“But I didn’t see you at Number Seven when we drilled yesterday.”
“I’m there now,” she said, with the same brevity. Feeling, apparently,
that some explanation was needed, she went on: “I’ve—I mean they—they’ve
changed me. Miss Prynne has let me have—or rather she’s taken— That is,”
she finished, in confusion, “we’re all nurses together—and we’ve—we’ve
exchanged.”
In spite of some inward observations, I spared her any other comment
than to say, “How jolly!” as if the exchange had been the most
matter-of-course thing in the world.
I spoke just now of riding tempests and zephyrs, and something like that
it was to plow along at every ounce of steam, with cross seas, head
seas, seas abeam, and seas abaft, as each new zigzag caught them. On the
roaring of the wind and the plunge and thunder of the waves one rose
into regions of tumultuous play where life and death were the stakes. I
saw no signs of fear, and still less of panic; nor, so far as the eye
could read, anything more than a sporting excitement. One would have
said that our peril was accepted as being all in the game, part of the
day’s work. By the end of 1916 Atlantic travelers had come to take the
submarine for granted, just as the statesmen of Plantagenet and Tudor
times took the headsman’s block as one of the natural risks of going into
politics.
But we looked instinctively for a periscope. It is not an easy thing for
any one to see, and for me it was more difficult than for most. I saw
none; or I saw a hundred. With the imperfect vision of my one eye the
crests of the billows bristled with moving four-inch pipes; and then
suddenly all would disappear and I saw nothing but the waves curling
upward into coronets of foam with veils of trailing lace.
Not that I was worse off in this respect than my fellow-travelers. As
they ran for their boats they would pause, take a hurried look at the
seas, exclaiming, “There it is!” and then, more doubtfully, “No, no!”
all in one breath. The “No, no!” was generally uttered in a tone of
disappointment, since to cross the ocean and sight no submarine would
have been like journeying through Egypt and missing the pyramids.
And yet our danger was apparent. Only a fortnight before the
_Kamouraska_, sister ship to the _Assiniboia_, had been sent to the
bottom in these very waters, with great loss of life. Of the tragedy
the papers had given us realistic pictures that were fresh in all our
minds. There was a preliminary scene on board not unlike the one we
were enacting. We saw later a shell bursting on the deck, somewhere
amidships. We saw the passengers and crew taking to the boats with shells
kicking up geysers among them as they tried to get away. We saw the great
ship sticking as straight up out of the water as a Cleopatra’s Needle,
before going slowly down. We saw the U-boat herself lying on the water
like a crocodile, some four thousand yards away; we saw Queenstown as a
morgue. All this was as vividly in our minds as a rehearsal to the actors
of a play; and yet we were probably no more nervous than the company on a
first night when the curtain is going up.
The word went round that it was the fate of the _Kamouraska_, with the
futility of her surrender as a means of saving the passengers’ lives,
that prompted our captain to flight and fight. Our wireless calls were
undoubtedly going up and down the Irish coast and out into the ocean.
Within an hour or two, if we could hold out so long, destroyers would be
rushing to our rescue. We had nothing to be terribly afraid of with more
than an imaginative fear.
That imaginative fear was quickened by the seemingly maddened action
of our ship. I can best describe her as a leviathan gone insane. If
insanity were to overtake a whale it would probably splash the deep in
some such frenzy as this—so many angles out of the course one way—then a
violent heeling over—so many angles out of the course another way—anyway,
anywhere, anything—to get out of that straight, staid line from port to
port which makes an ocean-going ship a liner. I admit that in this wild,
erratic dashing there was something that alarmed us, and something, too,
that made us laugh. It was the comic side of madness, in which you can
hardly see the terrible because of the grotesque.
By the time we reached life-boat No. 7 there were many signs that neither
officers nor passengers were going to take more chances than they were
obliged to. At No. 5 on one side of us a young officer was on top,
peeling off the tarpaulin covering. At No. 9 on the other side some of
the crew were already mounted, examining supplies and oars. At our own
boat, cranks were being fitted to the davits to swing the boat outward.
All along the line similar preparations were in progress, while men
and women—luckily we had no children on board—carrying such wraps and
hand-bags as they might reasonably take, stood in groups, waiting for
what was to happen next.
Our view of the sea was largely cut off here by the bulk of the
life-boats, though wherever there was a chink there was also a cluster of
heads. So many saw periscopes—and so many didn’t see them—that it became
a mild joke. In general we surmised that if a U-boat was cruising round
us at all she had only been porpoising—sticking up her periscope for a
second or two to get a look round, and withdrawing it before it could be
seen by any eye not on that very spot.
The girl in the yashmak and I arrived so late on the scene that there
were no places left by the rail, and we were obliged to content ourselves
with second-hand information as to what was taking place. Our excitement
had, therefore, a lack of point, like that of the small boy behind the
line of grown-up people watching a procession. We fell back in the end
into a kind of alcove, where, being partially protected from wind and
tumult, we could speak to each other without shouting.
I took the opportunity to thank her for her kindness to me when I came on
board on Sunday; but with my opening words the air of Francesca meeting
Paolo in space came over her again. I understood her to say that her help
on Sunday was a little thing, that she would have given it to any one.
“Of course,” I agreed, “you would have given it to any one; but in this
case you gave it to me. You must allow me to thank you before anything
happens that might—that might make gratitude too late.”
As I think of her now I can see that she was mistress of herself in the
way that a letter-perfect actress is mistress of herself, repeating words
that have been learned to fit a certain situation. She had foreseen that
I would say something of the kind; she had foreseen that when I did she
might be a prey to troublesome emotions; and so had fortified herself in
advance by a studied set of phrases.
“I’m so little of a nurse that I should be ashamed not to do for a
soldier the few small things in my power.”
If she had never made me suffer anything, and if the moment had not been
one that might conceivably end our relations forever, I should probably
not have uttered the words that came to me next.
“Was it only because I’m a soldier—?”
She interrupted skilfully. “Only because you’re a soldier? Isn’t a
soldier the most splendid man in the world—especially at a time like
this?”
Bang!
It was one of our two guns. As a merchantman, not built to withstand the
concussion of cannon, the _Assiniboia_ shuddered.
With an involuntary start my companion caught me by the sleeve.
The impulse to seize her hand and draw it gently within my arm was
irresistible. Had I reflected, I might not have done this, since my
dominant desire was to keep stripped and unencumbered for the race.
She allowed me to retain her hand just long enough to show that she was
not mortally offended, after which she gently disengaged herself. To
cover the constraint that both of us felt I went on to wonder if our shot
had taken effect. A young man who had gone to find out came back with the
news that the lookout, having spied the pin furrow of the periscope, the
shot had been fired at a venture. As far as could be observed it had done
nothing but send up a waterspout.
On receiving this information I went on with our interrupted
personalities.
“Ever since Sunday I’ve wondered what had become of you; but then I’ve
been looking for the uniform.”
“I always intended taking that off when I got on board. You see, I never
was a nurse in any but an amateur sense, and so—”
It was my opportunity to spring the surprise I had been holding in
reserve ever since my talk with the Consolatrice in the dock at Liverpool.
“When did you last see Mabel?”
She spoke with a sharp, sudden mezzo cry that might have been caused by
pain.
“Who told you that?”
“Who told me what?”
Bang!
It was our second gun, and though the girl in the yashmak started again,
she did not seize my arm. To hold the drama at its instant of suspense,
I pretended to be more interested in the effect of the shot than in
anything else in the world, as in other circumstances I should have been.
I turned to this one and that one, inviting their guesses, noting all
the while that over Regina Barry’s eyes there spread the surface fire
that a flaming sunset casts on troubled water.
She harked back to the subject as soon as it was clear that we had missed
our aim again.
“Lady Rideover promised me she’d never tell you.”
Her tone having become accusatory, I broke in on it with studied
nonchalance.
“And she never did. To the best of my recollection she never mentioned
your name to me. But is there anything wrong in my knowing that you and
she are friends?”
Color mounted to her brows where the yashmak couldn’t conceal it, though
she ignored the question.
“And I’m sure it wasn’t your sister Evelyn.”
“Why shouldn’t it have been?”
“Because she promised me, too. I should be frightfully hurt if I thought
she—”
“Then I’ll relieve your mind by assuring you that she didn’t. But to me
the curious thing is that you shouldn’t have wanted me to know.”
She ignored this, too, a furrow of perplexity deepening between her brows.
“It isn’t possible that Lady Rideover or Evelyn, without telling you in
words, should have allowed you to suspect—”
“Not any more than they allowed me to suspect that I was being nursed by
a houri out of paradise.”
She hastened to make a correction. “Oh, I never acted as nurse to you! It
was that Miss Farley.”
“But you were at Taplow when I was there, and in and out of my room.”
The peculiar light in her eyes, partly of amazement, partly of
incredulity, reminded me of a poor trapped lady I had once seen in the
prisoner’s dock while a witness recounted the secrets of her life with
remarkable exactness of detail.
“But you couldn’t see me!” she began, helplessly.
“No, but I could hear.”
“And you didn’t hear me. If I went into your room, which I didn’t often
do—”