Part 6

"Maud, let us cut the knot! We have made a mistake, both of us; for you are miserable, and I--I will not bear it. Come--the yacht is there. Let us go into the sunshine. Come, my darling--see how fate points the way. We are drifting, drifting--a little more and the current will take us. Why should you go back to the empty house? the empty life? Maud! Maud!"

What does a man say to a woman when he has forgotten everything in the world save his mad desire to keep her for his own? All that could be said, in all its tenderness, its passion, and its selfishness, was hers as the boat drifted and drifted.

"I am cold!" she said suddenly, giving a little shudder, yet drawing closer to him. "We shall be too late."

"Too late to return," he answered joyously. "Oh, Maud, trust me this once--See, the yacht is close." He turned and gave a quick exclamation of surprise. Where were they? Not, as he expected, within a stone's throw of the coast, drifting surely southwards. Here was nothing save sea, and rising slowly from it on all sides a thin mist, golden in the sunlight through which, in the far distance, a shadow or two loomed faint, unrecognized.

Above them the sky, clear as ever; below them the sea, bright, pellucid; but between them a gathering curtain which even as he looked faded from gold to white, from white to grey, as the unseen sun sank beneath the unseen horizon.

"It is a sea-haugh," he said lightly; "the wind must have changed to the north, and the cold condenses the vapour. I have seen them often after hot weather. But it is all right. We must be close to the yacht, for we were well in the current when I stopped rowing; and it runs inshore due south. If I whistle, they must hear and answer."

But none came, and the sound seemed to return resonant from the mist, showing that it had not travelled far. So, whistling, shouting, and rowing, they spent some time in vain, till fear began to invade her courage. What if they had drifted past? What if they were drifting out to sea, further and further from safety? He tried to scoff at her alarm, though his own anxiety grew fast as the mist settled thicker and thicker till he could not see a yard beyond the bows. Suddenly, with a grating shock, the boat stopped abruptly, almost throwing them into each other's arms. His heart seemed to stop also, as he remembered having heard of sunken rocks in mid channel.

"We are aground--stay still, I will see."

He stepped cautiously over the side, one foot into six inches of water and a shelving bottom, the other into three. Then on to firm dry warm sand. His laugh of relief was genuine.

"The adventure is over, Maud. Come! let me help you out. This must be the mainland; but where, I can't say."

A difficult question, indeed, to decide with that grey mist curtain closing in and shutting out all, save a patch or two of bent at their feet.

"Stay here a bit," he continued, "and I will explore. Take the whistle. I won't go beyond its reach or be away long; the road must be close by."

It was not, however, and he returned after a time with a clouded face. "I don't understand it. The sea seems to surround us except in one direction, and that is all sand and bent. I don't remember any such point below Grâda."

"Perhaps we are above it," suggested his companion.

"Quite impossible. The current runs south; a sort of back eddy from the big stream. That is what brings all the drift to Grâda Sands. The question, however, is what we are to do. Take to the boat again and punt along the shore till we find a landmark, I should say. Best not to desert our ships."

But this again brought a disappointment, and half an hour's rowing, punting, and towing resulted in nothing. By this time it was almost dark, the mist gathered denser than ever, and with the approach of night the north wind rose steadily.

"The sooner we settle ourselves the better, if we have to camp out, and it looks like it," said he at last. "Still, if we light a fire, some one may see it. Anyhow, there are stores and a sail in the boat, so we shall manage. Cheer up, Maud; imagine we are children again. How often haven't we pretended to be cast away on a desert island together, and how happy we were!"

True enough; yet as she helped him to gather driftwood for the fire, her thoughts were on the difference between those days and these. And there was more to them in this mischance than there would have been to others. What had she meant to do when she stepped into the boat? She could not tell; only this she knew, that fate seemed to have decided for her. If the fire brought some one--well and good. If not, why then Eustace and she had gone adrift. That question was settled forever.

She sate feeding the fire, whilst he foraged for eatables in the boat, and each stick seemed to her another doubt dispelled. How they flamed and crackled and sparkled, as driftwood does out of sheer joy in burning. Yet no one came--no one.

Later on, with the tenderness which was a fierce delight to her, he found her what shelter he could on that bare waste of bent and shingle; though it was only a nook, backed on the windy side by a rough slab of rock half embedded in the sand. Still it was dry and warm, and with the boat's sail wrapped round her, and her feet towards a freshly built fire, she could lean back comfortably and defy some of the growing cold and rising wind. She sate watching him silently as he sate by the fire, turning every now and again to assure himself of her comfort or tuck the sail, loosened by the wind, round her more closely.

Suddenly, during one of these ministrations, her eye caught the sparkle of dewdrops on his coat, and she stretched out her delicate hand to touch his sleeve. It was quite wet.

"There is plenty of room for you here, Eustace," she said quietly, "and the sail will cover us if we sit close together. I--I must not begin by being selfish." Then her calm gave way. "Oh, Eustace! Eustace! we must love each other very dearly or I shall die of shame."

Something in the almost despairing surrender to fate roused the best part in his nature. He drew her head on to his shoulder and kissed her gently.

"Good-night, dear. Go to sleep if you can. I'll watch the fire."

She gave a little shivering sob and clung to him. All was settled now; she had taken her life into her own hands; the struggle was over, and he was a haven of rest--a haven of rest. Her thoughts went no further than that, for she was utterly wearied out; but as he sate beside her, his mind went far afield into the afterwards which he had claimed as his right; and more than once as she stirred in the uneasy sleep into which she had fallen, he bent over her again and kissed her. She was his; the past was at an end; scruples must come later if they came at all. He had foreseen this ending from the beginning; perhaps he had tried to escape from it; perhaps he had not. This much was certain,--the stars had fought for him, and she was his. The wind swept steadily round them, but, safe sheltered as she was, he feared no harm, and when the dawn came their troubles would all be over--forever.

So sheltering her, as morning approached he, too, fell into a doze, and the fire, deprived of fuel, sank by degrees to a heap of smouldering ashes. Then the chill which comes before the day sought them out even in each other's arms, and brought to both a vague, surprised consciousness of their surroundings. Where were they? What had happened? With eyes still full of sleep and dreams, she saw the grey mist hanging round them--the ashes of the fire which had burnt so bravely last night. Last night! Great God, how came she there?

"Eustace!" she cried, starting up wildly, one hand finding aid from the slab of rock behind her. Her pretty hair was damp with dew, her face flushed where it had rested on his shoulder.

For answer he caught her to him and covered her face with passionate kisses. He, too, was fresh from sleep and dreams,--dreams of the hereafter. And now the day had come, and yonder, where the mist showed lightest, the sun was rising.

"Oh, no! no!" she panted, struggling to escape.

"Maud!"--his tone was full of surprised reproach as he fell back a step,--"what is it? What have I done?"

"What have _I_ done?" she echoed swiftly. "I can't remember! Oh, God! what's that?" Her voice rose to a shriek; she clung to him convulsively with one hand while her eyes fixed themselves on the stone slab which had sheltered her--and him.

The north wind had done work during the night, and the embedded slab was clear now; more than clear. It formed part of a stone coffin whence the wind had driven the sand, leaving the contents exposed to view. Only a few bones, but, backed by the drifted sand, they still kept the semblance of a skeleton sitting staring out into the mist.

Eustace Gordon recoiled--the best of men would have done so much in such a situation; then memory aided him.

"It is Eilean-a-fa-ash, Maud--Eilean-a-varai--you remember. We must have drifted north somehow. Don't look so scared, my darling. It is only Eilean-a-fa-ash--the Island of Rest--that is all."

She did not heed him; her eyes, full of an almost insane terror, were fastened on the fleshless hand which lay so near--oh! God in heaven!--so near her own as it clutched the side of the coffin.

"The ring," she whispered. "Look! look--the ring, my ring, my ring."

Yes! on the dead as on the living hand he saw the ring with its legend, "Beautiful, constant, chaste." A chill came over even his passion; yet he turned to her with sudden petulance.

"Well! what then?--you know whence it must have come, what it must have been from the beginning, I suppose. Come! let us leave these horrors, let us leave the past and be sensible. Come, Maud."

She gave him one look,--a look he never forgot,--and with a cry of "Rick's ring! Rick's ring!" broke from him and disappeared into the mist.

"Maud! Maud! don't be silly! Maud! where are you going? For God's sake, Maud! come back. The mist--the sea--are you mad? Maud! Maud!"

Then he, too, was blotted out, and the growing light of day found nothing human there save the bones of a woman who had been loved. Nothing but that and the ashes of a fire which had gone out.

"Maud! Maud!" The cry hit on the mist and came echoing back to him, as, following her faint footsteps, he pursued her. Once looming through the fog he thought he saw her pausing as for breath, but his passionate entreaty for her to wait for him, his eager reminder that he was Eustace--Eustace, her lover--brought no response. Did he imagine a faint cry as if she started off in renewed alarm, or was it only some sea-bird hidden in the mist, uttering its plaintive note?

He brought himself up suddenly with a gasp of horrid fears as his feet gave way beneath him--deeper? deeper? No! that was right: firm ground once more, but where was he? Where were those faint footmarks leading him?

"Maud! Come back! It is not safe!" Still he went on. Not safe, indeed! He floundered desperately for a moment, and then stood with laboured breath and a dew of deadly fear on his face, looking round him. The sun rising steadily had, by this time, turned the mist into a golden haze, through which he could see that a few seaweed-hung boulders had been gathered to a heap whence sprang a cross-shaped post. It must be a ford--the sea ford to Eilean-a-fa-ash. That way then lay safety, for a few hours; but which way had she gone? He stooped to see, with fear for her and for himself fighting with his love. Then he stood up, pale as death. "Maud! Come back. Maud! I will not hurt you." Surely, surely there was an answering cry. The relief seemed to blind him, deafen him.

"Here! Here! where are you? It is I!"

The next instant Rick Halmar was beside him, fiercely imperative. "Where is she? Where is she?"

Eustace Gordon looked at the eager boyish face stupidly, and faltered, "She was afraid--she ran away. I don't know why. Call her. She might come to you. Call her."

Those bright blue eyes seemed to pierce him through and through, before they sought the ground. There was not much to be seen; only the print of a woman's foot in the sand, a foot going south; due south.

"Coward!"

The word rang out clear from the golden mist like a voice from heaven, and Eustace Gordon was left standing alone beside the cross pointing towards safety. Rick Halmar had gone south; due south.

VIII

Then a new cry beat itself upon the curtain of mist: "Lady Maud! Lady Maud! it is I--Rick! Rick Halmar." And the boy's voice reached further than the man's, as moment by moment the sea-haugh lightened, softened, rose, until it seemed no more than a golden halo round the climbing sun.

"It is I--Rick! Rick Halmar."

His hands clenched tighter and tighter as he ran. To Eustace the danger had been uncertain, unreal, but Rick knew every inch of the ground, and knew that each step left hope further behind. Already his accustomed ear had caught the curious whispering hush with which the land gives way before the sea. And he knew what that meant on Grâda Sands. Firm foothold for a second and then a shivering and murmuring sliding gulf. Oh, horrible, most horrible to think of her.

"Lady Maud! it is I--Rick, only Rick."

The thought came to him suddenly that it was his birthday. She had promised to give him something. Ah! fate could not be so cruel on his birthday of all days in the year! Foolish irrational thought which somehow brought him comfort as his keen eyes sought a sign and found nothing but those shining footsteps, whence the water filtered even as he sped past them. Thank Heaven for so much! since it showed that the tide was still far off; that as yet there was time. Lighter and lighter too! Soon he might be able to see her, ghostlike, through the mist, or at least judge the distance of that creeping line of foam which, still unseen, and still, he hoped fiercely, far, far off, yet seemed to occupy his every thought, to fill his memory. Tortuous like a snake, with the snake's low hiss as it curled along the quivering sand. Suddenly his heart stood still, for there out of the golden mist grew the tall black spar of the old wreck with its message of warning: "Pretty safe so far, most times; beyond that--" The recollection of his own careless words prompted another cry.

"My lady--my dearest lady. It is I, Rick--only Rick."

What was that on the sand--blotting the yellow sand just below the spar? A stone? seaweed? No--that was a woman's dress; she was there, face downwards on the sand, fallen insensible perhaps--but saved. Thank God! saved. He stumbled in his mad haste to reach her. Was it a stumble, or had his foot broken through the firmer crust? Again, this time both feet. Could he have come so far, so close, only to fail? Impossible! Then beneath him he felt a tremor, the first slight tremor heralding the dissolution of dry land. With the sudden resolve which, in time of danger, separates one man from his fellow, decisively, absolutely, to the utter annihilation of all cant about equality, he put all his strength into one bold leap forward. The next instant he was clinging to the spar like a monkey, or a sailor. The tremor passed; the sand settled once more with a low gurgling murmur, proclaiming the back draw of the wave still hidden by the haze. Cautiously he tried one foot beyond the single plank between him and destruction. Hopeless, even if he stood still, and to reach her he must take a step or two. Again the tremor came,--the shifting, sliding sparkle of the sand-grains as they parted,--and the figure lying with its face hidden, resting on the right arm, sank a little. Only a very little; yet still it sank. He had come prepared for danger, with a rope wound about his waist; and almost with his first foothold on the wreck, his hands had been busy with the coil even while his thoughts and eyes were elsewhere. A bight here, a bend there, and it was fast as sailor's lore could make it, to the spars and to his body. No! not there; for it had to be doubled to bear the strain, and he could not afford to lose an inch. So, tight over one shoulder with a treble twist round his outstretched arm. That would not give way unless it tore the arm from its socket; and then the rope, being high up on the spar, would give him greater purchase when the time came for strength. How long these thoughts, these actions, seemed to take; yet he could not spare one of them even though, with a soft, swishing rush, the hidden enemy made another sally. This time lingering half a moment round that figure on the sand as if to gain a firmer hold upon it. Perhaps! but not so firm as his would be. Now he was ready! With a swing backwards and forwards to gain additional impetus, the rope coiled loosely so as not to drag, he leapt clear of the wreck towards her. An instant's doubt, and he had her by the hand, the left hand, which lay stretched on the sand as she had fallen. How cold it was! Could she be dead? But the horror of the thought was forgotten in fight; for now, with the same chuckling sound as if the devils below were laughing at him, came the back draw. Not an inch, not a quarter to be yielded, come what might. The rope, despite his bitter clench upon its strands, cut deep into his arm; it seemed as if a red-hot iron pierced his shoulder, as the sinews strained to their uttermost. Ah! that was a relief, but her weight was heavier surely, and that meant less stable support. Hanging as he was, by one arm,--the other outstretched to keep his hold on her,--he could see nothing save the unsteady sand closing round him. He seemed to feel nothing save the little cold hand in his. It was now or never. Grasping the rope as high as he could reach, he put out his whole strength, hoping to move her but an inch nearer to him. Hopeless; and the back draw, coming on him unawares, found him, as it were, on the rack, and seized its opportunity. He set his teeth and endured. How, he never knew, but when the agony passed, a dew, like that of death, was on his face, and he hung nerveless, helpless, save for the desperate resolve to keep his hold--to keep her hand in his. The wave again. Little bubbles this time, as if some one was drowning close by. Ah! if he could only see her, even though it was to see her gripped in that pulsating horror!

"Maud! it is I--only Rick." The cry came from him as he hung on the rack once more. Perhaps, if he could keep his hold, the coming tide would slacken that grip--it might--it must. How far had she sunk--already? Had the golden head disappeared? Was there nothing left save the little cold hand where he could feel the ring--his ring--slipping under his clasp? Ah! there was the wave again--surging in his ears, whispering, whispering, whispering, surely of some far-off country, of a great rest, and peace, and forgetfulness.

* * * * *

Rick Halmar hung limp upon the rope. Nature had stepped in; her patience was exhausted, she would have no more heroism, no more delay. Those two hands had held each other long enough. The time had come for them to part quietly, peacefully. Not in a moment, but gradually, as if even in unconsciousness the spirit strove against the flesh, those slender fingers slipped through the strong ones. Slipped and slipped, till, with a little jerk, Rick's hand closed upon itself, and fell back inert, while the other, still stretched in mute appeal, sank slowly into the sand.

The sun, having escaped from its halo, saw the deed done, and smiled down upon the sight cheerfully. Only a boy with a birthday present in his hand. Only one more woman loved and lost. What was that to weep over? A wheeling gull, sweeping by on broad white wings, suggested sympathy, but, in reality, it came to see if the deed portended food for its young ones. There were no other spectators. Had there been, they would have been so occupied by vain attempts to aid, that the essence of it all would have escaped them. Such things are better told than witnessed.

* * * * *

So thought Miss Willina when, three weeks afterwards, Rick, with his left arm still in a sling, tried to make her understand it was not his fault. He wore the silver ring on his right hand; they had found it there tight clasped when, set on the track by Eustace Gordon, they came in a boat to the rescue. Just too late to do more than release Rick from a torture none the less painful afterwards because it was unfelt at the time. Perhaps, with her older eyes, Miss Willina saw further into the blame than he did; but she said nothing.

So Rick kept the ring, with its legend "Beautiful, constant, chaste," as his birthday present. He did not even give it to his wife. It belonged, he said, to the most perfect woman he had ever seen, and when people suggested the propriety of this being a euphonism for the one he had chosen as his life-companion, he shook his head with a smile.

Nevertheless, Miss Willina was not silent of blame. She poured vials of it on her own head for having neglected a clear duty. If she had only insisted on the other devil being burnt as well, this terrible thing might not have come to pass. Anyhow, she would go over to the deserted Lodge without delay, and destroy the wicked idol, lest it should do more harm.

"Let me come too," said Rick in a low voice.

This time Miss Willina did not meet his request with the query, "Was she so pretty as all that, dear?" Indeed, the memory of those words choked her.

So Rick went for the first time into the little sanctum where Lady Maud had stood adrift at the window. The image was still on the mantelpiece, and he started at the sight of it. "Aunt Will!" he cried in quick, half-alarmed tones, "I never made that--it is not my work."

It was not. The professor had been right for once, when he called it a genuine savage conception of fate, brought thither by the Gulf Stream.

Rick took it up in his hands and looked at it curiously. "I wonder," he said, half to himself, "if things would have been different." Then, with a sort of appeal, he turned to Miss Willina. "Aunt Will--you don't really believe--all that rubbish--do you?"

Her answer was decisive. She took the image from him, and marched off with it to Kirsty's peat fire.

So that was an end of the tragic comedy of Roederay. When Rick set off to sail the seas, all the actors in it had disappeared, save Miss Willina in the windblown Noah's Ark at Eval.

Will Lockhart came back the next summer, and painted a picture of Eilean-a-fa-ash, with a golden sea-haugh hanging over drifted sand, and the skeleton of a hand showing from a stone coffin. It was gruesome and morbid; so it was much admired by the Gulf Stream of society in the Royal Academy. Miss Willina, however, still refused to find entertainment in a magic lantern. The past was sacred, she said, and no good ever came in disbelieving in it. Besides, what would become of her animals?

He came again the next summer, bringing with him a tale about the "flusteration midst the bastes of all creation," which followed on the introduction of the "Spirit of fell Denial into the Ark," whereat they both laughed.

And that year he sent a picture to the Royal Academy, which a few critics admired. But then, it was only the portrait of a middle-aged woman with a sick gosling on her lap, and half a dozen zoological specimens grouped around her. Yet you could almost feel the northwest wind which was ruffling the coils of hair, and smell the fresh, salt, wholesome breeze which had swept the sand from those dead fingers at Eilean-a-fa-ash. It was the other side of the picture; but it did not suit the public taste so well. _Chacun à son gout_.