Somehow Good Part 76

She had slept so sound she was sure it was late. But it was only half-past six, and the early greetings of Mrs. Lobjoit below were not to the baker, nor even to the milk, but to next door, which was dealing with the question of its mat and clean step through the agency of its proprietress, whose voice chimed cheerfully with Mrs. Lobjoit's over the surprise of the latter finding _her_ street door had been opened, and that some one had already pa.s.sed out. For Mrs. Lobjoit had made _that_ sure, the night before, that she had "shot to" the bottom bolt that _would_ shet, _because_ she had ignored as useless the top bolt that _wouldn't_ shet--the correlation of events so often appealed to by witnesses under examination; which Law, stupidly enough, prides itself on snubbing them for. Further, Mrs. Lobjoit would have flown to the solution that it was her gentleman gone out, only that it was quite into the night before they stopped from talking.

Sally heard this because she had pulled down the top sash of her window to breathe the sea air, regardless of the fact she well knew, and described thus--that the sash-weight stuck and clunkled and wouldn't come down. She decided against running the risk of disturbing Jeremiah on the strength of Mrs. Lobjoit's impressions; although, if he had gone out, she certainly would follow him. But she slipped on a dressing-gown and went half-way downstairs, to see if his hat was still on its peg. It was gone. So she went back to her room, and dressed furtively. Because if they _had_ been talking late into the night, it would be just as well for her mother to have her sleep out.

But she had hardly finished was.h.i.+ng when she became aware of a footstep outside--Jeremiah's certainly. She went to the window, saw him approach the house, look up at it, but as though he did not recognise that she was there, and then turn away towards the flagstaff and the old town. It was odd and unlike him, and Sally was alarmed.

Besides, how white he looked!

Bear this in mind, that Sally knew absolutely nothing of the cataclysm of revived memory in Jeremiah. Remember that the incident of the galvanic battery at the pier-end is only four days old. Do not be misled by the close details we have given of these four days.

Sally's alarm at the haggard look of her stepfather's face took away her breath; at least, she did not find her voice soon enough for him to hear her call out--she did not like to shout loud because of her mother--as he turned away. Or it seemed so, for that was the only way she could account for his walking away so abruptly. In her hurry to get dressed and follow him, she caught up an undergarment that lay on the floor, without seeing that her own foot was on the tape that was to secure it, and a rip and partial disruption was the consequence.

Never mind, it would hold up till she came in. Or, if it didn't, where was that safety-pin that was on her dressing-table yesterday? Not there? Again, never mind! She would do, somehow. She hurried on her clothes, and her hat and waterproof, and left the house, going quickly on what she supposed to be the track of Jeremiah, who was, by now, no longer visible.

But she caught sight of him returning, while she was still two or three minutes' walk short of the flagstaff he was approaching from the other side. He would stop to talk with the coastguard. He always did.

Surely he would, this time. But no--he didn't.

He may have spoken, but he did not stop. So Sally noted as she hesitated an instant, seeing him turn off at an angle and go towards the pier. There was a shorter cut to the pier, without going to the flagstaff. Sally turned herself, and took it. She would catch him as he came back from the pier-end, if he was going to walk along it.

She saw him as she descended the slope that, part pathway and part steps, led down towards the sea. He walked straight towards the pier, pa.s.sing as he went a man and boy, who were carrying what she took, at that distance, for well-made coils of rope; and then, arriving at the pier-turnstile just as they did, pa.s.s them, and, leaving them apparently in conversation with the gatekeeper, walk steadily on towards the pier-end.

"I shouldn't call the paint properly hardened on myself. Nor won't be yet-a-piece, if you ask my opinion." It was young Benjamin's father said these words to the veteran in charge of the pier-turnstile; who, as an early bird, was counting his tickets, so to speak, before they were hatched--his actual professional cabinet-seance not having begun.

For the pier wasn't open yet, and his permission to Fenwick to pa.s.s the open side-gate was an indulgence to an acquaintance.

His reply to the speaker was that he must bide awhile in patience, then. Paint was good to dry while the gra.s.s grew, and there was plenty else to fret about for them as wanted it. He seemed only to mention this from consideration of the wants of others. He either had plenty to fret about, or was happier without anything. He ended with, "What have you to say to that, Jake Tracy?" showing that the father of Benjamin was Jacob, following precedent.

But Jacob preferred not to be led away into ethics. "I should stand 'em by, in the shadow, for the matter of a day or two," said he.

"In yander." And the life-belts being safely disposed of, he added: "I thought to carry back number fower from the pier-end, and make a finish of the job. But looking to the condition of this paint, maybe better leave her for service. She'll do as well next week." But the moralist inclined to make a finish of the job. Who was going overboard afore the end of next week? And supposing they did, the resources of civilisation wouldn't be exhausted, for we could throw 'em a clean one paint or no.

"Send your lad to fetch her along, Jake. I'll make myself answerable."

And young Benjamin, confirmed by a nod from his father, departed for the mysteriously feminine hencoop.

Just as the boy turned to go, Fenwick came up, and, paying no attention to greetings from the two men, pa.s.sed through the side-gate and walked rather briskly away along the pier. Each of the men looked at the other, as though asking a question. But neither answered, and then both said, "Queer, too!" A nascent discussion of whether one or other should not follow him--for the look of his face had gone home to both, as he was, of course, well known to them--was cut short by Jacob Tracy saying, "Here's his daughter coming to see for him." And, just after, Sally had pa.s.sed them, leaving them pleasantly stirred by the bright smile and eye-flash that seemed this morning brighter than ever. The boy shouted something from the pier-end, to which his father's shouted reply was that he must bide a minute and he would come to see himself.

"The yoong beggar's got the use of his eyes," he said, not hurrying.

"I'll go bail he'll find her. She's there all right, I suppose?" He was still referring to the hencoop, not to any lady.

"Ah, _she's_ there, quite safe. You'd best step along and find her.

Boys are boys, when all's told."

But Jacob wanted Benjamin to distinguish himself, and still didn't hurry. The strange appearance of Mrs. Lobjoit's gentleman supplied materials for chat. Presently his son shouted again, and he answered, "Not there, is she? I'll come." He walked away towards the pier-end just as Sally, who had fancied Jeremiah would be somewhere alongside of the paG.o.da-building that nearly covered it, came back from her voyage of exploration, and looked down the steps to the under-platform, that young Benjamin had just come up shouting.

What little things life and death turn on sometimes!

CHAPTER XLV

OF CONRAD VEREKER'S REVISION OF PARADISE, AND OF FENWICK'S HIGH FEVER.

OF AN ENGLISH OFFICER WHO WAVERED AT BOMBAY, AND OF FENWICK'S SURPRISE-BATH IN THE BRITISH CHANNEL. WHY HE DID NOT SINK. THE ELLEN JANE OF ST. SENNANS. ONLY SALLY IS IN THE WATER STILL. MORE BOATS. FOUND!

Fenwick, haunted by the phantoms of his own past--always, as his fever grew, a.s.suming more and more the force of realities--but convinced of their ephemeral nature, and that the crisis of this fever would pa.s.s and leave him free, had walked quickly along the sea front towards the cliff pathway. Had Dr. Conrad seen him as he pa.s.sed below his window and looked up at it, he would probably have suspected something and followed him. And then the events of this story would have travelled a different road. But Vereker, possessed by quite another sort of delirium, had risen even earlier--almost with the dawn--and, taking Sally's inaccessibility at that unearthly hour for granted, had gone for a long walk over what was now to him a land of enchantment--the same ground he and Sally had pa.s.sed over on the previous evening. He and his mother would be on their way to London in a few hours, and he would like to see the landmarks that were to be a precious memory for all time yet once more while he had the chance. Who could say that he would ever visit St. Sennans again?

If Fenwick, in choosing this direction first, had a half-formed idea of attracting the doctor's attention, the appearance of Mrs.

Iggulden's shuttered parlour-window would have discouraged him. It told a tale of a household still asleep, and quite truly as far as she herself was concerned. For Dr. Conrad, as might have been expected, was very late in coming home the night before; and his mother's peculiarity of not being able to sleep if kept up till eleven, combined with the need of a statement of her position, a declaration of policy, and almost a budget, if not quite, on the subject of her son's future housekeeping, having resulted in what threatened to become an all-night sitting, the good woman's dozes and repentances, with jerks, on the stairs overnight, had produced their consequences in the morning. Fenwick pa.s.sed the house, and walked on as far as where the path rose to the cliffs; then turned back, and, pausing a moment, as we have seen, under Sally's window, failed in his dreamy state to see her as she looked over the cross-bar at him, and then went on towards the old town. It may be she was not very visible; the double gla.s.ses of an open sash-window are almost equal to opacity. But even with that, the extreme aberration of Fenwick's mind at the moment is the only way to account for his not seeing her.

In fact, his mental perturbation came and went by gusts, as his memory caught at or relinquished agitating points of reminiscence, always dwelling on that parting from Rosalind at Umballa. His brain and nervous system were in a state that involved a climax and reaction; and, unhappily, this climax, during which his identification of his present self with his memory of its past was intensified to the point of absolute hallucination, came at an inopportune moment. If he could only have kept the phantoms of his imagination at bay until he met Sally! But, really, speculation on so strange a frame of mind is useless; we can only accept the facts as they stand.

He had no recollection afterwards of what followed when he pa.s.sed the house and failed to see Sally or hear her call out to him. For the time being he was back again in his life of twenty years ago. Those who find this hard to believe may see no way of accounting for what came about but by ascribing to Fenwick an intention of suicide. For our part we believe him to have been absolutely incapable of such an act from a selfish impulse; and, moreover, it is absurd to impute to him such a motive, at this time, however strongly he might have been impelled towards it by discovering the injustice and cruelty of his own unforgiveness towards his young wife at some previous time--as, for instance, in America--when she herself was beyond his reach, and a recantation of his error impossible. Unless we accept his conduct as the result of a momentary dementia, produced by overstrain, it must remain inexplicable.

It appeared to him, so far as he was afterwards able to define or record it, that he was no longer walking on the familiar track between the few lodging-houses that made up the old St. Sennans, and the still older fis.h.i.+ng-quarter near the jetty, but that he was again on his way from Lah.o.r.e to Kurachi, from which he was to embark for a new land where his broken heart might do its best to heal; for if ever a man was utterly broken-hearted it was he when he came away from Lah.o.r.e, after his futile attempt to procure a divorce. He no longer saw the cold northern sea under its great blue cloud-curtain that had shrouded the coming day; nor the line of fis.h.i.+ng-smacks, beached high and dry, and their owners' dwellings near at hand, a little town of tar and timber in behind the stowage-huts of nets and tackle, nor the white escarpment of the cliffs beyond, that the sea had worked so many centuries to plunder from the rounded pastures of the sheep above. He no longer heard the music of the waves on the s.h.i.+ngle, nor the cry of the sea-bird that swept over them, nor the tinkle of the sheep-bell the wind knows how to carry so far in the stillness of the morning, nor the voices of the fisher-children playing in the boats that one day may bear them to their death. His mind was far away in the Indian heat, parching and suffocated on the long railway journey from Lah.o.r.e to Kurachi, scarcely better when he had reached his first boat that was to take him to Bombay, to embark again a day or two later for Australia. How little he had forgotten of the short but tedious delay in that chaotic emporium of all things European and Asiatic, that many-coloured meeting-ground of a thousand nationalities! How little, that the whole should come back to him now, and fill his brain with its reality, till the living present grew dim and vanished; reviving now and again, as fiction, read in early years, revives with a suggested doubt--is it true or false?

He sat again on the Esplanade at Bombay, as the sun vanished in a flood of rosy gold, and released the world from his heat. He felt again the relief of the evening wind; heard again the chat of a group of English officers who sipped sherry-cobblers at a table a few paces off. "I always change my mind," said one of them, "backwards and forwards till the last minute; then I make it the last one." He quite understood this man's speech, and thought how like himself! For from the time he left Lah.o.r.e he, too, had gone backwards and forwards, now resolving to return, come what might, now telling himself firmly there was no remedy but in distance apart, and all there might be of oblivion. Was there not yet time? He could still go back, even now.

But no; the old obduracy was on him. Rosey had deceived him!

Then he seemed to have come again to _his_ last minute. Once he was fairly on the s.h.i.+p that was even now coaling for her voyage, once the screw was on the move and the sh.o.r.e-lights vanis.h.i.+ng, the die would be cast. The stars that he and Rosey had seen in that cool English garden that night he met her first would vanish, too, and a world would be between them. Still, the hour had not come; it was not too late yet.

But still the inveterate thought came back--she _had_ deceived him.

So his delirium ended as its prototype of over twenty years ago had ended. He hardened his heart, thrust aside all thought of forgiveness and repentance, and went resolutely down to the quay, as he thought, to embark on the little boat for the s.h.i.+p, and so practically put all thought of hesitation and return out of his mind. This moment was probably what would have been the crisis of his fever, and it was an evil hour for him in which the builder of the pier at St. Sennans made it so like the platform of that experience of long ago. But the boat that he saw before him as he stepped unhesitatingly over its edge was only the image of a distempered brain, and in an instant he was struggling with the cold, dark water. A sudden shock of chill, an intolerable choking agony of breath involuntarily held, an instantaneous dissipation of his dream, the natural result of the shock, and Fenwick knew himself for what he was, and fought the cruel water in his despair. Even so a drowning man fights who in old failures to learn swimming has just mastered its barest rudiments.

A vivid pageant rushed across his mind of all the consequences of what seemed to him now his inevitable death, clearest of all a sad vision of Sally and Rosalind returning to their home alone--the black dresses and the silence. He found voice for one long cry for help, without a hope that it could be heard or that help could be at hand.

But he was neither unseen nor unheard, as you will know if we have not failed in showing the succession of events. Sally never hesitated an instant as she caught sight of the delirious man's involuntary plunge into the green waves that had no terrors for _her_. She threw off as she ran, fast, fast down the wooden stairway, the only clothes she could get rid of--her hat and light summer cloak--and went straight, with a well-calculated dive, to follow him and catch him as he rose. If only she did not miss him! Let her once pinion his arms from behind, and she would get him ash.o.r.e even if no help came.

Why, there was no sea to speak of!

The man Jacob Tracy, the father of Benjamin, saw something to quicken his speed as he walked along the pier to help in the discovery of the life-belt. Why did the swimming young lady from Lobjoit's want to be rid of her wrap-up at that rate as she turned so sharp round to run down the ladder? He increased a brisk walk to a run as the lad, who had followed the young lady down the steps, came running up again; for there was hysterical terror in his voice--he was a mere boy--as he shouted something that became, as distance lessened, "In t' wa-ater!

in t' wa-ater! in t' wa-ater! in t' wa-ater!" And he was waving something in his hand--a lady's hat surely; for with an instinct of swift presence of mind--a quality that is the breath of life to all that go down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps, mariners or fisher-folk--he had seen that the headgear Sally threw away would tell its tale quicker than any words he could rely on finding.

"Roon smart, yoong Benjamin--roon for the bo'ats and call out 'oars'!

Roon, boy--you've no time to lose!" And as the father dashes down the steps he spoke of as "the ladder" the son runs for all he is worth to carry the alarm to the sh.o.r.e. He shouts, "Oars, oars, oars!" as he was told. But it is not needed, for his thought of bringing up the hat has done his work already for him. The coastguard, though the pier itself hid the two immersions from him, is quick of apprehension and ready with his gla.s.s, and has seen the boy's return from below; and at the same time heard, not his words, but the terror in them, and by some mysterious agency has sent a flying word along the beach that has brought a population out to help.

A bad time of the tide to get a boat off sharp, and a long shelving run of sandy s.h.i.+ngle before we reach the sea; for all the boats are on the upper strand of the beach, above the last high-water mark, and the flow of the tide is scarcely an hour old. There is a short squat cobble, flat-bottomed and of intolerable weight, down near the waters, and its owner makes for it. Another man drives him out seawards, against the constant lift of breaking waves, large enough to be troublesome, small enough to be numerous. They give no chance to the second man to leap into the boat, so deep has he to go, pus.h.i.+ng on until the pads are out and the boat controlled; but he has barely time to feel the underdraw of the recoiling wave when the straight scour of a keel comes down along the sand and pebbles--the Ellen Jane, St. Sennans--half-pushed, half-borne by a crew three minutes have extemporised. You two in the bows, and you two astarn, and the spontaneous natural leader--the man the emergency makes--at the tiller-ropes, and Ellen Jane is off, well drenched at the outset. An oar swings round high in the air, not to knock one of you two astarn into the water, and then, "Give way!" and then the short, quick rhythm of the stroke, and four men at their utmost stress, each knowing life and death may hang upon the greatness of his effort.

The cobble is soon outshot, but its owner will not give in. He bears away from the course of the boat that has pa.s.sed him, to seek their common object where the tide-drift may have swept it, beyond some light craft at their moorings which would have hidden it for a while.

He has the right of it this time, for as he pa.s.ses, straining at his sculls, under the stern of a pleasure-yacht at anchor, his eye is caught by a black spot rising on a wave, and he makes for it. Not too fast at the last, though, but cautiously, so as to grasp the man with the life-belt and hold him firm till help shall come to get him on board. He might easily have overshot him; but he has him now, and the four-oar sights him as she swings round between the last-moored boat and the pier; and comes apace, the quicker for the tide.

"What is it ye say, master? What do ye make it out the gentleman says, Peter?" For Fenwick, hauled on board the cobble with the help of a man from the other boat, who returns to his oar, is alive and conscious, but not much more. A brandy-flask comes from somewhere in the steerage, where a mop and a tin pot and a boathook live, and its effect is good. The half-drowned man becomes articulate enough to justify the report. "It's his daughter he's asking for--overboard, too!" and then the man who spoke first says: "You be easy in your mind, master; we'll find her. Bear away a bit, and lie to, Tom." Tom is the man in the cobble, and he does as he is bidden. He s.h.i.+ps his sculls and drifts, watching round on all sides for what may be just afloat near the surface. The four-oar remains, and the eyes of her crew are straining hard to catch a sight of anything that is not mere lift and ripple of a wave.

Then more boats one after another, and more, and the gathering crowd that lines the sh.o.r.e sees them scatter and lie to, some way apart, to watch the greater s.p.a.ce of water. All drift, because they know that what they seek is drifting, too, and that if they move they lose their only chance; for the thing they have to find is so small, so small, and that great waste of pitiless sea is so large. It is their only chance.

The crowd, always growing, moves along the beach as the flotilla of drifting boats move slowly with the tide. They can hear the shouting from boat to boat, but catch but little of the words. They follow on, with little speech among themselves, and hope dying slowly out of their hearts. Gradually towards the jetty, where the girl they are seeking sat, only a few days since, beside the man whose heart the memory of yesterday is still rejoicing; the only trouble of whose unconscious soul is the thought that he and she must soon be parted, however short the term of their separation may be. He will know more soon.

Suddenly the shouting increases in the boats, and excited voices break the silence on the sh.o.r.e. It won't do to hope too much, but surely all the boats are thickening to one spot.... No, it's nothing!... Yes, it _is_--it _is_ something--one knows what--sighted abaft the Ellen Jane, whose steersman catches it with a boathook as the oars we on the beach saw suddenly drop back water--slowly, cautiously--and only wait for him to drag the light weight athwart the gunwale to row for the dear life towards the town. The scattered crowd turns and comes back, trampling the s.h.i.+ngle, to meet the boat as she lands, and follow what she brings to the nearest haven.