第40章

Her first wild impulse was to run to the cove, for the little dingey always moored there, and to desperately attempt to overtake him.But the swift consciousness of its impossibility was followed by a dull, bewildering torpor, that kept her motionless, helplessly following the vessel with straining eyes, as if they could evoke some response from its decks.She was so lost in this occupation that she did not see that a pilot-boat nearly abreast of the cove had put out a two-oared gig, which was pulling quickly for the rocks.When she saw it, she trembled with the instinct that it brought her intelligence.She was right; it was a brief note from her husband, informing her that he had been hurriedly dispatched on a short sea cruise; that in order to catch the tide he had not time to go ashore at the bluff, but he would explain everything on his return.Her relief was only partial; she was already experienced enough in his vocation to know that the excuse was a feeble one.

He could easily have "fetched" the bluff in tacking out of the Gate and have signaled to her to board him in her own boat.The next day she locked up her house, rowed round the Point to the Embarcadero, where the Bay steamboats occasionally touched and took up passengers to San Francisco.Captain Simmons had not seen her husband this last trip; indeed, did not know that he had gone out of the Bay.Mrs.Bunker was seized with a desperate idea.She called upon the Secretary of the Fishing Trust.That gentle man was business-like, but neither expansive nor communicative.Her husband had NOT been ordered out to sea by them; she ought to know that Captain Bunker was now his own master, choosing his own fishing grounds, and his own times and seasons.He was not aware of any secret service for the Company in which Captain Bunker was engaged.He hoped Mrs.Bunker would distinctly remember that the little matter of the duel to which she referred was an old bygone affair, and never anything but a personal matter, in which the Fishery had no concern whatever, and in which HE certainly should not again engage.He would advise Mrs.Bunker, if she valued her own good, and especially her husband's, to speedily forget all about it.These were ugly times, as it was.If Mrs.Bunker's services had not been properly rewarded or considered it was certainly a great shame, but really HE could not be expected to make it good.Certain parties had cost him trouble enough already.

Besides, really, she must see that his position between her husband, whom he respected, and a certain other party was a delicate one.But Mrs.Bunker heard no more.She turned and ran down the staircase, carrying with her a burning cheek and blazing eye that somewhat startled the complacent official.

She did not remember how she got home again.She had a vague recollection of passing through the crowded streets, wondering if the people knew that she was an outcast, deserted by her husband, deceived by her ideal hero, repudiated by her friends! Men had gathered in knots before the newspaper offices, excited and gesticulating over the bulletin boards that had such strange legends as "The Crisis," "Details of an Alleged Conspiracy to Overthrow the Government," "The Assassin of Henderson to the Fore Again," "Rumored Arrests on the Mexican Frontier." Sometimes she thought she understood the drift of them; even fancied they were the outcome of her visit--as if her very presence carried treachery and suspicion with it--but generally they only struck her benumbed sense as a dull, meaningless echo of something that had happened long ago.When she reached her house, late that night, the familiar solitude of shore and sea gave her a momentary relief, but with it came the terrible conviction that she had forfeited her right to it, that when her husband came back it would be hers no longer, and that with their meeting she would know it no more.For through all her childish vacillation and imaginings she managed to cling to one steadfast resolution.She would tell him EVERYTHING, and know the worst.Perhaps he would never come; perhaps she should not be alive to meet him.

And so the days and nights slowly passed.The solitude which her previous empty deceit had enabled her to fill with such charming visions now in her awakened remorse seemed only to protract her misery.Had she been a more experienced, though even a more guilty, woman she would have suffered less.Without sympathy or counsel, without even the faintest knowledge of the world or its standards of morality to guide her, she accepted her isolation and friendlessness as a necessary part of her wrongdoing.Her only criterion was her enemy--Mrs.Fairfax--and SHE could seek her relief by joining her lover; but Mrs.Bunker knew now that she herself had never had one--and was alone! Mrs.Fairfax had broken openly with her husband; but SHE had DECEIVED hers, and the experience and reckoning were still to come.In her miserable confession it was not strange that this half child, half woman, sometimes looked towards that gray sea, eternally waiting for her,--that sea which had taken everything from her and given her nothing in return,--for an obliterating and perhaps exonerating death!