I WILL not enter in detail into the feelings of the father and sister on this alarming and dreadful night. No tragedy followed, the reader will feel well assured, or this history would never have been written. But the wind rose till it blew what the sailors called half a gale. It seemed to Katherine a hurricane—a horrible tempest, in which no such slender craft as that in which Stella had gone forth had a chance for life; and indeed the men on the pier with their conjectures as to what might have happened were not encouraging. She might have fetched Ventnor or one of those places by a long tack. She might have been driven out to the Needles. She mightn’t know her way with those gentlemen only as was famous sailors with a fair wind, but not used to dirty weather. Katherine spent all the night on the pier gazing out upon the waste of water now and then lighted up by a fitful moon. What a change—what a change from the golden afternoon! And what a difference from her own thoughts!—a little grudging of Stella’s all-success, a little wounded to feel herself always in the shade, and the horrible suggestion of Stella’s loss, the dread that overwhelmed her imagination and took all her courage from her. She stood on the end of the pier, with the wind—that wind which had driven Stella forth out of sound and sight—blowing her about, wrapping her skirts round her, loosing her hair, making her hold tight to the rail lest she should be blown away. Why should she hold tight? What did it matter, if Stella were gone, whether she kept her footing or not? She could never take Stella’s place with anyone. Her father would grudge her very existence that could not be sacrificed to save Stella. Already he had begun to reproach her. Why did you let her go? What is the use of an elder sister to a girl if she doesn’t interfere in such a case? And three years older, that ought to have been a mother to her.
Thus Mr. Tredgold had babbled in his misery before he was persuaded to lie down to await news which nothing that could be done would make any quicker. He had clamoured to send out boats—any number—after Stella. He had insisted upon hiring a steamer to go out in quest of her; but telegrams had to be sent far and wide and frantic messengers to Ryde—even to Portsmouth—before he could get what he wanted. And in the meantime the night had fallen, the wind had risen, and out of that blackness and those dashing waves, which could be heard without being seen, there came no sign of the boat. Never had such a night passed over the peaceful place. There had been sailors and fishermen in danger many a time, and distracted women on the pier; but what was that to the agony of a millionaire who had been accustomed to do everything with his wealth, and now raged and foamed at the mouth because he could do nothing? What was all his wealth to him? He was as powerless as the poor mother of that sailor-boy who was lost (there were so many, so many of them), and who had not a shilling in the world. Not a shilling in the world! It was exactly as if Mr. Tredgold had come to that. What could he do with all his thousands? Oh, send out a tug from Portsmouth, send out the fastest ferry-boat from Ryde, send out the whole fleet—fishing cobles, pleasure boats—everything that was in Sliplin Harbour! Send everything, everything that had a sail or an oar, not to say a steam engine. A hundred pounds, a thousand pounds—anything to the man who would bring Stella back!
The little harbour was in wild commotion with all these offers. There were not many boats, but they were all preparing; the men clattering down the rolling shingle, with women after them calling to them to take care, or not to go out in the teeth of the gale. “If you’re lost too what good will that do?” they shrieked in the wind, their hair flying like Katherine’s, but not so speechless as she was. The darkness, the flaring feeble lights, the stir and noise on the shore, with these shrieking voices breaking in, made a sort of Pandemonium unseen, taking double horror from the fact that it was almost all sound and sensation, made visible occasionally by the gleam of the moon between the flying clouds. Mr. Tredgold’s house on the cliff blazed with lights from every window, and a great pan of fire wildly blazing, sending up great shadows of black smoke, was lit on the end of the pier—everything that could be done to guide them back, to indicate the way. Nothing of that sort was done when the fishermen were battling for their lives. But what did it all matter, what was the good of it all? Millionaire and pauper stood on the same level, hopeless, tearing their hair, praying their hearts out, on the blind margin of that wild invisible sea.
There was a horrible warning of dawn in the blackness when Stella, soaked to the skin, her hair lashing about her unconscious face like whips, and far more dead than alive, was at last carried home. I believe there were great controversies afterwards between the steam-tug and the fishing boats which claimed to have saved her—controversies which might have been spared, since Mr. Tredgold paid neither, fortified by the statement of the yachtsmen that neither had been of any use, and that the Stella had at last blundered her way back of her own accord and their superior management. He had to pay for the tug, which put forth by his orders, but only as much as was barely necessary, with no such gratuity as the men had hoped for; while to the fishers he would give nothing, and Katherine’s allowance was all expended for six months in advance in recompensing these clamorous rescuers who had not succeeded in rescuing anyone.
Stella was very ill for a few days; when she recovered the wetting and the cold, then she was ill of the imagination, recalling more clearly than at first all the horrors which she had passed through. As soon as she was well enough to recover the use of her tongue she did nothing but talk of this tremendous experience in her life, growing proud of it as she got a little way beyond it and saw the thrilling character of the episode in full proportion. At first she would faint away, or rather, almost faint away (between two which things there is an immense difference), as she recalled the incidents of that night. But after a while they became her favourite and most delightful subjects of conversation. She entertained all her friends with the account of her adventure as she lay pale, with her pretty hair streaming over her pillow, not yet allowed to get up after all she had gone through, but able to receive her habitual visitors.
“The feeling that came over me when it got dark, oh! I can’t describe what it was,” said Stella. “I thought it was a shadow at first. The sail throws such a shadow sometimes; it’s like a great bird settling down with its big wing. But when it came down all round and one saw it wasn’t a shadow, but darkness—night!—oh, how horrible it was! I thought I should have died, out there on the great waves and the water dashing into the boat, and the cliffs growing fainter and fainter, and the horrible, horrible dark!”
“Stella dear, don’t excite yourself again. It is all over, God be praised.”
“Yes, it’s all over. It is easy for you people to speak who have never been lost at sea. It will never be over for me. If I were to live to be a hundred I should feel it all the same. The hauling up and the hauling down of that dreadful sail, carrying us right away out into the sea when we wanted to get home, and then flopping down all in a moment, while we rocked and pitched till I felt I must be pitched out. Oh, how I implored them to go back! ‘Just turn back!’ I cried. ‘Why don’t you turn back? We are always going further and further, instead of nearer. And oh! what will papa say and Katherine?’ They laughed at first, and told me they were tacking, and I begged them, for Heaven’s sake, not to tack, but to run home. But they would not listen to me. Oh, they are all very nice and do what you like when it doesn’t matter; but when it’s risking your life, and you hate them and are miserable and can’t help yourself, then they take their own way.”
“But they couldn’t help it either,” cried Evelyn, the rector’s daughter. “They had to tack; they could not run home when the wind was against them.”
“What do I care about the wind?” cried Stella. “They should not have made me go out if there was a wind. Papa said we were never to go out in a wind. I told them so. I said, ‘You ought not to have brought me out.’ They said it was nothing to speak of. I wonder what it is when it is something to speak of! And then we shipped a sea, as they called it, and I got drenched to the very skin. Oh, I don’t say they were not kind. They took off their coats and put round me, but what did that do for me? I was chilled to the very bone. Oh, you can’t think how dreadful it is to lie and see those sails swaying and to hear the men moving about and saying dreadful things to each other, and the boat moving up and down. Oh!” cried Stella, clasping her hands together and looking as if once more she was about almost to faint away.
“Stella, spare yourself, dear. Try to forget it; try to think of something else. It is too much for you when you dwell on it,” Katherine said.
“Dwell on it!” cried Stella, reviving instantly. “It is very clear that you never were in danger of your life, Kate.”
“I was in danger of your life,” cried Katherine, “and I think that was worse. Oh, I could tell you a story, too, of that night on the pier, looking out on the blackness, and thinking every moment—but don’t let us think of it, it is too much. Thank God, it is all over, and you are quite safe now.”
“It is very different standing upon the pier, and no doubt saying to yourself what a fool Stella was to go out; she just deserves it all for making papa so unhappy, and keeping me out of bed. Oh, I know that was what you were thinking! and being like me with only a plank between me and—don’t you know? The one is very, very different from the other, I can tell you,” Stella said, with a little flush on her cheek.
And the Stanley girls who were her audience agreed with her, with a strong sense that to be the heroine of such an adventure was, after all, when it was over, one of the most delightful things in the world. Her father also agreed with her, who came stumping with his stick up the stairs, his own room being below, and took no greater delight than to sit by her bedside and hear her go over the story again and again.
“I’ll sell that little beast of a boat. I’ll have her broken up for firewood. To think I should have paid such a lot of money for her, and her nearly to drown my little girl!”
“Oh, don’t do that, papa,” said Stella; “when it’s quite safe and there is no wind I should like perhaps to go out in her again, just to see. But to be sure there was no wind when we went out—just a very little, just enough to fill the sail, they said; but you can never trust to a wind. I said I shouldn’t go, only just for ten minutes to try how I liked it; and then that horrid gale came on to blow, and they began to tack, as they call it. Such nonsense that tacking, papa! when they began it I said, ‘Why, we’re going further off than ever; what I want is to get home.’”
“They paid no attention, I suppose—they thought they knew better,” said Mr. Tredgold.
“They always think they know better,” cried Stella, with indignation. “And oh, when it came on to be dark, and the wind always rising, and the water coming in, in buckets full! Were you ever at sea in a storm, papa?”
“Never, my pet,” said Mr. Tredgold, “trust me for that. I never let myself go off firm land, except sometimes in a penny steamboat, that’s dangerous enough. Sometimes the boilers blow up, or you run into some other boat; but on the sea, not if I know it, Stella.”
“But I have,” said the girl. “A steamboat! within the two banks of a river! You know nothing, nothing about it, neither does Katherine. Some sailors, I believe, might go voyages for years and never see anything so bad as that night. Why, the waves were mountains high, and then you seemed to slide down to the bottom as if you were going—oh! hold me, hold me, papa, or I shall feel as if I were going again.”
“Poor little Stella,” said Mr. Tredgold, “poor little girl! What a thing for her to go through, so early in life! But I’d like to do something to those men. I’d like to punish them for taking advantage of a child like that, all to get hold of my new boat, and show how clever they were with their tacking and all that. Confound their tacking! If it hadn’t been for their tacking she might have got back to dinner and saved us such a miserable night.”
“What was your miserable night in comparison to mine?” cried Stella, scornfully. “I believe you both think it was as bad as being out at sea, only because you did not get your dinner at the proper time and were kept longer than usual out of bed.”
“We must not forget,” said Katherine, “that after all, though they might be to blame in going out, these gentlemen saved her life.”
“I don’t know about that,” said the old man. “I believe it was my tug that saved her life. It was they that put her life in danger, if you please. I’d like just to break them in the army, or sell them up, or something; idle fellows doing nothing, strolling about to see what mischief they can find to do.”
“Oh, they are very nice,” said Stella. “You shan’t do anything to them, papa. I am great chums with Charlie and Algy; they are such nice boys, really, when you come to know them; they took off their coats to keep me warm. I should have had inflammation of the lungs or something if I had not had their coats. I was shivering so.”
“And do you know,” said Katherine, “one of them is ill, as Stella perhaps might have been if he had not taken off his coat.”
“Oh, which is that?” cried Stella; “oh, do find out which is that? It must be Algy, I think. Algy is the delicate one. He never is good for much—he gives in, you know, so soon. He is so weedy, long, and thin, and no stamina, that is what the others say.”
“And is that all the pity you have for him, Stella? when it was to save you——”
“It was not to save me,” cried Stella, raising herself in her bed with flushed cheeks, “it was to save himself! If I hadn’t been saved where would they have been? They would have gone to the bottom too. Oh, I can’t see that I’m so much obliged to them as all that! What they did they did for themselves far more than for me. We were all in the same boat, and if I had been drowned they would have been drowned too. I hope, though,” she said, more amiably, “that Algy will get better if it’s he that is ill. And it must be he. Charlie is as strong as a horse. He never feels anything. Papa, I hope you will send him grapes and things. I shall go and see him as soon as I am well.”
“You go and see a young fellow—in his room! You shall do nothing of the sort, Stella. Things may be changed from my time, and I suppose they are, but for a girl to go and visit a young fellow—in his——”
Stella smiled a disdainful and amused smile as she lay back on her pillow. “You may be sure, papa,” she said, “that I certainly shall. I will go and nurse him, unless he has someone already. I ought to nurse the man who helped to save my life.”
“You are a little self-willed, wrong-headed—— Katherine, you had better take care. I will make you answer for it if she does anything so silly—a chit of a girl! I’ll speak to Dr. Dobson. I’ll send to—to the War Office. I’ll have him carted away.”
“Is poor Algy here, Kate? Where is he—at the hotel? Oh, you dreadful hard-hearted people to let him go to the hotel when you knew he had saved my life. Papa, go away, and let me get dressed. I must find out how he is. I must go to him, poor fellow. Perhaps the sight of me and to see that I am better will do him good. Go away, please, papa.”
“I’ll not budge a step,” cried the old gentleman. “Katie, Katie, she’ll work herself into a fever. She’ll make herself ill, and then what shall we do?”
“I’m very ill already,” said Stella, with a cough. “I am being thrust into my grave. Let them bring us together—poor, poor Algy and me. Oh, if we are both to be victims, let it be so! We will take each other’s hands and go down—go down together to the——”
“Oh, Katie, can’t you stop her?” cried the father.
Stella was sobbing with delicious despair over the thought of the two delightful, dreadful funerals, and all the world weeping over her untimely fate.
Stella recovered rapidly when her father was put to the door. She said with a pretty childish reverberation of her sob: “For you know, Kate, it never was he—that would be the poignant thing, wouldn’t it?—it was not he that I ever would have chosen. But to be united in—in a common fate, with two graves together, don’t you know, and an inscription, and people saying, ‘Both so young!’” She paused to dry her eyes, and then she laughed. “There is nothing in him, don’t you know; it was Charlie that did all the work. He was nearly as frightened as I was. Oh, I don’t think anything much of Algy, but I shall go to see him all the same—if it were only to shock papa.”
“You had better get well yourself in the meantime,” said Katherine.
“Oh, you cold, cold—toad! What do you care? It would have been better for you if I had been drowned, Kate. Then you would have been the only daughter and the first in the house, but now, you know, it’s Stella again—always Stella. Papa is an unjust old man and makes favourites; but you need not think, however bad I am, and however good you are, that you will ever cure him of that.”