"I ask because it will take time for me to get used to your showing me
any consideration," she said, with the imp back on her shoulder. "Your
iron hand has almost cowed me. You have nearly broken my spirit. I am
a humble creature now, grateful for crumbs of kindness."
Franklin threw back his head and laughed until the tears came into his
eyes.
"What's the matter?" she asked, gravely.
He turned and looked her full in the face. "The devil was somewhere
about when you were born," he said. "I wish to Heaven we were back in
the good old days when men could beat their women without fear of police
and suffrage and all the silly stuff that protects you against your
proper treatment."
Before she could answer he stopped the engine and ran the launch
alongside a low ridge of rock, sprang out, helped her up, jammed a pin
into a cleft and fastened the painter to it.
She stood up in front of him, proud and glorious in her youth and
beauty. "Well, here we are on your desert island," she said. "Beat me.
Why don't you?"
For a moment he said nothing. He ran his eyes over her,--golden hair,
flower-like face, eyes in which there was a lurking laugh, lovely slim
body. "I almost think you're not worth it," he said.
Almost!--how foolish of him to say that. One day soon he should
withdraw not only the almost but the whole remark, on his knees,--and be
left there, like a fool.
"May I have that little bag, please?" she asked, sweetly.
He hiked it out and gave it to her.
"You know the island, don't you?"
"Every inch of it."
"Where do you propose that I shall undress?"
"Come along and I'll show you." He started off, clambering over the
brown rocks.
She followed to a place about a hundred yards away,--a sort of cave on a
tiny spread of beach. "Oh, how perfectly delightful," she cried.
"Built for bathing, isn't it?"
"Don't go in before I come back. There's a strong undertow here. Sing
out when you're ready," and away he went.
Beatrix chose a dry spot on the sand and without a second's hesitation
sat down and started to untie her shoes. She longed to get into the
sea, to enjoy the exhilaration of exercise, to feel the warm sun on her
wet limbs and be a child of Nature. Franklin might talk as glibly as he
liked about the good old days but he was a sportsman. She had no fear.
He hadn't long to wait. He got into his bathing things and had only
taken two puffs of a cigarette before he heard her call. Once more he
climbed over and down the rocks,--stopped for a moment and drew in his
breath at the sight of her,--and then went on.
She waved her hand. She was standing ankle-deep in the sea with a red
rubber cap drawn tightly over her hair, without stockings and in a suit
that looked like a boy's. "Delicious," she called out.
It was the very word he had already discovered.
And in they tumbled, laughing and splashing, like children. "Let's dry
in the sun," she said coming out breathlessly, her face and arms
glistening, the wet suit as tight as a black skin. She sat down and
peeled off the rubber cap and shook her hair free. "This is the best
thing I've done for months."
He stood a few yards away and threw pebbles into the sea. He felt
awfully young and fit. It was almost as good as dreaming to be out
there, like that, with _her_. He chucked as hard as he could, with all
his force, competing against each good shot. "How about that?" he cried
out, with a laugh.
Beatrix looked at him. She had merely accepted him before. He was like
the bronze figure of "The Runner" come to life, with his small head and
broad, deep chest, hard muscular arms, clean, hipless lines, tremendous
strength. The sight of him gave her a sudden, unexplainable sense of
shyness. She tried to shake it off. It was disconcerting and foolish.
He flung himself down and began to babble to her, pouring sand through
his fingers. His dark, thick hair was still wet. His skin was tanned
almost black. The whites of his eyes were as white as his teeth. His
moustache, red as a rule, was burned to the color of straw. An odd
thought flashed through her mind. He must like her to have spared her,
to have respected her. How easy to have broken her if he'd cared!
"Isn't it wonderful here?" she said, resenting a feeling of
self-consciousness.
"Pretty good, isn't it? Malcolm and a whole crowd of us bathed here
last year. Very queer. I remember he told me about you that
morning,--how well you swim, or something, and by Jove, you do swim
well,--as well as you do everything else." He was not paying
compliments. There was not the faintest suggestion of flirtation in his
eyes. He made the statement of an accepted fact, and went on boyishly.
"Do you wonder that I keep away from towns? Just look at it here. No
umbrellas stuck about. No crowd of giggling women and cocktail hunters.
No strings of stinking cars lined up to carry off soft people. Here's
simplicity and truth. Will you ever get to like it, youngster?"
He was disappointing her. She wouldn't for the world have had him less
charming than he was, or say the things that some men had said to her
after bathing,--personal, fulsome things, caddish things. But,--she
_must_ look nice, she felt nice, and surely there might have been just a
little admiration in his eyes. Anyone would think that they had been
boy and girl together. He accepted it as a matter of course.
"Yes," she said, before she could stop herself, "with you."
He laughed softly and gratefully, leaned forward and kissed her foot,
then sprang up and bent over her, put one arm round her shoulders and
one under her knees, quietly gathered her up shoulder-high. "Come on,"
he said, "it's time to dress and eat," and he carried her to where her
clothes were lying, with his cheek against her breast.
When he put her down and saw her face, something went crack. Good God!
They were not, then, in that dream of his, married, hand in hand, with a
baby boy growing in the sun!
He bolted like a mountain goat.
*XXXIII*
The sight of him after he had put her down, scared, with his hands out
as though they had been burned, and the complete acknowledgment of the
ineptitude of apology that he gave by bolting, made Beatrix laugh. It
caught her sense of comedy and left a picture on her mind to which she
would always be able to turn to dispel depression. All the same her
heart was thumping and her cheeks were hot. She exulted in the fact,
now proved beyond argument, that she drew him, that he was all alive to
her attraction. She thrilled again as she thought of how he had kissed
her foot and the way in which he had carried her across the beach.
She found herself trying to find the right word to describe his strength
and cleanness and physical beauty, the odd boyishness of him, the
passion that was without animalism,--and failed. She got as far as to
wish that she had run her fingers through his hair as she felt a strong
desire to do,--and then began to dress quickly, drawing back, with an
odd touch of puritanism, from that kind of thought.
"I would like to come here every fine day," she said, looking about,
pretending that it was the view that appealed to her, and the color and
the gentle break of the sea. "And I'm as hungry as a hunter now," and
she knew that she was hurrying to see him again.
When she was dressed and had packed the bathing things into the bag she
stood still for a little while under the shadow of the rocks, with dry
seaweed all round her in a vague pattern. Privately and in a sort of
way in secret from herself, she tapped at her heart and went in, afraid
to take more than one quick look around. It was all untidy and chaotic.
Someone had stamped about in that hitherto perfectly neat and
undisturbed place. It was unrecognizable.... She ran away from it.
What did it mean? Why did she begin to feel that she was not the old
Beatrix, not quite so high-chinned and self-composed, not quite with the
same grip on the reins, softer, simpler, with a queer new feeling of
homesickness for a home that she didn't know?
"Now, now, my good girl," she said, "string up, pull yourself together.
No sloppiness, please." But she went eagerly back over the uneven rocks
and something was making her heart more untidy than ever.
She found the food laid out on a flat place and Franklin in the launch
doing something to the engine. She whistled and he looked up. "I'm
awfully hungry," she said.
"Right. I'll come. This engine's a bit groggy somewhere. I thought so
as we ran in. Careless blighter, Jones." He washed his hands in the
sea and came up, putting on his coat. "I hate messing about with
machinery. I know next to nothing about it and if I can't get it right
at once I have an unholy desire to smash. I've no patience with things
I don't understand."
"That's why you're so impatient with me sometimes," she said to
herself,--enormously surprised that she didn't say it aloud. Obviously
something was happening to her. She liked the way in which he had set
out the lunch and put the cushion so that the sun wouldn't fall on her
face. It was competent,--and she admired that. He was taller than he
had seemed to be on board and his grey eyes had a most intriguing way of
going black.
Franklin hid behind an abrupt and hard-forced casualness, very conscious
of having made a complete idiot of himself. He told her everything that
there was to eat, knowing very well that her quick eyes had at once made
an inventory, and looked after her with a rapid politeness. He
immediately entered into a long, detailed account of a most
uninteresting hunting trip in Central Africa and watched her like a hawk
to pounce if she made any reference to bathing or beaches. Also he
talked her down when she made one or two tentative efforts to lead the
conversation to something human and wilfully became more technical and
dry and endless.
Finally, having strained every nerve to stand it for his sake, she gave
a little scream, and he stopped. But before he could ask what was the
matter she said: "Nothing's bitten me and I haven't seen smugglers. I'm
simply fed up with red monkies and Croo-boys and the whole of Central
Africa. Tell me just one thing. How do you feel after eating four
hard-boiled eggs running?"
He chuckled. "Hungry," he said, and got off his sweating horse. She
was not going to hold him up to ridicule, and he was grateful.
They sat for a long time over lunch,--Franklin with his back to a rock
and a well-worn pipe going; Beatrix leaning back on her hands with her
hat off and the light on her hair. Suddenly Franklin sprang up. "Fog
coming over," he said sharply. He stood over her and held out his hand.
She took it and he jerked her to her feet. She looked out and saw the
_Galatea_ a long way off, disappearing behind what seemed to be a solid
wall of grey smoke. "Does it matter?"
"Yes. We'll leave these things. Nip into the launch quick and I'll
make a dash for the yacht." He gave her arm an impatient tap and she
caught up her hat and got in. Hauling out the pin he threw it aboard,
jumped into the stern, started the engine and backed out, turning with a
swing when he was clear. The sea was at the stand, due to go out.
Already the cowlike call of fog signals had begun far off. But he had
taken his line for the yacht and went for her. "With ordinary luck we
shall make her," he said. "I wish you'd brought your coat."
The fog rolled over them. Minutes before it had put out the sun. "What
fun!" laughed Beatrix. "It will make my hair curl."
"It'll make mine like astrakhan," he said, "if this cursed engine begins
any tricks. It's missing fire now, damn the thing!"
"Don't mind me," said Beatrix airily, "if you really feel the need to
swear."
"I shan't."
She looked all around. There was nothing to see except a monotony of
greyness. They were pushing through a thick, damp, mysterious series of
closely hung veils that dragged softly across her face, it wasn't
pleasant or funny. It was,--but with Franklin at her elbow it was
disloyal even to let the word take shape in her mind. If only she had
brought her coat, her thickest coat. She had hardly anything on. How
melancholy those sea-voices were. She hated eerie sounds. She saw
Franklin bend suddenly over the engine and pry and touch and say things
under his breath. Every now and then the thing had furious palpitation.
Then it seemed to her to be quarrelling together and throwing its parts
about. It kicked and wheezed and struggled like a held rooster,--and
stopped. She began to shiver. A dozen distant cows seemed to be
calling anxiously for their young. She could hardly see the peak of the
launch. She wasn't frightened. Only just a little anxious, or rather
uncomfortable. She loved new things but this was, undoubtedly and
without argument, too new.
"Hell!" said Franklin.
"Thank you," she replied. "You've said it for me."
He peered into her face. "Shall I tell you what's happened or not? I
mean do you want to face things or be coddled?"
"I thought you were beginning to know me," she said.
"Right. Now listen. This dirty little engine's playing the fool. I've
done everything I know to it, even to whispering endearing terms. But
in one word, it beats me."
She nodded brightly, rubbing her thinly-clad knees together and putting
her hands under her arms. "I see," she said. "Well?"
"That means that we're completely at the mercy of this rotten fog, and
presently we shall drift out, maybe into trade lines. Hear the bellows
of the freighters? We may be out all night with nothing to eat and drink
and the risk of being run down."
Her attempt at pluck was heroic. "There aren't any nice, soft, cozy
Jaeger dressing gowns in the locker, by any chance?"
"The Vanderdykes are all right," said Franklin, with queer enthusiasm.
He pulled off his flannel coat. "Put this on."
"No, no."
"Put this on."
"I won't put it on."
He wasted no further words. He took first one soft damp arm and then
the other, drew the sleeves over them, bent down and buttoned the coat
up.
"Oh, that's lovely," she said; "as warm as a radiator. But what about
you?"
"That's all right. Listen again. When McLeod finds that we don't get
back he'll probably send off the big launch to hunt us up. The only way
I can give them a line is to keep shouting. Very likely, giving me
credit for being less a confounded fool than I am, he'll imagine two
things,--either that I got off before the fog lowered and am able to
fake the engine if anything happens to it, or that, seeing the fog
coming over, I decided to stay on the island, in which case it would be
possible for him to feel his way to land and pick us off. As it is,
there's no compass aboard and I've no means of telling which way we're
drifting, and if the fog lasts all night,--puzzle, find the yacht. There
you have the worst and the best of it. Listen!"
"What is it?"
He put his hands up to his mouth and raised a tremendous shout.
"Ahoy,--_Galatea_, ahoy, ahoy!"
There was no answer. The sound seemed to fall dead, as though up
against a wall.
"Um," he said, and stood amidships with his legs wide apart and with the
utmost precision, with regular pauses, turning his head to right and
left, sent out long, steady calls. Some power-boat, feeling her way in
from fishing, might come within hail and give them a tow, or the big
launch might be poking about for them and pick up his voice. Good God,
to think that he had lived to be a man without being able to master a
damn fool engine! That was one of the worst points of being able to buy
service. It plucked initiative out of the brain like the bones out of
fish. "_Galatea, ... Galatea_.... Ahoy."
How extraordinary it was, she thought, sitting all together, as close as
she could get to herself. They were like two children lost in the
woods,--two people, both of whom had been able to buy the earth, played
a trick upon and shown that the earth was no more theirs than any other
man's,--two people cut off, brought all the way down the great ladder
with a run, to the desire for charity,--two people, young and wilful and
proud and vain, who had come together by a lie, been kept together by a
condition of nature against which they, for all their money, and youth
and supreme confidence, were utterly impotent,--two people mutually
aware of being man and woman drifting together in a new life to death,
perhaps....
"_Galatea, Galatea_, ahoy."
She gave a little cry of wonder and fright.