by Grant Allen
It was to him indeed a terrible task; for from the first moment when the painter set eyes on Elsie Challoner, he had felt some nameless charm about her face and manner, some tender cadence in her musical voice, that affected him as no other face and no other voice had ever affected him or could ever affect him. He was not exactly in love with Elsie love with him was a plant of slower growth but he was fascinated, impressed, interested, charmed by her. And to sit there alone in that tossing cabin, with Elsie cold and stiff on the berth before him, was to him more utterly painful and unmanning than he could ever have imagined a week or two earlier.
He did not doubt one instant the true story of the case. He felt instinctively in his heart that Hugh Massinger had shown her his inmost nature, and that this was the final and horrible result of Hugh’s airy easy protestations.
As he sat there, watching by the light of one oil lamp, and rubbing her hands and arms gently with his rough hard palms, he saw a sudden tumultuous movement of Elsie’s bosom, a sort of gasp that convulsed her lungs a deep inspiration, with a gurgling noise; and then, like a flash, it was borne in upon him suddenly that all was not over that Elsie might yet be saved that she was still living.
It was a terrible hour, a terrible position. If only they had had one more hand on board, one more person to help him with the task of recovering her! But how could he ever hope to revive that fainting girl, alone and unaided, while the ship drifted on, single-handed, tossing and plunging before that stiffening breeze? He almost despaired of being able to effect anything. Yet life is life, and he would nerve himself up for it. He would try his best, and thank heaven this boisterous wind that roared through the rigging would carry them quick and safe to Lowestoft.
His mother and sister were still there. If he once could get Miss Challoner safe to land, they might even now hope to recover her. Where there’s life, there’s hope. But what hope in the dimly lighted cabin of a toy yawl, just fit for two hardy weather-beaten men to rough it hardly in, and pitching with wild plunges before as fierce a gale as ever ploughed the yeasty surface of the German Ocean?
He rushed to the companion-ladder as well as he was able, steadying himself on his sea-legs by the rail as he went, and shouted aloud in breathless excitement: “Potts, she’s alive! she’s not drowned! Can you manage the ship anyhow still, while I try my best to bring her round again?”
Potts answered back with a cheery: “All right. There’s nothing much to do but to let her run. She’s out of our hands, for good or evil. The admiral of the fleet could do no more for her. If we’re swamped, we’re swamped; and if we’re not, we’re running clear for Lowestoft harbor. Give her sea-room enough, and she’ll go anywhere. The storm don’t live that’ll founder the ‘Mud-Turtle.’ I’ll land you or drown you, but anyhow I’ll manage her.”
With that manful assurance satisfying his soul, Warren Relf turned back, his heart on fire, to the narrow cabin and flung himself once more on his knees before Elsie.
A more terrible night was seldom remembered by the oldest sailors on the North Sea. Smacks were wrecked and colliers foundered, and a British gunboat, manned by the usual complement of scientific officers, dashed herself full tilt in mad fury against the very base of a first-class lighthouse; but the taut little “Mud-Turtle,” true to her reputation as the stanchest craft that sailed the British channels, rode it bravely out, and battled her way triumphantly, about one in the morning, through the big waves that rolled up the mouth of Lowestoft harbor. Potts had navigated her single-handed amid storm and breakers, and Warren Relf, in the cabin below, had almost succeeded in making Elsie Challoner open her eyes again.
But as soon as the excitement of that wild race for life was fairly over, and the “Mud-Turtle” lay in calm water once more, with perfect safety, the embarrassing nature of the situation, from the conventional point of view, burst suddenly for the first time upon Warren Relf s astonished vision; and he began to reflect that for two young men to arrive in port about the small hours of the morning, with a young lady very imperfectly known to either of them, lying in a dead faint on their cabin bunk, was, to say the least of it, a fact open to social and even to judicial misconstruction. It’s all very well to say offhand, you picked the lady up in the German Ocean; but Society is apt to move the previous question, how did she get there? Still, something must be done with the uncovenanted passenger. There was nothing for it, Warren Relf felt, even at that late season of the night, but to carry the halfinanimate patient up to his mother’s lodgings, and to send for a doctor to bring her round at the earliest possible opportunity.
When Elsie was aware of herself once more, it was broad daylight; and she lay on a bed in a strange room, dimly conscious that two women whom she did not know were bending tenderly and lovingly over her. The elder, seen through a haze of half-closed eyelashes, was a sweet old lady with snow-white hair, and a gentle motherly expression in her soft gray eyes: one of the few women who know how to age graciously “Whose fair old face grew more fair As Point and Flanders yellow.”
The younger girl was about Elsie’s own time of life, who looked as sisterly as the other looked motherly; a pleasant-faced girl, not exactly pretty, but with a clear brown skin, a cheek like the sunny side of peaches, and a smile that showed a faultless row of teeth within, besides lighting up and irradiating the whole countenance with a charming sense of kindliness and girlish innocence. In a single word it was a winning face. Elsie lay with her eyes half open, looking up at the face through her crossed eyelashes, for many minutes, not realizing in any way her present position, but conscious only, in a dimly pleased and dreamy fashion, that the face seemed to soothe and comfort and console her.
Soothe and comfort and console her for what? She hardly knew. Some deep-seated pain in her inner nature some hurt she had had in her tenderest feelings a horrible aching blank and void. She remembered now that something unspeakable and incredible had happened. The sun had grown suddenly dark in heaven. She had been sitting by the waterside with dear Hugh as she thought of the name, that idolized name, a smile played for a moment faintly round the corners of her mouth; and the older lady, still seen half unconsciously through the chink in the eyelids, whispered in an audible tone to the younger and nearer one: “She’s coming round, Edie. She’s waking now. I hope, poor dear, she won’t be dreadfully frightened, when she sees only two strangers by the bed beside her.”
“Frightened at you, mother,” the other voice answered, soft and low, as in a pleasant dream. “Why, nobody on earth could ever be anything but delighted to wake up anywhere and find you, with your dear sweet old face, sitting by their bedside.”
Elsie, still peering with half her pupils only through the closed lids, smiled to herself once more at the gentle murmur of those pleasant voices, both of them tender and womanly and musical, and went on to herself placidly with her own imaginings.
Sitting by the waterside with her dear Hugh dear, dear Hugh that prince of men. How handsome he was; and how clever, and how generous! And Hugh had begun to tell her something. Eh! but something! What was it? What was it? She couldn’t remember; only she knew it was something terrible, something disastrous, something unutterable, something killing. And then she rushed away from him, mad with terror, toward the big tree, and Ah!
It was an awful, heartbroken, heartrending cry. Coming to herself suddenly, as the whole truth flashed like lightning once more across her bewildered brain, the poor girl flung up her arms, raised herself wildly erect in the bed, and stared around her with a horrible vacant, maddened look, as if all her life were cut at once from under her. Both of the strangers recognized instinctively what that look meant. It was the look and the cry of a crushed life. If ever they had harbored a single thought of blame against that poor wounded, bleeding, torn heart for what seemed like a hasty attempt at self-murder, it was dissipated in a moment by that terrible voice the voice of a goaded, distracted, irresponsible creature, from whom allconsciousness or thought of right and wrong, of life and death, of se
nse and movement, of motive and consequence, has been stunned at one blow by some deadly act of undeserved cruelty and unexpected wickedness.
The tears ran unchecked in silent sympathy down the women’s flushed cheeks.
Mrs. Relf leaned over and caught her in her arms. “My poor child,” she whispered, laying Elsie’s head with motherly tenderness on her own soft shoulder, and soothing the girl’s pallid white face with her gentle old hand, “cry cry, cry if you can! Don’t hold back your tears; let them run, darling. It’ll do you good. Cry, cry, my child we’re all friends here. Don’t be afraid of us.”
Elsie never knew, in the agony of the moment, where she was or how she came there; but nestling her head on Mrs. Relf’s shoulder, and fain of the sympathy that gentle soul extended her so easily, she gave free vent to her pent-up passion, and let her bosom sob itself out in great bursts and throbs of choking grief; while the two women, who had never till that very morning seen her fair face, cried and sobbed silently in mute concert by her side for many, many minutes together.
“Have you no mother, dear?” Mrs. Relf whispered through her tears at last; and Elsie, finding her voice with difficulty, murmured back in a choked and blinded tone: “I never knew my mother.”
“Then Edie and I will be mother and sister to you,” the beautiful old lady answered, with a soft caress. “You mustn’t talk any more now. The doctor would be very, very angry with me for letting you talk and cry even this little bit. But crying’s good for one when one’s heart’s sore. I know, my child, your’s is sore now. When you’re a great deal better, you’ll tell us all about it. Edie, some more beef-tea and brandy. We’ve been feeding you with it all night, dear, with a wet feather. You can drink a little, I hope, now. You must take a good drink, and lie back quietly.”
Elsie smiled a faint sad smile. The world was all lost and gone for her now; but still she liked these dear souls’ sweet quiet sympathy. As Edie glided across the room noiselessly to fetch the cup, and brought it over and held it to her lips and made her drink, Elsie’s eyes followed every motion gratefully.
“Who are you?” she cried, clutching her new friend’s plump soft hand eagerly. “Tell me where I am. Who brought me here? How did I get here?”
“I’m Edie Relf,” the girl answered in the same low silvery voice as before, stooping down and kissing her. “You know my brother, Warren Relf, the artist whom you met at Whitestrand. You’ve had an accident you fell into the water from the shore at Whitestrand. And Warren, who was cruising about in his yawl, picked you up and brought you ashore here. You’re at Lowestoft now. Mamma and I are here in lodgings. Nobody at Whitestrand knows anything about it yet, we believe. But, darling,” and she held poor Elsie’s hand tight at this, and whispered very low and close in her ear, “we think we guess all the rest too. We think we know how it all happened. Don’t be afraid of us. You may tell it all to us by-and-by, when you’re quite strong enough. Mother and I will do all we can to make you better. We know we can never make you forget it.”
Elsie’s head sank back on the pillow. It was all terrible. But one thought possessed her whole nature now. Hugh must think she was really drowned: that would grieve Hugh dear affectionate Hugh. He might be cruel enough to cast her off as he had done though she couldn’t believe it — it must surely be a hideous, hideous dream, from which sooner or later she would be certain to have a happy awakening but at any rate it must have driven him wild with grief and remorse and horror to think he had killed her to think she was lost to him. Oughtn’t she to telegraph at once to Hugh to dear, dear Hugh and tell him at least she was saved, she was still living?
CHAPTER XV.
THE PLAN EXTENDS ITSELF.
For three or four days Elsie lay at the Relfs’ lodgings at Lowestoft, seriously ill, but slowly improving; and all the -time, Mrs. Relf and Edie watched over her tenderly with unceasing solicitude, as though she had been their own daughter and sister. Elsie’s heart was torn every moment by a devouring desire to know what Hugh had done, what Hugh was doing, what they had all said and thought about her at Whitestrand. She never said so directly to the Relfs, of course; she couldn’t bring herself yet to speak of it to anybody; but Edie perceived it intuitively from her silence and her words; and after a time, she mentioned the matter in sisterly confidence to her brother Warren. They had both looked in the local papers for some account of the accident if accident it were and saw, to their surprise, that no note was taken anywhere of Elsie’s sudden disappearance.
This was curious, not to say ominous; for in most English country villages a young lady cannot vanish into space on a summer evening, especially by flinging herself bodily into the sea as Warren Relf did not doubt for a second Elsie had done in the momentary desperation of a terrible awakening without exciting some sort of local curiosity as to where she has gone or what has become of the body. We cannot emulate the calm social atmosphere of the Bagdad of the Califs, where a mysterious disappearance on an enchanted carpet aroused but the faintest and most languid passing interest in the breasts of the bystanders. With us, the enchanted carpet explanation has fallen out of date, and mysterious disappearances, however remarkable, form a subject rather of prosaic and prying inquiry on the part of those commonplace and unromantic myrmidons, the county constabulary.
So the strange absence of any allusion in the Whitestrand news to what must needs have formed a nine days’ wonder in the quiet little village, quickened all Warren Relfs profoundest suspicions as to Hugh’s procedure.
At Whitestrand, all they could possibly know was that Miss Challoner was missing perhaps even that Miss Challoner had drowned herself. Why should it all be so unaccountably burked, so strangely hushed up in the local newspapers? Why should no report be divulged anywhere? Why should nobody even hint in the “Lowestoft Times” or the “Ipswich Chronicle” that a young lady, of considerable personal attractions, was unaccountably missing from the family of a well-known Suffolk landowner?
Already on the very day after his return to Lowestoft, Warren Relf had hastily telegraphed to Hugh Massinger at Whitestrand that he was detained in the Broads, and would be unable to carry out his long-standing engagement to take him round in the “Mud-Turtle” to London. But as time went on, and no news came from Massinger, Warren Relf’s suspicions deepened daily. It was clear that Elsie, too, was lingering in her convalescence from suspense and uncertainty. She couldn’t make up her mind to write either to Hugh or Winifred, and yet she couldn’t bear the long state of doubt which silence entailed upon her. So at last, to set to rest their joint fears, and to make sure what was really being said and done and thought at Whitestrand, Warren Relf determined to run over quietly for an afternoon’s inquiry, and to hear with his own ears how people were talking about the topic of the hour in the little village.
He never got there, however. At Almundham Station, to his great surprise, he ran suddenly against Mr. Wyville Meysey. The Squire recognized him at a glance as the young man who had taken them in his yawl to the sandhills, and began to talk to him freely at once about all that had since happened in the family. But Relf was even more astonished when he found’ that the subject which lay uppermost in Mr. Meysey’s mind just then was not Elsie Challoner’s mysterious disappearance at all, but his daughter Winifred’s recent engagement to Hugh Massinger. The painter was still some years too young to have mastered the profound anthropological truth that, even with the best of us, man is always a self-centered being.
“Well, yes,” the Squire said, after a few commonplaces of conversation had been interchanged between them. “You haven’t heard, then, from your friend Massinger lately, haven’t you? I’m surprised at that. He had something out of the common to communicate. I should have thought he’d have been anxious to let you know at once that he and my girl Winifred had hit things off amicably together. Oh yes, it’s announced, definitely announced: Society is aware of it. Mrs. Meysey made it known to the county, so to speak, at Sir Theodore Sheepshanks’ on Wednesday evening. Your friend Mas
singer is not perhaps quite the precise man we might have selected ourselves for Winifred, if we’d taken the choice into our own hands: but what I say is, let the young people settle these things themselves let the young people settle them between them. It’s they who’ve got to live with one another, after all, not we; and they’re a great deal more interested in it at bottom, when one comes to think of it, than the whole of the rest of us put together.”
“And Miss Challoner?” Warren asked, as soon as he could edge in a word conveniently, after the Squire had dealt from many points of view all equally prosy with Hugh Massinger’s position, character, and prospects “is she still with you? I’m greatly interested in her. She made an immense impression on me that day in the sandhills.”
The Squire’s face fell somewhat. “Miss Challoner?” he echoed. “Ah, yes; our governess. Well, to tell you the truth if you ask me point-blank Miss Challoner’s gone off a little suddenly. We’ve been disappointed in that girl, if you will have it. We don’t want it talked about in the neighbourhood more than we can help, on Hugh Massinger’s account, more than anything else, because, after all, she was a sort of a cousin of his a sort of a cousin, though a very remote one; as we learn now, an extremely remote one. We’ve asked the servants to hush it all up as much as they can, to prevent gossip; for my daughter’s sake, we’d like to avoid gossip; but I don’t mind telling you, in strict confidence, as you’re a friend of Massinger’s, that Miss Challoner left us, we all think, in a most unkind and ungrateful manner. It fell upon us like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. She wrote a letter to Winifred the day before to say she was leaving for parts unknown, without grounds stated. She -slipped away, like a thief in the night, as the proverb says, taking just a small handbag with her, one dark evening; and the only other communication we’ve since received is a telegram from London sent to Hugh Massinger asking us, in the most mysterious, romantic school-girlish style, to forward her luggage and belongings to an address given.”