The Tidal Wave and Other Stories Part 14

Mrs. Peck hesitated momentarily, almost as if she did not want to answer. Then, half defiantly, "Why, Rufus, to be sure," she said.

"Rufus!" A great hot wave of crimson suddenly suffused Columbine's face--a pitiless, burning blush that spread tingling over her whole body.

She lay very still while it lasted, and Mrs. Peck set down the cup and, rising energetically, began to tidy the room.

At length, faintly, the girl spoke again: "Aunt Liza!"

Mrs. Peck turned. There was a curious look in her eyes, a look half stern and yet half compa.s.sionate. "There, my dear, that'll do," she said. "I think you've talked enough. The doctor said as I was to keep you very quiet, especially when you began to get back your senses. Shut your eyes, do, and go to sleep!"

But Columbine's eyes remained open. "I'm not sleepy," she said. "And I must speak to you. I want to know--I must know"--she faltered painfully, but forced herself to continue--"Rufus--did he--did he really come back--that night?"

Mrs. Peck's compa.s.sion perceptibly diminished and her severity increased. "Oh, if you want the whole story," she said, "you'd better have it and have done; that is, so far as I know it myself. There are certain ins and outs that I don't know even yet, for Rufus can be very secretive if he likes. Well then, yes, he did come back, and he brought Mr. Knight with him. They were washed up by a great wave that dropped 'em high and dry near the quay. Mr. Knight was half drowned, and Rufus left him at Sam Jefferson's cottage and came on here for brandy and hot milk and such. He wasn't a penny the worse himself, but I suppose you thought it was his ghost. You behaved like as if you did, anyway. That's all I can tell you. Mr. Knight he got better in a day or two, and he's gone, said he'd had enough of it, and I don't blame him neither. Now that'll do for the present. By and by, when you're stronger, maybe I'll ask you to tell me something. But the doctor says as I'm not to let you talk at present."

Mrs. Peck took up the empty cup with the words, and turned with decision to the door.

Columbine did not attempt to detain her. She had read the doubt in the good woman's eyes, and she was thankful at that moment for the reprieve that the doctor's fiat had secured her.

She lay for a long, long time without moving after Mrs. Peck's departure. Her brain felt unutterably weary, but it was clear, and she was able to face the situation in all its grimness. Mr. Knight had gone. Mr. Knight had had enough of it. Had he really left without a word? Was she, then, so little to him as that? She, who had clung to him, had offered him unconditionally and without stint all that was hers!

She remembered how he had said that it would not last, that love was moonshine, love would pa.s.s. And how pa.s.sionately--and withal how fruitlessly!--had she revolted against that p.r.o.nouncement of his! She had declared that such was not love, and he--he had warned her against loving too well, giving too freely. With cruel distinctness it all came back to her. She felt again those hot kisses upon brow and lips and throat. Though he had warned her against giving, he had not been slow to take. He had revelled in the abandonment of that first free love of hers. He had drained her of all that she held most precious that he might drink his fill. And all for what? Again she burned from head to foot, and, groaning, hid her face. All for the making of a picture that should bring him world-wide fame! His love for her had been naught but small change flung liberally enough that he might purchase therewith the desire of his artist's soul. It had been just a means to an end. No more than that! No more than that!

Time pa.s.sed, but she knew naught of its pa.s.sing. She was in a place of bitterness very far removed from the ordinary things of life. She shed no tears. The misery and shame that burned her soul were beyond all expression or alleviation. She could have laughed over the irony of it all more easily than she could have wept.

That she--the proud and dainty, for whom no one had been good enough--should have fallen thus easily to the careless attraction of a man to whom she was nothing, nothing but a piece of prettiness to be bought as cheaply as possible and treasured not at all. Some whim of inspiration had moved him. He had obeyed his Muse. And he had been ready--he had been ready--even to offer her life in sacrifice to his idol. She did not count with him in the smallest degree. He had never cared--he had never cared!

She lifted her face at last. The torture was eating into her soul. It was more than she could bear. All the tender words he had spoken, the caresses he had lavished upon her, were as burning darts that pierced her whichever way she turned. Her surrender had been so free, so absolute, and in return he had left her in the dark. He had gone his careless way without a single thought for all the fierce devotion she had poured out to him. It had only appealed to him while the mood lasted. And now he had had enough of it. He had gone.

The murmur of the summer sea came to her as she lay, and she thought of the Death Current. Why--ah, why--had it been cheated of its prey? She shivered violently as the memory of that awful struggle in deep waters came to her. She had been saved, how she scarcely realised, though deep within her she knew--she knew!

Her burning eyes fell upon the little wild white roses on the shelf. Why had he brought them to her? Why had he chosen them? She felt as if they held a message for her, but it was a message she did not dare to read.

And then again she quivered as the dread memory of that night swept over her anew, and the eyes of flaming blue that had looked into hers.

Somewhere--somewhere outside herself, it seemed to her--a voice was speaking, very articulate and persistent, and she could not shut out the words it uttered. She lacked the strength.

"I always knew," it said, and it averred it over and over again, "as he loved you like mad."

Love! Love! But what was Love? Was any man capable of it? Was it ever anything more than brutal pa.s.sion or callous amus.e.m.e.nt? And hearts were broken and lives were ruined to bring men sport.

She clenched her hands, still gazing at the wild white roses with their orange scent of purity. Why had he sent them? What had moved him to gather them? He who had bargained with her, had wrung from her submission to his will as it were at the sword's point! He who had forced her to promise herself to him! What was love--or the making of love--to such as he?

The sweetness of the flowers seemed to pierce her. Ah, if they had only been Knight's gift, how different--how different--had been all things.

But they had come from Rufus. And so somehow their message pa.s.sed her by. The blackness of utter misery, utter hopelessness, closed in like a prison-cell around her soul.

CHAPTER XII

THE SAFE HAVEN

In the days that followed, Mrs. Peck's honest soul was both vexed and anxious concerning her charge. She found Columbine extraordinarily reticent. As she herself put it, it was impossible to get any sense out of her.

In compliance with the doctor's order and by the exercise of extreme self-restraint, she refrained from questioning her upon the matter of her behaviour on the night of the great tide. That Columbine would have enlightened her had she done so was exceedingly doubtful. But there was no doubt that something very unusual had taken place. The little white roses that Rufus presented as a daily offering would have told her that, apart from any other indications. She would have questioned Rufus, but something held her back; and Adam, when urged thereto, flatly refused to interfere.

Adam, rejuvenated and jubilant, went whistling about his work as of yore. His boy had come back to him in the flesh, and he was more than satisfied to leave things as they were.

"Leave 'em alone, Missus!" was his counsel "Rufus he knows what he's about. He'll steer a straight course, and he'll bring her into harbour sooner or later. You leave it to him, and be thankful that curly-topped chap has sheered off at last!"

Mrs. Peck had no choice but to obey, but her anxiety regarding Columbine did not diminish. The girl was so listless, so unlike herself, so miserable. It was many days before she summoned the energy to dress, and even then she displayed an almost painful reluctance to go downstairs.

She seemed to live in continual dread of some approaching ordeal.

"I believe it's Rufus she's afraid of," was Mrs. Peck's verdict.

But Adam scouted the idea as absurd. "What will you think of next, woman? Why, any one can see as he's quiet and well-behaved enough for any la.s.s. She's missing the curly-topped chap a bit maybe. But she'll get over that. Give her time! Give her time!"

So Mrs. Peck gave her time and urged her not at all. She was not very friendly with Columbine in those days. She disapproved of her, and her manner said as much. She kept all suspicions to herself, but she could not behave as if nothing had happened.

"There's wild blood in her," she said darkly. "I mistrust her."

And Columbine was fully aware of the fact, but she was too wretched to resent it. In any case, she would never have turned to Mrs. Peck for comfort.

She came downstairs at last one summer evening when Mrs. Peck was busy in the kitchen and no one was about. She had made no mention of her intention; perhaps she wanted to be unhampered by observation. It had been a soft, showery day, and there was the promise of more rain in the sky.

She moved wearily, but not without purpose; and soon she was walking with a hood drawn over her head in the direction of the cliff-edge where grew the sweet bog-myrtle and the little roses.

She met no one by the way. It was nearing the hour for the evening meal, nearing the hour when Mrs. Peck usually entered her room with the daily offering of flowers that filled it with orange fragrance. Mrs. Peck was not very fond of that particular task, though she never expressed her reluctance. Well, she would not have it to accomplish tonight.

A bare-legged, blue-jerseyed figure was moving in a bent att.i.tude along the slope that overlooked Rufus's cottage and the Spear Point. The girl stood a moment gazing out over the curving reef as if she had not seen it. The pool was smooth as a mirror, and reflecting the drifting clouds.

The tide was out. But, stay! It must be on the turn, for as she stood, there came the deep, tolling note of the bell-buoy. It sounded like a knell.

As it struck solemnly over the water, the man straightened himself, and in a moment he saw her.

He did not move to meet her, merely stood motionless, nearly knee-deep in the bog-myrtle, and waited for her, the white roses in one great, clenched hand. And she, as if compelled, moved towards him, till at last she reached and stood before him, white, mute, pa.s.sive as a prisoner in iron fetters.

It was the man who spoke, with an odd jerkiness of tone and demeanour that might have indicated embarra.s.sment or even possibly some deeper emotion. "So you've come along at last!" he said.

She nodded. For an instant her dark eyes were raised, but they flashed downwards again immediately, almost before they had met his own.

Abruptly he thrust out to her the flowers he held. "I was getting these for you."

She took them in a trembling hand. She bent her face over them to hide the piteous quivering of her lips. "Why--do you get them?" she whispered almost inarticulately.

He did not answer for a moment. Then: "Come down to my place!" he said.

"It's but a step."