_ CHAPTER V
Rolling, tumbling, splashing, foaming water as far as the eye could reach in every direction. A desolate waste, full of life, movement and colour, extending to the bleak horizon and like a vast ploughed field cut up into long and high liquid ridges, all scurrying in one direction in serried ranks and with incredible speed as if pursued by a fearful and unseen enemy. Serenely yet boisterously, gracefully yet resistlessly, the endless waves passed on--some small, others monstrous, with fleecy white combs rushing down their green sides like toy Niagaras and with a seething, boiling sound as when flame touches water. They went by in a stately, never ending procession, going nowhere, coming from nowhere, but full of dignity and importance, their breasts heaving with suppressed rage because there was nothing in their path that they might destroy. The dancing, leaping water reflected every shade and tint--now a rich green, then a deep blue and again a dirty gray as the sun hid for a moment behind a cloud, and as a gust of wind caught the top of the combers decapitating them at one mad rush, the spray was dashed high in the air, flashing out all the prismatic colours. Here and yonder, the white caps rose, disappeared and came again, and the waves grew and then diminished in size. Then others rose, towering, became larger, majestic, terrible; the milk-like comb rose proudly, soared a brief moment, then fell ignominiously, and the wave diminished passed on humiliated. Over head, a few scattered cirrus clouds flitted lazily across the blue dome of heaven, while a dozen Mother Carey chickens screamed hoarsely as they circled in the air. The strong and steady western breeze bore on its powerful pinions the sweet and eternal music of the wind and sea.
Shirley stood at the rail under the bridge of the ocean greyhound that was carrying her back to America with all the speed of which her mighty engines were capable. All day and all night, half naked stokers, so grimed with oil and coal dust as to lose the slightest semblance to human beings, feverishly shovelled coal, throwing it rapidly and evenly over roaring furnaces kept at a fierce white heat. The vast boilers, shaken by the titanic forces generating in their cavern-like depths, sent streams of scalding, hissing steam through a thousand valves, cylinders and pistons, turning wheels and cranks as it distributed the tremendous power which was driving the steel monster through the seas at the prodigious speed of four hundred miles in the twenty-four hours. Like a pulsating heart in some living thing, the mammoth engines throbbed and panted, and the great vessel groaned and creaked as she rose and fell to the heavy swell, and again lurched forward in obedience to each fresh propulsion from her fast spinning screws. Out on deck, volumes of dense black smoke were pouring from four gigantic smoke stacks and spread out in the sky like some endless cinder path leading back over the course the ship had taken.
They were four days out from port. Two days more and they would sight Sandy Hook, and Shirley would know the worst. She had caught the North German Lloyd boat at Cherbourg two days after receiving the cablegram from New York. Mrs. Blake had insisted on coming along in spite of her niece's protests. Shirley argued that she had crossed alone when coming; she could go back the same way. Besides, was not Mr. Ryder returning home on the same ship? He would be company and protection both. But Mrs. Blake was bent on making the voyage. She had not seen her sister for many years and, moreover, this sudden return to America had upset her own plans. She was a poor sailor, yet she loved the ocean and this was a good excuse for a long trip. Shirley was too exhausted with worry to offer further resistance and by great good luck the two women had been able to secure at the last moment a cabin to themselves amidships. Jefferson, less fortunate, was compelled, to his disgust, to share a stateroom with another passenger, a fat German brewer who was returning to Cincinnati, and who snored so loud at night that even the thumping of the engines was completely drowned by his eccentric nasal sounds.
The alarming summons home and the terrible shock she had experienced the following morning when Jefferson showed her the newspaper article with its astounding and heart rending news about her father had almost prostrated Shirley. The blow was all the greater for being so entirely unlooked for. That the story was true she could not doubt. Her mother would not have cabled except under the gravest circumstances. What alarmed Shirley still more was that she had no direct news of her father. For a moment her heart stood still--suppose the shock of this shameful accusation had killed him? Her blood froze in her veins, she clenched her fists and dug her nails into her flesh as she thought of the dread possibility that she had looked upon him in life for the last time. She remembered his last kind words when he came to the steamer to see her off, and his kiss when he said good-bye and she had noticed a tear of which he appeared to be ashamed. The hot tears welled up in her own eyes and coursed unhindered down her cheeks.
What could these preposterous and abominable charges mean? What was this lie they had invented to ruin her father? That he had enemies she well knew. What strong man had not? Indeed, his proverbial honesty had made him feared by all evil-doers and on one occasion they had gone so far as to threaten his life. This new attack was more deadly than all--to sap and destroy his character, to deliberately fabricate lies and calumnies which had no foundation whatever. Of course, the accusation was absurd, the Senate would refuse to convict him, the entire press would espouse the cause of so worthy a public servant. Certainly, everything would be done to clear his character. But what was being done? She could do nothing but wait and wait. The suspense and anxiety were awful.
Suddenly she heard a familiar step behind her, and Jefferson joined her at the rail. The wind was due West and blowing half a gale, so where they were standing--one of the most exposed parts of the ship--it was difficult to keep one's feet, to say nothing of hearing anyone speak. There was a heavy sea running, and each approaching wave looked big enough to engulf the vessel, but as the mass of moving water reached the bow, the ship rose on it, light and graceful as a bird, shook off the flying spray as a cat shakes her fur after an unwelcome bath, and again drove forward as steady and with as little perceptible motion as a railway train. Shirley was a fairly good sailor and this kind of weather did not bother her in the least, but when it got very rough she could not bear the rolling and pitching and then all she was good for was to lie still in her steamer chair with her eyes closed until the water was calmer and the pitching ceased.
"It's pretty windy here, Shirley," shouted Jefferson, steadying himself against a stanchion. "Don't you want to walk a little?"
He had begun to call her by her first name quite naturally, as if it were a matter of course. Indeed their relations had come to be more like those of brother and sister than anything else. Shirley was too much troubled over the news from home to have a mind for other things, and in her distress she had turned to Jefferson for advice and help as she would have looked to an elder brother. He had felt this impulse to confide in him and consult his opinion and it had pleased him more than he dared betray. He had shown her all the sympathy of which his warm, generous nature was capable, yet secretly he did not regret that events had necessitated this sudden return home together on the same ship. He was sorry for Judge Rossmore, of course, and there was nothing he would not do on his return to secure a withdrawal of the charges. That his father would use his influence he had no doubt. But meantime he was selfish enough to be glad for the opportunity it gave him to be a whole week alone with Shirley. No matter how much one may be with people in city or country or even when stopping at the same hotel or house, there is no place in the world where two persons, especially when they are of the opposite sex, can become so intimate as on shipboard. The reason is obvious. The days are long and monotonous. There is nowhere to go, nothing to see but the ocean, nothing to do but read, talk or promenade. Seclusion in one's stuffy cabin is out of the question, the public sitting rooms are noisy and impossible, only a steamer chair on deck is comfortable and once there snugly wrapped up in a rug it is surprising how quickly another chair makes its appearance alongside and how welcome one is apt to make the intruder.
Thus events combined with the weather conspired to bring Shirley and Jefferson more closely together. The sea had been rough ever since they sailed, keeping Mrs. Blake confined to her stateroom almost continuously. They were, therefore, constantly in one another's company, and slowly, unconsciously, there was taking root in their hearts the germ of the only real and lasting love-- the love born of something higher than mere physical attraction, the nobler, more enduring affection that is born of mutual sympathy, association and companionship.
"Isn't it beautiful?" exclaimed Shirley ecstatically. "Look at those great waves out there! See how majestically they soar and how gracefully they fall!"
"Glorious!" assented Jefferson sharing her enthusiasm. "There's nothing to compare with it. It's Nature's grandest spectacle. The ocean is the only place on earth that man has not defiled and spoiled. Those waves are the same now as they were on the day of creation."
"Not the day of creation. You mean during the aeons of time creation was evolving," corrected Shirley.
"I meant that of course," assented Jefferson. "When one says 'day' that is only a form of speech."
"Why not be accurate?" persisted Shirley. "It was the use of that little word 'day' which has given the theologians so many sleepless nights."
There was a roguish twinkle in her eye. She well knew that he thought as she did on metaphysical questions, but she could not resist teasing him.
Like Jefferson, she was not a member of any church, although her nature was deeply religious. Hers was the religion the soul inculcates, not that which is learned by rote in the temple. She was a Christian because she thought Christ the greatest figure in world history, and also because her own conduct of life was modelled upon Christian principles and virtues. She was religious for religion's sake and not for public ostentation. The mystery of life awed her and while her intelligence could not accept all the doctrines of dogmatic religion she did not go so far as Jefferson, who was a frank agnostic. She would not admit that we do not know. The longings and aspirations of her own soul convinced her of the existence of a Supreme Being, First Cause, Divine Intelligence-- call it what you will--which had brought out of chaos the wonderful order of the universe. The human mind was, indeed, helpless to conceive such a First Cause in any form and lay prostrate before the Unknown, yet she herself was an enthusiastic delver into scientific hypothesis and the teachings of Darwin, Spencer, Haeckel had satisfied her intellect if they had failed to content her soul. The theory of evolution as applied to life on her own little planet appealed strongly to her because it accounted plausibly for the presence of man on earth. The process through which we had passed could be understood by every intelligence. The blazing satellite, violently detached from the parent sun starting on its circumscribed orbit--that was the first stage, the gradual subsidence of the flames and the cooling of the crust--the second stage: the gases mingling and forming water which covered the earth--the third stage; the retreating of the waters and the appearance of the land--the fourth stage; the appearance of vegetation and animal life--the fifth stage; then, after a long interval and through constant evolution and change the appearance of man, which was the sixth stage. What stages still to come, who knows? This simple account given by science was, after all, practically identical with the biblical legend!
It was when Shirley was face to face with Nature in her wildest and most primitive aspects that this deep rooted religious feeling moved her most strongly. At these times she felt herself another being, exalted, sublimated, lifted from this little world with its petty affairs and vanities up to dizzy heights. She had felt the same sensation when for the first time she had viewed the glories of the snow clad Matterhorn, she had felt it when on a summer's night at sea she had sat on deck and watched with fascinated awe the resplendent radiance of the countless stars, she felt it now as she looked at the foaming, tumbling waves.
"It is so beautiful," she murmured as she turned to walk. The ship was rolling a little and she took Jefferson's arm to steady herself. Shirley was an athletic girl and had all the ease and grace of carriage that comes of much tennis and golf playing. Barely twenty-four years old, she was still in the first flush of youth and health, and there was nothing she loved so much as exercise and fresh air. After a few turns on deck, there was a ruddy glow in her cheeks that was good to see and many an admiring glance was cast at the young couple as they strode briskly up and down past the double rows of elongated steamer chairs.
They had the deck pretty much to themselves. It was only four o'clock, too early for the appetite-stimulating walk before dinner, and their fellow passengers were basking in the sunshine, stretched out on their chairs in two even rows like so many mummies on exhibition. Some were reading, some were dozing. Two or three were under the weather, completely prostrated, their bilious complexion of a deathly greenish hue. At each new roll of the ship, they closed their eyes as if resigned to the worst that might happen and their immediate neighbours furtively eyed each of their movements as if apprehensive of what any moment might bring forth. A few couples were flirting to their heart's content under the friendly cover of the life-boats which, as on most of the transatlantic liners, were more useful in saving reputations than in saving life. The deck steward was passing round tea and biscuits, much to the disgust of the ill ones, but to the keen satisfaction of the stronger stomached passengers who on shipboard never seem to be able to get enough to eat and drink. On the bridge, the second officer, a tall, handsome man with the points of his moustache trained upwards a la Kaiser Wilhelm, was striding back and forth, every now and then sweeping the horizon with his glass and relieving the monotony of his duties by ogling the better looking women passengers.
"Hello, Shirley!" called out a voice from a heap of rugs as Shirley and Jefferson passed the rows of chairs.
They stopped short and discovered Mrs. Blake ensconced in a cozy corner, sheltered from the wind.
"Why, aunt Milly," exclaimed Shirley surprised. "I thought you were downstairs. I didn't think you could stand this sea."
"It is a little rougher than I care to have it," responded Mrs. Blake with a wry grimace and putting her hand to her breast as if to appease disturbing qualms. "It was so stuffy in the cabin I could not bear it. It's more pleasant here but it's getting a little cool and I think I'll go below. Where have you children been all afternoon?"
Jefferson volunteered to explain.
"The children have been rhapsodizing over the beauties of the ocean," he laughed. With a sly glance at Shirley, he added, "Your niece has been coaching me in metaphysics."
Shirley shook her finger at him.
"Now Jefferson, if you make fun of me I'll never talk seriously with you again."
"Wie geht es, meine damen?"
Shirley turned on hearing the guttural salutation. It was Captain Hegermann, the commander of the ship, a big florid Saxon with great bushy golden whiskers and a basso voice like Edouard de Reszke. He was imposing in his smart uniform and gold braid and his manner had the self-reliant, authoritative air usual in men who have great responsibilities and are accustomed to command. He was taking his afternoon stroll and had stopped to chat with his lady passengers. He had already passed Mrs. Blake a dozen times and not noticed her, but now her pretty niece was with her, which altered the situation. He talked to the aunt and looked at Shirley, much to the annoyance of Jefferson, who muttered things under his breath.
"When shall we be in, captain?" asked Mrs. Blake anxiously, forgetting that this was one of the questions which according to ship etiquette must never be asked of the officers.
But as long as he could ignore Mrs. Blake and gaze at Shirley Capt. Hegermann did not mind. He answered amiably:
"At the rate we are going, we ought to sight Fire Island sometime to-morrow evening. If we do, that will get us to our dock about 11 o'clock Friday morning, I fancy." Then addressing Shirley direct he said:
"And you, fraulein, I hope you won't be glad the voyage is over?"
Shirley sighed and a worried, anxious look came into her face.
"Yes, Captain, I shall be very glad. It is not pleasure that is bringing me back to America so soon."
The captain elevated his eyebrows. He was sorry the young lady had anxieties to keep her so serious, and he hoped she would find everything all right on her arrival. Then, politely saluting, he passed on, only to halt again a few paces on where his bewhiskered gallantry met with more encouragement.
Mrs. Blake rose from her chair. The air was decidedly cooler, she would go downstairs and prepare for dinner. Shirley said she would remain on deck a little longer. She was tired of walking, so when her aunt left them she took her chair and told Jefferson to get another. He wanted nothing better, but before seating himself he took the rugs and wrapped Shirley up with all the solicitude of a mother caring for her first born. Arranging the pillow under her head, he asked:
"Is that comfortable?"
She nodded, smiling at him.
"You're a good boy, Jeff. But you'll spoil me."
"Nonsense," he stammered as he took another chair and put himself by her side. "As if any fellow wouldn't give his boots to do a little job like that for you!"
She seemed to take no notice of the covert compliment. In fact, she already took it as a matter of course that Jefferson was very fond of her.
Did she love him? She hardly knew. Certainly she thought more of him than of any other man she knew and she readily believed that she could be with him for the rest of her life and like him better every day. Then, too, they had become more intimate during the last few days. This trouble, this unknown peril had drawn them together. Yes, she would be sorry if she were to see Jefferson paying attention to another woman. Was this love? Perhaps.
These thoughts were running through her mind as they sat there side by side isolated from the main herd of passengers, each silent, watching through the open rail the foaming water as it rushed past. Jefferson had been casting furtive glances at his companion and as he noted her serious, pensive face he thought how pretty she was. He wondered what she was thinking of and suddenly inspired no doubt by the mysterious power that enables some people to read the thoughts of others, he said abruptly:
"Shirley, I can read your thoughts. You were thinking of me."
She was startled for a moment but immediately recovered her self possession. It never occurred to her to deny it. She pondered for a moment and then replied:
"You are right, Jeff, I was thinking of you. How did you guess?"
He leaned over her chair and took her hand. She made no resistance. Her delicate, slender hand lay passively in his big brown one and met his grasp frankly, cordially. He whispered:
"What were you thinking of me--good or bad?"
"Good, of course. How could I think anything bad of you?"
She turned her eyes on him in wonderment. Then she went on:
"I was wondering how a girl could distinguish between the feeling she has for a man she merely likes, and the feeling she has for a man she loves."
Jefferson bent eagerly forward so as to lose no word that might fall from those coveted lips.
"In what category would I be placed?" he asked.
"I don't quite know," she answered, laughingly. Then seriously, she added: "Jeff, why should we act like children? Your actions, more than your words, have told me that you love me. I have known it all along. If I have appeared cold and indifferent it is because"--she hesitated.
"Because?" echoed Jefferson anxiously, as if his whole future depended on that reason.
"Because I was not sure of myself. Would it be womanly or honourable on my part to encourage you, unless I felt I reciprocated your feelings? You are young, one day you will be very rich, the whole world lies before you. There are plenty of women who would willingly give you their love."
"No--no!" he burst out in vigorous protest, "it is you I want, Shirley, you alone."
Grasping her hand more closely, he went on, passion vibrating in every note of his voice. "I love you, Shirley. I've loved you from the very first evening I met you. I want you to be my wife."
Shirley looked straight up into the blue eyes so eagerly bent down on hers, so entreating in their expression, and in a gentle voice full of emotion she answered:
"Jefferson, you have done me the greatest honour a man can do a woman. Don't ask me to answer you now. I like you very much--I more than like you. Whether it is love I feel for you--that I have not yet determined. Give me time. My present trouble and then my literary work---"
"I know," agreed Jefferson, "that this is hardly the time to speak of such matters. Your father has first call on your attention. But as to your literary work. I do not understand."
"Simply this. I am ambitious. I have had a little success--just enough to crave for more. I realize that marriage would put an extinguisher on all aspirations in that direction."
"Is marriage so very commonplace?" grumbled Jefferson.
"Not commonplace, but there is no room in marriage for a woman having personal ambitions of her own. Once married her duty is to her husband and her children--not to herself."
"That is right," he replied; "but which is likely to give you greater joy--a literary success or a happy wifehood? When you have spent your best years and given the public your best work they will throw you over for some new favorite. You'll find yourself an old woman with nothing more substantial to show as your life work than that questionable asset, a literary reputation. How many literary reputations to-day conceal an aching heart and find it difficult to make both ends meet? How different with the woman who married young and obeys Nature's behest by contributing her share to the process of evolution. Her life is spent basking in the affection of her husband and the chubby smiles of her dimpled babes, and when in the course of time she finds herself in the twilight of her life, she has at her feet a new generation of her own flesh and blood. Isn't that better than a literary reputation?"
He spoke so earnestly that Shirley looked at him in surprise. She knew he was serious but she had not suspected that he thought so deeply on these matters. Her heart told her that he was uttering the true philosophy of the ages. She said:
"Why, Jefferson, you talk like a book. Perhaps you are right, I have no wish to be a blue stocking and deserted in my old age, far from it. But give me time to think. Let us first ascertain the extent of this disaster which has overtaken my father. Then if you still care for me and if I have not changed my mind," here she glanced slyly at him, "we will resume our discussion."
Again she held out her hand which he had released.
"Is it a bargain?" she asked.
"It's a bargain," he murmured, raising the white hand to his lips. A fierce longing rose within him to take her in his arms and kiss passionately the mouth that lay temptingly near his own, but his courage failed him. After all, he reasoned, he had not yet the right.
A few minutes later they left the deck and went downstairs to dress for dinner. That same evening they stood again at the rail watching the mysterious phosphorescence as it sparkled in the moonlight. Her thoughts travelling faster than the ship, Shirley suddenly asked:
"Do you really think Mr. Ryder will use his influence to help my father?"
Jefferson set his jaw fast and the familiar Ryder gleam came into his eyes as he responded:
"Why not? My father is all powerful. He has made and unmade judges and legislators and even presidents. Why should he not be able to put a stop to these preposterous proceedings? I will go to him directly we land and we'll see what can be done."
So the time on shipboard had passed, Shirley alternately buoyed up with hope and again depressed by the gloomiest forebodings. The following night they passed Fire Island and the next day the huge steamer dropped anchor at Quarantine. _