Molly had spent a night of feverish restlessness. It was with a feeling of relief that she answered a tap that came at her door in the early dusk of the January morning; but she gave a start of surprise when she saw Mrs. Langdale enter.
She started up on her elbow.
"Oh, what is it? It has been a fearful night. Has something dreadful happened?" she cried.
Mrs. Langdale's usually merry face was pale and quiet. She went quickly to the girl's side and took her hands into a tight clasp.
"My dear," she said, "Gerald Fisher asked me to come and tell you. There has been a wreck in the night. A vessel ran on to the rocks. There were three men on board. They could not reach them with an ordinary boat, and the life-boat was not available."
"Go on!" gasped Molly, her eyes on her friend's face.
Mrs. Langdale went on, with an effort.
"Charlie Cleveland--dear fellow--went out to them with a rope. He reached them, brought one safely back, returned for the others--and--and--" Her voice failed. Her hands tightened upon Molly's; they were very cold. "He managed to get to them again," she whispered, "but--the rope wasn't long enough. He unlashed himself and bound them together. They pulled them ashore--both living. But--he--was lost!"
The composure suddenly forsook Mrs. Langdale's face. She hid it on Molly's pillow.
"Oh, Molly, that darling boy!" she cried, with a burst of tears. "And they say he went to his death--laughing."
"He would," Molly said, in a strange voice. "I always knew he would."
She lay back again. Her face was suddenly pinched and grey, but she felt not the smallest desire to cry.
"I wonder why!" she presently said. "How I wonder why!"
Mrs. Langdale recovered herself with an effort. The frozen voice seemed to give her strength.
"Have we any right to ask that?" she whispered. "No one on this side can ever know."
"Oh, I think you are wrong," Molly said. "We can't be meant to grope in outer darkness."
Mrs. Langdale whispered something about "those the gods love." She was too broken-down herself to be able to offer any solid comfort.
After a painful silence she got up and busied herself with reviving Molly's fire, which had almost gone out. She felt as she had felt only once before in her life, and that had been ten years previously, when her only child had died suddenly. She wished passionately that she were back in Calcutta with her husband. She hated the bleak English winter, the cruel English seas.
Molly lay quite still for some time, her young face drawn and stricken.
At length she got up and went to the window. It was a morning of bleak winds and shifting clouds. The sea was just visible, very far and dim and grey. She stood a long while gazing stonily out.
"Can I get you anything, darling?" said Mrs. Langdale's voice softly behind her.
"No, thank you," the girl said, without turning. "Please leave me; that's all!"
And Mrs. Langdale crept away through the hushed house to her own apartment, there to lay down her head and cry herself exhausted. Dear, gallant Charlie! Her heart ached for him. His irrepressible gaiety, his reckless generosity, these had become the attributes of a hero for ever in her eyes.
After a while her hostess came to her, pale and tearful, to beg her, if she possibly could, to show herself at the breakfast table. Captain Fisher had repeatedly asked for her, she said; and he seemed very uneasy.
Mrs. Langdale rose, washed her face, and made an effort to powder away the evidence of her grief. Then she went bravely down and faced the silent crowd in the breakfast room. No one was eating anything. The very air smote chill and cheerless as she entered. As if he had been lying in wait for her, Fisher pounced upon her on the threshold.
"I must speak to you for a moment," he said. "Come into the smoking-room!"
Mrs. Langdale accompanied him without a word.
"How is she?" he demanded, almost before they entered. "How did she take it?"
There was something about Fisher just then with which Mrs. Langdale was wholly unacquainted. He was alert, impatient, almost feverish. She answered him with brevity.
"I think she is stunned by the news."
He began to pace to and fro with heavy restlessness.
"Ask her to come to me if she is up!" he said at length. "Tell her--tell her not to be afraid! Say I am waiting for her. I must see her."
Mrs. Langdale hesitated.
"She asked me to leave her alone," she said irresolutely.
Fisher wheeled swiftly round.
"I don't think she will refuse to see me," he said. "At least try!"
There was entreaty in his voice, urgent entreaty, which Mrs. Langdale found herself unable to withstand.
She departed therefore on her thankless errand and Fisher flung himself down at the table with his face buried in his hands. In this room but a few short hours ago Charlie had faced and turned away his anger with all the courage and sweetness which, combined, had made of him the hero he was.
It seemed to Fisher, looking back upon the interview, that the boy had done a braver thing, had offered a sacrifice more splendid, there, in that room, than any he had done or offered a little later down on the howling shore.
There came a slight sound at the door and Fisher jerked himself upright. Molly had entered softly. She was standing, looking at him with a strange species of wonder on her white face. He rose instantly and went to meet her.
"I have something to give you, Molly," he said. She raised her eyes questioningly.
"It was brought to me," he said, controlling his voice to quietness with a strong effort, "after Mrs. Langdale went to tell you of--what had happened. I wish to give it to you myself. And--afterwards to ask you a question."
"What is it?" Molly asked, with a sudden sharp eagerness.
"A note," Fisher said, and gave her a folded paper. "It was found on his dressing-table, addressed to you. His servant brought it to me."
Molly's hand trembled as she took the missive.
Fisher turned away from her, and stood before the window in dead silence. There was a long, quiet pause. Then a sudden sound made him swing swiftly round and stride to the door to turn the key. The next moment he was stooping over Molly, who had sunk down on the hearth-rug and was sobbing terrible, anguished sobs.
He lifted her to a chair with no fuss of words, and knelt beside her, stroking her hair, comforting her, with something of a woman's tenderness.
Molly suffered him passively, and the first wild agony of her trouble spent itself unrestrained on his shoulder. Then she grew calmer, and presently begged him in a whisper to read the message which Charlie had left behind him.
For a moment Fisher hesitated; then, as she repeated her desire, he took up the scrawl and deliberately read it through. It had evidently been written immediately after his interview with the writer.
"Dear Molly," the note said, "It's all right with Fisher, so don't you worry yourself! I clear out to-morrow, so that there may be no awkwardness, but we haven't quarrelled, he and I. Forget all about this business! It's been a mistake from start to finish. I ought to have known that I was only fit to be a looker-on when I fell at the first fence. You put your money on Fisher and you'll never lose a halfpenny! I'm nothing but a humble spectator, and I wish you--and him also--the best of luck. If I might be permitted, to offer a little, serious, fatherly advice, it would be this:
"Don't let yourself get dazzled by the outside shine of any man's actions! A man isn't necessarily a hero because he doesn't run away. It is the true-hearted, steady-going chaps like Fisher who keep the world wagging. They are the solid material. The others are only a sort of trimming stuck on for effect and torn off when the time comes for something new. So marry the man you love, Molly, and forget that anyone else ever made a fool of himself for your sweet sake!
"Your friend for ever,
"Charlie."
Thus ended, with a simplicity sublime, the few words of fatherly advice which as a legacy this boy had left behind him.
Fisher laid the note reverently aside and spoke with a great gentleness.
"Tell me, dear," he said, "will it make it any easier for you if I go away? If so--you have only to say so."
The words cost him greater resolution than any he had ever uttered. Yet he said them without apparent effort.
Molly did not answer him for many seconds. Her head drooped a little lower.
"I have been--dazzled," she said at last, and there was a piteous quiver in her voice. "I do not know if I shall ever make you understand."
"You need never attempt it, Molly," he answered very steadily. "I make no claim upon you. Simply, I am yours to keep or to throw away. Which are you going to do?"
He paused for her answer. But she made none. Only in her trouble it seemed to him that she clung to his support.
He drew her a little closer to him.
"Molly," he said very tenderly, "do you want me, child? Shall I stay?"
And at length she answered him, realising that it was to this man, hero or no hero, she had given her heart.
"Yes, stay, Gerald!" she whispered earnestly. "I want you."
* * *
Perhaps he understood her better than she thought. Perhaps Charlie's last words to him had taught him a wisdom to which he had not otherwise attained. Or perhaps his love was large enough to cover and hide all that might be lacking in that which she offered to him.
But at least neither then nor later did he ever seek to know how deeply the glamour of another man's heroism had pierced her heart. She tried to whisper an explanation, but he hushed the words unuttered.
"It is all right, child," he said. "I am satisfied. It is only the lookers-on who are allowed to see all the cards. I think when we meet him again he will tell us that we played them right."
There was a deep quiver in his voice as he spoke, but there was no lack of confidence in his words. Looking upwards, Molly saw that his eyes were full of tears.