"Drifting, drifting on and on,
Mast and oar and rudder gone,
Fatal danger for each one,
We helpless as in dreams."
What had he been about?
The air grew sweet with the sudden scent of heliotrope, and Miss Dallas
pushed aside the curtain gently.
"I may have that sail across the bay before I go? It promises to be fair
to-morrow."
He hesitated.
"I suppose it will be our last," said the lady, softly.
She was rather sorry when she had spoken, for she really did not mean
anything, and was surprised at the sound of her own voice.
But they took the sail.
Harrie watched them off--her husband did not invite her to go on that
occasion--with that stealthy sharpness in her eyes. Her lips and hands
and forehead were burning. She had been cold all day. A sound like the
tolling of a bell beat in her ears. The children's voices were choked
and distant. She wondered if Biddy were drunk, she seemed to dance about
so at her ironing-table, and wondered if she must dismiss her, and who
could supply her place. She tried to put my room in order, for she was
expecting me that night by the last train, but gave up the undertaking
in weariness and confusion.
In fact, if Harrie had been one of the Doctor's patients, he would have
sent her to bed and prescribed for brain-fever. As she was not a
patient, but only his wife, he had not found out that anything ailed
her.
Nothing happened while he was gone, except that a friend of Biddy's
"dropped in," and Mrs. Sharpe, burning and shivering in her
sewing-chair, dreamily caught through the open door, and dreamily
repeated to herself, a dozen words of compassionate Irish brogue:--
"Folks as laves folks cryin' to home and goes sailin' round with other
women--"
Then the wind latched the door.
The Doctor and Miss Dallas drew in their oars, and floated softly.
There were gray and silver clouds overhead, and all the light upon the
sea slanted from low in the west: it was a red light, in which the bay
grew warm; it struck across Pauline's hands, which she dipped, as the
mood took her, into the waves, leaning upon the side of the boat,
looking down into the water. One other sail only was to be seen upon the
bay. They watched it for a while. It dropped into the west, and sunk
from sight.
They were silent for a time, and then they talked of friendship, and
nature, and eternity, and then were silent for a time again, and then
spoke--in a very general and proper way--of separation and communion in
spirit, and broke off softly, and the boat rose and fell upon the strong
outgoing tide.
"Drifting, drifting on and on," hummed Pauline.
The west, paling a little, left a haggard look upon the Doctor's face.
"An honest man," the Doctor was saying, "an honest man, who loves his
wife devotedly, but who cannot find in her that sympathy which his
higher nature requires, that comprehension of his intellectual needs,
that--"
"I always feel a deep compassion for such a man," interrupted Miss
Dallas, gently.
"Such a man," questioned the Doctor in a pensive tone, "need not be
debarred, by the shallow conventionalities of an unappreciative world,
from a friendship which will rest, strengthen, and ennoble his weary
soul?"
"Certainly not," said Pauline, with her eyes upon the water; dull
yellow, green, and indigo shades were creeping now upon its ruddiness.
"Pauline,"--Dr. Sharpe's voice was low,--"Pauline!"
Pauline turned her beautiful head. "There are marriages for this world;
true and honorable marriages, but for this world. But there is a
marriage for eternity,--a marriage of souls."
Now Myron Sharpe is not a fool, but that is precisely what he said to
Miss Pauline Dallas, out in the boat on that September night. If wiser
men than Myron Sharpe never uttered more unpardonable nonsense under
similar circumstances, cast your stones at him.
"Perhaps so," said Miss Dallas, with a sigh; "but see! How dark it has
grown while we have been talking. We shall be caught in a squall; but I
shall not be at all afraid--with you."
They were caught indeed, not only in a squall, but in the steady force
of a driving northeasterly storm setting in doggedly with a very ugly
fog. If Miss Dallas was not at all afraid--with him, she was
nevertheless not sorry when they grated safely on the dull white beach.
They had had a hard pull in against the tide. Sky and sea were black.
The fog crawled like a ghost over flat and cliff and field. The rain
beat upon them as they turned to walk up the beach.
Pauline stopped once suddenly.
"What was that?"
"I heard nothing."
"A cry,--I fancied a cry down there in the fog."
They went back, and walked down the slippery shore for a space. Miss
Dallas took off her hat to listen.
"You will take cold," said Dr. Sharpe, anxiously. She put it on; she
heard nothing,--she was tired and excited, he said.
They walked home together. Miss Dallas had sprained her white wrist,
trying to help at the oars; he drew it gently through his arm.
It was quite dark when they reached the house. No lamps were lighted.
The parlor window had been left open, and the rain was beating in. "How
careless in Harrie!" said her husband, impatiently.
He remembered those words, and the sound of his own voice in saying
them, for a long time to come; he remembers them now, indeed, I fancy,
on rainy nights when the house is dark.
The hall was cold and dreary. No table was set for supper. The children
were all crying. Dr. Sharpe pushed open the kitchen door with a stern
face.
"Biddy! Biddy! what does all this mean? Where is Mrs. Sharpe?"
"The Lord only knows what it manes, or where is Mrs. Sharpe," said
Biddy, sullenly. "It's high time, in me own belafe, for her husband to
come ashkin' and inquirin' her close all in a hape on the floor
upstairs, with her bath-dress gone from the nails, and the front door
swingin',--me never findin' of it out till it cooms tay-time, with all
the children cryin' on me, and me head shplit with the noise, and--"
Dr. Sharpe strode in a bewildered way to the front door. Oddly enough,
the first thing he did was to take down the thermometer and look at it.
Gone out to bathe in a temperature like that! His mind ran like
lightning, while he hung the thing back upon its nail, over Harrie's
ancestry. Was there not a traditionary great-uncle who died in an
asylum? The whole future of three children with an insane mother spread
itself out before him while he was buttoning his overcoat.
"Shall I go and help you find her?" asked Miss Dallas, tremulously; "or
shall I stay and look after hot flannels and--things? What shall I do?"
"_I_ don't care what you do!" said the Doctor, savagely. To his justice
be it recorded that he did not. He would not have exchanged one glimpse
of Harrie's little homely face just then for an eternity of
sunset-sailing with the "friend of his soul." A sudden cold loathing of
her possessed him; he hated the sound of her soft voice; he hated the
rustle of her garments, as she leaned against the door with her
handkerchief at her eyes. Did he remember at that moment an old vow,
spoken on an old October day, to that little missing face? Did he
comfort himself thus, as he stepped out into the storm, "You have
'trusted her,' Myron Sharpe, as 'your best earthly friend'"?
As luck, or providence or God--whichever word you prefer--decreed it,
the Doctor had but just shut the door when he saw me driving from the
station through the rain. I heard enough of the story while he was
helping me down the carriage steps. I left my bonnet and bag with Miss
Dallas, pulled my water-proof over my head, and we turned our faces to
the sea without a word.
The Doctor is a man who thinks and acts rapidly in emergencies, and
little time was lost about help and lights. Yet when all was done which
could be done, we stood there upon the slippery weed-strewn sand, and
looked in one another's faces helplessly. Harrie's little boat was gone.
The sea thundered out beyond the bar. The fog hung, a dead weight, upon
a buried world. Our lanterns cut it for a foot or two in a ghostly way,
throwing a pale white light back upon our faces and the weeds and bits
of wreck under our feet.
The tide had turned. We put out into the surf not knowing what else to
do, and called for Harrie; we leaned on our oars to listen, and heard
the water drip into the boat, and the dull thunder beyond the bar; we
called again, and heard a frightened sea-gull scream.
"_This_ yere's wastin' valooable time," said Hansom, decidedly. I
forgot to say that it was George Hansom whom Myron had picked up to help
us. Anybody in Lime will tell you who George Hansom is,--a clear-eyed,
open-hearted sailor; a man to whom you would turn in trouble as
instinctively as a rheumatic man turns to the sun.
I cannot accurately tell you what he did with us that night. I have
confused memories of searching shore and cliffs and caves; of touching
at little islands and inlets that Harrie fancied; of the peculiar echo
which answered our shouting; of the look that settled little by little
about Dr. Sharpe's mouth; of the sobbing of the low wind; of the flare
of lanterns on gaping, green waves; of spots of foam that writhed like
nests of white snakes; of noticing the puddles in the bottom of the
boat, and of wondering confusedly what they would do with my
travelling-dress, at the very moment when I saw--I was the first to see
it--little empty boat; of our hauling alongside of the tossing, silent
thing; of a bit of a red scarf that lay coiled in its stern; of our
drifting by, and speaking never a word; of our coasting along after that
for a mile down the bay, because there was nothing in the world to take
us there but the dread of seeing the Doctor's eyes when we should turn.
It was there that we heard the first cry.
"It's shoreward!" said Hansom.
"It is seaward!" cried the Doctor.
"It is behind us!" said I.
Where was it? A sharp, sobbing cry, striking the mist three or four
times in rapid succession,--hushing suddenly,--breaking into shrieks
like a frightened child's,--dying plaintively down.
We struggled desperately after it, through the fog. Wind and water took
the sound up and tossed it about. Confused and bewildered, we beat about
it and about it; it was behind us, before us, at our right, at our
left,--crying on in a blind, aimless way, making us no replies,--beckoning
us, slipping from us, mocking us utterly.
The Doctor stretched his hands out upon the solid wall of mist; he
groped with them like a man struck blind.
"To die there,--in my very hearing,--without a chance--"
And while the words were upon his lips the cries ceased.
He turned a gray face slowly around, shivered a little, then smiled a
little, then began to argue with ghastly cheerfulness:--
"It must be only for a moment, you know. We shall hear it again,--I am
quite sure we shall it again, Hansom!"
Hansom, making a false stroke, I believe for the first time in his life,
snapped an oar and overturned a lantern. Some drift-wood, covered with
slimy weeds, washed heavily up at our feet. I remember that a little
disabled ground-sparrow, chased by the tide, was fluttering and drowning
just in sight, and that Myron drew it out of the water, and held it up
for a moment to his cheek.