CHAPTER XI.
THE RIDDLE OF LIFE.
The schooner slowly moved along, and lay not far from the steamship. The steamship did not start for Souris until the afternoon. Caius was put on shore there to await the hour of embarking. In his own mind he was questioning whether he would embark with the steamer or return to Cloud Island; but he naturally did not make this problem known to those around him.
The skipper and several men of the schooner came ashore with Caius. There was a great bustle as soon as they reached the small wharf because of what they had to tell. It was apparent from all that was told, and all the replies that were made, that no shadow of suspicion was to fall upon O'Shea. Why should it? He had, as it seemed, no personal grudge against Le Maître, whose death had been evidently an accident.
A man who bore an office akin to that of magistrate for the islands came down from a house near the harbour, and the story was repeated to him. When Caius had listened to the evidence given before this official personage, hearing the tale again that he had already heard many times in a few minutes, and told what he himself had seen, he began to wonder how he could still harbour in his mind the belief in O'Shea's guilt. He found, too, that none of these people knew enough about Josephine to see any special interest attaching to the story, except the fact that her husband, returning from a long voyage, had been drowned almost within sight of her house. "Ah, poor lady! poor lady!" they said; and thus saying, and shaking their heads, they dispersed to eat their dinners.
Caius procured the bundle of letters which had come for him by this first mail of the year. He sauntered along the beach, soon getting out of sight and hearing of the little community, who were not given to walking upon a beach that was not in this case a highroad to any place. He was on the shingle of the bay, and he soon found a nook under a high black cliff where the sun beat down right warmly. He had not opened his letters; his mind did not yet admit of old interests.
The days were not long passed in which men who continued to be good husbands and fathers and staunch friends killed their enemies, when necessary, with a good conscience. Had O'Shea a good conscience now? Would he continue to be in all respects the man he had been, and the staunch friend of Josephine? In his heart Caius believed that Le Maître was murdered; but he had no evidence to prove it—nothing whatever but what O'Shea's wife had said to him that day she was hanging out her linen, and such talk occurs in many a household, and nothing comes of it.
Now Josephine was free. "What a blessing!" He used the common idiom to himself, and then wondered at it. Could one man's crime be another man's blessing? He found himself, out of love for Josephine, wondering concerning the matter from the point of view of the religious theory of life. Perhaps this was Heaven's way of answering Josephine's appeal, and saving her; or perhaps human souls are so knit together that O'Shea, by the sin, had not blessed, but hindered her from blessing. It was a weary round of questions, which Caius was not wise enough to answer. Another more practical question pressed.