The Tidal Wave and Other Stories Part 9

"There is another thing I have to say," said Rufus.

Knight's smile broadened encouragingly. "By all means let us hear it!"

he said.

Rufus proceeded. "You speak of Columbine as if she were just a bit of amber or such-like as you'd found on the sh.o.r.e and picked up and put in your pocket. You speak as if she's your property to do what you like with. That's just what she is not. You're making love to her. I know it. I seen it. And it's got to stop."

He spoke with blunt force; his hands were suddenly locked upon each other in a hard grip.

Knight lifted his shoulders; his smile had become whimsical. He had drawn the fellow at last. "I thought you'd seen something," he remarked, "by your way. But who could help making love to a girl with a face like that? It would take a heart of stone to resist it. Why, even you"--and his look challenged Rufus with careless derision--"even you have fallen to that temptation before now, or I'm much mistaken. But I gather that your attentions did not meet with a very favourable response."

He was baiting the animal now, taunting him, with the semi-humorous malice of the mischievous schoolboy. He had no particular grudge against Rufus, but he had a lively desire to see him squirm.

But this desire was not to be gratified. Rufus met the thrust without the faintest hint of feeling.

"What you think," he said, in his weighty fashion, "has nothing to do with me. What you do is all that matters. And I tell you straight"--a blue flame suddenly leapt up like a volcanic light in the sombre eyes--"that no man that hasn't honest intentions by her is going to make love to Columbine."

"Great Jove!" mocked Knight, with his careless laugh. "And who told you, most worthy swain, what my intentions were?"

Rufus leaned towards him slowly, with something of the action of a crouching beast. "No one told me," he said in a voice that was deeply menacing. "But--I know."

Knight made a gesture of supreme indifference. "You are on an entirely wrong scent," he observed. "But you seem to be enjoying it." He paused to take out a cigarette. "Have a smoke!" he suggested after a moment, proffering his case.

Rufus did not so much as see it. His whole att.i.tude was one of strain, as if he barely held himself back from springing at the other's throat.

Knight, however, was elaborately unconscious of any tension. He smiled and closed his cigarette case. Then with the utmost deliberation he searched for his matches, found them, and lighted his cigarette.

Having puffed forth the first deep breath with luxurious enjoyment, he spoke again. "It is a little difficult to get a man of your stamp to comprehend the fact that an artist--a true artist--is not one to be greatly drawn by the grosser things of life, more especially when he is in ardent pursuit of that elusive flame called inspiration. But you would hardly grasp a condition in which the body--and the impulses of the body--are in complete subjection to the aspirations of the mind.

You"--he blew forth a cloud of smoke--"are probably incapable of realizing that the worship of beauty can be of so purely artistic a nature as to be practically free from the physical element, certainly independent of it. I am taking you out of your depth, I know, but it is hard to make myself clear to an untrained mind. I might try a homely simile and suggest to you that you go a-fishing, not for love of the fish, but because it is your profession; but that does not wholly ill.u.s.trate my meaning, for I love everything in the way of beauty that comes my way. I follow beauty like a guiding star. And sometimes--but seldom, oh, very seldom"--a sudden odd thrill sounded in his voice as if by accident some hidden string had been struck and set vibrating--"I fulfil my desire--I realise my dream--I grasp and hold a spark of the Divine." He paused again, his face to the gold of the dawn and in his eyes the far-off rapture of one who watches some soaring flight of fancy. Then abruptly, lightly, he resumed his normal, half-quizzing demeanour. "Doubtless I weary you," he said. "But you mustn't run away with the idea that I am in love because I feel myself inspired. It may sound callous to you, but if Miss Columbine were to lose her exquisite beauty (which heaven forbid!) I should never voluntarily look upon her again. That I take it, is the test of love, which, we are told, is blind to all defects."

He ceased to speak, and carelessly, yet with obvious enjoyment, he sent forth another cloud of smoke into the crystal air of the morning.

He was not looking at Rufus. It was abundantly evident that he had not realised how near to open violence the young fisherman had been. His nonchalant explanation was plainly all-sufficing in his own opinion, and during the very marked silence that followed he displayed no faintest hint of anxiety or even interest as to the fashion of its reception.

The boat was rocking lightly on the swell; the sea all around was flooded with gold. The great jagged outline of the Spear Point looked like the castle of a dream. The haze of the newly risen sun had touched with magic all the world. Knight's eyes were half-closed. He had the look of a man at peace with himself.

And Rufus relaxed. The tension went out of his att.i.tude; the volcanic fires died down. For half a minute or more he sat absolutely pa.s.sive.

Then slowly, with ma.s.sive deliberation, he moved, unshipped the oars, and bent himself to pull. In another ten seconds the boat was rushing through the water under the compulsion of his powerful strokes, heading straight for the boats of the fishing fleet that dotted the bay....

It must have been fully a quarter of an hour later that Knight, having finished his cigarette, came out of his reverie.

"And so, you see," he remarked in the tone of one pleasantly rounding off a conversation, "until my picture is painted I remain the slave of my dream. I wonder if I have succeeded at all in making myself intelligible."

His eyes opened lazily and met Rufus's sombre gaze; they held a laughing challenge, the easy challenge of the practised fencer who condescends to try a bout with ignorance.

Stolidly Rufus met the look. If he realised the challenge he did not accept it. He had barred himself in once more behind an impenetrable wall of unresponsiveness. His gaze was once more obscure and bovine. All hint of violence was gone from his bearing. Only solid force remained--the force that drove the boat strongly, unerringly, through the golden-crested waves.

"If you're going to do a picture of Columbine," he said slowly, "I hope it'll be a good one."

"It will probably be--great," said Knight, and flicked some ash from his sleeve with the complacent air of a man who has accomplished his purpose.

CHAPTER VI

THE MIDSUMMER MOON

It was very late that night, just as the first long rays of a full moon streamed across a dreaming sea, that the door that led out of the conservatory at The Ship softly opened, and a slim figure, clad in a long, dark garment, flitted forth. Neither to right nor left did it glance, but, closing the door without sound, slipped out over the gra.s.s almost as if it moved on wings, and so down to the beach-path that wound steeply to the sh.o.r.e.

The tide was rising with the moon; the roar of it swelled and sank like the mighty breathing of a giant. The waters shone in the gathering light in a vast silver shimmer almost too dazzling for the eye to endure. In another hour it would be as light as day. A few dim clouds were floating over the stars, filmy wisps that had escaped from the ragged edges of a dark curtain that had veiled the sun before its time. The breeze that had blown them free wandered far overhead; below, especially on the sh.o.r.e, it was almost tropically warm, and no breath of air seemed to stir.

Swiftly went the flitting figure, like a brown moth drawn by the glitter of the moonlight. There was no other living thing in sight.

All the lights of Spear Point village had gone out long since. Rufus's cottage, with its slip of garden on the shelf of the cliff, was no more than a faint blur of white against the towering sandstone behind. No light had shone there all the evening, for the daylight had not died till ten, and he was often in bed at that hour. The fishing fleet would be out again with the dawn if the weather held, or even earlier; and the hours of sleep were precious.

Down on the rocks on the edge of the sleeping pool a grey shadow lurked amidst darker shadows. A faint scent of cigarette smoke hung about the silver beach--a drifting suggestion intangible as the magic of the night.

Could it have been this faint, floating fragrance that drew the flitting brown moth by way of the quicksand, swiftly, swiftly, along the moonlit sh.o.r.e travelling with mysterious certainty, irresistibly attracted?

There was no pause in its rapid progress, though the course it followed was tortuous. It pursued, with absolute confidence, an invisible, winding path. And ever the roar of the sea grew louder and louder.

Across the pool, carved in the blackness of the outstretched curving scimitar of rock, there was a ledge, washed smooth by every tide, but a foot or more above the water when the tide was out. It was inaccessible save by way of the pool itself, and yet it had the look of a pathway cut in the face of the Spear Point Rock. The moonlight gleamed upon its wet surface. In the very centre of the great curving rock there was a deeper darkness that might have been a cave.

It must have been after midnight when the little brown figure that had flitted so securely through the quicksand came with its noiseless feet over the tumble of rocks that lay about the pool, and the shadow that lurked in the shadows rose up and became a man.

They met on the edge of the pool, but there was about the lesser form a hesitancy of movement, a shyness, almost a wildness, that seemed as if it would end in flight.

But the man remained quite motionless, and in a moment or two the impulse pa.s.sed or was controlled. Two quivering hands came forth to him as if in supplication.

"So you are waiting!" a low voice said.

He took the hands, bending to her. The moonlight made his eyes gleam with a strange intensity.

"I have been waiting a long time," he said.

Even then she made a small, fluttering movement backward, as if she would evade him. And then with a sharp sob she conquered her reluctance again. She gave herself into his arms.

He held her closely, pa.s.sionately. He kissed her face, her neck, her bosom, as if he would devour the sweetness of her in a few mad moments of utter abandonment.

But in a little he checked himself. "You are so late, sweetheart. The tide won't wait for us. There will be time for this--afterwards."

She lay burning and quivering against his heart. "There is tomorrow,"

she whispered, clinging to him.

He kissed her again. "Yes, there is tomorrow. But who can tell what may happen then? There will never be such a night as this again, sweet. See the light against that rock! It is a marvel of black and white, and I swear that the pool is green. There is magic abroad tonight. Let me catch it! Let me catch it! Afterwards!--when the tide comes up--we will drink our fill of love."

He spoke as if urged by strong excitement, and having spoken his arms relaxed. But she clung to him still.