Part 28 (1/2)
Perhaps I shall never get back. And n.o.body writes to me. No letters. So, while I am here, you understand?”
He remained bent over her, his head lost in the darkness of the little recess, waiting for a reply which did not come. And he thought, going away to the binnacle again:
”She is right. n.o.body can excuse themselves in a case like this. The only way is to say nothing at all.”
He did not go near her for a long while. Then an idea came to him, so simple he wondered he had not thought of it before. He was not making the most of the situation. He glanced back at the helmsman. He was far back, behind the steering wheel, and the faint glow of the binnacle lamp was screened by a canvas hood. Mr. Spokesly bent over the girl again.
”You do not believe me?” he muttered. ”You think I am not sincere? You think I would leave you?”
He leaned closer, watching her bright deriding eyes, and she nodded.
”Ah yes,” she sighed. ”By and by you would go.”
”You think because other men do that ... you think...?”
She nodded emphatically.
”... all men alike?” he finished lamely.
”They are!” she said quickly and laid her head against his shoulder for a moment with a faint chuckle of laughter.
”All right,” he whispered gravely, ”they are, as you say. But when we get ash.o.r.e in Athens, we will get married. Now then....”
His tone was low but triumphant. She could have no reply to that. It swept away all doubts in his own mind: and he thought her mind was like his own, a lumber room of old-fas.h.i.+oned, very dusty conventions and ideals. If he married her she must be convinced of his sincerity. It did not occur to him that women are not interested very much in the sincerity of a man, that he can be as unfaithful as he likes if he fulfills her conception of beauty and power and genius, that a woman like Evanthia might have a different notion of marriage from his own.
And she did not reply. He moved away from her, up-lifted by the mood of the moment. There could be no reply to that save surrender, he thought proudly.
And Evanthia was astonished. She sat there in the darkness, bound upon a journey which would bring her, she believed, to the amiable and faithless creature who had touched her imagination and who embodied for her all the gaiety and elegance of Europe. And this other man, a man of a distant, truculent, and predatory race, a race engaged in the destruction of European civilization as a sacrifice to their own little tribal G.o.d (which was the way Lietherthal had explained it to her) was proposing to marry her. It bereft her of speech because she was busy coordinating in her swift, shrewd mind all the advantages of such a scheme. There was an allurement in it, too. Her imagination was caught by the sudden vision of herself as the chatelaine of a villa. Yes! Her eyes sparkled as she figured it. He came towards her again and, leaning over, buried his face in the clean fresh fragrance of her hair. She remembered that magical moment by the White Tower when he had transcended his destiny and muttered hoa.r.s.ely that he would go to h.e.l.l for her. She put the question to herself with terrible directness--could she hold him? Could she exercise the mysterious power of her s.e.x upon him as upon men of her own race? She closed her eyes and sought blindly for an accession of strength in this crisis of her life. She put her arms up and felt his hand on her face. And then, giving way to an obscure and primitive impulse, she buried her teeth in his wrist. And for a long while they remained there, two undisciplined hearts, voyaging through a perilous darkness together.
CHAPTER XIV
Mr. Spokesly, looking down from the bridge at the up-turned and uncompromising face of Joseph Plouff, frowned.
”What does he say?” he repeated uneasily.
”He says keep the course.”
”You gave him the note?”
”No, he didn't open the door. He just said, to keep the course. I said 'You mean, don't alter it, Captinne?' and he said, 'No.'”
Plouff handed up the note Mr. Spokesly had given him, and the puzzled chief officer took it and opened it, as though he had forgotten or was uncertain of its contents. But before he read it afresh, he took a look round. This told him nothing for he was entirely lost in a white fog that rolled and swirled in slow undulating billows athwart the s.h.i.+p's bows. For four hours he had been going through this and the captain had not made his appearance on the bridge. Each time had come up the same message, to keep the course. And at last Mr. Spokesly had written a little note. He had torn a page out of the sc.r.a.p-log and written these words:
TO CAPTAIN RANNIE
SIR,
We have run our distance over this course. Please give bearer your orders. Weather very thick.
R. SPOKESLY. Mate.