First the deed, and then the awakening. And, what a terrible
awakening!
The destroyer is racing back to the base: for the mist has now
cleared and high speed is once more possible.
Norah, in the tiny wardroom which has been given up to the three
passengers, is a prey to the most poignant remorse and anxiety.
She sits with bowed head, her eyes fixed in a steady gaze yet seeing
nothing; her arms, stretched put limply before her with the clasped
hands lying in her lap would seem nerveless and lifeless but for the
perpetual wreathing and untwining of her restless fingers, the
outward symbol of the working of her tortured brain.
No gentle waking, this, no gradual realisation of the truth by means
of observations gathered here and there and ideas slowly
accumulating, such as is granted to many a one whose whole life is
changed and reversed. Let this girl's past be condemned as
pitilessly as you will, yet there must be some pity for the cruel
shock of this blinding light that has suddenly blazed in upon her
darkened mind.
Not two hours ago she was a devoted instrument of righteous
vengeance, vowed to a high task whose awful nature inspired her all
the more deeply.
Now, she sees very clearly the utter enormity of the thing she had
planned to do. She realises the baseness of the deed itself, and the
full extent of the dreadful consequences of it. But most of all she
loathes and despises herself for having ever been so warped and
twisted mentally as not to have known herself for what she was.
Her self-scourgings are, as with most penitents in the zeal of new
conversion, laid on with too heavy a hand. She is to blame, indeed,
but not so greatly as she now imagines, not so greatly as those who
have moulded her to their own evil pattern. The truth was in her
always, stirring to burst from this false mould--else how has she
broken free now at the very moment when temptation was at its
strongest?
Yet she will not spare herself nor accept a single drop of the balm
of self-pity. All excuses she thrusts from her, before there is time
for them to become properly visualised.
"_I did not do it--that at least is true._
"_But I meant to. Though I had days and weeks to think it over, I
really meant to do it. And even at the very last moment, or almost,
I still clung to my purpose._
"_Yet--after all, I changed my mind._
"_Yes, but why? Was it because I saw the enormity of the crime I was
about to commit?_
"_Partly that; but not altogether. It was through an accident--the
accident of a man looking at me in the way he did. And if I was
hindered merely by an accident, then my real intention remains
unchanged, and I am as guilty as though the deed were actually done._"
--And so on, in endless self-torment.
Happily for her, she is not allowed to continue without intermission
in her bitter reflections. There are two of the destroyer's
officers, a surgeon-probationer, and a midshipman, who are not on
duty and are therefore free to attend to the comfort and well-being
of their guests, a task which they feel it incumbent upon them to
perform with all the hospitality at their command.
These two seem to think they must lend their presence and the
consolations of cheerful small-talk as much as possible; and although
the surgeon-probationer disappears from the little wardroom from time
to time in order to give an eye to Netta who is lying exhausted in
the destroyer captain's cabin, he soon darts back again and joins the
midshipman in a well-meaning attempt at inducing cheerfulness.
It is an uphill task, certainly. Patrick is even more silent and
moody here than he was on board the _Marathon_. He answers in gruff
monosyllables to such remarks as are addressed to him, and never
advances a single observation on his own account.
So the two young officers soon give up the attempt in his case, and
turn all their energies upon Norah. The more readily since beauty in
distress is very much more attractive than a surly unprepossessing
man, and there can be no doubt either of Norah's distress or of her
beauty.
Patrick therefore, is left to the material consolations of a whisky
bottle and a soda syphon, which his hosts feel confident must be what
he needs in a case like this. And it seems that they are not far
wrong, for the silent morose man does not decline the proffered
hospitality, but on the contrary pours out for himself glass after
glass--and the soda-water disappears a good deal more slowly than the
whisky.
Against her will, then, Norah is forced to join in conversation; or
rather to force herself to listen with just sufficient attention to
enable her to make suitable replies when speech is demanded of her.
It is a trying ordeal for the unhappy girl; but a merciful one in
reality, for probably this enforced concentration is just the one
thing that keeps madness at bay.
Yet all the time she is consumed with a gnawing anxiety. There is a
question she would give almost anything to be able to answer:
She herself was providentially foiled in her dread attempt; but--did
Patrick succeed in bringing it to completion?
When he wrested the bomb from her grasp the moment before the
_Marathon's_ officers came into the wardroom, _what did he do with
it?_
She knows he could not have disposed of it in the room itself; for
they left on the instant, and Patrick preceded her so that she was
able to keep her eyes on him the whole time.
But afterwards? When they were out in the less brightly lit
alleyway? Or during the few minutes' delay before they actually left
the ship to go on board the destroyer?
There might have been an opportunity then; or was such opportunity
impossible on account of the presence of other people and Patrick's
ignorance of his surroundings?
He could not, surely, have just placed the bomb in any chance spot,
stooping quickly in an undetected movement amidst the crowd. That
would have been to court discovery, almost to a certainty, and
Patrick would never be so simple as that.
Yet, was it not possible that his quick eyes might have been able to
spy a hiding-place into which he might slip his hand as he passed,
behind an arm-rack, under a steam-pipe, or some such likely corner?
If such a chance offered itself, be sure he must have taken it!
But oh, if only Norah could know for certain!
Instead, the miserable girl has to listen and reply to the kindly
talk and questionings of her two well-intentioned hosts. And, worse
still, out of sheer politeness she has to recount at their eager
enquiry all the wretched falsehood of the torpedoed steamer.
To the ears of her auditors it is a romantic and exciting tale of
misadventure, and they press for the story in its entirety.
And Norah tells them. She is not going to make a confession to these
two young officers, whatever she may do later. This, at any rate, is
not the time nor the place. And what other course is open to her?
Therefore, with wild abandonment she heaps up the agony of the tale,
repeating every detail of what has been already told to the
_Marathon's_ officers, and even adding more.
She feels, rather than sees, the glaring eyes of Patrick fixed upon
her face as she fires off the rapid narration of their pretended
sufferings; and somehow this keeps her from giving way to hysterical
shrieks and laughter as otherwise she would: but the compelling
glance restrains her.
But at what an effort! And how thankful she is when, at the end of
it, her two listeners happen to go out of the room both together for
the first time, and leave her alone with her cousin!
This is the chance she has been waiting for. Immediately, with one
rapid backward glance to make sure the two officers have really gone,
she strides quickly across to Patrick and grasping him by the
shoulder as though she would shake the answer out of him, asks in a
tense, quivering voice:
"Oh, Patrick, _did_ you do it? Tell me!"
He shrinks from her grasp, and crouches back in his chair, glancing
upwards and sideways at the girl standing over him. Hatred gleams
from his reddened eyes, the hatred of fanaticism made fiercer by the
unstinted whisky he has been drinking. It is evident that he deems
the girl a treacherous renegade, and spurns her with loathing for her
having deserted the great Cause.
"For why should I tell you anything, wretched girl?" he mutters.
"You would only use it to betray me!"
"Oh, Patrick, tell me, tell me!"
"Curse you, keep away from me! I want no speech with you, nor ever
to set eyes on you again. No kith or kin are ye of mine from this
day on! Leave me alone, I bid ye!"
Nor will he deign to open his lips to say another word. Norah gives
a gesture of despair and with drooping head goes back to her place.
She had had her chance, and it has been of no avail. A repetition of
it is not to be hoped for, even were there any hopes of its being of
any use, for the midshipman comes back again and soon his fellow
officer also joins him.