Munsey's Magazine/Volume 86/Issue 2/A Sea Secret

HE broad hotel veranda commanded a view of the board walk, and across it to the horizon of the Pacific. It was after midnight, and the sauntering throngs had thinned out. The groups became detached, they gave place to single couples, and then to individuals, insignificant against the background of sea and sky.

The sky was cloudless, the sea glassy calm, except for the low undulations that scattered the image of the moon into a long-drawn dance of golden gleams. The romantic satellite was nearly twenty days old, and was keeping very late hours. She was dwindling, but what was left of her still retained the charm of her virgin youth and of her full maturity.

The last of the couples were passing by. They paused, and the voice of the girl said:

“Isn't that new moon sweet? I just love to see it rising over the wide ocean!”'

The man was lighting a cigarette, and his utterance was indistinct. We may assume that it conveyed a correction of the young lady's distorted astronomy. They passed on.

The board walk was now vacant. Vacant, too, was the hotel veranda, save for a couple of cushioned wicker chairs, drawn up close, and containing the two old gentlemen who had been sitting there for hours—almost since dinner was over. They were fitfully chatting and puffing at the butts of their final cigars.

“You see, Tom, a fellow like me, forty years in the profession, has seen a lot of queer things—things, I mean, that he can't explain; and this nephew of yours looks to me a case in point. We've got names for it, of course—hallucination, illusion. He sees what isn't there, and talks with 'em sometimes; but illusions are realities to the mind that conceives them, and may lead to concrete results. Take Mrs. Thingumbob at the tea fight yesterday, for instance, telling fortunes by teacup grounds, or cards, or palmistry.”

“She tells 'em, but they ain't so!” muttered Tom.

“No, but without the lines in your palm, or the tea grounds, or the cards, her faculty, or humbug, wouldn't operate; and her prediction may influence a man to lose a deal on the market, or a girl to listen to the young fellow with the dark hair, and those are realities. I'm not explaining, you know—only drawing an analogy.”

“I don't see the analogy. Jack sometimes thinks he sees the girl in the room, speaks to her, and gets mad because we don't notice her. He's not in an excited state, either. He lies around like a log—sleeps all night, the nurse says, and doesn't seem half awake in the daytime.”

“Inert outwardly, yes; but who's to tell what's going on inside?”

“The same as what goes on in a jelly-fish, I should say! Why, till this infernal thing happened, the boy was quite an athlete—running, tennis, polo, and so on. He won a swimming match over at Atlantic City this summer. Swimming—ah, I wish he'd never been near the water! That was how he met her, you know.”

“Do you know the girl? Have you seen her?”

“Oh, yes—she's easy to look at, as the boys say. For anything I know to the contrary, she may be straight enough morally, too; but after giving her the benefit of all doubts, the creature is utterly impossible for people of our sort. Why, she's a rank professional—competes in public matches—travels about the country with a gang of the same sort, giving 'exhibitions,' with expenses paid, of course! The sport editors of the papers run photographs of her in her swimming togs—and you know what they are—labeled 'champion lady swimmer and diver.' On the other hand, there's Jack, bred a gentleman, innocent as a baby, and only twenty. It's a plain case of infatuation. He doesn't know her in any right sense of the word. He doesn't know anything! Next year he'll be coming into an estate worth more than half a million, and I had intended, when I peg out, to let him have pretty nearly as much as that of my own; but I'm blessed if I'll give my good money to be splashed and scattered about by any little human porpoise like this girl! I've been hoping he'd get over it. I rushed him over to this side of the continent, on the 'out of sight out of mind' principle. That was three months ago, and he's as bad as ever, or worse. If she knew where he was—why, for half a million dollars, or for one-tenth of it, she'd undertake to swim across the Atlantic! Our best chance is that she may not locate him. I'd carry him over to Chinese Tartary, if it came to that! Possibly, though, knowing that I'm on guard, she'll understand that the jig is up; but I'm losing weight on it.”

“Have you arranged that they don't communicate by letter?”

“Oh, absolutely! Every letter that comes here is seen by me before it goes upstairs to his rooms, and the nurse is on the lookout, too. She's a reliable person—middle-aged, none of your coquettish young professionals. Jack hasn't been outside his suite since we came here. I can't get him out, in fact. Sometimes I almost wish he'd try to give us the slip. It would be a sign of life, at least; but he's simply a dormouse. If you speak to him, he just grins, or grunts, or shakes his head. It's unnatural. What's to be done?”

“Speaking as a doctor—or, in fact, as a man of common sense—I should say, let the boy alone. You call it infatuation; then it will wear out by degrees, in the absence of the provocative cause. If it's real love at first sight, and mutual—such things have been, Tom—then send for her. In other words, if it is of the spirit, and not merely of the flesh—that is, if the flesh is moved only through the inspiration of the spirit—the one cure is unconditional surrender on your part. All things mortal have their term, but this thing, love, is immortal, and keeps terms of its own. I know that isn't language that would be sanctioned by the profession; but doctors who don't upon occasion venture beyond the picket fence of their professional creed have something yet to learn. However,” he broke off with a chuckle, “I leave you at liberty to say that I'm as big a fool as you are!”

He pulled out his watch.

“My stars!” he cried out. “Do you know what time it is? This is the hour for lovers, not for old duffers of sixty! The moon herself will be abed in half an hour. Come on—we must beat her to it!”

They got up from their chairs and shuffled off. Had they sat there a little longer, things might have developed differently.

, in his gray silk pyjamas, lay on his back on his bed, with his eyes half open. In the adjoining room slept the nurse, snoring faithfully. The door between was ajar; but to get to the hallway, Jack would have to pass through her room, the key to the door of which was under her pillow. The open window beside which he lay was on the third floor of the hotel, with a drop of forty feet to the cement pavement below; so the good woman had her patient safe enough, and might take naps with a clear conscience. Jack was a well bred boy, and had never betrayed a suicidal tendency.

His window faced the west, and the moon, low down, shone through it and rested on his face. Moonlight is said to generate strange dreams sometimes; but Jack didn't appear to be asleep, and he gave no sign of being affected by the celestial beauty outspread before him. For him, all loveliness of earth and sky was gathered into one girl's face.

But, as he moodily gazed, the moon was all at once eclipsed.

How could that happen, without authorization of the almanac? The earth's shadow does not fall on a waning moon. The sky was cloudless.

He raised himself on his elbow, and looked intently. He now perceived that the obscuration of the satellite was caused by the intervention of somebody's head and shoulders, the arms resting on the window sill, almost within reach of Jack's hand.

A burglar? No, the head was feminine, and this was before the day of contemporary improvements in burglary. The face, dark against the light, and yet luminous, was that of a young girl, her hair floating about her in the faint air drawing inward from the sea. Her shoulders and arms were bare, and her features—why, it was she herself, of course!

The happiness that flooded through him at the sight was hardly mingled with surprise. He had known that she would come—that the ceaseless call of his spirit to hers must be answered at last. He had not, it is true, expected her to appear at that particular moment, or in that manner; but the spirit's ways and epochs are not ours. Love is a worker of miracles, and she was here!

The reality of her outdid even his lover's memory of her.

Her eyes were love, joy, and invitation, and she beckoned with her hand. Then she laid a finger on her lips. Yes, silence! Those snores from the next room mustn't be interrupted!

With a soundless, easy movement Jack transferred himself from the bed to the sill, and was seated lightly upon it, his feet swinging free in empty air. The window had no fire escape, but an iron ladder and platform communicated with the suite adjoining his, and were not more than a couple of yards to the right. He glanced downward for footing. The ledge above the window below afforded it, and an architectural excrescence on the side of the house came conveniently to his hand.

It was a simple matter for athletes like the girl and himself to effect the transit. She was already standing on the landing, and, as she turned to go down the stairway, she kindled him with her smile. Quickly and quietly they went down the ladder, she always a little in advance.

An L of the building threw a passing shadow over them. Jack took small heed of the route, but presently they were out on the board walk. Jack, in his gray pyjamas, was almost invisible in the fantastic light, and only the eyes of love could have discerned her as she flitted on before him; but the houses were all asleep, and there was none to see.

Her hair floated out behind her as she now and again glanced back at him over her shoulders. He lengthened his step to come up with her, but she, without seeming to hasten, maintained the interval of two or three paces. There were moments when the subtle rays from the sinking moon had the effect of making her appear to dissolve quite away; but, again, yonder glimmered the beloved figure!

What dress she wore he could not tell. It might have been pale films of seaweed falling ribbonlike around her; and from her he perceived a faint refreshing scent, as of the sea.

When they came abreast of the great pier, which extended far seaward, like a bridge to the moon, she turned toward it. The big gates were closed, but she opened a small door on the right. Here a little flight of steps led down to a narrow foot-way below the level of the main deck. It had no guard rail, and the tide beneath lapped softly about the pillars upholding the structure. Outward, illimitably, undulated the Pacific, a vast, friendly creature, all freedom and purity. It slumbered in a waking dream of immortality.

On a narrow shelf above it stood the girl, poised for the plunge. It was at the extremity of the pier. The shore, with its dark buildings, lay like a shadow behind, with the long array of board walk lamps sparkling above the surf line.

Girlish and beautiful she was, her hair thrown back, her smooth arms lifted above her head, her body, naked as a pearl, tapering in flowing curves to her white feet—a nymph of the prime, supple and free; and he a young triton, her lover and mate. With a jolt of the pulses he felt that they had left the solid earth behind them forever, and were on the brink of the realm which keeps its identity through endless changes, to match the immortal growing of the soul.

She seemed to rise from her perch, at the same time with a forward impulse, and her body passed through a wide arc and clove the water soundlessly. At once he followed her. He felt himself sinking deep and deeper into moony profundities, cool and clear. Deeper yet, till a gray-green obscurity enveloped him, and he became conscious of a pang of the heart, a struggle of the breath, and a slight anxiety lest he might lose her trail in the growing darkness. The darkness was very dark, and in his ears came a booming sound, which died away.

“Love, where are you?”

Why, she was here, close, her white side touching his own! They were moving forward without effort in a sphere of liquid chrysoprase. His arm was around her, the softness of her hair clung to his shoulder. She turned her head, and deeper than the sea was the virgin passion which her eyes poured into his and received from them. Their lips met.

They rose up from the abyss in slow, buoyant pulsations, rhythmical with the beating of their hearts. The oceanic coolness gratefully clothed their inward fire. The softness of her young bosom touched his face—a dream of Paradise!

No, not a dream! The life preceding this had been the dream, from which they were now awakened. Sense was flooded out in intuitions of the soul, revealing things too good and true for sense to comprehend.

“ would ever have believed it?” lamented the nurse.

She had awakened at her customary six o'clock, to find her patient's bed vacant. A look from the window had showed no crushed body on the pavement below. No suspicion of the fire escape had visited her mind. By what miracle had he vanished?

“Me, if I sleep at all, it's with one eye open and both ears, you might say,” she assured the old uncle and the doctor, distraught in their bed gowns. “Quieter than any mouse he must have been. He couldn't have gone by the door, the key being under my pillow—and here it is! I'm plain mystified, and that's God's truth!”

When the search reached the pier, the custodian could affirm that the gates had been locked. The small side door used by the workmen—well, he wouldn't just take his oath, but the regulation was to bolt it on the inside. But—well!

That morning there was a slight breeze, which had encouraged a fishing party to take a catboat outside in the hope of bluefish. After they had made an offing of ten miles, the breeze dropped, and they lay becalmed all day. A current, meanwhile, bore them northward and eastward.

Toward sunset they saw something floating on the water, which they gradually overtook. It was the dead body of a young man. They got it on board, and the evening breeze brought them back to shore.

“It's unusual that it should be floating so soon after death,” remarked the doctor, after other things had been said. “Must have been air in the lungs.”

“It was that seaweed that drowned him,” said the uncle. “He got tangled up in it. Why, over at Miami last summer he swam twenty miles, and come ashore as fresh as paint; but that seaweed is the devil!” After a pause he added: “Well, the poor boy is clear of that girl, anyway; but I'd rather she'd got him than—this!”

On the following morning the newspaper printed a paragraph of Eastern news. A girl—a professional swimmer and diver, and a champion in her class—had swum out to sea, alone, from Atlantic City, and had never returned. As she was perfectly at home in the water, it was conjectured that she must have met with some accident. The body had not been recovered. It had probably been carried far out to sea by some ocean current. Friends said that she had lately appeared depressed in spirits, from no ascertained cause.

“I guess that must have been she,” said the uncle, letting fall the paper, which the doctor had handed him after reading the item.

“Three thousand miles apart, and they died about the same time!” rejoined the other. “We sometimes murder our children just by meddling too much in their private affairs. Well, all things mortal have their term; but the spirit—what do we know of the spirit?”

He took off his dimmed spectacles and wiped them. His friend sat silent, gnawing his gray mustache.