All through his long swim to shore, all through the horrors of that November night and the long-drawn pain of the succeeding days, he had done his duty with a steady impassiveness which was in keeping with the square jaw, the resolute eyes, the firm and merciful lips of the man; but he had only thought of Mary Dixon. His one thought was that this must break her heart.
It was this thought that made him hard and impassive. In the great office in London he was received gravely. With a dull surprise he noted a quiver in the lips of the managing director when he shook hands. The great business man looked older and smaller and thinner in this short time, for it is a terrible thing to have to deal in human lives, even if you are paid heavily for so doing.
“There will be an official inquiry--you will have to face it, Stoke.”
“Yes,” he answered, almost indifferently.
“And there is Dixon's wife. You will have to go and see her. I have been. She stays at home and takes her punishment quietly, unlike some of them.”
And two hours later he was waiting for Mary Dixon in the little drawing-room of the house in a Kentish village which he had helped Dixon to furnish for her. She did not keep him long, and when she came into the room he drew a sharp breath; but he had nothing to say to her. She was tall and strongly made, with fair hair and delicate colouring. She had no children, though she had been married six years, and Nature seemed to have designed her to be the mother of strong, quiet men.
Stoke looked into her eyes, and immediately the expectant look came into them. There was something else behind it, a sort of veiled light.
“It was kind of you to come so soon,” she said, taking a chair by the fireside. There was only one lamp in the room, and its light scarcely reached her face.
But for all the good he did in coming it would seem that he might as well have stayed away, for he had no comfort to offer her. He drew forward a chair and sat down with that square slowness of movement which is natural to the limbs of men who deal exclusively with Nature and action, and he looked into the fire without saying a word. Again it was she who spoke, and her words surprised the man, who had only dealt with women at sea, where women are not seen at their best.