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And as they stood thus, facing each other, the floor between them began suddenly to heave, became a mass of seething billows that rocked her, caught her, engulfed her. She went down into them, and as the tossing darkness received her, her last thought was that Rufus had come back indeed–not to say farewell, but to take her with him on the long voyage from which there is no return….

CHAPTER XI

DEEP WATERS

Wild white roses that grew in the sandy stubble above the shore, little orange-scented roses that straggled through the grass–they called to something that ran in Columbine’s blood, they spoke to her of the South. She was sure that she would find those roses all about her feet when she came to the end of the long voyage. She would see their golden hearts wide open to the sun. For their fragrance haunted her day by day as she floated down the long glassy stretches and rocked on the waveless swells.

Sometimes she had a curious fancy that she was lying dead, and they had strewn the sweet flowers all about her. She hoped that they might not be buried with her; they were too beautiful for that.

At other times she thought of them as a bridal wreath, purer than the purest orange-blossom that ever decked a bride. Once, too–this was when she was nearing the end of the voyage–there came to her a magic whiff of wet bog-myrtle that made her fancy that she must be a bride indeed.

At last, just when it seemed to her that her boat was gently grounding upon the sand where the little white roses grew, she opened her eyes widely, wonderingly, and realised that the voyage was over.

She was lying in her own little room at The Ship, and Mrs. Peck, with motherly kindness writ large on her comely, plump face, was bending over her with a cup of steaming broth in her hand.

Columbine gazed at her with a bewildered sense of having slept too long.

Mrs. Peck nodded at her cheerily. “There, my dear! You’re better, I can see. A fine time you’ve given us. I thought as I should never see your bright eyes again.”

Columbine put forth a trembling hand with a curious feeling that it did not belong to her at all. “Have I been ill?” she said.

Mrs. Peck nodded again cheerily. “Why, it’s more than a week you’ve been lying here, and how I have worrited about you! Prostration following severe shock was what the doctor called it, but it looked to me more like a touch of brain fever. But there, you’re better! Drink this like a good girl, and you’ll feel better still!”

Meekly, with the docility of great weakness, Columbine swallowed the proffered nourishment. She wanted to recall all that had happened, but her brain felt too clogged to serve her. She could only lie and gaze and gaze at a little vase of wild white roses that faced her upon the mantelpiece. Somehow those roses seemed to her to play an oddly important part in her awakening.

“Where did they come from?” she suddenly asked.

Mrs. Peck glanced up indifferently. “They’re just those little common things that grow with the pinks on the cliff,” she said.

But that did not satisfy Columbine. “Who brought them in?” she said. “Who gathered them?”

Mrs. Peck hesitated momentarily, almost as if she did not want to answer. Then, half defiantly, “Why, Rufus, to be sure,” she said.

“Rufus!” A great hot wave of crimson suddenly suffused Columbine’s face–a pitiless, burning blush that spread tingling over her whole body.

She lay very still while it lasted, and Mrs. Peck set down the cup and, rising energetically, began to tidy the room.

At length, faintly, the girl spoke again: “Aunt Liza!”

Mrs. Peck turned. There was a curious look in her eyes, a look half stern and yet half compassionate. “There, my dear, that’ll do,” she said. “I think you’ve talked enough. The doctor said as I was to keep you very quiet, especially when you began to get back your senses. Shut your eyes, do, and go to sleep!”