was well away at the far end, and I had no
chance to handle it in time. It was the run of the tide took them out
beyond the length of the line, and I was bound to make the best throw
I could, and signal to shore for a boat." He was going to tell how the
only little boat at the pier-end had got water-logged in the night,
when Rosalind interrupted him.
"Did you see them both in the water?"
"Plain. The young lady swimming behind and keeping the gentleman's
head above the water. I could hear her laughing like, and talking.
Then I sent the belt out, nigh half-way, and she saw it and swam
for it. Then I followed my young lad for to get out a shore-boat."
It was the thought of the merpussy laughing like and talking in the
cruel sea that was to engulf her that brought a heart-broken choking
moan from her mother. Then, all being told, the fisher-folk glanced
at each other, and by common consent went noiselessly from the room
and lingered whispering outside. They closed the outer door, leaving
the cottage entirely to Rosalind and her husband, and then they two
were alone in the darkened world; and Conrad Vereker, whom they could
not help, was striving--striving against despair--to bring back life
to Sally.
* * * * *
A terrible strain--an almost killing strain--had been put upon
Fenwick's powers of endurance. Probably the sudden shock of his
immersion, the abrupt suppression of an actual fever almost at the
cost of sanity, had quite as much to do with this as what he was at
first able to grasp of the extent of the disaster. But actual chill
and exposure had contributed their share to the state of semi-collapse
in which Rosalind found him. Had the rower of the cobble turned
in-shore at once, some of this might have been saved; but that would
have been one pair of eyes the fewer, and every boat was wanted. Now
that his powerful constitution had the chance to reassert itself, his
revival went quickly. He was awakening to a world with a black grief
in it; but Rosey was there, and had to be lived for, and think of his
debt to her! Think of the great wrong he did her in that old time that
he had only regained the knowledge of yesterday! Her hand in his gave
him strength to speak, and though his voice was weak it would reach
the head that rested on his bosom.
"I can tell you now, darling, what I remember. I went off feverish
in the night after you left me, and I suppose my brain gave way, in
a sense. I went out early to shake it off, and a sort of delusion
completely got the better of me. I fancied I was back at Bombay, going
on the boat for Australia, and I just stepped off the pier-edge. Our
darling must have been there. Oh, Sally, Sally!..." He had to pause
and wait.
"Hope is not all dead--not yet, not yet!" Rosalind's voice seemed
to plead against despair.
"I know, Rosey dearest--not yet. I heard her voice ... oh, her
voice!... call to me to be still, and she would save me. And then
I felt her dear hand ... first my arm, then my head, on each side."
Again his voice was choking, but he recovered. "Then, somehow, the
life-belt was round me--I can't tell how, but she made me hold it so
as to be safe. She was talking and laughing, but I could not hear
much. I know, however, that she said quite suddenly, 'I had better
swim back to the pier. Hold on tight, Jeremiah!'..." He faltered again
before ending. "I don't know why she went, but she said, 'I must go,'
and swam away."
That was all Fenwick could tell. The explanation came later. It was
that unhappy petticoat-tape! A swimmer's leg-stroke may be encumbered
in a calm sea, or when the only question is of keeping afloat for
awhile. But in moderately rough water, and in a struggle against
a running tide--which makes a certain speed imperative--the conditions
are altered. Sally may have judged wrongly in trying to return to the
pier, but remember--she could not in the first moments know that the
mishap had been seen, and help was near at hand. Least of all could
she estimate the difficulty of swimming in a loosened encumbered
skirt. In our judgment, she would have done better to remain near the
life-belt, even if she, too, had ultimately had to depend on it. The
additional risk for Fenwick would have been small.
After he had ended what he had to tell he remained quite still, and
scarcely spoke during the hour that followed. Twice or three times
during that hour Rosalind rose to go out and ask if there was any
change. But, turning to him with her hand on the door, and asking
"Shall I go?" she was always met with "What good will it do? Conrad
will tell us at once," and returned to her place beside him. After
all, what she heard might be the end of Hope. Better stave off Despair
to the last.
She watched the deliberate hands of the clock going cruelly on,
unfaltering, ready to register in cold blood the moment that should
say that Sally, as they knew her, was no more. Thomas Locock, of
Rochester, had taken care of that. Where would those hands be on that
clock-face when all attempt at resuscitation had to stop? And why live
after it?
She fancied she could hear, at intervals, Dr. Conrad's voice giving
instructions; and the voice of the Scotsman, less doubtfully, which
always sounded like that of a medical man, for some reason not
defined. As the clock-hand pointed to ten, she heard both quite
near--outside Lloyd's Coffeehouse, evidently. Then she knew why she
had so readily relinquished her purpose of getting at Dr. Conrad
for news. It was the dread of seeing anything of the necessary
manipulation of the body. Could she have helped, it would have been
different. No, if she must look upon her darling dead, let it be
later. But now there was that poor fellow-sufferer within reach,
and she could see him without fear. She went out quickly.
"Can you come away?"
"Quite safely for a minute. The others have done it before."
"Is there a chance?"
"There is a chance." Dr. Conrad's hand as she grasps it is so cold
that it makes her wonder at the warmth of her own. She is strangely
alive to little things. "Yes--there _is_ a chance," he repeats, more
emphatically, as one who has been contradicted. But the old Scotch
doctor had only said cautiously, "It would be airly times to be
geevin' up hopes," in answer to a half-suggestion of reference to him
in the words just spoken. Rosalind keeps the cold hand that has taken
hers, and the crushing weight of her own misery almost gives place to
her utter pity for the ash-white face before her, and the tale there
is in it of a soul in torture.
"What is the longest time ... the longest time...?" she cannot frame
her question, but both doctors take its meaning at once, repeating
together or between them, "The longest insensibility after immersion?
Many hours."
"But how many?" Six, certainly, is Dr. Conrad's testimony. But the
Scotchman's conscience plagues him; he must needs be truthful. "Vara
likely you're right," he says. "I couldna have borne testimony
pairsonally to more than two. But vara sairtainly you're more likely
to be right than I." His conscience has a chilling effect.
Fenwick, a haggard spectacle, has staggered to the door of the
cottage. He wants to get the attention of some one in the crowd that
stands about in silence, never intrusively near. It is the father of
young Benjamin, who comes being summoned.
"That man you told me about...." Fenwick begins.
"Peter Burtenshaw?"
"Ah! How long was he insensible?"
"Eight hours--rather better! We got him aboard just before eight bells
of the second dog-watch, and it was eight bells of the middle watch
afore he spoke. Safe and sure! Wasn't I on the morning-watch myself,
and beside him four hours of the night before, and turned in at eight
bells? He'll tell you the same tale himself. Peter Burtenshaw--he's
a stevedore now, at the new docks at Southampton." Much of this was
quite unintelligible--ship's time is always a problem--but it was
reassuring, and Rosalind felt grateful to the speaker, whether what he
said was true or not. In that curious frame of mind that observed the
smallest things, she was just aware of the difficulty in the way of
a reference to Peter Burtenshaw at the new docks at Southampton. Then
she felt a qualm of added sickness at heart as she all but thought,
"How that will amuse Sally when I come to tell it to her!"
The old Scotchman had to keep an appointment--connected with birth,
not death. "I've geen my pledge to the wench's husband," he said, and
went his way. Rosalind saw him stopped as he walked through the groups
that were lingering silently for a chance of good news; and guessed
that he had none to give, by the way his questioners fell back
disappointed. She was conscious that the world was beginning to reel
and swim about her; was half asking herself what could it all
mean--the waiting crowds of fisher-folk speaking in undertones among
themselves; the pitying eyes fixed on her and withdrawn as they met
her own; the fixed pallor and tense speech of the man who held her
hand, then left her to return again to an awful task that had, surely,
something to do with her Sally, there in that cramped tarred-wood
structure close down upon the beach. What did his words mean: "I must
go back; it is best for you to keep away"? Oh, yes; now she knew, and
it was all true. She saw how right he was, but she read in his eyes
the reason why he was so strong to face the terror that she knew was
_there_--in _there_! It was that he knew so well that death would be
open to him if defeat was to be the end of the battle he was fighting.
But there should be no panic. Not an inch of ground should be
uncontested.
Back again in the little cottage with Gerry, but some one had helped
her back. Surely, though, his voice had become his own again as he
said: "We are no use, Rosey darling. We are best here. Conrad knows
what he's about." And there was a rally of real hope, or a bold bid
for it, when his old self spoke in his words: "Why does that solemn
old fool of a Scotch doctor want to put such a bad face on the matter?
Patience, sweetheart, patience!"
For them there was nothing else. They could hinder, but they could not
help, outside there. Nothing for it now but to count the minutes as
they passed, to feel the cruelty of that inexorable clock in the
stillness; for the minutes passed too quickly. How could it be else,
when each one of them might have heralded a hope and did not; when
each bequeathed its little legacy of despair? But was there need
that each new clock-tick as it came should say, as the last had said:
"Another second has gone of the little hour that is left; another inch
of the space that parts us from the sentence that knows no respite or
reprieve"? Was it not enough that the end must come, without the throb
of that monotonous reminder: "Nearer still!--nearer still!"
Neither spoke but a bare word or two, till the eleventh stroke of the
clock, at the hour, left it resonant and angry, and St. Sennans tower
answered from without. Then Rosalind said, "Shall I go out and see,
now?" and Fenwick replied, "Do, darling, if you wish to. But he would
tell us at once, if there were anything." She answered, "Yes, perhaps
it's no use," and fell back into silence.
She was conscious that the crowd outside had increased, in spite of a
fine rain that had followed the overclouding of the morning. She could
hear the voices of other than the fisher-folk--some she recognised as
those of beach acquaintance. That was Mrs. Arkwright, the mother of
Gwenny. And that was Gwenny herself, crying bitterly. Rosalind knew
quite well, though she could hear no words, that Gwenny was being told
that she could not go to Miss Nightingale now. She half thought she
would like to have Gwenny in, to cry on her and make her perhaps feel
less like a granite-block in pain. But, then, was not Sally a baby of
three once? She could remember the pleasure the dear old Major had at
seeing baby in her bath, and how he squeezed a sponge over her head,
and she screwed her eyes up. He had died in good time, and escaped
this inheritance of sorrow. How could she have told him of it?
What was she that had outlived him to bear all this? Much, so much,
of her was two dry, burning eyes, each in a ring of pain, that had
forgotten tears and what they meant. How was it that now, when that
Arkwright woman's voice brought back her talk upon the beach, not
four-and-twenty hours since, and her unwelcome stirring of the dead
embers of a burned-out past--how was it that that past, at its worst,
seemed easier to bear than this intolerable _now_? How had it come
about that a memory of twenty years ago, a memory of how she had
prayed that her unborn baby might die, rather than live to remind her
of that black stain upon the daylight, its father, had become in the
end worse to her, in her heart of hearts, than the thing that caused
it? And then she fell to wondering when it was that her child first
took hold upon her life; first crept into it, then slowly filled it
up. She went back on little incidents of that early time, asking
herself, was it then, or then, I first saw that she was Sally? She
could recall, without adding another pang to her dull, insensate
suffering, the moment when the baby, as the Major and General Pellew
sat playing chess upon the deck, captured the white king, and sent
him flying into the Mediterranean; and though she could not smile now,
could know how she would have smiled another time. Was that white king
afloat upon the water still? A score of little memories of a like sort
chased one another as her mind ran on, all through the childhood and
girlhood of their subject. And now--it was all to end....
And throughout those years this silent man beside her, this man
she meant to live for still, for all it should be in a darkened
world--this man was ... where? To think of it--in all those years,
no Sally for him! See what she had become to him in so short a
time--such a little hour of life! Think of the waste of it--of
what she might have been! And it was she, the little unconscious
thing herself, that sprang from what had parted them. If she
had to face all the horrors of her life anew for it, would she
flinch from one of them, only to hear that the heart that had
stopped its beating would beat again, that the voice that was
still would sound in her ears once more?
Another hour! The clock gave out its warning that it meant to strike,
in deadly earnest with its long premonitory roll. Then all those
twelve strokes so quick upon the heels of those that sounded but now,
as it seemed. Another hour from the tale of those still left but
reasonable hope; another hour nearer to despair. The reverberations
died away, and left the cold insensate tick to measure out the next
one, while St. Sennans tower gave its answer as before.
"Shall I go now, Gerry, to see?"
"I say not, darling; but go, if you like." He could not bear to hear
it, if it was to be the death-sentence. So Rosalind still sat on to
the ticking of the clock.
Her brain and powers of thought were getting numbed. Trivial things
came out of the bygone times, and drew her into dreams--back into
the past again--to give a moment's spurious peace; then forsook her
treacherously to an awakening, each time deadlier than the last. Each
time to ask anew, what could it all mean? Sally dead or dying--Sally
dead or dying! Each time she repeated the awful words to herself, to
try to get a hold she was not sure she had upon their meaning. Each
time she slipped again into a new dream and lost it.
Back again now, in the old days of her girlhood! Back in that little
front garden of her mother's house, twenty odd years ago, and Gerry's
hand in hers--the hand she held to now; and Gerry's face that now,
beside her, looked so still and white and heart-broken, all aglow with
life and thoughtless youth and hope. Again she felt upon her lips his
farewell kiss, not to be renewed until ... but at the thought she
shuddered away, horror-stricken, from the nightmare that any memory
must be of what then crossed her life, and robbed them both of
happiness. And then her powers of reason simply reeled and swam, and
her brain throbbed as she caught the thought forming in it: "Better
happiness so lost, and all the misery over again, than this blow that
has come upon us now! Sally dead or dying--Sally dead or dying!" For
what was _she_, the thing we could not bear to lose, but the living
record, the very outcome, of the poisoned soil in that field of her
life her memory shrank from treading?
What was that old Scotchman--he seemed to have come back--what was
he saying outside there? Yes, listen! Fenwick starts up, all his
life roused into his face. If only that clock would end that long
unnecessary roll of warning, and strike! But before the long-deferred
single stroke comes to say another hour has passed, he is up and at
the door, with Rosalind clinging to him terrified.
"What's the news, doctor? Tell it out, man!--never fear." Rosalind
dares not ask; her heart gives a great bound, and stops, and her teeth
chatter and close tight. She could not speak if she tried.
"I wouldna like to be over-confeedent, Mr. Fenwick, and ye'll
understand I'm only geevin' ye my own eempression...."
"Yes, quite right--go on...."
"Vara parteecularly because our young friend Dr. Vereker is unwulling
to commeet himself ... but I should say a pairceptible...."
He is interrupted. For with a loud shout Dr. Conrad himself,
dishevelled and ashy-white of face, comes running from the door
opposite. The word he has shouted so loudly he repeats twice; then
turns as though to go back. But he does not reach the door, for he
staggers suddenly, like a man struck by a bullet, and falls heavily,
insensible.
There is a movement and a shouting among the scattered groups that
have been waiting, three hours past, as those nearest at hand run to
help and raise him; and the sound of voices and exultation passes
from group to group. For what he shouted was the one word "Breath!"
And Rosalind knew its meaning as her head swam and she heard no more.