Chapter VI: Part FOUR: The Open Boat (3)

Bellair did try to lean back. One by one, the sheathes of will power that he had integrated in the past ten days relaxed. It was strange to feel them go. They had come hard, and they were correspondingly slow to ease in their grip. He had to be told again and again--to be helped to rest. It was good to think that a man does not lose such hard-won strength more easily than it comes--that one, in fact, has to use the same force to relax with. It was all delightful, this friendliness, the ease of his body, and the giving--the giving into human arms of great kindliness, and the sense of the others being cared for similarly. They had fixed a berth for him, when he said:

“You know we are to be together to-night. It was a compact between us----”

The surgeon was out and in. It occurred to Bellair that he was attending the other two.... He repeated his wish to the surgeon about joining the others as soon as possible.

“They’re all alike,” the latter said. “They’re all thinking about getting together again.... Good God, man, you’ve had ten days of steady company. You ought to sleep----”

“It is a compact between us.... Is he--is he?”

It came to Bellair that this man might be able to tell him the truth, but the surgeon was now at the door speaking to one of the Germans. He vanished without turning....

* * * * *

They were together later in one of the empty cabins of the German liner, _Fomalhaut_, bound for Auckland; and only the American doctor came and went. The child was asleep in the berth beside Fleury. The two others sat near.

The extraordinary moonlight of the night before, when Bellair had awakened to find the preacher at prayer, had left the spirit of its radiance upon Fleury’s face. It was there now--and such a different face from which his eyes, falsified by New York, had seen at first. This was the real Fleury--this lean, dark, white-toothed gamester, features touched by some immortal glow from that orient moon; whose smile and the quality of every word and gesture, had for him a gleam of inspiration and the nobility of tenderness. The man had risen in Fleury--that was the secret. And this that had risen in Fleury could not die.

But the flesh was dying. Bellair had known it in the dusk while the steamer neared. He knew that the woman understood--from her face which leaned toward the berth continually, from the suffering in her eyes and the dilation of sensitive nostrils.... For ten days, as much as he could, Fleury had betrayed himself. Custodian of the food and water, he had served them well. And that day of the Stackhouse passing--if it were not all a hideous dream, as Bellair fancied at times--he had not given a balance of strength that had not returned, to fight off the will of the Intruder.

The flesh was dying, but this that had risen in Fleury could not die. Their other companion had gone down, clothed in hair and filth and the desire of a beast, taking the remnant of the man with it.

Thus it had come to Bellair--the vivid contrast of cavern and high noon. It was all in the two deaths, the enactment of the second, as yet unfinished.... New York and all life moved with countless tricks and lures to make a man lose his way, lose his chance to rise and die with grace like this. New York was like one vast Lot & Company.

Fleury’s head was upon the knees of the woman. Bellair had not seen her take him. For this last hour, the three were as one. There was a cry from Bellair that the woman heard all her days:

“Oh, Fleury, do you have to go?”

So far as time measures, the silence was long before Fleury answered, and then only to say:

“Take my hand, Bellair.”

He came up from a deep dream to obey. It had been as if he were out under the stars again,--Fleury talking from the shadows near the woman--the rest, vastness and starlight.

“It’s the _too-great_ light, Bellair. It came when I could stand it. As soon as I could love you enough I could pray. It is the loss of the sense of self that made it wonderful. The Light and His voice came from ahead.

“‘_I am here for those who look ahead, and for those who turn back two thousand years, I am there. Those who love one another find me swiftly._’... This is dying of happiness.”

In the silence, the low lights of the cabin came back for their eyes. They heard him say at the last:

“... I love you both and respect and thank you both. We found our happiness in the open boat.... And Bellair, when you go back to New York, do not stay too long. It is right for you to go, but do not stay too long.... And dear Bellair--always follow the Gleam.”

The Doctor came. It was his step in the passage that roused them. He bent to the face, then searched the eyes of the woman. She could not find his.... Bellair was puzzled. The head was in her lap, yet the preacher seemed behind them, and still with something to say. They were not sure at first that it was the Doctor who asked:

“Why did you not call me?”

He repeated the question.

“He told us--you would come afterward,” Bellair said in a dazed way.

“Yes, he wanted it so,” said the woman.

The Doctor stared at them. “Are you two going to pull off anything further to-night, or are you going to get the rest you need, and attend to the nourishment you need?”

“We’re under orders now, Doctor,” said Bellair....

“If I should want him in the night--if I should be frightened, you would let him come?”

It was the Faraway Woman who asked this of the Doctor, her hand touching Bellair’s sleeve.

“Why, of course,” the Doctor answered quickly.

“We’ve been together in strange things,” Bellair explained. “And now you see, our friend is gone.”

* * * * *

The door was open between their cabins, but Bellair was not called. Once he heard the child cry, but it was quickly hushed.... He thought it must be near morning at last, and went on deck. He was not suffering, except from lassitude, deep languor and numbing strangeness that Fleury was not near him--that the woman was not sitting in her place forward.... It was just after midnight, the moon still high, the weather the same. ... He was not seen. Three men were seated smoking in the lee of one of the engine-room funnels, the light from the dining-saloon on their knees. The Doctor joined them, and said presently:

“... It’s a bit deep for me. They’ve been in an open boat ten days. Old Stackhouse, well-known down here, died of thirst the fourth or fifth day, but these two and the infant have lived through it. The preacher looked all right, but seems to have suffered a fatal case of happiness since we lifted him aboard. The two knew it was coming apparently, and arranged for me to be absent.... It appears that they made a sort of pilgrimage to Mecca out of thirst and starvation, and got away with it----”

Bellair withdrew softly.

In the long next forenoon when he could not rise, he wished he had gone into that open door, when he was on his feet last night. Sometimes half-dreamily he wished he were back in the open boat, because she was always there. Something had taken establishment in his character from that ten days. She had never failed--in light or dark, in the twilights of dawn and evening, in moon and star and sunlight--always there; disclosing leisurely some new aspect of beauty for him. He understood now that one does not begin to see clearly any object until one is attracted to it--that all the cursory _looking at things_ around the world will not bring them home to the full comprehension.

... He could call to her, but it was like telephoning. He had never liked that, and beside he was not the master of his voice. It would not go straight, but lingered in corners, broke pitifully--so that he knew it frightened her--and the meanings in his mind which he could not speak, pressed the tears out of his eyes.... Then there was pain. His body astonished him. He had merely been weak and undone last night, but to-day.... And he knew that she was suffering, not from any sound from her cabin, but because she did not come. Then _they_ had to feed the child. This filled him with a rebellion so sharp that it recalled him to full faculties for a second. He had to smile at his absurdity.

The second day it was the same, but the third Bellair arose; and when she heard his step, her call came. It was still early morning. He found the child before he looked into her face.

“I am ashamed to be so weak,” she said. “But to-day--a little later--he said I could rise. We are to be on deck for a half-hour after dinner, he told me.”

“The little Gleam----” said Bellair....

She was whiter, more emaciated than when they sighted the _Fomalhaut_. There had been a crisis that they had not expected in the relinquishment of their will-powers.... Yet he saw how perfectly her face was fashioned.... Her hand came up to him, warm from the child, the sleeve falling back to her shoulder--held toward him, palm upward. As he took it, all strangeness and embarrassment left him, and he was something that he had not been for five years, something from the Unknowable. But that was not all. He looked into her eyes and met something untellably familiar there.

A most memorable moment to Bellair.

* * * * *

They were on deck together in the afternoon, the American doctor helping them. They heard sacred music--as he walked between them aft. They reached the rail of the promenade overlooking the main-deck.... A service was being intoned in German. Passengers and crew were below, and in the midst--leaded and sewn in canvas, in the cover of a flag----

The sound that came from the woman was not to be interpreted. She turned and left them. Bellair would have followed but he felt a courtesy due the Doctor, who had arranged for them not to miss the ceremony. Perhaps he had held the ceremony until they could leave the cabin. Yet Bellair had already turned away.

“Good God----” said the American. “You people have got me stopped. I thought this was a trinity outfit--that we picked up.”

Bellair took his hand. “It was--but our friend left us.”

The Doctor glanced at him curiously, and pointed down to the body already upon the rail. “I suppose _that_ has nothing to do with him?” he remarked.

“Not now--not to watch,” said Bellair.

“I’ll understand you sometime,” the other added. “Go to her. You’ll probably find her waiting for you forward.”

* * * * *

Bellair lay in his berth that night, the open door between, and he thought of that first real look that had passed between them. “I’m not just right yet from the open boat,” he reflected. “I’m all let down from starvation, a bit wild with dreams and visions, but I saw old joys there and old tragedies, and mountains and deserts and--most of all, partings. I wonder what I’ve got to do with them all? It seemed to me that I belonged to some of those partings--as if I had hungered with her before and belonged to her now--and yet----”

Fleury came into his thoughts. “They were certainly great together. It seemed to me that I did not belong when they were together; and yet, this morning as I looked down at her--well, something of expectancy was there----”

Bellair found himself lying almost rigid in the intensity of his hope. Then his thoughts whirled back to New York--all unfinished. There was something in his heart for Bessie--and something in the wallet for Bessie. That was in the original conception, and he must not fail in that; and then he must clean that name, Bellair, from the black mark Lot & Company had traced across it. For a moment he fell to wondering just how he would go about that. Lot & Company was tight and hard to move.... A moment later he was somewhere in an evil and crowded part of New York, in the dark, Davy Acton holding him fast by the hand.

“... something of expectancy.”... Was it in her eyes, or in her lips? Her whole face came to him now, a picture as clear as life. He had dwelt upon her eyes before--and that billowy softness of her breast, as she lay--he had not thought of that. It was like something one says to another of such moment, that only the meaning goes home--the words not remembered until afterward. And her mouth--it was like a girl’s, like a mother’s too, so tender and _expectant_. ... That word thrilled him. It was the key to it all.

He was farther and farther from sleep--listening at last with such intensity that it seemed she must call.