Part 4

They faced each other, and knew that they were out of breath.

“Out there is a bar. I have been watching it. We can rest there.”

But Brassid did not touch her to help.

Presently they reached it. Neither could have gone twenty yards further. Brassid turned and looked shoreward. Something suddenly gripped his heart. The Crazy-Quilt House was a distant blur against the horizon. There were people on the beach, but they were as ants. He kept her face seaward. A ship, hull down, was sailing from them.

“And presently, when we are quite rested, we shall go home.”

“I suppose so,” she said petulantly. “But, oh, it has been _so_ lovely to-day!”

“But I am hungry.”

“Yes. Come.”

Once more he kept her eyes seaward by pointing out that the ship was coming about.

“Brassid,” she laughed, “to-morrow we shall go out to that ship!”

“Yes,” he smiled.

She had come very close to him. She was dancing on her toes upon the bar. The tide was running in rapidly. The sun was overhead in all its September glory. She held by his arms and danced. Her hair was confined under a pale-green scarf, save where it escaped. Below in the green water he could see her loveliness foreshortened.

“Brassid, you are staring at me. Do you see the scales?

“Why are you so quiet—now?

“Brassid, I can touch bottom no longer. See! I _must_ be in your arms! That is my only excuse—I am tired. Aha!”

She laughed gloriously.

“Brassid—dear—good—luck—to—you!” she whispered.

He kissed her.

“Brassid, what does that mean?”

“That you are engaged to me—”

“Brassid, I don’t mind being engaged—that much—out here—”

He kissed her again.

“Yes,” she said. “But remember that I do not love you, and that I shall never marry you. It will be quite different when we land. I heard the snuff lady say that we must be engaged, or it would be very improper to be so much alone—out—here. So now you may tell her that—we—are engaged—that everything is proper—and you needn’t say that it is only a little.”

She stopped to laugh again.

“Oh, Brassid, it is glorious! And you are lovely. And I have everything I want now—since we are engaged a little. And if I ever marry any one it will be some one just like you, who can swim, and has the big love—and courage. But I won’t love _you_, Brassid, I won’t. You should not expect _that_.”

“No,” laughed happy Brassid.

“Kiss me!” she commanded. “And laugh!”

Brassid did both.

VII STRANGE THAT LOVE SHOULD MAKE ONE AFRAID

The fierce inrush of a wave swept him from his feet. She spun around with a little cry. Then she saw what Brassid had seen and had kept from her. Fear touched the heart which had never feared before.

“Brassid,” she whispered, “I did not know that we had come so far!”

Brassid tried to laugh.

“The tide will help us.”

“Brassid, you kept me here—you kept me from looking—so that I might rest—and be—strong?”

“I kept you here,” said Brassid, “to make you mine.”

“Brassid,” she whispered, “why did you do so splendid a thing? Dreadful, too! I am afraid to drown now. I wasn’t before.”

“Why are you afraid now?”

“Because then I should never see _you_ again. That is what made the little fear you saw. It all came in a flash. I know. But I am not—afraid—not now.”

“Not now! My love!”

But he saw that panic had followed fear, that every nerve had slackened, that every muscle was unstrung. She swam, panting now,—he had never seen her do that,—and for a while conquered fear. She kept at his side. Now and then she touched him, and always she watched him piteously.

“Brassid—you are stronger—than I thought—stronger than I—as a man ought to be. I am—glad.”

“Yes,” gasped Brassid, “I am strong—and you are brave—”

“Brassid, I don’t mind being saved by you.”

“I should think not.”

“We will not forget the—Indian-fighter—Brassid.”

“Nor the whaler.”

“Yes; I want to live—to be—your—wife—Brassid.”

“My wife!”

Then was silence; nothing but the beating of their breath.

“Brassid—dear—if we do not—get home—stay with me! I do not want—to—stay out here—alone! Oh! Alone! Brassid—will you—stay with me—no—matter—no matter—”

“No matter—what!”

Perhaps it was wrong to say that. But his love was what he had called it—the big love. She gave up.

“Then—beloved—if you—will stay—with—me—”

She could even smile at him.

“The Indian-fighter—the whaler!” pleaded Brassid.

“Yes.”

She responded, and again and again responded. But he saw her first stroke fail. Each of his own cost what seemed a life.

“I am too—tired—Brassid.”

“Courage!” gasped Brassid.

“Yes; once more. To be your wife!”

They swam silently.

“Brassid—I am thinking—of all the dear things you—said. I didn’t notice some of them then. But now—as the drowning do—they are all—very—sweet.”

“You are not drowning,” said Brassid, with his last ferocity.

“It is so strange—that love—should make—one—afraid! I never was—afraid—until I loved you—Brassid—Brassid! Until I—loved—you!”

Brassid put his arm under her to float her. As he did so she sank away from him.

“Can’t—Brassid—dear,” she whispered. “I—am—too—tired—too—tired—”

He saw the dear face with the green water between them. The sun made it glorious—piteous.

“Too late!” said the eyes, as they had said it that first night—he could read it now as plainly as then. And another smile, as then. Her eyes kept upon him. She was quite still. Her arms opened to him. They closed about him, and once more Brassid followed the lovely Sea-Lady to the bottom.

THE LOADED GUN[3]

I THREE GENTLEMEN OF PHILADELPHIA

At three o’clock in the morning, Gast, McGill, and Ravant were going down Twentieth street, in the vicinity of Walnut street. They were locked together in the fashion of a Roman phalanx. And even then their going was unsteady. With the memory of his classical studies somewhat revived, Ravant repeated Cæsar’s commendation of the Roman formation.

A little later, and a little further down the street, where lived many of the city’s elect, they were protesting in over-vociferous melody that they would not go home till morning.

“Make it midday, for the sake of ver-sim-ili-tude,” begged Gast, breathless with the word, “for it is morning now. Behold!”

And thereupon he also remembered the invocations to the rising sun, in which the ancients abound, and produced one—according to his memory:

“Aurora leaped upon the nether hills And flung a kiss to Bacchus—’twas a day!”

The officer on the corner of the square came and looked on amicably.

His applause made McGill realize that the voices of his comrades, unlike his own, had never excelled in melody. He, therefore, attached himself to a lamp-post, and, in the fashion of a precentor, proposed to instruct them in the difficulties of “Annie Laurie.”

But, in attaching himself to the lamp-post, he had detached himself from the critical right of the phalanx, which now floundered dismally and then incontinently disintegrated. The officer of the peace secured Ravant and Gast and anchored them to McGill—and “Annie Laurie” went terribly on.

It would have been hard enough to endure if it had not been mixed with liquors. But since it was so mixed it was not wonderful that anathema was belched at them from the windows of that halcyon neighborhood, and that they were then slammed violently shut.

But they were hardly prepared for a gun-shot in their direction.

“That’s right,” complained McGill; “if you can’t reform ’em, shoot ’em!”

“Mac, that man’s a pil-os-per,” argued Gast. “For, lo! these many years the sover-eign people have sought a cure for the drink evil. Well, he has found it. Shoot ’em. Eh, Ravey?”

Ravant said nothing. And now they awoke to the understanding that he had grown heavy between them.

A cab passed. The driver, an experienced nighthawker, drew up to them.

“Right this time,” said Gast. “This jag is going home imperially in a cab. It’ll be about all I’ll be able to do to walk my own to my happy home.”

The officer assisted in getting Ravant into the cab.

But suddenly his manner changed to savagery. They were under the direct light of the corner electric.

“Which of you did this?” he demanded.

Blood slowly trickled from a wound in Ravant’s head.

Gast had a drunken inspiration.

“That gun!” he whispered.

The officer caught upon this.

“Where was it fired from?”

This none of them in the least knew.

The officer took McGill and Gast to the station-house, where they were ignominiously searched. Ravant went to the hospital in a cab.

Presently, in a lucid interval, Ravant signed an affidavit setting forth that it was neither McGill nor Gast who had fired the shot. Upon this his two companions were released “under surveillance.”

And this was so odious to Gast that he swore to find out who it was had fired the shot.

II AN OUNCE OF WHISKEY OR AN OUNCE OF BRAINS

The moment Ravant awoke to sanity at the hospital he demanded a drink of whiskey.

“The doctor has forbidden it,” said the nurse.

“Why?” shouted Ravant.

“Your head. He thinks it would take you much longer to get well—perhaps prevent your recovery altogether.”

“Call him!” Still in Ravant’s terrible voice. “I guess it’s my own head. And if I’d rather have an ounce of whiskey—more or less—than an ounce of brains—more or less—it’s my business and none of his.”

The little, frightened nurse did what he asked, and Ravant said to the doctor very much what he had said to the nurse. And the doctor answered him precisely what the nurse had answered.

“But,” he laughed in addition, “your head is certainly your own, and you are certainly sane enough to decide what you want done with it, though it is rather contrary to Dunglison’s ethics to let you. It doesn’t matter greatly either way, though. How much are you in the habit of taking?”

“All I can buy,” snarled Ravant.

The doctor laughed again and wrote a prescription for an ounce of whiskey.

“You don’t care whether I live or die, do you?” asked Ravant, odiously.

“Oh, quite as much as you do!” answered the doctor, with a certain jolly contempt for such a man. Then, to the nurse:

“I don’t think it will be necessary for me to see your patient again. Take care that he gets all he needs. My original instructions will do till he is discharged.”

“You don’t care either,” challenged Ravant, when the doctor had gone.

“Yes—I care—very much,” said the brave little nurse.

Ravant stared, then said:

“Well—hurry that whiskey here!”

And, presently, she brought it. Ravant saw only the hand which offered it to his famished soul. It trembled. As he took the glass he followed the arm up to the nurse’s face. That was very pale. When she was certain that he would drink it, she gasped and then choked down a bit of a sob.

“Now, what’s the matter with you?” cried Ravant, with brutal irritation.

“Noth—nothing,” faltered the nurse.

“You lie,” said Ravant. “I told you that it is my own head. Why don’t you want me to drink it?”

“Drink it!” begged the nurse, now in terror of him. “Please do!”

“I won’t! You’re both too dam’ anxious!”

He flung the frail glass against the wall, where it was broken. Then he turned his back upon the nurse, and, gripping the iron rods of his bed, bent them until they doubled and parted. He slept a little presently—breathing like a wounded beast. When he woke the little nurse was wiping up the spilled liquor. The terrible fragrance infested his very soul.

“Open the window!” Ravant shouted. “You are torturing me!”

The girl did this.

“Why did you make me smell the dam’ stuff?”

Then, a little more gently, before she could answer:

“Thank you. I can’t stand the smell of it—not the smell.”

The nurse laid a brave hand on his.

“I guess you’re the right sort,” he said hoarsely. “Put it there!”

He gripped the hand of the nurse as he would have done that of a man.

Afterward Ravant watched the girl as she “went about doing good” for him—as he gibed it. She tried to keep out of his vision.

“What in the devil are you about?” he commanded. “I want to look at you! It does me good—to look at you!”

She came, with a pink face, where he could see her.

“If it does you good—why, look at me!”

She tried to do it lightly—pose there—but her bosom heaved. Ravant saw this.

[Illustration: “_‘I guess you’re the right sort,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Put it there!’_”]

“Yes, I’ve stopped guessing. You _are_ the right sort—inside. And you’re not half as ugly outside as I thought you at first. Or else you’ve grown prettier. I think it’s that. I suppose they make it a point to hire only ugly girls for nurses. Else the patients would marry ’em as fast as they could gather ’em in, and there would never be any nurses. But you’ve fooled ’em! Look in the glass!”

It was useless to resist what had now become affectionate brutality, and she did this. It was true that there was a glow in her hollow cheeks.

“Thank you!”

“By the Lord, you nearly laughed!” said Ravant, with entire seriousness. “Say—I’m going to like you. And I want you to try to like me. If I ever ask for whiskey again, don’t you give it to me, no matter if I curse you up hill and down dale. And I’ll try not to ask for it.”

The nurse stopped something which would have been a sob at maturity.

“But for God’s sake, don’t cry,” Ravant went on. “I hate women who cry. And I’m not hating you—I see that already.”

“I will not cry!” pledged the nurse.

“I believe you,” said Ravant. “Put it there. I won’t drink!”

And for the second time they shook hands.

III CALLING A MAN A PIG

“And yet,” mused Ravant, “I make you cry!”

There was an unwonted softness in his voice.

“I’m sorry I’m such a brute—I _am_ a good deal of a brute—ain’t I?”

When she did not answer he shouted at her suddenly:

“Ain’t I?”

“Yes,” said the frightened nurse.

“And I’m a pig, too. That’s what the doctor called me the other day when he left, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I heard him. And he’s right, too—though not so bully as you, at saying it.”

“The doctor is mistaken,” braved the girl. “I wouldn’t say it.”

Ravant gasped and sat up in bed.

“_What?_”

The girl repeated, without fear, what she had said.

And nothing had ever cowed Ravant as that did. It made him stop and think. It seemed as if he had never thought before—so primitive were his processes.

“I’ll just live up to that girl’s estimate of me—and fool her. I really thought I was a pig. Heavens!” He laughed with himself as if he were some one else. “It didn’t even offend me! But I’m glad I’m not a pig—to her—and I’ll stop being a brute. Especially to women. What was it mother used to say?”

Finally he remembered it:

“Always be gentle to all women. For some of them are mothers, and all of them are daughters of mothers.”

He said to himself that he had better write that out in a plain hand and paste it in his hat. Then he said he would go the hat one better—he would write it out and paste it in his head.

And I think he did this in some fashion. For he often remembered it. And at this time it was hard for him to remember things.

“Please!” she begged of him one day with her hands out to his, meaning that he should intermit his ceaseless watching of her. “I feel like the insect under the microscope.” She ended with that brief, halfway laugh.

“I won’t,” said Ravant. “It helps me. And that is what you are paid for doing.”

“Yes,” said the girl, at once relapsing into her shell. “That is what I am paid for!”

“The only thing you need to be a real beauty is a smile. Can’t you get further than halfway? Try it. You won’t break anything. Smile for the drunken pig one of those smiles that won’t come off.”

“Have _you_ ever smiled?” retorted the girl.

“I grin all day,” answered Ravant.

“Yes—you grin.”

Ravant caught the subtlety and was both amazed at his nurse and shocked at himself. He remembered that it was very long since his face had known the smile of gentleness.

“Let’s learn the art together,” he laughed. “By the Lord, you are good for me!”

“Then I must admit that you are also good for me.”

“Smile!” commanded Ravant.

“I cannot,” laughed the girl.

Ravant laughed, and knew how splendid and strange this was to him.

“If you would do that more often, it would be good for you,” said Ravant again.

“And you would be—good!”

“Yes—” agreed the invalid, “if you would smile so for me—”

“Oh, I meant _your_ own smile!” cried the blushing nurse.

Ravant looked upon this blush until it had much the effect that looking upon the wine when it is red used to have upon him.

“Here!” he cried.

The girl came toward him. He caught her face between his hands and rounded it there.

“I have taken all the lines away. You have no business to have them.”

“My life—” said the girl, simply. “Those lines are its history. They belong there.”

“Then can you read my history in mine?” asked the man.

“Yes.”

“Do they say that I am a brute?”

“Yes.”

“Plainly?”

“Quite plainly.”

“My God! Why did not some one tell me that secret before? We go about thinking our faces conceal the very things they shout aloud!”

He looked again at her face.

“Yes, yours speaks of sorrow—”

A silence then—

“What was it?”

“Others said what you have just said. That I was ugly. A woman has nothing—is nothing—without beauty. That is her one source of power.”

Ravant laughed incredulously.

“Women like _me_,” added the nurse.

IV HE DID NOT KNOW THAT IT WAS LOADED

One day the nurse told him—as he insisted—the mystery of his opulent situation.

The person who had fired the shot had learned the effect of it from the newspapers, and being rich and sorry, had put his fortune at the disposal of the victim, and none of it was to be spared if it might help in the least to make him perfectly well again. Every cent of the very many the person had was at his disposal. And that his disposal of it might be the more free from embarrassment, he preferred to remain anonymous himself, and to make the hospital, or the nurse herself, if the victim preferred that, his almoner.

“Preferred to remain anonymous!” laughed Ravant. “He preferred to keep out of jail. I’d have him there in no time if I knew who he was!”

“It appears,” said the nurse, “that he did not know his pistol was loaded.”

Ravant exploded again—first with mirth, then with vengeance.

“The infernal old sneak and liar! To shoot a man simply because he happened to be drunk! Thank God a jag is not capital yet! It is no excuse to say that he didn’t know it was loaded. When he took up that pistol, it was with intent to kill. And, if I still remember any law, that is enough to hang him—”

“But they don’t hang people,” gasped the little nurse, “for anything but murder, do they?”

“I was going to say _if he had killed me_.”

“Oh!”

“Anyhow, we’ll make it the dearest lesson to the gentlemen who do not know it is loaded that ever was taught! We will spend that last cent of his. If not, we’ll throw it away! We are going to Europe at his expense. I need that to complete my recovery. And even then I will always wear this plate on my head in memory of him! And we’ll let the newspapers have it. It may prevent some other drunkard from such happiness as I am now enjoying, and teach the idiot with an empty gun to respect it as if it were loaded. I’ll be a missionary to my drunken kind all the world over! What do you say? By the way, what is your name?”

“Brown,” said the nurse.

“Whew!” said the invalid. “We can’t change that—can we?”

“No.”

“Marriage would do it.”

“Yes.”

“Ravant is better than Brown, eh?”

But then he laughed—he had frightened her!

“What’s your first name?”

“Rachel.”

“Heavens! But we might call you Ray. Ray Brown is not impossible. Did you notice that when I spoke of going to Europe and spending the old man’s money, I said _we_?”

“Yes,” said the girl.

“And it didn’t appeal to you?—make your little heart flutter—Ray?”

“No.”

“But you would help to try to ruin the old man?”

“I think it just for you to punish him in that way—but I am only a nurse.”

“Well—you are going with me—and that is the end of it. I need you and shall need you for a long time. In fact, I shall need you always. But, since you won’t marry me, as a nurse you will go!”

“Impossible! Mr. Ravant!” gasped the girl.

“Which?” snarled Ravant, in the old manner.

“Going to Europe with you—as your nurse—alone—”

“Well, then, we’ll take a chaperon. The old man must pay for her too.”

The girl was silent.

“Look here. I noticed that you didn’t say that the other thing was—impossible! Marrying me?”

“Yes—that is impossible, too,” said the girl.

“Oh!”

“What?”

For his tone was sinister.

“I’ll become a sot again.”

“The doctor says that with that wound in your head it will kill you!”

Ravant laughed—the brutal laugh once more.

“Well, let it. You can’t open the gate of paradise and let me get one glimpse and then shut it in my face. I’ll go back to my own little paradise.”

He was laughing. But she caught the note of hopelessness under it.

“Do you mean to say that if I marry you—”

“I will be good.”

“Understand that I do not love you! Not at all!”

“No one does. Marry me anyhow. Marry me to get rid of me. If you fall in love with some one else, it is off.”

The girl sobbed. She was on her knees at his bed. He did not like this.

“Never mind—never mind—child. I only thought we could make it less expensive to the old man in that way. I could then stop your wages, and we would not need a chaperon. And I really fancied that this thing inside of me which yearns for you—can’t wait till the night is over and you and morning come—is love. But I don’t know what the thing is—I never had the symptoms before—speak to the doctor about it—tell him I have ceased to be a pig. But, perhaps _you_ know. Do you? Were you ever in love?”

“No, sir,” answered the nurse.

“Stop crying!” thundered Ravant.

“Yes, sir,” said the little nurse.

V A FOOL AND HIS MONEY

“Well, thank God,” Ravant said, later on, “that you didn’t refuse me because you didn’t know me. I can’t fancy a better way of finding a man out than being his nurse. But I may not always be a brute. So, remember that I want to marry you, and, when you don’t think me too much of a brute think sometimes about marrying me—you may get used to it!”

“Yes, sir,” said the nurse.

“How much money have I?”

“About four dollars, sir.”