Again Lois raised her hands and buried her face in them. A sob broke from her, and in a moment the tears ran out between her fingers.
“Lois!”
Derek took a quick step towards her, but she held him off.
“No!”
She turned away to a window and stood with her back to the room, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief.
“I haven’t done that since I was a child,” she said between a laugh and a sob. “I’m so sorry.”
She came forward again into the room and stood a little apart from her lover.
“Dearest,” she said, “I thank you and thank you. You’ve been a darling to me. You took me by surprise this morning. I knew, of course, that we were great friends. I thought that you were perhaps a little fond of me. But that this morning...after what happened last night...you would still take my face between your hands and kiss me — oh, I couldn’t believe it! You showed me a world I didn’t know, which I didn’t believe existed. My dear, if I could just creep to you and say, ‘Yes, we begin, we both begin,’ I shouldn’t be standing here and you there. But I can’t say that, Derek.”
Derek began to plead. He used the phrases all lovers use, eternally old and eternally new, the everyday words transmuted into gold by the alchemy of a passionate heart. All his fine self-confidence had gone. He was going to take the tangled skein after Mark had made a bungle of it and unravel it out of hand, was he? He found himself desperately crying:
“I love you, Lois...I love you...There never will be anyone else in the world for me but you...I adore you...It was planned ages ago that we should meet and love...Together we could do such fine things. It’ll be wonderful.”
And Lois, all her yearning heart in her eyes, answered with quivering lips:
“It might have been wonderful, Derek.”
“Without you I am lame.”
Slowly she shook her head.
“With me you would be crippled.”
Years ago, when Henry Perriton had first told Lois that she was Mark Thewliss’ bastard daughter, she had nursed a morbid fancy that she carried a taint upon her like a leper, that she must keep aloof from the other girls of her age, that she ought to carry a bell so that its tinkling might warn others of her approach. She had grown out of that foolishness, but she had the conviction back in her mind now. She remembered how she had fallen at the first suggestion of Hoyle, nay, how she had run forward to welcome it, how continuously she had planned to bring it to success and the bitterness of her disappointment when, answering her telegram, Hoyle had met her in the basement of the great Oxford Street store only to tell her of the hiatus which made the formula of no worth. She was horribly ashamed. There was a taint upon her. She was set apart.
“Marriage with you, dear one, cannot be,” she said. Gently though they were spoken, never were words more firm, and never did they expose more clearly a breaking heart. “I would not do you so much harm. Oh, yes, it would be harm. Again I say I know now a little about myself. Between us there would always be the knowledge of this that I had done. You wouldn’t hold it over my head, as Henry Perriton did with my mother; I know that very well. But I haven’t my mother’s” — and she sought for a word— “acquiescence, and the dignity of her acquiescence in the things which can’t be altered. This secret would be there between us. I should feel — a horrible word, but it just says what I mean — I should feel inferior, and I shouldn’t be patient, I shouldn’t accept. I should visit it on you — yes, until in time you would begin to hate the sight of me and the very sound of my voice upon the stairs.”
“I’ll take the risk of that, Lois,” cried Derek, brushing away her argument.
“I know you would, my dear,” she answered. “But I won’t. So you must let me go.”
She turned hesitatingly towards Mark, who was standing apart by the fire.
“I am very sorry,” she said in a low voice, and she added in a voice which was lower still: “Father, I beg your pardon.”
Mark reached out his arms to her.
“Oh, my dear!” he whispered.
But she did not come into them, and he dropped them to his side.
“So you really are going?”
There was so deep a yearning in his eyes that she dared not look at them.
“I must. I must be alone. I am like a child in the dark.”
She moved again towards the door, and now Derek stood away from it. It was so clear that no power could stop her. In a few moments the car was heard to drive away. The two men were left standing in the library, and upon Mark’s face was the look of one who would welcome death.
XXIX. THE ANTHEM
“Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for me,
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea.”
The voice of one boy soared, pure and wistful as the music of a flute above the others, and seemed to beat with the pinions of an angel about the high wood roof. Mark Thewliss, two and a half years older by the measurement of days and ten by that of sorrow, sat in the very front of the church, his face a pale mask, his eyes drawing unconsciously a little solace and rest from the glorious blue of the great painted window above the altar.
He had planned that a wedding should be held here with its fact of reparation and its promise of a long line of men and women who should serve the commonwealth, make a new family old, and keep its name sweet and of good repute. He peopled the church with rejoicing friends. He saw the bridesmaids a delicious cluster of fresh flowers grouped at the foot of the aisle, he walked himself up the length of it with a hand upon his arm which clung just a trifle more tightly than it ever had clung, so that he might feel the dear touch of it through all the rest of his hours. He heard the bells clash joyously, rocking the walls. Dreams and vanities! Nothing had gone according to plan. For he had been in a hurry. Lois had not stepped an inch beyond the truth when she had said that. Success, the sensation of power, the great name, the gratitude of unknown people for the great gift of colour which he was to put within their reach — he had been in a hurry to secure these fine things, so the church was full of mourners instead of wedding guests.
“But such a tide as moving seems asleep
Too full for sound and foam
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.”
The lovely anthem winged by the young pure voice rose and fell like a smooth wave of the sea. Derek had turned again home after that fateful hour in the library at Upper Theign. Oh, he had tried to carry on, working at the flotation of the company, overdoing his jests, filling with a laborious vivacity the emptiness which never could be filled. But he had no heart for it. A year and he had come to the end of his acting. He turned again home. Mark recalled the evening. It was a Sunday, and they were in the country together, Olivia, and Derek and he. Derek had rattled away through dinner rather boisterously, and coming into the library had dropped into a chair by the fire — the chair in which Lois had once sat in the formal, still attitude of one who was there on probation.
“I’m through, Mark,” he had said, with such a look of weariness upon his face that he was not to be gainsaid. “I have tried, you know. I thought that I could worry it out, until last week. But last week I began to doubt. And once I had begun to doubt, it rushed upon me as a certainty that I couldn’t. I must go, Mark. I feel like a dog, leaving you. But I can’t help it.”
Mark had just nodded his head.
“No, you can’t help it. Derek. Thank you for staying with me so long. What are you going to do?”
He could go out on the staff of the new Commander-in-Chief in India. It was the work to which he was bred. He had turned again home.
Behind Mark Thewliss in the church old Gregory was sitting, and his thoughts were wandering. The back of Mark’s neck had grown too thin during these last months. How long would he go on? He was one of the wiry men. He had never put on fat. He was born for a very long life. But when
the back of the neck goes thin — there’s a bad sign. Happily the company was launched, the patents assured, the universal process for making dyes fast a triumphant advance, and good men on the directorate. Mardyke and Campion’s would go on, even though the giant who had built it up fell.
“Twilight and evening bell
And after that the dark,
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark.”
Thus the choir. It had been broad daylight and Derek in the fullness of his strength when he had embarked. Riding down the Khyber Pass from Landi Khotal after a tour of inspection on the Afghan border, his escort had been bombed by an air-squadron on manoeuvres. A terrible mistake, but mistakes must happen, and men on service who die because of them die serving like soldiers in battle. Derek was buried out there amongst those far hills “I’m through.” Yes, he was through now. There was but the memory of his joyous, gallant spirit alive in the church.
“For though from out our bourn of time and place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.”
Mark himself had asked that that anthem should be sung. It was written at sea. He had seemed to hear in its rhythm the long-drawn low thunder of a calm sea breaking upon a beach. The sea had always been one of the two great emotional influences in his life, as though it had a message for him which it was always hinting, which one day it would clearly deliver. The sea and Lois, his daughter. He wondered whether she was here, hidden amongst the mourners, whether when all was over their eyes would meet. Surely if they did, the barrier would be down. The great, hoped-for harvest — that, with Derek gone, was lost, but he and she might perhaps glean a few ears from the stubble. Surely she would be here, for Love had spoken with its authentic voice when she had bidden Derek good-bye on that morning of snow at Upper Theign.
Mark, employing a wiser head than Joseph Wyatt’s, had kept touch with his daughter’s movements. She had disappeared, it is true, but he had held his eyes upon Glebe Villa. He had not a doubt that Mona would be written to and through Mona he meant by hook or by crook to discover Lois’ whereabouts. Mona, indeed, made just the move which he expected. On learning the treachery of Henry Perriton, she left him. She joined Lois in London and the pair of them, at once courageous, independent and efficient, had established themselves upon what was left of Lois’ savings at Southampton. There they had opened a small secretarial office, taking the name of Lightfoot, and almost from the first they made it pay. There was no slovenliness in their work, and they had no grudge against overtime. Mark, himself, was able in that pleasant city of great ships to put secretly a good deal of opportunity in their way. He would have made that opportunity had it been necessary. But it was not, and it was an immense consolation to Mark and a high cause of pride that even without his help their little business made by themselves was prospering. For the rest, he did not for a second time seek for any facile assurance that their domestic life met with a like success. But so far as he could learn they had attained some measure of contentment; they enjoyed at all events the loving company of each other and knew perhaps from time to time some moments of vivid happiness.
None the less there had been great love between Lois and Derek, and the loss of him must be a heavy cloud upon her now. Surely she was somewhere in this church. He waked from his thoughts of her to see the tall Rector standing with uplifted hand, and to hear the Benediction. Then two buglers of Derek’s regiment stepped forward, and the Last Post with its long-drawn farewell blown, it sounded, to the loneliest traveller already lost beyond infinite spaces, crashed with a heart-shattering volume amongst the pillars of the church and was flung back from the walls and high arches in echoes of intolerable sadness. The bugle call took Mark Thewliss by storm, and broke through his vigilance. Despite the difference in their years, Derek Crayle had been the greatest friend he had ever had. Now he was gone. Mark dropped his face upon his hands, and so remained, whilst the Funeral March thundered and the mourners went from the church.
Amongst the last to leave was Lois. She had been kneeling in a side aisle almost in a line with Mark Thewliss. She stood up and gazed at him a little while through the curtain of her tears. She took, indeed, a step across the aisle, her heart yearning towards him. Had he lifted his head at that moment, their eyes must have met, and nothing thereafter could have held them apart. But he did not, and Lois, seeing Olivia at his side, turned away blindly down the aisle.
A few seconds later Mark whispered to his wife:
“Olivia! I want you to leave me here alone;” and when he was alone, by some odd chance, unless it was by some thread of sympathy too fine for mind and brain to apprehend, his gaze wandered to the bench where Lois so lately knelt. Above the bench, there was a coloured window in memory of Admiral Blake, who had once been buried in the Abbey and thence ejected. There were tall ships sailing stately across the blue glass, and they held Mark Thewliss’ eyes. He wondered again whether the sea had not some undelivered message for him such as mountaineers listen to on their high pinnacles. His thoughts leapt over the years of his big top-sail schooner and homed on the little Sea Flower, which, still tended and cherished, had lain this many a year in a yard on the Hamble River. A message had been delivered to him on that trim and dainty cutter, but clamorous for the sensation of power, he had given to it no heed.
During the evening, after a long silence, he told Olivia suddenly that for a little while he must go away. Olivia nodded her head. During the last two years a constraint had grown up between them, setting a check upon their tongues and a formality upon their manners. There were subjects to be avoided, so vast a difference separated their angles of view. Questions were dangerous, for no one could tell whither they might lead. The pair had drifted apart. Olivia returned very gently:
“Yes. This has been a troublesome time for you. Go, Mark!” and for a week he was very busy.
XXX. THE LAST CRUISE
AT SIX O’CLOCK on a Tuesday morning, Sea Flower, trim and spruce as a girl at the dance of the season, slipped down Southampton Water with a fair wind upon her beam. It was the month of August, the sky already bleached by the sun, seemed to have lent its blue to the sea, and the little waves of the Sound, embroidered with gold, sang under the forefoot of the cutter. Mark sat alone at the tiller, was the only inhabitant of his ship; and already his troubled soul was smoothing out. There was an exhilaration in his blood, and a world-old vanity stirred within him.
“I am just as useful as I ever was. I can cook as good a breakfast as my chef and set my sails properly into the bargain.” He felt his years dropping one by one from his shoulders. He bore to the left of the Dean’s Elbow where once, unseen by him, Mona Lightfoot had slipped a wedding ring from her finger and watched it waver and sink into green darkness. Now the tall spire of Ryde Church stood high above the ridge of the island. Mark shook out his mainsheet and bore away between Calshot and the Brambles past Gurnard’s Bay, and the long pier of Yarmouth and the high slope of purple heather above the Needles. The wind dropped when he was opposite to the sand cliffs of Bournemouth, but freshened again towards sunset, blowing from the east as it had done throughout the day. Mark bore up between the striped buoys and the black cones to the white landing gates of Brownsea, tacked round the elbow of the channel and sailed free northwards to Poole. He had never once put into those shallow waters since he and Mona Lightfoot had made their cruise to the west; and but for the “Margate Hoy,” the little tavern of dingy yellow upon the quay, he would hardly have known the place again. Then it had been a decrepit little town dying, as it were, upon its feet. Now colliers for the new electric light works crowded the wharves, the streets were ajostle with tourists driven out by the high prices of Bournemouth, and motor-boats ran them to Studland Bay on moonlight trips.
Mark dropped his anchor and went ashore in his punt to do his marketing. He was more tired than he would admit, and the exhilaration of the morn
ing had gone from him. There were too many memories awakened by the stones of that small town, and he hurried back to his cutter, cooked his dinner, and sat in his cabin, very lonely and very old. But though the glamour of this fantastic expedition had vanished, Mark was obstinate. Farther to the west, west of St. Alban’s head— “where England begins,” as he remembered with a smile perhaps in the West Bay beyond the Bill, a cool silent night would restore it and, chasing the years away, make him brother with the stars.
But the wind held light all the next day, and died away before the evening. The cutter was becalmed opposite to the ochre-coloured coastguard station on the cliff at the narrow entrance to Lulworth Cove. There she hung and a mist came up from the south thick as wool, so that not even a star was visible. The Sea Flower drifted in with the tide, and Mark, seated in the cockpit by the tiller, could hear the voices of people talking upon the beach. Then as the tide ebbed, the voices diminished and soon there was no sound at all but an occasional creak of the gaff or the boom. There settled upon Mark a profound discouragement. This last emancipation was denied to him. He would never go west now and see the Bishop Lighthouse rising from the spume of the Atlantic. The gates were closing on him. He would leave the Sea Flower at Weymouth in the morning, and take the train back to his home. Some odd questions, with which he had never troubled before, presented themselves suddenly. What had he got out of his life? He remembered a story told of the great actor whose manner and voice he had once so proudly copied. He was asked just that question: “What had he got out of it?” and he had answered, so the story ran, “A good cigar, a good glass of wine, a good friend.”
Mark could say as much. Could he say more? That idea of his that bright colours made for the peace of the world? He had been so sure of it. With the success of his formula he had done something real towards proving his faith in it. But wasn’t the whole idea rather romantic, the dream of a man with his head in the clouds? The fog wrapped him about, cold and heavy, numbing body and brain. He couldn’t tell. He gave up trying to tell, and fell to speculating whether he would live his life over again if the chance were given to him. After all, what had he lived for. The sensation of power? Yes, everything had been sacrificed to that. Yet — he knew it now — he had never enjoyed that sensation half so completely as on a day of storm nearly thirty years ago when he had sailed the Sea Flower, with a gale behind him, across the West Bay to Lulworth Cove. That day rolled itself out upon the thick fog like a brilliant film in a dark theatre. He and Mona and the gale piling up the water behind him and roaring against his shred of sail. Would he go through all his life again? He thought with terror of the mistakes which he had just not made, and with bitter regret of those which he had. He thought of Mona...and of Lois...and in the end he threw all these questions from him.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 612