IV
NORTHWARD
Not since her change of faith–never in fact–had Elinor Marshall listened to such open abuse of a sacred institution. And the memory of it kept her wide awake during a portion of the night.
Although she had decided to ignore that argument of the printing-press and bath-tub, it wormed itself into the inner chambers of her brain; and it refused to make way for better thoughts. As the possessor of a depositic conscience she suffered the miseries of guilt. For despite all reasoning of her own, she began to feel that unless those arguments were refuted, her faith might suffer: and, with her, an untarnished faith was vital.
The motion of her berth, the rhythmic pounding of the engines, the muffled sound, at intervals, of feet upon the deck, all were soothing; but the remembrance of that discussion, with its mortifying climax, made sleep impossible. This childish sensitiveness she fully realized,–and despised,–but nerves achieved an easy victory over reason.
She was glad when daylight came. Long before the breakfast hour she left her state-room and sought the deck for fresh air, and for Father Burke. He, also an early riser, was discovered in the lee of the upper cabins, his little prayer-book in his hand. Sitting close beside him she gave, in detail, the story of her conversation with Mr. Boyd. It was in the nature of a confession, but delivered in the hope and in the faith of the enemy’s discomfiture. She felt, of course, that the statements concerning the press and tub were false and foolish, and she knew that Father Burke could tell her why.
Her confidence was not misplaced. This was not the first time Father Burke had been called upon to stiffen the faith of wavering converts. Considerable experience and a perfect familiarity with the subject rendered the task an easy one. The tones of Father Burke’s voice were, in themselves, almost sufficient for the purpose. Deep, calm, mellow, ravishingly sympathetic, they played like celestial zephyrs upon the chords of the maiden’s heart. They filled the inmost recesses of her soul with security and peace. His arguments were the old, familiar things, considerably damaged by Protestants and other heretics; but he knew his audience. And when the spell had worked, when the wings beside him ceased to flutter, he drove the final bolt.
“You know, my child, that the value of a statement depends largely upon the character of him who utters it. I have no desire to injure this young man, nor to prejudice you in any way against him. But it is clearly my duty to warn you that he is not a person with whom it would be safe for you to permit a very close acquaintance.”
“You need have no anxiety on that point.”
“I am very glad to hear it.”
“But tell me what you know about him, Father Burke. His family never mentions his name, and I supposed there was something to conceal. Was it anything very bad?”
“Yes, bad enough. He is a wilful man, of a perverse and violent temper. His utterances of yesterday are in perfect accord with the spirit he displayed in youth. He broke his father’s heart.”
“From his face one would never suspect that part of it–the violent temper. He appears to be a person of unusual cheerfulness and serenity,–most offensively serene at times.”
“Very possible, my child. One of the hardest things to learn, and we seldom achieve it in youth, is that outward appearances often bear no relation to the inner man,–that the most inviting face can hide a vicious nature.”
“Do you really think him a bad man? I mean thoroughly unprincipled and wicked? I don’t like him, but somehow it doesn’t seem as if he could be utterly bad, with such a face.”
“Ah, my daughter, be on your guard against those very things! Heed the voice of experience. Remember his career.”
“But what especial thing did he do? What drove him away from home?”
“In a fit of temper he tried to kill his father.”
“Really!”
“As an old friend of the family, I knew the circumstances.”
“Awful! How did it happen?”
“They were in the garden in an arbor, engaged in a controversy. In his anger he struck the old gentleman and knocked him down, and would have killed him had not others interfered.”
A silence followed, not broken by Father Burke. He desired his listener to realize the iniquity of the deed.
At last she inquired half timidly:
“And there was no provocation?”
“None whatever.”
After another pause she said, reflectively:
“The father had a temper too, I fancy, from what I know of him.”
Toward the face beside him the priest cast a sidelong look, which was detected.
“I am not defending the son,” she said hastily. “Heaven forbid! I almost hate him. But you must admit that the father was not an especially lovable character, nor very gentle in his ways.”
“He had his faults, like the rest of us; but he was a rare man,–a religious man of deep convictions, and the soul of honor.”
“Yes, I suppose so, but I was always afraid of him.”
Father Burke laid his hand on her arm and said, very gently but with unusual seriousness:
“I should regret exceedingly, my child, to have you listen to the flippant sacrilege of this young man, or be subjected to his influence in any way.”
“There is no cause for alarm. I shall have as little to do with him as possible.”
“An excellent resolve. And now, will you grant me a request?”
“Certainly.”
“I have no right to exact a promise. I only suggest that while on this boat you avoid, as far as possible, his companionship.”
“I promise.”
They both arose. His voice and manner were always impressive, even in ordinary conversation. But now a moisture gathered in the maiden’s eyes as he gazed benignly into her face, and murmured in tones tremulous with feeling:
“May Heaven bless you, my daughter, for your noble spirit, and for your unswerving devotion to a holy cause.”
Then they went below to breakfast.
The girl was hungry; Father Burke was not. The undulations of the boat so tempered his appetite that food had lost its charm. A cup of tea and a bite of toast were the limits of his endeavor. Even these descended under protest and threatened to return. When the heretic–the victim of the plot–appeared soon after and took his seat at the table, he noticed that the greetings he received, while friendly and all that etiquette required, were less cordial than on the day before.
And this was emphasized later, when he joined Miss Marshall on the deck. After a moment’s conversation, she spoke of letters to be written, and went below.
And once again, to make sure that this disgrace was no fancy of his own, he approached her as she sat reading, or at least, with a book in her hand. In his best and most easy manner, he inquired:
“Did you ever hear of the Magdalen Islands, Miss Marshall?”
She looked up, and nodded pleasantly.
“Well, we are passing them now.”
“Indeed!”
“They are off there to the westward, between twenty and thirty miles away, but out of sight, of course.”
Amiably she inclined her head in recognition of the news, but made no reply.
It began to be awkward for Pats. But he resolved to suppress any outward manifestations of that state. This task was all the harder, as his legs embarrassed him. He knew them to be thin,–of a thinness that was startling and unprecedented,–and now, as he confronted the northeast wind, their shrunken and ridiculous outlines were cruelly exposed. He was sensitive about these members, and he thought she had glanced furtively in their direction. However, with his usual buoyancy he continued:
“And now we leave land behind us until we reach the northern shore of the Gulf.”
“Yes?”
Although she gazed pensively over the water, and with conspicuous amiability, something seemed to suggest that the present conversation had reached a natural end. So the skeleton moved away.
With Pats a hint was enough. During the remainder of the voyage, at meals, and the few occasions on which he met the lady, he also was genial and outwardly undisturbed; but he took every care that she should be subjected to no annoyance from his companionship. This outward calmness, however, bore no resemblance to his inward tribulation. Such was his desire for her good opinion that this sudden plunge from favor to disgrace–or at least, to a frigid toleration–brought a keen distress. Moreover, he was mortified at having allowed himself, under any pretext, to jeer at her religion.
“Ass, ass! Impossible ass!” he muttered a dozen times that day.
Meanwhile, the Maid of the North was driving steadily along, always to the north and east. On the morning of the second day her passengers had caught glimpses, to the larboard, of the shores of Nova Scotia. Later they rounded Cape Breton, and then, against a howling wind and a choppy sea, headed north into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Maid of the North was a sturdy boat, and though she pitched and tossed in a way that disarranged the mechanism of her passengers, she did nothing to destroy their confidence.
It was the evening of this last day of the voyage, when Pats, feeling the need of companionship in his misery, descended for a final interview with Solomon. Through a dismal part of the steamer he groped his way, until his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. Solomon heard his step and knew him from afar. He whined, pulled hard at his chain, and stood up on his hind legs, waving his front ones in excited welcome.
“There is somebody glad to see me, anyway,” thought Pats, as he sat on an anchor bar with the dog’s head between his knees. There had always been more or less conversation between these two: not that Solomon understood the exact meaning of all the words, but he did thoroughly understand that trust and affection formed the bulk of the sentiments expressed. And these things being the basis of Solomon’s character rendered him a sympathetic and grateful listener. The monologue, address, oration, confidence–or whatever–was delivered in a low tone, accompanied by strokings of the listener’s head, taps, friendly pinches, and wandering of fingers about the ears.
“Bad place for a dog, old chap. Lots of motion here, and smells, but ’twill soon be over. So cheer up. Any way, you are lots better off than I am. In a single interview I have secured the contempt of an exceptionally fine woman. Yes, your Pats has done well.”
He smiled in the darkness, a melancholy smile.
“She probably told everything to the priest, and he has explained to her satisfaction wherein I am a fool,–a malicious, blaspheming, dangerous villain, and a stupendous ass. And he is right. Perhaps, in time,–a long time,–I may learn that insulting people’s religion isn’t the shortest road to popularity.”
In his abstraction the hand, for an instant, was withdrawn. Solomon protested, and the attentions were resumed. “Keep still, old man, I am not going. And don’t get that chain around your legs. But she is a fine girl, Sol: too fine, perhaps. Just a little, wee bit too everlastingly high-minded and superior for ordinary dogs like us.”
While administering these pearls of wisdom the speaker had become interested in two approaching figures, dimly visible in the obscurity. As they came nearer, he saw that one, the older of the two, a man with gray chin whiskers and a blue jersey, was drunk. This man stopped, and holding the other by the arm exclaimed:
“It’s so, damn it! It’s so, I tell yer! What’s he doin’ this minute? He’s blind drunk in his cabin. Why, the jag on him would sink a man-o’-war. Oh, he’s a daisy cap’n, he is! He’s the champion navigator.”
“He’ll be all right in the mornin’.”
“All right in the mornin’! It’ll be a week! And where’ll we be to-morrer mornin’? Where are we–hic–now? God knows, and he ain’t tellin’.”
With a maudlin gesture and a reverberating hiccup, the speaker, following the motion of the boat, pushed his friend against the wall and held him there. “I’ll tell yer where we are; we are more’n fifty miles east of where we think we are. We ain’t sighted Anticosti yet. And we ain’t goin’ to.”
The other man laughed, “Oh, shut up, Bart. You are gettin’ a jag on yerself.”
“Yes, sir! We are fifty miles too far to easterd now, and by to-morrer mornin’ it’ll be a hundred miles.”
They passed on, the older man still holding forth. “I’ve been this cruise a dozen times, but, by God! this is the first time I ever tried to get there by–hic–headin’ for Labrador.”
They disappeared in the darkness, in the direction of the forecastle, the sound of their footsteps dying away among the other noises of the boat.
Here was food for thought. But, then, the man was exceeding drunk. And his companion, who probably knew him well, paid no attention to his words. However, Pats took a look about the boat when he got on deck. The pilot and second officer were in the wheelhouse, both silent, serious, and attending to their duty. The watches were all at their posts and the Maid of the North was ploughing bravely through the night as if she, at least, had no misgivings. By the time Pats went to bed, an hour later, the drunken sailor was forgotten.
It was a long time before he slept; and the sleep, when it came, was fitful. Perhaps he had brooded too much over his fall from grace. As the night wore on he was not sure, half the time, whether he was dreaming or awake. And so eventful were his slumbers, and so real the events therein, that his dreams and his waking moments became painfully intermingled. As, for instance, when he entered the cathedral. For a moment he stood still, overcome by its vastness and by the size of the congregation. Truly an imposing assemblage! And the great edifice was ablaze with light. A wedding, apparently, for there, before the altar, stood the bride, awaiting the groom.
As Pats sauntered up the nave she turned about and smiled. And, lo! it was Miss Marshall, more beautiful than ever, more stately and more patrician, if possible, than in her travelling dress. For now she was all in white with a long veil–and orange blossoms. She smiled at him and beckoned.
Yes! He was to be the groom! It was for him they waited!
He strove to get ahead. His feet refused to budge. The harder he tried, the tighter he stuck. He opened his mouth to explain, but no sound came forth. Again and again he tried. Again and again he failed. The huge congregation began to murmur and he could hear them whispering, “What a fool!”
Then, from behind him came three men: Billy Townsend, the man with the nose, and the other fellow with the flowers. They walked by him, easily, all in wedding array, and they lined up by the bride. Pats tried to raise his voice and stop it, but in vain. The Pope stepped forward and performed the ceremony, uniting them all in marriage. The four bowed their heads and received a blessing.
And when the happy grooms with their bride came down the main aisle, they gave Pats a look,–a look so triumphant and so contemptuous, that it set his soul afire. He boiled with fury and humiliation. But stir he could not, nor speak. The bride’s contempt, and she showed it, was beyond endurance. Gasping with passion, he tried to rush forward and smite the grooms–to scream–to do anything. But he could only stand–immovable.
Suddenly the music changed. From a stately march it galloped into the air of a comic song that he had always hated. The Pope, as he marched by, stopped in front of him and cursed him for a Protestant. And now, beneath the jewelled tiara, Pats recognized the drunken old sailor with the chin beard.
But in the midst of these curses came tremendous blows against the outer walls, resounding through the whole interior of the Cathedral; then an awful voice, as from The Almighty, reverberated down the aisle:
“Time to get up! We are there!”
The martyr, in the violence of his struggle, banged his head against the berth above, and shouted:
“Where?”
“At Boyd’s Island, sir, where you get off.”