Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories Part 21

All through his long swim to sh.o.r.e, all through the horrors of that November night and the long-drawn pain of the succeeding days, he had done his duty with a steady impa.s.siveness which was in keeping with the square jaw, the resolute eyes, the firm and merciful lips of the man; but he had only thought of Mary Dixon. His one thought was that this must break her heart.

It was this thought that made him hard and impa.s.sive. In the great office in London he was received gravely. With a dull surprise he noted a quiver in the lips of the managing director when he shook hands. The great business man looked older and smaller and thinner in this short time, for it is a terrible thing to have to deal in human lives, even if you are paid heavily for so doing.

"There will be an official inquiry--you will have to face it, Stoke."

"Yes," he answered, almost indifferently.

"And there is Dixon's wife. You will have to go and see her. I have been. She stays at home and takes her punishment quietly, unlike some of them."

And two hours later he was waiting for Mary Dixon in the little drawing-room of the house in a Kentish village which he had helped Dixon to furnish for her. She did not keep him long, and when she came into the room he drew a sharp breath; but he had nothing to say to her. She was tall and strongly made, with fair hair and delicate colouring.

She had no children, though she had been married six years, and Nature seemed to have designed her to be the mother of strong, quiet men.

Stoke looked into her eyes, and immediately the expectant look came into them. There was something else behind it, a sort of veiled light.

"It was kind of you to come so soon," she said, taking a chair by the fireside. There was only one lamp in the room, and its light scarcely reached her face.

But for all the good he did in coming it would seem that he might as well have stayed away, for he had no comfort to offer her. He drew forward a chair and sat down with that square slowness of movement which is natural to the limbs of men who deal exclusively with Nature and action, and he looked into the fire without saying a word. Again it was she who spoke, and her words surprised the man, who had only dealt with women at sea, where women are not seen at their best.

"I do not want you to grieve for me," she said quietly. "You have enough trouble of your own without thinking of me. You have lost your friend and your ship."

He made a little movement of the lips, and glanced at her slowly, holding his lip between his teeth as he was wont to hold it during the moments of suspense before letting go the anchors in a crowded roadstead as he stood at his post on the forecastle-head awaiting the captain's signal. She was the first to divine what the ship had been to him. Her eyes were waiting for his. They were alight with a gentle glow, which he took to be pity. She spoke calmly, and her voice was always low and quiet. But he was quite sure that her heart was broken, and the thought must have been conveyed to her by the silent messenger that pa.s.ses to and fro between kindred minds. For she immediately took up his thought.

"It is not," she said, rather hurriedly, "as if it would break my heart.

Long ago I used to think it would. I was very proud of him and of his popularity. But--"

And she said no more. But sat with dreaming eyes looking into the fire.

After a long pause she spoke again.

"So you must not grieve for me," she said, returning persistently to her point.

She was quite simple and honest. Hers was that rare wisdom which is given only to the pure in heart; for they see through into the soul of man and sift out the honest from among the false.

It seemed that she had gained her object, for Stoke was visibly relieved. He told her many things which he had withheld from other inquirers. He cleared Dixon's good name from anything but that liability to error which is only human, and spoke of the captain's nerve and steadiness in the hour of danger. Insensibly they lapsed into a low-voiced discussion of Dixon as of the character of a lost friend equally dear to them both.

Then he rose to take his leave before it was really necessary to go in order to catch his train, impatient to meet her eyes--which were waiting for his--for a moment as they said good-bye, as the man who is the slave of a habit waits impatiently for the time when he can give way to it.

He went home to the rooms he always occupied near his club in London.

There he found a number of letters which had been sent on from the steamship company's offices. The first he opened bore the postmark of St. Just in Cornwall. It was from the coastguard captain of that remote western station, and it had been originally posted to St. Keverne.

"Dear Sir," he wrote. "One of your crew or pa.s.sengers has turned up here on foot. He must have been wandering about for nearly a week and is dest.i.tute. At times his mind is unhinged. He began to write a letter, but could not finish it, and gives no name. Please come over and identify him. Meanwhile, I will take good care of him."

Stoke opened the folded paper, which had dropped from the envelope.

"Dear Jack," it began. One or two sentences followed, but there was no sequence or sense in them. The writing was that of Captain Dixon without its characteristic firmness or cohesion.

Stoke glanced at his watch and took up his bag--a new bag hurriedly bought in Falmouth--stuffed full of a few necessities pressed upon him by kind persons at St. Keverne when he stood among them in the clothes in which he had swum ash.o.r.e, which had dried upon him during a long November night. There was just time to catch the night mail to Penzance.

Heaven was kind to him and gave him no time to think.

The coach leaves Penzance at nine in the morning for a two hours'

climb over bare moorland to St. Just--a little grey, remote town on the western sea. The loneliness of the hills is emphasized here and there by the ruin of an abandoned mine. St. Just itself, the very acme of remoteness, is yearly diminishing in importance and population, sending forth her burrowing sons to those places in the world where silver and copper and gold lie hid.

The coastguard captain was awaiting Stoke's arrival in the little deserted square where the Penzance omnibus deposits its pa.s.sengers. The two men shook hands with that subtle and silent fellowship which draws together seamen of all cla.s.ses and all nations. They walked away together in the calm speechlessness of Englishmen thrown together on matters of their daily business.

"He doesn't pick up at all," said the coastguard captain, at length.

"Just sits mum all day. My wife looks after him, but she can't stir him up. If anybody could, she could." And the man walked on, looking straight in front of him with a patient eye. He spoke with unconscious feeling. "He is a gentleman, despite the clothes he came ash.o.r.e in.

Getting across to the Southern States under a cloud, as likely as not,"

he said, presently. "Some bank manager, perhaps. He must have changed clothes with some forecastle hand. They were seaman's clothes, and he had been sleeping or hiding in a ditch."

He led the way to his house, standing apart in the well-kept garden of the station. He opened the door of the simply furnished drawing-room.

"Here is a friend come to see you," he said; and, standing aside, he invited Stoke by a silent gesture of the head to pa.s.s in.

A man was sitting in front of the fire with his back towards the door.

He did not move or turn his head. Stoke closed the door behind him as he entered the room, and went slowly towards the fireplace. Dixon turned and looked at him with shrinking eyes, like the eyes of a dog that has been beaten.

"Let us get out on to the cliffs," he said in a whisper. "We cannot talk here."

He was clean-shaven, and his hair was grizzled at the temples. His face looked oddly weak; for he had an irresolute chin, hitherto hidden by his smart beard. Few would have recognized him.

By way of reply Stoke went back towards the door.

"Come on, then," he said rather curtly.

They did not speak until they had pa.s.sed out beyond the town towards the bare tableland that leads to the sea.

"Couldn't face it, Jack, that's the truth," said the captain, at last.

"And if you or any others try to make me, I'll shoot myself. How many was it? Tell me quickly, man."

"Over a hundred and ninety," replied Stoke.

They walked out on to the bare tableland and sat down on a crumbling wall.

"And what do the papers say? I have not dared to ask for one."

Stoke shrugged his square shoulders.

"What does it matter what they say?" answered the man who had never seen his own name in the newspapers. Perhaps he failed to understand Dixon's point of view.

"Have you seen Mary?" asked the captain.

"Yes."

Then they sat in silence for some minutes. There was a heavy sea running, and the rocks round the Land's End were black in a bed of pure white. The Longship's lighthouse stood up, a grey shadow in a grey scene.

"Come," said Stoke. "Be a man and face it."

There was no answer, and the speaker sat staring across the lashed waters to the west, his square chin thrust forward, his resolute lips pressed, his eyes impa.s.sive. There was obviously only one course through life for this seaman--the straight one.