The Ship of Stars by Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch

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"But since the coast has no harbour--"

"I would build one. Look at this," he pulled a pencil and paper from
his pocket and rapidly sketched the outlines of the Bristol Channel.
"What is that? A bag. Suppose a vessel taken in the mouth of it; a
bag with death along the narrowing sides and death waiting at the
end--no deep-water harbour--no chance anywhere. And the tides!
You know the rhyme--"

"From Padstow Point to Lundy Light
Is a watery grave by day or night."

"Yes, there's Lundy"--he jotted down the position of the island--
"Hit off the lee of Lundy, if you can, and drop hook, and pray God it
holds!"

"But this harbour? What would it cost?"

"I dare say a million of money; perhaps more. But I work it out at
less--at Porthquin, for instance, or Lundy itself, or even at St.
Ives."

"A million!" she laughed. "Now I see the boy I used to know--the boy
of dreams."

He turned on her gravely. She was exceedingly beautiful, standing
there in her black habit, bareheaded in the glare of the lenses,
standing with head thrown back, with eyes challenging the past, and a
faint glow on either cheek. But he had no eyes for her beauty.

He opened his lips to speak. Yes, he could overwhelm her with
statistics and figures, all worked out; of shipping and disasters to
shipping; of wealth and senseless waste of wealth. He could bury her
beneath evidence taken by Royal Commission and Parliamentary
Committee, commissioners' reports, testimony of shipowners and
captains; calculated tables of tides, sets of currents, prevailing
winds; results of surveys hydrographical; all the mass of facts he
had been accumulating and brooding over for eighteen long months.
But the weight of it closed his lips, and when he opened them again
it was to say, "Yes, that is my dream."

At once he turned his talk upon the light revolving in their faces;
began to explain the lenses and their working in short, direct
sentences. She heard his voice, but without following.

Pezzack and the under-keeper had drawn apart to the opposite side of
the cage and were talking together. The lantern hid them, but she
caught the murmur of their voices now and again. She was conscious
of having let something slip--slip away from her for ever. If she
could but recall him, and hold him to his dream! But this man,
talking in short sentences, each one so sharp and clear, was not the
Taffy she had known or could ever know.

In the blaze of the lenses suddenly she saw the truth. He and she
had changed places. She who had used to be so practical--_she_ was
the dreamer now; had come thither following a dream, walking in a
dream. He, the dreaming boy, had become the practical man, firm,
clear-sighted, direct of purpose; with a dream yet in his heart, but
a dream of great action, a dream he hid from her, certainly a dream
in which she had neither part nor lot. And yet she had made him what
he was; not willingly, not by kindness, but by injustice. What she
had given he had taken; and was a stranger to her.

Muffled wings and white breasts began to beat against the glass.
A low-lying haze--a passing stratum of sea-fog--had wrapped the
light-house for a while, and these were the wings and breasts of
sea-birds attracted by the light. To her they were the ghosts of
dead thoughts--stifled thoughts--thoughts which had never come to
birth--trying to force their way into the ring of light encompassing
and enwrapping her; trying desperately, but foiled by the transparent
screen.

Still she heard his voice, level and masterful, sure of his subject.
In the middle of one of his sentences a sharp thud sounded on the
pane behind her, as sudden as the crack of a pebble and only a little
duller.

"Ah, what is that?" she cried, and touched his arm.

He thrust open one of the windows, stepped out upon the gallery, and
returned in less than a minute with a small dead bird in his hand.

"A swallow," he said. "They have been preparing to fly for days.
Summer is done, with our work here."

She shivered. "Let us go back," she said.

They descended the ladders. Trevarthen met them in the kitchen and
went before them with his lantern. In a minute they were in the
cradle again and swinging toward the cliff. The wisp of sea-fog had
drifted past the light-house to leeward, and all was clear again.
High over the cupola Cassiopeia leaned toward the pole, her breast
flashing its eternal badge--the star-pointed W. Low in the north--as
the country tale went--tied to follow her emotions, externally
separate, eternally true to the fixed star of her gaze, the Waggoner
tilted his wheels and drove them close and along and above the misty
sea.

Taffy, pulling on the rope, looked down upon Honoria's upturned face
and saw the glimmer of starlight in her eyes; but neither guessed her
thoughts nor tried to.

It was only when they stood together on the cliff-side that she broke
the silence. "Look," she said, and pointed upward. "Does that
remind you of anything?"

He searched his memory. "No," he confessed: "that is, if you mean
Cassiopeia up yonder."

"Think!--the Ship of Stars."

"The Ship of Stars?--Yes, I remember now. There was a young sailor--
with a ship of stars tattooed on his chest. He was drowned on this
very coast."

"Was that a part of the story you were to tell me?"

"What story? I don't understand."

"Don't you remember that day--the morning when we began lessons
together? You explained the alphabet to me, and when we came to W--
you said it was a ship--a ship of stars. There was a story about it,
you said, and promised to tell me some day."

He laughed. "What queer things you remember!"

"But what was the story?"

"I wonder! If I ever knew, I've forgotten. I dare say I had
something in my head. Now I think of it, I was always making up some
foolish tale or other, in those days."

Yes; he had forgotten. "I have often tried to make up a story about
that ship," she said gravely, "out of odds and ends of the stories
you used to tell. I don't think I ever had the gift to invent
anything on my own account. But at last, after a long while--"

"The story took shape? Tell it to me, please."

She hesitated, and broke into a bitter little laugh. "No," said she,
"you never told me yours." Again it came to her with a pang that he
and she had changed places. He had taken her forthrightness and left
her, in exchange, his dreams. They were hers now, the gaily coloured
childish fancies, and she must take her way among them alone.
Dreams only! but just as a while back he had started to confess his
dream and had broken down before her, so now in turn she knew that
her tongue was held.

Humility rose as they entered the kitchen together. A glance as
Honoria held out her hand for good-bye told her all she needed to
know.

"And you are leaving in a day or two?" Honoria asked.

"Thursday next is the day fixed."

"You are very brave."

Again the two women's eyes met, and this time the younger understood.
_Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge;
thy people shall he my people, and thy God my God_--that which the
Moabitess said for a woman's sake women are saying for men's sakes by
thousands every day.

Still holding her hand, Humility drew Honoria close. "God deal
kindly with you, my dear," she whispered, and kissed her.

At the gate Honoria blew a whistle, and after a few seconds
Aide-de-camp came obediently out of the darkness to be bridled.
This done, Taffy lent his hand and swung her into the saddle.

"Good-night and good-bye!"

Taffy was the first to turn back from the gate. The beat of
Aide-de-camp's hoofs reminded him of something--some music he had
once heard; he could not remember where.

Humility lingered a moment longer, and followed to prepare her son's
supper.

But Honoria, fleeing along the ridge, hugged one fierce thought in
her defeat. The warm wind sang by her ears, the rhythm of
Aide-de-camp's canter thudded upon her brain; but her heart cried
back on them and louder than either--

"He is mine, mine, mine! He is mine, and always will be. He is lost
to me, but I possess him. For what he is I have made him, and at my
cost he is strong."

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