THE NIGHT OF STORMS

A Woman! But how was it possible that there should be a woman in his cabin? There must have been some unthinkable mistake, and he felt confident that it was not he who had made it. He had looked carefully at the number over the door, comparing it with the number on his ticket. But, after all, what did it matter? It was too late now to apportion blame. She was there. And what hair she had! When she stood up it must fall far below her knees.

"What shall I do?" thought Max. "Shall I lie still until she goes to sleep again, and then sneak out into the salle? If she doesn't see my suitcase she need never know I've been in the room."

And, after all, it came back to that, whether he had mistaken the cabin, or she. If he had left his suitcase in plain sight, marked "Lieutenant Max Doran, —th Cavalry, Fort Ellsworth," the woman would have rung for a steward, and the error would somehow have been adjusted.

Four or five minutes passed, and silence reigned in the berth overhead. Max sat up cautiously, lest his bunk should squeak, and had begun still more cautiously to emerge from it, when there came a sudden vicious lurch of the ship. He was flung out, but seized the berth-curtain, as the General Morel awkwardly wallowed, and staggered to his feet, just in time to save the occupant of the upper berth from flying across the room. With a cry, she fell on to his shoulder, and he held her up with one hand, still grasping the curtain with the other. The long plait of hair and a smooth bare arm were round his neck. A face was close to his, and he could feel warm, quick breaths on his cheek.

"Don't be frightened," he heard himself soothe her with deceitful calm. "It'll be all right in a minute. I won't let you fall."

Even as he spoke, it occurred to Max that possibly she didn't understand English. The thought had hardly time to pass through his mind, however, when she answered him in English in a shocked whisper, trying vainly to draw away:

"But—it's a man!—in my cabin!"

"I'm awfully sorry," said Max. "There's been some mistake. Better let me hold you a few seconds more, till the ship's steadier. Then I'll lift you down to the lower berth. You see, I thought it was my cabin."

"Oh," she exclaimed; and he felt a quiver run through the bare arm. Her hair, which showered over his face and twined intricately round his neck, had a faint, flowery perfume. "As soon as I get you down, and make you comfortable, I'll go," he hurried on. "There, now, I think things are quieting for the moment. We must have had two waves following one another quicker than the rest. Let go your hold on the berth, and I'll take you out."

He felt her relax obediently; and slipping one arm under her shoulder, the other under her knees, he lifted a burden which proved to be light, from the upper berth, to bestow it in safety, far back against the wall in the bunk underneath.

"Oh, thank you," was breathed out with a sigh of relief. "You're very kind—and so strong! But I feel dreadfully ill. I hope I'm not going to faint."

"I'll get you some brandy," said Max, bethinking himself of a certain silver flask in his suitcase, a prize as it happened, won as an amateur of la boxe.

To his horror she made no answer.

"Jove!" he muttered. "She's gone off—and no wonder. It's awful!"

He began to be flurried, for his own head was not too clear. "She may be flung to the floor while I'm groping around for that suitcase of mine, if she's fainted, and can't save herself when the next wave comes," he thought. "That won't do. I'll have to light up, and wall her in with the bedding from the top bunk, so she can't easily be pitched out."

Hesitating a little, not quite sure about the propriety of the necessary revelation, he nevertheless switched on the electricity. After the dusk which had turned everything shadow-gray, the little stateroom appeared to be brilliantly illuminated. In his berth lay the girl he had seen on deck and at dinner.

Max was not completely taken by surprise, as he would have been had he seen the vision before hearing her voice. As she clung round his neck, she had spoken only brokenly and in a whisper, but from the first words he had felt instinctively sure of his companion's identity.

If she had been delicately pale before, now she was deathly white, so white that Max, who had never before seen a woman faint, felt a stab of fear. What if she had a weak heart? What if she were dead?

She wore a dressing-gown of a white woollen material, inexpensive perhaps, but classic in its soft foldings around the slender body; and the thought flitted through Max's head that she was like a slim Greek statue, come alive; or perhaps Galatea, disappointed with the world, turning back to marble.

All the while he, with unsteady hands, unlocked and opened his bag, fumbling among its contents for the flask, she lay still, without a quiver of the eyelids. She did not even seem to breathe. But perhaps girls were like that when they fainted! Max didn't know. He wanted to listen for the beating of her heart, but dared not. He would try the brandy, and if that did not bring her to herself, he would ring and ask for the ship's doctor. But—could he do that? How could he explain to any one their being together in this cabin?

Hastily he poured a little brandy from the flask into the tiny cup which screwed on like a cover. The pitching and tossing made it hard not to spill the fluid over the upturned face—that would have been sacrilege!—but with an adroitness born of desperation he contrived to pour a few drops between the parted lips. Apparently they produced no effect; but another cautious experiment was rewarded by a gasp and a slight quivering of the white throat. On one knee by the side of the berth, Max slipped an arm under the pillow, thus lifting the girl's head a little, that she might not choke. As he did this she swallowed convulsively, and opening her eyes wide, looked straight into his.

"Thank heaven!" exclaimed Max. "You frightened me."

She smiled at him, their faces not far apart, her wonderful hair trailing past his breast. Yet in his anxiety and relief Max had lost all sense of strangeness in the situation. Drawing long, slow breaths, she seemed purposefully to be gaining strength to speak. "It's nothing—to faint," she murmured. "I used to, often. And I feel so ill."

"Have you any one on board whom I could call?" Max asked.

"Nobody," she sighed. "I'm all alone. I—surely this cabin is 65?"

"I think it's 63. But no matter," Max answered hurriedly. "Don't bother about that now. I——"

"When I came in first this morning, I rang for a stewardess to ask if there was to be any one with me," the girl went on, a faint colour beginning to paint her white cheeks and lips with the palest rose. "But nobody answered the bell. There was no luggage here, and I thought I must be by myself. But afterward a stewardess or some one put my bag off this bed on to the upper one so I dared not take the lower berth. I put the door on the hook, to get air; but when I heard somebody come in, I never dreamed it might be a man."

"Of course not," Max agreed. "And I—when I saw a form in the dim light, lying up there—I never thought of its being a woman. I can't tell you how sorry I am to have seemed such a brute. But——"

"After all, it's a fortunate thing for me you were here," the girl comforted him. "If you hadn't been, I should have fallen out of the top berth and perhaps killed myself. I should hate to die now. I want so much to see my father in Africa, and—and—somebody else. I think you must have saved my life."

"I should be so happy to think that," Max answered warmly. "I haven't as pleasant an errand in Africa as you have. But whatever happens, I shall be thankful that I came, and on this ship. I was wondering to-day if I were glad or sorry to have been born. But if I was born to save a girl from harm, it was worth while, of course, just for that and nothing else. Now, if you're feeling pretty well again, I'd better go." Gently he drew his arm out from under the pillow, thus laying down the head he had supported.

The girl turned, resting her cheek on her hand—a frail little hand, soft-looking as that of a child—and gazed at Max wistfully.

"I suppose you'll think it's dreadful of me," she faltered, "but—I wish you needn't go. I've never been on the real sea before since I was a baby: only getting from England to Ireland the shortest way, and on the Channel. This is the first storm I've seen. I never thought I was a coward. I don't like even women to be cowards. I adore bravery in men, and that's why I—but no matter! I don't know if I'm afraid exactly, but it's a dreadful feeling to be alone, without any one to care whether you drown or not, at night on a horrible old ship, in the raging waves. The sea's like some fierce, hungry animal, waiting its chance to eat us up."

"It won't get the chance," Max returned cheerfully. He was standing now, and she was looking up at him from the hard little pillow lately pressed by his own head. "I shouldn't wonder if the old tub has gone through lots of worse gales than this."

"It's comforting to hear you say so, and to have a human being to talk to, in the stormy night," sighed the girl. "I feel better. But if you go—and—where will you go?"

"There are plenty of places," Max answered her with vague optimism.

Just then the General Morel gave a leap, poised on the top of some wall of water, quivered, hesitated, and jumped from the height into a gulf. Max held the girl firmly in the berth, or she would have been pitched on to the floor. Involuntarily she grasped his arm, and let it go only when the wallowing ship subsided.

"That was awful!" she whispered. "It makes one feel as if one were dying. I can't be alone! Don't leave me!"

"Not unless you wish me to go," Max said with great gentleness.

"Oh, I don't—I can't! Except that you must be so miserably uncomfortable."

"I'm not; and it's the finest compliment and the greatest honour I've ever had in my life," Max stammered, "that you should ask me to—that it should be a comfort to you, my staying."

"But you are the kind of man women know they can trust," the girl apologized for herself. "You see, one can tell. Besides, from the way you speak, I think you must be an American. I've heard they're always good to women. I saw you on deck, and afterward at dinner. I thought then there was something that rang true about you. I said 'That man is one of the few unselfish ones. He would sacrifice himself utterly for others.' A look you have about the eyes told me that."

"I'm not being unselfish now," Max broke out impulsively; then, fearing he had said an indiscreet thing, he hurried on to something less personal. "How would it be," he suggested in a studiously commonplace tone, "if I should make myself comfortable sitting on my suitcase, just near enough to your berth to keep you from falling out in case another of those monsters hit the ship? You could go to sleep, and know you were safe, because I'd be watching."

"How good you are!" said the girl. "But I don't want to sleep, thank you. I don't feel faint now. I believe you've given me some of your strength."

"That's the brandy," said Max, very matter of fact. "Have a few drops more? You can't have swallowed half a teaspoonful——"

"Do you think, if I took a little, it would make me warm? I'm so icy cold."

"Yes, it ought to send a glow through your body." He poured another teaspoonful into the miniature silver cup, and supported the pillow again, that she need not lift her head. Then he took the two blankets off the upper berth, and wrapped them round the girl, tucking them cozily in at the side of the bed and under her feet.

"If you were my brother," she said, "you couldn't be kinder to me. Have you ever had a woman to take care of—a mother, or a sister, perhaps?"

"I never had a sister," Max answered. "But when I was a boy I loved to look after my mother."

"And now, is she dead?"

"Now she's dead."

"My mother," the girl volunteered, "died when I was born. That made my father hate the thought of me, because he worshipped her, and it must have seemed my fault that she was lost to him. I haven't seen my father since I was a little girl. But I'm going to him now. I've practically run away from the aunts he put me to live with; and I'd hardly any money, so I was obliged to travel all the way second-class."

"That's exactly what I thought!" ejaculated Max.

"Did you think about me, too?" she asked, interest in their talk helping her to forget the rolling of the ship.

"Yes, I thought about you—of course."

"That I'd run away?"

"Well, you were so different from the rest, it was queer to see you in the second-class."

"But so are you—different from the rest. Yet you're in the second-class."

"I'm hard up," exclaimed Max, smiling.

"You, too! How strange that we, of all the others, should come together like this. It is as if it were somehow meant to be, isn't it? As if we were intended to do something for each other in future. I wish I could do something for you, to pay you for to-night."

"I don't need pay." Max smiled again, almost happily. "It's you who are being good to me. I was feeling horribly down on my luck."

"I'm sorry. But it's helped you to help me. I understand that. Do you know, I believe you are one whose greatest pleasure is in doing things for those not as strong as yourself."

"I never noticed that in my character," laughed Max.

"Yet there's something which tells me I'm right. I think you would, for that reason, make a good soldier. My father is a soldier. He's stationed at a place called Sidi-bel-AbbÉs."

"But that's where the Foreign Legion is, isn't it?" The words slipped out.

"He's colonel of the First Regiment. Oh, I believe it's half dread of what he'll say to me, that makes me so ill and nervous to-night. The only two men in the world I love are so strong, so—so almost terrible, that I'm like a little wreath of spray dashed against the rocks of their nature. They don't even know I'm there!"

Suddenly Max seemed to see the two framed photographs in the open bag: an officer in French uniform, and Richard Stanton, the explorer, the man of fire and steel said to be without mercy for himself or others. Max felt ashamed, as if inadvertently he had stumbled upon a secret. "Strong men should be the tenderest to women," he reminded her.

"Yes, on principle. But when they want to live their own lives, and women interfere? What then? Could one expect them to be kind and gentle?"

"A man worth his salt couldn't be harsh to a woman he loved."

"But if he didn't love her? I'm thinking of two men I know. And just now, more of my father than—than the other. I've got no one to advise me. I wonder if you would, a little? You're a man, and—and I can't help wondering if you're not a soldier. Don't think I ask from curiosity. And don't tell me if you'd rather not. But you see, if you are one, it would help, because you could understand better how a soldier would feel about things."

"I have been a soldier," Max said. There was no reason why he should keep back the truth from this little girl for whom he was playing watchdog: the little girl who thought him as kind as a brother! "But I'm afraid I don't know much about women."

"The soldier I'm thinking about—my father—doesn't want to have anything to do with women. My mother spoiled him for others. I believe their love story must be the saddest in the whole world. But tell me, if you were old, as he is, nearly fifty, and you had a daughter you didn't love—though you'd been kind about money and all that—what would you say if she suddenly appeared from another country, and said she'd come to live with you?"

"By Jove!" exclaimed Max. "Is that what you're going to do?"

"Yes. You think my father will have a right to be angry with me, and perhaps send me back?"

"I don't know about the right," said Max, "but soldiers get used to discipline, you see. And a colonel of a regiment is always obeyed. He might find it inconvenient if a girl suddenly turned up."

"But that's my only hope!" she pleaded. "Surprising my father. Anyhow, I simply can't go back to my aunts. I have some in Dublin—they were my mother's aunts, too: and some in Paris—aunts of my father. That makes them my great-aunts, doesn't it? Perhaps they're harder for young people to live with than plain aunts, who aren't great. I shall be twenty-one in a few weeks and free to choose my own life if my father won't have me. I'm not brave, but I'm always trying to be brave! I can engage as a governess or something, in Algeria, if the worst comes to the worst."

"I don't believe your father would let you do that. I wouldn't in his place."

"After all, you're very young to judge what he would do, even though you are a soldier!" exclaimed the girl, determined not to be thwarted. "I must take my chance with him. I shall go to Sidi-bel-AbbÉs. If there's a train, I'll start to-morrow night. And you, what are you going to do? Shall you stop long in Algiers?"

"That depends," answered Max, "on my finding a woman I've come to search for."

The girl was gazing at him with the deepest interest. "You have come to Algiers to find a woman," she murmured, "and I, to find a man. Do you—oh, don't think me impertinent—do you love the woman?"

"No," said Max. "I've never seen her." And then, the power of the storm and the night, and their strange, dreamlike intimacy, made him add: "I love a woman whom I may never see again."

"And I," said the girl, "love a man I haven't seen since I was a child. Let's wish each other happiness."

"I wish you happiness," echoed Max.

"And I you. I shall often think of you, even if we never meet after to-morrow. But I hope we shall! I believe we shall." She shut her eyes suddenly, and lay still for so long that Max was afraid she might have fainted again.

"Are you all right?" he asked anxiously, bending toward her from his low seat on the suitcase.

She opened her eyes with a slight start, as if she had waked, half dazed, from some unfinished dream.

"Oh, yes," she said. "I was making a picture, in a way I have. I was wondering what would happen to us, in our different paths, and trying to see. One of my aunts says it is 'Celtic' to do that. I saw you in a great waste-place, like a desert. And then—I was there, too. We were together—all alone. Perhaps, although I didn't know it, I'd really fallen asleep."

"Perhaps," agreed Max, and a vague thrill ran through him. He, too, had dreamed of desert as he lay in the lower berth, and she, overhead, had dreamed a desert dream, each unknown to the other. "Try to go to sleep again."

She closed her eyes, and presently he thought that she slept. Once or twice she waked with the heave and jolt of a great wave, always to find her watchdog at hand.

But at last, when with the dawn the storm lulled, Max noiselessly switched off the light and went out.