WHERE IS BOMPARD?
When they had re-settled themselves she rose to go, nodded to them and
turned away towards the river. Then she looked back. The big bull was
following her and the rest of the herd were moving slightly in the same
direction. The bull paused when she turned, then, when she went on, he
continued following her, lazily and as if drawn by some gentle magnetic
attraction.
Across the river she turned and waved her hand to them. Then she went
on.
In some extraordinary way the creatures had made the place less lonely
and the wonder of them pursued her as she walked, keeping to the sand
patches where the rocks were and then striking along the great levels of
pure sand.
Her feet did not hurt her and she was beginning to recognise that touch
with the world which comes to those who walk without boots, something
that humanity has all but forgotten, all but ceased to remember.
As she drew near the caves she looked for the men, but the beach was
deserted. Then, looking into the men's cave, she saw La Touche lying on
his back asleep, his pipe beside him and his arm flung across his eyes.
Where was Bompard?
He ought to have been back by this, and as she turned and looked up and
down the beach a vague uneasiness came upon her.
It was as if for the first time she had recognized the value of Bompard
in their small society. Bompard with his age and heaviness and patent
honesty, despite his stupidity, was a presence not to be despised.
If La Touche had been another man she might have awakened him to make
enquiries. As it was, she preferred to let him lie.
Bompard she had last seen crossing the rocks of the Lizard point. It was
there that she must look for him.
She went to the cave where she had left her boots and put them on for
the climb. When she reached the point she found the work easier than she
had suspected. The rocks were not strewn at random, they were in reality
breaks off and tables of the basalt; the whole point was like a great
lizard that, creeping stealthily towards the sea, had been stricken into
rock.
She climbed, and in five minutes was on the highest point with a new
view of the coast before her. It was like looking at Ferocity. Here the
rocks were broken and tumbled about, indeed, rocks, huge and spired like
churches, cliffs black and polished with the washing of the waves,
monoliths standing out in the blue-green water and all ringing and
singing to the chime of the sea. Inland, cañons of night and shoulders
of dolerite and plains where nothing grew leading to great level
bastions, fortifications that seemed built by rule and plumb line, with
the markings of the basalt visible through the clear air. Basalt has
that terrible peculiarity. It seems the work of a hand, it makes castles
and fortifications whose ruled markings bear the inevitable suggestions
of masonry.
And across all that not a sign of life save the wings of the tireless
birds, teal and duck, cormorants, and beyond the seaward rocks the great
sea geese fishing and the guillemots flighting and the white tern
darting like dragon-flies.
Where was Bompard?
Had he, by any chance, come back and taken some other road off the
beach? There was only one way: the break in the cliffs, beyond the
caves. She thought it highly improbable that he would have come back
only to leave the beach by another way, the descent from where she stood
and towards the bed country was quite easy, alluringly easy. No, he
would have gone on.
She sat down to rest and watch.
At any moment he might appear in the distance. From where she sat the
sea lay straight before her and the far off islands, to the left the
rock strewn coast, to the right the great curving beach.
Behind her the country stormed away, stern, grey-grim and treeless, to
the foothills whose misty mauve lay stretched before the mountains.
Every now and then she would turn towards the left searching the country
and cliffs with her eyes, but no form appeared.
She remembered now that he had talked about sea birds' eggs and how to
get them. Might he have gone hunting for eggs over those cliffs and
fallen?
She remembered also when the two men had come back from their expedition
inland they had brought an alarming story of a bog like a quick sand. La
Touche had blundered into it and he would have gone down only for his
companion. They had also said something about pot holes like shafts in
the basalt. She turned her mind away from these thoughts and passing her
fingers through her hair removed the comb which held it in a rough knot,
shaking it free to the sun and wind. She combed it with her fingers and
rearranged it and then looked again--nothing.
It came to her suddenly that though she were to sit there forever the
vigil would be useless, that Bompard had gone--never to return.
She reasoned with this feeling, and reason only increased her fears. It
was now noon, Bompard was not the man to go on a long expedition by
himself; he was too inactive and easy-going. No, something had happened
to him and he might at that moment be lying dead at the foot of some
cliff or he might have broken a leg and be lying at the foot of some
rock unable to move.
She rose up and came swiftly down to the beach. Reaching the caves she
found La Touche opening a tin. It was dinner-time.
"What has become of Bompard?" she asked. "Have you seen him since he
went off this morning over those rocks?"
"Bompard," replied the other, "Mon Dieu! How do I know? No, I have not
seen him, he is big enough to take care of himself."
"That may be," she replied, "but accidents happen no matter how big a
man may be. He has not returned--"
"So it would seem," said La Touche, who had now got the tin open and was
turning the contents on to a plate. "But he will return when he
remembers that it is dinner-time."
Her lips were dry with anger, there was a contained insolence in the
manner and voice of the other that roused her as much as his
callousness. His mind seemed as cold as his pale blue eyes. All her
mixed feelings towards him focussed suddenly into a point--she loathed
him; but she held herself in.
"If he has not returned when we have finished dinner," said she, "we
will have to look for him." She took a plate and some of the beef he had
turned from the tin and with a couple of biscuits drew off and taking
her place outside in the sun began her wretched meal. A rabbit that had
run out on the sands sat up and looked at her as she ate, then it ran
off and as she followed it with her eyes she contrasted the little
friendly form with the form of La Touche, the dark innocent eyes with
those eyes of washed-out blue, without depth, or, perhaps, veiling
depth.
When she had finished eating she put the plate by her side and sat
waiting for La Touche to make a movement.
Bompard that morning had left his tinder box behind him in the cave, she
heard the strike of flint on steel. La Touche was lighting his pipe. She
waited ten minutes or more, then she came to the cave mouth.
"Are you not coming to look for Bompard?" asked she.
"I'll go when I choose," said he, "I don't want orders."
"I gave you no orders," she replied, "I asked you, are you not coming to
look for Bompard who may be in difficulties, or lying perhaps with a
broken limb--and you sit there smoking your pipe. But I give you orders
now; get up and come and help to look for him. Get up at once."
He sprang to his feet and came right out. It seemed to her that she had
never seen him before. This was the real La Touche.
"One word more from you," he shouted, "and I'll show you who's master.
You! Talk to me, would you! A--woman more trouble than you're worth. Off
with you, get down the beach--clear!"
He took a step forward with his right fist ready to strike,
open-handed. Then he drew back. She had whipped the knife from its
sheath.
The boat hook, which she had brought back with her, was propped against
the cliff behind her and out of his reach, he had no weapon.
She did not add a word to the threat of the knife. He stood like a fool,
unable to sustain her gaze, venomous, yet held, as a snake is held by a
man's grip.
"Now," she said, "get on. Go search for your companion and if you dare
to speak to me again like that I will make you repent it. You thought I
was weak being a woman and alone. You were going to strike. Coward!--Get
on, go and search for your companion."
He turned suddenly and walked off towards the Lizard rocks. "I'll go
where I choose," said he.
It was a lame and impotent end of his rebellion, but she held no
delusions. This was only the beginning--if Bompard did not return.
She put the knife in its sheath and then she put the boat hook away,
hiding it behind the sailcloth in her cave, then she went into the
men's cave. La Touche's clasp knife lay there on the sand, it was not
much of a weapon but she took it. She examined the dinner knives again.
They were almost useless as weapons. Then she came out. La Touche had
disappeared beyond the rocks and she came to the boat. There was nothing
here in the way of a weapon that he might use, unless the oars. They
were heavy, but he was strong. She determined to leave nothing to
chance and, carrying the oars down the beach to the break in the cliffs,
she hid them amongst some scrub bushes. Then she remembered the axe,
sought for it and hid it.
Then she came back and sat down to reconsider matters.
The position was as bad as could be.
As bad as La Touche. Once let this man get the upper hand and she was
lost. She would be his slave and worse. She had measured him finely.
Instinct, never at fault, told her that to pull down anything above him
would be meat and drink to La Touche's true nature and that his hatred
of her superiority was deepened by the fact that she was a woman.
Were she weak he would beat her and make her cook for him, trample on
her, make her his woman to fetch and carry, and, if Bompard did not come
back, she was here alone with him and would have to fight this thing
out.
Well, she could not fight it by brooding over it, and she was not
helping to look for Bompard.
She drew the knife from its sheath and held the eight inches of razor
sharp steel balanced in her hand for a moment as though admiring it.
Then she replaced it in the sheath and started towards the Lizard
Point.