A DOOR OF ESCAPE
It was a spell of long-drawn-out anguish for the watchers on shore, the
while that Theo Carnegy and little Queenie sank helplessly in their
rapidly filling boat. From one to another of the cottages round the
bay the news had flown like wild-fire that the captain's boat, with the
captain's daughters, was going down within sight, and not a man nor a
boy in Northbourne village but was out at sea since daybreak, for the
'mackerrow' were proving a little gold-mine to the community, and the
fishermen grudged to sleep or eat, so eager were they to make hay while
the sun was shining.
The women would not have thought twice of taking to the boats
themselves and attempting a rescue, but all the decent crafts were at
sea; the few that were beached were useless, being out of repair.
There was, accordingly, nothing to do but stand in huddled groups
wringing the hands that, perforce, were helpless. Some--the timid
ones--covered their eyes from the sight. Others, fascinated, found it
impossible to turn their gaze for a single second from the hapless boat
which their practised sight noted was now perceptibly lower in the
water. One or two among them, old Goody Dempster conspicuously, stood
with white lips that moved silently as they prayed God to have pity, to
stretch out His mighty hand and save those in dire danger.
And while the women watched breathlessly, or prayed, Geoff, with old
Binks, struggled on, a nightmare feeling weighing them down all the
time, that they were standing still, instead of making way.
At last, when the watchers on the shore could no longer see aught but
the rim of the top of the boat, and only the two clinging figures in
it, for 'The Theodora' had settled down almost under water, the
Vicarage boat pulled up alongside, with a final long sweep, into which
Geoff, half fainting, put his sole remaining strength.
How the rescue was achieved, then, none of the four could ever
afterwards tell or picture with any clearness. It was as if other
hands than those of Geoff and Binks did the work, while Queenie and
then Theo were half lifted, half dragged in by the two.
More dead than alive, the rescued sisters were, with considerable
difficulty, laid at the bottom of the boat. Theo had swooned away the
moment she realised that they were saved, and the women watchers on the
shore sobbed loudly in hysterical relief.
'Shall we take 'em over to the Vicarage?' hoarsely asked Binks,
handling his oar for the return.
'No, no! Home--home to father!' whispered back Geoff, whose voice
seemed to have died away into a feeble sort of whistle.
Then the two, exhausted as they were already, pulled their hardest over
the blue waters to the tiny pier under the Bunk.
The catastrophe, next door to a terrible tragedy, had happened in the
space of about fifteen minutes, and it seemed strangely impossible that
the sun should be still shining, and the light wind curling the
rippling waves as if nothing had happened.
The captain, who had been, as usual, absorbed in his manuscript,
sitting with his back to the window, knew nothing of it until he was
hastily called to carry up the senseless Theo. It was a considerable
time before his efforts to restore the unconscious girl were
successful; and it would not be easy to tell how the father, whom Theo
Carnegy had allowed herself to think and pronounce indifferent to his
children's welfare, suffered as he hung over the senseless form of his
best-beloved child. Her peril stirred up all the love that, though
undoubtedly existing, had been dormant. From that fateful hour,
however, the old sea-captain was an altered man. His heart awoke to
the fact that the chief place in it should be filled by his motherless
children, instead of, as it had been, by a mere hobby.
All through the hours of the anxious night that followed he went from
one bed to the other, tending the occupants with that gentleness,
almost womanly, which a sailor possesses in no ordinary degree. For
Queenie there were no apprehensions, save dread of a chill from the
wetting she received; the child was tranquil, and appeared to have
sustained no shock.
'We said "Our Father," me and Theo,' she whispered innocently to the
captain, as he sat by her little bed holding her hands, 'and He sent
Geoff and Binks directly to pick us out of the water; and then Theo
went off to sleep in the boat, and my new shoes is spoilt most
dreadful!'
With Theo it was otherwise. She had sustained a severe mental shock,
as well as the bodily strain, in her fruitless efforts to pull the
heavy boat through the water. And it had been a terrible spasm of
terror to sink slowly, helplessly, in the yawning waves, trying all the
time to hold up the precious little sister. When the doctor from
Brattlesby arrived, he looked grave enough over his elder patient; and
next day he was even more serious.
'She is in for brain fever!' he said briefly. He was a man of few
words, leaving the burden of conversation, as a rule, to his patients.
Hence, perhaps, it was that little Dr. Cobbe was the most popular
being, man or doctor, for miles round Northbourne.
And with regard to Theo it was as he said. For many weeks Theo Carnegy
lay battling for her life in the cruel clutches of the fever,
unconscious that her most devoted and tenderest nurse was the father
whom she had bitterly imagined thought more of his hobby than of his
boys and girls. All Northbourne, as with one heart, sorrowed aloud for
their favourite Miss Theedory; her grave condition was the sole theme
of talk in the cottages round the bay.
'Happen she was too good to live!' croaked Jerry Blunt's mother, with
an appropriate melancholy in her voice; and the gossips nodded
approvingly at a sentiment which fitted in with their own views of life.
'Nothin' o' the sort!' struck in a dissentient voice, which belonged to
Goody Dempster herself. 'There's none too good to live, seein' as life
is a great gift that can only come from the Lord Himself. He gives,
and He takes away, that's how we've got to look at things. And, please
God, He will see fit to raise up Miss Theedory among us again, hale and
sound. She's one as could be ill spared.'
'Amen!' assented more than one voice among the listeners, in ready
response.
But there was one heart that felt heavier than all others--too heavy to
hold a ray of hope--and that belonged to Alick Carnegy. When he
returned home from his stolen holiday, and found what had happened
during his absence, the remorse of the boy was uncontrollable. He
could not but feel it to be true, what others did not scruple to tell
him bluntly, for plain-speaking was a distinguishing feature of the
fishing village, that had he and Ned Dempster been at home, they could
have reached his sisters in far less time than Geoff, younger and
weaker of muscle, and Binks, long past his heyday of strength and
stiffened with rheumatism, had done.
With cold shivers of dread, he heard how Theo, though delivered from
one perilous strait, lay in jeopardy of her life in the new peril of
fever.
She would die, he was convinced, and voices seemed to be incessantly
crying in his ears: 'It will be your fault, all your fault! You fought
to have your own way, in spite of her pleadings, and now she will die
because you were not here to help her in such sore peril. She was
deserted, so she will die, our Theo!'
Alick, a boy of strong feelings, became maddened by despair, and
exaggerated the calamity. As time went on--and brain fever rarely
hurries itself--Theo grew no better, but rather weaker, and Alick
secretly called himself her murderer. He was distraught.
'Oh, Ned, if we had been at home, you and I, we could have reached them
in half the time Geoff and old Binks took! We could have rescued them
before "The Theodora" began to settle down!' he blurted out when he
found Ned sobbing helplessly in a corner of the tea-house, The latter,
though not possessed of Alick's torturing powers of imagination, was
overcome with remorse for his own share in the transaction.
Oh, Muster Alick, it ain't "we" it's me, only me, as is to blame!' he
hoarsely said, in a voice choked with sobs.
'What do you mean?' asked Alick heavily; and he stared down at the
crouching speaker.
'Miss Theedory telled I to mend the leak,' moaned Ned. 'And she
thought I'd done it, I expec', for she showed how 'twas to be mended;
but I knowed how as well as she did, for I've seed a-many done. But I
put off the doin' of it to go to Brattlesby Woods along with you,
Muster Alick, and Jerry Blunt, an' I deceived her; an' now she's
drowned, Miss Theedory is! Leastways, 'tis the same thing; for all
Northbourne's a-sayin' as she's bound to die of it all!' The boy,
burying his head, broke down into a loud, irrepressible fit of crying.
Ned too! Alick's lips quivered as he turned abruptly away. He himself
it was who tempted Ned away, and caused the boy to neglect his duty,
bringing down all this misfortune. He had been thinking himself the
only person in fault for being wilfully absent, but it was worse and
worse! He had lured away, and placed another in the same position, so
wide-spreading can a single evil step be in its results. Even through
his sinking fears about Theo, Alick could not but feel pathetically
sorry for poor Ned, whose grief grew wilder in its abandon after his
confession was out.
'Have you told any one about not mending the leak, Ned? Does my father
know?' he came back to Ned's side to ask anxiously.
'I dussn't!' was the choking reply. 'But I feels bound, somehow, to
tell you,' he added. 'If Miss Theedory dies, 'twill be me as did it;
an' you can tell 'em all so, if you like! They'll put me in gaol, o'
course; p'raps they'll hang me. They may bring it in manslaughter. I
dunno what they haven't the power to do!' ended Ned desperately.
Alick stared through the window out to sea, with an equally woebegone
face with that of his companion in misery. Two more unhappy boys one
could not have well beheld. And this grievous state of affairs had
revengefully trodden on the heels of the delightfully fascinating
expedition to the woods, which had been forbidden to the one boy, and
which the other boy had shirked his duty to join in!
'What would be the end of it all?' Alick dully asked himself.
'Ned,' he said aloud, and there was a passionate ring of regret in his
voice, 'it wasn't worth it!'
'No, muster, it warn't!' assented Ned, fully understanding that Alick
would have given his right hand to have put back the clock of time,
that he might again have the chance of apologising as Geoff had done,
and returning to his duty in the schoolroom. Both boys felt positively
assured that had they been on the spot the catastrophe could not
possibly have occurred.
There was a spell of silence in the tea-house. Now and again the echo
of a sob shook Ned from head to foot. Alick leaned his forehead
against the window jamb, and stared sullenly at the leaping waves
below. As he gazed, a strange resolve came into the boy's mind, born
of the deepening despair consuming him.
In the black gloom that environed him, came Satan's opportunity.
'You will never be forgiven if Theo dies,' whispered the tempting
voice. 'Perhaps you also will be put in prison, who knows, with Ned as
an accomplice!' Alick Carnegy, it will be seen, had but confused
notions as to what manslaughter meant. He shivered and cowered at the
terrifying notions of being shut up for life, perhaps, in some gloomy
gaol. Better-informed boys may jeer at Alick's ignorance of things in
general, but Northbourne was an out-of-the-way, stand-still spot, with
few or no opportunities of smartening the wits, of keeping up with the
times.
'The best way out of the difficulty would be to run away, wouldn't it?'
as he brooded, somebody seemed to suddenly and swiftly whisper in his
ear. And Alick, when the sense of the suggestion penetrated his mind,
abruptly lifted his hanging head. He gasped aloud in relief. A door
of escape opened in the black, impenetrable wall that was closing in
round him.
'Ned,' he said softly, nudging the other boy, 'listen to me! Be done
with that cry-baby business! We two, you and I, have got ourselves
into an awful scrape, and there's only one thing for us. Can't you
guess what that is? Rouse up! Can't you guess?' he repeated
impatiently.
'Me guess? No! I can't make Miss Theedory get well; and what else
matters?' Ned lifted a tear-stained face to say brokenly.
'You've often said you'd be game to run away to sea, if I made up my
mind to do it, haven't you? Well, all the blame of whatever happens
comes on us--you and me. We are bound to suffer the penalty.' Alick
spoke slowly, and with the air of weighing his words, while Ned
listened in awe. 'Now, then, it seems to me, is our chance to do it.
Let's set out this very night; they'd never miss us in all the--the
worry about Theo, until it would be too late to overtake us. We could
walk to London in about three days, I expect; and once at the Docks it
would be queer if you and I couldn't slip quietly on board some
North-bound vessel, as we've often planned to do. Speak up! Will you
come?'
And Alick breathlessly waited for Ned's long-of-coming answer.