The Nymph and the Lamp (38 page)

Mrs. McBain was an exact woman. Skane and Sargent had no more than her minute, standing in the doorway murmuring a few commonplaces and then being shooed off like importunate puppies. Then Matthew came, with a light of relief on his haggard face.

“My dear, Halifax raised the
Elgin
five minutes ago and we've just heard O'Dell's reply. He's heading for Marina at ten knots—should be off Marina tomorrow about the middle of the forenoon. There's a light westerly breeze and not much surf, and McBain thinks that will hold. He's fixed up a wagon with a mattress on top of some loose hay. Tomorrow after breakfast he'll hitch up his steadiest ponies and we'll take you along the north beach to the landing place. You must tell Mrs. McBain what things to pack up for you. I'll get my own duds later on.”

Isabel licked her dry lips. “Matthew, will you close the door, please—gently, I don't want to offend Mrs. McBain. There's something I must tell you.”

Carney arose and shut the door. He turned, drawing in a deep breath and squaring his shoulders. “Yes, my dear?”

“Please sit down, Matthew. I don't want you to come away with me.”

“But I've made arrangements…”

“That doesn't matter. The station's what matters. You can't go off and leave two men to run the thing for so long. Don't argue—please! You must hear what I have to say. I've had a lot of time to think, lying here. My mind's been so muddled ever since I came to Marina, but now it's very clear. I'm going to be all right. I don't think I'm dangerously hurt. It's not even important, really. The important thing, Matthew, is that it offers me away out of a nightmare. I think you know I've not been happy here. There were times when I was, when everything seemed wonderful, and I think you felt the same. But after the winter came everything changed. It did something to us. As if—as if we were both under a curse of some kind. There were times when I've felt that it was very close to me, that I could put out my hand and touch it, if only I knew what it was. But I don't know and it wasn't to be touched. It was like a darkness that you can sense but you can't feel. It seemed to shut us off from each other, you and me.”

“Yes,” he said. He was not looking at her. The massive blond head was bowed, the crisp beard against his chest. He sat hunched forward, contemplating his big clasped hands, and she saw that the knuckles were white.

“It's difficult to say this, Matthew. I realize now that I should never have come. It wasn't your fault. It was mine—all mine. I came to you in a moment of hysteria and threw myself at your head; and then I persuaded you to bring me here. That was the ultimate folly. I know that now. It's only brought unhappiness to you, to me—to all of us. I suppose we might have gone on like that, for how long it sickens me to think. Then this happened. It seemed a final judgment on my folly. But now I know it's the best thing that could have happened, for us all. It puts an end to this—this glum little play that we've all been acting here. At least it takes me off the scene and leaves you all as you were before, when you had what you considered the finest kind of life. I've never forgotten what you told me the day we met, that Marina was the only place that had any meaning for you. That's still true, isn't it?”

He remained bowed and silent. Then in a strained voice, almost a whisper:

“Yes.”

“Then you'll promise to stay—and let me go?” Another silence; and again a hoarse “Yes.” She saw a tear splash on the clenched hands, and her own eyes filled.

“Please leave me now,” she said in a broken voice. “And tell Mrs. McBain that I want to be alone for a time.”

She wept when he had gone; and in the morning, just before they came to take her away, she worked the wedding ring off her finger and slipped it under the pillow. It seemed the only way to mark the end of their relationship. Matthew would find it there when he returned from the beach, and he would understand.

Clothing the patient was a problem, for every movement was an agony; but this was solved by enclosing her carefully, just as she was, in an eiderdown sleeping bag from McBain's emergency stores. In this, securely buttoned from head to foot, they carried her on a stretcher to the wagon. It was Sargent's watch and she said good-by to him there, with a pale smile, and saw him turning away to hide his emotion. Mrs. McBain sat in the straw beside her, and McBain took the reins himself. They set off slowly over the dunes towards the north beach, with Carney walking on one side of the wagon and Skane on the other, to ease the sway of it as the ponies clambered over the slopes. For all that, it was a painful journey until they came out on the level footing of the beach.

There was a light breeze and the air was cool and fresh. The surf hissed on the shore and seemed at times to sweep about the ponies' feet but it did not sound like a bad sea. She noticed Mrs. McBain and the men glancing at it carefully from time to time. A flock of terns followed the wagon, darting, wheeling, soaring overhead, and filling the air with their outcry. The radio mast stood tall in the April sky, receding, sinking slowly into the dunes. Isabel watched it out of sight.

At the landing place the lifeboat crew were waiting with the station's best surfboat and a special stretcher with slings at both ends for hoisting aboard the ship. The Kahns were there, and the Lermonts had ridden down from Number Two.

“Is that thing safe?” demanded Mrs. McBain, eyeing the stretcher as the men eased the laden sleeping bag into it.

“I made it myself,” said McBain rather indignantly. “She'll be strapped in. She can't fall out, even if one sling lets go.”

“Well, you look to it sharp before they hoist her up. I won't have the poor girl slung aboard by the heels like a pony, John McBain. Are you all right, lamb?”

“Yes.”

“Here's your husband to kiss you good-by.”

Matthew's face appeared, bending over her. He looked very stern. His eyes were exactly the color of the spring sky, so different from the dark blue sea-tint of Skane's, and she saw in them now the strange “radio look” that she had so often remarked in all of them, the eyes unseeing and yet regarding things hidden and afar. There were no tears in them, as there were in hers. She felt the crisp hairs of the golden beard against her cheek and then a brief touch of his lips.

“I've written a letter to Hurd,” he said in a measured voice. “He'll make all the hospital arrangements and see that you have everything you want.”

He paused, and swallowed, looking off to sea. “Good-by, my dear, and God bless you. It's strange…that seems all there is to say.” He turned away.

Mrs. McBain fussed about the buttons of the sleeping bag and kissed her.

“Good-by, lamb, and come back to us soon. Your suitcase and things are in the boat.” And she added, “Don't cry, you mustn't cry,” as if she were not weeping noisily herself.

Then Skane's face, gaunt and impersonal, but with an intimate message in his eyes. She blinked the tears away and said in a small cold voice, “It's good-by, Greg.”

“We'll be seeing you,” he said. She did not answer. In another moment McBain was saying, “All right, boys, shove off.” He stood in the boat clasping the loom of the big steering oar in his seasoned hands. The crew, with Kahn, Lermont, Skane, Carney and the three island women, put their hands on the gunwales and waded out into the surf, thrusting the boat to sea. Isabel, in the boat bottom, could see nothing now but McBain's alert brown face and the sea birds wheeling in the cloudless sky. It was like that other boat journey when she had felt herself so lonely in the grip of the sea. The boat was water-borne now, dancing in the surf, and the crew jumped in and ran out the oars.

“Pull!” snapped McBain. “Lively now!” The rowers pulled violently. A sea ran along the gunwale and poured a thin lip over it. There was a sound of water trickling. Then the short quick chop of the inshore waves subsided. The boat moved up and down on slow glossy swells. McBain looked down and gave Isabel a grin.

“Nothin' to it, Ma'am. Janie's got us a good sea for her prayers.”

Nevertheless there was concern in his eyes as they drew alongside the ship and looked up the swaying iron cliff of her side. O'Dell had his forward derrick boom swung out and the cargo hook came down to the boat like a predatory claw. One of the boatmen took the steering oar so that McBain could fasten the stretcher tackles himself. Then, easing one of the control lines through his hands and keeping a fierce eye on the man who held the other, he called, “H'ist away!”

Isabel heard O'Dell's high voice calling “Easy! Easy now!” to his donkeyman. It was done very well, without even a jerk as the stretcher left the boat. She had no fear, indeed despite her pain and weariness she found a twinge of humor in the thing. It was so like Little Eva going up to heaven on a rope from the flies of Acker's. For a time there was nothing in her view but the sky, the cargo hook and its wire, but as the boom swung slowly inboard the
Lord Elgin's
upper works came into sight, and the faces of O'Dell and his mate thrust over the canvas dodger on the bridge. The stretcher was lowered to the forward deck. Without warning Isabel was looking up into the smiling face of a woman.

“Hello,” it said.

“Who are you?” said Isabel, astonished.

“Well, for one thing I'm a nurse. That's a bit of luck, isn't it? I was going up the coast to a sick woman at Kedge Rock lighthouse when Captain O'Dell got the order to come out here.”

Then O'Dell's face, pale and sardonic, and his cold blue eyes. “Well, young woman, I s'pose you didn't know it was loaded?”

“No.”

“They never do. We'll have you snug in a berth in a minute or two. How do you feel?”

“Rather mournful at the moment, I'm afraid.”

“You'll be all right. Why didn't Carney come off with you?”

“I didn't want him to.”

Captain O'Dell searched her eyes with his appraising stare, and found nothing but a challenge that defeated him. He shrugged and called seamen to carry the stretcher aft.

CHAPTER 27

The hospital was full and busy. Hurd had been unable to get a private room and Isabel found herself in a “semi,” separated by a canvas screen from an elderly woman who groaned and fussed and made much trouble for the duty nurse. The nurse intimated to Isabel with whispers and a roll of eyes that old Mrs. Tappett was slowly dying of cancer and making rather a nuisance of herself in the process. It appeared that among other things she objected to drinking the city water. She came from a place in the suburbs where the people had their own wells and she had insisted that her son bring her a supply of water from home. He had driven up to the city with a large carboy of the authentic water and deposited it with the head nurse, who promptly poured it down the nearest sink. Then, carefully sterilized and refilled from a hospital tap, the carboy went up to the old lady's room.

At discreet intervals the nurse on duty whisked the carboy away and brought it back full, intimating that the son had sent up another supply by a friend. Whenever the patient demanded a drink the nurse would pour a glass full of the precious water and hold it to her lips; and Mrs. Tappett would drink with loud clucking sounds and then exclaim to Isabel on the other side of the screen, “Ah, my dear, what a difference! None of that horrid chlorine nor the iron taste off the pipes!”

The nurse would pop her head around the end of the screen with a quick grin and a wink, and Isabel would smile and murmur, “Yes, I'm sure.”

With this innocent little farce, and occasional visits from another son, a bovine man of fifty very anxious to get away again, and from a young Anglican parson who believed in good cheer when visiting the sick and burst into the room crying “Hello! Hello! Hello!” like a parrot in holy orders, the long days were enlivened. Isabel's own visitors were of a somewhat different stamp. Hurd came once or twice. He was rather stiff. It was plain that he had not forgiven Miss Jardine for running off as she had. He had sent a wireless to Carney saying that the wound while serious was not dangerous and that she was recovering nicely. He talked a lot of shop, in which Isabel was only faintly interested, and then mounted his hobbyhorse. Things in the wireless world were changing every day, everything was moving very fast, and he, Hurd, was hard put to keep up with it. Radio was developing new miracles and very soon the telegraphy would be just a petty side show. Broadcasting—now there was something big. Some people were laughing at it but they'd laugh on the other side of their faces before ten years were out, mark his words.

Hurd had started as an operator in what he called “this game.” But he had soon got away from pounding brass and into management at the shore end. He spoke of that early experience aboard ship as a millionaire might speak of selling newspapers as a boy. Whenever a happy-go-lucky sea operator came under his notice he could not help thinking, “There but for the grace of God goes Rollo Hurd.” He spoke appreciatively of Carney and Skane, but the note of condescension in his voice left no doubt that privately he considered Carney and others who served in such Godforsaken holes a lot of nincompoops. Isabel was glad when he left.

A visit from Miss Benson proved more entertaining. She came in wearing a chic spring ensemble including what must have been the shortest skirt in Halifax and what was known currently as a chase-me-Charlie hat. She put a bag of grapes on the bedside table, and sat on the chair crossing her greatest asset with a slither of taut silk.