DEEP WATERS
Wild white roses that grew in the sandy stubble above the shore, little
orange-scented roses that straggled through the grass--they called to
something that ran in Columbine's blood, they spoke to her of the South.
She was sure that she would find those roses all about her feet when she
came to the end of the long voyage. She would see their golden hearts
wide open to the sun. For their fragrance haunted her day by day as she
floated down the long glassy stretches and rocked on the waveless
swells.
Sometimes she had a curious fancy that she was lying dead, and they had
strewn the sweet flowers all about her. She hoped that they might not be
buried with her; they were too beautiful for that.
At other times she thought of them as a bridal wreath, purer than the
purest orange-blossom that ever decked a bride. Once, too--this was when
she was nearing the end of the voyage--there came to her a magic whiff
of wet bog-myrtle that made her fancy that she must be a bride indeed.
At last, just when it seemed to her that her boat was gently grounding
upon the sand where the little white roses grew, she opened her eyes
widely, wonderingly, and realised that the voyage was over.
She was lying in her own little room at The Ship, and Mrs. Peck, with
motherly kindness writ large on her comely, plump face, was bending over
her with a cup of steaming broth in her hand.
Columbine gazed at her with a bewildered sense of having slept too long.
Mrs. Peck nodded at her cheerily. "There, my dear! You're better, I can
see. A fine time you've given us. I thought as I should never see your
bright eyes again."
Columbine put forth a trembling hand with a curious feeling that it did
not belong to her at all. "Have I been ill?" she said.
Mrs. Peck nodded again cheerily. "Why, it's more than a week you've been
lying here, and how I have worrited about you! Prostration following
severe shock was what the doctor called it, but it looked to me more
like a touch of brain fever. But there, you're better! Drink this like a
good girl, and you'll feel better still!"
Meekly, with the docility of great weakness, Columbine swallowed the
proffered nourishment. She wanted to recall all that had happened, but
her brain felt too clogged to serve her. She could only lie and gaze and
gaze at a little vase of wild white roses that faced her upon the
mantelpiece. Somehow those roses seemed to her to play an oddly
important part in her awakening.
"Where did they come from?" she suddenly asked.
Mrs. Peck glanced up indifferently. "They're just those little common
things that grow with the pinks on the cliff," she said.
But that did not satisfy Columbine. "Who brought them in?" she said.
"Who gathered them?"
Mrs. Peck hesitated momentarily, almost as if she did not want to
answer. Then, half defiantly, "Why, Rufus, to be sure," she said.
"Rufus!" A great hot wave of crimson suddenly suffused Columbine's
face--a pitiless, burning blush that spread tingling over her whole
body.
She lay very still while it lasted, and Mrs. Peck set down the cup and,
rising energetically, began to tidy the room.
At length, faintly, the girl spoke again: "Aunt Liza!"
Mrs. Peck turned. There was a curious look in her eyes, a look half
stern and yet half compassionate. "There, my dear, that'll do," she
said. "I think you've talked enough. The doctor said as I was to keep
you very quiet, especially when you began to get back your senses. Shut
your eyes, do, and go to sleep!"
But Columbine's eyes remained open. "I'm not sleepy," she said. "And I
must speak to you. I want to know--I must know"--she faltered painfully,
but forced herself to continue--"Rufus--did he--did he really come
back--that night?"
Mrs. Peck's compassion perceptibly diminished and her severity
increased. "Oh, if you want the whole story," she said, "you'd better
have it and have done; that is, so far as I know it myself. There are
certain ins and outs that I don't know even yet, for Rufus can be very
secretive if he likes. Well then, yes, he did come back, and he brought
Mr. Knight with him. They were washed up by a great wave that dropped
'em high and dry near the quay. Mr. Knight was half drowned, and Rufus
left him at Sam Jefferson's cottage and came on here for brandy and hot
milk and such. He wasn't a penny the worse himself, but I suppose you
thought it was his ghost. You behaved like as if you did, anyway. That's
all I can tell you. Mr. Knight he got better in a day or two, and he's
gone, said he'd had enough of it, and I don't blame him neither. Now
that'll do for the present. By and by, when you're stronger, maybe I'll
ask you to tell me something. But the doctor says as I'm not to let you
talk at present."
Mrs. Peck took up the empty cup with the words, and turned with decision
to the door.
Columbine did not attempt to detain her. She had read the doubt in the
good woman's eyes, and she was thankful at that moment for the reprieve
that the doctor's fiat had secured her.
She lay for a long, long time without moving after Mrs. Peck's
departure. Her brain felt unutterably weary, but it was clear, and she
was able to face the situation in all its grimness. Mr. Knight had
gone. Mr. Knight had had enough of it. Had he really left without a
word? Was she, then, so little to him as that? She, who had clung to
him, had offered him unconditionally and without stint all that was
hers!
She remembered how he had said that it would not last, that love was
moonshine, love would pass. And how passionately--and withal how
fruitlessly!--had she revolted against that pronouncement of his! She
had declared that such was not love, and he--he had warned her against
loving too well, giving too freely. With cruel distinctness it all came
back to her. She felt again those hot kisses upon brow and lips and
throat. Though he had warned her against giving, he had not been slow to
take. He had revelled in the abandonment of that first free love of
hers. He had drained her of all that she held most precious that he
might drink his fill. And all for what? Again she burned from head to
foot, and, groaning, hid her face. All for the making of a picture that
should bring him world-wide fame! His love for her had been naught but
small change flung liberally enough that he might purchase therewith the
desire of his artist's soul. It had been just a means to an end. No more
than that! No more than that!
* * *
Time passed, but she knew naught of its passing. She was in a place of
bitterness very far removed from the ordinary things of life. She shed
no tears. The misery and shame that burned her soul were beyond all
expression or alleviation. She could have laughed over the irony of it
all more easily than she could have wept.
That she--the proud and dainty, for whom no one had been good
enough--should have fallen thus easily to the careless attraction of a
man to whom she was nothing, nothing but a piece of prettiness to be
bought as cheaply as possible and treasured not at all. Some whim of
inspiration had moved him. He had obeyed his Muse. And he had been
ready--he had been ready--even to offer her life in sacrifice to his
idol. She did not count with him in the smallest degree. He had never
cared--he had never cared!
She lifted her face at last. The torture was eating into her soul. It
was more than she could bear. All the tender words he had spoken, the
caresses he had lavished upon her, were as burning darts that pierced
her whichever way she turned. Her surrender had been so free, so
absolute, and in return he had left her in the dark. He had gone his
careless way without a single thought for all the fierce devotion she
had poured out to him. It had only appealed to him while the mood
lasted. And now he had had enough of it. He had gone.
The murmur of the summer sea came to her as she lay, and she thought of
the Death Current. Why--ah, why--had it been cheated of its prey? She
shivered violently as the memory of that awful struggle in deep waters
came to her. She had been saved, how she scarcely realised, though deep
within her she knew--she knew!
Her burning eyes fell upon the little wild white roses on the shelf. Why
had he brought them to her? Why had he chosen them? She felt as if they
held a message for her, but it was a message she did not dare to read.
And then again she quivered as the dread memory of that night swept over
her anew, and the eyes of flaming blue that had looked into hers.
Somewhere--somewhere outside herself, it seemed to her--a voice was
speaking, very articulate and persistent, and she could not shut out the
words it uttered. She lacked the strength.
"I always knew," it said, and it averred it over and over again, "as he
loved you like mad."
Love! Love! But what was Love? Was any man capable of it? Was it ever
anything more than brutal passion or callous amusement? And hearts were
broken and lives were ruined to bring men sport.
She clenched her hands, still gazing at the wild white roses with their
orange scent of purity. Why had he sent them? What had moved him to
gather them? He who had bargained with her, had wrung from her
submission to his will as it were at the sword's point! He who had
forced her to promise herself to him! What was love--or the making of
love--to such as he?
The sweetness of the flowers seemed to pierce her. Ah, if they had only
been Knight's gift, how different--how different--had been all things.
But they had come from Rufus. And so somehow their message passed her
by. The blackness of utter misery, utter hopelessness, closed in like a
prison-cell around her soul.