The Ebbing Of The Tide. Becke Louis
again he watched her.
“I think I will marry her, Brice. Sometimes when the old Marist priest comes here he makes me feel d–d uncomfortable. Of course he is too much of a gentleman—although he is a sky-pilot—to say all he would like to say, but every time he bids me good-bye he says—cunning old chap—‘And think, M. Baldwin, her father, bad as he was, was a white man!”
The young man listened in silence.
“I don’t think I will ever go back to civilisation again, my lad—I am no use there. Here I am somebody—there I am nobody; so I think I’ll give the old Father a bit of a surprise soon.” Then with his merry, chuckling laugh—“and you’ll be my best man. You see, it won’t make any difference to you. Nearly all that I have, when I peg out, will go to you—the son of my old friend and shipmate.”
A curious feeling shot through Brice’s heart as he murmured his thanks. The recital of the girl’s history made him burn with hot anger against her. He had thought her so innocent. And yet the old trader’s words, “I’ve almost made up my mind to marry her,” seemed to dash to the ground some vague hope, he knew not what.
That night he lay on a soft mat on Baldwin’s verandah and tried to sleep. But from between the grey-reds of the serried line of palms that encompassed the house on all but the seaward side, a pale face with star-like eyes and ruby lips looked out and smiled upon him; in the distant and ever varying cadences of the breaking surf he heard the sweet melody of her voice; in the dazzling brilliancy of the starry heavens her haunting face, with eyes alight with love, looked into his.
“D–n!” He rose from his couch, opened the gate, and went out along the white dazzle of the starlit beach. “What the devil is the matter with me? I must be drunk—on two or three nips of whisky.... What a glorious, heavenly night!… And what a grand old fellow Baldwin is!… And I’m an infernal scoundrel to think of her—or a d–d idiot, or a miserable combination of both.”
In a few days two things had happened. Baldwin had married Loisé, and Brice was madly in love with her and she with him. Yet scarcely a word had passed between them—he silent because of genuine shame at the treachery of his thoughts to the old man; she because she but bided her time.
One day he accepted an invitation from the old French priest to pay a visit to the Mission. He went away quietly one morning, and then wrote to Baldwin.
“Ten miles is a good long way off,” he thought. “I’ll be all right in a week or so—then I’ll come back and be a fool no longer.”
The priest liked the young man, and in his simple, hospitable way, made much of him. On the evening of the third day, as they paced to and fro on the path in the Mission garden, they saw Baldwin’s boat sail up to the beach.
“See,” said the priest, with a smile, “M. Baldwin will not let me keep you; and Loisé comes with him. So, so, you must go, but you will come again?” and he pressed the young Englishman’s hand.
The sturdy figure of the old trader came up through the garden; Loisé, native fashion, walking behind him.
Knitting his heavy white eyebrows in mock anger he ordered Brice to the boat, and then extending his hand to the priest—“I must take him back, Father; the Malolo sails to-morrow, and the skipper is coming ashore to-night to dinner, to say good-bye; and, as you know, Father, I’m a silly old man with the whisky bottle, and I’ll get Mr. Brice to keep me steady.”
The tall, thin old priest raised his finger warningly and shook his head at old Baldwin and then smiled.
“Ah, M. Baldwin, I am very much afraid that I will never make you to understand that too much of the whisky is very bad for the head.”
With a parting glass of wine they bade the good Father good-bye, and then hoisting the sail, they stood across for Rikitea. The sun had dipped, and the land-breeze stole softly down from the mountains and sped the boat along. Baldwin was noisy and jocular; Brice silent and ill at ease.
Another hour’s run and Baldwin sailed the boat close under the trading schooner’s stern. Leaning over the rail was the pyjama-clad captain, smoking a cigar.
“Now then, Harding,” bawled the old trader, “don’t forget to be up to time, eight o’clock.”
“Come aboard, and make out your order for your trade, you noisy old Areoi devil,” said Harding. “You’ll ‘make it out ashore,’ eh? No fear, I won’t trust you, you careless, forgetful old dog. So just lay up alongside, and I’ll take you ashore in half an hour.”
“By Jupiter, I mustn’t forget the order,” and Baldwin, finding he could not inveigle the captain ashore just then, ran the boat alongside the schooner and stepped over her rail—“Go on, Brice, my lad. I’ll soon be with you. Give him some whisky or beer, or something, Loisé, as soon as you get to the house. He looks as melancholy as a ghost.”
As the boat’s crew pushed off from the schooner, Brice came aft to steer, and placing his hand on the tiller it touched Loisé’s. She moved aside to make room for him, and he heard his name whispered, and in the darkness he saw her lips part in a happy smile.
Then, still silent, they were pulled ashore.
From his end of the house he heard a soft footfall enter the big room, and then stop. She was standing by the table when, soon after, he came out of his room. At the sound of his footstep she turned the flame of the shaded lamp to its full height, and then raised her face and looked at him. There was a strange, radiant expectancy in her eyes that set his heart to beat wildly. Then he remembered her husband—his friend.
“I suppose Tom won’t be long,” he began, nervously, when she came over to him and placed her hand on his sleeve. The slumbrous eyes were all aglow now, and her bosom rose and fell in short, quick strokes beneath her white muslin gown.
“Why did you go away?” she said, her voice scarce raised above a whisper, yet quivering and tremulous with emotion.
He tried to look away from her, trembling himself, and not knowing what to say.
“Ah,” she said, “speak to me, answer me; why don’t you say something to me? I thought that once your eyes sought mine in the boat”—then as she saw him still standing awkward and silent, all her wild passion burst out—“Brice, Brice, I love you, I love you. And you, you hate me.” He tried to stop her.
Her voice sank again. “Oh, yes, yes; you hate me, else why would you go away without one word to me? Baldwin has told you of—of—of something. It is all true, quite true, and I am wicked, wicked; no woman could have been worse—and you hate me.”
She released her hold upon his arm, and walking over to the window leant against it and wept passionately.
He went over to her and placed his hand upon her shoulder.
“Look here, Loisé, I’m very, very sorry I ever came here in the Malolo”—her shaking figure seemed to shrink at the words—“for I love you too, but, Loisé—your husband was my father’s oldest friend—and mine.”
The oval, tear-swept face was dangerously close to his now, and set his blood racing again in all the quick, hot madness of youth.
“What is that to me?” she whispered; “I love you.”
Brice shut his fists tightly and then—fatal mistake—tried to be angry and tender at the same moment.
“Ah, but Loisé, you, as well as I, know that among English people, for a man to love his friend’s wife–”
Again the low whisper—“What is that to me—and you? You love me, you say. And, we are not among English people. I have my mother’s heart—not a cold English heart.”
“Loisé, Baldwin is my friend. He looks upon me as his son, and he trusts me—and trusts you.... I could never look him in the face again.... If he were any other man I wouldn’t care, or if, if–”
She lifted her face from his shoulder. “Then you only lied to me. You don’t love me!”
That