“Good-by, then. I shall bless you every day and it shall not hurt you!”
“I never thought that it would, Morgen Fay.”
“No. Thou’rt clean! Good-by, good-by, good-by!”
The ship overhung them,—bowsprit and carved sea goddess, body of ship and high forecastle, masts, spars and rigging. And the stars shone between, and men were up there making sail among the stars, and all the air sang around and the water sang. Morgen Fay had her own courage. It was coming to her from far and near. She felt like a child. Something in her was crumbling away, or something within her, after long groping, was painfully lifting itself into higher air. “I have tasted evil, I have tasted good; I like better the last taste.”
The rowers ceased to row. A rope was flung, a manner of ladder of rope slipped over the side. Master of the Vineyard and Thomas Bettany spoke low together, then the former mounted to his ship. “Now, Alice Dawn—God bless you!”
“God bless you.”
She was light and strong. She climbed, she stood in the waist of the Vineyard and turning herself, looked to see the boat put off with two. But the rower who had not spoken, the man who had been silent in street and lane, who had opened doors silently in prison, was climbing from boat to Vineyard deck. Light from a lantern by the mast fell upon him. Burgher’s dress, cap of blue, young beard of brown-gold upon his face. “Where?—where?”
Bodily there rose before her the cell at Silver Cross and all the sudden lights, coloured by some old secret device, that bloomed about her and her floating drapery, and this man upon his knees. With a cry she turned to the boat. Two seamen had descended in Diccon’s place. It was Vineyard boat, it would put Bettany ashore and return, and no boatmen at the main water steps have any tale to tell. Already the boat was away from the ship. “Friend! friend!”
Richard Englefield stood beside her. “He cannot return, nor help us further, Morgen!”