The Sea Bride Part 32

"All right," she said, and bent her head above her sewing once more, disregarding him.

Noll was stupefied.... This was not surprise; it was the helplessness which courage inspires in a coward. For Noll was a coward in those last days.... His face twisted; his hand was shaking.... He stared over the revolver barrel at Faith's brown head. Her hair was parted in the middle, drawn back about her face. The white line of skin where the hair was parted fascinated him; he could not take his eyes from it. The revolver muzzle lowered without his being conscious of this fact; the weapon hung in his hand.... His eyes were fixed on Faith's head, on the part in her hair.... She wore an old, tortoise comb, stuck downward into the hair at the back of her head, its top projecting upward.... A singular, old-fashioned little ornament.... There was a silver mounting on it; and the light glistened on this silver, and caught Noll's eye, and held it....

Faith continued her quiet sewing. And Noll's tense muscles, little by little, relaxed.... His fingers loosed their grip on the revolver b.u.t.t; it dropped to the floor with a clatter. The sound seemed to rouse Noll; he strode toward Faith. "By G.o.d," he cried. "You'll...." He swung down a hand and gathered the fabric of her work between harsh fingers. Her needle was in the midst of a st.i.tch; it p.r.i.c.ked him.... He did not feel the tiny wound. He would have s.n.a.t.c.hed the stuff out of her hands.... He felt as though it were defending her....

But when his hand swept down between hers and caught the bit of embroidery, Faith looked up at him again, and she caught his eyes. That halted him; he stood for an instant motionless, bending above her, their faces not six inches apart.... Then the man jerked his hand away.... He released his grip on the bit of fancy work; but the needle was deep in his finger, so that he pulled it out of the cloth. The thread followed it; when his quick movement drew the thread to full length, the fabric was jerked out of Faith's unresisting hands. It dangled by the thread from the needle that stuck in Noll's finger; and he saw it, and jerked the needle out with a quick, spasmodic gesture, and flung it to one side. He did not look at it; he was looking, still, at Faith.

"Put that away," he said hoa.r.s.ely.

Faith smiled, glanced toward the bit of white upon the floor. "I'm afraid there's blood on it," she said.

"Blood ..." he repeated, under his breath. "Blood...." She folded her hands quietly upon her knee, waiting.

"I want to talk to you," he said.

She nodded. "All right. Do."

His wrath boiled through his lips chokingly. "You ..." he stammered.

"You and Brander...."

Her eyes, upon his, hardened. She said nothing; but this hardening of her eyes was like a defiance. He flung his hands above his head. "By G.o.d, you're shameless," he choked. "You're shameless.... A shameless woman.... And him.... I took him out of a h.e.l.l hole.... And he takes you.... I'll break him in two with my hands."

She said nothing; he flung into an insanity of words. He cursed her unspeakably, with every evil phrase he had learned in close to thirty years of the sea. He accused her of unnamable things.... His face swelled with his fury, the veins bulged upon his forehead, his eyes were covered with a dry film. His mouth filled with saliva, that splattered with the venom of his words.... It ran down his chin, so that he brushed it away with the back of his hand.... He was uncontrolled, save in one thing. Something made him hush his voice; he whispered harshly and chokingly.... What he said could scarce have been heard in the main cabin, six feet away from them....

The man was slavering; there were flecks of foam upon his lips.... And Faith watched him in a curious detachment, as though he were something outside the world, below it, beyond it.... She scarce heard his words at all; she was looking at the man's naked soul.... It was so inexpressibly revolting that she had no feeling that this soul had once been wedded to hers; she could not have believed this if she had tried. This was no man, but a beast.... There could be nothing between them. She had married Noll Wing; not the body of him, nor the face of him, but the soul within the man. And this was not Noll Wing's soul she saw.... That was dead; this horrible thing had bred festeringly in the carrion....

Humanity has an immense capacity for rising to an emergency. The human heart sustains a grief that should kill; it throws this grief aside and is--save for a hidden scar--as gay as it was in the beginning. Man meets peril or death, meets them unafraid.... If he had considered these emergencies in the calm and security of his home, his hair would have crawled with terror at the thought of them. The imagination can conjure dreadful things; the heart and soul and body of man can endure catastrophes beyond imagining. There is no load too heavy for this immortally designed fabric of flesh and blood and bone to bear. There is a psychological phenomenon that might be called the duplication of personality. A soldier in battle becomes two men. One of these men is convulsed with l.u.s.t for blood; he screams, he shoots, he stabs, he kills. The other is calm and serene; he watches the doings of his other self, considers them with calm mind, plans perilous combinations in the twinkling of an eye.... The soldier contains within himself a general who plans, and an army which executes the plan....

It was so with Faith. She shrank in spirit and heart before Noll's horrible outpouring; yet was she at the same time steady and undisturbed. There was a numbness upon her; a numbness that killed suffering and at the same time stimulated thought.... She was able to perceive the very depths of Noll; she looked, at the same time, into her own depths.... She heard him accuse her of foul pa.s.sion for Brander; she knew, instead, that she loved Brander completely.... She had never known her love for Brander before; Noll showed it to her, dragged it out where she could see it beyond mistaking.... And even in that moment she welcomed this love; welcomed it, and saw that it was honest, and wholesome, and splendid, and clean.... She welcomed it, so that she smiled....

Her smile struck Noll like a blow in the face, stunning and sobering him. He flung out his hands.

"Come!" he commanded. "What do you say? Say something? Say...."

"What?" she asked. "What shall I say?"

"Is it true? d.a.m.n you.... d.a.m.n you.... Is it true?"

"Could I say anything you would believe?"

"No, by G.o.d! You're dirty and false as h.e.l.l. You...." He struck his hands together helplessly. "Nothing," he cried. "Nothing! Nothing you can say.... Dirty as h.e.l.l...."

Yet his eyes still besought her to speak; she touched the bench beside her. "Sit down, Noll," she said gently.

The man towered above her, hands upraised. His fingers twisted and writhed and clenched as though upon a soft throat that he gripped. His features worked terribly.... And then, before her eyes, a change came upon him. The tense muscles of his fury sagged; the blood ebbed from his veins, so that they flattened; the black flush faded on his cheeks....

He opened his mouth and screamed once, a vast and stricken scream of a beast in pain. It was like the scream of a frightened, anguished horse.... It rang along the length of the _Sally_, so that the men forward shrank and looked over their shoulders, and every man aboard the ship was still....

He screamed, and then his great body shrank and collapsed and tottered and fell.... He dropped upon his knees, at her feet. He flung his head in her lap, his arms about her waist, clinging as a drowning man might cling to a rock. His cap dropped off; she saw his bald old head there.... He sobbed like a child, his great shoulders twitching and heaving.... His face was pressed upon her clasped hands; she felt his tears upon her wrists, felt the slaverings of his sobbing mouth upon her fingers....

He cried softly: "Eh, Faith.... Faith.... Don't you turn against me, now. I'm old, Faith...." And again: "I'm old, Faith.... Dying, Faith....

Don't leave me.... Don't turn against me now."

She bent above him, filled with an infinite pity and sorrow. This was the wreck of her love; she no longer loved him, but her heart was filled with sorrow.... She bent forward and laid her smooth cheek against the smooth parchment of his bald old head. She loosed her hands, and drew them out from beneath his face, and laid them on his shoulders, stroking him gently.

"There, Noll.... There ..." she murmured. Foolish words, meaningless, like the comforting sounds of an inarticulate animal.... Yet he understood. There were no words for what was in her heart; she could only whisper: "There.... There.... There...." And gently touch his shoulders, and his head.

"They're all against me, Faith," he told her, over and over. "All against me. Even you...."

"No, no, Noll. There...."

"You love him.... You love him."

"No, Noll. No...." She lied, not to deceive her husband, but to comfort him. Her eyes, above Noll's head, seemed to ask her love's pardon for the lie. "No, Noll.... You're my husband."

His arms tightened about her waist; his great chest pressed against her knees. "You're mine," he begged. "You're mine. Don't go away from me."

"No. Never.... Never, forever."

He raised his face from her lap at last; and she saw that it was sunken like the countenance of one long dead. Cadaverous.... He cried, in utter self-abas.e.m.e.nt. "Eh, Faith. I don't deserve you. I'm an old, helpless man...."

She smiled at him. "I married you, Noll."

"I'm no good. They're laughing at me...."

Her eyes heartened him. "Master them. Command them. You are the master, Noll."

"I can't.... There's no strength in me...."

"It's there. Master them, Noll."

"I can't hold myself, Faith. Not even myself. I'm rotted with whiskey, and years, and strife...."

"Master yourself, Noll."

"Faith, Faith.... It's too late. I'm gone. I can't."

"You can," she said. She spoke the two words quietly; yet somehow they gave him of her strength, so that his head lifted higher, and the muscles took form beneath his slack cheeks. He stared into her eyes, as though he were drinking her soul through them; his chest swelled as though virtue were going into him. They sat thus, minutes on end.... He got to his feet. His eyes cleared, with the tempestuous and short-lived fire of age in their depths. He swore:

"By G.o.d, Faith. I will. I'll command.... Myself and them."

"You can," she said again. "You can. So--do, Noll."

He turned away from her, looking about with new eyes.... She smiled sadly; she knew him too well, now.... She was not surprised when his first act was to go to the lockfast and get his bottle, and drink.... He smacked his lips, chuckled at her.

"By G.o.d, Faith, I'll show these dogs," he cried, and flung open the door. She heard him go out and climb up to the deck.... She sat where he had left her....

Sat there, and knew her love for Brander. In those minutes while she remained where Noll had seen her last, she listened to the singing of new voices in her heart. Brander was before her, in her eyes, in her thoughts.... He possessed her, in that moment, more completely than Noll had ever done. She gave herself to him completely, without reluctance and without faintest reservation. No need to see him, no need to tell him. She knew, he must know.... She never asked whether he loved her; she had always known that. Known it without admitting the knowledge, even in her thoughts. She loved him, body and heart and soul; her eyes yearned for his, her tongue to tell him what her heart was singing, her arms to embrace him....

She got up, at last, a little wearily.... It was only a matter of minutes that she sat there, looking within herself. When she listened, now, she could hear Noll's voice, on deck, roaring in the old way....