Part 34 (1/2)

It was a great wrench to him to leave Agatha again so soon, in the first full force of his pa.s.sion. But he left her almost happily.

His love for her was rising up and filling his whole existence. And it is not those lives that are frittered away in a thousand pastimes that are happy. It is the strong life wholly absorbed by one great interest, be it love or be it merely money-making.

Luke had hitherto been rather an aimless man. He was a brilliant sailor, not because he set himself to the task, but merely because seamans.h.i.+p was born in him, together with a dogged steadiness of nerve and a complete fearlessness. It was so easy to be a good sailor that he had not even the satisfaction of having to make an effort. His heart was empty. He had indeed the sea, but his love of it was unconscious. Away from it, he was ill at ease; on its breast, he was not actively happy--he was merely at home. But he had no career. He had no great prize to aim for, and his combative nature required one. He had no career to make, for he was already near the summit of the humble ladder on which Fate had set his feet.

Then came Agatha, and the empty heart was filled with a dangerous suddenness.

The pain which this parting caused him had something of pleasure in it. There are some men and many women who doubt love unless it bring actual pain with it. Luke had always mistrusted fate, and had love brought happiness with it he would probably have doubted its genuineness. He hugged all his doubts, his jealousies, his pa.s.sionate thoughts to himself. He had nothing to cling to. Agatha had never told him that she loved him. But she was for him so entirely apart from all other women that it seemed necessary that he also should not be as other men for her. Not much for a lover to live upon during four or five months!

Agatha had given him a photograph of herself--a fas.h.i.+onable picture in an affected pose in evening dress--but she had absolutely refused to write. This photograph Luke put into a frame, and as soon as the Croonah was out of dock he hung it up in his little cabin. His servant saw it and recognised the fair pa.s.senger of a former voyage, but he knew his place and his master too well to offer any comment.

Unlike the ordinary young man, whose thoughts are lightly turned to love, Luke was no worse a sailor for his self-absorption. All his care, all his keen, fearless judgment were required; for the Croonah ran through a misty channel into a boisterous Atlantic.

He stood motionless at his post, as was his wont, keen and alert for the moment, but living in the past. He saw again Mrs. Harrington's drawing-room as he had last seen it, with Agatha sitting in a low chair near the fire, while Mrs. Harrington wrote at her desk, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker read the Times.

”I have come,” he remembered saying, ”to bid you good-bye.”

He heard again the rustle of Mrs. Ingham-Baker's newspaper, and again he saw the look in Agatha's eyes as they met his. He would remember that look to the end of his life; he was living on it now.

Agatha, in her rather high-pitched society tones, was the first to speak.

”If I were a sailor,” she said, ”I would never say good-bye. It is better to drop in and pay a call; at the end one might casually mention the words.”

”Oh! we grow accustomed to it,” Luke answered.

”Do you?” the girl inquired, with an enigmatical smile, and her answer was in his eyes. She did not want him to grow accustomed to saying farewell to her.

Luke FitzHenry was not inclined to sociability--the stronger sort of man rarely is. On board the Croonah he was usually considered morose and self absorbed. He did his duty, and in this was second to no man on board; but he was content to get the pa.s.sengers to their destination, looking upon the Croonah as a mere conveyance for a certain number of chattering, gossiping, mischief-making live- stock. He utterly failed in his social duties; he did not cultivate the art of making his s.h.i.+p a sort of floating ”hydro”.

The boisterous weather kept the decks fairly select until Gibraltar had been left behind in the luminous haze that hangs over the mouth of the Mediterranean in a westerly breeze. But in the smoother waters of the Southern seas the pa.s.sengers plucked up courage, and one morning at breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man nodding vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he subsequently waved with friendly jocularity.

”Morning--morning!” he cried.

”Good morning,” replied Luke, pa.s.sing to his seat at the after-end of the saloon. He had recognised the man at once, although he had only exchanged a few words with him in a crowded ball-room.

Everything connected with Agatha, however remotely, seemed to engrave itself indelibly on his mind. This was Willie Carr, the man to whom Agatha had introduced him at the naval orphanage ball.

Willie Carr was on board the Croonah, evidently quite at home, and bound for India, for he was seated at the Indian table.

It was not necessary for Luke to make inquiries about this pa.s.senger, because his brother officers soon began to speak of him.

By some means Carr made himself popular among the officers, and gradually began to enjoy privileges denied to his fellow pa.s.sengers.

He frequently visited the engine-room, and was always to be seen after meals in, or in the neighbourhood of, the smoking-room, in conversation with one or other of the Croonah's officers, who were generally found to be smoking Carr's cigars.

Despite many obvious and rather noisy overtures of friends.h.i.+p, Luke FitzHenry held aloof until the Aden light was left behind. He succeeded in limiting his intercourse to an exchange of pa.s.sing remarks on the weather until the Croonah had rounded Pointe de Galle and was heading northwards. Then arose circ.u.mstances which brought them together, and possibly served Willie Carr's deliberate purpose.

Carr was travelling without his wife--he was the sort of man who does travel without his wife. She, poor woman, had made one initial mistake, namely, in marrying him, and such mistakes are sometimes paid for by a life of atonement to the G.o.ds. She remained at home to care for an ever-increasing family on a small housekeeping allowance, which was not always paid.

This wife was the only point in his favour which had presented itself to Luke's mind, for the latter resented a certain tone of easy familiarity, which Agatha seemed to take as a matter of course.

Luke was afraid of being questioned about Agatha, and he therefore kept Carr at a respectful distance. He harboured no personal dislike towards the man, whose bluff and honest manner made him popular among his fellows.

It was the evening of the first day in the Bay of Bengal that a steamer pa.s.sed the Croonah, running south, and flying a string of signals. The Croonah replied, and the homeward-bound vessel disappeared in the gathering twilight with her code flags still flying.

”What did she say?” asked the pa.s.sengers.