8
They made an appearance of drinking (with a cracker in hand) at midnight, but it was for the sake of the woman—a sup of tepid water. The long night sailed by. Slowly the moon sank—that dry moon, brick-red and bulbous, as it entered the western sea. All was still in the little boat. Bellair was ready to meet his suffering. [Pg 156]He could not sleep—because the woman was near. That was the night that her quality fixed itself for all time exemplary in his heart.
The little story had revealed to him a new sanctuary. He loved it and the little Gleam; as for that, he loved Fleury, too. It was a strange resolving of all separateness that had come to him from these friends. More than ever thrilling it had come, with Stackhouse out of the boat and since the story had been made his.
She had been frightened by his loss of consciousness at the end of the battle. He had awakened looking into her eyes. He scarcely dared to recall what she had said in her anxiety, but it was an extraordinary matter of value. What a mother she was; and what a little girl lived in that story, and now!... That little girl was still in her heart. The recent days in the open boat had not spoiled her; nor the recent years of loneliness and tragedy. Out of it all had come certain perfect works—the babe in her arms, her own fortitude and fearlessness of death; the little girl still in her eyes and heart. Bellair saw that a man loves the child in a woman, quite as much as a woman loves the boy in a man.... She had said that Fleury and he were brothers and heroes. He knew better in his own case. Still she had said it, adding that the discovery of such men to her was a part of the very bloom of life....
Bellair was not thinking the personal relation now. Fleury and she were mated in his own thoughts. From the beginning, this was so; and yet he did not ask more. He had come to believe from their glorious humanity (so strange to him and unpromising in the beginning)—that the world was crowded with latent values which, once touched and quickened into life, would make it a paradise.
That was the substance of the whole matter. He must never forget it. The human values which he had met in these were secret in thousands, perhaps in millions, of hearts, and needed only breaking open by stress and revelation—to bring the millennium to old Mother Earth, and open her skies for the plan of joy. Bellair impressed this upon his mind again, so he would not forget—then fell asleep.
She was first awake in the distance-clearing light. She arose carefully, so as not to awaken the men and the child, and stared long in every quarter. There was no ship, no land, no cloud; and yet a trace of happiness on her thin face, as she sat down. Fleury was rousing. She had expected that; for through their strange sympathy several times before he had awakened with her, or soon after. She bent forward and whispered a good-morning, and added:
“It is gone——”
“Surely?”
“Yes.”