Part 16 (1/2)

”Yes, for me, perhaps--but for you! Oh, if it should end in your being taken away from the world before your time, from the world and the lady who--what then?”

Morris winced; then he said: ”G.o.d's will be done. But although we may be in danger, we are not dead yet; not by a long way.”

”She would hate me whose evil fortune it was to draw you to death, and in life or out of it I should never forgive myself--never! never!” and she covered her eyes with her cold, wet hand and sighed.

”Why should you grieve over what you cannot help?” asked Morris gently.

”I cannot quite explain to you,” she answered; ”but the thought of it seems so sad.”

CHAPTER X

DAWN AND THE LAND

A day, a whole day, spent upon that sullen, sunless waste of water, with the great waves bearing them onwards in one eternal, monotonous procession, till at length they grew dizzy with looking at them, and the ceaseless gale piping in their ears. Long ago they had lost sight of land; even the tall church towers built by our ancestors as beacons on this stormy coast had vanished utterly. Twice they sighted s.h.i.+ps scudding along under their few rags of canvas, and once a steamer pa.s.sed, the smoke from her funnels blowing out like long black pennons.

But all of these were too far off, or too much engaged with their own affairs to see the little craft tossing hither and thither like a used-up herring basket upon the endless area of ocean.

Fortunately, from his youth Morris had been accustomed to the management of boats in all sorts of weather, the occupation of sailing alone upon the waters being one well suited to his solitary and reflective disposition. Thus it came about that they survived, when others, less skilful, might have drowned. Sometimes they ran before the seas; sometimes they got up a few square feet of sail, and, taking advantage of a veer in the wind, tried to tack, and once, when it blew its hardest, fearing lest they should be p.o.o.ped, for over an hour they contrived to keep head on to the waves.

Thus, diversified by some necessary bailing, pa.s.sed the short November day, long enough for them, till once more the darkness began to gather.

They had still some food and drink left; indeed, had it not been for these they would have perished. Most happily, also, with the sun the wind dropped, although for hours the sea remained dangerously high.

Now wet and cold were their enemies, worse than any that they had been called upon to face. Long ago the driving spray had soaked them to the skin, and there upon the sea the winter night was very chill.

While the wind, fortunately for them, by comparison a warm one, still blew from the west, and the sea remained tempestuous, they found some shelter by wrapping themselves in a corner of the sail. Towards midnight, however, it got round to the northeast, enough of it to moderate the sea considerably, and to enable them to put the boat about and go before it with a closely reefed sail. Now, indeed, they were bitterly cold, and longed even for the shelter of the wet canvas.

Still Morris felt, and Stella was of the same mind, that before utter exhaustion overtook them their best chance for life lay in trying to make the sh.o.r.e, which was, they knew not how far away.

There, then, for hours they cowered in the stern of the boat, huddled together to protect themselves as best they might from the weather, and plunging forward beneath their little stretch of sail. Sleep they could not, for that icy breath bit into their marrow, and of this Morris was glad, since he did not dare relax his watch for an instant. So sometimes they sat silent, and sometimes by fits and starts they talked, their lips close to each other's face, as though they were whispering to one another.

To while away the weary time, Morris told his companion about his invention, the aerophone. Then she in turn told him something of her previous life--Stella was now a woman of four and twenty. It seemed that her mother had died when she was fourteen at the rectory in Northumberland, where she was born. After that, with short intervals, she had spent five years in Denmark, whither her father came to visit her every summer. Most of this time she pa.s.sed at a school in Copenhagen, going for her holidays to stay with her grandmother, who was the widow of a small landowner of n.o.ble family, and lived in an ancient, dilapidated house in some remote village. At length the grandmother died, leaving to Stella the trifle she possessed, after which, her education being completed, she returned to Northumberland to keep house for her father. Here, too, it would seem that her life was very lonely, for the place was but an unvisited coast village, and they were not rich enough to mix much with the few county families who lived anywhere within reach.

”Have you no brothers or sisters?” asked Morris.

Even then, numb as was her flesh with cold, he felt her wince at the question.

”No, no,” she answered, ”none now--at least, none here. I have--I mean I had--a sister, my twin, but she died when we were seventeen. This was the most dreadful thing that ever happened to me, the thing which made me what I am.”

”I don't quite understand. What are you, then?”

”Oh, something very unsatisfactory, I am afraid, quite different from other people. What Mr. Tomley said _you_ were, Mr. Monk, a mystic and a dreamer of dreams; a lover of the dead; one who dwells in the past, and--in the future.”

Morris did not pursue the subject; even under their strange circ.u.mstances, favourable as they were to intimacy and confidences, it seemed impertinent to him to pry into the mysteries of his companion's life. Only he asked, at hazard almost:

”How did you spend your time up there in Northumberland?”

”In drawing a little, in collecting eggs, moths, and flowers a great deal; in practising with my violin playing and singing; and during the long winters in making translations in my spare time of Norse sagas, which no one will publish.”

”I should like to read them; I am fond of the sagas,” he said, and after this, under pressure of their physical misery, the conversation died away.

Hour succeeded to hour, and the weather moderated so much that now they were in little danger of being swamped. This, indeed, was fortunate, since in the event of a squall or other emergency, in their numbed condition it was doubtful whether they could have found enough strength to do what might be necessary to save themselves. They drank what remained of the whiskey, which put life into their veins for a while, but soon its effects pa.s.sed off, leaving them, if possible, more frozen than before.