As Dick Lewis went up the steps, the front door opened and old Jaffray’s
moved face showed against the dark of the hall. Lewis noticed, with his
new and wondering appreciation for the beauty of common things, that it
was finely carved as ivory against the shadow. Then, he was shaking the
old man’s hand.
“I’m glad to see you, Mr. Lewis. Glad from my ’eart, sir, if you’ll
allow me. We were all very glad to hear of your safety. Miss Guida,
she’s waiting for you. . . Yes, in the library, sir.”
“Thank you, Jaffray.”
He went to the familiar door and opened it, and the woman who had been
sitting for an hour listening for his step and the sound of the opening
door, rose and went forward swiftly to meet him. She said only “Dick!”
Then, as they clasped hands: “I need not tell you our joy and relief
when we heard.”
“Thank you, Guida. You had my letter?”
“Yes, I kept it to myself—greedy me! The others don’t know you’re here
yet. And you’ve come—?”
“Just on my way back. To say good-bye.”
She smiled, summoning that light speech so many use for a shield and
buckler. “Don’t! No good-byes between friends! I shall say ‘Au ’voir’ as
usual.”
But he did not respond to her mood. He said gently, “I think
good-bye—and all it stands for—is a good thing to say between
friends.” And instantly something alert and frightened stood up in the
woman’s soul, crying “He’s changed, he’s different. Something’s
happened. This is not Dick. . .”
She met his eyes, resting on her with a sort of abstract delight. From
her pale crinkled hair to her slender feet, she was good for eyes to
rest on; many eyes had told her so. But Dick Lewis seemed for the first
time to see her at a very far distance; and the dumb fear at her heart
spread to her body, so that she pressed her hands hard together to
prevent them shaking.
“I—want to hear about your escape, Dick,” she said aloud.
There was a long pause. At last he turned to her with a simplicity as
strange as it was new. “And I—want to tell you, Guida. I—came to tell
you. But I don’t quite know how to do it without hurting you.” His eyes
were infinitely kind. “You’ve been so good to me, you see.”
She looked at him. “Don’t think of me,” she said clearly; “I knew from
your letter there was something you wanted to tell me. Don’t think of
me, except that I want to listen. And always want to—help, if I
can. . . Wait till I get settled comfy. There. Go on.”
He leaned forward and touched her hand an instant. “You’re a dear,” he
said, rather huskily; “you’ve been listening to my tales for—five years
or so, isn’t it? Well, listen to the last. Your friendship’s been the
best thing those five years have known.”
Her eyes were like steel as she said with careful lightness, “But why
speak of it in the past tense, Richard?”
He was silent; she felt his kindness reaching out to her as he had
reached his hand; a kindness somehow pitiful. At last he said quietly,
“Because—this time—I believe it really will be good-bye, Guida. I
don’t think I shall come back.”
“You mean. . . ?”
His eyes met hers, gravely, across that strange distance. “I mean—if
there’s any justice, or any mercy, in earth or heaven, I _can’t_ come
back.”
She said at once. “You’ll have to tell me the whole thing. You owe me
that.”
“Yes, I owe you that. . . and so much more! If only I can make you
understand. . .”
Sheer fright was sickening her. A hundred broken words beat on her
bewildered mind. Exposure—shock—could his brain be affected? That
small crying voice repeated over and over, “What is it, O, what is it?
What’s happened to him? What does it mean?” She did not know she had
spoken the last words aloud till he answered them.
“I mean only that I believe, this time, I shan’t come back, my dear.”
“But you’ve come through safely—come through everything—up till now!”
He smiled at her affectionately from his far distance. “O, I don’t mean
warnings or presentiments, or any of that rot! I mean a reasoned
assurance that I am not to survive the war.”
She managed a smile also. “You look—very much alive, Dick!”
“Yes.” He was looking at her very straightly. “But you see—it’s not my
own life. It’s just on loan for a time. That’s the way I look at it.”
She heard her own voice saying, “You must try to make me understand,
Dick.” He answered at once, “I’ll try, Guida.”
“You know all the newspaper part of it. You know the ship was torpedoed
without warning; that she sank in eight minutes; that the sea was so
rough only three boats were launched safely? Yes? Well, you know as much
of that part of it as I do, then. For I fell when she heeled to the
explosion, and either struck my head, or was struck by something. I
remember nothing till I found myself fighting upwards out of the sea;
not much then; I was pretty far gone. . . ‘All Thy waves and billows are
gone over me.’ You’ve read that. So had I. But it’s a strange thing to
_feel_ it.
“I was swimming by instinct when I came to myself. My head felt as if it
was split in two, and I could scarcely see, what with dizziness and salt
water. But there was some sort of wreckage floating near, and I made for
it. It was one of those collapsible canvas boats. I don’t know where it
came from. It was floating bottom up and crumpled. The air caught under
it, made it float like a buoy, but it gave a bit with my weight. Then I
saw that there was someone else clinging to the other side of it. A
girl.
“I was quite in possession of myself, but awfully sick and shaken. I
said ‘Will it bear two, d’you think?’ And she said, ‘Yes, rather. Can
you get hold of it?’
“I got hold of it after a fashion. My hands didn’t seem to belong to me.
She watched me across the keel with some anxiety. I misread this, and
said, ‘I’ll just rest here a bit, if you don’t mind, and then I’ll swim
off and find something else. She said at once, ‘Please don’t. If we keep
the gunwale under each side, the air won’t leak out so much. It kept
bobbing up before you came. You’re a soldier, aren’t you? I saw you on
board.’
“I said, Yes, I was a soldier; wounded, sent south, and just on my way
back. Couldn’t say I’d noticed her on board, for I hadn’t. I noticed her
now, though. She was quite young; her hair was tied in a sopping tail at
the back of her neck, schoolgirl fashion, her face was fair, rather
square, perfectly calm, and streaming, I thought at first with
sea-water. Then I saw it was with tears. She saw me look at her and said
at once, ‘There were children on board, you know. I was playing with
them this morning. Jolly lucky for us that it’s not cold, and that we
can both swim.’ I said, Yes, jolly lucky. . .”
He stopped. He was silent so long that the woman listening stirred and
drew a long breath like a sob. He looked at her quickly. “You and I,” he
went on in a low voice, “we’ve talked so much of life and . . . death,
and what death means. And there, with that girl, nearer to it than I’d
ever been before, I hadn’t a thought or a word different to what you’d
have at five o’clock tea! She talked a good deal—rather off-hand and
slangy like a boy—of a safety-waistcoat and a certain Miss Matthews.
‘We’d only one,’ she said, ‘and of course, I put it on Miss Matthews,
and she sat up all night in it, reading Gold Dust. . . Beastly little
books.’ She said, when did I think we’d be picked up? And I said ‘O, any
moment,’ though I’d the greatest doubts if we’d be picked up at all.
Then wave after wave of pain and sickness came over me. My head was on
fire. I thought I must let go. But I hung on; really because I didn’t
want to leave the girl alone. . . When I came out of ’em, she—she
comforted me. How? O, I don’t know. She just said ‘Stick to it. O _do_
stick to it! You can manage it a bit longer, and a ship is sure to turn
up.’ So I kept on managing it a bit longer.
“I’d have done better to let go then.
“Once, though, I must have fainted or something. I came to, and she had
swum round, and was supporting me. I don’t know what I said, but she
dived back to the other side like a fish. ‘Jolly lucky,’ she told me,
‘that I went in for swimming. I’ve two cups.’ We talked about the cups,
I remember; and that Miss Matthews had thought it unladylike to choose
cups when you might have had teaspoons instead.
“We must have been two hours in the water. My God! such hours! Not that
we suffered much. But that passive _waiting_ was so strange. It called
for every ounce of endurance in soul and body; I’ve never felt such a
strain on me, even in the trenches. And she—that girl—bore it, and
better than I. . .”
He was silent again. Guida listened to the ticking of a little French
clock, whose pendulum was a gilded Love swinging on a wreath of roses.
Presently it sounded a small ringing chime; and a peal beaten by iron
hammers in a hundred towers could not have been more remorseless than
the fairy sound.
“From first to last we saw nothing of the other boats, nor of any other
survivors. The sea seemed to have been swept clear, even of the tragedy.
I did see one smear of smoke on the horizon, but would not draw her
attention to it, and it quickly passed.
“I roused from a sort of doze—if it’s possible to doze clinging to an
upturned boat, with a broken head. The sky seemed lower and darker. The
waves seemed to run against it. It was a funny effect. I expected them
to splash and flop back! We were very low in the sea. I thought the boat
we clung to was lower. And evening was coming on. Our last hope, I
thought, would go with the day. . .
“I looked across the keel. That brave child’s face was very pale. Her
mouth was set in such resolution it made her look old. She said quietly.
‘The air’s leaking out of the boat.’
“Not a thing could I do or say to help her! I don’t hold it’s any part
of a man’s duty to throw dust in the eyes of a plucky girl facing
danger; but I _did_ long to be able to ease it a bit for her. And beyond
what comfort the mere presence of another human being gave her, I was
utterly useless. However, something in her face made me think she’d have
been worse off alone, and I resolved to cling on to the last possible
moment. But I was very weak and drowsy. I’d have let go and given up if
it hadn’t been for her.
“‘If it sinks any lower.’ I told her, ‘you must work round to the stern
and cling on there, and I’ll swim alongside.’ I knew I shouldn’t swim
far; but I thought the thing would serve to keep her head out of the
water for another couple of hours, anyway. And then she leaned a little
forward and said ‘No!’
“‘You must,’ I said. But she went on quite quietly, ‘No. If this boat
will only support one—if only one of us is to be saved—then it must be
you.’
“I laughed. I was very angry with her—with that small, steady, white
face of hers. I said, ‘Don’t talk nonsense, if you please. It’s all
quite bad enough without that. You’ll do as you’re told.’ I suppose I
was awfully rude to her. . . But she made me listen.
“‘That’s all right,’ she said, in her boyish way, ‘when other things are
all right. But everything’s upside down now. Nothing is as usual. You
know what I mean. And of the two, you _must_ be saved, if there’s a
choice. Just _because_ of—of women and children. Just _because_ you’re
a man, and can fight, and help to stop—this. Don’t you see? Can’t you
see?’
“I talked a lot more—talked like a Dutch Uncle. We argued the rights
and wrongs of it for ever so long. It must have been. . . funny. . . we
two specks of human beings, talking like that in the middle of the
Atlantic! Her arguing was not the least use, of course. She to argue
down the deepest instinct in the nature of any decent man of our
race—she, that little thing! She was silent at last. I thought I’d
convinced her of the sheer, rank, outrageous impossibility of her idea.
And all the time I was longing to give in and let go there and then.
Only I read in her face—somehow; how does one know things at such
times?—that her one fear was just being left alone. She wasn’t afraid
of death; but she _was_ afraid of the gray twilight and the empty, empty
sea.
“We did not speak for a long time after that. We were too tired. That
wild suggestion of hers never crossed my mind again. I was
thinking,—chiefly of going ratting with Gherkin, the terrier I left
with the Dunstables! I was in a sort of dream, I think. But once I heard
her speak, low and clearly. ‘Hold on,’ she said, ‘hold on. Stick it out!
It’s your duty. You’re not your own now. You belong to every weak and
defenceless thing there is in the world. . .’ I didn’t quite take in
what she said, or its meaning; I was too far gone. But I lifted my
head—I was resting it against the bulge of the broken canvas keel—and
nodded to her, and she nodded back at me. I remembered afterwards that
her eyes were starry bright. . . Then I let my head go down again, and
shut my eyes a minute. . .”
He turned slowly, so that he faced Guida full. She saw, with an
indescribable wrench of pain, that his brown cheeks were glistening wet;
and as she saw it, he wiped the tears away, openly, on his knuckles,
like a child. His eyes, looking into hers, held the reflection of a
great light. And he was miles away; separated from her by measureless
emotion, as by time and space.
He said, quite steadily, “I never saw her again.
“When I remember anything more, I was in the vast blaze of a
searchlight—an agony of light, it seemed to me, boring through me. Then
there were black shapes of men, trying to lift me into a boat. My hands
were so clenched and numbed on the gunwale of that canvas thing that
they had to cut free the bits I was hanging on to. . . for fear I left
the girl in the lurch. And I shouted to them ‘Have you got the lady?
Have you got the young lady? Take her first!’ And one of them put his
ear down to my mouth, and listened carefully, and then looked at the
others. And he said, very gently, ‘There ain’t no young lady, sir.
You’re the only one on that boat.’”
Pity rushed over the frozen woman in the chair; pity, warm and blinding.
“O, the poor child!” she said, “O, the poor child!”
But Lewis swung on her almost angrily. “Don’t pity her,” he said at
once. “There’s nothing to pity in such a royal sort of generosity as
hers! She and her gift are not to be pitied. Don’t waste pity on—either
of us, Guida.”
Meeting her dumb, bewildered look, after a moment he went on, “If I’m
sure of anything, in earth or heaven, I’m sure that she gave her life
for mine—that she let go her hold on that boat deliberately—to give me
a better chance—because she thought mine the more useful life.”
“You can’t be _sure_, my poor Dick!”
“But I am sure. She was in better case to stick to that boat than I was.
She gave me my life—no, lent it!—the divine, unpardonable child. . .
She lent it, in her own words, to all the weak things of the world,
because I could fight on their side till such deeds as _that_ were done
away. I take it so. I believe I am—meant to take it so. It’s not my own
life any more. It’s a loan, till the end of justice has been
reached—the end we all have fought for, she not less than I. God knows!
And when that end’s attained, I think God in His mercy will call in the
debt—that He won’t leave me under such a proud, intolerable,
burden. . . What a lot we’ve talked about—things—before. And here, I
suppose, is the strangest thing of all. Only it doesn’t seem strange to
me. Just natural. One didn’t exactly run away from. . . death. . .
before, you know. The difference now is only that, when I see it coming,
I shall run to meet it.”
She could find no relief in thought or feeling. He sat quite still in
his pet chair, the traces of those unashamed tears still on his cheeks,
staring at the rug; and as she watched him, she saw a terror opening
before her, a gray desolation. The familiar room, the afternoon sunlight
in squares on the carpet, the faint rattle of a wind-stirred blind—all
the old familiar things were there. But in the half of an hour, the soul
of them was changed past any recall of hers.
She tried once, timidly, desperately, “But if she _gave_ it to you. . .”
He answered quickly, “For that! Just for that. I shall have no right to
the loan any longer.” He looked at her quietly. And she spoke, answering
something his eyes had said rather than his lips.
“I see. And nothing I can say will make you look at it differently. . .”
“No. I don’t think it will, Guida. I’ve had a long time to think things
out, you see.”
The familiar room, the familiar figure, Guida saw them as in a glass
darkly. She knew it was no use fighting. Something confronted her which
was implacable by words or tears or prayers; implacable as death, yet
wearing the bright face of life and love.
He was watching her, with infinite kindness, from that great and starry
distance. “I didn’t do wrong to tell you, did I?” he asked gently.
“There was more or less of an unspoken compact—we always talked out our
philosophies. How thin they seem—now. . . . And I thought you
wouldn’t—grieve—when it comes. . . If I could show you that grief
was—would be—out of place.”
She bent her head and after a minute asked calmly, “when do you go?”
“This evening.” And afterwards she could remember no interval between
his saying so and his rising to go. A few more brief sentences, broken
words of courage that were on a thousand lips; then he was at the door,
turning with a smile. She did not press him to stay. Life was going with
him; but better it should go, she thought. She knew afterwards that he
had held her hands, kissed her once, and blessed her for “the truest
friend ever man had.” But all the time their souls were divided by a
barrier of great and shining things in which she had no share.
“Good-bye, Guida.”
“No, Dick, no! Au ’voir!”
For a moment that light seemed to include her as she defied it, to shine
on her too. Then it was gone with him, and the door closed.
She stayed quiet, as she was, for a long time; then she slid forward
slowly to the floor and knelt there, her face in her hands. Later she
rose, and went to a glass, and mercilessly examined her beauty.
“A little while, my dear,” she said, “a little while, and you’ll be old.
And lonely. . . Would it have made any difference if you’d told Dick you
loved him?”
“Would it have made it seem _happier_ to Guida,” Dick Lewis was asking
himself, “if I could have told her that I’ll be not only willing, but
glad—eager—to go, for the sake of the one chance in a thousand that
I’ll find that girl again—the girl whose name I never knew—the girl on
the other side?”