Front matter (continued 5)

He turned his smiling eyes suddenly to Sarah's face.

"How's the old man, by the way? Still keeping uppermost of the weeds?"

"He's nobbut middlin', that's all," she forced herself to reply.

"Is he anywhere about?"

"Like enough ... but you needn't wait."

"I'd like a chin with him, all the same!" He hugged himself as he stood on the hearth, and his huge shadow hugged itself on the wall. The same mischievous sound crept back into his voice. "I'm mighty glad to see you again, old woman, I am that! Perhaps you'll feel like slinging me a smile or two after a bit."

"Eliza'll smile, I'll warrant, if you've nobbut a pound or two in your poke."

"I have that--sure!" He slapped his coat as he spoke, laughing a great laugh which shook her as cruelly as his knock. "It's up to me to keep my pockets stitched, nowadays," he finished, in a contented tone.

"I'm main glad to hear it," she said sardonically, and he nodded gaily.

"That's real nice of you, old woman! You can keep right on. You'd a terrible down on me in the old days, hadn't you now?"

"I've no use for you, Jim Thornthwaite, and never had. You know that as well as me."

"That's so!" He laughed again. "But I was always mighty fond of you." He made a movement as if to cross to her side, but she backed instantly, as if she guessed. "Of course, you'd a deal rather it had been Geordie," he said. "I know that. But he was never much of a sparkle in the family tarara, and that's honest. I left him serving in a store,--poor lad Geordie,--and hankering like honey after the old spot!"

"And you left him behind," Sarah flung at him,--"you wi' brass?"

"He wouldn't take a red cent. I looked him up as soon as I struck it rich, but he was always set on hoeing his own row. He'd have taken it from his own folks, but he wouldn't from me. Guess it was Blindbeck hate in him coming out at last! But if ever he'd had the dollars, he'd have been home before you could hear him shout."

"He's best where he is," Sarah said coldly, repenting her charge. Eliza's son should not see that she grudged or cared. "Them as makes beds can likely lie on the straw."

"Well, Blindbeck luck still holds, anyway!" Jim smiled. "See here!" He put his hand in the great-coat that seemed to hide from her that he was a creature of flesh and blood, and instantly she heard the rustle of notes. He opened the big pocket-book under the light, running his hand over the clean slips with joyous pride. "Don't that talk?" he said cheerfully. "Doesn't it sure talk?" and in spite of her resolve she shrank from the crisp, unaccustomed sound.

"Good enough, eh?" he demanded warmly,--"and there's plenty more behind! That's only to pass the time o' day with, so to speak. Guess it'll do for a fairing for my old mother, that's about all." He snapped the elastic again and flung the book on the table, so that it slid across within Sarah's reach. Lifting his eyes he met her gaze fixed blindly upon his face, and his brow contracted as he puzzled over that hard, unrecognising stare.

"Can't we sit down for a spell?" he asked her coaxingly, turning back to the hearth. "I feel real unwanted, standing on my hind legs."

"Eliza'll be waiting on you," Sarah said, through a stiff throat.

"She's waited twenty years." He laid a hand on a chair, and pulled it nearer to the warmth. It protested violently when it felt his weight, but he settled himself snugly, and did not care. The fire, as if heartened at sight of him on the hearth, changed its cold yellow for a crimson glow.

"It's good to be home," he said happily,--"good as a Sunday-school, treat,--sure!" He pulled his pipe from his pocket, and began to fill it meditatively, with quiet hands.... "Now, if it had been Geordie that had struck it rich, it would have been a real hum for you, wouldn't it, old woman? Guess I feel real mean, for your sake, that it's only me. Guess I could almost wish it was Geordie out and out!"

He leaned forward with the firelight on his face, looking at her with the same smile that was like a hand that he reached out.

"He was always making a song," he said, "about what he'd do when he struck it rich. 'I'll be off home that slick you'll hear the bump,' he used to say, 'and I'll be planning all the way how I'll burn the cash!' I'd like to buy the farm for the old dad;--guess Squire'd part all right if I could pass him enough. As for the old woman, there's just no end to what I'd do,--glad rags and brooches, and help all round the house. It'd be just Heaven and Witham Gala, playing Providence to the old woman! ... That's what I want my brass for, when I strike it rich!'"

"A fool's dream!" Sarah said.

"A fine fool's dream."

"Them as dreams over much likely never does nowt else."

He leaned forward still further, the smile more urgent on his lips. "There was only one thing used to fret him," he went on, "and he spent a powerful lot of time thinking about it, and wearing himself thin. 'S'pose she don't know me when I sail in?' he used to say. 'S'pose I'm that changed I might as well be any other mother's son as well as hers? There's a mighty pile o' years between us,--big, terrible years! I'd sure break my heart if she didn't know me right off, even if I'd grown a face like a pump-handle and a voice like a prize macaw! But I guess I needn't trouble,' he used to say, 'because mothers always know. I've got that slick by heart,--they always know.'" He waited a moment, and then pressed on, with a note that was like alarm. "Say, he was right, wa'n't he?"--he asked anxiously,--"dead right? It's a sure cinch that mothers always know?"

The force of his demand seemed almost to shake the obstinate figure so cynically aloof. It was as if he were prompting her to something that she knew as well as he, but would not admit for some reason of her own. Even after he had stopped speaking the demand seemed to persist, and she answered at last with a cold smile on her hard face.

"Nay, my lad," she said sneeringly, "you needn't put yourself about! Eliza'll be fain to see you, wherever you got your brass. She'll know you well enough, never fret, wi' yon pack o' cards in your hand!"

His smile died as if she had struck him,--the whole laughing pleasure of him died. "I worked for it honest," he said in reply, but his voice sounded dull and tired. Even in the dusk she might have seen the spirit go out of him, the lines in his face deepen, his head sink, his shoulders droop. The merry boy that had come into the house was gone, leaving the stern man of middle age. Sarah could not see what she had done to him, but she could feel the change. Scenes with Jim in the old days had always ended much as this. Many a time he had come to her full of affection and fun, and in a few moments she had slain them both. He had looked up at her with hurt eyes that still laughed because they couldn't do anything else, and had held to his old cry--"I'm your lad really, Aunt Sarah,--same as Geordie is!"

He sat for a few minutes staring at the floor, his pipe with its filled bowl hanging idly from his hand. He seemed to be adjusting himself to new ideas, painfully making room for them by throwing overboard the old. Then he rose to his feet with a half-sigh, half-yawn,--and laughed. Sarah heard him, and started,--it was so like the old-time Jim! But though she might have winced in the old days, it did not trouble her now. If she had had no tenderness for the scapegrace lad she was not likely to pity the grown, successful man.... Without looking at her again he went across to the window and stared out. The pane swung open wide on its bent rod, and not a breath of wind troubled its buckled frame. Across the vanished sands the light still glowed from the 'Ship,' red on the dark that seemed like a mere dissolution of everything into mist.

"Old Fleming still at the 'Ship'?" he enquired, keeping his back turned. "And May?" His voice warmed again on the little name. "May's married this many a year, I guess!"

"Nay, not she!" Sarah said. "She's not wed, nor like to be." Unconsciously she relaxed a little. "She was always terble sweet on Geordie, was May."

The man looking out smiled at the light as if it had been a face. He spoke low, as if speaking to himself.

"I'd sure forgot!"

"I reckon she's waiting for him yet, but I doubt she'll wait till the Judgment, and after that!"

"She was always a sticker, was May...." He swung round, cheerful again, though lacking the ecstasy with which he had come in. "Sweet on Geordie, was she? Well, I guess a live dog's better than a dead lion! I'll hop across for a chin."

"You'll loss yourself, crossing t'sand."

"I've crossed it every night in my dreams!" He came back to her, with his face tender again, the thin flame of the candle showing his pleasant eyes and kindly lips. "Say, though!" he added anxiously. "I can come back?"

"Best bide at t' 'Ship.'"

"But I'd a deal rather sleep here!"

"Well, you wain't, and that's flat!"

"There's Geordie's bed, ain't there?" he urged her, in pleading tones. "I'll lay you've kept it fixed for him all along!"

"Ay,--for Geordie!" said Geordie's mother, setting her mouth.

"Couldn't you kinder think I was Geordie once in a while?"

"Nay."

"Not for a mite of a minute?" His voice shook.

"Nay, not I!"

He lifted his shoulders, and let them droop again. "I'm sure coming back, though!" he finished, in his persistent way.... "Stop a shake, though! What about the tide?"

His eyes turned from old custom to the table over the hearth, and, crossing over to it, he struck a light. The silver box in his hand flashed a tiny scintilla on the dusky air. He looked up at the table, but he did not see it, the match dwindling above his brooding face.

"You might ha' been just a mite glad to see me!" he exclaimed wistfully, stamping it out upon the flags. "Why, you'd never ha' known me from Adam if I hadn't given you the call! It'll give me the knock right out if May don't know me neither when I sail in. They say sweethearts don't forget, no more than mothers, but perhaps it's all a doggoned lie!"

"She was Geordie's lass,--not yours!" Sarah told him, with jealous haste.

"Sure!" he said with a smile, and struck a second match.

Now he looked at the table in earnest, but only for a space. "Saturday," she heard him murmuring, in an absent voice. "Martinmas, ain't it? ... Tide at ten...."

She made a movement forward and put out her hands.

"Nay, but yon's never----" she began; and stopped.

"Eh, old woman?"

"Nay, it's nowt."

"It's Saturday, ain't it?"

"I reckon it is."

"Saturday's my day for luck," she heard him saying, as the match died down. "I've got a cinch on Saturdays, that's sure!" The gaiety in his tone was only a mockery of what it had been before. "Tide at ten, eh?--and it's six, now." He drew his watch from his pocket and gave it a glance. "Well, so long! I'll be right back!"

To both the moments seemed endless in which he moved across the floor. His look dwelt upon her in a last effort to reach her heart, and then lingered about the room on the dim fellowships of his youth. But even Geordie himself could hardly have touched her in that hour. The strongest motive that had ruled her life had her finally by the throat.

Yet she called to him even as he went, afraid, woman-like, of the sound of the shut door. "Jim!" she flung after him. "Jim, lad! ... Jim!"

"Say! Did you call?" He was back again on wings.

"Nay ... it was nowt." She indicated the pocket-book within reach of her hand. "You'd best take yon truck along wi' you an' all."

Even in his disappointment he was still able to smile. "It don't need a safe between it and a Thornthet, I guess!" was all he said. In that moment, indeed, the money was nothing and less than nothing to them both. Sarah was honest to the core, and never remembered once that dead men tell no tales and that the sea does not betray.... The thing that had conquered her soul was at least also above that.

"Ten, wa'n't it?" he asked, drifting reluctantly out again. His voice came from further away, like the gull's voice from the sky. "So long! Cheero! I'll be back again with the tide...."

IV

She heard rather than felt the silence re-enfold the house, like the swish of a curtain softly tumbled down. She was vividly on the alert for every change in the brooding quiet, but she was not afraid of the inevitable sound that must shortly break it again. To herself she seemed to be shut into the very heart of things, where everyone knows his secret hiding-place to be. Nothing could hurt her there, because it was shut away from pain. Neither remorse nor fear could touch her in that calm.

Yet all the time her mind had followed the man who had gone out, hearing the thud of his feet on the sandy ground, and seeing the bulk of him huge on the sea-wall. The sound of his feet would be sharper on the beach, but when he got to the sand it would be muffled as if with cloths. When he came to the channel he would stand and hail, and the light from the 'Ship' would lie on the water like a road....

But never to-night or in all time would he get as far as the bank. Suddenly, as he walked, he would hear a whisper out of the west. It would mean nothing to him at first, nor the wind feeling along his cheek. He would only say to himself that the trees were astir on the far point. Then he would hear a noise like a coming shower, and lift up his face to meet the first of the rain. But the sound that came after would come running along the sand, until every rib was vibrating its message to his feet. When he knew what it was, he would stand perfectly still, and then he would spring in the air and start to run. But, run as he might, he would never reach the shore, or stand on the gold road that would take him over to May. The white tide-horses were swifter far than he; their unshod hoofs would outrun his heavy boots. The sweeping advance-water would suddenly hem him in, swirling before his feet and shooting behind his back. He would run this way and that in the dark, but it would be no use. He would run and run, but it would never be any use....

From complete detachment she passed gradually to a comforting sense of quittance and ease. It was as if a burden that she had carried all her life had been cut away, so that she could lift up her head and look in front of her and breathe free. The sickening jealousy was gone, the gnawing pain at her heart, the fierce up-swelling of decimating rage, the long, narrowed-down brooding of helpless hate. Never again would she be able to see herself as the poor relation fawning at Eliza's skirts. The thing had been done at last which paid Eliza in full.

She had, as she came back within range of feeling again, one last, great moment of exultant pride. She seemed to herself actually to grow in size, to tower in the low room as the shadow of the home-comer had towered over ceiling and wall. Into the hands of this oppressed and poverty-stricken woman there had suddenly been given the heady power of life and death, and the stimulant of it was like wine in her thin blood, making her heart steady as a firm-blown forge. She felt strong enough in that moment to send every child of Eliza's out to its death in the maw of the Night Wave. She felt an epic figure poised on the edge of the world, heroic, tremendous, above all laws. Indeed, she seemed, as it were, to be the very Finger of God itself....

And then faintly the exultation sank; dimmed, rather, as on a summer day the sharpness goes out of the high lights on lawn and wall. The sun is not gone, but the farthest and finest quality of it is suddenly withdrawn. In some such way a blurring of vivid certainties came upon her brain. A breath of wind was blown sharply through the open window, and with a touch of surprise she found that she was cold. The fire, so lately encouraged by the visitor's presence, had died sulkily into grey clinkers tinged with red that had no more warmth to it than a splash of paint. The candle, on the other hand, had sprung into a tall flame from a high wick. It was as if it was making a last effort to illumine the world for the woman over whose mind was creeping that vague and blurring mist.

With the slackening of the mental tension her physical self slackened, too. She began to rock to and fro, muttering softly as she swayed.

"Blind thoughts in a blind body's brain!" she was saying to herself.... "Ay, it's about time. A blind night and a blind tide.... Ay, it's about time...."

And yet through the blind night and with her blind sight she still saw the figure swinging over the sands, broad, confident, strong, as were all at Blindbeck,--successful and rich. Always her mind kept close at its back, seeing the solid print of it on the air, feeling the muscular firmness of its tread, and hearing the little whistled tune that kept escaping between its teeth....

Suddenly she raised her voice, as if addressing somebody a long way off.

"What d'you want wi' a bed as'll never sleep in bed again? Nay, my lad, you'll have nowt but churchyard mould! ... Yon's if they find him, when the tide comes in. There'll be a bonny fairing for Eliza when the tide comes in!"

She stopped abruptly as Simon clattered into the room, holding herself motionless by a final effort of will. He glanced uneasily at the still figure, the unspread table and the dead fire, but he did not speak. He was still conscious of guilt and ready to make amends, even to the extent of going supperless to bed. Outside the door, he had felt curiously certain that Sarah was not alone, and even now he looked into corners for figures that were not there. Coming in from the dark on the marsh, his instinct had told him instantly that the atmosphere had changed, but the knowledge faded once he was well inside. He wondered whether anything had been done with the milk, but did not like to ask, and, setting the still-lighted lantern on the floor, stooped to unloose his boots.

"All yon talk about Geordie's fair give me the jumps!" he remarked suddenly, with an embarrassed laugh. "I could ha' sworn I heard his voice as I was snecking shuppon door!"

She did not answer, and with an inward curse at his own foolishness he bent lower over his boots. "Another o' yon big tides," he went on hurriedly, when the thongs were loosed. "It's sharp on t'road now. I could hear it as I come in."

Even as he spoke the room was suddenly filled with the sound of the sea. Before the majesty of the coming presence the whole house seemed to cringe and cower. Sarah felt the room swing round with her, and caught at the table, gripping the edge of it until her very fingers seemed of wood.

"There it be!" Simon said, raising himself. "It's big, as I said." He clanked across to the window as he spoke, the laces slapping and trailing on the flags, and again, as he put his face to the square, the wind that blows before the tide stirred mightily through the room. Far-off, but coming fast, they could hear the messenger from the deep, sweeping its garment over the head of the crouched waste, as it sped to deliver its challenge at the locked gate of the sea-wall.

Sarah had still control over her actual body, but no more. With Simon's entrance she had realised herself again, and knew that she was weak and old, with a mind that had got beyond her, and cried and ran to and fro as Jim would run when he heard the Wave. Always she seemed to herself to be close at his back, but now she ran to warn him and stumbled as she ran. She flung out her arms towards him in an aching passion to hold him close, and in that moment felt the truth drop, stilly, into her whirling brain. He turned his face towards her swiftly as they went, and for all its likeness it was not Jim's face. She saw him swept and helpless in the swirl of the tide, and in the dark and the tumult knew that the precious body was not Jim's. She saw him borne in the stillness of morning to the haunted Tithe-Barn where all the drowned were laid, and by the light of the truth that there is between living and dead knew she had always known it was not Jim....

"I hope May's gitten back," Simon was saying anxiously, as he peered out. "I hope she's landed back...." Presently he leaned further, and gave a sigh of relief. "Ay,--there goes Fleming's lamp!"

Instantly, as the light went out, there came from the sands a whistle and then a cry. Simon spun round, saying, "What's yon?" with a frightened look, and when the call came again he snatched the lantern from the floor. The third call came suddenly faint, as if its author were running towards the tide, and with a harsh cry a gull swept white and huge beyond the pane. Simon fell back at the sight of it, crying aloud, and throwing his arm before his eyes.

But at the same moment Sarah burst her bonds. "Geordie, Geordie!" she screamed, and ran frenziedly to the door. "Nay, it's over now," she finished, falling back against the wall. "Gang out and seek our fairing, master,--mine and thine!"

PRINTED AT WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PLYMOUTH. ENGLAND

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