“I think there’s a lighter alongside of her, isn’t there?” said Slingsby.
Strange, whose eyesight was remarkable, answered:
“Yes, a lighter loaded with barrels.”
“Some carbonate of soda,” said Slingsby, with a grin. They went into the cockpit, leaving the door open.
It was a hot night, and in a café beyond the trees a band was playing the compelling music of Louise. Strange listened to it, deeply stirred. Life had so changed for him that he had risen from the depths during the last weeks. Then Slingsby raised his hand.
“Listen!”
With the distant music there mingled now the creaking of a winch. Strange extinguished the light, and both men crept out from the cockpit. The sound came from the Santa Maria del Pilar, and they could see the spar of her hoisting tackle swing out over the lighter and inboard over the ship’s deck.
“She’s loading,” said Strange, in a low voice.
“Yes,” answered Slingsby; “she’s loading.” And his voice purred like a contented cat.
He slept on a bed made up in the saloon that night. Strange in his tiny cabin, and at nine o’clock the next morning, as they sat at breakfast, they saw the Santa Maria del Pilar make for the sea.
“We ought to follow, oughtn’t we?” said Strange anxiously.
“There’s no hurry.”
“But she’ll do nine knots in this breeze.” Strange watched her with the eye of knowledge as she leaned over ever so slightly from the wind. “She might give us the slip.”
Slingsby went on eating unconcernedly.
“She will,” he answered. “We are not after her, my friend. Got your chart?”
Strange fetched it from the locker and spread it out on the table.
“Do you see a small island with a lighthouse?”
“Yes.”
“Four miles west-south-west of the lighthouse. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“How long will it take you to get to that point?”
Strange measured his course.
“Five to five and a half hours forced draught.”
“Good. Suppose we start at six this evening.”
The Boulotte went away to the minute. At eight it began to grow dark, but no steaming light was hoisted on the mast, and no sidelamps betrayed her presence. In the failing light she became one with the sea but for the tiniest wisp of smoke from her chimney, and soon the night hid that. A lantern flashed for a while here and there on the forward deck in the centre of a little group, and then Slingsby came back to Strange at the wheel.
“It’s all right,” he whispered softly.
Nights at sea! The cool, dark tent of stars, the hiss and tinkle of waves against the boat’s side, the dinghy, slung out upon the davits, progressing above the surface of the water, the lamp light from the compass striking up on the brasswork of the wheel and the face of the steersman; to nights at sea Strange owed all the spacious moments of his crippled life. But this night was a sacred thing. He was admitted to the band of the young strong men who serve, like a novice into the communion of a church; and his heart sang within his breast as he kept the Boulotte to her course. At a quarter past eleven he rang the telegraph and put the indicator to “slow.” Five minutes later he stopped the engine altogether. Four miles away to the north-eastward a light brightened and faded.
“We are there,” he said, and he looked out over an empty sea.
Under Slingsby’s orders he steamed slowly round in a circle, ever increasing the circumference, for an hour, and then the new hand — who, by the way, was a master gunner — crept aft.
“There it is, sir.”
A hundred yards from the port bow a dark mass floated on the sea. The Boulotte slid gently alongside of it. It was a raft made of barrels lashed together.
“We have seen those barrels before, my friend,” said Slingsby, his nose wrinkling up in a grin of delight. Before daybreak the work was done. Fifty empty barrels floated loose; there was a layer of heavy oil over the sea and a rank smell in the air.
“Now,” said Slingsby, In a whisper, “shall we have any luck, I wonder?”
He went forward. The capstan head had been removed, and in its place sat a neat little automatic gun, which could fling two hundred and seventy three-pound shells six thousand yards in a minute. For the rest of that night the Boulotte lay motionless without a light showing or a word spoken. And just as the morning came, in the very first unearthly grey of it, a wave broke — a long, placid roller which had no right to break in that smooth, deep sea. Slingsby dipped his hand into the cartridge box and made sure that the band ran free; the gunner stood with one hand on the elevating wheel, the other on the trigger; eight hundred yards away from the Boulotte there was suddenly a wild commotion of the water, and black against the misty grey a conning tower and a long, low body of steel rose into view. U-whatever-its-number was taken by surprise. The whole affair lasted a few seconds. With his third shot the gunner found the range, and then, planting his shells with precision in a level line like the perforations of a postage stamp, he ripped the submarine from amidships to its nose. Strange had a vision for a second of a couple of men trying to climb out from the conning tower, and then the nose went up in the air like the snout of some monstrous fish, and the sea gulped it down.
“One of ’em,” said Slingsby. “But we won’t mention it. Lucky you saw those red streaks, my friend. If a destroyer had come prowling up this coast instead of the harmless little Boulotte there wouldn’t have been any raft on the sea or any submarine just here under the sea. What about breakfast?”
Strange set the boat’s course for Marseilles, and the rest of that voyage was remarkable only for a clear illustration of the difference between the amateur and the professional. For whereas Strange could not for the life of him keep still during one minute, Slingsby, stretched at his ease on the saloon sofa, beguiled the time with quotations from the “Bab Ballads” and “Departmental Ditties.”
RAYMOND BYATT
DORMAN ROYLE WAS the oddest hero for such an adventure. He followed the profession of a solicitor, and the business he did was like himself, responsible and a trifle heavy. No piratical dashes into the Law Courts in the hope of a great haul were encouraged in his office. Clients as regular in their morals as in their payments alone sought his trustworthy and prosaic advice. Dorman Royle, in a word, was the last man you would think ever to feel the hair lifting upon his scalp or his heart sinking down into a fathomless pit of terror. Yet to him, nevertheless, these sensations happened. It may be that he was specially chosen just because of his unflighty qualities; that, at all events, became his own conviction. Certainly those qualities stood him in good stead. This, however, is surmise. The facts are beyond all dispute.
In June, Royle called upon his friend Henry Groome, and explained that he wanted Groome’s country house for the summer.
“But it’s very lonely,” said Groome.
“I don’t mind that,” replied Dorman Royle, and his face beamed with the smile at once proud and sheepish and a little fatuous which has only meant one thing since the beginning of the world.
“You are going to be married!” said Groome.
“How in the world did you guess?” asked Royle; but it must be supposed that there had been some little note of regret or jealousy in his friend’s voice, for the smile died away, and he nodded his head in comprehension.
“Yes, old man. That’s the way of it. It’s the snapping of the old ties — not a doubt. I shall meet you from time to time at the club in the afternoon, and you will dine with us whenever you care to. But we shall not talk very intimately any more of matters which concern us. We shall be just a trifle on our guard against each other. A woman means that — yes. However, I do what I can. I borrow your house for my honeymoon.”
Groome heard the speech with surprise. He had not expected to be understood with so much accuracy. He seemed to be looking at a new man — a stranger, almost certainly no longer his frien
d, but a man who had put friendship behind him and had reached out and grasped a treasure which had transfigured all his world.
“And whom are you going to marry?” Groome asked; and the answer surprised him still more.
“Ina Fayle.”
“Ina — you don’t mean —— ?”
“Yes, I do,” said Royle, and the note of his voice was a challenge. But Groome did not take it up. Ina Fayle, of course, he knew by sight and by reputation, as who in London at that time did not? She was a young actress who had not been content to be beautiful.
“Yes, she’s a worker,” suddenly said Royle. “She has had to work since she was sixteen, and what she is, sheer industry has made her. Now she is going to give up all her success.”
Groome wondered for a moment how in the world she could bring herself to do it. A girl of twenty-three, she had gained already so much success that she must find the world a very pleasant place. She had the joy of doing superbly the work she loved, and a reward besides, tremendous because so immediate, in the adoration of the public, in the great salary after she had been poor, and while she was young enough to enjoy every penny of it. Groome was still wondering when once more Royle broke in upon him.
“Yes. It’s the sort of renunciation which is much more surprising in a girl than it would be in a man. For the art of the stage is of much the same stuff as a woman’s natural life, isn’t it? I mean that beauty, grace, the trick of wearing clothes, the power of swift response to another’s moods, play the same large part in both. But, you see, she has character, as well as gifts — that’s the explanation.”
Royle looked at his watch.
“Come and see her, will you?”
“Now?”
“Yes. I promised that I would bring you round,” and as he got up from his chair he added: “Oh, by the way, as to your house, I ought to have told you. Ina has a dog — a black spaniel — do you mind?”
“Not a bit,” said Groome, and he put on his hat.
The two men walked northwards, Royle at once extremely shy and inordinately proud. They crossed the Marylebone Road into Regent’s Park.
“That’s her house,” said Royle, “the one at the end of the terrace.”
Ina Fayle lived with a companion; she was not quite so tall as Groome, who had only seen her upon the stage, expected her to be. He had thought to find a woman a trifle cadaverous and sallow. But she had the clear eyes and complexion of a child, and her wealth of fair, shining hair spoke of a resplendent health. She came across the room and took Groome into a window.
“You know Dorman very well, don’t you? I want to show you something I have bought for him. Oh, it’s nothing — but do you think he will like it?”
She was simple and direct in her manner, with more of the comrade than the woman. She showed Groome a gold cigarette-case.
“Of course it will do. But you have already made him a better wedding-gift than that,” said Groome.
“I?” Her forehead puckered in a frown. “What gift?”
“A very remarkable gift of insight, which he never had before.”
She coloured a little with pleasure, and her eyes and her voice softened together.
“I am very glad,” she answered. “One takes a great deal. It is pleasant to give something in return.”
Dorman Royle and Ina Fayle were duly married towards the end of the month, and began their life together in the house which Groome had lent them.
It stood on the top of a hill amongst bare uplands above the valley of the Thames, in a garden of roses and green lawns. But the house was new, and the trees about it small and of Groome’s own planting, so that every whisper of wind became a breeze up there, and whistled about the windows. On the other hand, if the wind was still there was nowhere a place more quiet, and the slightest sound which would never have been heard in a street rang out loud with the presumption of a boast. Especially this was so at night. The roar of the great trains racing down to the west cleft the air like thunder; yet your eyes could only see far away down in the river-valley, a tiny line of bright lights winking amongst the trees. In this spot they stayed for a week, and then Ina showed her husband a telegram summoning her to the bedside of her mother.
“It’s not very serious, as you see,” she said. “But she wants me, and I think that for a day or two I must go.”
She went the next morning. Dorman Royle was left alone, and was thoroughly bored until late on the night before Ina’s return. It was, in fact, not far from twelve o’clock when Royle began to be interested. He was sitting in the library when he heard very distinctly through the open window a metallic click. The sound was unmistakable. Somewhere in the garden a gate had been opened and allowed to swing back. What he had heard was the latch catching in the socket. He was interested in his book, and for a moment paid no heed to the sound. But after a second or two he began to wonder who at this hour in that lonely garden had opened a gate. He sat up and listened but the sound was not repeated. He was inclined to think, clear and distinct though the sound had been, that he had imagined it, when his eyes fell upon Ina’s black spaniel. He could no longer believe in any delusion of his senses. For the dog had heard the sound too. He had been lying curled up on the varnished boards at the edge of the room, his black, shining coat making him invisible to a careless glance. Now he was sitting up, his ears cocked and his eyes upon the window with the extraordinary intentness which dogs display.
Dorman Royle rose from his chair.
“Come,” he said, in a whisper, but the spaniel did not move. He sat with his nose raised and the lip of the lower jaw trembling, and his eyes still fixed upon the window. Royle walked softly to the door of the room. It opened on to a hall paved with black and white stone which took up the middle part of the house. Upon his right a door opened on to the drive, on his left another led out to a loggia and a terrace. Royle opened this second door and called again in a whisper to the spaniel:
“Come, Duke! Seek him out!”
This time the dog obeyed, running swiftly past his legs into the open air. Royle followed. It was a bright, moonlit night, the stars hardly visible in the clear sky. Royle looked out across the broad valley to the forest-covered Chilterus, misty in the distance. Not a breath of wind was stirring; the trees stood as though they had been metal. Three brick steps led from the terrace to the tennis-lawn. On the opposite side of the tennis-lawn a small gate opened on to a paddock It was this gate which had opened and swung to. But there was no one now on the lawn or in the paddock, and no tree stood near which could shade an intruder. Royle looked at the dog. He stood upon the edge of the terrace staring out over the lawn; Royle knew him to be a good house-dog, yet now not a growl escaped him. He stood waiting to leap forward — yes, but waiting also for a friendly call from a familiar voice before he leapt forward; and as Royle realised that a strange thought came to him. He had been lonely these last days; hardly a moment had passed but he had been conscious of the absence of Ina; hardly a moment when his heart had not ached for her and called her back. What if he had succeeded? He played with the question as he stood there in the quiet moonlight upon the paved terrace. It was she who had sped across the paddock twelve hours before her time and opened the gate. She had come so eagerly that she had not troubled to close it. She had let it swing sharply to behind her. She was here now, at his side. He reached out a hand to touch her, and take hers; and suddenly he became aware that he was no longer playing with a fancy — that he believed it. She was really here, close to him. He could not see her — no. But that was his fault. There was too much dross in Dorman Royle as yet for so supreme a gift. But that would follow — follow with the greater knowledge of her which their life together would bring.
“Come, Duke,” he said, and he went back into the house and sat late in the smoking-room, filled with the wonder of this new, strange life that was to be his. A month ago and now! He measured the difference of stature between the Dorman Royle of those days and the Dorman Royle of to-day, and he wa
s sunk in humility and gratitude. But a few hours later that night his mood changed. He waked up in the dark, and, between sleep and consciousness, was aware of some regular, measured movement in the room. In a moment he became wide awake, and understood what had aroused him. The spaniel, lying on the coverlet at the foot of the bed, was thumping with his tail — just as if someone he loved was by him, fondling him. Royle sat up; the bed shook and creaked under him, but the dog paid no heed at all. He went on wagging his tail in the silence and darkness of the room. Someone must be there, and suddenly Royle cried aloud, impetuously, so that he was surprised to hear his own voice:
“Ina! Ina!” and he listened, with his arms outstretched.
But no answer came at all. It seemed that he had rashly broken a spell. For the dog became still. Royle struck a match and lighted the candle by his bed, straining his eyes to the corners of the room. But there was no one visible.
He blew out the candle and lay down again, and the darkness blotted out all the room. But he could not sleep; and — and — he was very careful not to move. It was not fear which kept him still — though fear came later — but a thrilling expectation. He was on the threshold of a new world. He had been made conscious of it already; now he was to enter it — to see. But he saw nothing. Only in a little while the spaniel’s tail began once more to thump gently and regularly upon the bed. It was just as if the dog had waited for him to go to sleep before it once more resumed its invisible communion. This time he spoke to the dog.
“Duke!” he whispered, and he struck a match. The spaniel was lying upon his belly, his neck stretched out, his jaws resting upon his paws. “Duke, what is it?”
The animal raised its head and turned a little to one side. The human voice could not have said more clearly:
“What’s the matter? You are interrupting us.”
The match burned out between his forefinger and thumb. Royle did not light another. He laid himself down again. But the pleasant fancy born in him upon the moonlit terrace had gone altogether from his thoughts. There was something to him rather sinister in the notion of the dog waiting for him to go to sleep and then, without moving from its place — so certain it was of the neighbourhood of some unseen being to whom it gave allegiance — resuming a strange companionship. He no longer thought of Ina — Ina as the visitor. He began to wonder how the dog had come to her, who had owned it before her. He plunged into vague and uncomfortable surmises. No doubt the darkness, the silence of the night, and his own sleeplessness had their effects. He lay in a strange exaltation of spirit, which deepened slowly and gradually into fear. Yes, he was afraid now. He had a sense of danger, all the more alarming because it was reasonless. There were low breathings about his bed; now some one bent over him, now a hand lightly touched the coverlet. He, the most unimpressionable of men, rejoiced when a grey beam of light shot through a chink of the curtain and spread like a fan into the room. He turned over on his side and slept until the sun was high.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 788