In the Tideway Part 10

"How serious you are!" she cried with a sudden change of mood. "See! I promise to give it back on Friday if it hurts. It shall be my birthday present. There!"

"All right. I'll keep it for yours; then we shall be quits," he said, laughing.

When he had left them, Eustace took his place, and Cynthia Strong and Captain Weeks were certainly the happier for the change. Lady Maud, likewise, to judge by her light laughter.

Fast Day rose brilliantly. The clear, crisp sunshine poured in through the dining-room windows, when, coming down to breakfast, she found her cousin there, alone.

"Another lovely day," she said gaily.

"The last for me," he replied. "That was the yacht yesterday. It has anch.o.r.ed below the sands, and the captain has strict orders from Louisa to bring me off dead or alive to-night." He laughed, but there was a bitter look on his face as he tossed a crumpled letter towards her. "Catch! that's my warrant of execution."

Not a very nice letter, but a reasonable one in its way. The weather was to blame, of course; still, she had asked him to join her many times and he had not joined her. He had been a month and more at Roederay and now the equinoctial gales were over, she meant to be off southwards. If he could not make use of the yacht, he must send it round to Cowes and make his own arrangements. For her part, she intended to start for the Mediterranean in ten days. Not the sort of letter to be disregarded by a husband dependent on the writer for all save a very moderate settlement.

"I've told them to have the boat ready at the Grada point at five this afternoon to take me on board. Perhaps it is better so. This sort of thing couldn't have gone on much longer."

She was silent, and the professor, bursting in, ended the tete-a-tete.

"What a land, or perhaps I should say sea, of surprises this is, to be sure!" he exclaimed. "The _Clansman_, I am informed by the factor, whom I met on his way to preaching, will antic.i.p.ate her time by three whole days, owing to this Fast and some local market. She takes Carbost on the out instead of the in trip, and is due to-night, some time between seven and two in the morning. So I am afraid, my dear lady, that my delightful visit must come to a somewhat abrupt conclusion. I propose, therefore, going over--"

"To Eval House," suggested Eustace.

"No-o. To the hotel at dusk, so as to be on the spot."

Lady Maud paled visibly. "And Cynthia! of course she and Captain Weeks will go too. Ah! what a sudden breakup of our pleasant party!"

"You had better come with us, dear lady, and so reduce our regrets to a minimum," cried the professor gallantly.

But the compliment fell flat. That was the fate of most remarks during breakfast, so that conversation dwindled to excerpts from Bradshaw's guide. Captain Weeks, who was generally a stand-by of placid good nature, was peculiarly low. He had made up his mind, come what might, to try his fate with Cynthia Strong before leaving, and now, though still determined, he felt hustled. She, in her turn, knew she had shilly-shallied in a way unworthy of a Girton girl until her opportunities of bringing the professor to book had dwindled to three days; two of them to be spent at sea, where she could not be sure of herself or him. As for Eustace and Maud, their role in the comedy of Life had been touched with tragedy for some time past. They felt dimly that the crisis had come.

"We have never been to Eilean-a-fa-ash, after all," said Cynthia, pausing at the window on her way to pack, and looking regretfully to where the island lay out in the blue sea.

"I thought we shouldn't," murmured Lady Maud in a low voice; "the Island of Rest is not for us."

"It has been within reach all the time. It is so still," replied Eustace in the same tone.

"We might have gone this morning if it hadn't been Fast Day,"

continued Cynthia, aggrieved. "Couldn't we bribe somebody? I want to go awfully, and so does the professor."

"My failure to do so will be the only regret which can possibly mingle with my memories of Roederay."

"Can't think why you all want to see it," remarked the captain, frowning at the professor's complimentary bows. "I went over one day--yes, I did, Miss Strong--to shoot seals. Didn't get any--worse luck! But it wasn't a bit pretty. Sand and bones and a stone coffin or two. The ghillie told me, too, that sometimes, after a north wind, it was awfully grim. The sand blows off, don't you know, and leaves skeletons and things. Not at all the place for ladies, don't you know."

"I'm sorry to be obliged to differ," retorted Cynthia sharply. "In my opinion, there are no places where a woman should not be."

"Nihil continget quod non ornavit," paraphrased the professor.

The captain's head held itself very high. "Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't think so. However, as you wish to see it, Miss Strong, I shall be delighted to row you over in the small boat. Only we must start at slack tide; that is, about three in the afternoon."

"Too late, I'm afraid," replied the young lady disconsolately. "We ought to be starting for the hotel before six; oughtn't we, Maud?"

"Oh, we could manage it," he went on, seeing in this plan the chance of the tete-a-tete on which his mind was set. "If the wagonette were to pick us up at the cross-roads, we should have heaps of time. It would only be starting two hours earlier,--before the others, I mean."

"What do you say, professor?" asked Cynthia sweetly.

Arthur Weeks ground his teeth, and turned away with a murmur about the boat being heavy.

"But the professor will row, of course. Every one rows at Oxford.

Indeed, I, for one, think the Oxford style is the best in the world."

"Then perhaps you will not require my aid. I only learnt off the coast of Cornwall."

Cynthia looked at her usually docile adorer in amaze; she did not understand that the big man had for once thought it worth while to make up his mind. "But we couldn't go without you," she pleaded quite meekly. "You see, you have been there before. Ah, no! we couldn't go without you."

"If I can be of any use--" said the captain magnificently, and the sight of his aggrieved but courteous dignity gave Cynthia quite a pang.

So it was arranged that, about slack tide, he and the professor should row to Eilean-a-fa-ash from the boat-house on the north headland, and afterwards, taking advantage of the full tide and southerly current, slip down the coast across the sands to meet the wagonette. Eustace and Maud proposed to start about the same time for Eval House, so that he might say good-bye to Miss Willina before joining the yacht's boat at Grada point, whence the carriage, on its return journey, would take Lady Maud back to Roederay.

A sombre silence had lain between these two all day, and even when they were left alone on the terrace watching the others disappear sh.o.r.ewards, they said nothing for a time. A great stillness seemed to be in the very air. Not a breath on the water, not a sound on the moor, not a cloud on the sky. The very house seemed asleep; most of the servants away for edification or amus.e.m.e.nt at the preaching, miles to the south, amongst the peat bogs and heather, singing psalms and eating peppermint drops, praising the Creator and flirting with the creature.

The silence must have reminded Eustace of this fact, for at last he turned to his companion hastily. "They won't be at Eval, so there is no use going. Come, Maud! It is the last time we shall be together, I suppose. Come."

It was not much to grant, she thought, when she might never see him again. So they went out together over the moors, down by the little pools where the water showed their shadows, blended one into the other, upon the cairns where they sate together, looking out over the sea. Together, always together, Eustace and she, as it had been at the beginning. And this was the end, the very end.

Meanwhile the trio in the boat set forth gaily; the professor very straight in the back, and with no little style giving the stroke, whilst Arthur Weeks, gloomily polite, paddled in the bows, debarred from even a fair sight of his beloved. The full flood-tide lapped at the furthermost scallop of seaweed on the shingly sh.o.r.e, and touched the sea-pinks cresting the rocks.

"Couldn't you pull a leetle harder?" suggested the captain drily, when the professor paused in a long sentence to take breath. "I don't want to hustle anybody, but we have only just got time to manage it. We are making a good deal of leeway, and the channel north is a bit dangerous."

Cynthia glanced nervously towards the Pole. "Oh, yes! please, Mr.

Endorwick, pull harder. We can talk when we get to the island."

Easier said than done. The perspiration poured down the professor's face, and bow kept her head straight as a die; yet still the boat failed to respond.

As they crept along slowly, the channel between the headlands and the island began to open up, showing the still, oily water which tells of swift current.

"We are too far north," said the captain, resting on his oar a moment.

"The tide can't have been quite slack when we started. However, it doesn't matter; for the current here will take us south in no time."

The professor pausing too, they drifted idly.

"That's the landing-place, Miss Strong," went on the speaker. "Yonder, where the bents almost touch the water, and that square thing behind is a stone cof--" he paused abruptly. "Why, what the devil! we're drifting north--due north. By George, we are, though."

In good sooth they were--drifting north like a feather.

"North! impossible--the current runs south at flood. Stay--by Heaven, I remember--Ronald said something about a change at the equinox.

Quick, man alive. Pull, pull hard! Once she gets beyond those rocks, we will have the d.i.c.kens and all to keep her out of the eddy. It runs like a race--higher up--amongst sunken--rocks."

The last words came in jerks as he set all his strength to the oar.

The boat spun round with the point of the professor's oar as axis; spun round, drifting as it span.