Double Harness

"Terribly severe," he said. "No night to keep a man on the look-out."

He looked at Grantley, evidently not knowing him.

"A bad night for a ride too, sir," he added; "but it's better to be moving than standing here, looking for a boat that's as likely to come as the Channel Squadron!" He spat scornfully as he ended.

"Looking for a boat?"

For the moment Grantley was glad to talk; it was a relief. Besides he did not know what he was going to do, and caught at a brief respite from decision.

"Aye," the man grumbled, "a boat to come from Portsmouth. Best luck for her if she's never started, and next best if she's put in for shelter on the way. She'd never make Fairhaven to-night."

"Then what's the good of looking for her?"

"Because I get five s.h.i.+llings for it. The owner's waiting for her--waiting at the Sailors' Rest there." He pointed to the inn a hundred yards away. "She was to have been here by midday, and he's in a hurry. Best for him if she doesn't come, if he means to sail to-night, as he says he does." He paused and spat again. "Pretty weather for a lady to go to sea, ain't it?" he ended sarcastically.

The fates were with Grantley Imason. They sent guidance.

"What boat is it?" he asked quietly.

"The _Ariadne_" ("Hairy Adny," he p.r.o.nounced the name).

"Ah, yes! Mr. Blake's yacht?"

"You know him, sir? Well, you'll find him and his lady at the 'Rest'

there; and if you're a friend of theirs, you tell 'em not to expect her to-night, and not to go on board her if she comes."

"Here's another s.h.i.+lling for you, and good-night."

Grantley rode on to the inn, thanking fate, realising now how narrow the chance had been. But for the storm, but for the wind that had buffeted and almost beaten him, no pride, no resolution, would have been of any avail. With fair weather the yacht would have come and gone. He saw why Christine Fanshaw was not to deliver his letter till the morrow. Without the storm, no pride, no resolution, no courage would have availed him.

The _Ariadne_ would have put to sea, and Sibylla would have been gone for ever. Now, thanks to fate, she was not gone. Grantley drew a long breath--the breath of a man whom a great peril has narrowly pa.s.sed by.

The plan had been well laid, but the storm had thwarted it. There was time yet.

Was there? That question could not but rise in his mind. He faced it fairly and squarely, and jogged on to the Sailors' Rest.

"Praise to this fine storm!" he cried within himself--to the storm which beat and raged, which had feigned to hinder his coming, but was his ally and friend. Good luck to it! It had served his turn as nothing else could. And how it was attuned to his mood--to the fierce stern conflict which he had to wage! This was no night for gentleness. There were nights when nature's gentleness mocked the strife to which her own decrees condemned the race of men. But to-night she herself was in the fight. She incited, she cheered, she played him on; and she had given him his field of battle. The sense of helplessness pa.s.sed from him. He was arrayed for the fight. He drank in the violent salt air as though it were a potion magic in power. His being tingled for the struggle.

There was a light in an upper window of the Sailors' Rest. The blinds were not drawn. No, the pair in that room were looking out to sea, looking for the boat which did not come, looking in vain over the tumbling riot of waves. But stay! Perhaps they looked no more now; perhaps they had abandoned that hope for the night. Christine was not to deliver his letter till the morrow; they would think that they had to-night. The thought brought back his pain and his fierceness. They would think that they had to-night! They were wrong there; but it was ten o'clock. "Ten o'clock!" he muttered, as he drew rein at the door of the Sailors' Rest and cast his eyes up to the light in the window over his head.

Within, young Blake was turning away from the window.

"She won't come to-night," he said. "I suppose they started, or I should have had a wire. They must have put back or

"It's too perverse," Sibylla murmured forlornly.

Her vision of their flight was gone. The rush through the waves, the whistling wind, the headlong course, the recklessness, the remoteness from all the world, the stir, the movement, the excitement--all were gone. On the yacht, out in mid-sea, no land in sight, making for a new world, they two alone, with all that belonged to the old life out of view and out of thought--the picture had caught and filled her fancy. In her dream the sea had been as Lethe, the stretch of waters a flood submerging all the past and burying the homes of memory. She had stood arm in arm with him, revelling in the riot of the open seas. No further had the vision gone. The room in the inn was very different. It was small, stuffy, and not too clean. The smell of stale tobacco and of dregs of liquor hung about it. The fire smoked, sending out every now and then a thick dirty cloud that settled on her hands and hair. Her dainty cleanliness rose in revolt. It was a sordid little room. It was odious then; it would never be pleasant in retrospect. Somehow it carried a taint with it; it brought into prominence all that her thoughts had forgotten; its four dingy walls shut out the glowing picture which her fancy had painted.

Blake came and stood behind her chair, laying his hand on her shoulder.

She looked up at him with a sad smile.

"Nothing's quite what you expect," she said. "I wanted my voyage! I suppose I didn't want--reality! But I'm not a child, Walter. I have courage. This makes no difference really."

"Of course it doesn't--so long as we're together."

"I didn't come to you to make the good times better, but to make the bad times good--to do away with the bad times. That's what you wanted me for; that's what I wanted to do." She rose and faced him. "So I'll always welcome trouble--because then I'm wanted, then I can do what I've come to do."

"Don't talk about trouble, Sibylla. We're going to be very happy."

"Yes, I think so," she said, looking at him with thoughtful eyes. "I think we shall be."

"By G.o.d, I love you so!" he burst out suddenly, and then walked off to the window again.

She spread out her hands in an instinctive gesture of deprecation, but her smile was happy.

"That's how I can do what I want to do for you," she said. "That's how I can change your life, and--and find something to do with mine."

He came slowly back towards her, speaking in a low restrained voice:

"It's really no use waiting for the boat. She won't come."

Sibylla stood very still; her eyes were fixed on his face. He met her gaze for a moment, then turned away, sat down by the table, and lit a cigarette--doing it just by habit, and because he was so restless, not because he wanted to smoke.

She stood there in silence for two or three minutes. Once she shuddered just perceptibly. She was striving to yield, to do what he asked, to live up to her gospel of giving everything so that she might make happy him whom she had chosen to receive her gifts--might make him happy, and so fill, enrich, and enn.o.ble his life and hers. She had not thought there would be a struggle; that had got left out in the visions--the visions which were full of the swish of the wind, the dance of the waves, and the sailing to worlds new and beautiful. What struggled? Old teachings, old habits, instincts ingrained. She was acting in obedience to ideas, not to feeling. And feeling alone has power to blot such things out of being.

But for good and evil she was a fanatic--she owned her ideas as masters, and forced herself to bend to them as a slave. What they asked must be given--whatever the sacrifice, the struggle, the repulsion. That they might realise what her nature craved, they must be propitiated by what her nature did not love. On that condition alone would they deal with her. And now these ideas, with all their exacting relentless claims, had found embodiment in Walter Blake.

Blake turned his head and looked at her. She came quickly to him and fell on her knees by him. His hand rested on the table, and she laid hers lightly on it.

"Walter, it's hard!"

"If you love me----" he murmured.

She knew by now that love can be unmerciful. With a little sigh she raised his hand and kissed it. She was half reconciled to her surrender, because she hated it. Had anyone been there to interpose and forbid, her reluctant acceptance would have been turned into an ardent desire to complete her sacrifice.

Young Blake flung away his cigarette and sprang to his feet. He was not thinking of his aspirations now. Wanting to be good was not present to his mind, nor the leading of a new life. He was full of triumph. He forgot the yacht that had not come, and anything there might be uncongenial in the surroundings. He caught Sibylla's hands. She looked at him with a smile half of wonder, half of pity. She had put away her shrinking, though it might come back; but it was a little strange that good could be done only on conditions.

They were standing thus when they heard a voice, the loud gruff voice belonging to the retired merchant-skipper who kept the inn. He was rather a rough customer, as indeed the quality of his patrons rendered necessary; he did not hesitate to throw a man out or (as Fairhaven's report averred) to lay a stick across the back of the saucy buxom daughter who served the bar for him if her sauciness became too p.r.o.nounced. On the whole he was the sort of character popular in the nautical quarter of Fairhaven.

The loud voice came from a distance--from the bottom of the stairs apparently. The landlord was talking to himself, for all that appeared--no other voice made itself heard. He was saying that he had made a promise, and that he was a man of his word. He said this several times. Blake and Sibylla stood hand in hand, their eyes turned in the direction of the door. Then the landlord observed that "times were hard, and that he was a poor man." Blake and Sibylla heard that too. Then the landlord's heavy step came half-way up the stairs. "A poor man," they heard him say with strong emphasis. Still they could hear no other voice and no other step. But they had dropped one another's hands by now, and stood quite still a couple of paces apart.

"Oh, he's bargaining with somebody for the price of a bed!" said young Blake, with an attempt at lightness.

The landlord's steps were heard descending the stairs again. And now another step drew near.

Suddenly young Blake darted towards the door and locked it. He turned a scared face round on Sibylla. The steps sounded along the pa.s.sage. His eyes met hers. He did not know the step, but he knew the one thing that he feared, and his uneasy mind flew to the apprehension of it.

"Can it be--anybody?" he whispered.

"It's Grantley," she answered quietly. "Unlock the door. I'm not afraid to meet him. In the end I believe I'm glad."