The World From Rough Stones Page 17

  The tide was out, laying bare the miles of smooth firm sand for which the village was so popular. Away in the distance, he could see the Penny Stone; they said it was all that remained of an inn and that travellers' horses had once been tied to a ring let into it.

  Well—it was still a capital place for riding. In fact, there was someone out there now. Going fast, too. But, as the dark shape of the horse drew near he saw that it was riderless. His first thought was that it had thrown its rider, but then he saw it was not even saddled. In any case, now that the creature was almost below him, it was clearly just a young colt. Escaped from its field and out for a run. What a lark it would be if he could get on its back and go for a gallop!

  He looked for the steps, but they were far away to his left—too far. He let himself over the wall and slid ungracefully down to the beach. The colt threw up its head, turned, showed a pair of flying heels, and bolted. But it ran only a hundred yards or so, almost to the steps, and turned again to watch him. That was when he saw the two dogs, far out on the beach, running toward the colt. Swiftly but warily, he ran along the foot of the wall, hoping to reach the colt before the dogs could alarm it.

  The jolting he gave himself as he ran prevented him from seeing earlier than he did that these two dark running shapes were not dogs but only yearling calves. They all arrived at the same spot at almost the same time. And there they stood in a breathless, impromptu group. The three beasts looked so like truant boys that Walter almost laughed aloud; they stared at him just as if they waited to see if he were angry or no. To think of riding the colt was suddenly absurd. Walter stooped and lifted a handful of damp sand. He lobbed it high above and beyond them and the soft smack it made as it fell galvanized them once more into flight. They ran straight as an arrow to the very brink of the sea—where, no doubt, they scanned its face for the same signs of anger or menace.

  He turned and began to make his way up to the promenade. At the third step, Dixon's came into view over the top; Nixon's was still hidden behind the wall. He paused, trying to work out which light might come from their room. None, he decided. So Arabella was asleep. He imagined her lying there, warm and drowsy…so lovely…and so very desirable. He yearned to be beside her now, to waken again those fires that had burned so fierce last night. He almost formed the intention before his wiser self prevailed. Let her work to it gently. Let the thoughts he had implanted germinate and grow. Let her come to him with this same degree of yearning and he would never need look back.

  He had just taken the next upward step, bound by this cooler philosophy, when he heard an urgent conference, part whispered, part voiced, somewhere nearby. Slowly, he moved to the shadow of the wall and crept up, step by step, until his eyes could just peep over the parapet and take in the promenade beyond.

  It was Mrs. McKechnie and her young maid. They whispered heatedly yet did not quite seem to be arguing. Shortly, as if making a concession, the widow took her fob watch from her pocket book and gave it to the girl, tapping it several times to emphasize whatever she was saying. The girl shrugged and turned toward the sea but not quite full face to Walter. The other looked at her undecidedly for a moment and then turned and walked back in the direction of Nixon's.

  Walter immediately saw the danger he was in. If the girl now came to the wall, he could hide in the moonshadow where he was. But if, for some reason, she took it into her head to stroll down on to the sands…

  As swift as the thought he crept surefooted backward down the steps to the beach; without pause, he put twenty yards between himself and the foot of the steps; and then he strolled out into the light and stood with his hat off, facing the sea, as if he had been there ten minutes or more. Only moments later he thanked the sense that had warned him away from the steps; the girl was, indeed, coming down.

  At the foot of the steps she walked straight toward the sea, ignoring him. Surely she saw him.

  "Good evening!" he called.

  She halted and turned in his direction. She had to wipe her eyes before she saw him. That was why she had failed to notice him.

  "Mr. Thornton?" she asked in a voice almost sure.

  "Yes. Miss…er, I ought to know your name—you're Mrs. McKechnie's companion."

  She shrugged. "You'd better just call me Sanders. I'm her maid, not a companion."

  Was she Welsh? There was a slight trace of something there. A very appealing voice, in fact. The speed with which she had suppressed her tears was astonishing.

  "Miss Sanders, then."

  He was sure she blushed. She stood irresolute, the way girls do when they blush.

  "There's a dashed odd thing." He pointed out to sea. The colt and yearlings had gone.

  "What?" she asked. "I can't see clearly. Not that far."

  "A young colt and two yearling calves straying. Galloping round here like puppies."

  She giggled. It was a very appealing voice.

  "Look," he said. "Here are their tracks."

  Following them brought him closer to her—not alarmingly but close enough to let them talk without raising their voices.

  "Do please put up your hat, sir. I'm not used to such courtesies," she said.

  "Well." He complied. "If you'll permit me no courtesies at least you'll allow me to do plain gentleman's duty. Let me escort you back to your lodging."

  "But you are staying in the other direction."

  "That's no answer."

  "I thank you very kindly, sir, but I'm not going home just now."

  Walter looked at the clear sky, and breathed deep draughts of the fresh salt breeze. "No," he said at last, as if in total agreement with her. "It's too fine a night."

  "Fine for some," she said glumly.

  He looked at her. For a moment they stared at one another. He sensed that she had something to tell; as she looked at him, she was trying to frame the right words. Hers was a mobile, feline sort of face, with a little chin, precise, firm lips, winedark in the moonlight; a straight nose; and large, watchful eyes. If he had not been here with Arabella, oh what efforts he would make to get her!

  "Is Mrs. McKechnie still at Nixon's?" he asked.

  "You might say so. She came out with me, but she's gone back."

  "Ah. No doubt she will emerge in a moment and you can escort each other back."

  "She will emerge"—the girl pulled out the watch Mrs. McKechnie had passed to her—"in seventy minutes. Give or take thirty."

  "I say!" Walter said as understanding began to dawn. "The doctor, eh!"

  The girl said nothing. And when she did speak, it was as if to change the subject: "Did he let you win at cards tonight?"

  "I won. I don't know about let."

  She snorted. "I do. About three pounds? And he took it very calm?"

  "You must have heard. Mrs. McKechnie must have told you."

  "I've heard, all right. Many and many a time. If you're wise, you'll go back to pennies and halfpennies. If you're wiser still, you'll pocket your winnings and call it a day."

  "He's not like that," Walter assured her. "He's too kindly. Too good a companion."

  "I make no doubt of it." She spoke with complete conviction. "A kindly man. And a good man. But it's his vice. Something…compels him to it."

  Walter was too astonished to make an immediate reply. And it was true that the doctor had made some very surprising blunders in his play. Then, feeling that some comment was called for, he observed "All of us have some compulsion or other, I suppose."

  "Yes."

  "But to get back to the point," he went on, "I thought his room was on the first floor up. I saw him up there this afternoon."

  "That's the upstairs parlour. He spies on the ladies bathing from there with his glass. His room's around the side. With its own stair to the garden. Oh, he's well in with Nixon!"

  "But what a hard go for you!" Walter exclaimed. "Having to cool your heels for an hour. What are you supposed to do? Keep out of sight?"

  "I shouldn't tell you any of this."

 
"You mean two wrongs don't make a right? Well—maybe not, but the second one can often take a lot of the sting out of the first."

  "I'm supposed to go and hide myself in her bathing hut until she comes and drops pebbles on the roof. She's put a chaise longue inside where I can sleep if I want."

  "How very…considerate of her," Walter said. The pause he made was involuntary; it was to suppress the tremble that overtook him as the dizzying prospect of the girl, the hour, the location, and the cause all dropped into place. But his hesitation had the effect of adding an insinuation he had not been bold enough to intend.

  It evidently startled her. "Oh!" she said.

  Not "There'll be none of that, sir!"

  Not "I'm a good girl, sir."

  Not an affronted drawing-in of skirts and an offended gliding away.

  Not, as far as he could tell, a blush.

  Just a speculative, almost empty "oh"—as if the idea had not until then occurred to her. How could one ever tell what women were thinking?

  Anyway—what did it matter what she thought? As she herself said, she was only a servant girl. At the very worst she could say "no" and that would be an end to it. There'd be no wider reverberations.

  "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," he said.

  She walked toward him, speaking as she came. "You're an odd one for a honeymooning man!" She held something in her hand. "Here's the key—see if you remember which hut it is."

  He took the key but held on to her hand. "I'd know it from above," he said. "It's the one whose roof is almost worn through with dropping pebbles."

  She elbowed him gently in the ribs and giggled. But when he unlocked the door and held it for her she paused. "You're not going all the way with me," she said. "I want that understood. I'm not going to let you inside me."

  He nodded impatiently toward the interior. "How dull for you," he answered as she passed.

  Inside it was so dark that he could make out no part of her. "Come on. Shut the door," she told him. He heard her cloak and bonnet drop to the floor; she was over in the corner. Buttons were popping energetically and the small room seemed filled with the rustle and swish of her clothing.

  "I'm not going to be left with a sprained ankle," she said. "Especially by the sort of fella as'd sooner double the height of the hedge than help a lame bitch over the stile."

  "How do you know I'm that sort of man?" he asked, wondering why her insolence and hardness were so exciting to him. "You're a very unromantic young girl."

  "What has this to do with romance?" He saw her teeth flash dimly as she smiled; he was just beginning to make out shapes in the dark.

  "Do shut the door," she ordered coming across to do it herself. "Are you still clothed? And here's me moulted!"

  He felt the heat from her body, still warm from her clothes. In the second before she shut out all the light he saw there was little more for him to do.

  "What's still on me remains on me," she said, guessing the direction of his thought. "It'll take long enough to struggle back into what's already shed." Her nimble little fingers were busy with his buttons.

  Delicious was the word he applied to that night whenever he recalled it in later years. In a life of unflagging obsession with the delights of women, that encounter always retained a quality of its own. The difference began with his knowing, from the very start, that it was going to be a dry old night up in Hornington Crescent. It was the first such occasion in his life, so he had no idea what was in store. If not that, then what? he wondered. Every previous experience amounted to an assuaging of a lust—a gluttonous satisfaction of a hunger that merely swelled itself in consequence. But compared to those ravenous feasts, this was like an evening in the hands of a great chef—one with a matchless skill at preparing an endless bounty of hors d'oeuvres.

  Quite obviously, Miss Sanders had been there many times before. It was she who led Walter from delicacy to delicacy, granting him the taste of delights he had known of in the abstract but had never experienced in the flesh. Yet whatever peaks of joy they assailed together, the conscious mind was always partner to the act. This engagement was the least muscular, least hurried, most languid he had ever enjoyed with any girl. Nothing they did was a mere subordinate part of some headlong rush to a remote and all-important summit of delight. Each moment was itself; each act its own reward. And when his climax came, it was just another among many delectations. Not an end. Not a beginning. Remotely surprised, he observed his body continuing afterward as before.

  In the end, it was she who stopped them. Some internal night watchman awakened her broader self-interest. She lowered her thigh onto his ear and nudged him, already half asleep, away. Then she sat up and breathed in and out, profoundly replete.

  "Sauce for the gander!" she said with a soft laugh. "I should think Mrs. McKechnie's had the dryer evening—from one look at her old doctor."

  He found her mouth and kissed her, full and soft and long. "Don't talk, please," he begged in a whisper. As always at such moments, he felt only the deepest gratitude. This time it was keener than ever because of all the unsuspected joys she had led him to. Something of his mood communicated to her for she pulled him back into one last gentle kiss and then dressed in silence as he had asked.

  He was clad before her and pushed open the door, letting in the fresh salt air and the splash and knock of the surf—now noticeably nearer. After the dark, it was alarmingly bright out there; the waves, especially, gleamed with a supernatural light.

  "Don't go up these steps please," she said. "If you walk along the beach to the end of the wall there's a little path goes up to the road."

  He nodded. "I don't suppose we'll get another chance," he said.

  "I hadn't even thought of the possibility." She laughed. "If we do, are you laying odds we wouldn't take it?"

  He looked from her to the sky and then at the long, northward stretch of beach. A great sadness, broad rather than deep, a sense of something lost, something…perhaps unattainable, filled him. "I don't want to go," he said.

  She snorted, not unkindly. "No purpose served talking like that," she told him. "Go you must, kind sir." And she nudged him out and shut the door.

  Dispirited, he walked along the foot of the wall. The moon, now in the western sky, left no shadow for him to hug. When he reached the path he was startled by the sudden appearance of a short, powerful man, holding a lantern.

  "A colt and three calves?" the man asked, out of breath. "Seen them?"

  "Two calves."

  "Buggery! They've split. Colt's a mealy bay with a pink snip."

  "I tried to corner them but they were too frisky. Halfway to Lytham I'd think by now."

  "Buggery," the man said again. "I best go mounted after 'em." He strode back inland. Walter could still see the lantern swinging as he let himself quietly in by Dixon's never-locked front door.

  Chapter 17

  By next day the bad weather had returned. Low clouds scudded across the sky, seeming to boil downward, toward the land. And the turbulent sea rose and fell in tongues of deep green fire. It was "blowing marlin spikes," an elderly guest, an ex-sea-captain, told them at breakfast after they returned from communion.

  A vessel must have foundered somewhere offshore yesterday or in the night, for a vast mass of timbers and other flotsam had been stranded by the ebbing tide. Already it had attracted a crowd of sightseers and wreckers, as well as two men from the Excise. Three adventurous souls wrestled with a barrel out in the heaving surf.

  When Walter and Arabella returned from Matins, the wind had eased, though it occasionally blew in strong, squally gusts. There was still no rain, but the sea, now nearly at full ebb again, thundered mightily, throwing up a spray that could sting as hard as any driven rain.

  "Let us go down near the waves," Arabella begged. "I have not been on the sands at all yet."

  A few dozen others had the same idea and the beach was quite crowded. Most were out walking, but several were mounted and one or two h
ad come out in carriages to drive up and down the smooth hard sand.

  "Did you see all the building-up they are doing down beyond the church?" Walter asked. "If this place gets any more popular, its wildness will be all spoiled."

  "It was wild last night," she said. "I wonder you stayed out in it at all."

  "Not so wild," he said, smiling as his eyes lingered on one distant bathing hut. "The moon was out."

  Her brow creased. "But that was much later," she said. "About eleven o'clock."

  "Well I went back to the doctor, feeling we had made an inadequate parting. And they prevailed upon me for another hand or two. That's why I was late." He found it distasteful to lie to her precisely because she was so easily deceived.