The Grey Lady Part 34

It was a great wrench to him to leave Agatha again so soon, in the first full force of his pa.s.sion. But he left her almost happily.

His love for her was rising up and filling his whole existence. And it is not those lives that are frittered away in a thousand pastimes that are happy. It is the strong life wholly absorbed by one great interest, be it love or be it merely money-making.

Luke had hitherto been rather an aimless man. He was a brilliant sailor, not because he set himself to the task, but merely because seamanship was born in him, together with a dogged steadiness of nerve and a complete fearlessness. It was so easy to be a good sailor that he had not even the satisfaction of having to make an effort. His heart was empty. He had indeed the sea, but his love of it was unconscious. Away from it, he was ill at ease; on its breast, he was not actively happy--he was merely at home. But he had no career. He had no great prize to aim for, and his combative nature required one. He had no career to make, for he was already near the summit of the humble ladder on which Fate had set his feet.

Then came Agatha, and the empty heart was filled with a dangerous suddenness.

The pain which this parting caused him had something of pleasure in it. There are some men and many women who doubt love unless it bring actual pain with it. Luke had always mistrusted fate, and had love brought happiness with it he would probably have doubted its genuineness. He hugged all his doubts, his jealousies, his pa.s.sionate thoughts to himself. He had nothing to cling to. Agatha had never told him that she loved him. But she was for him so entirely apart from all other women that it seemed necessary that he also should not be as other men for her. Not much for a lover to live upon during four or five months!

Agatha had given him a photograph of herself--a fashionable picture in an affected pose in evening dress--but she had absolutely refused to write. This photograph Luke put into a frame, and as soon as the Croonah was out of dock he hung it up in his little cabin. His servant saw it and recognised the fair pa.s.senger of a former voyage, but he knew his place and his master too well to offer any comment.

Unlike the ordinary young man, whose thoughts are lightly turned to love, Luke was no worse a sailor for his self-absorption. All his care, all his keen, fearless judgment were required; for the Croonah ran through a misty channel into a boisterous Atlantic.

He stood motionless at his post, as was his wont, keen and alert for the moment, but living in the past. He saw again Mrs. Harrington's drawing-room as he had last seen it, with Agatha sitting in a low chair near the fire, while Mrs. Harrington wrote at her desk, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker read the Times.

"I have come," he remembered saying, "to bid you good-bye."

He heard again the rustle of Mrs. Ingham-Baker's newspaper, and again he saw the look in Agatha's eyes as they met his. He would remember that look to the end of his life; he was living on it now.

Agatha, in her rather high-pitched society tones, was the first to speak.

"If I were a sailor," she said, "I would never say good-bye. It is better to drop in and pay a call; at the end one might casually mention the words."

"Oh! we grow accustomed to it," Luke answered.

"Do you?" the girl inquired, with an enigmatical smile, and her answer was in his eyes. She did not want him to grow accustomed to saying farewell to her.

Luke FitzHenry was not inclined to sociability--the stronger sort of man rarely is. On board the Croonah he was usually considered morose and self absorbed. He did his duty, and in this was second to no man on board; but he was content to get the pa.s.sengers to their destination, looking upon the Croonah as a mere conveyance for a certain number of chattering, gossiping, mischief-making live- stock. He utterly failed in his social duties; he did not cultivate the art of making his ship a sort of floating "hydro".

The boisterous weather kept the decks fairly select until Gibraltar had been left behind in the luminous haze that hangs over the mouth of the Mediterranean in a westerly breeze. But in the smoother waters of the Southern seas the pa.s.sengers plucked up courage, and one morning at breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man nodding vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he subsequently waved with friendly jocularity.

"Morning--morning!" he cried.

"Good morning," replied Luke, pa.s.sing to his seat at the after-end of the saloon. He had recognised the man at once, although he had only exchanged a few words with him in a crowded ball-room.

Everything connected with Agatha, however remotely, seemed to engrave itself indelibly on his mind. This was Willie Carr, the man to whom Agatha had introduced him at the naval orphanage ball.

Willie Carr was on board the Croonah, evidently quite at home, and bound for India, for he was seated at the Indian table.

It was not necessary for Luke to make inquiries about this pa.s.senger, because his brother officers soon began to speak of him.

By some means Carr made himself popular among the officers, and gradually began to enjoy privileges denied to his fellow pa.s.sengers.

He frequently visited the engine-room, and was always to be seen after meals in, or in the neighbourhood of, the smoking-room, in conversation with one or other of the Croonah's officers, who were generally found to be smoking Carr's cigars.

Despite many obvious and rather noisy overtures of friendship, Luke FitzHenry held aloof until the Aden light was left behind. He succeeded in limiting his intercourse to an exchange of pa.s.sing remarks on the weather until the Croonah had rounded Pointe de Galle and was heading northwards. Then arose circ.u.mstances which brought them together, and possibly served Willie Carr's deliberate purpose.

Carr was travelling without his wife--he was the sort of man who does travel without his wife. She, poor woman, had made one initial mistake, namely, in marrying him, and such mistakes are sometimes paid for by a life of atonement to the G.o.ds. She remained at home to care for an ever-increasing family on a small housekeeping allowance, which was not always paid.

This wife was the only point in his favour which had presented itself to Luke's mind, for the latter resented a certain tone of easy familiarity, which Agatha seemed to take as a matter of course.

Luke was afraid of being questioned about Agatha, and he therefore kept Carr at a respectful distance. He harboured no personal dislike towards the man, whose bluff and honest manner made him popular among his fellows.

It was the evening of the first day in the Bay of Bengal that a steamer pa.s.sed the Croonah, running south, and flying a string of signals. The Croonah replied, and the homeward-bound vessel disappeared in the gathering twilight with her code flags still flying.

"What did she say?" asked the pa.s.sengers.

"Nothing," replied the officers; "only the weather. It is the change of the monsoon."

At dinner the captain was remarkably grave; he left the table early, having eaten little. The officers were reticent, as was their wont.

Luke FitzHenry, it was remarked and remembered afterwards, alone appeared to be in good spirits.

After dinner a busybody in the shape of a too intelligent young coffee-planter, who possessed an aneroid barometer, brought that instrument to the smoking-room with a scared face. The needle was deflected to a part of the dial which the intelligent young planter had hitherto considered to be merely ornamental and not intended for practical use. His elders and betters told him to put it away and not to tell the ladies. Then they continued smoking; but they knew that they had just seen such a barometer as few men care to look upon.

The word "cyclone" was whispered in one corner of the cabin, and a white-moustached general was understood to mutter -

"d.a.m.ned young fool!" as he pulled at his cheroot.

The whisperer did not hear the remark, and went on to give further information on atmospheric disturbances. Suddenly the field-officer jumped to his feet.

"Look here, sir!" he cried. "If we are in for a cyclone, I trust that we know how to behave as men--and die as men, if need be! But don't let us have any whispering in corners, like a lot of schoolgirls. We are in the care of good men, and all we have to do is to obey orders, and--d.a.m.n it, sir!--to remember we're Englishmen!"

The general walked out of the smoking-saloon, and the first sight that greeted his eyes was Luke FitzHenry, quick, keen, and supernaturally calm, standing over a group of Malay sailors who were hard at work getting in awnings. The white-haired soldier stood and watched with the grim silence which he had showed to death before now. He was of the Indian army. He had led the black man to victory and death, and he knew to a nerve the sensitive Asiatic organisation. He saw that it was good and not for the first time he noted the sheep-like dependence with which the black men grouped themselves round their white leader, watching his face, taking their cue in expression, in att.i.tude, even in their feelings from him.

"Good man," muttered the general to himself.

He stood there alone while the ship was stripped of every awning, while the decks were cleared of all that hamper which makes the pa.s.senger an enc.u.mbrance at sea. There was no shouting, no confusion, no sign of fear. In a marvellously short time the broad decks were lying bare and clear, all loose things were stowed away or made fast, and the Croonah stood ready for her great fight.

All the while an arc of black cloud had been growing on the horizon.

There was not a breath of wind. From the engine-rooms the thud of the piston-rods came throbbing up with a singular distinctness. The arc of cloud had risen halfway to the meridian. There were streaks in it--streaks of yellow on black. Far away to the north, at the point of contact with the horizon, a single waterspout rose like a black pillar from sea to cloud. Dwellers in the cool and temperate zones would have thought that the end of the world was about to come. Men, standing quite still, felt the drops of perspiration trickling beneath their ears. The air taken into the lungs seemed powerless to expand them. The desire to take a deeper breath was constant and oppressive.

A quartermaster brought a message to the general that he must go below or else come up to the lower bridge. He could not stay where he was. The captain said that the cyclone might break at any moment. The old soldier nodded, and made his way to the lower bridge. Before he had been there long he was joined by Carr, who carried a mackintosh over his arm. The two men nodded. The general rather liked Carr. He was a Harrovian, and the general's son was at Harrow.

"Going to see it out on deck?" he inquired.

"Rather. I'm not going to be drowned like a rat in a trap!" replied Carr, jovial still, and brave.

Luke came to the bridge and took up his position by the side of the captain. No one spoke.

From the distant horizon--from the north where the waterspout still was--a long groan floated over the water. There was a green line on the black surface of the ocean, dark green flecked with white; it was spreading over the sea, and coming towards them. Luke turned and said one word to the quartermaster. The man went to the wheelhouse and brought out three long black oilskin coats--two for the captain and Luke, the other for himself.

The groan, like that of an animal in pain, was repeated. It seemed farther off. Then a sound like the escape of steam from an engine came apparently from the sky.

Luke said something to the captain, and pointed with his right hand.

They consulted together in a whisper, and the captain made a signal to the two steersmen motionless in the wheelhouse. The well-greased chains ran smoothly, and the great black prow of the Croonah crept slowly round the horizon pointing out to sea, away from the land.

Ceylon lay astern of them in the darkness which was almost like night.

The captain and Luke stood side by side on the little bridge, far above the deck. They had exchanged their gold-braided caps for sou'westers. The outline of their black forms was just distinguishable against the sky. They were looking straight ahead into the yellow streaks, out over the flecked sea. And not a breath of wind stirred the leaden atmosphere.

Looking down on the broad decks, it would seem at first that they were deserted, but as the eye became accustomed to the gloom, men standing like shadows could be perceived here and there--at their posts--waiting.

All the skylights had been doubly tarpaulined. Some of them had been strengthened with battens lashed transversely over the canvas.

All that mortal brain could devise mortal hand had done. The rest was with G.o.d.

The decks were quite dark, for the skylights were covered, even those of the engine-room, and the men at work down there in the stifling heat knew not what the next moment might bring. They had nothing to guide them as to the moment when the hurricane would strike the ship. For the last five minutes they had been holding on to their life-rails with both hands, expecting to be thrown among the machinery at every second.