Elfie led the way.
'Will you go with us?' I asked. 'Or must I send the money back by the child?'
Her eyes rested on me for a moment with a deepening expression of distrust, then looked away again. She began to turn pale. 'You are not like yourself to-night,' she said. Without a word more, she took her hat and cloak and went out before me into the square. I followed her, closing the doors behind me. She made an attempt to induce the child to approach her. 'Come, darling,' she said, enticingly—'come and take my hand.'
But Elfie was not to be caught: she took to her heels, and answered from a safe distance. 'No,' said the child; 'you will take me back and put me to bed.' She retreated a little further, and held up the key: 'I shall go first,' she cried, 'and open the door.'
She trotted off a few steps in the direction of the harbor, and waited for what was to happen next. Her mother suddenly turned, and looked close at me under the light of the stars.
'Are the sailors on board the boat?' she asked.
The question startled me. Had she any suspicion of my purpose? Had my face warned her of lurking danger if she went to the boat? It was impossible. The more likely motive for her inquiry was to find a new excuse for not accompanying me to the harbor. If I told her that the men were on board, she might answer, 'Why not employ one of your sailors to bring the money to me at the house?' I took care to anticipate the suggestion in making my reply.
'They may be honest men,' I said, watching her carefully; 'but I don't know them well enough to trust them with money.'
To my surprise, she watched me just as carefully on her side, and deliberately repeated her question:
'Are the sailors on board the boat?'
I informed her that the captain and crew slept in the boat, and paused to see what would follow. My reply seemed to rouse her resolution. After a moment's consideration, she turned toward the place at which the child was waiting for us. 'Let us go, as you insist on it,' she said, quietly. I made no further remark. Side by side, in silence we followed Elfie on our way to the boat.
Not a human creature passed us in the streets; not a light glimmered on us from the grim black houses. Twice the child stopped, and (still keeping slyly out of her mother's reach) ran back to me, wondering at my silence. 'Why don't you speak?' she asked. 'Have you and mamma quarreled?'
I was incapable of answering her—I could think of nothing but my contemplated crime. Neither fear nor remorse troubled me. Every better instinct, every nobler feeling that I had once possessed, seemed to be dead and gone. Not even a thought of the child's future troubled my mind. I had no power of looking on further than the fatal leap from the boat: beyond that there was an utter blank. For the time being—I can only repeat it, my moral sense was obscured, my mental faculties were thrown completely off their balance. The animal part of me lived and moved as usual; the viler animal instincts in me plotted and planned, and that was all. Nobody, looking at me, would have seen anything but a dull quietude in my face, an immovable composure in my manner. And yet no madman was fitter for restraint, or less responsible morally for his own actions, than I was at that moment.
The night air blew more freshly on our faces. Still led by the child, we had passed through the last street—we were out on the empty open space which was the landward boundary of the harbor. In a minute more we stood on the quay, within a step of the gunwale of the boat. I noticed a change in the appearance of the harbor since I had seen it last. Some fishing-boats had come in during my absence. They moored, some immediately astern and some immediately ahead of my own vessel. I looked anxiously to see if any of the fishermen were on board and stirring. Not a living being appeared anywhere. The men were on shore with their wives and their families.
Elfie held out her arms to be lifted on board my boat. Mrs. Van Brandt stepped between us as I stooped to take her up.
'We will wait here,' she said, 'while you go into the cabin and get the money.'
Those words placed it beyond all doubt that she had her suspicions of me—suspicions, probably, which led her to fear not for her life, but for her freedom. She might dread being kept a prisoner in the boat, and being carried away by me against her will. More than this she could not thus far possibly apprehend. The child saved me the trouble of making any remonstrance. She was determined to go with me. 'I must see the cabin,' she cried, holding up the key. 'I must open the door myself.'
She twisted herself out of her mother's hands, and ran round to the other side of me. I lifted her over the gunwale of the boat in an instant. Before I could turn round, her mother had followed her, and was standing on the deck.
The cabin door, in the position which she now occupied, was on her left hand. The child was close behind her. I was on her right. Before us was the open deck, and the low gunwale of the boat overlooking the deep water. In a moment we might step across; in a moment we might take the fatal plunge. The bare thought of it brought the mad wickedness in me to its climax. I became suddenly incapable of restraining myself. I threw my arm round her waist with a loud laugh. 'Come,' I said, trying to drag her across the deck—'come and look at the water.'
She released herself by a sudden effort of strength that astonished me. With a faint cry of horror, she turned to take the child by the hand and get back to the quay. I placed myself between her and the sides of the boat, and cut off her retreat in that way. Still laughing, I asked her what she was frightened about. She drew back, and snatched the key of the cabin door out of the child's hand. The cabin was the one place of refuge now left, to which she could escape from the deck of the boat. In the terror of the moment, she never hesitated. She unlocked the door, and hurried down the two or three steps which led into the cabin, taking the child with her. I followed them, conscious that I had betrayed myself, yet still obstinately, stupidly, madly bent on carrying out my purpose. 'I have only to behave quietly,' I thought to myself, 'and I shall persuade her to go on deck again.'
My lamp was burning as I had left it; my traveling-bag was on the table. Still holding the child, she stood, pale as death, waiting for me. Elfie's wondering eyes rested inquiringly on my face as I approached them. She looked half inclined to cry; the suddenness of the mother's action had frightened the child. I did my best to compose Elfie before I spoke to her mother. I pointed out the different objects which were likely to interest her in the cabin. 'Go and look at them,' I said, 'go and amuse yourself.'
The child still hesitated. 'Are you angry with me?' she asked.
'No, no!'
'Are you angry with mamma?'
'Certainly not.' I turned to Mrs. Van Brandt. 'Tell Elfie if I am angry with you,' I said.
