For a moment in the profound trouble of the task before her she did not
understand what the question meant. Then, her face faintly flushing, she
whispered: "Anthony."
Her father, a red spot on each cheek, leaned his head back wearily in the
corner of the cab.
"Anthony. What is he? Where did he spring from?"
"Papa, it was in the country, on a road--"
He groaned, "On a road," and closed his eyes.
"It's too long to explain to you now. We shall have lots of time. There
are things I could not tell you now. But some day. Some day. For now
nothing can part us. Nothing. We are safe as long as we live--nothing
can ever come between us."
"You are infatuated with the fellow," he remarked, without opening his
eyes. And she said: "I believe in him," in a low voice. "You and I must
believe in him."
"Who the devil is he?"
"He's the brother of the lady--you know Mrs. Fyne, she knew mother--who
was so kind to me. I was staying in the country, in a cottage, with Mr.
and Mrs. Fyne. It was there that we met. He came on a visit. He
noticed me. I--well--we are married now."
She was thankful that his eyes were shut. It made it easier to talk of
the future she had arranged, which now was an unalterable thing. She did
not enter on the path of confidences. That was impossible. She felt he
would not understand her. She felt also that he suffered. Now and then
a great anxiety gripped her heart with a mysterious sense of guilt--as
though she had betrayed him into the hands of an enemy. With his eyes
shut he had an air of weary and pious meditation. She was a little
afraid of it. Next moment a great pity for him filled her heart. And in
the background there was remorse. His face twitched now and then just
perceptibly. He managed to keep his eyelids down till he heard that the
'husband' was a sailor and that he, the father, was being taken straight
on board ship ready to sail away from this abominable world of
treacheries, and scorns and envies and lies, away, away over the blue
sea, the sure, the inaccessible, the uncontaminated and spacious refuge
for wounded souls.
Something like that. Not the very words perhaps but such was the general
sense of her overwhelming argument--the argument of refuge.
I don't think she gave a thought to material conditions. But as part of
that argument set forth breathlessly, as if she were afraid that if she
stopped for a moment she could never go on again, she mentioned that
generosity of a stormy type, which had come to her from the sea, had
caught her up on the brink of unmentionable failure, had whirled her away
in its first ardent gust and could be trusted now, implicitly trusted, to
carry them both, side by side, into absolute safety.