To love is good, no doubt, but you love best
A calm safe life, with wealth and ease and rest.
The Croonah ran round Europa Point into fine weather, and the wise old
captain--who felt the pulse of the saloon with unerring touch--deemed
it expedient to pin upon the board the notice of a ball to be given on
the following night. There was considerable worldly knowledge in this
proceeding. The passengers still had the air of Europe in their lungs,
the energy of Europe in their limbs. Nothing pulls a ship full of
people together so effectually as a ball. Nothing gives such absorbing
employment to the female mind which would otherwise get into hopeless
mischief. Besides they had been at sea five days, and the captain knew
that more than one ingenuous maiden, sitting in thoughtful idleness
about the decks, was lost in vague forebodings as to the creases in her
dresses ruthlessly packed away in the hold.
The passengers were, in fact, finding their sea-legs, which, from the
captain's point of view, meant that the inner men and the outer women
would now require and receive a daily increasing attention. So he said
a word to the head cook, and to the fourth officer he muttered--
"Let the women have their trunks!"
When, on the evening of the ball, Agatha appeared at the door of her
mother's cabin, that good lady's face fell.
"What, dear? Your old black!"
"Yes, dear, my old black," replied the dutiful daughter. She was
arranging a small bouquet of violets in the front of her dress--a
bouquet she had found in her cabin when she went to dress. Luke had,
no doubt, sent ashore for them at Gibraltar--and there was something of
the unknown, the vaguely possible, in his manner of placing them on her
tiny dressing-table, without a word of explanation, which appealed to
her jaded imagination.
There was some suggestion of recklessness about Agatha, which her
mother almost detected--something which had never been suggested in the
subtler element of London drawing-room. The girl spoke in a short,
sharp way which was new to the much-snubbed rear-commander. Agatha
still had this when Luke asked her for a dance.
"Yes," she answered curtly, handing him the card and avoiding his eyes.
He stepped back to take advantage of the light of a swinging hurricane
lamp, and leant against the awning which had been closed in all round.
"How many may I have?" he asked.
She continued to look anywhere except in his direction. Then quite
suddenly she gave a little laugh.
"All."
"What?" he added, with a catch in his breath.
"You may have them all."
There was a pause; then Agatha turned with a half-mocking smile, and
looked at him. For the first time in her life she was really
frightened. She had never seen passion in a man's face before. It was
the one thing she had never encountered in the daily round of social
effort in London. Not an evil passion, but the strong passion of love,
which is as rare in human beings as is genius. He was standing in a
conventional attitude, holding her programme--and that which took the
girl's breath away lay in his eyes alone.
She could not meet his look, for she felt suddenly quite puny and small
and powerless. She realised in that flash of thought that there was a
whole side of life of which she had never suspected the existence.
After all, she was learning the lesson that millions of women have to
learn before they quite realise what life is.
She smiled nervously, and looked hard at the little card in his strong,
still hands--wondering what she had done. She saw him write his name
opposite five or six dances. Then he handed her the card, and left her
with a grave bow--left her without a word of explanation, to take his
silence and explain it if she could. That sense of the unknown in him,
which appealed so strongly to her, seemed to rise and envelop her in a
maze of thought and imagination which was bewildering in its
intensity--thrilling with a new life.
When he came back later to claim his first dance, he was quietly
polite, and nothing else. They danced until the music stopped, and
Agatha knew that she had met her match in this as in other matters.
The dancers trooped out to the dimly-lighted deck, while the
quartermaster raised the awning to allow the fresh air to circulate.
Luke and Agatha went with the rest, her hand resting unsteadily on his
sleeve. She had never felt unsteady like this before. She was
conscious, probably for the first time in her life, of a strange,
creeping fear. She was distinctly afraid of the first words that her
partner would say when they were alone. Spread out over the broad deck
the many passengers seemed but a few. It was almost solitude--and
Agatha was afraid of solitude with Luke. Yet she had selected a dress
which she knew would appeal to him. She had dressed for him--which
means something from a woman's point of view. She had welcomed this
ball with a certain reckless throb of excitement, not for its own sake,
but for Luke's. The unerring instinct of her vanity had not played her
false. She had succeeded, and now she was afraid of her success.
There is a subtle fear in all success, and an indefinite responsibility.
Luke knew the ship. He led the way to a deserted corner of the deck,
with a deliberation which set Agatha's heart beating.
"What did you mean when you said I could have all the dances?" asked
Luke slowly. His eyes gleamed deeply as he looked down at her. And
Agatha had no answer ready.
She stood before him with downcast eyes--like a chidden child who has
been meddling with danger.
And suddenly his arms were round her. She gave a little gasp, but made
no attempt to escape from him. This was all so different, so new to
her. There was something in the strong salt air blowing over them
which seemed to purify the world and raise them above the sordid cares
thereof. There was something simple and strong and primitive in this
man--at home on his own element, all filled with the strength of the
ocean--mastering her, claiming her as if by force.
"What did you mean?" he asked again.
She pushed him away, and turning stood beside him with her two hands
resting on the rail, her back turned towards him.
"Oh, Luke," she whispered at length, "I can't be poor--I CAN'T--I
can't. You do not know what it is. It has always been such a
struggle--there is no rest in it."
It is said that women can raise men above the world. How often do they
bring them down to it when they are raising themselves!
And Luke's love was large enough to accept her as she was.
"And if I were not poor?" he asked, without any of the sullen pride
that was his.
She answered nothing, and he read her silence aright.
"I will become rich," he said, "somehow. I do not care how. I will, I
will--Agatha!"
She did not dare to meet his eyes.
"Come," she said. "Come--let us go back."
They danced together again, but Agatha refused to sit anywhere but
beneath the awning. While they were dancing they did not speak. He
never took his eyes off her, and she never looked at him.
Then, just as he was, with a pilot jacket exchanged for his dress coat,
Luke had to go on duty on the bridge. While he stood there, far above
the lighted decks, alone at his post in the dark, keen and watchful,
still as a statue, the sound of the dance music rose up and enveloped
him like the echo of a happy dream.
Presently the music ceased, and the weary dancers went below, leaving
Luke FitzHenry to his own thoughts.
All the world seemed to be asleep except these two men--one motionless
on the bridge, the other alert in the dimly lighted wheelhouse. The
Croonah herself seemed to slumber with the regular beating of a great
restless heart far down in her iron being.
The dawn was now creeping up into the eastern sky, touching the face of
the waters with a soft, pearly light. A few straight streaks of cloud
became faintly outlined. The moon looked yellow and deathlike.
Luke stood watching the rise of a new day, and with it there seemed to
be rising within him a new life.
Beneath his feet, in her dainty cabin, Agatha Ingham-Baker saw that
dawn also. She was standing with her arms folded on the upper berth
breast high. She had been standing there an hour. She was alone in
the cabin, for Luke had secured separate rooms for the two ladies.
Agatha had not moved since she came down from the ball. She did not
seem to be thinking of going to bed. The large square port-hole was
open, and the cool breeze fluttered the lace of her dress, stirring the
dead violets at her breast.
Her finely cut features were set with a look of strong determination.
"I can't--I can't be poor," she was repeating to herself with a
mechanical monotony.