Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts Part 34

With this she resumed her old att.i.tude by the tiller. Her eyes were fixed ahead, her gaze pa.s.sing just over the minister's hat. When he glanced up he saw the rime twinkling on her shoulders and the star-shine in her dark eyes. Around them the heavens blazed with constellations.

Never had the minister seen them so mult.i.tudinous or so resplendent.

Never before had the firmament seemed so alive to him. He could almost hear it breathe. And beneath the stars the little boat raced eastward, with the reef-points pattering on its tan sails.

Neither spoke. For the most part the minister avoided the girl's eyes, and sat nursing his wrath. The whole affair was ludicrous; but it meant the sudden ruin of his good name, at the very start of his career.

This was the word he kept grinding between his teeth--"ruin," "ruin."

Whenever it pleased this mad creature to set him ash.o.r.e, he must write to Deacon Snowden for his boxes and resign all connection with Troy.

But would he ever get rid of the scandal? Could he ever be sure that, to whatever distance he might flee, it would not follow him? Had he not better abandon his calling, once and for all? It was hard.

A star shot down from the Milky Way and disappeared in darkness behind the girl's shoulders. His eyes, following it, encountered hers.

She left the tiller and came slowly forward.

"In three minutes we'll open Plymouth Sound," she said quietly, and then with a sharp gesture flung both arms out towards him. "Oh, lad, think better o't an' turn back wi' me! Say you'll marry me, for I'm perishin'

o' love!"

The moonshine fell on her throat and extended arms. Her lips were parted, her head was thrown back a little, and for the first time the young minister saw that she was a beautiful woman.

"Ay, look, look at me!" she pleaded. "That's what I've wanted 'ee to do all along. Take my hands: they'm shapely to look at and strong to work for 'ee."

Hardly knowing what he did, the young man took them; then in a moment he let them go--but too late; they were about his neck.

With that he sealed his fate for good or ill. He bent forward a little and their lips met.

So steady was the wind that the boat still held on her course; but no sooner had the girl received the kiss than she dropped her arms, walked off, and shifted the helm.

"Unfasten the sheet there," she commanded, "and duck your head clear."

As soon as their faces were set for home, the minister walked back to the cuddy roof and sat down to reflect. Not a word was spoken till they reached the harbour's mouth again, and then he pulled out his watch.

It was half-past four in the morning.

Outside the Battery Point the girl hauled down the sails and got out the sweeps; and together they pulled up under the still sleeping town to the minister's quay-door. He was clumsy at this work, but she instructed him in whispers, and they managed to reach the ladder as the clocks were striking five. The tide was far down by this time, and she held the boat close to the ladder while he prepared to climb. With his foot on the first round, he turned. She was white as a ghost, and trembling from top to toe.

"Nance--did you say your name was Nance?"

She nodded.

"What's the matter?"

"I'll--I'll let you off, if you want to be let off."

"I'm not sure that I do," he said, and stealing softly up the ladder, stood at the top and watched her boat as she steered it back to Ruan.

Three months after, they were married, to the indignant amazement of the minister's congregation. It almost cost him his pulpit, but he held on and triumphed. There is no reason to believe that he ever repented of his choice, or rather of Nance's. To be sure, she had kidnapped him by a lie; but perhaps she wiped it out by fifty years of honest affection.

On that point, however, I, who tell the tale, will not dogmatise.

WHICH?

The scene was a street in the West End of London, a little south of Eaton Square: the hour just twenty-five minutes short of midnight.

A wind from the North Sea had been blowing all day across the Thames marshes, and collecting what it could carry; and the shop-keepers had scarcely drawn their iron shutters before a thin fog drifted up from lamp-post to lamp-post and filled the intervals with total darkness--all but one, where, half-way down the street on the left-hand side, an enterprising florist had set up an electric lamp at his private cost, to shine upon his window and attract the attention of rich people as they drove by on their way to the theatres. At nine o'clock he closed his business: but the lamp shone on until midnight, to give the rich people another chance, on their way home, of reading that F. Stillman was prepared to decorate dinner-tables and ball-rooms, and to supply bridal bouquets or mourning wreaths at short notice.

The stream of homeward-bound carriages had come to a sudden lull.

The red eyes of a belated four-wheeler vanished in the fog, and the florist's lamp flung down its ugly incandescent stare on an empty pavement. Himself in darkness, a policeman on the other side of the street flashed his lantern twice, closed the slide and halted for a moment to listen by an area railing.

Halting so, he heard a rapid footfall at the upper corner of the street.

It drew nearer. A man suddenly stepped into the circle of light on the pavement, as if upon a miniature stage; and as suddenly paused to gaze upward at the big white globe.

He was a middle-aged man, dressed in an ill-fitting suit of broad-cloth, with a shabby silk hat and country-made boots. He stared up at the globe, as if to take his bearings in the fog; then pulled out a watch.

As the light streamed down upon its dial, a woman sidled out from the hollow of a shop-door behind him, and touched his elbow.

"Deary!" she began. "Going home, deary?"

"Heh? Let me alone, please," said the man roughly. "I am not that sort." She had almost slipped her arm in his before he turned to speak; but now she caught it away, gasping. Mock globes danced before his eyes and for the moment he saw nothing but these: did not see that first she would have run, then moved her hands up to cover her face. Before they could do so he saw it, all white and d.a.m.ned.

"Annie!"

"Oh, w.i.l.l.y . . ." She put out a hand as if to ward him off, but dropped both arms before her and stood, swaying them ever so slightly.

"So this . . . So _this_ . . ." He choked upon the words.

She nodded, hardening her eyes to meet his. "He left me. He sent no money--"

"I see."

"I was afraid."

"Afraid?"

"Afraid to do it . . . suddenly . . . to put an end. . . . It's not so easy to starve, really. Oh, w.i.l.l.y, can't you hit me?"

He seemed to be reflecting. "I--I say," he said abruptly, "can't we talk? Can't we get away somewhere and talk?"

Her limp arms seemed to answer: they asked, as plainly as words, "What is there to say?"

"I don't know. . . . Somewhere out of this infernal light. I want to think. There must be somewhere, away from this light . . ." He broke off. "At home, now, I can think. I am always thinking at home."

"At home . . ." the woman echoed.

"And you must think too?"

"Always: everywhere."

"Ah!" he ran on, as one talking against time: "but what do you suppose I think about, nine times out of ten? Why"--and he uttered it with an air of foolish triumph--"of the chances that we might meet . . . and what would happen. Have you ever thought of that?"

"Always: everywhere . . . of that . . . and the children."