The shore was a low, dark streak, four miles away--an appalling distance
away; but as she clung lightly to his shoulders, as Thomas Jefferson
Brown told her to do, the horror and the fear of the big sea went out
of Lady Isobel’s brave little heart. She put her face down against his
neck, pulled back his wet hair, and kissed him. God bless all such true
hearts, wherever they be!
“We’ll make it, Tom--we’ll make it!” she told him a hundred times.
He felt the warm caresses of her lips, the thrilling love of her voice,
and he knew that she was ready to die with him.
He swam in a strange way--a wonderfully strange way--did Thomas
Jefferson Brown. He stood almost erect in the water, his head and
shoulders clear; and now and then he stopped to rest, and it seemed no
test for him at all to float with the weight of the woman he loved, his
face turned up to her in those moments, her glorious blue eyes devouring
him, her sweet lips kissing him--still kissing him.
He was doing a thing that she knew no other man in the world could do.
She kept telling him so, while the land drew nearer and nearer, until at
last she cried out in joy that she could see the little bushes along the
shore.
“Another mile, Tom!” she said. “Only another mile, and then--”
“And then--” he said.
“And then--life!” she cried. “Life for you and me!”
He went on, seeming to grow stronger as the shore drew nearer. It was
wonderful; but at last, when they came to the beach, he dropped down
like a dead man. Lady Isobel caught his head to her dripping breast, and
rocked him back and forth, sobbing a paean of love and pride, while far
out she saw the canoe and Lord Meton drifting shoreward.
A few minutes later, Thomas Jefferson Brown went out into the sea again,
until he was not much more than a speck, and brought in the canoe and
Lord Meton, while Lady Isobel stood to her knees in the water, praising
her God that from riches and splendor she had come out into a wilderness
to find such a man as this.
After that, at York Factory, there was nothing left for Thomas Jefferson
Brown to do but to reveal himself, and when Lord Meton discovered that
there ran as good blood through his rescuer’s veins as through his
own, he gripped hands with the man who had saved him, and gave his
congratulations cm the spot. But it made no difference to Isobel. If
anything, she was a little disappointed.
Thomas Jefferson Brown arranged to go back with them on their yacht. The
wedding would take place in London, a quiet affair. One day Isobel and
her lover came along hand in hand, and Thomas Jefferson Brown said to
me:
“Bobby, you’re going to be best man.”
“Not best man,” Lady Isobel added, “but second best, Bobby. There’s only
one best man in the world!”
But I haven’t been able to come to the point of this story yet--the
remarkable part of it. Two weeks later, when we were up the river
and our canoe struck a snag, I discovered that Thomas Jefferson Brown
“couldn’t swim a stroke!”
“Good Lord!” I said, but waited.
Back at the post, Thomas Jefferson Brown took me into his little room,
and said:
“Bobby, you’ve found that I can’t swim, and I’m going to trust you with
a great secret. Love can accomplish miracles; and love did--out there.
For when I let go of the canoe, Bobby, I knew that I was going straight
down to my death. But a wonderful thing happened.” He brought a little
map from a drawer. “Look at this map, Bobby. See all those little marks
off Harrison’s Island--figures--twos and threes and fives, and
nothing above sixes? That’s the depth of water for five miles out from
Harrison’s Island, at low tide; and it was low tide when I jumped from
the canoe. That’s all, Bobby. _I waded ashore_. But what would be the
good of saying anything about it when it brought me love like hers?”
Yes, what would be the use? For Thomas Jefferson Brown stepped out
deliberately to go to his death, and found life. He’s a hero and a man,
is Thomas Jefferson Brown, even if fate did step in to make heroism a
little easy for him at the time!