It was a simple formula, but effective. When repeated often enough, with sufficiently convincing caresses, she became calmer. When he brought her on deck all signs of the terrible scene enacted there had been removed. She asked what had caused the firing, and he told her that Voles was arrested. It was sufficient. So sensitive was she that the mere sound of the dead bully’s name made her tremble.
“I remember now,” she whispered. “I was sure he had killed you. I knew you would follow me, Rex. When I saw you I forgot all else in the joy of it. Are you sure you are not injured?”
At another time he would have laughed, but her worn condition demanded the utmost forbearance.
“No, dearest,” he assured her. “He did not even try to hurt me. Now let me take you to my mother.”
The captain, thoroughly scared by the events he had witnessed, came forward with profuse apologies and offers of the ship’s hospitality. Carshaw felt that the man was not to blame, but the Wild Duck held no attractions for him. He hurried Winifred ashore.
Steingall came with them. The district police would make the official inquiries as a preliminary to the inquest which would be held next day. Carshaw must attend, but Winifred would probably be excused by the authorities. He conveyed this information in scraps of innuendo. Winifred did not know of Voles’s death or the shooting of Fowle till many days had passed.
Fowle did not die. He recovered, after an operation and some months in a hospital. Then Carshaw befriended him, obtained a situation for him, and gave him money to start life in an honest way once more.
There was another scene when Mrs. Carshaw brought Meiklejohn to her apartment and found Rex and Winifred awaiting them. Winifred, of course, had never seen the Senator, and there was nothing terrifying to her in the sight of a haggard, weary-looking, elderly gentleman. She was far more fluttered by meeting Rex’s mother, who figured in her mind as a domineering, cruel, old lady, elegantly merciless, and gifted with a certain skill in torture by words.
Mrs. Carshaw began to dispel that impression promptly.
“My poor child!” she cried, with a break in her voice, “what you have undergone! Can you ever forgive me?”