Part 16

The very differences in my appearance—the mustache, the patch over my left eye, the military coat—must have helped to recall the earlier occasion by the indirect means of contrast. As for her, she was what she had seemed to me then—two great flaming eyes. They were tired eyes now, haunted, tragic perhaps, and I saw later that when you caught them off their guard they were pensive, if not mournful. They were, indeed, all I could see of her, for the rest of her features were hidden by the veil over the lower part of the face which women occasionally copy from the Turkish lady’s yashmak. A small black cap, held by a jade-green pin, and a long, shapeless black ulster or coat completed a costume quite unlike the uniform for which I had been looking.

I can only describe that encounter as the meeting of two transmigrated souls. She had gone as far in her direction as I in mine; but I couldn’t tell at a glance in what direction she had gone. It was what struck me dumb. When Paolo and Francesca met in space they had nothing to say to each other except with the eyes. In some such case as that we found ourselves. The pressure of topics was too great to allow of immediate selection. She seemed to wait for me to utter the first word, and as I was at a loss she dropped the portière behind her, inclined her head, and passed on into the saloon.

Though it was my place to follow her, I couldn’t, for the minute, take so obvious a course. I was not only too mystified by what I had heard of her, but too confused as to our standing toward each other. I couldn’t begin with a “How do you do?” as if we had parted on the ordinary social terms, while anything more dramatic would have been absurd. Hobbling along the deck, I took refuge in the smoking-room in order to reflect.

Reflection was not easy. Over its calm fields emotion spread like water through a broken dike. For two and a half years the emotional had been so stemmed and banked and dammed in me that I had thought it under control forever. I had had enough to do in giving orders or carrying them out. But, now that the repressed had broken its bounds again, the tide swept everything away with it.

Not that I knew just what I was experiencing; on the contrary, I couldn’t have disentangled the element of anger from that of curiosity, nor that of curiosity from that of joy. All I could say for certain was that never in my life had I been so anxious to keep free; never had I so much needed concentration and single-mindedness. The task to which I had vowed my undivided energy and heart demanded a genuine celibacy of the will; and now of all the women in the world....

I was working on this train of thought when I became aware that people were running along the deck. Glancing about me at the same moment, I saw I was alone in the smoking-room. A whistle blew, piercingly, alarmingly. By the time I had struggled to my feet the ship changed her course so sharply as to throw me against a chair.

I knew what it was, of course. We had been talking of the possibility ever since we left the Mersey. However much we tried to keep the mind away from the subject, it came back to it, as a mischievous boy makes straight for the thing forbidden him.

My first thought was for the girl in the yashmak. I must find her, see she had a life-belt, and take her to her boat. Before I had scrambled to the door, however, it flew open, apparently of its own accord, while a wild nor’wester positively blew the young lady in.

It also blew away anything like Paolo-and-Francesca sentiment.

“Oh, here you are!” she exclaimed, breathlessly. “I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. They say we’ve sighted a periscope. Take this and put it on.”

Of the two life-belts she carried she flung one to me, beginning to fasten the other about herself.

“But the one you’ve brought me must belong to some one else,” I objected, as I aided her. “I’ve got one of my own in my cabin. I’ll just run down—”

She brushed this aside. “No; this is yours. I went and got it.”

“You—” I began in astonishment.

“I’m a nurse—or a kind of one,” she said, hastily. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“But you knew where my cabin was?”

“I found out. Oh, hurry—please!”

She helped me as a medieval lady might have helped her lord to buckle on his sword; and presently we were out on deck.

As we had twice already drilled in the unsightly things, we had lost the sense of the grotesque appearance presented by ourselves and our fellow-travelers. Besides, we were too eager to descry the periscope to have any more thought of ourselves than a wild duck of how it looks when skimming away from a sniper. Indeed, it was chiefly of a hunted wild duck that our zigzagging boat reminded me.

It was a sullen day, with that scudding of low, gray clouds which looks as if the heavens were hastening to some Armageddon of their own. The sea had hardly got over the swell left by one gale when it was being lashed into fury by another. The _Assiniboia_ pitched and rolled and tore through the waters like a monster goaded by innumerable stings. I should have found it next to impossible to struggle along the deck had my protectress not stood by and steadied me.

There was a kind of foolish pretense at the chivalrous in my tone as I said, “I’ll just see you to your boat before going over to mine.”

“We’re in the same boat,” she answered, briefly. “Do come along.”

I thought of my forty-eight hours of unfruitful search for her.

“But I didn’t see you at Number Seven when we drilled yesterday.”

“I’m there now,” she said, with the same brevity. Feeling, apparently, that some explanation was needed, she went on: “I’ve—I mean they—they’ve changed me. Miss Prynne has let me have—or rather she’s taken— That is,” she finished, in confusion, “we’re all nurses together—and we’ve—we’ve exchanged.”

In spite of some inward observations, I spared her any other comment than to say, “How jolly!” as if the exchange had been the most matter-of-course thing in the world.

I spoke just now of riding tempests and zephyrs, and something like that it was to plow along at every ounce of steam, with cross seas, head seas, seas abeam, and seas abaft, as each new zigzag caught them. On the roaring of the wind and the plunge and thunder of the waves one rose into regions of tumultuous play where life and death were the stakes. I saw no signs of fear, and still less of panic; nor, so far as the eye could read, anything more than a sporting excitement. One would have said that our peril was accepted as being all in the game, part of the day’s work. By the end of 1916 Atlantic travelers had come to take the submarine for granted, just as the statesmen of Plantagenet and Tudor times took the headsman’s block as one of the natural risks of going into politics.

But we looked instinctively for a periscope. It is not an easy thing for any one to see, and for me it was more difficult than for most. I saw none; or I saw a hundred. With the imperfect vision of my one eye the crests of the billows bristled with moving four-inch pipes; and then suddenly all would disappear and I saw nothing but the waves curling upward into coronets of foam with veils of trailing lace.

Not that I was worse off in this respect than my fellow-travelers. As they ran for their boats they would pause, take a hurried look at the seas, exclaiming, “There it is!” and then, more doubtfully, “No, no!” all in one breath. The “No, no!” was generally uttered in a tone of disappointment, since to cross the ocean and sight no submarine would have been like journeying through Egypt and missing the pyramids.

And yet our danger was apparent. Only a fortnight before the _Kamouraska_, sister ship to the _Assiniboia_, had been sent to the bottom in these very waters, with great loss of life. Of the tragedy the papers had given us realistic pictures that were fresh in all our minds. There was a preliminary scene on board not unlike the one we were enacting. We saw later a shell bursting on the deck, somewhere amidships. We saw the passengers and crew taking to the boats with shells kicking up geysers among them as they tried to get away. We saw the great ship sticking as straight up out of the water as a Cleopatra’s Needle, before going slowly down. We saw the U-boat herself lying on the water like a crocodile, some four thousand yards away; we saw Queenstown as a morgue. All this was as vividly in our minds as a rehearsal to the actors of a play; and yet we were probably no more nervous than the company on a first night when the curtain is going up.

The word went round that it was the fate of the _Kamouraska_, with the futility of her surrender as a means of saving the passengers’ lives, that prompted our captain to flight and fight. Our wireless calls were undoubtedly going up and down the Irish coast and out into the ocean. Within an hour or two, if we could hold out so long, destroyers would be rushing to our rescue. We had nothing to be terribly afraid of with more than an imaginative fear.

That imaginative fear was quickened by the seemingly maddened action of our ship. I can best describe her as a leviathan gone insane. If insanity were to overtake a whale it would probably splash the deep in some such frenzy as this—so many angles out of the course one way—then a violent heeling over—so many angles out of the course another way—anyway, anywhere, anything—to get out of that straight, staid line from port to port which makes an ocean-going ship a liner. I admit that in this wild, erratic dashing there was something that alarmed us, and something, too, that made us laugh. It was the comic side of madness, in which you can hardly see the terrible because of the grotesque.

By the time we reached life-boat No. 7 there were many signs that neither officers nor passengers were going to take more chances than they were obliged to. At No. 5 on one side of us a young officer was on top, peeling off the tarpaulin covering. At No. 9 on the other side some of the crew were already mounted, examining supplies and oars. At our own boat, cranks were being fitted to the davits to swing the boat outward. All along the line similar preparations were in progress, while men and women—luckily we had no children on board—carrying such wraps and hand-bags as they might reasonably take, stood in groups, waiting for what was to happen next.

Our view of the sea was largely cut off here by the bulk of the life-boats, though wherever there was a chink there was also a cluster of heads. So many saw periscopes—and so many didn’t see them—that it became a mild joke. In general we surmised that if a U-boat was cruising round us at all she had only been porpoising—sticking up her periscope for a second or two to get a look round, and withdrawing it before it could be seen by any eye not on that very spot.

The girl in the yashmak and I arrived so late on the scene that there were no places left by the rail, and we were obliged to content ourselves with second-hand information as to what was taking place. Our excitement had, therefore, a lack of point, like that of the small boy behind the line of grown-up people watching a procession. We fell back in the end into a kind of alcove, where, being partially protected from wind and tumult, we could speak to each other without shouting.

I took the opportunity to thank her for her kindness to me when I came on board on Sunday; but with my opening words the air of Francesca meeting Paolo in space came over her again. I understood her to say that her help on Sunday was a little thing, that she would have given it to any one.

“Of course,” I agreed, “you would have given it to any one; but in this case you gave it to me. You must allow me to thank you before anything happens that might—that might make gratitude too late.”

As I think of her now I can see that she was mistress of herself in the way that a letter-perfect actress is mistress of herself, repeating words that have been learned to fit a certain situation. She had foreseen that I would say something of the kind; she had foreseen that when I did she might be a prey to troublesome emotions; and so had fortified herself in advance by a studied set of phrases.

“I’m so little of a nurse that I should be ashamed not to do for a soldier the few small things in my power.”

If she had never made me suffer anything, and if the moment had not been one that might conceivably end our relations forever, I should probably not have uttered the words that came to me next.

“Was it only because I’m a soldier—?”

She interrupted skilfully. “Only because you’re a soldier? Isn’t a soldier the most splendid man in the world—especially at a time like this?”

Bang!

It was one of our two guns. As a merchantman, not built to withstand the concussion of cannon, the _Assiniboia_ shuddered.

With an involuntary start my companion caught me by the sleeve. The impulse to seize her hand and draw it gently within my arm was irresistible. Had I reflected, I might not have done this, since my dominant desire was to keep stripped and unencumbered for the race.

She allowed me to retain her hand just long enough to show that she was not mortally offended, after which she gently disengaged herself. To cover the constraint that both of us felt I went on to wonder if our shot had taken effect. A young man who had gone to find out came back with the news that the lookout, having spied the pin furrow of the periscope, the shot had been fired at a venture. As far as could be observed it had done nothing but send up a waterspout.

On receiving this information I went on with our interrupted personalities.

“Ever since Sunday I’ve wondered what had become of you; but then I’ve been looking for the uniform.”

“I always intended taking that off when I got on board. You see, I never was a nurse in any but an amateur sense, and so—”

It was my opportunity to spring the surprise I had been holding in reserve ever since my talk with the Consolatrice in the dock at Liverpool.

“When did you last see Mabel?”

She spoke with a sharp, sudden mezzo cry that might have been caused by pain.

“Who told you that?”

“Who told me what?”

Bang!

It was our second gun, and though the girl in the yashmak started again, she did not seize my arm. To hold the drama at its instant of suspense, I pretended to be more interested in the effect of the shot than in anything else in the world, as in other circumstances I should have been. I turned to this one and that one, inviting their guesses, noting all the while that over Regina Barry’s eyes there spread the surface fire that a flaming sunset casts on troubled water.

She harked back to the subject as soon as it was clear that we had missed our aim again.

“Lady Rideover promised me she’d never tell you.”

Her tone having become accusatory, I broke in on it with studied nonchalance.

“And she never did. To the best of my recollection she never mentioned your name to me. But is there anything wrong in my knowing that you and she are friends?”

Color mounted to her brows where the yashmak couldn’t conceal it, though she ignored the question.

“And I’m sure it wasn’t your sister Evelyn.”

“Why shouldn’t it have been?”

“Because she promised me, too. I should be frightfully hurt if I thought she—”

“Then I’ll relieve your mind by assuring you that she didn’t. But to me the curious thing is that you shouldn’t have wanted me to know.”

She ignored this, too, a furrow of perplexity deepening between her brows.

“It isn’t possible that Lady Rideover or Evelyn, without telling you in words, should have allowed you to suspect—”

“Not any more than they allowed me to suspect that I was being nursed by a houri out of paradise.”

She hastened to make a correction. “Oh, I never acted as nurse to you! It was that Miss Farley.”

“But you were at Taplow when I was there, and in and out of my room.”

The peculiar light in her eyes, partly of amazement, partly of incredulity, reminded me of a poor trapped lady I had once seen in the prisoner’s dock while a witness recounted the secrets of her life with remarkable exactness of detail.

“But you couldn’t see me!” she began, helplessly.

“No, but I could hear.”

“And you didn’t hear me. If I went into your room, which I didn’t often do—”

I launched a theory that was purely inspiration.

“Oh, I know. If you came into my room you didn’t make a sound. You arranged that with Mabel. But haven’t you heard that the blind develop an extra sense?”

“Not as quickly as that—or with that precision.” She brightened with a new thought. “If your extra sense told you I was there, why didn’t you speak to me?”

“Suppose I said that I respected your incognita? If you didn’t want to speak to me it must have been for a reason. I couldn’t ignore that.”

Whir-r-r! Z-z-z! P-ff!

A shell from the submarine struck the water somewhere near us, though all we saw was a column of white spume on the port side of the ship, while we were on the starboard.

She ignored even this. Standing erect, with her hands in the pockets of her ulster, with no feature to betray her but her eyes, she surmised, calmly, “Some of the other nurses or one of the patients must have given you a hint.”

“None of them ever pronounced your name in my hearing.”

“Then I give up guessing!” she said, with a touch of impatience.

“Which is what I can’t do.”

“But what have you to guess at?”

“At what you’ve done it—at what you’re doing it—for.”

She may have smiled behind the yashmak as she said, “What difference does it make to you?”

“I dare say it doesn’t make any—except that I seem to be the person benefited.”

“In time of war the soldier—the man who does the thing—is the person benefited.”

“Oh no; there’s the cause.”

“But surely, if we’ve learned anything during the past two years, it’s that what the soldier does for the cause can’t compare with what the cause does for the soldier.”

I saw my opportunity and was quick to use it. “So that out of what you’ve been doing for me even you have got something.”

She turned this neatly. “I’ve got a great deal—out of what I’ve been doing for every one. Not that it’s been much. I merely mean that, whatever it’s been, it’s brought me in far more than I’ve ever given out.”

The swing of the boat was so abrupt as almost to make her heel over. Up and down the deck such passengers as were clinging to nothing were flung this way and that, with some laughing and a few involuntary cries. Miss Barry having braced me in a corner of the alcove because of my game leg, I kept my footing steadily, but the girl herself was thrown square into my arms.

Not more than a second later another Whir-r-r! Z-z-z! warned us that another shell was on the way; but before we had time to be afraid a soft P-ff! told us that this, too, had struck the water. The waterspout, this time on the starboard side, not only spattered us with spray, but made it clear that only the sharp shifting of the course had saved us from a hole in our bow. That within the next few minutes our enemy would get us somewhere was a little more than probable.

Then from every cluster of heads came the cry, “Oh, look!”

There she was—a blue-gray streak, only a little darker than the blue-gray waters. The change in our course revealed her as she lay on the surface to shell us, since she was too far away to send us a torpedo. We forgot everything—Regina Barry and I forgot each other—to gaze. My arms relaxed their hold on the girl because there was no longer a mind to direct them; the girl took command of herself because it was only thus that she could observe the most baleful and fascinating monster in the world.

For it was as a monster, baleful and fascinating, that we regarded her. She was not a thing planned by men’s brains and built in a shipyard. She was an abnormal, unscrupulous, venomous water beast, with a special enmity toward man. She had about her the horror of the trackless, the deep, the solitary, the lonesome, the devilish. Few of us had ever got a glimpse of her before. It was like Saint George’s first sight of the dragon that wasted men and cities, and called forth his hatred and his sword.

I think that sheer hatred was the cause of our banging away at her with our two guns. We could hardly expect to hit her. She must have been out of our range, and our only hope was in getting out of hers.

As far as we could judge she was lying still and shelling us at her ease. Splash! Splash! Splash! The screeching things went all round us; but by some miracle they were only spectacular.

Viewed as a spectacle, there was a terrific beauty in it all. Nature and man were raging together, ferociously, magnificently, without conscience, without quarter, without remorse. Hell had unsealed its springs even in us who stood watchful and inactive. There was a sense of abhorrent glory in the knowledge that there were no limits to which we would not go. That there were no limits to which our enemy would not go with us was stimulating, quickening, like the flicker of the whip to the racer. About and above us were all the elements of which man is most accustomed to be afraid, but which, now that we were among them, inspired an appalling glee.

It was amazing how quickly we got used to it, just as, I am told, a man after a night or two gets used to being in the death-house. To be shelled on a stormy, lonely ocean came within a few minutes to being a matter of course. Had we had time to reflect and look backward, it would have seemed strange to think that we had made voyages across the Atlantic in which we had not been shelled.

Then all of a sudden there was a noise like that in a house when it is struck by lightning. It was as if all creation had burst into sound, as if there were nothing anywhere that was not a concomitant of an ear-splitting, soul-splitting crash. It was over us; it was round us; it was everywhere; it might have been within us. In our own persons we seemed to be rent by it.

From the port side a blast of smoke rose and poisoned the dark air. A few shrieks, half suppressed by the shriekers, ran the length of the deck, and a few male exclamations of astonishment and awe. For the most part, however, we stood still and soundless, as I believe we should have held ourselves had it proved to be the Judgment Day.

Our immediate impression was that all the aft of the ship had been carried away. Had she begun to settle stern foremost on the instant we should not have been surprised. We could hardly believe that the long, narrow perspective of the deck, with its groups dotting the length of it, could remain unshattered and afloat. We were sure the decks below must have been blown into air and water.

For the hundredth part of a second the _Assiniboia_ appeared to stop still in her course, like a creature with its death-wound. She seemed stricken, stunned. But she gave another lurch, another swing to her huge person; and when the second shell came on, taking the range of that which had struck her, it plowed the waves astern. All seemed to be over in the space of between two breaths. By the time we could get our wits together sufficiently to ask what had happened she was once more driving onward.

It was splendid. It was sublime. It thrilled one with pride in pluck and seamanship. One could have hugged the brave old leviathan by the neck.

A British seaman, running down the deck on some errand, cried, as he passed us: “Got the old bucket aft, just above the water-line. But, Lor’! she don’t mind it! Didn’t do no ’arm. On’y killed Sammy Smelt, a steerage cabin-boy.”

But it was a beginning. Nothing could save us now but speed and the captain’s skill. The young officer who had helped to strip the covering off No. 5 strolled by us, smoking a cigarette.

“We’re showing her a pretty clean pair of heels,” he said, coolly, by way of dealing out encouragement. “Ship’s carpenter’s begun plugging up the hole. That won’t hurt us so long as we don’t get another.”