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Still the pitiless great mass of a steamer in front of the yacht plunged and yawed and dragged them without mercy through the black waters, where a huge surge could now be occasionally discerned sweeping its foaming crest past the little yacht, which was gradually succumbing to the wild forces about it.
Margaret was back again in the cabin now. She had wedged herself in, with her back against the bunks, and one foot up against the table as a prop to keep her in position. In one hand she held a bottle of brandy and in the other a glass. And when a man fell out sick and exhausted she attended to him. There was no water asked for. They took the brandy "neat." She had succeeded in quieting the other women, and as they could not hear the bailing in the after-cabin they were in happy ignorance of the worst. Whatever fears she had had when the knowledge of danger first came to her, she showed no sign of them now – but only a compassion for the exhausted workers that heartened them up and did them good.
A third hour had nearly expired since they began to use the buckets, and Margaret for a long time had been watching the water, in which the bailers worked, gradually creeping up over their feet as they spent themselves on a dreary round, to which the toil of Sisyphus was satisfactory. The water was rising steadily in spite of their best efforts to keep the boat afloat. Margaret had quietly made up her mind that they would never see the land again. There did not seem to be any chance left, and she was going, as men say, to "die game." Her courage and cheering words inspired the others to endless exertions. She was like a big sister to them all. At times she was hilarious and almost boisterous, and when she waved the bottle in the air and declared that there was no Scott Act on board, her conduct can not be defended. Maurice Rankin tried to say he wished they could get a Scott Act on the water, but the remark seemed to lack intrinsic energy, and he failed from exhaustion to utter it.
Another half-hour passed, and while the men trudged through the ever-deepening water Margaret experienced new thoughts whenever she gazed at Geoffrey, who had worked almost incessantly. She looked at the knotted cords on his arms and on his forehead, at the long tenacious jaw set as she had seen it in the hurdle race, and she knew from the swelling nostril and glittering eye that the idea of defeat in this battle with the waters was one which he spurned from him. His clothes were dripping with water. The neck-button of his shirt had carried away, his trousers were rolled up at the bottom, and his face perspired freely with the extraordinary strain, and yet in spite of his appearance she felt as if she had never cared for him so much as when she now saw him. On through the night she sat there doing her woman's part beside those who fought with the water for their lives. She saw the treacherous enemy gaining on them in spite of all their efforts, and in her heart felt fully convinced that she could not have more than two hours to live. The hot steam from men working frantically filled the cabin, the weaker ones grew ill before her, and she looked after them without blenching. Hers was no place for a toy woman. She was there to help all those about to die; and to do this rightly, to force back her own nausea, and face anxiety and death with a smile.
As for Geoffrey, life seemed sweet to him that night. For him, it was Margaret or – nothing. To him, this facing of death did just one thing. It raised the tiger in him. He had what Shakespeare and prize-fighters call "gall," that indomitable courage which women worship hereditarily, although better kinds of courage may exist.
Another long half-hour passed, and then Maurice fell over his bucket, keel-up. He had fainted from exhaustion, and was dosed by Margaret in the usual way, and after this he was set on his pins and sent on deck for the lighter work at the pumps. After that, the paid hands, having in some way purloined too much whisky, mutinied, and said they would be blanketty-blanketted if they would sling another bucket.
The others went on as steadily as before, while the crew went forward to wait sulkily for the end.
Jack and Charley then consulted as to what was best to be done. To hold on in this way meant going to the bottom, without a shadow of doubt. They had tried to signal to the steamer, to get her to slow up and take all hands on board. But the watchers at the stern of the steamer had been taken off to work at the steamer's pumps; for, as was afterward found, she also was leaking badly and in a dangerous condition.
Ought they to cut the towline, throw out the inside ballast, and cut away the mast to ease the straining at the seams? The wooden hull, minus the inside ballast, might float in spite of the lead on the keel, which was not very heavy, and in this way they might drift about until picked up the next day. But the ballast was covered with water. They could not get it out in time to save her. Yet the seas seemed somewhat lighter than they had been. Would not the boat leak less while proceeding in an ordinary way, instead of being dragged from wave to wave? No doubt it would, but was it safe to let the steamer leave them? Ought they to cut the towline, get up a bit of a sail, and endeavor to make the north shore of the lake?
While duly weighing these things, Jack was making a rough calculation in his head, as he took a look at the clock. Then he walked forward, took a halyard in his hands, and embracing the plunging mast with his legs, he swarmed up about twenty feet from the deck. Then, after a long look, he suddenly slid down again, and running aft he called to the others, while he pointed over the bows.
"Toronto Light, ahoy!"
"Holy sailor!" cried Charley in delight. "Are you sure of it?"
"Betcherlife!" said Jack. "Can't fool me on Toronto Light. Go and see for yourself."
Charley climbed up and took a look. Then he went down into the forecastle and told the men they would get no pay for the trip if they did not help to bail the boat.
Seeing that not only life but good pay awaited them, they turned to again and helped to keep the ship afloat.
In a few minutes more Jack called to Margaret to come on deck. When she had ascended, she sat on the dripping cabin-top and watched a changing scene, impossible to forget. Soon after she appeared, there came a flicker in the air, as short as the pulling of a trigger, and all at once she perceived that she began dimly to see the waves and the pitching boat. It was like a revelation, like an experience of Dante's Virgil, to see at last some of that hell of waters in which they had struggled so long for existence.
As the first beginning of weird light, coming apparently from nowhere, began to spread over the weary waste of heaving, tumbling, merciless waters and to dilute the ink of the night, as if with only a memory of day, a momentary chill went through Margaret, as she began to realize a small part of what they had come through. But as the ragged sky in the east paled faintly, rather than warmed, with an attempt at cheerfulness, like the tired smile of a dying man, it sufficed, although so deficient in warmth, to cheer her heart. The calm certainty of an almost immediate death that had settled like a pall upon her was dispelled by rays of hope that seemed to be identical with the invading rays of light. "Hope comes from the east," she thought, as a ray from that quarter made the atmosphere take another jump toward day, and as she fell into a tired reverie she remembered, with a heart forced toward thanksgiving, those other early glad tidings from the East. Worn out, she yielded to early emotions, and thanked God for her deliverance. She arose and went carefully along the deck, holding to the wet boom, until she reached the mast, where she stopped and gazed at the black mass of the great steamer still plunging and yawing and swinging through the waters, with its lights looking yellow in the pale glimmer of dawn. After viewing the disorder on decks she could form an idea of the work the men had had during the darkness of the night.
But, oh, what a broken-nosed nightmare of a yacht it was, in the dreary morning light, with all the dripping black-looking heap of wreckage piled over the bows, the mast pitching back toward the stern with a tangled mass of everything imaginable wound in a huge plait down the lifts. In this draggle-tailed thing, with a boom lying on deck and hanging over the counter and its canvas trailing in the water, Margaret could not recognize the peerless swan that a short time ago poised itself upon its pinions and swept so majestically out of Toronto Bay.
The water, at every mile traversed, now grew calmer as the gale came partly off the land. Soon the pitching ended altogether. The opened seams ceased to smile so invitingly to the death that lurks under every boat's keel. The pumps and buckets had begun to gain upon the water in the cabin, and by the time they had swept round the lighthouse and reached the wharf the flooring had been replaced, while the pumps were still clanging at intervals.
When they made fast to the dock a drawn and haggard group of men – a drooping, speechless, and even ragged group of men – allowed themselves to sleep. It did not matter where or how they slept. They just dropped anywhere; and for five hours Nature had all she could do to restore these men to a semblance of themselves.
[Note. – If Captain Estes, of the Mail Line Steamer Abyssinian, should ever read this chapter, he will know a part of what took place at the other end of the hawser on the night of September 5, 1872.]
CHAPTER XVI
What slender youth, bedewed with liquid odors,
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha? For whom bindest thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,
Plain in its neatness? Oh, how oft shall he
On faith, and changed gods, complain,
To whom thou untried seemest fair?
Horace, Lib. I, Ode 5.
A fine spring afternoon. A dark-eyed, well-dressed young lady with an attractive figure descends from a street car near the Don Bridge. She crosses the bridge leisurely and proceeds eastward along the Kingston Road toward Scarborough. Whatever her destination may be, the time at which she arrives is evidently of no consequence. She does "belong" down Kingston Roadway. The street car dropped her there, and one may come a long way for ten cents on street cars. From the uninterested way in which she views the semi-rural surroundings one can see that she is carelessly unfamiliar with the region.
A fine horse, with his glossy coat and harness shining in the sun, comes along behind her at a rate that would not be justified in a crowded thoroughfare. Behind the horse a stylish dog-cart bowls along with its plate-glass lamps also shining in the sun. Between this spot and the city of Kingston there is no man on the road handsomer than he who drives the dog-cart. The lady looks pleased as she hears the trap coming along; a flush rises to her cheeks and makes her eyes still brighter. When the horse trots over the sod and stops beside the sidewalk her surprise is so small that she does not even scream. On the contrary, she proceeds, without speaking, to climb into the vehicle with an expression on her face in which alarm has no place.
In some analogy with that mysterious law which rules that an elephant shall not climb a tree, symmetrical people in fashionable dresses, whose lines tend somewhat toward convexity, do not climb into a high dog-cart with that ease which may compensate others for being long and lanky. A middle-aged elder of the Established Kirk stands on his doorstep directly opposite and looks pious. He says this is a meeting not of chance but of design, and reproof is shown upon his face. The lady wears Parisian boots, and the general expression of the middle-aged elder is severe except where the eyes suggest weakness unlooked for in a face of such high moral pitch. Once in, the young lady settles herself comfortably and wraps about her dress the embroidered dust-linen as if she were well accustomed to the situation. They drive off, and the middle-aged elder shakes his head after them and says with renewed personal conviction that the world is not what it ought to be.
The road is soft and smooth, and the horse saws his head up and down as he steps out at a pace that makes him feel pleasantly disposed toward country roads and inclined to travel faster than a gentlemanly, civilized, by-law-regulated horse should desire. The young lady lays aside her parasol, which is remarkable – a gay toy – and takes up a black silk umbrella which is not remarkable but serviceable. The good-looking man pulls out of his pocket a large brown veil rolled up in paper, and she of the Parisian boots ties it quickly around a little skull-cap sort of bonnet of black beads and lace. The veil is thrown around in such a way that the folds of it can be pulled down over her face in an instant. Here, also, the lady shows a deftness in assuming this head-gear that argues prior practice, and when this is done she lays her hand on the handsome man's arm and looks up at him radiantly, while the silk umbrella shuts out a couple of farmer's wives.
"Doesn't it make me look hideous?" she says, referring to the veil.
"Yes, my dear, worse than ever," says the handsome man. His face is a mixture of careless good-nature and quiet devil-may-care recklessness. Perhaps there are women who never make men look spiritual. It is to be hoped that the umbrella hides his disregard for appearances on the public street and that the farmer's wives in the neighborhood are not too observant.
"For goodness' sake, Geoffrey, do behave better on the highway! What will those women think?"
"Their curiosity will gnaw them cruelly, I fear. They are looking after us yet. I can see them."
"Well, it is not fair to me to go on like that; besides I am terrified all the time lest the people may find out who it is that wears the brown veil about the country. I have heard four or five girls speaking about it. It's the talk of the town."
"No fear about that, Nina. I don't think your name was ever mentioned in connection with the veil, but, in case it might be, I drove out Helen Broadwood and Janet Carruthers lately, and, in view of the dust flying, I persuaded them to wear the brown veil. We drove all over the city and down King Street several times. So now the brown veil is divided between the two of them. It was not much trouble to devote a little time to this object, and besides, you know, the old people give excellent dinners."
"That was nice of you to put it off on those girls and to take so much trouble for me, but it can't last, Geoffrey, dear. We are sure to be recognized some day. Helen and Janet will both say they were not on the Indian road near the Humber the day we met the Joyces's wagonette, and those girls are so stupid that people will believe them; and that bad quarter of an hour when Millicent Hart rode behind us purposely to find out who I was. That was a mean thing of her to do, but I paid her off. I met her at Judge Lovell's the other night. It was a terrible party, but I enjoyed it. I knew she expected to bring things to a climax with Mr. Grover; she's folle about that man. I monopolized him the whole evening – in fact he came within an ace of proposing. Gracious, how that girl hates me now!"
"I would not try paying her off too much, or she will think you have a strong reason for doing so," said Geoffrey. "After all, her curiosity did her no good. You managed the umbrella to a charm."
"The best thing you could do would be to have a linen duster for me to wear – such as the American women travel in; then, as the veil covered my head, I could discard the umbrella, and they would not recognize my clothes."
In this way they rattled down to Scarborough, and then Geoffrey turned off the highway through a gate and drove across a lot of wild land covered with brushwood until he struck a sort of road through the forest which had been chopped out for the purpose of hauling cordwood in the winter. He followed this slowly, for it was rough wheeling. Then he stopped, tied the horse, and Nina and he sauntered off through the woods until they reached the edge of the high cliffs overlooking the lake. This spot escaped even picnic parties, for it was almost inaccessible except by the newly cut and unknown road. Solitude reigned where the finest view in the neighborhood of Toronto could be had. They could look along the narrow cliffs eastward as far as Raby Head. At their feet – perhaps a hundred and fifty feet down – the blue-green waves lapped the shore in the afternoon breeze, and on the horizon, across the thirty or forty miles of fresh water, the south shore of the lake could be dimly seen in a summer haze.
The winter had come and gone since we saw our friends last, and the early spring was delicious in the warmth that hurried all nature into a promise of maturity. Not much of importance had happened to any of them since we last saw them. Jack was as devoted as ever, and Nina was not. She tried to do what she could in the way of being pleasant to Jack, and she went on with the affair partly because she had not sufficient hardness of heart to break it off, and chiefly because Geoffrey told her not to do so. He preferred that she should remain, in a nondescript way, engaged to Jack.
Hampstead generally dined with the Mackintoshes on Sunday, and called in the evening once or twice during the week. He also took Margaret for drives in the afternoon – generally about the town. When this happened a boy in buttons sat behind them and held the horse when they descended to make calls together on Margaret's friends. This was pleasant for both of them, and a beginning of the quiet domestic life which, after marriage, Geoffrey intended to confine himself to, and he won good opinions among Margaret's friends from the cheerful, pleasant, domesticated manner he had with him when they dropped in together, in an off-hand, "engaged" sort of way to make informal calls. And so far as Margaret could know he seemed in every way entitled to the favorable opinions she created. All his better, kinder nature was present at these times, and no one could make himself more agreeable when he was, as he said of himself, "building up a moral monument more lasting than brass."
But Geoffrey had his "days off," and then he was different. He smiled as he thought that in cultivating a high moral tone it was well not to overdo the thing at first; that two days out of the week would suffice to keep him socially in the traces. He thought his "off" days frequently made him prize Margaret all the more when he could turn with some relief toward the one who embodied all that his imagination could picture in the way of excellence. He despised himself and was complacent with himself alternately, with a regularity in his inconsistencies which was the only way (he would say, smiling) that he could call himself consistent. If necessary, he would have admitted that he was bad; but to himself he was fond of saying that he never tried to conceal from himself when he was doing wrong; and, among men, he despised the many "Bulstrodes" of existence who succeed in deceiving themselves by falsities. He said that this openness with self seemed to have something partly redeeming about it; perhaps only by comparison – that it possibly ranked among the uncatalogued virtues, marked with a large note of interrogation. He thought there were few brave enough to be quite honest with themselves, and that there was always a chance for a man who remained so; that the hopeless ones were chiefly those who, with or without vice, have become liars to themselves; who, by mingling uncontrolled weakness and professed religion, have lost the power to properly adjust themselves.
This day of the drive to Scarborough was one of his "off" days. He found a piquancy in these trips with him, because so many talked about her beauty; and, as the majority of men do not have very high ideals concerning feminine beauty, Nina was well adapted for extensive conquest. No doubt she was very attractive, quite dazzling sometimes. She was partly of the French type, perfect in its way, but not the highest type; she was lady-like in her appearance, yet with the slightest soupçon of the nurse-girl. It amused him to hear men discussing, even squabbling about her, especially after he had come from a trip with the brown veil. If men had been more sober in the way they regarded her, if her costumes had been less bewitching, he soon would have become tired. But these incentives made him pleased with his position, and he was wont to quote the illustrious Emerson in saying that "greatly as he rejoiced in the victories of religion and morality, it was not without satisfaction that he woke up in the morning and found that the world, the flesh, and the devil still held their own, and died hard." In other words, it pleased him that Nina existed to give life – for the present – a little of that fillip which his nature seemed to demand.
"What is a wise man? Well, sir, as times go, 'tis a man who knows himself to be a fool, and hides the fact from his neighbor."
This was the only text upon which Geoffrey founded any claim to wisdom.
As they left the cliff and walked slowly back through the woods Nina was leaning on his arm, and the happiness of her expression showed how completely she could forget the duties which both abandoned in order to meet in this way. But when they arrived at the dog-cart a change came over her. The brown veil had to be tied on again. At many other times she had done this placidly, as part of the masquerade. But to-day she was not inclined to reason carefully. To-day the veil was a badge of secrecy, a reminder of underhand dealings, a token that she must ever go on being sly and double-faced with the public, that she must renounce the idea of ever caring for Geoffrey in any open and acknowledged way. To be sure, she had accepted this situation in its entirety when she continued to yield to her own wishes by being so much with an engaged man. But to be reasonable always, is uncommon. She resisted an inclination to tear the veil to shreds. Something told her that exhibitions of temper would not be very well received by her companion. No matter how she treated Jack, was she not honest with Geoffrey? Did she not risk her good name for him? And why should she have to mask her face and hide it from the public? She – an heiress, who would inherit such wealth – whose beauty made her a queen, to whom men were like slaves!
The veil very nearly became altered in its condition as she thought of these things, but she put it on, and smothered her wrath until they got out upon the highway. Then she said, after a long silence: "Would it not be as well to let Margaret wear this brown veil a few times, Geoffrey? She has a right to drive about with you, and if people thought it was only she, their curiosity might cease."
A farm-house cur came barking after the dog-cart just then, and Geoffrey's anger expended itself partly on the dog, instead of being embodied in a reply.
The whip descended so viciously through the air that a more careful person might have seen that the suggestion had not improved his temper.
Except this, he gave no answer. She pressed the subject, although she knew he was angry. "Don't you think, Geoffrey, that that would be a good thing to do? It would quite remove curiosity, and would, in any case, be only fair to me."
Now, if there was one thing Hampstead could not and would not endure, it was to have a woman he amused himself with attempt to put herself on a par with the one he reverenced. Margaret was about all that remained of his conscience. She embodied all the good he knew. Every resolve and hope of his future depended upon her. He could not as yet, he thought, find it possible always to live as she would like; but in a calm way, so controlled as to seem almost dispassionate, he worshiped her, as it were, in the abstract.
His ideas concerning her were so rarefied that, in any other person, he might have called them fanatical. He was bad, but he felt that he would rather hang himself than allow so much as a breath to dim the fair mirror of Margaret's name. At the very mention of her as wearing this brown veil he grew pale with anger, and the barking cur got the benefit of it, and at Nina's insistence his face and eyes grew like steel.
"Heavens above! Can't you let her name alone? Is it not enough for you to raise the devil in me, without scheming to give her trouble? Do you think I will allow her to step in and be blamed for what it was your whim to go in for – risks and all?"
Nina was ready now to let the proposition drop, but she could not refrain from adding: "She would not be blamed for very much if she were blamed for all that has happened between us."
There was truth in what she said, but Geoffrey had looked upon these meetings as anything but innocent. Argument on the point was insufferable, and it only made him lash out worse, as he interrupted her.
"Good God, Nina! you must be mad! Don't you see? Don't you understand?"
Nina waited a second while she thought over what he meant, and her blood seemed to boil as she considered different things.
"Yes, I do understand. You need say no more," cried she, with her eyes blazing. "You want me to realize that I am so much beneath her – that she is so far above me – that, although I have done nothing much out of the way, the imputation of her doing the same thing is a kind of death to you. You go out of your way to try and hurt me – "
"No, no, Nina," said Geoffrey, controlling himself, "I do not want to hurt your feelings. If we must continue speaking on this unpleasant subject, I will explain."
"That will do, Geoffrey Hampstead," she exclaimed in a rage; "I don't want to hear your explanation. I hate you and despise you! I have been a fool myself, but you have been a greater one. I could have made a prince of you. I was fool enough to do this, and now," here Nina tore the veil off her head, and threw it on the road, "and now," she continued, as she faced him with flashing eyes, "you will always remain nothing but a miserable bank-clerk. Who are you that you should presume to insult me? and who is she that she should be held over my head? I am as good in every way as she is, and, if all that's said is true, I am a good deal better."
Geoffrey listened silently to all she said, and to her blind imputation against Margaret. Gazing in front of him with a look that boded ill, he reduced the horse's pace to a walk, so that he need not watch his driving, and turned to her, speaking slowly, his face cruel and his eyes small and glittering.
"Listen! You have consciously played the devil with me ever since I knew you. You have known from the first how you held me; you played your part to perfection, and I liked it. It amused me. It made better things seem sweeter after I left you. It is not easy to be very good all at once, and you partly supplied me with the opposite. I don't blame you for it, because I liked it, and I confess to encouraging you, but the fact is – you sought me. Hush! Don't deny it! As women seek, you sought me. We tacitly agreed to be untrue to every tie in order to meet continually, and in a mild sort of way try to make life interesting. Did either of us ever try by word or deed to improve the other? Certainly not. Nor did we ever intend to do so. We taught each other nothing but scheming and treachery. And you thought that you would make the devil so pleasing that I could not do without him. This is the plain truth – in spite of your sneer. Recollect, I don't mind what you say about me, but you have undertaken to insult and lay schemes for somebody else, and that I'll not forgive. For that, I say what I do, and I make you see your position, when you, who have been a mass of treachery ever since you were born, dare to compare yourself with – no matter who. I won't even mention her name here. That's how I look upon this affair, if you insist upon plain speech. Now we understand things."
It was a cruel, brutal tirade. Truth seems very brutal sometimes. He began slowly, but as he went on, his tongue grew faster, until it was like a mitrailleuse. Nina was bewildered. She had angered him intentionally; but she had not known that on one subject he was a fanatic, and thus liable to all the madness that fanaticism implies. She said nothing, and Hampstead, with scarcely a pause, added, in a more ordinary tone: "It will be unpleasant for us to drive any further together. You are accustomed to driving. I'll walk."
He handed the reins to Nina and swung himself out without stopping the horse. She took the reins in a half-dazed way and asked vaguely:
"What will I do with the horse when I get to the town?"
"Turn him adrift," said Geoffrey, over his shoulder, as he proceeded up a cross-road, feeling that he never wished to see either her or the trap again.
Nina stopped the horse to try to think. She could not think. His biting words had driven all thought out of her. She only knew he was going away from her forever. She looked after him, and saw him a hundred yards off lighting a cigar with a fusee as he walked along. She called to him and he turned. The country side was quiet, and he could hear her say, "Come here!" He went back, and found her weeping. All she could say was "Get in." Of course he got in, and they drove off up the cross-road so as to meet no person until she calmed herself. After a while she sobbed out:
"Oh, you are cruel, Geoffrey. I may be a mass of treachery, but not to you – not to you, Geoffrey. Having to put on the veil angered me. I have been wicked. We have both been wicked. But you are so much worse than I am. You know you are!"
As she said this it sounded partly true and partly whimsical, so she tried to smile again. He could not endeavor to resist tears when he knew that he had been unnecessarily harsh, and he was glad of the opportunity to smile also and to smooth things over.
