“I remember I used to wish you had.”
“Well, there’s one thing you can’t remember, because you never knew it. And that is that I had never seen you in the Valdivia days. It was partly my fault, but not altogether. Men’s lives are so hidden from girls. How is it possible for us to know them? We never see them doing things that are worth while. We haven’t a notion what they’re like when they’re at work. Only, about one man’s work I used to think I knew. Of course I didn’t, but just to imagine it was something. I was the kind of girl who isn’t ambitious for herself. But for the man she—The reason that old ‘obsession,’ as you called it, took such hold of me, was that there was a man who was ‘doing things’! I’d heard all my life about the things he’d done and the things he meant to do. They seemed already made immortal in a book. But now I’ve seen it isn’t only he—”
The contrast in achievement cut too cruelly. Cheviot struck the damp railing with his open palm, and laughed out loud.
Though his action dashed her into trembling she drew closer, she pressed against his arm. “Besides, I’ve come at last to care for some one in the only true way—quite apart from anything he may do. I—I love you, Louis.”
The look he turned upon her was very beautiful to the girl. As his hand moved toward her along the railing, under cover of the cape, her own slipped into it.
The wild chant of the Chinamen abruptly ended, and now that nearer, more intelligible sound, the creaking of the falls as the long boat sank from the davits to the sea.
Cheviot, with an effort, turned his eyes away from the girl’s face. Together they watched the boat floated over the great anchor that was suspended lengthwise a little under the surface of the water; together saw the binding fast of the anchor to the boat. And now the two made one were ready. Cheviot took off his overcoat and flung it over the railing. “Will you have an eye to that?”
Her heart was beating painfully. “Do you think I’ll have an eye to spare?”
“Well, keep this in your pocket then.” He took off his watch. “And here’s this.” He put a little leather case in her hand, smiling and saying hurriedly, under his breath: “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” Then facing about he signaled to his volunteers.
In the undisciplined fashion of her sex, Hildegarde, forgetting to go back behind the barrier, stood at gaze. Cheviot, carrying with him something quick and quivering out of the heart of the girl (something that kept her linked to him not by eye and mind alone, but as by a bond that established oneness of the very flesh, faithfully reporting effort and transmitting feeling), he disappeared over the ship’s side after the officer, followed by the six volunteers. With steady eyes the girl watched the buffeting of the heavy-weighted boat, and watched the fog blur it till it looked like something seen in a dream. Cheviot at the bow, by the uniformed figure, less distinct both of them than the big German with his black-and-yellow cap at the stern.