To those who looked
on it was a horrible, an unnerving sight; and this time Coxeter with
sudden strength took Nan back into his arms. He felt her trembling,
shuddering against him,--what she had just seen had loosed fear from its
leash. "I'm frightened," she moaned. "Oh, Mr. Coxeter, I'm so horribly
frightened of those men! Are they all gone?" "Yes," he said grimly, "most of them managed to get into the boat. Don't
be frightened. I think we're safer here than we should be with those
ruffians." Another man would have found easy terms of endearment and comfort for
almost any woman so thrust on his protection and care, but the very
depth of Coxeter's feeling seemed to make him dumb,--that and his
anguished fear lest by his fault, by his own want of quickness, she had
perhaps missed her chance of being saved. But what he was lacking another man supplied. This was the captain, and
Nan, listening to the cheering, commonplace words, felt her nerve, her
courage, come back. "Stayed with your husband?" he said, coming up to them. "Quite right,
mum! Don't you be frightened. Look at me and my men, we're not
frightened--not a bit of it! My boat will last right enough for us to be
picked off ten times over. I tell you quite fairly and squarely, if I'd
my wife aboard I'd 'a kept her with me. I'd rather be on this boat of
mine than I would be out there, on the open water, in this fog." But as
he walked back to the place where stood the rocket apparatus, Coxeter
heard him mutter, "The brutes! Not all seconds or thirds either. I wish
I had 'em here, I'd give 'em what for!" *       *       *       *       *

Later, when reading the narratives supplied by some of the passengers
who perforce had remained on the doomed boat, Coxeter was surprised to
learn how many thrilling experiences he had apparently missed during the
long four hours which elapsed before their rescue. And yet the time of
waiting and suspense probably appeared as long to him as it did to any
of the fifty odd souls who stayed, all close together, on the upper
deck waiting with what seemed a stolid resignation for what might next
befall them. From the captain, Coxeter, leaving Mrs. Archdale for a moment, had
extracted the truth. They had drifted down the French coast. They were
on a dangerous reef of rock, and the rising of the wind, the lifting of
the fog, for which they all looked so eagerly, might be the signal for
the breaking up of the boat. On the other hand, the boat might hold for
days. It was all a chance. Coxeter kept what he had learnt to himself, but he was filled with a
dull, aching sensation of suspense. His remorse that he had not hurried
Mrs. Archdale into one of the first boats became almost intolerable. Why
had he not placed her in the care even of the Jew, Victor Munich, who
was actually seated in the last boat before the scramble round it had
begun? More fortunate than he, Mrs. Archdale found occupation in tending the
few forlorn women who had been thrust back. He watched her moving among
them with an admiration no longer unwilling; she looked bright, happy,
almost gay, and the people to whom she talked, to whom she listened,
caught something of her spirit. Coxeter would have liked to follow her
example, but though he saw that some of the men round him were eager to
talk and to discuss the situation, his tongue refused to form words of
commonplace cheer. When with the coming of the dawn the fog lifted, Nan came up to Coxeter
as he stood apart, while the other passengers were crowding round a fire
which had been lit on the open deck. Together in silence they watched
the rolling away of the enshrouding mist; together they caught sight of
the fleet of French fishing boats from which was to come succour. As he turned and clasped her hand, he heard her say, more to herself
than to him, "I did not think we should be saved." III

John Coxeter was standing in the library of Mrs. Archdale's home in
Wimpole Street. Two nights had elapsed since their arrival in London,
and now he was to see her for the first time since they had parted on
the Charing Cross platform, in the presence of the crowd of people
comprised of unknown sympathisers, acquaintances, and friends who had
come to meet them. He looked round him with a curious sense of unfamiliarity. The colouring
of the room was grey and white, with touches of deep-toned mahogany. It
was Nan's favourite sitting-room, though it still looked what it had
been ever since Nan could remember it--a man's room. In his day her
father had been a collector of books, medals, and engravings connected
with the severer type of eighteenth-century art and letters. In a sense this room always pleased Coxeter's fancy, partly because it
implied a great many things that money and even modern culture cannot
buy. But now, this morning--for it was still early, and he was on his
way to his office for the first time since what an aunt of his had
called his mysterious preservation from death--he seemed to see
everything in this room in another light. Everything which had once been
to him important had become, if not worthless, then unessential. He had sometimes secretly wondered why Mrs. Archdale, possessed as she
was of considerable means, had not altered the old house, had not made
it pretty as her friends' houses and rooms were pretty; but to-day he no
longer wondered at this. His knowledge of the fleetingness of life, and
of the unimportance of all he had once thought so important, was too
vividly present....

She came into the room, and he saw that she was dressed in a more
feminine kind of garment than that in which he generally saw her. It
was white, and though girdled with a black ribbon, it made her look very
young, almost girlish. For a moment they looked at one another in constraint. Mrs. Archdale
also had altered, altered far less than John Coxeter, but she was aware,
as he was not aware, of the changes which long nearness to death had
brought her; and for almost the first time in her life she was more
absorbed in her own sensations than in those of the person with her. Seeing John Coxeter standing there waiting for her, looking so like his
old self, so absolutely unchanged, confused her and made her feel
desperately shy. She held out her hand, but Coxeter scarcely touched it. After having
held her so long in his arms, he did not care to take her hand in formal
greeting. She mistook his gesture, thought that he was annoyed at having
received no word from her since they had parted. The long day in between
had been to Nan Archdale full of nervous horror, for relations, friends,
acquaintances had come in troops to see her, and would not be denied. Already she had received two or three angry notes from people who
thought they loved her, and who were bitterly incensed that she had
refused to see them when they had rushed to hear her account of an
adventure which might so easily have happened to them. She made the
mistake of confusing Coxeter with these selfish people.