Chapter V: Part FOUR: The Open Boat (2)

Something of the encounter returned now. “I do not belong here with you,” he said. “The thing--at the last--came for me----”

Then he realised how absurd this would sound--as if some ogre had come. Yet they understood.

“I thought it had come for me,” the woman answered quietly. “I said that, and _he_----”she turned with a smile to the preacher,“--and he said the same--that it had come for him. We will forget that. Something freed us----”

Bellair turned to the child.

“It was the little Gleam who freed us,” Fleury said.

“How did you get that name?” Bellair asked.

“You said it.”

“How long have I been lying here?”

“Ten minutes.”

He rested a moment longer.... The woman was sane, the child unhurt. Stackhouse was dead, and they had not murdered him. It was the fourth sunset.... Bellair sat up and turned his eyes to the sea.

The great body was near. It would not sink. They tried to row, but were too weak to pull far. The calm sea would not cover it from their eyes.... Even the birds did not come to it, and there was no tugging from the deep.

The terrible battle of the day had left them whimpering--drained men, in the pervading calm of the sea, under the dry cloudless heat and light of the sky. Fleury and Bellair looked at each other and their eyes said: “We did not murder him.” They looked again and found the woman saner than they. They turned over her shoulder to the blotch upon the sea. It floated high, drifted with them. They could not speak connectedly, but longed for the night.... At last, they heard her voice:

“It is very great to me to know that there are such men in the world. As a little girl in New Zealand I used to picture such heroes--such brothers and heroes. I came to doubt it afterward, and that was evil in me. I see now that the dream was true----”

They listened like two little boys.

“See, the cool is coming!” she added. “The child is glad, too. To-night, we will talk!”

“You will tell us a story?” Fleury said.

“Yes, when it is darker. It is all so safe and quiet now. We are all one.”

That meant something to Bellair. Later when it was dark, and they had supped, he said:

“It’s good--the way you count me in, but you shouldn’t. I don’t belong, much as I’d like to. I misjudged you at first. I misjudged Fleury--and him----” he pointed over her shoulder to the sea.

“It will be gone in the morning,” she whispered, patting his hand. “We are three--and the child.”

“Three, and God bless you,” said Fleury. “Three and the little Gleam----”

“The Gleam,” the woman repeated, holding the child closer. “I love that.”

“We are three and we follow the Gleam.”

7

Fleury took the child. The Faraway Woman sat straight in her seat, so that Bellair wondered at her strength. Her strength came to him. The deeps of his listening were opened to her low voice. The story came to them with all the colour and contour of her thought-pictures--a richness from the unspoken words which cannot be given again:

“It’s about a little girl whom I will call Olga,” she said. “That is really her name, and the story is the little girl’s truly. I shall only tell part of it to-night, for it is long and I would only tell you the happy part--to-night.

“Olga’s father and mother and the other children lived in a low house by the open road that led to Hamilton. He raised sheep for a living on the rolling pasture-lands near the Waikata river, a hundred miles south of Auckland.... Yes, Olga was born in New Zealand--the youngest of a houseful of sisters. They belong more to the latter part of the story which I shall not tell to-night--just the happy part to-night.... The first thing that Olga remembered as belonging to the Great Subject was spoken by her father one evening when they were all together at their supper of bread and milk:

“‘... One never knows. It is best not to turn away any stranger, not even if he is shabby and ill-looking. I heard of a house where a stranger was turned away. They were not bad people, but supper was over, the things put aside, and the woman was very tired. The stranger was taken in at the next house, and in the morning he seemed different to them--not shabby or ill-looking at all, but rested and laughing, with bright lights about his hair. Always afterward, that house was blest, but the other house went on in its misery and labour. One never knows. It is best not to turn any stranger away.’

“Now Olga understood that from beginning to end. Many times before she had tried to follow the talk at the table, but the words would come too fast, and she would fall away to her own manner of seeing things. This talk simplified many matters for her, and seemed greatly to be approved. So in the evenings she began to watch for _her_ guest up the long level road that led to Hamilton. All that summer Olga thought of it and watched, though she was very little and only five. Sometimes when it was not yet dark she would venture forth a few steps and stare up the long road, until the house of their distant but nearest neighbour was all blurred in the night. Just behind her cottage in the other direction, the road dipped into a ravine, and the trees grew up from it, shutting off the distance. No place could be more wonderful than the ravine at midday, for the shades were quickened with birds, bees, flowers and much beside that only Olga saw, but its enchantment was too keen for the evening, and the night came there very quickly.

“Her Guest would never come from the ravineway, but from the long, open road--Olga was sure of this. Yet when stopping to think, she became afraid he would not be allowed to pass the neighbour’s house. Their little Paul was her frequent playmate, and Paul’s father and mother were most good and hospitable people, the last on the Hamilton road to let a stranger go by, without food and shelter. And Paul would be looking, for he was almost always interested in her things.... But perhaps they would be in at supper and not see the stranger; or perhaps he would not want to stop there, but would know that _she_ was watching. She made very certain that he would not get by her house unobserved.

“Spring had come again. The pale blue hepaticas were peeping into bloom. There was one day that ended in Olga’s most wonderful night. The sun had gone down, but not the light. The sky was crowded with rich gold like the breast of the purple martin--flickerings of beautiful light in the air, as if little balls of happiness were bursting of themselves. The shadows were soft on the long road; the tiles of the neighbour’s low house were like beaten gold, and the perfume of the hyacinths flooded everywhere into the silence. All that heaven could ever be was in that broad splendour and sweetness--the ravine a soft purple stillness behind, and a faint mist of red falling in the distant gold.

“He was coming. She knew him for The Guest from afar. The neighbours’ house was already dimmed, but the stranger was clear, so that she knew he had passed their door. She ran forth to meet him, and no one called to her from behind. It seemed all made for her--the evening so sweet and vast and perfect. One of her little loose shoes came off as she hurried, but she did not stop. The single one made her running clumsy, so she kicked that free too. He must not think she was a little lame girl.... He was farther than she thought; she had never come so far alone in the evening. And yet how clearly she could see him....

“He must be very tired, for sometimes he was on one side of the road, and sometimes on the other. He was quite old, and his step unsteady, yet he carried his cane and did not use it.... His head was uncovered. Now she knew why his steps were so unsteady. He was looking upward as he walked--upward and around quite joyously, the glow of the sky upon his white beard and hair--so that he did not see her coming, and her bare feet were silent on the road.

“She felt very little as she touched his cane.

“‘Won’t you come to our house to rest? Oh, please----’

“‘Yes, yes,’ he answered, but did not look down.

“‘Our house is near--won’t you come?’ she asked again, and turning, she was surprised how far it was, but not afraid, and no one called to her.

“‘Oh, yes,’ he answered.

“‘But I am down here----’

“‘Bless me--are you?’

“He did not seem to see her very well, but tried to follow her voice, his eyes looking past her, and to the side, his great hands groping for her gently. Olga spoke again and touched his hands. Then he really saw her, and she sighed with relief, because his eyes filled with the gentlest love she had ever seen--seemed to rest upon her and enclose her at the same time. The gladdest smile of welcome had come to his face. Both her hands were in his groping ones, but now she turned and led him. There was silence as they walked, and Olga asked:

“‘But what were you looking for--you were looking up, you know?’

“‘Was I, dear?’

“‘Yes, and what were you looking for?’

“‘I was looking for my mother,’ he said.

“Olga thought how old she must be, and she wanted to cry.... _Her_ mother made the stranger very welcome, and her father stood back against the wall smiling in a way that she always remembered, and without lighting his pipe until after the stranger had finished his meal. There was golden butter and the dark bread that is the life of the peasants, a pitcher of fresh milk and a bite of that cheese which is brought forth only on Sundays or holidays. They pressed him to eat more, saying that he must be in need of food after his journey, but it was very little that he really took. He smiled and looked with peace from face to face, but Olga had pulled her stool back into the shadows, for she did not wish to intrude. He had not seen so much of the others.

“A chair was brought to the hearth, for it was now dark and there was a little fire burning against the damp coolness of evening. They waited in vain for him to speak. It was as if he had come home. To Olga he was intensely memorable sitting there in the firelight. The others would draw near, and he leaned forward and looked into their faces smilingly, but it was not the same.... Now he was looking and looking around the room. He found her, and held out his hands. She heard her mother say, ‘This is Olga’s guest.’

“She had not believed his old arms could be so strong. With one hand he held her, while the other patted her shoulder softly, slowly,--as if he had everything he desired. All about her was the firelight and the strange joyous whiteness of him--his throat and collar and beard all lustrous white. In his arms there was something she had never known, even from her mother--a deep and limitless joy, as if the world were all good, and nothing could possibly happen that would not be the right good thing.

“Then she became afraid her breast would burst, for the happiness was more and more. It had to do with the future, such a far distance of seeing, all rising and increasingly good--until Olga had to slip down from his knees, because the happiness in and through her was more than she could bear.

“‘I will come back,’ she said hoarsely.

“Outdoors she waited until the stars had steadied and were like the stars she knew, for they had been huge and blazing at first; then she returned and he stretched out his hands to her, and she heard her mother say, ‘Surely, this is Olga’s guest.’

“She did not remember how she got into her little bed. She heard the birds in the vines, and it was golden day when she awoke. Suddenly she knew that she had slept too long, that she would find him gone.... She thought of her little brown shoes on the road, but some one must have brought them in, for there they were by the bed.... He was no longer in the house, but she did not weep. There had been so much of wonder and beauty. She looked into her mother’s face, but did not ask. The mother smiled, as if waiting for her to speak. The other children must have been told, for they did not speak.

“A thousand times Olga wished that she had awakened in time; often it came to her that she had not done all she could for her guest, but there was never real misery about it, and she was never quite the same after that perfect night. She thought it out bit by bit every day, but it was long, long afterward before she spoke, and this was to an elder sister, who--it was most strange and pitiful to Olga--seemed to have forgotten it all----”

The Faraway Woman reached for the child, and held it close and strangely. Fleury offered her water, but she took just a sup and bade them finish the cup. “That was the happy part,” she added in a whisper, her back moving slowly to and fro, as she held the child high. “It might all have been happier, but Olga was not quite like the others. They did not tell her what they knew, and Olga never could tell them what she felt. Another time--some happy time--I will tell you, who are so good--you will understand the rest of the story----”

“Would you tell us if Olga’s guest came again?” the preacher asked.

“Yes, he came again,” she said softly.

Bellair sat still for several moments. Then he leaned forward and touched the child’s dress.

8

They made an appearance of drinking (with a cracker in hand) at midnight, but it was for the sake of the woman--a sup of tepid water. The long night sailed by. Slowly the moon sank--that dry moon, brick-red and bulbous, as it entered the western sea. All was still in the little boat. Bellair was ready to meet his suffering. He could not sleep--because the woman was near. That was the night that her quality fixed itself for all time exemplary in his heart.

The little story had revealed to him a new sanctuary. He loved it and the little Gleam; as for that, he loved Fleury, too. It was a strange resolving of all separateness that had come to him from these friends. More than ever thrilling it had come, with Stackhouse out of the boat and since the story had been made his.

She had been frightened by his loss of consciousness at the end of the battle. He had awakened looking into her eyes. He scarcely dared to recall what she had said in her anxiety, but it was an extraordinary matter of value. What a mother she was; and what a little girl lived in that story, and now!... That little girl was still in her heart. The recent days in the open boat had not spoiled her; nor the recent years of loneliness and tragedy. Out of it all had come certain perfect works--the babe in her arms, her own fortitude and fearlessness of death; the little girl still in her eyes and heart. Bellair saw that a man loves the child in a woman, quite as much as a woman loves the boy in a man.... She had said that Fleury and he were brothers and heroes. He knew better in his own case. Still she had said it, adding that the discovery of such men to her was a part of the very bloom of life....

Bellair was not thinking the personal relation now. Fleury and she were mated in his own thoughts. From the beginning, this was so; and yet he did not ask more. He had come to believe from their glorious humanity (so strange to him and unpromising in the beginning)--that the world was crowded with latent values which, once touched and quickened into life, would make it a paradise.

That was the substance of the whole matter. He must never forget it. The human values which he had met in these were secret in thousands, perhaps in millions, of hearts, and needed only breaking open by stress and revelation--to bring the millennium to old Mother Earth, and open her skies for the plan of joy. Bellair impressed this upon his mind again, so he would not forget--then fell asleep.

She was first awake in the distance-clearing light. She arose carefully, so as not to awaken the men and the child, and stared long in every quarter. There was no ship, no land, no cloud; and yet a trace of happiness on her thin face, as she sat down. Fleury was rousing. She had expected that; for through their strange sympathy several times before he had awakened with her, or soon after. She bent forward and whispered a good-morning, and added:

“It is gone----”

“Surely?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God.”

The preacher breathed deeply, contemplated their faces one after another. From Bellair lying in the stern, his eyes turned significantly to the woman’s, and his own lit with zeal.... Bellair was on the borderland then, coming up through the fathoms of dream. Already he felt the heat; the sun had imparted its ache to his eyes. The three were half-blinded by the long brilliance of the cloudless days on the sea.... Bellair was trying to speak, but could not because of the parch in his throat. Moreover, no thoughts could hold him--not even Bessie. She came to mind, pink and ineffectual, lost in her childish things. She had failed this way before....

There was a cup to his lips. He smelled the water, and wanted it as he wanted decency and truth--as he wanted to be brave and fit to be one of the three. It almost crazed him, the way he wanted it--but it would be taking it from her. All the violence of one-pointed will was against the cup. He pushed it away.

“Don’t, Bellair,” said Fleury. “You’ll spill it. Drink----”

“I won’t. Take it away.”

“You must drink. It is yours.”

“Yes, he must drink,” said the woman.

Bellair sat up. Fleury was holding the cup to his lips.

“It is gone from behind,” said the preacher. “Drink your water. I have. I will speak to you after you drink.”

He stared at them, and at the open sea behind her. Then it came to him, as if from Fleury’s mind, to obey.... Fleury then served the woman. They ate a cracker together; at least it seemed so. Then Fleury spoke:

“We have the child to serve--that is our first thought; therefore we must think of the child’s mother first. As for her other part, as our companion, she will be one with us, of course. We have been here five full days, and we have not been allowed, by the presence of him who is gone--and may God rest and keep that--we have not been allowed to do the best we could in this great privilege of being together and drawing close to reality. Many have gone without food and drink for ten days--to come close to God. There is food here and water--to keep us in life. This is what I would say: We must change our point of view.”

He paused, and their eyes turned from one to another. The child’s face seemed washed in the magic of morning. The preacher added:

“We must cease to regard ourselves as suffering, as creatures in want, as starving or dying of thirst. Rather, as three souls knit, each to the other, who have entered upon a pilgrimage together--a period of simple austerity to cleanse and purify our bodies the better to meet and sense reality, and to approach with a finer sensitiveness, than we have ever known--the mystery and ministry of God.... So we are not suffering, Bellair. We are not suffering--”

He turned to the woman.

“We are chosen ones. This is our wilderness. When we are ready--God will speak to us. We are very far from the poor needs of the body--for this is the time and period of our consecration. God bless you both--and the Gleam.”

9

It was the seventh evening, the cool coming in. Bellair could not feel his body below his lungs, unless he stopped to think. The child was on his knee, his hands holding it. The little face was browned, but very clear and bright. Bellair’s hands against the child’s dress were clawlike to his own eyes, like the hands of a black man very aged. He could move his fingers when he thought of it, but he did not know if they moved unless he watched. The effort of steadying the child he did not feel in his arms, but in his shoulders. It was like the ache in his eyes. No tears would come, but all the smart of tears’ beginnings; and the least little thing would bring it about. He had to stop between words and wait for his throat to subside--in the simplest saying.

He saw everything clearly. The open boat was like a seat lifted a trifle above the runways of the world. He could see them, as one in the swarming paths beneath could never hope to see. It was all good, but the pain and the pressure of them all!... Bessie Brealt in pain and pressure; Davy Acton in the hard heavy air; Broadwell who was trying to be a man at Lot & Company’s; the old boarding-house woman who had forgotten everything but her rooms--her rooms moving with shadows whom she never saw clearly and never hoped to understand--shadows that flitted, her accounts never in order, her rooms never in order.... There had been people in there whom he never saw--one girlish voice that awakened in the afternoon and sang softly, a most subdued and impossible singing. She worked nights at a telephone switch-board--the night-desires of the great city passing through her--and she sang to the light of noon when it came to the cage.... Sunday afternoons when it was fine, a bearded man emerged from a back-room, emerged with a cane and cigarette case. Always on the front steps he lit the cigarette....

Bellair now couldn’t smoke.... Once there had been moaning in a lower back room, moaning night and morning from a woman. He was not sure if it were the millinery woman, or the one who worked in Kratz’s. The moaning stopped and as he passed through the hall, he heard a doctor say to the landlady:

“King Alcohol.”

Just that.... He saw the millinery woman afterward, so it wasn’t she.... The air in the old halls was of a character all its own. It was stronger than the emanations from any of the rooms. The separate currents lost their identity like streams in the ocean, like souls in Brahma.... How strangely apart he had kept all that five years! A face not seen before in the halls, and he did not know if it were a newcomer or old. So few came to the board to dine--the chorus-woman from the Hippodrome, who came up nightly from the water.... He saw the view from his window--over the roofs and areas. It was a wall of windows--dwellers in the canyon sides; boxes of food hanging out, clothing out to freshen itself in the dingy and sluggish airs--the coloured stockings and the faces that looked out. Everything was monotonous but the faces--faces grim and sharp--faces of kittens and bulls and rabbits and foxes, faces of ferrets, sleek faces, torn faces, red and brutal, white and wasted faces; faces of food and drink, faces of hunger and fear; the drugged look; few tears but much dry yearning, and not a face of joy.

There was no joyousness and peace in the lower runways, but pain and heavy pressures.... Bellair saw himself moving among those halls again, not a stranger, but with a hand, a smile, a dollar. No one would moan for days without his knowing. He would find day-work for the little telephone miss, and send orders for hats to the milliner. He would awaken that shadow of all the shadows, the landlady, with kindness and healing. He would call across the windowed cavern.... They would say, “Come over and help us,” and he would rush down stairs, and around into other streets, and faces there would be ready to show him. He saw it all clearly, such as it was, but no facts. They would not call to him. They would not be healed. They would take a dollar, but say he was cracked. He could move about passing forth a dollar here and there--that was all. They would welcome him at Lot & Company’s if he passed it out quietly enough. The dollar would go into the Sproxley system and emerge unbroken to the firm itself, there to be had and held and marked down in the house of Lot--Jabez, Nathan, Eben, Seth, each a part, the jovial Mr. Rawter a small but visible part--one hundred Sproxley-measured cents.... Davy Acton wouldn’t get one, nor Broadwell, nor the girls upstairs. The firm would not encourage him passing beyond the cage of Mr. Sproxley.... There were many who wanted food and drink and hats--hats----”

He was with Bessie Brealt now ... that night and the kiss. It was another life.... He went back to those who needed food--New York so full of food. Then he felt the heavy wallet against his breast--one paper in there would fill the open boat with food....

“My God,” he said.

* * * * *

He didn’t try to explain.... Sometimes he fell into a little dream as he sat. Once he was drinking at the narrow throat of a green bottle,--a magic bottle whose base was in the sea, and the trickle that passed through was freshened drop by drop. But it was a trick like all else in the world and the drops passed with agonising slowness. He came to, sucking hard upon his brass key, his mouth ulcered from it.... There were times in the long days that he hungered for the stars almost as for drink; times in the night when the stars bored him like some man-pageantry that he had seen too much of; times when the thought of God was less than the thought of water; and times when the faith and the glory of the spirit of the world made thirst a thing to laugh at, and death whimsical and insignificant.... Sometimes in the night, he fancied the woman was Bessie Brealt. It would come like a little suspicion first hardly stirring his faculties; finally it would be real--that the singing girl was there, all but her song. He would sit up rubbing his eyes in rebellion. Once he had spoken to be sure.

“Yes, it is I,” she said huskily, and the voice was not Bessie Brealt’s.

10

They did not speak of ships. Through the wakeful night hours they watched for the lights of ships, but they did not speak of vigils. Their eyes were straining for uncharted shores during the days, but they did not speak of land; nor of rain, though they watched passionately the change and movement of wind and cloud.

It is true that they suffered less in the days that followed the passing of Stackhouse. The underworld was gone from the seat in the stern; sunlight and sea air had cleansed it from the boat. They were weaker, but pangs of thirst were weaker, too. Small pieces of metal in their mouths kept the saliva trickling. The real difference was an exaltation which even Bellair shared at times, and which had come to them the fifth morning with Fleury’s talk, and with refining intensity since.

The child was well; his imperative founts still flowing. She was pure mother; it was the child that was nourished first, not her own body. She was first in the passion for his preservation. Indeed, she would have told them at once had any change threatened him. But she was the soul of the fasting too; the austerity of it found deep sanction within her; and there were moments in which she bewildered Bellair, for she became bright with the vitality which is above the need of bread.

Fleury talked of God, as Stackhouse had talked of death. Indeed, there was a contrasting intoxication in the days and nights of the preacher, but one without hideous reaction.

“There comes a moment,” he said, “when I am alone--when you two are asleep--that I feel the weakness. I drink and eat--perhaps more than my share. But when we are all together--sitting here as now, talking and sustaining one another--oh, it seems I was never so happy.”

Bellair suspected that this talk of lapses into abandonment while others slept was an effort to make their minds easy on the subject of his share. Both the Mother and Bellair doubted this; it preyed upon them. In the main they were one solution, each separate quality of their individualism cast into a common pool for the sustaining of a trinity.

“It changes the whole order,” Fleury declared. “Why, whole crowds have died of hunger--in half the number of days that holy men and women have fasted as a mere incident of their practice toward self-mastery. This is our consecration.”

Bellair found it true. He had ceased to marvel at himself. Deep reconstruction was advanced within him; and a strange loyalty and endurance prospered from the new foundations. If this were self-hypnosis--very well; if madness--very well, too; at least, it was good to possess, seven, eight, nine days in an open boat, on a one-fifth ration of water and food. To Bellair, who felt himself inferior to the others, it appeared that they already lived what he was thrillingly thinking out. He remembered his first thoughts of them--in the cold worldly manner of a fellow-traveller. It was almost as far as a man’s emotion can swing, from what he thought of them now. Before God, he believed he was right now, and wrong then. Certainly he would test it out, if he lived to move among men again.

He thought often about the child’s voice--at the moment that the heart of Stackhouse broke--as the point of his turning and salvation. This furnished a clue to many things, though he did not miss the fact that the world would smile at his credulity in accepting such a dispensation as real. The world would say that he had been driven to far distances of illusion by thirst and hunger; in fact, that anything which he had seen, other than the original entity in the eyes of Stackhouse, was a part of the illusion. Bellair considered this, and also that in every instance of late in which he had held the world’s point of view he had been proven wrong. He granted the world its rights to think as it chose, but accepted the dispensation.

There had been good and evil within him. The balance had turned in favour of the good, with that cry. It had turned from the self. The purpose of the Enterer had been to keep him _in_ the self. It had come from the unfathomed depths of evil--that purpose and the devil which he saw. Bellair had heard repeatedly that some such _dweller_ appeared to each man who makes an abrupt turn from the life of flesh to the life of the spirit. Each of the three had seen something foreign in the eyes of Stackhouse. It is true they had not talked of it; possibly to each it was different in its deadliness; perhaps theirs was not the demon _he_ saw, since Fleury and the woman were much farther on the way than he, but they had been good enough to share responsibility for the visitation. Indeed, the Faraway Woman could not have been acting, since a cry came from her the instant _it_ appeared.

This he loved to study: that his thought of the child had balanced the whole issue against the intruder; that something within him had brought that saving grace of selflessness out of chaos. It was a squeak, he invariably added, but it had shown him enough, opening the way. There must be such a beginning in every man; in fact, there must come an instant of choice; an instant in which a man consciously chooses his path, weighing all that is past against the hope and intellectual conception of a better life.

Bellair brooded upon this a great deal, especially on the ninth day, and that was the day, Fleury talked--the holiest of their days in the open boat. Bellair found many things clearer afterwards. As soon as he understood fully, he meant to close it all, so far as his own relation was concerned. In its very nature it must be given to others, must be turned to helpfulness. It was a sort of star-dust which did not adhere to self, but sought places of innocence to shine from, and used every pure instrument for its dissemination. The key to the whole matter was the loss of the sense of self. Having accepted this, Bellair knew that he must go up into Nineveh, so to speak. He trembled.

“We learn by austerities apart,” Fleury said, “and then we return to men with the story. We are called up the mountain to witness the transfiguration, and then are sent with the picture down among men. Oh, no, we are not permitted to remain, nor build a temple up there. First we receive; then we must give. We must lose the sense of self in order to receive; and having received, we do not want the sense of self. This is the right and left hand of prayer--pure selfless receptivity, then tireless giving to others. It is the key to the whole scheme of life--mountain and valley, ebb and flow, night and day, winter and summer, the movement of the lungs and the heart and the soul. We cannot receive while our senses are hot with desire; therefore we must become delicate and sensitive. Having received, we must make the gift alive through action. Dreaming is splendid; the dreamer receives. The dreamer starts all things; but the dreamer becomes a hopeless ineffectual if he does not make his dreams come true in matter. That is it. We are here to make matter follow the dream. That’s why the spirit puts on flesh--that’s why we are workmen. Action is the right hand of thought.”

The preacher was ahead of him in these thoughts. So often he said just what Bellair needed, the exact, clearing, helpful thing. For instance, Bellair had followed his own fascinating conviction that the world is full of secret values; that the world is ready to pull together, only it requires a certain stimulus from without--some certain message that would reach and unify all. Fleury tightened the matter by his expression of it:

“The socialists are doing great good. The church is still doing good; the societies that have turned to the East have heard the great message; even in commerce there is a new life; everywhere in the world, the sense of having found _some new spirit_ which works to destroy the sense of self. If one great figure should come now--come saying, ‘You are all good. You are all after the same thing. One way is as good as another--only come.’... What we need is for some one to touch the chord for us--to give us the key, as to an orchestra of different instruments. We are all making different notes; and yet are ready for the harmony--some of us intensely eager for the harmony. The great need is for a Unifier.... It seems that we, here in the small boat, can see America so much clearer, than when we were there----”

Bellair had felt this a thousand times.

“The greatest story in the world is the story of the coming of a Messiah--the one who may chord for us. I think He will come. He will come out of the East, his face like the morning sun turned to the West. Don’t you see--we are all like atoms of steel in a chaos? You know what happens when a voltage of electricity is turned upon a bar of steel? Order comes to the chaos; the atoms sing, all turned the same way. That Voice must come--that tremendous voltage of spiritual electricity--that will set us all in harmony--all with our tails down stream.”

And Fleury finished it all by pointing out what had happened to them in the small boat. They had lost separateness; they were each for the others.

“That’s what must happen in America, in the world,--the pull of each for the whole--the harmony. You have seen an audience in the midst of great message or great music--they weep together. They cry out together. They are all one. That’s the story. That is what must happen. It will happen when the Unifier comes. It is the base of all gospel--that we are all one in spirit. Don’t you see it--every message from the beginning of time has told it? All one--all one--our separateness is our suffering, our evil. To return to the House of Our Father--that is the end of estrangement.”

... And Fleury was the one who had ceased to talk. But he had acted, too.... They saw that he was held by some power of his giving to them. He was like light. He had given the whole material force of his body to hold off that destruction which had come with the dying of Stackhouse. He had not eaten, even as they had eaten. They feared for him, because he was the centre and mainspring of their pilgrimage. Especially this haunt became more grippable in the heart of the ninth night.... There was a small tin of water left, less than three pints, very far from clean; and somewhat less than a pound of crackers. Bellair awoke to find Fleury gone from his place between him and the woman. He was in the stern, in the old seat of Stackhouse, praying. ... Fleury met the tenth day with an exaltation that awed Bellair and the woman; and there came from it a fear to Bellair’s heart that had nothing to do with self, nor with the Mother, nor the Gleam.

They were all weak, and two men utterly weak. Through their will and denial, and the extraordinary force and health of her own nature, the child had not yet been dangerously denied. It had become a sort of natural religion with the three--a readiness to die for the Gleam.

“This is our last day,” said Fleury, before the western horizon was marked clear.... The Faraway Woman told them another story of what the wise old shepherd dog told the puppies--that it was better to begin on crackers and water--and end on cookies and cream....

11

Bellair believed about this being the last day. The authority was quite enough, but there was still something akin to eternity in the possible space of another daylight and distance. The announcement did not bring him an unmixed gladness, for the mysterious fear of the night haunted him--the thing that had come to him under the full and amazing moon while Fleury prayed.... Day revealed no sign. They sat speechless and bowed under the smiting noon--the little boat in the wide, green deep under a fleckless, windless sky, proud of its pure part in infinite space.

That was the day the child moaned, as significantly for the ears of men, as for the mother. He was a waif to look at--the little heart at times like one of them in stoicism--then nestling to the mother-breast and the turning away in astonishment and pain. The Mother’s eyes were harrowing.

“This is our last day,” Fleury repeated.

“I believe you,” she said.

“Then drink and eat----”

“I did--it is--it is--oh, I did!”

“Land or rain or a ship, I do not know--but this is the last day----”

Bellair regarded him, between his own wordless vapourings of consciousness. The preacher was like a guest, not of earth altogether--like one who would come in the evening.... Yes, that was it. He was like the old man who came to Olga, only young and beautiful. It did not occur to Bellair now that he was regarding his friend with a quality of vision that a well-fed man never knows.... That which he had fancied placid and boyish was knit and masterful. The cheeks and temples were hollowed, but the eyes were bright. There is a brightness of hunger, of fever, of certain drugs, but these were as different as separate colours--and had not to do with this man’s eyes. Nothing that Bellair knew but starlight could be likened--and not all starlight. There was one star that rose late and climbed high above and a little toward the north--solitary, remote, not yellow nor red nor green nor white, as we know it--yet of that whiteness which is the source of all. Bellair had forgotten the name, but Fleury’s eyes made him think of it.

... The woman’s head was lying back. Something that Bellair had noted a hundred times, without bringing it actually into his mind’s front, now appeared with all the energy of a realisation. Her throat was almost too beautiful. The diverging lines under the ear, one stretching down to the shoulder, the other curving forward around the chin, were shadowed a little deeper from her body’s wasting, but the beauty was deeper than flesh, the structure itself classic. It was the same as when he had noted her finger-nails. Beauty had brought him a kind of excitement, and something of hostility--as if he had been hurt terribly by it long ago. But this was different; these details had come one by one, as he was ready. Her integrity had entered his heart before each outer symbol. He had not seen her at all at first; recalled the queer sense of hesitation in raising his eyes across the table in the cabin of the _Jade_. He had studied her face in the open boat, but something seemed to blur his eyes when she turned to him to speak. Two are required for a real understanding. As yet they had not really met, not yet turned to each other in that searching silence which fathoms. But the details were dawning upon him. Perhaps that was the way of the Faraway Woman--to dawn upon one.

* * * * *

The day was ending--their shadows long upon the water. Fleury raised his hand as he said:

“It is surer to me than anything in the world----”

“What, Fleury?” Bellair asked, though there was but one theme of the day.

“That this is our last day in the open boat.”

Bellair did not answer. His own voice had a hideous sound to him and betrayed his misery.

“It was the _too-great light_--that I saw,” the preacher added huskily. “It began last night as I prayed. I saw that this was the last day for us--but more----”

“I saw something about you as you prayed,” the woman said.

Fleury surprised them now, taking a sup of water. They saw that he had something to say about God and the soul of man--that was the romance he worshipped. They listened with awe. In Bellair’s heart, at least, there was a conviction that tightened continually--that they were not long to hear the words of the preacher.

“... For two years I have been in the dark and could not pray. Before that I prayed with the thought of self, which is not prayer. I could not stay as a church leader without praying. I said I would pray when I could pray purely for them. I told them, too, that I could not look back in service and adoration to the Saviour of another people who lived two thousand years ago. They called me a devil and a blasphemer. For two years, I have tried to serve instead of to pray, but no one would listen, no one would have me. They said I was insane, and at times I believed it. At last, it came to me that I must go away--to the farthest part of the world----”

He turned yearningly to the woman.

“And then you came with your strength and faith.”

Now to Bellair:

“And you came with the world in your thoughts, and I made the third. We went down into the wilderness together--with that other of the underworld. _It was a cosmos._ It has shown me all I can bear. Last night, it came to me that I _could_ pray for you. It came simply, because I loved you enough----”

His face moved from one to the other, his hand fumbling the dress of the child beside him.

“It was very clear. As soon as I loved you enough, I could pray for you, without thought of self. It was the loss of the self that made it all so wonderful. And as I prayed, the light came, and the Saviour I had lost, was in the light. And the light was Ahead; and this message from Him, came to my soul:

“_I am here for those who look ahead; and for those who turn back two thousand years, I am there. Those who love one another find me swiftly._”

Bellair scarcely heard him. Fleury’s eyes were light itself. The man’s inner flame had broken through. Something incandescent was within him; something within touched by the “glittering plane.” But it did not mean future years together. Bellair had wanted that.... Fleury smiled now, his eyes lost in the East. He lifted his hand.

“It always comes from the East,” he said strangely.

Bellair had searched that horizon a few moments ago. He knew exactly how the East had looked--a thin luminous grey line on the green, brightening to Prussian blue, then to vivid azure. He dared not look now, but watched the woman.

Straining and terror were in her eyes--then sudden light, a miracle of light and hope, then her cry.

Bellair seemed to see it in her mind--the smudge upon the horizon--before he turned. It was there--a blur on the thin grey line.

To lift the oars was like raising logs of oak, but he shipped the pair at last, listening for the words of the others and watching their faces. It seemed simpler than straining his eyes to the East. Fleury tried to raise the overcoat from the bottom of the boat, but it fell from his hands, and he sank back smiling:

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’re coming. They’ll see us soon.”

To Bellair it was like seeing a ghost, that smile of Fleury’s. It meant something that in the future would be quite as important to him as the ship’s bearing down to lift them up. He pulled toward the east--felt the old fainting come, pulled against that,--to the east, until a low, thundering vibration was all about him, like the tramp of death. Perhaps it was that--the thought flickered up into form out of the deep blur.... He was drinking water again. This time he did not fight.

“You may as well have yours, Bellair, man,” Fleury was saying, “and you need not row. They’re coming. It’s a ship coming fast. There is light for them to see us well--if they do not already----”

“But you haven’t drunk!”

“Bless you, I’ll drink now.”

The woman handed him the water. The cup was in his hand. He covered merely the bottom of the cup, and made much of it as if it were a full quart.

“The fact is--I’m not thirsty,” he said pitifully, when he saw their faces.

“You’re all in,” Bellair said in an awed tone.

* * * * *

Through the prolonged ending of that day Bellair watched the steamer near, but his thoughts were not held to the beauty of her form, nor the pricking out at last of her lights. He stood against the bare pole in the dusk, and waved and called--his voice little and whimsical. It seemed to falter and cling within their little radius, then run back to his ears--a fledgeling effort. But the deep baying of the steamer answered at last. Even that could not hold Bellair’s thoughts.... She was coming straight toward them now. If it were death and illusion, so be it; at least that is what he saw.

“It would be all right--except for him,” Bellair said to the woman.

“I tell you all is well,” said Fleury. “Only I ask----”

“Yes,” they said, when he paused.

“Don’t let them separate us--when we are on board the ship to-night. I want to be with you both to-night--we three who have seen so much together--and the little man.”

... They heard her bells and the slackening of the engines. She was coming in softly like an angel, bringing the different life, a return to earth it was. The woman was weeping. Bellair could not have spoken without tears....

Just now through the evening purple, he saw _that_ star in the east, off the point of the steamer’s prow.

“Fleury,” he said, “tell me--what is that one--that pure one--I have forgotten?”

The preacher’s eyes followed his finger.

“That is Spika--Spika of the Virgin,” he said.

12

The engine had stopped. She neared in the deep dusk, a harp of lights, and with the steady sound of a waterfall.... She was just moving. There was a hail from the heights.

“Hai!” answered Bellair. It was a poor, broken sound.

Now they felt the strange, different heat of the steamer--earth-heat--and a thousand odours registered on their clean senses--milk and meat, coal-smoke, and the steam of hot ashes, perfumes, metal and paint.... A hoarse voice called down:

“Are any of you sick--infectious?”

“No--just hunger and thirst--clean as a new berth.”

It was Bellair again.

“Stay off well. We’re putting down a ladder. Watch the green light.”

They saw it come down to them--to the very water. Then they were uplifted. This was the world coming back--but a changed world. A great kindness had come over all men. Bellair saw the tears in the eyes of the people gathered on the deck. He almost expected to see Bessie Brealt there.... Perhaps the change had come from her singing.... There was a choke in the voices of the people gathered around them.

“Please,” he managed to say, “don’t keep us apart to-night--we three. Please let us be together.”

And down the deck-passage he heard the voices of women, and among them, the Faraway Woman’s voice, in answer:

“Yes, I will go with you thankfully--but not for long. My companions and I must be together very soon. We three--to-night--it is promised between us.”

There was no voice from Fleury.

The kindness of every one, that was like a poignant distress to Bellair. He dared not speak; in fact, there was danger of him breaking down even without words. The eyes about him were searching, in their eagerness to help. An Englishman came forward at intervals and gripped his hand; a German spoke to others of the remarkable condition of the boat and its three, after ten days; another German moved in and out helping, without any words, though his eyes lifted Bellair over several pinches of emotion. The American ship-doctor was the best of all; young, gruff, humorous, quick-handed, doing and saying the right thing.... They brought him stimulants and sups of water by the teaspoon. The merest aroma of thin broth in the bottom of a tea-cup was lifted to his lips. He was helped to a hot bath; a splendid quiet friendliness about it all. Now it occurred to Bellair that they were tremendously eager to hear his story. He wanted to satisfy them....

“It was the fifth day--that Stackhouse died,” he was saying, though he was mistaken. “Perhaps you’ve heard of him ... owns a lot of ships and islands down here.... That was the climax for us. He died hard and he was a big man--but we did not murder him.... His body did not sink....”

There was a boom of running water in the bathroom; the steam rising. Bellair’s voice was ineffectual. The face of the ship-surgeon bent to him in the steam, saying:

“Cut it--there’s plenty of time.... Leave it all to us.... I say, lean back. You’ve got a bath coming. Guess you’ve never been on a sick-list before. We can wait for the story.”