Part 17 (2/2)

To his companions he was rather a mystery. To some of them he was just down on his luck; to others he was a man ”who had done something.”

”I suppose you have come out here to lie doggo,” said the skipper to him, shouting out the words in the height of the gale, when both were standing by the lashed wheel one night. ”I ask no questions. All I say is, you do your work. I have had no call to slap a hadd.i.c.k across your face. I say that fair and square. Water!”

He concluded his speech with a yell. Stretton saw a ragged line of white suddenly flash out in the darkness, high up by the weather bow, and descend with a roar. It was a wave breaking down upon the deck.

Both men flung themselves down the companion, and the water sluiced after them and washed them struggling about the floor of the cabin.

The wave saved Stretton from the need to reply, and the skipper did not refer to the subject again.

Stretton had signed on for this cruise on the _Perseverance_ because he wanted a time during which he could be quite sure of his livelihood. So far he had failed. He must map out a new course for himself upon his life's chart. But for that work he needed time for thought, and that time, up till now, he had not enjoyed. The precarious existence which he had led since he had lost the half of Millie's small fortune--now a clerk in a store, and a failure; now a commercial traveller, and again a failure--had left him little breathing s.p.a.ce wherein to gather up his slow thoughts and originate a new plan. That breathing s.p.a.ce, however, the _Perseverance_ had afforded him. During the long watches on fine nights, when the dark sails, swinging up and down to the motion of the boat, revealed and obscured the stars, he wrestled with the difficult problem of his life.

He could go back when his cruise was over if he chose. His father was dying; he faced the fact quite frankly. The object with which he set out would be, after all, accomplished, though not accomplished by himself. There would be a house for Millie and himself independent of the old man's caprice; their life would be freed from the shadow of his tyranny; their seclusion would come to an end; they could let the sunlight in upon their lives. Yes! But there were the letters down in the cabin there, underneath his pillow. Did not they alter the position? He had gone away to keep his wife, just, in a word, to prevent that very contempt of which the letters gave him proof. Must he not now stay away in order to regain her? His wife was at the bottom of all his thoughts. He had no blame for her, however much her written words might hurt. He looked back upon their life together, its pleasant beginnings, when they were not merely lovers, but very good friends into the bargain. For it is possible to be the one and yet not the other. They were good days, the days in the little house in Deanery Street, days full of fun and good temper and amus.e.m.e.nt. He recalled their two seasons in London--London bright with summer--and making of each long day a too short holiday. Then had come the change, sudden, dark, and complete. In the place of freedom, subjection; in the place of company, isolation; in the place of friends, a sour old man, querulous and exacting. Then had come the great hope of another home; and swiftly upon that hope its failure through his incapacity.

He could not blame her for the letters underneath his pillow. He was no less set upon regaining her than he had been before on keeping her.

His love for her had been the chief motive of his life when he left the house in Berkeley Square. It remained so still. Could he go back, he asked himself?

There was one inducement persuading him always to answer ”Yes”--the sentence which Pamela had spoken, and which she had refused to explain. He should be at his wife's side. He had never understood that saying; it remained fixed in his memory, plaguing him. He should be at his wife's side. So Pamela Mardale had said, and for what Pamela said he had the greatest respect. Well, he could be in a few weeks at his wife's side. But would it not be at too great a cost unless he had first redeemed himself from her contempt?

Thus he turned and turned, and saw no issue anywhere. The days slipped by, and one morning the fish-cutter brought to him a letter, which told him that four days ago his father had died. He could not reach home in time for the funeral, even if he started at once. And he could not start at once; he had signed on for eight weeks.

But the letter left him face to face with the old problem. Should he go back or should he stay away? And if he stayed away, what should he do?

He came on deck one morning, and his skipper said--

”There's a fog on land, Stretton,”

”How do you know that?” asked Stretton.

The captain pointed to some birds hovering over the masts of the ketch.

”Those are land birds,” said he. ”Look, there's a thrush and there's a blackbird. You won't find them so far from land without a reason.

There has been a fog, and very likely a storm. They have lost their bearings in the fog.”

The birds hovered about the s.h.i.+ps of the fleet, calling plaintively--here, at all events, were men recognisably belonging to the land they vainly sought. Stretton, watching them, felt very much like one of those birds. He, too, had lost his way in a fog, and though he made no outcry, his need of guidance was no less great than theirs.

Then came a morning at last when the trawl was hauled in for the last time, and the boat's head pointed towards Yarmouth.

”When shall we reach harbour?” Stretton asked anxiously.

”If this breeze holds, in twenty-four hours,” replied the skipper.

Twenty-four hours! Just a day and a night, and Stretton would step from the deck on to Gorleston Quay; and he was no nearer to the solution of his problem than when he had stepped from the quay on to the deck eight weeks ago. Those eight weeks were to have resolved all his perplexities, and lo! the eight weeks had pa.s.sed.

He was in a fever of restlessness. He paced the deck all the day when he was not standing at the wheel; at night he could not sleep, but stood leaning over the bulwarks, watching the stars trembling in the quiet water. At one o'clock in the morning the _Perseverance_ pa.s.sed a lights.h.i.+p. Already the boat was so near home! And in the hour which followed, his eight weeks of solitary communing, forced, as it were, by immediate necessity, bore their fruit. His inspiration--he counted the idea no less than an inspiration-came to him suddenly. He saw all at once his course marked out for him upon the chart of life. He would not suffer a doubt of it to enter his mind; he welcomed it with pa.s.sion, and the great load was lifted from his mind. The idea had come. It was water in a dry land.

A fisherman leaning over the bulwark by Stretton's side heard him suddenly begin to sing over to himself a verse or two of a song--

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