THE VANISHING OF EMMELINE (continued)
He dropped the line, and turned with a start. There was no one visible.
He ran amongst the trees calling out her name, but only echoes
answered. Then he came back to the lagoon edge.
He felt sure that what he had heard was only fancy, but it was nearly
sunset, and more than time to be off. He pulled in his line, wrapped it
up, took his fish-spear and started.
It was just in the middle of the bad place that dread came to him.
What if anything had happened to her? It was dusk here, and never had
the weeds seemed so thick, dimness so dismal, the tendrils of the vines
so gin-like. Then he lost his way—he who was so sure of his way
always! The hunter’s instinct had been crossed, and for a time he went
hither and thither helpless as a ship without a compass. At last he
broke into the real wood, but far to the right of where he ought to
have been. He felt like a beast escaped from a trap, and hurried along,
led by the sound of the surf.
When he reached the clear sward that led down to the lagoon the sun had
just vanished beyond the sea-line. A streak of red cloud floated like
the feather of a flamingo in the western sky close to the sea, and
twilight had already filled the world. He could see the house dimly,
under the shadow of the trees, and he ran towards it, crossing the
sward diagonally.
Always before, when he had been away, the first thing to greet his eyes
on his return had been the figure of Emmeline. Either at the lagoon
edge or the house door he would find her waiting for him.
She was not waiting for him to-night. When he reached the house she was
not there, and he paused, after searching the place, a prey to the most
horrible perplexity, and unable for the moment to think or act.
Since the shock of the occurrence on the reef she had been subject at
times to occasional attacks of headache; and when the pain was more
than she could bear, she would go off and hide. Dick would hunt for her
amidst the trees, calling out her name and hallooing. A faint “halloo”
would answer when she heard him, and then he would find her under a
tree or bush, with her unfortunate head between her hands, a picture of
misery.
He remembered this now, and started off along the borders of the wood,
calling to her, and pausing to listen. No answer came.
He searched amidst the trees as far as the little well, waking the
echoes with his voice; then he came back slowly, peering about him in
the deep dusk that now was yielding to the starlight. He sat down
before the door of the house, and, looking at him, you might have
fancied him in the last stages of exhaustion. Profound grief and
profound exhaustion act on the frame very much in the same way. He sat
with his chin resting on his chest, his hands helpless. He could hear
her voice, still as he heard it over at the other side of the island.
She had been in danger and called to him, and he had been calmly
fishing, unconscious of it all.
This thought maddened him. He sat up, stared around him and beat the
ground with the palms of his hands; then he sprang to his feet and made
for the dinghy. He rowed to the reef: the action of a madman, for she
could not possibly be there.
There was no moon, the starlight both lit and veiled the world, and no
sound but the majestic thunder of the waves. As he stood, the night
wind blowing on his face, the white foam seething before him, and
Canopus burning in the great silence overhead, the fact that he stood
in the centre of an awful and profound indifference came to his
untutored mind with a pang.
He returned to the shore: the house was still deserted. A little bowl
made from the shell of a cocoa-nut stood on the grass near the doorway.
He had last seen it in her hands, and he took it up and held it for a
moment, pressing it tightly to his breast. Then he threw himself down
before the doorway, and lay upon his face, with head resting upon his
arms in the attitude of a person who is profoundly asleep.
He must have searched through the woods again that night just as a
somnambulist searches, for he found himself towards dawn in the valley
before the idol. Then it was daybreak—the world was full of light and
colour. He was seated before the house door, worn out and exhausted,
when, raising his head, he saw Emmeline’s figure coming out from amidst
the distant trees on the other side of the sward.