The Harbor of Doubt

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SIREN

He saw the glad smile on her lips, the light in her great, lustrous, dark eyes, and the beauty of her faultless body, and yet they all faded to nothing beside the astounding and inexplicable fact that she was in the mystery schooner.

“You here!” he gasped, taking her hands in his big rough ones and gripping them tight. The impulse to draw her to him in an embrace was almost irresistible, for not only was she lovely in the extreme, but she was from Freekirk Head and home, and his soul had been starved with loneliness and the ceaseless repetition of his own thoughts.

“Yes,” she replied in her gentle voice, “I am here. You are surprised?”

“That hardly expresses it,” he returned. “So many things have happened to-day that I expect anything now.”

“Come, let us go in,” she said, and led him through a doorway that connected with an adjoining room. In the center of it was a small table laid with linen and furnished with glittering silver and glass. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

“You know fishermen well enough not to ask that,” he laughed, and they sat down. Elsa did not make any tax upon his conversational powers. It was Code himself who first put a pertinent question.

“I take for granted your being here and your living like this,” he said; “but I am bursting with curiosity. How do you happen to be in this schooner?”

“It is my schooner; why shouldn’t I be in it?” she smiled.

“Yours?” He was mystified. “But why should you have a vessel like this? You never used one before that I know of.”

“True, Code; but I have always loved the sea, and–it amuses me. You remember that sometimes I have been away from Freekirk Head for a month at a time. I have been cruising in this schooner. Once I went nearly as far as Iceland; but that took longer. A woman in my position must do something. I can’t sit up in that great big house alone all the time.”

The intensity with which she said this put a decidedly new face on the matter. It was just like her to be lonely without Jim, he thought. Naturally a woman with all her money must do something.

“But, Elsa,” he protested, “your having the schooner for your own use is all right enough; but why has it always turned up to help me when I needed help most? Really, if I had all the money in the world I could never repay the obligations that you have put me under this summer.”

“I don’t want you to repay me,” she said quietly. “Just the fact that I have helped you and that you appreciate it is enough to make me happy.”

He looked steadily into her brown eyes for a few moments. Then her gaze dropped and a dull flush mounted from her neck until it suffused her face.

He had never seen her look so beautiful. The wealth of her black hair was coiled about the top of her head like a crown, and held in its depths a silver butterfly.

Her gown was Quaker gray in color, and of some soft clinging material that enhanced the lines of her figure. It was an evening gown, and cut just low enough to be at the same time modest and beautiful. Code, without knowing why, admired her taste and told himself that she erred in no particular. Her mode of life was, at the same time, elegant and feminine–exactly suited her.

“You are easily made happy,” he remarked, referring to her last sentence.

“No, I’m not,” she contradicted him seriously. “I am the hardest woman in the world to make happy.”

“And helping me does it?”

“Yes.”

“You are a good woman,” he said gratefully, “and always seem to be doing for others. No one will ever forget how you offered to stand by the women of Grande Mignon while the men went fishing.”

Again Elsa blushed, but this time the color came from a different source. Little did he know that her philanthropy was all a part of the same plan–to win his favor.

“And the things I know you must have done for my mother,” he went on. “Those are the things that I appreciate more than any. It is not every woman who would even think of them, let alone do them.”

Why would he force her into this attitude of perpetual lying? she thought. It was becoming worse and worse. Why was he so straightforward and so blind? Could he not see that she loved him? Was he one of those cold and passionless men upon whom no woman ever exerts an intense influence?

Though she did not know it, she expressed the whole fault in her system. A man reared in a more complex community than a fishing village would have divined her scheme, and the result would have been a prolonged but most delightful duel of wits and hearts.

But Code, by the very directness of his honesty, and simplicity of his nature, cut through the gauzy wrappings of this delectable package and went straight to its heart. And there he found nothing, because what little of the deeply genuine there lay in this woman’s restless nature was disguised and shifted at the will of her caprice.

When Code had experienced the pleasure of lighting a genuine clear Havana cigar after many months of abstinence, she leaned across the table to him, her hands clasped before her.

“Code, what does loneliness represent to you?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he temporized, taken aback. “I don’t go in for loneliness much; but when I do, why all I want is–well, let me see, a good game of quoits with the boys in front of the church, or a talk with my mother about how rich we are going to be some day when I get that partnership in the fishstand. I’m too busy to be lonely.”

“And I’m too lonely to be busy!” He looked at her unbelievingly.

“You!” he cried. “Why, you have everything in the world; you can go anywhere, do anything, have the people about you that you want. You, lonely? I don’t understand you.”

“Well, I’ll put it another way. Did you ever want something so hard that it hurt, and couldn’t get it?”

“Yes, I wanted my father back after he died,” said Code simply.

“And I wanted Jim after he died,” added Elsa. “Those things are bad enough; but one gets used to them. What I mean especially is something we see about us all the time and have no chance of getting. Did you ever want something like that, so that it nearly killed you, and couldn’t get it?”

Code was silent. The one rankling hurt of his whole life, after seemingly being healed, broke out afresh–the engagement of Nat Burns and Nellie Tanner.

He suddenly realized that, since seeing Elsa, he had not as much as remembered Nellie’s existence, when usually her mental presence was not far from him. Elsa, with all her luxury and alluring feminine charms, seemed to cast a spell that bound him helpless like the music in the fairy stories. He liked the spell, and, after all she had done, he confessed to an extraordinary feeling for the enchantress.

Now had come the memory of Nellie–dear, frank-eyed, open-hearted Nellie Tanner–and the thought that her fresh wholesomeness was pledged to make glad the life of Nat Burns seared his heart. A cloud settled down on his brow. But in a moment he recalled himself. His hostess had asked him a question; he must answer it.

“Yes, I have wanted something–and couldn’t get it.”

“Yes,” said Elsa slowly, “a thing is bad enough; but it seems to me that the most hopeless thing in the world is to want a person in that way.” Her voice was dreamy and retrospective. Its peculiar, vibrant timbre thrilled him with the thought that perhaps there was some hidden tragedy in her life that he had never suspected. Any unpleasant sense that she was curious was overcome by the manner in which she spoke.

“Yes, it is,” he answered solemnly.

She looked up in astonishment at the sincerity of his tone, her heart tingling with a new emotion of delicious uncertainty. What if, after all, he had wanted some one in the way she wanted him? What if the some one were herself and he had been afraid to aspire to a woman of her wealth and position? She asked this without any feeling of conceit, for one who loves always dreams he sees signs of favor in the one beloved.

“Then you have wanted some one?” All her manner, her voice, her eyes expressed sympathy. She was the soul of tact and no mean actress at the same time.

Code, still in the depth of reminiscence and averted happiness, scarcely heard her, but he answered

“Yes, I have.” Then, coming to full realization of the confession, he colored and laughed uneasily. “But let’s not talk of such personal things any more,” he added. “You must think me very foolish to be mooning about like this.”

“Can I help you?” she asked, half suffocated by the question. “Perhaps there might be something I could do that would bring the one you want to you.”

It was the crucial point in the conversation. She held her breath as she awaited his answer. She knew he was no adept at the half-meanings and near-confessions of flirtation, and that she could depend upon his words and actions to be genuine.

He looked at her calmly without the additional beat of a pulse. His color had died down and left him pale. He was considering.

“You have done much for me,” he said at last, “and I shall never forget it, but in this matter even you could not help me. Only the Almighty could do it by direct intervention, and I don’t believe He works that way in this century,” Code smiled faintly.

As for Elsa, she felt the grip as of an icy hand upon her heart. It was some one else that he meant. Was it possible that all her carefully planned campaign had come to this miserable failure? Had she come this far only to lose all?

The expression of her features did not change, and she sought desperately to control her emotion, but she could not prevent two great tears from welling up in her eyes and slowly rolling down her cheeks.

Code sat startled and nonplused. Only once before in his life had he seen a woman cry, and that was when Nellie broke down in his mother’s house after the fire. But the cause for that was evident, and the very fact of her tears had been a relief to him. Now, apparently without rime or reason, Elsa Mallaby was weeping.

The sight went to his heart as might the scream of a child in pain. He wondered with a panicky feeling whether he had hurt her in any way.

“I say, Elsa,” he cried, “what’s the matter? Don’t do that. If I’ve done anything–” He was on his feet and around the little table in an instant. He took her left hand in his left and put his right on her shoulder, speaking to her in broken, incoherent sentences.

But his words, gentle and almost endearing, emphasized the feeling of miserable self-pity that had taken hold of her and she suddenly sobbed aloud.

“Elsa, dear,” he cried, beside himself with uncertainty, “what is it? Tell me. You’ve done so much for me, please let me do something for you if I can.”

“You can’t, Code,” she said, “unless it’s in your heart,” and then she bowed her beautiful head forward upon her bare arms and wept. After awhile the storm passed and she leaned back.

He kissed her suddenly. Then he abruptly turned to the door and went out.

Schofield had suddenly come to his senses and disengaged himself from Elsa’s embrace.

CHAPTER XXV

THE GUILT FIXED

It was the following afternoon before Code Schofield ventured on deck.

When he did so it was to find that all naval uniforms had been laid aside, the imitation brass guns forward had been removed, and the schooner so altered that she would scarcely have been recognized as the Albatross.

The wireless had been erected again, and now the apparatus was spitting forth an almost constant series of messages. The crew, spotless in dungarees and without a vestige of a weapon, maneuvered the schooner as Code had never in his life seen a vessel handled. At a word from the officer of the watch they jumped as one man. Every order was executed on the run, and all sails were swayed as flat and taut as boards.

Code found Elsa ensconced with a book under the awning amidships. Big, comfortable wicker chairs were about and the deck so lately cleared for action had an almost homelike look.

“Did you sleep well?” asked the girl with an entire lack of self-consciousness, as though the episode of the night before had never occurred. Code was very thankful for her tact and much relieved. It was evident that their relations for the remainder of the four days’ journey north were to be impersonal unless he chose to make them otherwise. This he had no intention of doing–after his morning’s battle with himself.

“Like a top, when I got started,” he replied. “And you?”

“Splendidly, thanks. And you should have seen the breakfast I ate. I am a shameful gourmand when I am at sea.”

He took a chair and filled his pipe.

“By the way, how long have you been out on this cruise? You weren’t aboard, were you, the time the mystery schooner led the revenue steamer such a chase?”

“No,” she replied, “but I wish I had been. I nearly died when I heard about that; it was so funny. I have only been aboard about four days. I’ll tell you the history of it.

“I was having a very delightful dinner up at Mallaby House with Mrs. Tanner, Nellie’s mother, you know”–she looked unconcernedly out to sea–“when I got a message, part wireless and part telegram, saying that Nat Burns had nabbed you in St. Pierre and was racing with you to St. Andrew’s.

“Well, I’ve sworn all along that you shouldn’t come to any harm through him, so I just left Freekirk Head the next morning on the steamer, took a train to Halifax, and had the schooner pick me up there. Off Halifax they told me that the Nettie B. was six hours ahead of us and going hard, so we had to wing it out for all there was in this one. I had provided all the naval fixings before, realizing that we would probably have to use them some time, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Well, Elsa, I’ll say this–that I don’t believe that there was ever a schooner built that could outgame and outsail this one. She’s a wonder!”

For a while they talked of trite and inconsequential things. It was very necessary that they become firmly grounded on their new footing of genuine friendship before departing into personalities; and so, for two days, they avoided any but the most casual topics.

As the weather was exceptionally warm, with a spicy salt breeze that seemed to bear the very germ of life in its midst, they had breakfast and luncheon on deck, dining below in the rosy little dining-room.

Thirty-six hours before they expected to catch the fishing fleet (it had been maneuvered so that Code should be restored to the Charming Lass after dark), Elsa opened the subject of Code’s trouble with Nat Burns. It was morning, and his recent days of ease and mental refreshment had made him see things clearly that had before been obscured by the great strain under which he labored.

Code told her the whole thing from beginning to end, leaving out only that part of Nat’s cumulative scheme that had to do with Nellie Tanner. He showed Elsa how his enemy had left no stone unturned to bring him back home a pauper, a criminal, and one who could never again lift his head among his own people even though he escaped years in prison.

It was a brief and simple story, but he could see Elsa’s face change as emotions swept over it. Her remarks were few, but he suddenly became aware that she was harboring a great and lasting hatred against Nat. He did not flatter himself that it was on his own account, nor did he ask the reason for it, but the knowledge that such a hatred existed came to him as a decided surprise.

When he had finished his narrative she sat for some little time silent.

“And you think, then,” she asked at last, “that his motive for all this is revenge, because his father happened to meet death on the old May?”

“So far it has seemed to me that that can be the only possible reason. What else–but now wait a moment while I think.”

He went below into his room, secured the old log of the M.C. Burns and the artificial horizon. Together they read the entries that Michael Burns had made.

“Now, Elsa,” said Code by way of explanation, “it was a dead-sure thing that Nat could never have beaten me in his schooner, and for two reasons: First, the May was a naturally faster boat than the old M.C., although Nat would never admit it. That is what really started our racing. Secondly, I am only telling the truth when I say that I can outsail Nat Burns in any wind from a zephyr to a typhoon.

“He is the kind of chap, in regard to sailing, who doesn’t seem to have the ‘feel’ of the thing. There is a certain instinct of forces and balance that is either natural or acquired. Nat’s is acquired. Why, I can remember just as well when I was eight years old my father used to let me take a short trick at the wheel in good weather, and I took to it naturally. Once on the Banks in a gale, when I was only eighteen, the men below said that my trick at the wheel was the only one when they got any sleep.

“Now, those two things being the case, Elsa, how did Nat Burns expect to win the second race from the May?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem possible that he could win.”

“Of course it doesn’t, and yet his father writes here that Nat ‘swears he can’t lose.’ Well, now, you know, a man that swears he can’t lose is pretty positive.”

“Did he try to bet with you for the second race?” asked Elsa.

“Did he? I had five hundred dollars at the bank and he tried to bet me that. I never bet, because I’ve never had enough money to throw it around. A good deal changed hands on the first race, but none of it was mine. I raced for sport and not for money, and I told Nat so when he tried to bet with me. If I had raced for money I couldn’t have withdrawn that day and gone to St. John for cargo the way I did.”

“Then it seems to me that he must have known he couldn’t lose or he would not have tried to bet.”

“Exactly.”

“But how could he know it?”

“That is what I would like to find out.”

Code absently thrust his hand into his coat pocket and encountered the mirror he had found aboard the Nettie B. He drew it out and polished its bright surface with his handkerchief.

Elsa was immediately interested and Code told her of its unexpected discovery.

“And he had it!” she cried, laughing. “Of all things!”

“Yes, and he always wanted it. I remember when father first gave it to me and I was working out little problems in astronomy, Nat used to take the thing and handle it and admire it. You see the back and edges are silver-plated and it is really quite valuable. He tried to get his father interested, but, so far as I know, never succeeded.

“It was a strange thing, but that simple mirror appealed to Nat tremendously, and you know how that would act on a man of his nature. He is and always has been utterly selfish, and if there was any object he wanted and could not have it increased his desire.”

“But how did he get it, I wonder?” asked the girl, taking the object and heliographing the bright sun’s rays from the polished surface. “When did you have it last?”

Code knitted his brows and thought back carefully. He had an instinctive feeling that perhaps in this mirror lay the key to the whole situation, just as often in life the most unexpected and trivial things or events are pregnant with great moment.

“I had it,” he said slowly, thinking hard; “let me see: the last time I remember it was the day after my first race with Nat. In the desk that stood in the cabin of the old May I kept the log, my sextant, and a lot of other things of that kind. In a lower drawer was this mirror, and the reason I saw it was this:

“When I had made fast to my moorings in the harbor I immediately went below to make the entry in the log about the race–naturally I couldn’t leave that undone. I remember I looked in the top drawer for the book, but didn’t find it. So then I looked in the other drawers and, in doing so, opened the one containing the mirror.

“I distinctly remember seeing it, for the lamp was lighted and the glass flashed a blinding glare into my eyes. You see we raced in about the worst winter weather there was and the lamp had to be lighted very early.

“The log-book wasn’t there, and I found it somewhere or other later, but that hasn’t anything to do with the case. I never saw the mirror after that–in fact, never looked for it. I took for granted it had gone down with the May, along with all my other things, except the log-book, which I saved and use now aboard the Lass.”

“And you didn’t take it out or give it to anybody?”

“No. I am positive of that. I didn’t touch it after seeing it that once.”

“Then it is very plain, Code, that if Nat Burns came into possession of it he must have taken it himself. He was very angry with you for winning, wasn’t he?”

“Terribly. For once I thought he might be dangerous and kept out of his way until the thing had worn off a little.”

“Just like him,” said Elsa in that tone of bitter hatred that Code had heard her use before when speaking of Burns. “He must have gone aboard the May and taken it, because you prized it so much. A fine revenge!”

“Yes, but we don’t do those things in Freekirk Head, Elsa. You know that. We don’t steal from one another’s trawl-lines, and we don’t prowl about other men’s schooners. I can’t understand his doing a thing like that.”

“Perhaps not, but if not, explain how he got it.”

“You’re right,” Code admitted after a moment’s thought; “that’s the only way.”

They were silent for a while, pondering over this new development and trying to discover where it might lead. Under sharp commands the crew brought the schooner about on the starboard tack, for the wind was on the bow, and set a staysail between the fore and main masts. The splendid ship seemed to skim over the surface of the sea, touching only the tops of the waves.

“No, it’s no good!” broke out Code suddenly. “Much as I hate Nat Burns, I don’t believe he would come aboard my schooner just for the purpose of stealing a silver-plated mirror. That isn’t like him. He’s too clever to do anything like that. And, besides, what kind of a revenge would that be for having lost the race?”

“Well, what can you suggest? How else did he get it?” Elsa was frankly sceptical and clung to her own theory.

“He might have come aboard for something else, mightn’t he, and picked up the mirror just incidentally?”

“He might have, yes, but what else would bring him there?”

Code sat rigid for a few minutes. He had such a thought that he scarcely dared consider it himself.

“It’s all clear to me now,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “Nat came aboard to damage the schooner so that he would be sure to win the second race.”

“Code!” The cry was one of involuntary horror as Elsa remembered the tragedy of the May. Hate Nate though she might, this was an awful charge to lay at his door.

“Then he killed his own father, if what you say is true!” she added breathlessly. “Oh, the poor wretch! The poor wretch!”

“Yes, that solves it,” went on Code, who had hardly heard her. “That solves the entries that Michael Burns made in his ship’s log before he went to St. John on his last business trip. Nat swore he could not lose, and the old man, who was honest enough himself, must have wondered what his son was up to.

“This mirror proves that Nat must have been aboard the schooner secretly; what he told his father and his eagerness to bet with me on a proposition that seemed foolhardy on the face of it clinch the thing in my mind. The misguided fool! That, Elsa, is an example of how low a man will go who has been spoiled and brought up without the slightest idea of self-control.”

“Why, you’re preaching to me, Code,” laughed the girl, and he joined her. But she sobered in a moment.

“This is all very fine theory,” she said, “and I half believe it myself, but it’s worthless; you haven’t a grain of proof. Tell me, have you ever thought over the details of the sinking of the May?”