At the little port within the inlet they disembarked, and took the small steamer of the Inside Route, which was to carry them through the sounds to Romney. Night had come on, dark and quiet; clouds covered the sky; the air was warm, for it was still summer here. The dusky shores, dimly visible on either hand, gave a sense of protection after the vastness of the ocean; the odors of flowers reached them, and seemed sweet after its blank, cold purity. Cicely, with Porley and Jack, was on the deck near the stern; the judge was now with them, now at the prow, now up-stairs, now down-stairs; he could not be still. Eve sat by herself on the forward deck, gazing through the darkness at the water; she could not see it save here and there in broken gleams, where the lights from the lower cabin shone across it; she heard the rushing sound made by the great paddle-wheels as they revolved unseen behind her, and the fancy came to her that she should like to be lashed to the outer rim of one of them, and be carried up and down through the cool water. Towards ten o’clock a beam shone out ahead. “See it?” said the judge, excitedly, coming to show it to her. “Jupiter Light!”
And Eve remembered that less than a year before she had landed here for the first time, a woman imperious, sufficient to herself; a woman who was sure that she could direct her own course; in addition, a woman who supposed herself to be unhappy. How like child’s play did this all seem now—her certainties, and her pride, and her supposed sorrow! “If I could die, wouldn’t that be the best thing for me, as well as for Paul? A way out of it all? The first shock over, I should be but a memory to him; I should not be a miserable haunting presence, wretched myself, and making him wretched too. I wonder—I wonder—is it wrong to try to die?”
The stern Puritan blood of her father in her answered, “One must not give up until one has exhausted every atom of one’s strength in the contest.”
“But if it is all exhausted? If—” Here another feeling came sweeping over her. “No, I cannot die while he is in the world; in spite of my misery, I want to be here if he is here. Perhaps no knowledge of anything that happens here penetrates to the next world; if that is the case, I don’t want to be there, no matter how beautiful it may be. I want to stay where I can hear of Paul.”
After they had left the boat, and Pomp and Plato were hoisting the trunks into one of the wagons, Cicely came up.
“Eve, you must stay with me more, now that we are here; you mustn’t be always off by yourself.”
“I thought you preferred it.”
“Yes, through the journey. But not now. It’s a great deal worse for me now than it is for you; you have left Paul behind, but I am going to see Ferdie in a moment or two. I shall see him everywhere—in the road, at the door, in our own room; he will stand and look at me.”
“Well, you will like that.”
“No, for it will be only a mockery; I shall not be able to put my arms round him; he won’t kiss me.”