TONY'S INSPIRATION
Warrisden had failed. This was the account of his mission which he had
to give to Pamela Mardale; and he gave it without excuses. He landed
at Billingsgate Wharf at eleven o'clock on the second day after the
sails of the Blue Fleet had dropped out of sight behind the screen of
breaking waves. That afternoon he travelled down to the village of the
three poplars. It was night when he stepped out of the train on to the
platform of the little station. One can imagine what bitter and
humiliating thoughts occupied his mind. Away on the crest of the hill
the lights of the village shone brightly through the clear night air,
just as the lights of Margate had shone across the bay when the
steam-cutter had sprung like a thing alive to the lift of the sea
beneath her bows. Then all the breeze had whispered promises; now the
high hopes were fallen. "Do not fail!" Pamela had cried, with a
veritable passion, hating failure as an indignity, he could hear the
words in the very accent of her voice. Once she had suffered failure,
but it was not to be endured again. That was what she had meant; and
he had failed. He drove along that straight road which he had
traversed with Pamela at his side; he slept under the roof of the inn
where Pamela had claimed his help. The help had been fruitless, and
the next morning he rode down the hill and along the load with the
white wood rails--"the new road"--to tell her so. The sun was bright;
there was a sparkle of spring in the air; on the black leafless boughs
birds sang. He looked back to the three poplars pointing to the sky
from the tiny garden on the crest of the hill. Quetta--yes! But it
seemed there was to be no Seistan.
He had started early, fearing that there might be a meet that day; and
he had acted wisely, for in the hall there were one or two men
lounging by the fire in scarlet, and Pamela was wearing her
riding-habit when she received him. He was shown into a little room
which opened on to the garden behind the house, and thither Pamela
came.
"You are alone!" she said.
"Yes; Stretton would not come."
"None the less, I am very grateful."
She smiled as she spoke, and sat down, with her eyes upon him, waiting
for his story. The disappointment was visible upon his face, but not
upon hers. Pamela's indeed, was to him at this moment rather
inscrutable. It was not indifferent, however. He recognised that, and
was, in a way, consoled. It had been his fear that at the first word
she would dismiss the subject, and turn her back on it for good. On
the contrary, she was interested, attentive.
"You found him, then?" she asked.
"Yes. You would like to hear what passed?"
"Of course."
"Even though I failed?"
She looked at him with some surprise at his insistence.
"Yes, yes," she said, a little impatiently.
"We were nearly three days longer in reaching the Blue Fleet than we
anticipated," he began. "Stretton came on board the fish-cutter----"
And Pamela interrupted him--
"Why were you nearly three days longer? Tell me about your own journey
out to the fleet from the beginning."
She was, in fact, as much interested in her messenger as in the errand
upon which she had sent him. Warrisden began to see that his journey
after all was not entirely a defeat. The alliance to which they had
set their hands up there in the village on the hill was bearing its
fruit. It had set them in a new relationship to each other, and in a
closer intimacy.
He told the story of his voyage, making light of his hardships on the
steam-cutter. She, on the other hand, made much of them.
"To quote your captain," she remarked, with a smile, "it was not a
Bobby's job."
Warrisden laughed, and told her of Stretton's arrival in the punt of
the _Perseverance_. He described the way in which he had come on
board; he related the conversation which had passed between them at
the stern of the cutter.
"He hadn't the look of a man who had failed," Warrisden continued. "He
stood there on the swinging deck with his legs firmly planted apart,
as easily as if he were standing on a stone pavement. I, on the other
hand, was clinging desperately to a stay. He stood there, with the
seas swinging up behind him, and stubbornly refused to come."
"You told him of his father's illness?" asked Pamela.
"He replied that his father had not sent for him."
"You spoke of the candles lit every night?"
"His answer was the same. His father had not sent for him. Besides, he
had his time to serve. He had signed on for eight weeks. There was
only one moment when I thought that there was a chance I might
persuade him; and, indeed, my persuasions had really nothing to do
with it at all. It was just the mention of your name."
"My name?" asked Pamela, in surprise.
"Yes. In answer to a question of his I told him that I had been sent
out by you, and for a moment he faltered."
Pamela nodded her head in comprehension.
"I understand; but he refused in the end?"
"Yes. He said, 'One must take one's risks.'"
Pamela repeated the sentence softly to herself; and Warrisden crossed
over to her side. His voice took a gentler note, and one still more
serious than that which he had used.
"Do you know what I think?" he asked. "You sent me out with a message
to Stretton. I think that he has sent me back with a message for
you--'One must take one's risks.' He said that he had learned that in
the North Sea. He pointed to the little boats carrying the fish-boxes
to the steamer through the heavy, breaking seas. Each man in each of
the boats was taking his risks. 'Whether it's lacing your topsail or
taking in a reef,' he said, 'one must take one's risks.'"
Pamela was silent for awhile after he had spoken. She sat with her
hands folded in her lap, and her face most serious. Then she looked up
at her companion with a very friendly smile; but she did not answer
him at all. And when she spoke, she spoke words which utterly
surprised him. All the time since the ketches had disappeared behind
the waves he had been plagued with the thought of the distress which
defeat would cause her; and here she was saying--
"I am very glad that you went out to the North Sea for me, even though
the journey proved fruitless. It makes us so much the better friends,
doesn't it? And that is a gain for me. Think of it that way, and you
will not mind the hardships and the waste of time."
She held out her hand--rather a rare act with her--and Warrisden took
it. Then came the explanation why defeat meant so little just at this
time.
"I need not have sent you at all," she continued, "could I have
foreseen. Sir John Stretton died yesterday afternoon, suddenly. I
received a telegram last night from Millie. So Tony will naturally
come home when his four weeks are up. I wrote last night to Millie,
telling her where Tony was." Then she added, "But I am glad that I did
not foresee."
She rose from her chair, and they walked out through the hall to the
front of the house. A groom was holding Pamela's horse. The others who
were hunting that day had already ridden off. Warrisden helped her
into the saddle, and she rode away.
Sir John had died, and Stretton would now naturally come home. That
explained to Warrisden how it was that Pamela made so little of the
defeat. But it was not the whole explanation. Pamela was waking from
her long sleep, like the princess in the fairy tale, and the mere act
of waking was a pleasure. In the stir of emotions, hitherto rigorously
suppressed, in the exercise of sympathies, she found a delight such as
one may find in the mere stretching of one's muscles after a deep
rest. The consciousness of life as a thing enjoyable began to tingle
in her. She was learning again lessons which she remembered once to
have learned before. The joy of being needed by those one needs--there
was one of them. She had learned a new one to-day--"One must take
one's risks." She repeated the sentence over to herself as she rode
between the hedgerows on this morning which had the sparkle of spring.
A few days ago she would have put that view of life away from her.
Now, old as it was, simple as it was, she pondered upon it as though
it were a view quite novel. She found it, moreover, pleasant. She had
travelled, indeed, further along the new road than she was aware. The
truth is that she had rather hugged to herself the great trouble which
had overshadowed her life. She had done so unwittingly. She had
allowed it to dominate her after it had lost its power to dominate,
and from force of habit. She began to be aware of it now that she had
stepped out from her isolation, and was gathering again the strings of
her life into her hands.
* * * * *
But Pamela was wrong in her supposition that since Sir John's death
the danger for Millicent was at an end. Tony Stretton would now return
home, she thought; and nothing was further from Tony's thoughts. At
the time when Pamela was riding through the lanes of Leicestershire on
that morning of early spring, Tony was lying in his bunk in the cabin
of the _Perseverance_ reading over, for the thousandth time, certain
letters which he kept beneath his pillow. This week he kept the long
night watch from midnight until eight of the morning; it was now
eleven, and he had the cabin to himself. The great gale had blown
itself out. The trawl, which for three days had remained safely stowed
under the lee bulwarks, was now dragging behind the boat; with her
topsails set the ketch was sailing full and by the wind; and down the
open companion the sunlight streamed into the cabin and played like
water upon the floor. The letters Tony Stretton was reading were those
which Millie had sent him. Disappointment was plain in every line;
they were sown with galling expressions of pity; here and there
contempt peeped out. Yet he was glad to have them; they were his
monitors, and he found a stimulus in their very cruelty. Though he
knew them by heart, he continually read them on mornings like this,
when the sun shone down the companion, and the voices of his fellow
sailors called cheerily overhead; at night, leaning upon his elbow,
and spelling them out by the dim light of the swinging lamp, while the
crew slept about him in their bunks.
To his companions he was rather a mystery. To some of them he was just
down on his luck; to others he was a man "who had done something."
"I suppose you have come out here to lie doggo," said the skipper to
him, shouting out the words in the height of the gale, when both were
standing by the lashed wheel one night. "I ask no questions. All I say
is, you do your work. I have had no call to slap a haddick across your
face. I say that fair and square. Water!"
He concluded his speech with a yell. Stretton saw a ragged line of
white suddenly flash out in the darkness, high up by the weather bow,
and descend with a roar. It was a wave breaking down upon the deck.
Both men flung themselves down the companion, and the water sluiced
after them and washed them struggling about the floor of the cabin.
The wave saved Stretton from the need to reply, and the skipper did
not refer to the subject again.
Stretton had signed on for this cruise on the _Perseverance_ because
he wanted a time during which he could be quite sure of his
livelihood. So far he had failed. He must map out a new course for
himself upon his life's chart. But for that work he needed time for
thought, and that time, up till now, he had not enjoyed. The
precarious existence which he had led since he had lost the half of
Millie's small fortune--now a clerk in a store, and a failure; now a
commercial traveller, and again a failure--had left him little
breathing space wherein to gather up his slow thoughts and originate a
new plan. That breathing space, however, the _Perseverance_ had
afforded him. During the long watches on fine nights, when the dark
sails, swinging up and down to the motion of the boat, revealed and
obscured the stars, he wrestled with the difficult problem of his
life.
He could go back when his cruise was over if he chose. His father was
dying; he faced the fact quite frankly. The object with which he set
out would be, after all, accomplished, though not accomplished by
himself. There would be a house for Millie and himself independent of
the old man's caprice; their life would be freed from the shadow of
his tyranny; their seclusion would come to an end; they could let the
sunlight in upon their lives. Yes! But there were the letters down in
the cabin there, underneath his pillow. Did not they alter the
position? He had gone away to keep his wife, just, in a word, to
prevent that very contempt of which the letters gave him proof. Must
he not now stay away in order to regain her? His wife was at the
bottom of all his thoughts. He had no blame for her, however much her
written words might hurt. He looked back upon their life together, its
pleasant beginnings, when they were not merely lovers, but very good
friends into the bargain. For it is possible to be the one and yet not
the other. They were good days, the days in the little house in
Deanery Street, days full of fun and good temper and amusement. He
recalled their two seasons in London--London bright with summer--and
making of each long day a too short holiday. Then had come the change,
sudden, dark, and complete. In the place of freedom, subjection; in
the place of company, isolation; in the place of friends, a sour old
man, querulous and exacting. Then had come the great hope of another
home; and swiftly upon that hope its failure through his incapacity.
He could not blame her for the letters underneath his pillow. He was
no less set upon regaining her than he had been before on keeping her.
His love for her had been the chief motive of his life when he left
the house in Berkeley Square. It remained so still. Could he go back,
he asked himself?
There was one inducement persuading him always to answer "Yes"--the
sentence which Pamela had spoken, and which she had refused to
explain. He should be at his wife's side. He had never understood that
saying; it remained fixed in his memory, plaguing him. He should be at
his wife's side. So Pamela Mardale had said, and for what Pamela said
he had the greatest respect. Well, he could be in a few weeks at his
wife's side. But would it not be at too great a cost unless he had
first redeemed himself from her contempt?
Thus he turned and turned, and saw no issue anywhere. The days slipped
by, and one morning the fish-cutter brought to him a letter, which
told him that four days ago his father had died. He could not reach
home in time for the funeral, even if he started at once. And he could
not start at once; he had signed on for eight weeks.
But the letter left him face to face with the old problem. Should he
go back or should he stay away? And if he stayed away, what should he
do?
He came on deck one morning, and his skipper said--
"There's a fog on land, Stretton,"
"How do you know that?" asked Stretton.
The captain pointed to some birds hovering over the masts of the
ketch.
"Those are land birds," said he. "Look, there's a thrush and there's a
blackbird. You won't find them so far from land without a reason.
There has been a fog, and very likely a storm. They have lost their
bearings in the fog."
The birds hovered about the ships of the fleet, calling
plaintively--here, at all events, were men recognisably belonging to
the land they vainly sought. Stretton, watching them, felt very much
like one of those birds. He, too, had lost his way in a fog, and
though he made no outcry, his need of guidance was no less great than
theirs.
Then came a morning at last when the trawl was hauled in for the last
time, and the boat's head pointed towards Yarmouth.
"When shall we reach harbour?" Stretton asked anxiously.
"If this breeze holds, in twenty-four hours," replied the skipper.
Twenty-four hours! Just a day and a night, and Stretton would step
from the deck on to Gorleston Quay; and he was no nearer to the
solution of his problem than when he had stepped from the quay on to
the deck eight weeks ago. Those eight weeks were to have resolved all
his perplexities, and lo! the eight weeks had passed.
He was in a fever of restlessness. He paced the deck all the day when
he was not standing at the wheel; at night he could not sleep, but
stood leaning over the bulwarks, watching the stars trembling in the
quiet water. At one o'clock in the morning the _Perseverance_ passed a
lightship. Already the boat was so near home! And in the hour which
followed, his eight weeks of solitary communing, forced, as it were,
by immediate necessity, bore their fruit. His inspiration--he counted
the idea no less than an inspiration-came to him suddenly. He saw all
at once his course marked out for him upon the chart of life. He would
not suffer a doubt of it to enter his mind; he welcomed it with
passion, and the great load was lifted from his mind. The idea had
come. It was water in a dry land.
A fisherman leaning over the bulwark by Stretton's side heard him
suddenly begin to sing over to himself a verse or two of a song--
"Oh, come out, mah love! I'm a-waiting foh you heah!
Doan' you keep yuh window closed to-night."
It was a coon song which Stretton was humming over to himself. His
voice dropped to a murmur, He stopped and laughed softly to himself,
as though the song had very dear associations in his thoughts. Then
his voice rose again, and there was now a kind of triumph in the lilt
of the song, which had nothing to do with the words--
"De stars all a-gwine put dey little ones to bed
Wid dey 'hush now, sing a lullaby,'
De man in de moon nod his sleepy, sleepy head,
And do sandman put a little in his eye."
The words went lilting out over the quiet sea. It seemed to Stretton
that they came from a lighted window just behind him, and were sung in
a woman's voice. He was standing on a lawn surrounded by high dark
trees in the warmth of a summer night. He was looking out past the
islets over eight miles of quiet water to the clustered lights of the
yachts in Oban Bay. The coon song was that which his wife had sung to
him on one evening he was never to forget; and this night he had
recovered its associations. It was no longer "a mere song sung by
somebody." It seemed to him, so quickly did his anticipations for once
outrun his judgment, that he had already recovered his wife.
The _Perseverance_ was moored alongside of the quay at eight o'clock
in the morning, and just at that time Millie was reading a letter of
condolence from Lionel Callon.