Authors: Jean S. Macleod
For a moment of disbelief she stood frozen where she was, and then she thrust the door open and crossed the room in half a dozen swift strides. Blair was still unconscious.
“He has had his injection, Julius!”
In the silence she did not recognize her own voice. It had sounded high-pitched and uncontrolled, filling the room with hysterical sound, although she had tried to keep it level and authoritative.
Julius turned from the bed. The light was behind him, but she could see the narrowed eyes and the teeth bared in a smile that was like a snarl.
“Allow me to know what I am doing, Laura,” he said, so calmly that she stepped back a pace.
“You’re killing him! You’re killing him!” she cried before she could stop herself.
He turned toward the light with a pitying smile, laying the syringe down on the table beneath it. Laura saw that it was empty.
“You can’t do this, Julius!" She tried to reach him, to beat at him with her clenched fists. “You’ve got to let him go. He
is
going. He wants to go!”
He took her by the arm and led her to the door.
“Hysterical fool!" he said. “Did you imagine that I would kill him?”
What then? What? With the power he had he could destroy Blair in some other way. Was that it? Under the pretense of an experiment, and with Blair’s full cooperation in the first place, he could be experimenting in a different way, making sure that his patient’s nerves and health suffered irreparable damage in the process.
And Blair had found out just in time.
Slowly, without knowing how she moved at all, she walked back to her room, stunned by the suspicion and unable to reason or think clearly until dawn broke and the long streamers of light chased the moonlight from the bay.
Perplexed, half-crazed and wounded by her love, she tried to take up the threads of ordinary living because of Lance and the need to present a sense of balance until Blair could get away.
Julius made no reference to the scene in the bedroom. It almost seemed as if he had forgotten it, and he accepted Blair’s decision to end the experiment with at least a pretense of regret.
“I hope you will seek other advice, Cameron,” he suggested magnanimously, “although who I am to send you to at this stage I have no idea. Blount, in America, perhaps. Would you like me to write to him?”
Was he the complete hypocrite, Laura wondered, or was this his way of removing Blair to a safer distance, hoping, knowing, perhaps, that he would never come back?
Within a week Blair was up and about again.
“Nobody could be more glad than me!
”
Lance gloated, able to express himself with a freedom not permitted to Laura. “I’ve got one day left! D’you think Julius would let us take
Northern Bird
over to the Islands?”
“I don’t know,” Laura said, feeling her heart turn to lead as she thought of parting with Blair. “You could ask him.”
“Blair would want to go. I know he would,” Lance decided. “He’s quite fit now, Laurie, isn’t he? And we’re going to travel down to London together on Friday!”
So much had been arranged, Laura thought. Escape for Blair and adventure ahead for Lance.
For herself? She could not think about that. There was nothing between her and Julius now, no feeling, no tenderness. All the bonds were gone—the bonds that had never really existed except in her own mind. Her marriage lay at her feet, broken beyond repair. The vows she had made that day in the London church were less than nine months old. They still rang clearly in her heart, the promise she had made to l
ov
e and honor Julius “till death us do part.”
Could they, she wondered, start again? Was it possible to pick up the pieces, to try to make something out of their life together? But how? How?
To her surprise Julius appeared quite willing to spend Lance
’
s final day at Dunraven afloat. It was Blair who seemed to hesitate, looking doubtfully up at the sky to the north before they cast off, but he said nothing to spoil their enjoyment. He did suggest, however, that they should limit their course to the mainland lochs, sailing southward down the coast of Wester Ross and perhaps crossing to Skye, if there was time.
Julius, however, decided to go in the opposite direction. He had a mind, he said, to take a look at Cape Wrath, that barren, savage promontory facing the limitless Arctic wastes where beetling cliffs and craggy pinnacles fell sharply to the sea, echoing and resounding endlessly to the fury of waves.
Callum came down from the lodge early, and as they rowed out to
Northern Bird
she saw him look up at the sky as Blair had done earlier. He spoke to Blair in the Gaelic, but after a while he nodded, as if he had accepted the situation mainly because of some assurance or other which Blair had been able to give him.
There was a brisk breeze blowing from the west and they reached Scourie before noon. Laura felt that she could have stayed forever in this lovely little township with its gentle, guardian mountain and the silences of a great forest shutting her in, but Julius wanted to press on to Kinloch Bervie.
The wind had freshened considerably by the time they rounded Handa Island, and they felt the full force of it as they battled their way north. Long before they had reached Loch Bervie Laura saw Blair’s brows come together in concentration, and quite soon they could feel the strong pull of the tides, the endless struggle of the waters where Atlantic and Arctic met.
The sky, too, had lost much of its morning blue. A peculiar, Hazy grayness crept in from the west and the wind began blowing treacherously.
Blair, who had been watching the sails, went back to speak to Julius.
“But we’re within hailing distance of the Cape!” Laura heard her husband objecting. “What’s the matter, Cameron? Are you afraid?”
She did not hear Blair's reply. It was low and constrained, but when he came back along the deck his jaw was set tightly.
Julius called him back to take the tiller as they sailed into the loch. In the quiet, sheltered water in the shadow of Foinaven it was easy to forget the fury of the sea outside. The flat green southern shore of the loch was a riot of wild flowers on this early spring day, and birds sang everywhere. Soon, however, there was an almost ominous silence and Blair said half reluctantly:
“We ought to get back. It’s nearly three o’clock.”
He took the yacht out, and almost at once they were met by a changed wind. It blew with increasing force from the northeast, and his eyes narrowed to consider the dwindling horizon as he put the tiller hard over.
“What the devil are you about?” Julius demanded close at his elbow. “We’re going north!”
“Not this trip,” Blair said firmly. “We’ll be lucky if we get back without running into trouble as it is.”
“A bit of wind!” Julius retorted scornfully.
“It’s more than that,” Blair told him, grim-faced. “We can’t afford to take risks.”
“We’ve got a perfectly reliable engine on board,” Julius suggested, not quite so scornfully.
“I wouldn’t rely on anything in this part of the world,” Blair informed him.
He did not add that they should not have come so far north or that they should have sailed toward the more sheltered waters between Skye and the mainland, as he had suggested. He was not that sort
o
f man, but Laura was aware of the leashed anger in him that might still prove ugly if it were provoked.
It was a silent return trip, with the wind now their enemy instead of their friend, and even Lance stopped his tuneless singing to help with the reefing of the heavy sails.
“We ought to make it,” Blair came aft to tell Laura with an assurance she wasn’t sure he felt. “Once we’re around Rhu Coigach we should be all right.”
Curiously enough, it was the skerries at the mouth of their own small loch that made Laura feel more anxious than anything else, and she hoped that Blair would take over the tiller before they reached them. As the wind rose, however, it became apparent that the men would have to take it in spells to steer
Northern Bird
on her course. The powerful, lashing turmoil of the sea pitted itself relentlessly against them, testing their strength and endurance to the utmost, and the long coastline seemed endless. Suilven and Canisp and Ben More Assynt were lost in mist long before they came to Rhu Coigach, and it was almost impossible to make out the indentations of the bays. Craggy headlands rose frighteningly close and disappeared behind them. They were in a lost world of sea and fog long before they neared the loch, with only the beating sound of the waves rising endlessly against them.
Northern Bird
was tossed and flung about like a cork in the vicious crosscurrents of the North Minch, and Laura thought that they would be lucky to get back to Dunraven alive.
She had passed beyond fear now, but once or twice in the beginning, when
Northern Bird
had plunged into the trough of a wave, she had closed her eyes, waiting for the final impact that would spell their doom. When the gallant little yacht had ridden, quivering, to the crest of the next wave she had been aware of a strange triumph, a breathless sort of exaltation rejecting fear.
Julius took over the tiller when the final headland had slipped behind them into the mist and Blair came to stand beside her. Long afterward Laura was to remember the look he gave her, remember and cherish it, deep in her heart, because it told her of his love more plainly than any words could have done. There was admiration in it, too, as he said almost casually:
“We could make you skipper in a week or two, Laura!”
Lance, who had been hopelessly and ignominiously sick on the return journey, looked up from the companionway with abject apology in his eyes.
“Can I do anything to help?” he asked. “We’re almost home, aren’t we?”
“Almost,” Blair assured him. “Come up on deck and get some fresh air. You’ll feel better.”
They were using the engine now, tossing and twisting in the treacherous crosscurrents that ran between the low-lying skerries, and the sky behind them was ominously low and threatening. The first lashing of rain slanted viciously across the deck. In another half hour visibility would be nil.
As it was they could not see the land ahead of them. They seemed to be feeling their way through a steadily-deepening gray gloom.
Blair went aft to shout to Julius, who was already struggling with the tiller.
“I’ll take her in, if you like,” he offered.
Julius swung around to look at him. His hands had been gripping the tiller till the knuckles stood out white against his flesh, but there was a strange light of triumph in his eyes as he turned Blair’s suggestion aside.
“There’s no need for you to take over, Cameron,” he said. “I’ve brought her this far, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” Blair agreed abruptly, unprepared to argue with him, yet standing close beside him, his eyes on the still angry seas ahead.
Laura stood huddled in the far corner of the cockpit, wishing that Julius would let Blair take over. He knew these seas, and he knew the yacht far better than Julius did. This was no time for allowing pride and personal antagonism to creep in.
Like an enraged animal cheated of its prey, the wind seemed to increase in fury as they neared their destination and the blinding rain slanted more viciously across their line of vision.
“We can make it,” Blair said through set teeth. “Where’s Callum?”
“On deck.” Laura could just see Callum’s small, hunched figure crouched in its yellow oilskins, his dark face turned up to the wind and spume. He seemed to be reveling in the storm, as if it was all part of his natural element. “He seems to want to be up there right in the teeth of the wind!”
“Callum loves the sea and everything connected with it,” Blair said, without taking his eyes from Julius.
His own hands were clenched in the pockets of his oilskin coat and his mouth was grim, but that was the only sign he gave of tension.
Then, suddenly, as they approached the narrow entrance to the loch, there was a suggestion of change, a sound that had not been there before. It was several minutes before Laura realized that it came from the engine, but in those seconds both Blair and Lance had dived for the companionway. She heard Blair say something to her brother, but Lance’s answer was torn away by the wind.
Northern Bird
lurched and rocked violently, and it was as much as Julius could do to hold on to the tiller.
“I can’t see a damned thing!” he cursed, peering through the rain. “Can
you d
o
something, Laura—that damned sail flapping all over the place—”
Lance’s inexpert sail lashing had come adrift and a triumphant wind was flicking it farther and farther out from the boom. It was not serious, but it was irritating to Julius in his present mood.
“I’ll
see what I can do.”
She crawled on deck, tugging at the lashing, feeling the onslaught of the wind and rain tearing past her. She struggled against the elements in sudden personal conflict.
“It’s no better!” Julius yelled over the fury of the storm. “I still can’t see a thing!”
There was fear in his voice now, and Laura felt her throat go dry. As if for her immediate reassurance the engine struggled back into pulsing life, beating surely and steadily in the heart of the ship.
“It’s all right!” she cried, the small exultant note in her voice rising above the storm. “Blair will be up again in a moment!” She struggled farther along the deck and was unaware of Julius’s reply. “I’ll see if I can see any better up for
w
ard.”
The wind wrenched her voice away but she hung on to the veering boom, straining to see through the gloom ahead. There seemed to be nothing there but an endless tossing, spume-flecked waves—no land, no bay, no sanctuary.
Northern Bird
was being battered beyond endurance, caught in the crosscurrents that Blair had warned Julius about.
Blair, she thought. Blair! If only you could take over, everything would be all right! If only Julius would let you—
But he must! He must! This was madness. Callum came toward her, crouching along the wave-lashed deck, keeping his hold by a miracle, it seemed. He yelled something in her ear, but it was torn away by the wind.
“I can’t hear, Callum! I can’t hear—” she cried, her lips numb and salty with spray.