The Scarecrow and Other Stories Part 10

She spoke to him first.

"Yes"; he said.

"You live up there?" She pointed a bare browned arm up toward the sun bleached chalk cliffs. "By yourself?"

"Yes."

"You ain't got a boat?"

"No."

"They say you don't ever fish. Why don't you, Mister?"

"I--I ain't the one to fish."

"Want to help me with these here nets?"

"I--I can't do--that."

"It ain't hard, Mister."

"I--can't--do--it."

"Come on in; I'll show you how."

He opened the gate and went into the yard and then he stood there just looking down at her.

"I wouldn't touch--no--net--"

Her brows drew together in a puzzled frown.

"You mean you don't like fishing?"

Somehow he did not want her to know.

"I--ain't--the--one--to--take--no--sea-thing--away--from--the--sea."

"Oh;" she said, not understanding.

They were silent a moment.

"You sell baskets?" She asked him.

"D'you want one?"

"Mebbe. Got a medium-sized one?"

"Got a lot."

"Mebbe--I--could--use--one."

"I'd like mighty well to--to give you one, little girl."

"Why, I ain't a little girl, Mister. I--I thought--I'd mebbe--buy--"

He interrupted her.

"You'll not buy one off of me. I'll bring you one--; if you like."

"A medium-sized one."

"I'll bring it to you--; to-morrow."

"Thanks."

"Good-by, little girl."

"Good-by, Mister."

At the end of the street he turned to look back.

She was on her knees working at her mending of the nets again. She looked very small kneeling there on the hard brown earth with the straggling lines of squat weather darkened shanties trailing behind her out onto the edge of the yellow sanded beach, and the clear unbroken blue of the autumn skies above. She glanced up and then she waved her hand at him.

He went slowly along the narrow pathway that wound through the sharp crevices of the chalk cliffs to the back of his own stone built shanty.

That night he stood staring out at the sea. The moon was on the wane. It hung very low in the sky so that the red-gold streak of it seemed to dip into the water. A cold northeast wind lashed over the waves. Dark swollen purplish clouds raced together in an angry ma.s.s. The sea itself was black but for the tossing gigantic waves with their dead white crests of spraying foam. The pounding of them on the beach below him vibrated in his ears. The sea-gulls were flying heavily close to the earth; their inhuman, piercing shrieking filling the air.

The little girl had spoken to him.

He turned from the sea then. He went into his shanty. He bolted the great iron bolts of the door and braced himself against it as if he were shutting something out; something that he feared; something that was certain to come after him. He crouched there shivering and shuddering.

The pounding of the sea was in his ears. The wind that came from the ocean whistled and wailed shrilly around and around the house. He leaned there; his back to the door; his hands pressing stiff fingered against it; his lips moving, mumbling dumbly. His eyes, the color of the sea, stared blindly before him. The rumbling roar of the rising tide; the thundering boom of it. And in the sudden lull of the wind the hiss of the seething spray.

The sea was angry.

He thought with a kind of paralyzing terror that it was angry with him.

It was calling to him. The lashing of the big waves demanded him. The sonorous drumming of it. He had never before denied its call. The persistent thudding of it there at the base of the chalk cliffs. It was insisting that he belonged to it. The inhuman piercing shrieks of the circling sea-gulls mocked him. They knew that he belonged to the sea.

How could he even think of that golden haired little girl who had spoken to him--

The sea was angry.

He tore at the iron bolts and flinging the door wide open he rushed out to the edge of the chalk cliffs. And as he stood there the clouds dwindled in a vaporous haze away from the skies. The thin red-gold line of the waning moon grew brighter. The sea lay foam flecked and calm beneath the dark heavens. And at the base of the chalk cliffs the water lapped and lapped with a strange insidious sound.

And the next day he sat there in front of his shanty, his reeds in his hands, his fingers busy with his basket weaving; making big baskets and small baskets; and his eyes, blue green and strained, were fixed on the tranquil blue green of the water below him.

For two days he sat there in front of his iron bolted door that now swung wide open on its rusty hinges.

The third day he stood upon the edge of the precipice.

It was a gray fog drenched day. The mist dripped all about him. The opaque veil of it shut out everything in wet obliteration. He stood quite still knowing that beneath its dank dribbling thickness, the sea churned wildly in its rising tide.