Louis Tracy - Flower of the Gorse

Yet on this night of nights, when the return to his beloved Pont Aven might well be reckoned the close of the most notable achievement of his whole life, he seemed to have collapsed physically and mentally. His eyes had a vacant look. Their wonted expression of a somewhat sarcastic yet not intolerant outlook on life had fled for the hour, and he peered at the Breton and the sailor as though he had never before seen either. His slight but usually alert and wiry frame appeared to have shrunk. He remained deaf to Peridot's suggestion as to the brandy, and became curiously interested in the red gleam of the lighthouse which came in sight just before the bar was reached.

The Breton imagined that his employer's bodily resources had been unduly taxed. Catching the eye of the yacht's skipper (whose name, by the way, was William Popple), he nodded toward the tiller, pointed straight ahead, and held up a finger. "Wan mineet," he said.

Captain Popple was not to be outdone in linguistic amenities. " Comprenny ," he grinned, and took control.

Peridot thrust his head into the hatch. "Ma'mselle," he said, "these poor devils' teeth are chattering with the cold. Will you pass the cognac?"

Yvonne felt the urgency of the request. Nearly every man was wet to the skin, and the wind bit keenly. She abandoned her nurse's work for the moment, opened a locker, and produced a bottle of generous size.

"Here you are," she said. "See that a little is left. I have given some to the men, and I hope my other invalid will soon be able to take a small quantity."

The fisherman removed a plug which had replaced the ordinary cork, and handed the bottle to Captain Popple. The brandy was a fine old liquor, brown, and mellow, and smooth to the palate, and Popple took a draft worthy of a Russian grand duke.

"Gosh!" he said, passing the bottle to Ingersoll, "that's the stuff! It warms the cockles of yer heart."

Ingersoll swallowed a mouthful. It seemed to restore his wits. The eye of the lighthouse had changed from red to green. "It is singular," he said, "how a quality of evil can be associated with certain colors. Red means danger and possible death, while green implies a jealous love perilously akin to hate."

He had not the least notion of the incongruity of such a remark just then. He might have been making conversation for some boarding-school miss whom Yvonne had brought on a summer cruise.

The other man, puzzled, stared stolidly into the gathering gloom.

"When you're plashin' at sea on a dark night you find them colored sectors mighty useful, Sir," was all he could find to say.

Ingersoll roused himself, as though from sleep, and indeed he had been wholly unconscious of his surroundings during the last few minutes. "Oh, doubtless," he said apologetically, "I was thinking aloud, a foolish habit. You were telling me about the owner of the Stella. Carmac is the name, I think? I knew a Walter H. Carmac many years ago. He was very tall, but slightly built. Surely a man cannot change his physique so markedly in the course of, say, twenty years!"

"Well, as to that, Sir, on'y the other day I was talkin' of Mr. Carmac's size to Mr. Raymond, the gentleman with the broken arm (Mr. Carmac's secretary, he is), an' he said the guv'nor used to be thin as a lath once. P'raps it was a case of laugh and grow fat. Very pleasant gentleman, Mr. Carmac was; an' his lady too – one of the best. Excuse me, Sir, but I couldn't help starin' at your girl. She's that like Mrs. Carmac it's surprising. If anyone said they was mother an' daughter, I'd agree at once – if I didn't know different."

There was a pause. Peridot had intrusted the supply of brandy to Tollemache for further distribution. He came aft now, as careful piloting would soon be needed.

"Once we're inside, Monsieur," he said, "we'll set the men at work by turns with the sweeps. That will drive the chill away."

Ingersoll explained the scheme to the skipper, who gave it his hearty approval.

"Did the yacht belong to Mr. Carmac?" went on the artist.

"Yes, Sir. He bought her a fortnight ago. She used to be Lord Aveling's Nigger; but Mr. Carmac didn't like that name, and changed it to the Stella, after his wife's Christian name."

"He didn't care to sail in a yacht called the Nigger, eh?"

A bitterness of aloes was in the words. Apparently they suggested some unpleasing notion to Popple, who branched off to another topic.

"I've a sort of idea his heart was affected," he said. "I know that some bigwig of a London doctor recommended a long voyage, and Mr. Carmac bein' several times a millionaire he just up and grabbed the first suitable craft that offered. Wouldn't wait for a survey. Took everything for granted; though I warned him that white paint may cover a lot of black sins. He an' the missis had planned a regular tour in the Mediterranean, goin' from Gib to the Balearics, and dodgin' in and out of ports all along the north coast until we brought up at Constantinople sometime in April. I advised him to let me meet him at Gib or Marseilles; but he was one of the men who will have their own way, and nothin' would suit but that he should come straight aboard. We left Southampton Tuesday evenin', and made Brest yesterday afternoon. Today we were for callin' at Belle Isle and berthin' at Lorient; but the foul weather met us, an' he was half inclined to put in at this very place we're headin' for, – Pont Aven is the name, isn't it? – on'y poor Mrs. Carmac wouldn't hear of it. She said Belle Isle was no distance, an' made out she was a good sailor – which was hardly correct, because she was ill as could be for the last two hours."

"Why didn't you turn back?"

"There was no turnin' back about Mr. Carmac, Sir. He wasn't built that way, bein' a sure enough American. Though I've never known anybody more devoted to his wife than he was, he ought to have let a younger man take her across to your boat. Not as I mean to argy that anyone could have held up against that sea. Lord love a duck! it was a oner an' no mistake! But there, what has to be will be. Poor Mr. Carmac was fated to hand in his checks on the coast of Finistère, an' we others weren't, and that's all there is to it; though I'd be flyin' in the face of Providence if I didn't say in the same breath that if four of the pluckiest and best hadn't been aboard this 'ere craft, none of our little lot would ever have seen daylight again."

Tollemache joined them. He had just exchanged a word with Yvonne, who had evidently placed her guest in a bunk, because the gleam of an oil lantern came through the open hatch, and, like the good yachtswoman she was, she had passed out the side lights trimmed and ready for use.

"Well, Ingersoll," he said cheerily, "how are you feeling now?"

"Rather tired," was the unexpected answer.

"I'm not surprised at that. You've had a pretty strenuous time."

"Of course you, Lorry, have had the day of your life!"

"Y-yes. I wouldn't go through it again, though, for a small fortune; that is, with Yvonne on board. It was nip and tuck when we were jammed up against the reef."

"It didn't take you long, Sir, for all that, to jump in after Mrs. Carmac," said Popple.

"Oh, is that the lady's name? What a weird specimen one of your sailormen must be! I asked him the name of the yacht's owner, and he didn't know it."

"If it's the beauty I saw you talkin' to, the swine didn't know his own name when he kem aboard at Southampton," snorted Popple indignantly. "Sink me! I've never seen a man so loaded. Took me for his long-lost uncle. Me, mind you! If I hadn't been rather short-handed, I'd have run him ashore to find an uncle in a policeman."

"He is sober enough now," laughed Tollemache. "I had some difficulty in persuading him to take a sip of brandy. He said he was a teetotaler."

"He what? Which one?"