Kitabı oku: «The Destroying Angel», sayfa 12
"Of course," he assented, puzzled beyond expression, cudgelling his wits for some solution of a riddle sealed to his masculine obtuseness.
What could have happened to influence her so strangely? Could he have said or done – anything – ?
The problem held him in abstraction throughout the greater part of their walk to the farm-house, though he heard and with ostensible intelligence responded to her running accompaniment of comment and suggestion…
They threaded the cluster of buildings that, their usefulness outlived, still encumbered the bluff bordering upon the beach. The most careless and superficial glance bore out the impression conveyed by the girl's description of the spot. Doorless doorways and windows with shattered sashes disclosed glimpses of interiors fallen into a state of ruin defying renovation. What remained intact of walls and roofs were mere shells half filled with an agglomeration of worthlessness – mounds of crumbled, mouldering plaster, shards, rust-eaten tins, broken bottles, shreds of what had once been garments: the whole perhaps threatened by the overhanging skeleton of a crazy staircase… An evil, disturbing spot, exhaling an atmosphere more melancholy and disheartening than that of a rain-sodden November woodland: a haunted place, where the hand of Time had wrought devastation with the wanton efficacy of a destructive child: a good place to pass through quickly and ever thereafter to avoid.
In relief against it the uplands seemed the brighter, stretching away in the soft golden light of the descending sun. The wind sang over them a boisterous song of strength and the sweep of open spaces. The air was damp and soft and sweet with the scent of heather. Straggling sheep suspended for a moment their meditative cropping and lifted their heads to watch the strangers with timorous, stupid eyes. A flock of young turkeys fled in discordant agitation from their path.
Halfway up to the farm-house a memory shot through Whitaker's mind as startling as lightning streaking athwart a peaceful evening sky. He stopped with an exclamation that brought the girl beside him to a standstill with questioning eyes.
"But the others – !" he stammered.
"The others?" she repeated blankly.
"They – the men who brought you here – ?"
Her lips tightened. She moved her head in slow negation.
"I have seen nothing of either of them."
Horror and pity filled him, conjuring up a vision of wild, raving waters, mad with blood-lust, and in their jaws, arms and heads helplessly whirling and tossing.
"Poor devils!" he muttered.
She said nothing. When he looked for sympathy in her face, he found it set and inscrutable.
He delayed another moment, thinking that soon she must speak, offer him some sort of explanation. But she remained uncommunicative. And he could not bring himself to seem anxious to pry into her affairs.
He took a tentative step onward. She responded instantly to the suggestion, but in silence.
The farm-house stood on high ground, commanding an uninterrupted sweep of the horizon. As they drew near it, Whitaker paused and turned, narrowing his eyes as he attempted to read the riddle of the enigmatic, amber-tinted distances.
To north and east the island fell away in irregular terraces to wide, crescent beaches whose horns, joining in the northeast, formed the sandy spit. To west and south the moorlands billowed up to the brink of a precipitous bluff. In the west, Whitaker noted absently, a great congregation of gulls were milling amid a cacophony of screams, just beyond the declivity. Far over the northern water the dark promontory was blending into violet shadows which, in turn, blended imperceptibly with the more sombre shade of the sea. Beyond it nothing was discernable. Southeast from it the coast, backed by dusky highlands, ran on for several miles to another, but less impressive, headland; its line, at an angle to that of the deserted island, forming a funnel-like tideway for the intervening waters fully six miles at its broadest in the north, narrowing in the east to something over three miles.
There was not a sail visible in all the blue cup of the sea.
"I don't know," said Whitaker slowly, as much to himself as to his companion. "It's odd … it passes me…"
"Can't you tell where we are?" she inquired anxiously.
"Not definitely. I know, of course, we must be somewhere off the south coast of New England: somewhere between Cape Cod and Block Island. But I've never sailed up this way – never east of Orient Point; my boating has been altogether confined to Long Island Sound… And my geographical memory is as hazy as the day. There are islands off the south coast of Massachusetts – a number of them: Nantucket, you know, and Martha's Vineyard. This might be either – only it isn't, because they're summer resorts. That" – he swept his hand toward the land in the northeast – "might be either, and probably is one of 'em. At the same time, it may be the mainland. I don't know."
"Then … then what are we to do?"
"I should say, possess our souls in patience, since we have no boat. At least, until we can signal some passing vessel. There aren't any in sight just now, but there must be some – many – in decent weather."
"How – signal?"
He looked round, shaking a dubious head. "Of course there's nothing like a flagpole here – but me, and I'm not quite long enough. Perhaps I can find something to serve as well. We might nail a plank to the corner of the roof and a table-cloth to that, I suppose."
"And build fires, by night?"
He nodded. "Best suggestion yet. I'll do that very thing to-night – after I've had a bite to eat."
She started impatiently away. "Oh, come, come! What am I thinking of, to let you stand there, starving by inches?"
They entered the house by the back door, finding themselves in the kitchen – that mean and commonplace assembly-room of narrow and pinched lives. The immaculate cleanliness of decent, close poverty lay over it all like a blight. And despite the warmth of the air outside, within it was chill – bleak with an aura of discontent bred of the incessant struggle against crushing odds which went on within those walls from year's end to year's end…
Whitaker busied himself immediately with the stove. There was a full wood-box near by; and within a very few minutes he had a brisk fire going. The woman had disappeared in the direction of the barn. She returned in good time with half a dozen eggs. Foraging in the pantry and cupboards, she brought to light a quantity of supplies: a side of bacon, flour, potatoes, sugar, tea, small stores of edibles in tins.
"I'm hungry again, myself," she declared, attacking the problem of simple cookery with a will and a confident air that promised much.
The aroma of frying bacon, the steam of brewing tea, were all but intolerable to an empty stomach. Whitaker left the kitchen hurriedly and, in an endeavour to control himself, made a round of the other rooms. There were two others on the ground floor: a "parlour," a bedroom; in the upper story, four small bedchambers; above them an attic, gloomy and echoing. Nowhere did he discover anything to moderate the impression made by the kitchen: it was all impeccably neat, desperately bare.
Depressed, he turned toward the head of the stairs. Below a door whined on its hinges, and the woman called him, her voice ringing through the hallway with an effect of richness, deep-toned and bell-true, that somehow made him think of sunlight flinging an arm of gold athwart the dusk of a darkened room. He felt his being thrill responsive to it, as fine glass sings its answer to the note truly pitched. More than all this, he was staggered by something in the quality of that full-throated cry, something that smote his memory until it was quick and vibrant, like a harp swept by an old familiar hand.
"Hugh?" she called; and again: "Hugh! Where are you?"
He paused, grasping the balustrade, and with some difficulty managed to articulate:
"Here … coming…"
"Hurry. Everything's ready."
Waiting an instant to steady his nerves, he descended and reëntered the kitchen.
The meal was waiting – on the table. The woman, too, faced him as he entered, waiting in the chair nearest the stove. But, once within the room, he paused so long beside the door, his hand upon the knob, and stared so strangely at her, that she moved uneasily, grew restless and disturbed. A gleam of apprehension flickered in her eyes.
"Why, what's the matter?" she asked with forced lightness. "Why don't you come in and sit down?"
He said abruptly: "You called me Hugh!"
She inclined her head, smiling mischievously. "I admit it. Do you mind?"
"Mind? No!" He shut the door, advanced and dropped into his chair, still searching her face with his troubled gaze. "Only," he said – "you startled me. I didn't think – expect – hope – "
"On so short an acquaintance?" she suggested archly. "Perhaps you're right. I didn't think… And yet – I do think – with the man who risked his life for me – I'm a little justified in forgetting even that we've never met through the medium of a conventional introduction."
"It isn't that, but…" He hesitated, trying to formulate phrases to explain the singular sensation that had assailed him when she called him: a sensation the precise nature of which he himself did not as yet understand.
She interrupted brusquely: "Don't let's waste time talking. I can't wait another instant."
Silently submissive, he took up his knife and fork and fell to.
XVI
THE BEACON
Through the meal, neither spoke; and if there were any serious thinking in process, Whitaker was not only ignorant of it, but innocent of participation therein. With the first taste of food, he passed into a state of abject surrender to sheer brutish hunger. It was not easily that he restrained himself, schooled his desires to decent expression. The smell, the taste, the sight of food: he fairly quivered like a ravenous animal under the influence of their sensual promise. He was sensible of a dull, carking shame, and yet was shameless.
The girl was the first to finish. She had eaten little in comparison; chiefly, perhaps, because she required less than he. Putting aside her knife and fork, she rested her elbows easily on the table, cradled her chin between her half-closed hands. Her eyes grew dark with speculation, and oddly lambent. He ate on, unconscious of her attitude. When he had finished, it was as if a swarm of locusts had passed that way. Of the more than plentiful meal she had prepared, there remained but a beggarly array of empty dishes to testify to his appreciation.
He leaned back a little in his chair, surprised her intent gaze, laughed sheepishly, and laughing, sighed with repletion.
A smile of sympathetic understanding darkened the corners of her lips.
"Milord is satisfied?"
"Milord," he said with an apologetic laugh, "is on the point of passing into a state of torpor. He begins to understand the inclination of the boa-constrictor – or whatever beast it is that feeds once every six months – to torp a little, gently, after its semi-annual gorge."
"Then there's nothing else…?"
"For a pipe and tobacco I would give you half my kingdom!"
"Oh, I'm so sorry!"
"Don't be. It won't harm me to do without nicotine for a day or two." But his sigh belied the statement. "Anyway, I'll forget all about it presently. I'll be too busy."
"How?"
"It's coming on night. You haven't forgotten our signal fires?"
"Oh, no – and we must not forget!"
"Then I've got my work cut out for me, to forage for fuel. I must get right at it."
The girl rose quickly. "Do you mind waiting a little? I mustn't neglect my dishes, and – if you don't mind – I'd rather not be left alone any longer than necessary. You know…"
She ended with a nervous laugh, depreciatory.
"Why, surely. And I'll help with the dish-cloth."
"You'll do nothing of the sort. I'd rather do it all myself. Please." She waved him back to his chair with a commanding gesture. "I mean it – really."
"Well," he consented, doubtful, "if you insist…"
She worked rapidly above the steaming dish-pan, heedless of the effects upon her hands and bared arms: busy and intent upon her business, the fair head bowed, the cheeks faintly flushed.
Whitaker lounged, profoundly intrigued, watching her with sober and studious eyes, asking himself questions he found for the present unanswerable. What did she mean to him? Was what he had been at first disposed to consider a mere, light-hearted, fugitive infatuation, developing into something else, something stronger and more enduring? And what did it mean, this impression that had come to him so suddenly, within the hour, and that persisted with so much force in the face of its manifest impossibility, that he had known her, or some one strangely like her, at some forgotten time – as in some previous existence?
It was her voice that had made him think that, her voice of marvellous allure, crystal-pure, as flexible as tempered steel, strong, tender, rich, compassionate, compelling… Where had he heard it before, and when?
And who was she, this Miss Fiske? This self-reliant and self-sufficient woman who chose to spend her summer in seclusion, with none but servants for companions; who had comprehension of machinery and ran her motor-boat alone; who went for lonely swims in the surf at dawn; who treated men as her peers – neither more nor less; who was spied upon, shadowed, attacked, kidnapped by men of unparalleled desperation and daring; who had retained her self-possession under stress of circumstance that would have driven strong men into pseudo-hysteria; who now found herself in a position to the last degree ambiguous and anomalous, cooped up, for God only knew how long, upon a lonely hand's-breadth of land in company with a man of whom she knew little more than nothing; and who accepted it all without protest, with a serene and flawless courage, uncomplaining, displaying an implicit and unquestioning faith in her companion: what manner of woman was this?
At least one to marvel over and admire without reserve; to rejoice in and, if it could not be otherwise, to desire in silence and in pride that it should be given to one so unworthy the privileges of desiring and of service and mute adoration…
"It's almost dark," her pleasant accents broke in upon his revery. "Would you mind lighting the lamp? My hands are all wet and sticky."
"Assuredly."
Whitaker got up, found matches, and lighted a tin kerosene lamp in a bracket on the wall. The windows darkened and the walls took on a sombre yellow as the flame grew strong and steady.
"I'm quite finished." The girl scrubbed her arms and hands briskly with a dry towel and turned down her sleeves, facing him with her fine, frank, friendly smile. "If you're ready…"
"Whenever you are," he said with an oddly ceremonious bow.
To his surprise she drew back, her brows and lips contracting to level lines, her eyes informed with the light of wonder shot through with the flashings of a resentful temper.
"Why do you look at me so?" she demanded sharply. "What are you thinking…?" She checked, her frown relaxed, her smile flickered softly. "Am I such a fright – ?"
"I beg your pardon," he said hastily. "I was merely thinking, wondering…"
She seemed about to speak, but said nothing. He did not round out his apology. A little distance apart, they stood staring at one another in that weird, unnatural light, wherein the glow from the lamp contended garishly with the ebbing flush of day. And again he was mute in bewildered inquiry before that puzzling phenomenon of inscrutable emotion which once before, since his awakening, had been disclosed to him in her mantling colour, in the quickening of her breath, and the agitation of her bosom, in the timid, dumb questioning of eyes grown strangely shy and frightened.
And then, in a twinkling, an impatient gesture exorcised the inexplicable mood that had possessed her, and she regained her normal, self-reliant poise as if by witchcraft.
"What a quaint creature you are, Hugh," she cried, her smile whimsical. "You've a way of looking at one that gives me the creeps. I see things – things that aren't so, and never were. If you don't stop it, I swear I shall think you're the devil! Stop it – do you hear me, sir? And come build our bonfire."
She swung lithely away and was out of the house before he could regain his wits and follow.
"I noticed a lot of old lumber around the barn," she announced, when he joined her in the dooryard – "old boxes and barrels and rubbish. And a wheelbarrow. So you won't have far to go for fuel. Now where do you purpose building the beacon?"
He cast round, peering through the thickening shades of dusk, and eventually settled upon a little knoll a moderate distance to leeward of the farm-house. Such a location would be safest, even though the wind was falling steadily with the flight of the hours; and the fire would be conspicuously placed for observation from any point in the north and east.
Off in the north, where Whitaker had marked down the empurpled headland during the afternoon, a white light lanced the gloom thrice with a sweeping blade, vanished, and was replaced by a glare of angry red, which in its turn winked out.
Whitaker watched it briefly with the finger-tips of his right hand resting lightly on the pulse in his left wrist. Then turning away, he announced:
"Three white flashes followed by a red at intervals of about ten seconds. Wonder what that stands for!"
"What is it?" the girl asked. "A ship signalling?"
"No; a lighthouse – probably a first-order light – with its characteristic flash, not duplicated anywhere along this section of the Atlantic coast. If I knew anything of such matters, it would be easy enough to tell from that just about where we are. If that information would help us."
"But, if we can see their light, they'll see ours, – won't they? – and send to find out what's the matter."
"Perhaps. At least – let's hope so. They're pretty sure to see it, but as to their attaching sufficient importance to it to investigate – that's a question. They may not know that the people who live here are away. They may think the natives here are merely celebrating their silver wedding, or Roosevelt's refusal of a third term, or the accession of Edward the Seventh – or anything."
"Please don't be silly – and discouraging. Do get to work and build the fire."
He obeyed with humility and expedition.
As she had said, there was no lack of fodder for the flames. By dint of several wheelbarrow trips between the knoll and the farmyard, he had presently constructed a pyre of impressive proportions; and by that time it was quite dark – so dark, indeed, that he had been forced to hunt up a yard lantern, carrying the which the girl had accompanied him on his two final trips.
"Here," he said clumsily, when all was ready, offering her matches. "You light it, please – for luck."
Their fingers touched as she took the matches. Something thumped in his breast, and a door opened in the chambers of his understanding, letting in light.
Kneeling at the base of the pyre, she struck a match and applied it to a quantity of tinder-dry excelsior. The stuff caught instantly, puffing into a brilliant patch of blaze; she rose and stood back, en silhouette, delicately poised at attention, waiting to see that her work was well done. He could not take his gaze from her.
So what he had trifled and toyed with, fought with and prayed against, doubted and questioned, laughed at and cried down, was sober, painful fact. Truth, heart-rending to behold in her stark, shining beauty, had been revealed to him in that moment of brushing finger-tips, and he had looked in her face and known his unworthiness; and he trembled and was afraid and ashamed…
Spreading swiftly near the ground, the flames mounted as quickly, with snappings and cracklings, excavating in the darkness an arena of reddish radiance.
The girl retreated to his side, returning the matches.
A tongue of flame shot up from the peak of the pyre, and a column of smoke surpassed it, swinging off to leeward in great, red-bosomed volutes and whorls picked out with flying regiments of sparks.
"You'd think they couldn't help understanding that it's a signal of distress."
"You would think so. I hope so. God knows I hope so!"
There was a passion in his tones to make her lift wondering eyes to his.
"Why do you say that – that way? We should be thankful to be safe – alive. And we're certain to get away before long."
"I know – yes, I know."
"But you spoke so strangely!"
"I'm sorry. I'd been thinking clearly; for the first time, I believe, since I woke up."
"About what? Us? Or merely me?"
"You. I was considering you alone. It isn't right that you should be in this fix. I'd give my right hand to remedy it!"
"But I'm not distressed. It isn't altogether pleasant, but it can't be helped and might easily have been worse."
"And still I can't help feeling, somehow, the wretched injustice of it to you. I want to protest – to do something to mend matters."
"But since you can't" – she laughed in light mockery, innocent of malice – "since we're doing our best, let's be philosophical and sit down over there and watch to see if there's any answer to our signal."
"There won't be."
"You are a difficult body. Never mind. Come along!" she insisted with pretty imperiousness.
They seated themselves with their backs to the fire and at a respectful distance from it, where they could watch the jetting blades of light that ringed the far-off headland. Whitaker reclined on an elbow, relapsing into moody contemplation. The girl drew up her knees, clasped her arms about them, and stared thoughtfully into the night.
Behind them the fire flamed and roared, volcanic. All round it in a radius of many yards the earth glowed red, while, to one side, the grim, homely façade of the farm-house edged blushing out of the ambient night, all its staring windows bloodshot and sinister.
The girl stirred uneasily, turning her head to look at Whitaker.
"You know," she said with a confused attempt to laugh: "this is really 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."
