"Here's another shilling for you, and good-night."
Grantley rode on to the inn, thanking fate, realising now how narrow the chance had been. But for the storm, but for the wind that had buffeted and almost beaten him, no pride, no resolution, would have been of any avail. With fair weather the yacht would have come and gone. He saw why Christine Fanshaw was not to deliver his letter till the morrow. Without the storm, no pride, no resolution, no courage would have availed him. The Ariadne would have put to sea, and Sibylla would have been gone for ever. Now, thanks to fate, she was not gone. Grantley drew a long breath—the breath of a man whom a great peril has narrowly passed by. The plan had been well laid, but the storm had thwarted it. There was time yet.
Was there? That question could not but rise in his mind. He faced it fairly and squarely, and jogged on to the Sailors' Rest.
"Praise to this fine storm!" he cried within himself—to the storm which beat and raged, which had feigned to hinder his coming, but was his ally and friend. Good luck to it! It had served his turn as nothing else could. And how it was attuned to his mood—to the fierce stern conflict which he had to wage! This was no night for gentleness. There were nights when nature's gentleness mocked the strife to which her own decrees condemned the race of men. But to-night she herself was in the fight. She incited, she cheered, she played him on; and she had given him his field of battle. The sense of helplessness passed from him. He was arrayed for the fight. He drank in the violent salt air as though it were a potion magic in power. His being tingled for the struggle.
There was a light in an upper window of the Sailors' Rest. The blinds were not drawn. No, the pair in that room were looking out to sea, looking for the boat which did not come, looking in vain over the tumbling riot of waves. But stay! Perhaps they looked no more now; perhaps they had abandoned that hope for the night. Christine was not to deliver his letter till the morrow; they would think that they had to-night. The thought brought back his pain and his fierceness. They would think that they had to-night! They were wrong there; but it was ten o'clock. "Ten o'clock!" he muttered, as he drew rein at the door of the Sailors' Rest and cast his eyes up to the light in the window over his head.
Within, young Blake was turning away from the window.
"She won't come to-night," he said. "I suppose they started, or I should have had a wire. They must have put back or put in for shelter somewhere. And if she did come, I couldn't take you to sea to-night." He came across to where Sibylla sat over the fire. "It's no use expecting her to-night. We must get away to-morrow morning. There's plenty of time." He meant time before Grantley Imason would receive Sibylla's letter and come to Fairhaven, seeking his wife.
"It's too perverse," Sibylla murmured forlornly.
Her vision of their flight was gone. The rush through the waves, the whistling wind, the headlong course, the recklessness, the remoteness from all the world, the stir, the movement, the excitement—all were gone. On the yacht, out in mid-sea, no land in sight, making for a new world, they two alone, with all that belonged to the old life out of view and out of thought—the picture had caught and filled her fancy. In her dream the sea had been as Lethe, the stretch of waters a flood submerging all the past and burying the homes of memory. She had stood arm in arm with him, revelling in the riot of the open seas. No further had the vision gone. The room in the inn was very different. It was small, stuffy, and not too clean. The smell of stale tobacco and of dregs of liquor hung about it. The fire smoked, sending out every now and then a thick dirty cloud that settled on her hands and hair. Her dainty cleanliness rose in revolt. It was a sordid little room. It was odious then; it would never be pleasant in retrospect. Somehow it carried a taint with it; it brought into prominence all that her thoughts had forgotten; its four dingy walls shut out the glowing picture which her fancy had painted.
Blake came and stood behind her chair, laying his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with a sad smile.