In the Roaring Fifties Part 3

She threw the hood back from her abundant hair and stood a little apart, her hands pressed upon her eyes, struggling with her tears, already wondering at the sudden, overwhelming emotion that had swept her into this betrayal. He mused in a troubled way, perplexed by her contradictions avowal, feeling that, after all, he might have done this girl a great wrong.

'Has your life been so unhappy, then?' he asked.

'It has been too happy,' she replied in a constrained voice.

'Too happy?'

'If I had learned to know sorrow sooner I could have borne it better, perhaps; but until a year ago my life was all happiness. Before that I had those who loved me, and neither fears nor cares. My father died, and mother followed him within seven months. I was their only child; I found myself alone, beset with anxieties and terrors, utterly desolate. I am going to be Mrs. Macdougal's companion at her husband's sheep-run, deep in the Australian Bush, and to teach their children. Since coming aboard I have been too much alone; I have had too much time to think of my hopelessness, my loneliness. There were moments when I seemed to be cut off from the world. It was in one of these moments that I--I--' She made a significant gesture. Her voice had grown faint, and her limbs trembled.

'Stay,' he said gently, 'I'll get you a seat.'

His concern about this stranger, his curiosity, occasioned no self-questionings, no probing into motives. For the time being his customary att.i.tude of mind--that of the pessimist sceptically weighing every emotion--deserted him. He had been, in his small circle in Chisley, the one person with a tangible grievance against life, but here he found another at more bitter variance with Fate, and weaker by far for the fight. A mutual grievance is a strong bond. He was lifted out of himself.

When he returned he found Lucy Woodrow much more composed. She thanked him, and seated herself in the shadow.

'Mr. Done,' she said, 'I owe you an apology. You did me a great service, and I have made that an excuse for inflicting my troubles upon you.' Jim noted the conventional phrases with a feeling of uneasiness. 'You are very kind, but something I have confessed I want you to forget. I lost control of myself.'

'You may trust me to say nothing.'

Yes, yes; I am sure of that,' she added hastily, 'but I want you to forget. I should not like to see it in your face if we meet again.'

'Why fear that? For what you did you have to answer to yourself alone.'

'I did not confess the truth even to Mrs. Macdougal,' the girl went on in a low voice. 'I have been a little hysterical, and it is very good of you to bear with me.'

'I'm glad you told me; it gives me an interest, and I've never been interested in the fate of another human creature since I was a mere boy.'

'I did wrong in the sight of G.o.d. You have saved me from a great crime.'

'No! If life had become unbearable you were justified. When you said I had no right to interfere, you spoke the truth. No man has the right to insist upon a fellow-creature continuing to live when life has become intolerable.' Jim was most emphatic on this point.

'Hus.h.!.+ Oh, hus.h.!.+ I know I said it, and I have thought it too; but the thought was born of weakness and cowardice.'

Done, who thought he understood himself clearly, and believed he had a plan of life as precise and logical as the multiplication table, was puzzled by a nature almost wholly emotional, and she continued:

'I mean to be brave, to meet the future with hope. It was my loneliness that terrified me. I thought it might be always so, but perhaps real happiness awaits me out there. I may make true friends.'

She spoke eagerly, anxiously, seeking corroboration, looking to him for encouragement with touching wistfulness, as if he had been a graybeard and an old and trusted friend, rather than a mere youth in years, and an acquaintance of only a few hours.

He felt the appeal, and tried to respond.

'Yes yes,' he said. 'Then, at least, one can always fight the world. If we can't be loved, we can make ourselves feared. There's a great deal in that.'

The girl was surprised at his warmth, and a little startled by his philosophy.

'I could not think that,' she said softly. 'It must be terrible to be feared--to meet always with doubt and shrinking where you look for confidence and affection.'

'But when the world refuses to accept us, when it uses all our fine emotions as scourges to torture us, then we must fight.'

'I--I fight the world!' The girl rose in some agitation, and raised two tremulous hands, as if in evidence of her weakness.

The gesture staggered him a little. He had been not so much defining her position as defending his own, and although he could see the futility of his principle of resentment as applied to her case, it was not in his nature to preach the pleasing gospel of sentimental optimism. He had no words of comfort to offer her; the gentle plat.i.tudes of encouragement and consolation she needed, and which would have fallen so glibly from the lips of an average man, were impossible to him. He was silent.

'One had better die,' continued Lucy Woodrow, 'than live at enmity with one's fellow-creatures. Ah! the world is good and kind, under its seeming cruelties. People are more generous than we know, but we should meet them with open hearts, and give a warm welcome to their affection and confidence. There must be something evil in the nature that is shut out from human sympathy, human fellows.h.i.+p--something wanting in the heart that is lonely, where there are scores of men and women eager to give friends.h.i.+p and love. We repel those who are drawn to us by their goodness of heart; we refuse what we most long for, and then blame others because we are unhappy.'

The girl was speaking the thoughts in which she had vainly sought comfort. She ceased abruptly, and, moving to the side, stood with her eyes turned yearningly back over the sea, oppressed by her loneliness and the home-sickness that had not left her since the sh.o.r.es of England faded from her sight.

Jim felt a stir of something like resentment at his heart. He found in the girl's words a reflection of the beliefs of his native village, and perhaps justification of them, and saw her for the moment as the embodiment of the respectability, the piety, and all the narrowness of Chisley. The thought revived his habitual reserve. He meditated an escape, already regretting that he had permitted himself to drift into this extraordinary position.

IV

MRs. MACDOUGAL came to Done's rescue a moment later. She sauntered languidly up to the young couple in her character of the interesting invalid, careful to make a charming picture in the moonlight.

'It is a delightful night, Mr. Done, is it not?' she said.

Jim admitted as much, without any display of interest, and the lady continued:

'You know our dear girl is not strong. You must not keep her in the night air. Why, Lucy, how foolish you are! not a single wrap, and the wind so chilly! You'll certainly have a sickness.'

'I shall not be ill, Mrs. Macdougal,' said Lucy. 'But you are very good.'

Mrs. Macdougal's plump figure was covered with furs, and a handsome shawl trailed from her arm; but it was characteristic of Mrs. Macdougal to profess the sweetest solicitude for other people, whilst appropriating for her own use and pleasure all the comfortable, pleasant, and pretty things. She was not more than thirty-three, and looked like a gipsy spoiled by refinements. Her social schooling had been confined to a long course of that delectable literature devoted to the amours of a strictly honourable aristocracy with superior milkmaids, nursery governesses, and other respectable young persons in lowly walks. Indeed, Mrs. Macdougal, having had no early training worth speaking of, had successfully modelled her manners upon those of a few favourite heroines. She fancied the expression, 'It is, is it not?' lent an air of exquisite refinement to ordinary conversation. She was naturally artificial. Artifice would have been her certain resort in whatever path it had pleased Fate to plant her small feet. Her temper was excellent so far as it went, and her manner tender and clinging. She would have preferred to have been tragic with such eyes and such hair, but with her plump figure it was not possible.

She loved attention, particularly the attentions of men, and employed many artifices to secure them, usually with success. She had engaged Captain Evan on the deck during every afternoon for a whole week, fanning away a purely hypothetical headache. Altogether Mrs. Macdougal was a delightful fool; almost everybody liked her.

'Really, for your own sake, my dear! It will not do for two of us to be invalids.' Mrs. Macdougal pressed a firm white hand upon her ample bosom, and coughed a melancholy little cough, hinting at a deep-seated complaint, the seriousness of which she could not long hope to disguise from her friends.

Lucy retired dutifully, and her mistress composed herself in an effective att.i.tude for a long chat with the young man.

'Darling girl!' she said, gazing affectionately after the retreating figure. It suddenly occurred to her that she was very fond of Lucy Woodrow, although up to the time of the accident she had not given her a second thought.

The young man did not feel called upon to make a demonstration; he merely inclined his head and watched Lucy along the deck as a manifestation of some little interest in the subject.

'If anything had happened to her that awful time!' Mrs. Macdougal's eyes waxed to their greatest dimensions to express terror, distress, all the excitement of the accident, and were veiled under their white lids and heavy lashes to convey some idea of the grief that would have lacerated that gentle breast had Lucy Woodrow perished in the cruel sea. 'Ah, Mr.

Done, I, too, owe you a debt of grat.i.tude!' she continued. 'The poor girl is in my care. I should never have forgiven myself.'

'I can't accept your grat.i.tude, ma'am,' said Jim brusquely.

'So gallant, so n.o.ble!' murmured the lady. She was not succeeding, and she felt it. The boy was too ridiculous. She a.s.sumed a new pose, gazing dreamily over the side into the scudding sea.

'If I were to fall in, Mr. Done,' she said, after a telling pause, 'you would save me too?' She smiled coquettishly.

'I should not, Mrs. Macdougal; the responsibility is too great.'

She did not fully understand him, and was quite shocked, but answered brightly:

'Oh yes, it is, is it not?'

Jim now resented the woman's intrusion upon him with a cublike sullenness. He even longed to be avenged upon her for his uneasiness, and would have liked to have said quite coolly, 'In the devil's name, madam, leave me to myself!' It piqued him that, after all, he had not the moral courage to do this, so he turned a forbidding shoulder, pretending interest in the scud of sea.