CHAPTER XV
Now, of course, that I know what Bellwattle has told her husband about me, I view Cruikshank in a different light. Now, moreover, that he imagines he knows my little secret, he does the same with me. I catch his eyes looking at me with a cunning expression that is humorous, too, as though he found a hidden meaning in every word I said.
"This place suits your appetite," he remarked the other morning, at breakfast, when I put away my empty porridge-dish and fell to work upon the fresh mackerel which had been caught at sunrise. "You don't eat like this in London."
Upon my soul, I believe he expects to see me waste away to nothing now that he imagines I am in love. Thank Heaven, a bitter experience has made me too prosaic for that. I may not be a philosopher, but at least I manage to live alone, which cannot be done with such romantic fancies as lead to starvation or any such tricks as that. Indeed, I learn much from Dandy, whose deepest passion never diminishes his excitement when it comes to the moment for Moxon to throw his two biscuits on to the tesselated pavement in the hall. It is he who likes them thrown. At first I had disapproved.
"Can't you put those biscuits on a plate?" I once said to Moxon, "instead of flinging the food at him."
Moxon took my reproach most excellently, and replied he had begun in that fashion, but that Dandy had shown signs of disliking the plate. It appears he picked up the biscuits himself and threw them across the hall.
"As if to make out, sir," said Moxon, "that they was alive. So I thought it would add to the illusion if I did it for him. I fancy myself, sir, that they must taste nicer to him that way."
Of course, Moxon is a sentimentalist, which I am not; neither, for the matter of that, is Dandy. But Moxon—well, I rather fancy myself that Moxon would go down in weight a bit were he in love. He is built that way. Now, I am neither built that way, nor am I at the present moment martyr to any passion at all, wherefore I would eat a breakfast with any one and be glad of it.
I do not think I have ever felt so keen an appetite in all my life as during these three days while I am waiting for Friday to arrive. One thing only concerns me. Our meeting is to be at twelve o'clock—midday. In all my thoughts of her coming, I have imagined it would be at night, when she might have found excuse to escape from the Miss Fennells and contrive to see me alone. But, no, it is to be in broad daylight. Even that heavy veil—which, indeed, it is quite likely she will not wear, since I have said I know her eyes are well—but even that at such an hour will not dim the quickness of her perception. She will see me as Bellwattle sees me, as every woman has seen me since the first moment when an absurd and morbid sensitiveness induced me to notice such things. And then—will she listen to me? I leave it on the knees of the implacable gods.
Something tells me that I have not set out upon the wild errand of my journey for nothing. For so far do I believe in Destiny, that what we do, having within us some definite purpose to accomplish, is ordained to a certain end. Some end, it may be, so foreign to our thoughts, as is impossible of conception; but a definite purpose will always be a weapon in the hand of Fate to achieve a definite victory. I only pray that mine may be what I have hoped of it. I only pray that the result of my adventure may be the return of that little spirit in prison to her home in the burning heart of the sun.
I was up early this morning, for it is Friday, the day I have been waiting for. The sun beat down upon my face and woke me before it was six o'clock. It was then as I lay there, with my eyes half closed, that the sound of a far voice shouting on the cliffs came dimly to my ears. It was arresting, insistent, but not enough to stir me. I neither moved my head nor opened my eyes; but I listened, sleepily wondering what it was.
Presently a voice from below in the garden rose compellingly to my open window.
"Bellairs! Come down! There are sprats in the bay—they've got the nets out."
I jumped up from my bed and looked down. There was Cruikshank, dressed in such garments as served to make him decent and no more.
"Shove some things on," said he, "and come along with me as quick as you can. I'll show you the sight of your life."
I was with him in a moment, and we were hurrying along to the cliffs.
"Where's Bellwattle?" I asked.
"In the garden. She won't come and look at these things. I tell her fish have no nerve centres, that they feel nothing; but it's no good. She sees them wriggle and that's enough for her. Ever seen a haul of sprats?"
I shook my head.
"My Lord!" said he, and in that exclamation he spoke more for the sight of it than if he had talked for hours. The silence that followed filled my imagination, till suddenly he broke it.
"Bellwattle says you're going to take the cottage in the hollow," he declared.
I opened my eyes wide and laughed.
"She told you that as a fact?" said I.
"Yes."
"When do I take possession?"
"Next year."
I laughed again.
"Well—what do you think about it?" said I. "Do you approve?"
"I shall be delighted. You must let me help you to make the garden. Only suggest—here and there. I know just what can be done with it."
"But do you really believe that I am going to take it?" I exclaimed.
"She says so. I suppose she knows what she's talking about."
"She said so—seriously?"
"Yes—quite."
Now what in the name of Heaven does she mean? She is not one of those women who talk for the sake of talking. I have been out with her on the cliffs when, for long stretches, she has been silent, and that, not for want of things to say, but because there have not been words good enough to say them with. Then what does she mean when she tells Cruikshank that next year I am going to take the cottage in the hollow?
"Don't say anything about that," he added. "I've just remembered that she told me I was not to breathe a word of it to you."
Then it is really true, so far as she is concerned. She really thinks of it as of some definite event that will ultimately take place. Upon my soul, the wiles and ways of women exceed the steepest flights of my imagination. I had told her it was out of the question; she declares to Cruikshank it is a certain fact.
However, there was no time to wonder about it then. We had come up the cliff road, past the fishermen's cottages and there, beyond the pier, by the steep purple rocks of sandstone, of which all this coast-line is composed, there was the boat putting out with the nets, racing through the water, the great sweeps bending from their wooden rowlocks with the sudden power of every stroke. It is this, this moment of casting the net at the stentorian command of him who stands high upon the cliff above, it is this moment which is the most critical of all. For hours they may have waited, knowing that fish are in the bay. For hours—I have seen them since, with the boat lying idly on the tranquil waters, the men dozing lazily at their oars, while high above them is that watchman the one man alone in all the village whose keen eye can follow the passage of the school—for hours they will wait in easy idleness as he sits there on guard about them, his chin resting rigidly upon his knees, his sombrero hat pulled heavily down above his eyes, motionless and silent as a piece of statuary which the rough hand of Nature has carved out of such living marble as is only hers to mould.
I have sat by his side and spoken to him, but he never answers. I have tried to see with his eyes the intangible tone upon the water which these myriad creatures make in their frightened passage to escape from the thousand enemies pursuing them, but never a sign have I seen. The eyes of God are set in the hollows of his head, for so it seems to me must the Omnipotent Power sit silently upon the great cliffs of Time noting the struggles and the passages of all the countless little creatures that fill the vast sea of this world.
But he is not silent, this watchman, for long. A moment in his vigil comes when the muscles of his face begin to twitch and tremble. Another instant and he is upon his feet, shouting in guttural Gaelic to the men in the boat below. With his hat, now crushed within his hands, he waves, gesticulates and cries his orders from the cliffs above the sea, and in swift obedience to his voice that echoes and re-echoes from the giant walls of rock, the men put out from the shore. In a moment the mighty sweeps are straining back to the long, deep stroke, the little wave of water rises at the nose of the boat and swells and swells as she makes her speed, while in the stern there stands one of those swarthy fishermen, heaving overboard the coils and coils of dusky nets that sink down and away into the green water, leaving behind their little studs of floating cork to mark the circle they have bound.
That is a moment then! A moment when it seems the business of the whole world might cease to let this thing be done. And then the net is thrown at last. Without delay they set themselves to haul it in.
Cruikshank was not far wrong. It was a sight I shall ever remember, the casting and the drawing of those nets on that still May morning after sunrise, when even the sea was scarce awake. By the time we reached the rocks, that great circle of floating corks had narrowed down to so confined a space that the fish were leaping from the water in their efforts to be free. Every man there had the bright light of excitement in his eyes and, as he lashed the water with his oar, driving the fish far back into the relentless prison of the net, one of the fishermen sang the lilt of a strange, barbaric song below his breath. Splash—splash went the oar like a giant metronome, beating the pulse to his song.
And then the last phase of it, the boats surrounding that great basin of the net, men ladling out the fish from the hissing water, filling the boats until they stood knee-deep in molten, running silver, and the gunwales sunk lower down and lower into the sea. How exhaustless it seemed, that mine of glittering metal! Again and again they plunged their great ladles into the bright green water; again and again they brought them forth heavy with the burden of such glory of riches as I have never seen. My eyes were filled with silver and emerald—emerald and silver, they seemed the only colors in the world.
It is over and done with all too soon. All too soon the nets are shaken out and the boats go toiling back—barges of silver bullion—to their little market-place by the pier. And then those white-winged scavengers of the sea, the shrieking, hungry gulls are all that are left to mark the spot where God has given one mighty handful of His treasure for the needs of men.
I stood there for a moment watching them as they flung themselves upon the water for the crumbs of silver which had fallen from the rich man's coffers. Again I turned my head for the last sight of the heavy-laden boats as they swung out of view around the corner of the pier. The next moment they were gone. The whole place was quiet once more. I looked about me. It was hard to believe that what I had just beheld was anything other than a waking dream. Then Cruikshank stooped down, and from a pool of water collected in the hollow of a rock, he picked up one of the little fish that had escaped. With a gentle hand he flung it back into the sea, and we both watched it as it floundered for a moment helplessly upon the surface.
"That gull's getting it!" said I, as I saw the great wings swoop down, but with an effort the fish turned and dived. We saw it shooting down, a little glittering arrow of light, into the unfathomable depths of green. Deeper and deeper it went until it was but a twinkling silver point, then the shadows swayed over it and it was gone.
"I have acquitted myself," said Cruikshank.
I looked at him for explanation.
"Bellwattle will ask me if I saved any of the sprats. I shall be able to tell her the truth for a change."