no canny, this place. Or else I'm balmy. I'm seeing things--shapes that
stir against the blackness, off there beyond the light, moving, halting,
staring, hating us for butchering their age-old peace and quiet. Maybe
I'll forget to see them, if you'll talk to me a little."
"I can't talk to you," he said, ungracious in his distress.
"You can't? It's the first time it's been noticeable, then. What's
responsible for this all-of-a-sudden change of heart?"
"That's what's responsible." The words spoke themselves almost against
his will.
"What--change of heart?"
"Yes," he said sullenly.
"You're very obscure. Am I to understand that you've taken a sudden
dislike to me, so that you can't treat me with decent civility?"
"You know that isn't so."
"Surely"--she caught her breath sharply, paused for an instant, then
went on--"surely you don't mean the converse!"
"I've always understood women knew what men meant before the men did,
themselves." His voice broke a little. "Oh, can't you see how it is with
me? Can't you see?" he cried. "God forgive me! I never meant to inflict
this on you, at such a time! I don't know why I have...."
"You mean," she stammered in a voice of amaze--"you mean--love?"
"Can you doubt it?"
"No ... not after what's happened, I presume. You wouldn't have
followed--you wouldn't have fought so to save me from drowning--I
_suppose_--if you hadn't--cared.... But I didn't know."
She sighed, a sigh plaintive and perturbed, then resumed: "A woman never
knows, really. She may suspect; in fact, she almost always does; she is
obliged to be so continually on guard that suspicion is ingrained in her
nature; but...."
"Then you're not--offended?" he asked, sitting up.
"Why should I be?" The firelight momentarily outlined the smiling, half
wistful countenance she turned to him.
"But"--he exploded with righteous wrath, self-centred--"only a scoundrel
would force his attentions upon a woman, in such circumstances! You
can't get away from me--I may be utterly hateful to you--"
"Oh, you're not." She laughed quietly. "You're not; nor am I
distressed--because of the circumstances that distress you, at least.
What woman would be who received as great and honourable a
compliment--from you, Hugh? Only"--again the whimsical little laugh that
merged into a smothered sigh--"I wish I knew!"
"Wish you knew what?"
"What's going on inside that extraordinary head of yours: what's in the
mind behind the eyes that I so often find staring at me so curiously."
He bowed that head between hands that compressed cruelly his temples.
"I wish _I_ knew!" he groaned in protest. "It's a mystery to me,
the spell you've laid upon my thoughts. Ever since we met you've
haunted me with a weird suggestion of some elusive relationship, some
entanglement--intimacy--gone, perished, forgotten.... But since you
called me to supper, a while ago, by name--I don't know why--your voice,
as you used it then, has run through my head and through, teasing my
memory like a strain of music from some half-remembered song. It
half-maddens me; I feel so strongly that everything would be so straight
and plain and clear between us, if I could only fasten upon that
fugitive, indefinable something that's always fluttering just beyond my
grasp!"
"You mean all that--honestly?" she demanded in an oddly startled voice.
"Most honestly." He looked up in excitement. "You don't mean _you_'ve
felt anything of the sort?"
"No, I"--her voice broke as if with weariness--"I don't mean that,
precisely. I mean.... Probably I don't know what I do mean. I'm really
very tired, too tired to go on, just now--to sit here with you,
badgering our poor wits with esoteric subtleties. I think--do you
mind?--I'd better go in."
She rose quickly, without waiting for his hand. Whitaker straightened
out his long body with more deliberation, standing finally at full
height, his grave and moody countenance strongly relieved in the ruddy
glow, while her face was all in shadow.
"One moment," he begged humbly--"before we go in. I ... I've something
else to say to you, if I may."
She waited, seriously attentive.
"I haven't played fair, I'm afraid," he said, lowering his head to
escape her steadfast gaze. "I've just told you that I love you, but...."
"Well?" she demanded in an odd, ringing voice. "Isn't it true?"
"True?" He laughed unnaturally. "It's so true I--wish I had died before
I told you!"
"Why?"
"Because ... because you didn't resent my telling you...."
It seemed impossible for him to speak connectedly or at any length,
impossible to overcome his distaste for the hateful confession he must
make. And she was intolerably patient with him; he resented her quiet,
contained patience; while he feared, yet he was relieved when she at
length insisted: "Well?"
"Since you didn't resent that confession, I am led to believe you
don't--exactly--dislike me. That makes it just so much the harder to
forfeit your regard."
"But must you?"
"Yes."
"Please explain," she urged, a trace wearily.
"I who love you with all my heart and mind and soul--I am not free to
love you."
"You aren't free--!"
"I.... No."
After several moments, during which he fought vainly with his inability
to go on, she resumed her examination with a manner aloof and yet
determined:
"You've told me so much, I think you can hardly refuse to tell more."
"I," he stammered--"I am already married."
She gave a little, stifled cry--whether of pain or horror or of
indignation he could not tell.
"I'm sorry--I--" he began.
"Don't you think you might have thought of this before?"
"I ... you don't understand--"
"Are you in the habit of declaring yourself first and confessing
later?... Don't answer, if you don't want to. I've no real right to
know. I asked out of simple curiosity."
"If you'd only listen to me!" he broke out suddenly. "The thing's so
strange, so far off--dreamlike--that I forget it easily."
"So it would seem," she put in cruelly.
"Please hear me!"
"Surely you must see I am listening, Mr. Whitaker."
"It was several years ago--nearly seven. I was on the point of
death--had been told to expect death within a few months.... In a moment
of sentimental sympathy--I wasn't at all myself--I married a girl I'd
never seen before, to help her out of a desperate scrape she'd got
into--meaning simply to give her the protection of my name. She was in
bad trouble.... We never lived together, never even saw one another
after that hour. She had every reason to think me dead--as I should have
been, by rights. But now she knows that I'm alive--is about to sue for a
divorce.... Now you know just what sort of a contemptible hound I am,
and why it was so hard to tell you."
After a long pause, during which neither stirred, she told him, in a
faint voice: "Thank you."
She moved toward the house.
"I throw myself upon your mercy--"
"Do you?" she said coolly, pausing.
"If you will forgive me--"
"Oh, I forgive you, Mr. Whitaker. My heart is really not quite so
fragile as all this implies."
"I didn't mean that--you know I didn't. I'm only trying to assure you
that I won't bother you--with this trouble of mine--again. I don't want
you to be afraid of me."
"I am not."
The words were terse and brusque enough; the accompanying swift gesture,
in which her hand rested momentarily on his arm as if in confidence
approaching affection, he found oddly contradictory.
"You don't see--anything?" she said with an abrupt change of manner,
swinging to the north.
He shaded his eyes, peering intently through the night, closely sweeping
its encompassing obscurity from northwest to southeast.
"Nothing," he said, dropping his hand. "If there were a boat heading
this way, we couldn't help seeing her lights."
"Then there's no use waiting?"
"I'm afraid not. They'd hardly come to-night, anyway; more likely by
daylight, if they should happen to grow suspicious of our beacon."
"Then I think I'll go to bed. I'm very, very tired, in spite of my sleep
on the sands. That didn't rest me, really."
"Of course."
"And you--?"
"Oh, I'm all right."
"But what are you going to do?"
"Why--keep the fire going, I presume."
"Is it necessary, do you think? Or even worth while?"
He made a doubtful gesture.
"I wish," she continued--"I wish you'd stay in the house. I--I'm really
a bit timid: unnerved, I presume. It's been, you know, rather a
harrowing experience. Anything might happen in a place like this...."
"Oh, certainly," he agreed, something constrained. "I'd feel more
content, myself, to know I was within call if anything should alarm
you."
They returned to the kitchen.
In silence, while Whitaker fidgeted about the room, awkward and unhappy,
the girl removed a glass lamp from the shelf above the sink, assured
herself that it was filled, and lighted it. Then, over her shoulder:
"I hope you don't mean to stay up all night."
"I--well, I'm really not sleepy."
"Oh, but you are," she contradicted calmly.
"Honestly; I slept so long down there on the beach--"
"Please don't try to deceive me. I know that slumbers like those--of
exhaustion--don't rest one as they should. Besides, you show how tired
you are in every gesture, in the way you carry yourself, in your very
eyes."
"You're mistaken," he contended, looking away for fear lest his eyes
were indeed betraying him. "Besides, I mean merely to sit up here, to
see that everything is all right."
"How should it be otherwise?" She laughed the thought away, yet not
unkindly. "This island is as empty as a last-year's bird's-nest. What
could happen to harm, or even alarm us--or me?"
"You never can tell--"
"Nonsense! I'm not in the least frightened. And furthermore I shan't
sleep a wink--shan't even try to sleep unless you promise me not to be
silly. There's a comfortable room right at the foot of the stairs. If
you sleep there, I shall feel more than secure. Will you promise?"
He gave in at discretion: "Yes; I promise."
"As soon as you feel the least need of sleep, you'll go to bed?"
"I promise."
"Very well, then."
The insistent note faded from her tones. She moved toward the table, put
the lamp down, and hesitated in one of her strange, unpresaged moods of
diffidence, looking down at the finger-tips with which she traced a
meaningless pattern on the oil-cloth.
"You are kind," she said abruptly, her head bowed, her face hidden from
him.
"Kind!" he echoed, dumfounded.
"You are kind and sweet and generous to me," she insisted in a level
voice. "You have shown me your heart--the heart of a gentleman--without
reserve; but of me you have asked nothing."
"I don't understand--"
"I mean, you haven't once referred to what happened last night. You've
been content to let me preserve my confidence, to remain secretive and
mysterious in your sight.... That is how I seem to you--isn't it?"
"Secretive and mysterious? But I have no right to your confidence; your
affairs are yours, inviolable, unless you choose to discuss them."
"You would think that way--of course!" Suddenly she showed him her face
illumined with its frank, shadowy smile, her sweet eyes, kind and as
fearless as the eyes of a child. "Other men would not, I know. And you
have every right to know."
"I--!"
"You; and I shall tell you.... But not now; there's too much to tell, to
explain and make understandable; and I'm too terribly tired. To-morrow,
perhaps--or when we escape from this weird place, when I've had time to
think things out--"
"At your pleasure," he assented gently. "Only--don't let anything worry
you."
Impulsively she caught both his hands in a clasp at once soft and
strong, wholly straightforward and friendly.
"Do you know," she said in a laughing voice, her head thrown back, soft
shadows darkening her mystical eyes, the lamplight caressing her hair
until it was as if her head were framed in a halo of pure gold, bright
against the sombre background of that mean, bare room--"Do you know,
dear man, that you are quite, quite blind?"
"I think," he said with his twisted smile, "it would be well for me if I
were physically blind at this instant!"
She shook her head in light reproof.
"Blind, quite blind!" she repeated. "And yet--I'm glad it's so with you.
I wouldn't have you otherwise for worlds."
She withdrew her hand, took up the lamp, moved a little away from him,
and paused, holding his eyes.
"For Love, too, is blind," she said softly, with a quaint little nod of
affirmation. "Good night."
He started forward, eyes aflame; took a single pace after her; paused as
if against an unseen barrier. His hands dropped by his sides; his chin
to his chest; the light died out of his face and left it gray and deeply
lined.
In the hallway the lamp's glow receded, hesitated, began to ascend,
throwing upon the unpapered walls a distorted silhouette of the rude
balustrade; then disappeared, leaving the hall cold with empty darkness.
An inexplicable fit of trembling seized Whitaker. Dropping into a chair,
he pillowed his head on his folded arms. Presently the seizure passed,
but he remained moveless. With the drift of minutes, insensibly his taut
muscles relaxed. Odd visions painted the dark tapestries of his closed
eyes: a fragment of swinging seas shining in moonlight; white swords of
light slashing the dark night round their unseen eyrie; the throat of a
woman swelling firm and strong as a tower of ivory, tense from the
collar of her cheap gown to the point of her tilted chin; a shrieking,
swirling rabble of gulls seen against the fading sky, over the edge of a
cliff....
He slept.
Through the open doorway behind him and through the windows on either
hand drifted the sonorous song of the surf, a muted burden for the
stealthy disturbances of the night in being.
XVII
DISCOVERY
In time the discomfort of his posture wore through the wrappings of
slumber. He stirred drowsily, shifted, and discovered a cramp in his
legs, the pain of which more effectually aroused him. He rose, yawned,
stretched, grimaced with the ache in his stiffened limbs, and went to
the kitchen door.
There was no way to tell how long he had slept. The night held
black--the moon not yet up. The bonfire had burned down to a great
glowing heap of embers. The wind was faint, a mere whisper in the void.
There was a famous show of stars, clear, bright, cold and distant.
Closing and locking the door, he found another lamp, lighted it, and
took it with him to the corner bedchamber, where he lay down without
undressing. He had, indeed, nothing to change to.
A heavy lethargy weighed upon his faculties. No longer desperately
sleepy, he was yet far from rested. His body continued to demand repose,
but his mind was ill at ease.
He napped uneasily throughout the night, sleeping and waking by fits and
starts, his brain insatiably occupied with an interminable succession of
wretched dreams. The mad, distorted face of Drummond, bleached and
degraded by his slavery to morphine, haunted Whitaker's consciousness
like some frightful and hideous Chinese mask. He saw it in a dozen
guises, each more pitiful and terrible than the last. It pursued him
through eons of endless night, forever at his shoulder, blind and
weeping. Thrice he started from his bed, wide awake and glaring,
positive that Drummond had been in the room but the moment gone.... And
each time that he lay back and sleep stole in numbing waves through his
brain, he passed into subconsciousness with the picture before his eyes
of a seething cloud of gulls seen against the sky, over the edge of a
cliff.
He was up and out in the cool of dawn, before sunrise, delaying to
listen for some minutes at the foot of the stairway. But he heard no
sound in that still house, and there was no longer the night to affright
the woman with hinted threats of nameless horrors lurking beneath its
impenetrable cloak. He felt no longer bound to stand sentinel on the
threshold of her apprehensions. He went out.
The day would be clear: he drew promise of this from the gray bowl of
the sky, cloudless, touched with spreading scarlet only on its eastern
rim. There was no wind; from the cooling ashes of yesternight's
beacon-fire a slim stalk of smoke grew straight and tall before it
wavered and broke. The voice of the sea had fallen to a muffled
throbbing.
In the white magic of air like crystal translucent and motionless, the
world seemed more close-knitted and sane. What yesterday's veiling of
haze had concealed was now bold and near. In the north the lighthouse
stood like a horn on the brow of the headland, the lamp continuing to
flash even though its light was darkened, its beams out-stripped by the
radiant forerunners of the sun. Beyond it, over a breadth of water
populated by an ocean-going tug with three barges in tow and a becalmed
lumber schooner, a low-lying point of land (perhaps an island) thrust
out into the west. On the nearer land human life was quickening: here
and there pale streamers of smoke swung up from hidden chimneys on its
wooded rises.
Whitaker eyed them with longing. But they were distant from attainment
by at the least three miles of tideway through which strong waters
raced--as he could plainly see from his elevation, in the pale, streaked
and wrinkled surface of the channel.
He wagged a doubtful head, and scowled: no sign in any quarter of a boat
heading for the island, no telling when they'd be taken off the cursed
place!
In his mutinous irritation, the screaming of the gulls, over in the
west, seemed to add the final touch of annoyance, a superfluous addition
to the sum of his trials. Why need they have selected that island for
their insane parliament? Why must his nerves be racked forever by their
incessant bickering? He had dreamed of them all night; must he endure a
day made similarly distressing?
What _was_ the matter with the addle-pated things, anyway?
There was nothing to hinder him from investigating for himself. The girl
would probably sleep another hour or two.
He went forthwith, dulling the keen edge of his exasperation with a
rapid tramp of half a mile or so over the uneven uplands.
The screaming was well-nigh deafening by the time he stood upon the
verge of the bluff; beneath him gulls clouded the air like bees
swarming. And yet he experienced no difficulty in locating the cause of
their excitement.
Below, a slow tide crawled, slavering, up over the boulder-strewn sands.
In a wave-scooped depression between two of the larger boulders, the
receding waters had left a little, limpid pool. In the pool lay the body
of a man, face downward, limbs frightfully sprawling. Gulls fought for
place upon his back.
The discovery brought with it no shock of surprise to the man on the
bluff: horror alone. He seemed to have known all along that such would
be the cause. Yet he had never consciously acknowledged the thought. It
had lain sluggish in the deeps beneath surfaces agitated by emotions
more poignant and immediate. Still, it had been there--that
understanding. That, and that only, had so poisoned his rest....
But he shrank shuddering from the thought of the work that lay to his
hand--work that must be accomplished at once and completely; for she
must know nothing of it. She had suffered enough, as it was.
Hastening back to the farmstead, he secured a spade from the barn and
made his way quickly down to the beach by way of the road through the
cluster of deserted fishermen's huts.
Fifteen minutes' walk brought him to the pool. Ten minutes' hard work
with the spade sufficed to excavate a shallow trench in the sands above
high-water mark. He required as much time again to nerve himself to the
point of driving off the gulls and moving the body. There were likewise
crabs to be dealt with....
When it was accomplished, and he had lifted the last heavy stone into
place above the grave, he dragged himself back along the beach and round
a shoulder of the bluff to a spot warmed by the rays of the rising sun.
There, stripping off his rags, he waded out into the sea and cleansed
himself as best he might, scrubbing sand into his flesh until it was
scored and angry; then crawled back, resumed his garments, and lay down
for a time in the strength-giving light, feeling giddy and faint with
the after-effects of the insuppressible nausea which had prolonged
intolerably his loathsome task.
Very gradually the bluish shadows faded from about his mouth and eyes,
and natural colour replaced his pallor. And presently he rose and went
slowly up to the house, all his being in a state of violent rebellion
against the terror and mystery of life.
What the gulls and the crabs and the shattering surf had left had been
little, but enough for indisputable identification.
Whitaker had buried Drummond.
XVIII
BLIGHT
By the time he got back to the farm-house, the woman was up, dressed in
the rent and stained but dry remnants of her own clothing (for all their
defects, infinitely more becoming than the garments to which she had
been obliged to resort the previous day) and busy preparing breakfast.
There was no question but that her rest had been sound and undisturbed.
If her recuperative powers had won his envy before, now she was wholly
marvellous in his eyes. Her radiant freshness dazzled, her elusive but
absolute quality of charm bewitched--and her high spirits dismayed him.
He entered her presence reluctantly, yielding alone to the spur of
necessity. To keep out of her way was not only an impossibility, but
would have served to rouse her suspicions; and she must not know:
however difficult the task, he must dissemble, keep her in ignorance of
his discovery. On that point he was resolved.
"Well, sir!" she called heartily over her shoulder. "And where, pray,
have you been all this long time?"
"I went for a swim," he said evasively--"thought it might do me good."
"You're not feeling well?" She turned to look him over.
He avoided her eye. "I had a bad night--probably because I had too much
sleep during the day. I got up feeling pretty rusty--the weight of my
years. Cold water's ordinarily a specific for that sort of thing, but it
didn't seem to work this time."
"Still got the hump, eh?"
"Still got the hump," he assented, glad thus to mask his unhappiness.
"Breakfast and a strong cup of tea or two will fix that," she announced
with confidence. "It's too bad there's no coffee."
"Yes," he said--"sorry!"
"No signs of a response to our C. Q. D.?"
"None as yet. Of course, it's early."
He lounged out of the kitchen with a tin bowl, a towel and a bar of
yellow soap, and splashed conscientiously at the pump in the dooryard,
taking more time for the job than was really necessary.
From her place by the stove, she watched him through a window, her eyes
like a sunlit sea dappled with shadows of clouds speeding before the
wind.
He lingered outside until she called him to breakfast.
His stout attempts to match her cheerfulness during the meal fell
dismally short of conviction. After two or three false starts he gave it
up and took refuge in his plea of indisposition. She humoured him with a
covert understanding that surmised more in a second than he could have
compressed into a ten-minute confession.
The meal over, he rose and sidled awkwardly toward the door.
"You'll be busy for a while with the dishes and things, won't you?" he
asked with an air meant to seem guileless.
"Oh, yes; for some time," she replied quickly.
"I--I think I'll take a stroll round the island. There might be
something like a boat hidden away somewhere along the beach."
"You prefer to go alone?"
"If you don't mind."
"Not in the least. I've plenty to occupy my idle hands. If I can find
needle and thread, for instance...." She indicated her clothing with a
humorously rueful gesture.
"To be sure," he agreed, far too visibly relieved. Then his wits
stumbled. "I want to think out some things," he added most
superfluously.
"You won't go out of sight?" she pleaded through the window.
"It can't be done," he called back, strolling out of the dooryard with
much show of idle indecision.
His real purpose was, in fact, definite. There was another body to be
accounted for. It was quite possible that the sea might have given it up
at some other point along the island coast. True: there was no second
gathering of gulls to lend colour to this grisly theory; yet the danger
was one to be provided against, since she was not to know.