CROSSING THE CHANNEL
Booth, restless with a vague uneasiness that had come over him
during the night, keeping him awake until nearly dawn, was hard put
during the early hours of the forenoon to find occupation for his
interest until a seasonable time arrived for appearing at Southlook. He
was unable to account for this feeling of uncertainty and irritation.
At nine he set out to walk over to Southlook, realising that he should
have to spend an hour in profitless gossip with the lodge-keeper
before presenting himself at the villa, but somehow relishing the
thought that even so he would be nearer to Hetty than if he remained
in his own door-yard.
Half-way there he was overtaken by Sara's big French machine returning
from the village. The car came to a standstill as he stepped aside
to let it pass, and Sara herself leaned over and cordially invited
him to get in and ride home with her.
"What an early bird you are," he exclaimed as he took his seat
beside her.
She was not in a mood for airy persiflage, as he soon discovered.
"Miss Castleton has gone up to town, Mr. Booth," she said rather
lifelessly. "I have just taken her to the station. She caught the
eight-thirty."
He was at once solicitous. "No bad news, I hope?" There was no
thought in his mind that her absence was other than temporary.
"She is not coming back, Brandon." She had not addressed him as
Brandon before.
He stared. "You--you mean--" The words died on his lips.
"She is not coming back," she repeated.
An accusing gleam leaped into his eyes.
"What has happened, Mrs. Wrandall?" he asked.
She was quick to perceive the change in his voice and manner.
"She prefers to live apart from me. That is all."
"When was this decision reached?"
"But yesterday. Soon after she came in from her walk with you."
"Do--do you mean to imply that THAT had anything to do with her
leaving your home?" he demanded, with a flush on his cheek.
She met his look without flinching. "It was the beginning."
"You--you criticised her? You took her to task--"
"I notified her that she was to marry Leslie Wrandall, if she
marries any one at all," she said in a perfectly level tone.
"Good Lord, Mrs. Wrandall!"
"But she is not going to marry Leslie."
"I know it--I knew it yesterday," he cried triumphantly. "She loves
me, Sara. Didn't she say as much to you?"
"Yes, Brandon, she loves you. But she will not be your wife."
"What is all this mystery? Why can't she be my wife? What is there
to prevent?"
She regarded him with dark, inscrutable eyes. Many seconds passed
before she spoke.
"Would you want her for your wife if you knew she had belonged to
another man?"
He turned very cold. The palms of his hands were wet, as with
ice-water. Something dark seemed to flit before his eyes.
"I will not believe that of her," he said, shaking his head with
an air of finality.
"That is not an answer to my question."
"Yes, I would still want her," he declared steadily.
"I merely meant to put you to the harshest test," she said, and
there was relief in her voice. "She is a good girl, she is pure.
I asked my question because until yesterday I had reason to doubt
her."
"Good heavens, how could you doubt those honest, guiltless eyes
of--"
She shook her head sadly. "To answer you I would have to reveal
the secret that makes it impossible for her to become your wife,
and that I cannot, will not do."
"Is it fair to me?"
"Perhaps not, but it is fair to her, and that is why I must remain
silent."
"Before God, I shall know the truth,--from her, if not from
you,--and--"
"If you love her, if you will be kind to her, you will let her go
her way in peace."
He was struck by the somewhat sinister earnestness of her words.
"Tell me where I may find her," he said, setting his jaw.
"It will not be difficult for you to find her," she said, frowning,
"if you insist on pursuing her."
"You drive her away from your house, Sara Wrandall, and yet expect
me to believe that your motives are friendly. Why should I accept
your word as final?"
"I did not drive her away, nor did I ask her to stay."
He stared hard at her.
"Good Lord, what is the meaning of all this?" he cried in perplexity.
"What am I to understand?"
The car had come to a stop under the porte cochere. She laid her
hand on his arm.
"If you will come in with me, Brandon, I will try to make some
things clear to you."
He left in half-an-hour, walking rapidly down the drive, his coat
buttoned closely, although the morning was hot and breathless. He
held in his hand a small scrap of paper on which was written: "If
I loved you less, I would come to you now and lie to you. If you
love me, Brandon, you will let me go my way. It is the only course.
Sara is my friend, and she is yours. Be guided by her, and believe
in my love for you. Hetty."
And now, as things go in fairy stories, we should prepare ourselves
to see Hetty pass through a season in drudgery and hardship, with
the ultimate quintessence of joy as the reward for her trials and
tribulations. Happily, this is not a fairy tale. There are some
things more fantastic than fairy tales, if they are not spoiled in
the telling. Hetty did not go forth to encounter drudgery, disdain
and obloquy. By no manner of means! She went with a well-filled
purse, a definite purpose ahead and a determined factor behind.
In a manner befitting her station as the intimate friend of Mrs.
Challis Wrandall, as the cousin of the Murgatroyds, as the daughter
of Colonel Castleton of the Indian Corps, as a person supposed to
be possessed of independent means withal, she went, with none to
question, none to cavil.
Sara had insisted on this, as much for her own sake as for Hetty's;
she argued, and she had prevailed in the end. What would the world
think, what would their acquaintances think, and above all what
would the high and mighty Wrandalls think if she went with meek
and lowly mien?
Why should they make it possible for any one to look askance?
And so it was that she departed in state, with a dozen trunks and
boxes; an obsequiously attended seat in the parlour-car was hers;
a telegram in her bag assured her that rooms were being reserved
for herself and maid at the Ritz-Carlton; alongside it reposed a
letter to Mr. Carroll, instructing him to provide her with sufficient
funds to carry out the plan agreed upon; and in the seat behind
sat the lady's maid who had served her for a twelve-month and more.
The timely demise of the venerable Lord Murgatroyd afforded the
most natural excuse for her trip to England. The old nobleman gave
up the ghost, allowing for difference in time, at the very moment
when Mrs. Redmond Wrandall was undoing a certain package from
London, which turned out to be a complete history of what his
forebears had done in the way of propagation since the fourteenth
century.
Hetty did not find it easy to accommodate her pride to the plan
which was to give her a fresh and rather imposing start in the
world. She was to have a full year in which to determine whether she
should accept toil and poverty as her lot, or emulate the symbolic
example of Dicky the canary bird. At the end of the year, unless she
did as Dicky had done, her source of supplies would be automatically
cut off and she would be entirely dependent upon her own wits and
resources. In the interim, she was a probationary person of leisure.
It had required hours of persuasion on the part of Sara Wrandall
to bring her into line with these arrangements.
"But I am able and willing to work for my living," had been Hetty's
stubborn retort to all the arguments brought to bear upon her.
"Then let me put it in another light. It is vital to me, of course,
that you should keep up the show of affluence for a while at least.
I think I have made that clear to you. But here is another side to
the matter; the question of recompense."
"Recompense?" cried Hetty sharply.
"Without your knowing it, I have virtually held you a prisoner all
these months, condemned in my own judgment if not in the sight of
the law. I have taken the law unto myself. You were not convicted
of murder in this Unitarian court of mine, but of another sin. For
fifteen months you have been living under the shadow of a crime you
did not commit. I was reserving complete punishment for you in the
shape of an ignoble marriage, which was to have served two bitter
ends. Well, I have had the truth from you. I believe you to
be absolutely innocent of the charge I held over you, for which I
condemned you without a hearing. Then, why should I not employ my
own means of making restitution?"
"You have condescended to believe in me. That is all I ask."
"True, that is all you ask. But is it altogether the fair way out of
it? To illustrate: our criminal laws are less kind to the innocent
than to the guilty. Our law courts find a man guilty and he is
sent to prison. Later on, he is found to be innocent--absolutely
innocent. What does the State do in the premises? It issues
a formal pardon,--a mockery, pure and simple,--and the man is set
free. It all comes to a curt, belated apology for an error on the
part of justice. No substantial recompense is offered. He is merely
pardoned for something he didn't do. The State, which has wronged
him, condescends to pardon him! Think of it! It is the same as if
a man knocked another down and then said, before he removed his
foot from the victim's neck: 'I pardon you freely.' My father was
opposed to the system we have--that all countries have--of pardoning
men who have been unjustly condemned. The innocent victim is pardoned
in the same manner as the guilty one who comes in for clemency. I
accept my father's contention that an innocent man should not be
shamed and humiliated by a PARDON. The court which tried him should
re-open the case and honourably ACQUIT him of the crime. Then
the State should pay to this innocent man, dollar for dollar, all
that he might have earned during his term of imprisonment, with an
additional amount for the suffering he has endured. Not long ago in
an adjoining State a man, who had served seventeen years of a life
sentence for murder, was found to be wholly innocent. What happened?
A PARDON was handed to him and he walked out of prison, broken
in spirit, health and purse. His small fortune had been wiped out
in the futile effort to prove his innocence. He gave up seventeen
years of his life and then WAS PARDONED for the sacrifice. He
should have been paid for every day spent in prison. That was the
very least they could have done."
"I see now what you mean," mused Hetty. "I have never thought of
it in that way before."
"Well, it comes to this in our case, Hetty: I have tried you all
over again in my own little court and I have acquitted you of the
charge I had against you. I do not offer you a silly pardon. You
must allow me to have my way in this matter, to choose my own means
of compensating you for--"
"You saved my life," protested Hetty, shaking her head obstinately.
"My dear, I appreciate the fact that you are English," said Sara,
with a weary smile, "but won't you PLEASE see the point?"
Then Hetty smiled too, and the way was easier after that for Sara.
She gained her quixotic point, and Hetty went away from Southlook
feeling that no woman in all the world was so bewildering as Sara
Wrandall.
When she sailed for England, two days later, the newspapers announced
that the beautiful and attractive Miss Castleton was returning to
her native land on account of the death of Lord Murgatroyd, and
would spend the year on the Continent, where probably she would
be joined later on by Mrs. Wrandall, whose period of mourning and
distress had been softened by the constant and loyal friendship of
"this exquisite Englishwoman."
Four hundred miles out at sea, she was overtaken by wireless messages
from three persons.
Brandon Booth's message said: "I am sailing to-morrow on a faster
ship than yours. You will find me waiting for you on the landing
stage." Her heart gave a leap to dizzy heights, and, try as she
would, she could not crush it back to the depths in which it had
dwelt for days.
The second bit of pale green paper contained a cry from a most
unexpected source: "Cable your London address. S. refuses to give it
to me. I think I understand the situation. We want to make amends
for what you have had to put up with during the year. She has shown
her true nature at last." It was signed "Leslie."
From Sara came these cryptic words: "For each year of famine there
will come seven years of plenty."
All the way across the Atlantic she lived in a state of subdued
excitement. Conflicting emotions absorbed her waking hours but
her dreams were all of one complexion: rosy and warm and full of
a joyousness that distressed her vastly when she recalled them to
mind in the early morning hours. During the day she intermittently
hoped and feared that he would be on the landing stage. In any event,
she was bound to find unhappiness. If he were there her joy would
be short-lived and blighting; if he were not there, her disappointment
would be equally hard to bear.
He was there. She saw him from the deck of the tender as they
edged up to the landing. His tall figure loomed in the front rank
against the rail that held back the crowd; his sun-bronzed face
wore a look of eager expectancy; from her obscured position in the
shadow of the deck building, purposely chosen for reasons only too
obvious, she could even detect the alert, swift-moving scrutiny
that he fastened upon the crowd.
Later on, he stood looking down into her serious blue eyes; her hands
were lying limp in his. His own eyes were dark with earnestness,
with the restraint that had fastened itself upon him. Behind her
stood the respectful but immeasurably awed maid, who could not,
for the life of her, understand how a man could be on both sides
of the Atlantic at one and the same time.
"Thank the Lord, Hetty, say I, for the five day boats," he was
saying.
"You should not have come, Brandon," she cried softly, and the
look of misery in her eyes was tinged with a glow she could not
suppress. "It only makes everything harder for me. I--I--Oh, I
wish you had not come!"
"But isn't it wonderful?" he cried, "that I should be here and
waiting for you! It is almost inconceivable. And you were in the
act of running away from me, too. Oh, I have that much of the tale
from Sara, so don't look so hurt about it."
"I am so sorry you came," she repeated, her lip trembling.
Noting her emotion, he gave her hands a fierce, encouraging pressure
and immediately released them.
"Come," he said gently; "I have booked for London. Everything is
arranged. I shall see to your luggage. Let me put you in the carriage
first."
As she sat in the railway carriage, waiting for him to return,
she tried in a hundred ways to devise a means of escape, and yet
she had never loved him so much as now. Her heart was sore, her
desolation never so complete as now.
He came back at last and took his seat beside her in the compartment,
fanning himself with his hat. The maid very discreetly stared out
of the window at the hurrying throng of travellers on the platform.
One other person occupied the compartment with them, a crabbed
Englishman who seemed to resent the fact that his seat was not next
the window, and that maids should be encouraged to travel first
class.
"Isn't it really wonderful?" whispered Booth once more, quite as
if he couldn't believe it himself. She smiled rather doubtfully.
He was sitting quite close to her and leaning forward.
The Englishman got up and went into the corridor to consult the
conductor. One might have heard him say he'd very much prefer going
into another compartment where it wouldn't be necessary for him
to annoy a beastly American bride and groom--her maid and perhaps
later on his man--all the way up to London.
"How I love you--Hetty--how I adore you!" Booth whispered passionately.
"Oh, Brandon!"
"And I don't mean to give you up," he added, his lean jaw setting
hard.
"You must--oh, you must," she cried miserably. "I mean it, Brandon--"
The Englishman came back and took his seat. He glared at Booth
through his eye-glass, and that young gentleman sat up in sudden
embarrassment.
"What are your plans?" asked he, turning his back on their
fellow-passenger.
"Please don't ask me," she pleaded. "You must give it up, Brandon.
Let me go my own way."
"Not until I have the whole story from you. You see, I am not
easily thwarted, once I set my heart on a thing. I gathered this
much from Sara: the obstacle is NOT insurmountable."
"She--said--that?"
"In effect, yes," he qualified.
"What did she tell you?" demanded Hetty, laying her hand on his
arm.
"I will confess she didn't reveal the secret that you consider a
barrier, but she went so far as to say that it was very dark and
dreadful," he said lightly. They were speaking in very low tones.
"When I pinned her down to it, she added that it did not in any
sense bear upon your honour. But there is time enough to talk about
this later on. For the present, let's not discuss the past. I know
enough of your history from your own lips as well as what little I
could get out of Sara, to feel sure that you are, in a way, drifting.
I intend to look after you, at least until you find yourself. Your
sudden break with Sara has been explained to me. Leslie Wrandall
is at the back of it. Sara told me that she tried to force you to
marry him. I think you did quite right in going away as you did,
but, on the other hand, was it quite fair to me?"
"Yes, it was most fair," she said, compressing her lips.
He frowned.
"We can't possibly be of the same opinion," he said seriously.
"You wouldn't say that if you knew everything."
"How long do you intend to stay in London?"
"I don't know. When does this train arrive there?"
"At four o'clock, I think. Will you go to an hotel or to friends?"
He put the question very delicately.
She smiled faintly. "You mean the Murgatroyds?"
"Your father is here, I am informed. And you must have other friends
or relatives who--"
"I shall go to a small hotel I know near Trafalgar Square," she
interrupted quietly. "You must not come there to see me, Brandon."
"I shall expect you to dine with me at--say Prince's this evening,"
was his response to this.
She shook her head and then turned to look out of the window. He
sat back in his seat and for many miles, with deep perplexity in his
eyes, studied her half-averted face. The old uneasiness returned.
Was this obstacle, after all, so great that it could not be overcome?
They lunched together, but were singularly reserved all through the
meal. A plan was growing in her brain, a cruel but effective plan
that made her despise herself and yet contained the only means of
escape from an even more cruel situation.
He drove with her from the station to the small hotel off Trafalgar
Square. There were no rooms to be had. It was the week of Ascot and
the city was still crowded with people who awaited only the royal
sign to break the fetters that bound them to London. Somewhat
perturbed, she allowed him to escort her to several hotels of a
like character. Failing in each case, she was in despair. At last
she plucked up the courage to say to him, not without constraint
and embarrassment:
"I think, Brandon, if you were to allow me to apply ALONE to one
of these places I could get in without much trouble."
"Good Lord!" he gasped, going very red with dismay. "What a fool
I--"
"I'll try the Savoy," she said quickly, and then laughed at him.
His face was the picture of distress.
"I shall come for you at eight," he said, stopping the taxi at
once. "Good-bye till then."
He got out and gave directions to the chauffeur. Then he did a very
strange thing. He hailed another taxi and, climbing in, started
off in the wake of the two women. From a point of vantage near
the corridor leading to the "American bar," he saw Hetty sign her
slips and move off toward the lift. Whereupon, seeing that she was
quite out of the way, he approached the manager's office and asked
for accommodations.
"Nothing left, sir."
"Not a thing?"
"Everything has been taken for weeks, sir. I'm sorry."
"Sorry, too. I had hoped you might have something left for a friend
who expects to stop here--a Miss Castleton."
"Miss Castleton has just applied. We could not give her anything."
"Eh?"
"Fortunately we could let her have rooms until eight this evening.
We were more than pleased to offer them to her for a few hours,
although they are reserved for parties coming down from Liverpool
tonight."
Booth tried the Cecil and got a most undesirable room. Calling up
the Savoy on the telephone, he got her room. The maid answered.
She informed him that Miss Castleton had just that instant gone
out and would not return before seven o'clock.
"I suppose she will not remove her trunks from the station until
she finds a permanent place to lodge," he inquired. "Can I be of
any service?"
"I think not, sir. She left no word, sir."
He hung up the receiver and straightway dashed over to the Savoy,
hoping to catch her before she left the hotel. Just inside the door
he came to an abrupt stop. She was at the news and ticket booth in
the lobby, closely engaged in conversation with the clerk. Presently
the latter took up the telephone, and after a brief conversation
with some one at the other end, turned to Hetty and nodded his
head. Whereupon she nodded her own adorable head and began the
search for her purse. Booth edged around to an obscure spot and
saw her pay for and receive something in return.
"By Jove!" he said to himself, amazed.
She passed near him, without seeing him, and went out into the
court. He watched her turn into the Strand.
When the night boat from Dover to Calais slipped away from her
moorings that evening, Hetty Castleton and her maid were on board,
with all their bags and trunks, and Brandon Booth was supposed to
be completely at sea in the heart of that glittering London-town.
The night was fog-laden and dripping, and the crossing promised
to be unpleasant. Wrapped in a thick sea-ulster Hetty sat huddled
up in the lea of the deck-house, sick at heart and miserable. She
reproached herself for the scurvy trick she was playing on him,
reviled herself and yet pitied herself. After all, she was doing
him a good turn in forcing him to despise her for the shameless
way in which she treated his devotion, his fairness, his loyalty.
He would be happier in the end for the brief spasm of pain and disgust
he was to experience in this second revelation of her unworthiness.
Crouching there in the shadow, with the foghorn chortling hoarsely
over the shabby trick,--so it seemed to her,--she stared back at
the misty glow of the pier and tried to pierce the distance that
lay between her and the lights of London, so many leagues away.
HE was there, in the glitter and glamour of it all, but black with
disappointment and wonder. Oh, it was a detestable thing she had
done! Her poor heart ached for him. She could almost see the despair,
the bewilderment in his honest eyes as he sat in his room, hours
after the discovery of her flight, defeated, betrayed, disillusioned.
There were but few people crossing. Sailors stood by the rail,
peering into the fog, but it seemed to her that no one else was
afoot on board the steamer. Already the boat was beginning to show
signs of the uneasy trip ahead. Many foghorns, far and near, were
barking their lugubrious warnings; the choppy waves were slashing
against the vessel with a steady beat; the bobbling of the ship
increased as it plunged deeper into the cross-seas. But she had
no thought of the ship, the channel or the perils that surrounded
her. Her mind was back in London with her heart, and there was
nothing ahead of her save the dread of tomorrow's sunlight.
She was a good sailor. A dozen times, perhaps, she had crossed the
English Channel, in fair weather and foul, and never with discomfort.
Her maid, she knew, was in for a wretched brawl with the waves,
but Hetty was too wise a sailor to think of trying to comfort the
unhappy creature. Misery does not always love company.
A tall man came shambling down the narrow space along the rail
and stopped directly in front of her. She started in alarm as he
reached out his hand to support himself against the deck house. As
he leaned forward, he laughed.
"You were thinking of me, Hetty," said the man.
For a long time she stared at him, transfixed, and then, with a
low moan, covered her eyes with her hands.
"Is it true--is it a dream?" she sobbed.
He dropped down beside her and gathered her in his strong, eager
arms.
"You WERE thinking of me, weren't you? And reproaching yourself,
and hating yourself for running away like this? I thought so. Well,
you might just as well try to dodge the smartest detective in the
world as to give me the slip now, darling."
"You--you spied on me?" she cried, in muffled tones. She lay very
limp in his arms.
"I did," he confessed, without shame. "'Gad, when I think of what
I might be doing at this moment if I hadn't found you out in time!
Think of me back there in London, racing about like a madman,
searching for you in every--"
"Please, please!" she implored.
"But luck was with me. You can't get away, Hetty. I shan't let you
out of my sight again. I'll camp in front of your door and you'll
see me wither and die of sleeplessness, for one or the other of my
eyes will always be open."
"Oh, I am so tired, so miserable," she murmured.
"Poor little sweetheart!"
"I wish you would hate me."
"Lie where you are, dearest, and--forget!"
"If I only could--forget!"
"Rest. I will hold you tight and keep you warm. We're in for a nasty
crossing, but it is paradise for me. I am mad with the delight of
having you here, holding you close to me, feeling you in my arms.
The wilder the night the better, for I am wild with the joy of it
all. I love you! I love you!" He strained her closer to him in a
sort of paroxysm.
She was quiet for a long time. Then she breathed into his ear:
"You will never know how much I was longing for you, just as you
are now, Brandon, and in the midst of it all you came. It is like
a fairy story, and oh, I shall always believe in fairies."
All about them were the sinister sounds of the fog--the hoots,
the growls and groans of lost things in the swirl of the North Sea
current, creeping blindly through the guideless mist. To both of
them, the night had a strangely symbolic significance: whither were
they drifting and where lay the unseen port?
A huge liner from one of the German ports slipped across their bows
with hoarse blasts of warning. They saw the misty glow of her lights
for an instant, and even as they drew the sharp breath of fear,
the night resumed its mantle and their own little vessel seemed to
come to life again after the shock of alarm and its engines throbbed
the faster, just as the heartbeats quicken when reaction sets in.
A long time afterward the throbbing ceased, bell-buoys whistled and
clanged about them; the sea suddenly grew calm and lifeless; they
slid over it as if it were a quavering sheet of ice; and lights
sneaked out of the fog and approached with stealthy swiftness.
Bells rang below and above them, sailors sprang up from everywhere
and calls were heard below; the rattling of chains and the thumping
of heavy luggage took the place of that steady, monotonous beat of
the engines. People began to infest the deck, limp and groaning,
harassed but voiceless. A mighty sigh seemed to envelop the whole
ship--a sigh of relief.
Then it was that these two arose stiffly from their sheltered bench
and gave heed to the things that were about them.
The Channel was behind them.