Part 17

For the first time since he had met her he had caught her unawares, quiet. It was extraordinary. This was not the young hedgehog, with all her defenses pointed, the immature woman of complete sophistication, ready at any moment to smile and answer back, to hide behind a manner, to dart out with a flash of wit, to mock, to wheedle, to inspire, to anger. This was Eve in exile, the original woman come upon suddenly alone in a glade, away from any glistening pool in which she could watch the reflection of her face and gleaming body, from any Adam upon whom to try her wiles. This was Beatrix, herself, at last.

Franklin moved to go. He felt like Peeping Tom at the top window of that house in Coventry from which he gloated upon the beauty of Godiva "clothed on in Chastity." It was unfair, almost indecent, it seemed to him, to take advantage of this lovely chameleon in her original color. And as he moved she heard him and changed.

"Hello, Strong Man," she cried out, slipping from the horse. "What's the latest?" Her expression was impudent, her friendliness an audacity.

Franklin leaned against the door. He had never supposed that a time would ever come when he would be obliged to play-act. "I've cut the fishing trip for to-day," he said, as though he were talking to a young sister. "Jones has damaged his hand and as he's the only man I care to take, the thing's off."

"Oh, poor Mr. Jones!"

"You implied just now that you were bored stiff with the yacht."

"Fed up, I meant to say, which is several degrees worse."

"What about coming out on the small launch and having lunch on one of the islands westward?"

Beatrix picked up her bath-robe and swung it round her shoulders. "It sounds too good to be true," she said, without enthusiasm. "Thank you."

Franklin blocked the door. She was in his blood. "Good God," he cried, all out of control, "why don't you smash that damned shell and be yourself all the time?"

She raised her eyebrows and swung a tassel round and round. "You don't like my shell, then?"

"I loathe it!"

"Well, nobody asked you to do anything else, you know."

Her iciness and savoir faire, the fearless way in which she stood up to him, the utter indifference to his opinion one way or the other on any mortal subject crushed his passion as effectively as a snuffer on the flame of a candle. He stood aside to let her pass.

But she had seen the sudden blaze in his eyes. It was not to be missed. She mistook it for the sort of passion that she had unconsciously roused in Sutherland York and used her wits to quell. There had been none of this, to her way of thinking, in the kisses that Franklin had snatched. They were merely to show her that he was owner. She had never conceived it possible that this inarticulate man could love her. He made it too obvious that she fell far short of his ideal. But she had now at last caught the desired glimpse of that side of his character that she had been working to find. He was not then so supremely self-composed as he made himself out to be. He had shown her, in a flash,--and she got this with a great throb of feminine triumph,--that however well he had believed in the truth of his scornful statement as to the huts on the desert island when he had made it, he would lie if he repeated it now.

And with this balm to the wound in her vanity, which had never healed, she passed him. He lived as a man again for the first time since the bedroom incident,--and she liked him for it. She got this too, as she went off to her suite, and it came on top of her determination to fight "fair or unfair," as something of a shock. To begin to like him when she ought to detest him most!--"Good Lord," she said to herself as she dressed to go out in the launch, with greater pains than usual, "what a mass of contradictions you are, my child. What are you _really_, I wonder?--and how will all this end?"

Franklin went slowly across to the port-side, disheartened and depressed. "What the devil's the use of me? Every time I open my mouth it makes everything more hopeless. I'm as bad as a bull in a china shop. I'd better let her go and chuck the whole blessed thing and, after all, is there any gold to dig out or has it all turned to brass? I'll be hanged if I know."

*XXXII*

There was a certain amount of bustle going on. The yacht had found an anchorage. The small launch had been let down. A steward handed over a lunch basket to Jones, who was "willing" hard to be taken along. Men moved at the double in the execution of their duties. The first officer stood by with a watchful eye. He had made a small bet with Jones that he would be left behind.

It was midday and very warm. There was not enough wind to tease a curl. When Beatrix appeared, in the fewest possible clothes, she was followed by the stewardess carrying a sort of mackintosh bag in which were a bathing dress, a tin of powder, a brush and comb, and so forth.

"Back about five," said Franklin.

The first officer saluted. "Very good, sir. Keep an eye on the weather. It looks like a change to me."

"All right."

Franklin got into the launch and handed Beatrix aboard. "You're taking a coat, aren't you?"

"No," said Beatrix. "Why? It's lovely and warm."

"I'd like you to."

She smiled up at him and shook her head. She held the cards now.

Franklin caught the eye of the precocious Jones and jerked his thumb towards the yacht. The first officer grinned to see him nip aboard. A dollar had its uses but it was well worth ten to see Jones squashed.

Away went the launch, the happy pair in the stern, the white silk shirt and red tie of the girl standing out against the water, the midday sun beating down from a cloudless sky on the trim and glossy boat. Franklin turned his head over his shoulder, and waved his left hand at the Captain. The pit-pit of the motor awoke echoes.

"Owe you a bloomin' dollar," said Jones, with a touch of temper.

The first officer let his laugh go.

The Captain left the bridge, went along to his quarters, took off his coat, lit a cigar and sat down to write to his wife. It was not his day for writing, but on his brain there was a very charming picture of a girl in a white silk shirt and a red tie.

Beatrix crossed her legs and drew in a long breath. "The prisoner goes for an airing," she said.

The chameleon had changed color again. Franklin caught her sunny mood with eagerness. "Glad to get off?"

"Oh, goodness, yes! I feel like the man who after living at the Plaza for a year sneaked into Child's for his meals. Anything for a change. Which island are you making for?"

Franklin pointed. "That one. It has a natural landing-place, enough shade----"

"A good place to bathe from?"

"But you're not going to bathe, are you?"

"Oh, yes, I am! There are my things. Have you got yours?"

"Yes, they're in the locker."

"I shall simply adore to swim. If you'd been any sort of a husband you'd have seen to it before." She shot this out without thinking. Her spirits were too high to bother about anything that he might say. She had forgotten for the time being that he was a man.

"Being your sort of husband," he blurted out, "I keep all suggestions to myself."

She gave one quick look at him. Yes, she held the cards now, all of them. There would be no more monotony from day to day. This man was coming through, like a negative in course of development. She would be able to play with him as a cat plays with a mouse, make him pay over and over again for having hurt her so deeply, and as soon as it suited her bring him to the point of being willing and anxious to let her go, getting nothing from her.

She sat back and smiled. How infinitely satisfactory it was to resume her place in the world and in her own esteem! It wasn't her fault if everybody had spoiled her. It was theirs. The point was, was she worth spoiling? And for Franklin to say yes,--Franklin who had fought so hard to wear a mask and had played the tyrant with such success,--that was good hearing!

"What time do you propose having lunch?" she asked, after a long and happy silence.

"Any time you like."

"Do you mean that?"

He looked astonished. "Yes, of course."

"I ask because it will take time for me to get used to your showing me any consideration," she said, with the imp back on her shoulder. "Your iron hand has almost cowed me. You have nearly broken my spirit. I am a humble creature now, grateful for crumbs of kindness."

Franklin threw back his head and laughed until the tears came into his eyes.

"What's the matter?" she asked, gravely.

He turned and looked her full in the face. "The devil was somewhere about when you were born," he said. "I wish to Heaven we were back in the good old days when men could beat their women without fear of police and suffrage and all the silly stuff that protects you against your proper treatment."

Before she could answer he stopped the engine and ran the launch alongside a low ridge of rock, sprang out, helped her up, jammed a pin into a cleft and fastened the painter to it.

She stood up in front of him, proud and glorious in her youth and beauty. "Well, here we are on your desert island," she said. "Beat me. Why don't you?"

For a moment he said nothing. He ran his eyes over her,--golden hair, flower-like face, eyes in which there was a lurking laugh, lovely slim body. "I almost think you're not worth it," he said.

Almost!--how foolish of him to say that. One day soon he should withdraw not only the almost but the whole remark, on his knees,--and be left there, like a fool.

"May I have that little bag, please?" she asked, sweetly.

He hiked it out and gave it to her.

"You know the island, don't you?"

"Every inch of it."

"Where do you propose that I shall undress?"

"Come along and I'll show you." He started off, clambering over the brown rocks.

She followed to a place about a hundred yards away,--a sort of cave on a tiny spread of beach. "Oh, how perfectly delightful," she cried. "Built for bathing, isn't it?"

"Don't go in before I come back. There's a strong undertow here. Sing out when you're ready," and away he went.

Beatrix chose a dry spot on the sand and without a second's hesitation sat down and started to untie her shoes. She longed to get into the sea, to enjoy the exhilaration of exercise, to feel the warm sun on her wet limbs and be a child of Nature. Franklin might talk as glibly as he liked about the good old days but he was a sportsman. She had no fear.

He hadn't long to wait. He got into his bathing things and had only taken two puffs of a cigarette before he heard her call. Once more he climbed over and down the rocks,--stopped for a moment and drew in his breath at the sight of her,--and then went on.

She waved her hand. She was standing ankle-deep in the sea with a red rubber cap drawn tightly over her hair, without stockings and in a suit that looked like a boy's. "Delicious," she called out.

It was the very word he had already discovered.

And in they tumbled, laughing and splashing, like children. "Let's dry in the sun," she said coming out breathlessly, her face and arms glistening, the wet suit as tight as a black skin. She sat down and peeled off the rubber cap and shook her hair free. "This is the best thing I've done for months."

He stood a few yards away and threw pebbles into the sea. He felt awfully young and fit. It was almost as good as dreaming to be out there, like that, with _her_. He chucked as hard as he could, with all his force, competing against each good shot. "How about that?" he cried out, with a laugh.

Beatrix looked at him. She had merely accepted him before. He was like the bronze figure of "The Runner" come to life, with his small head and broad, deep chest, hard muscular arms, clean, hipless lines, tremendous strength. The sight of him gave her a sudden, unexplainable sense of shyness. She tried to shake it off. It was disconcerting and foolish.

He flung himself down and began to babble to her, pouring sand through his fingers. His dark, thick hair was still wet. His skin was tanned almost black. The whites of his eyes were as white as his teeth. His moustache, red as a rule, was burned to the color of straw. An odd thought flashed through her mind. He must like her to have spared her, to have respected her. How easy to have broken her if he'd cared!

"Isn't it wonderful here?" she said, resenting a feeling of self-consciousness.

"Pretty good, isn't it? Malcolm and a whole crowd of us bathed here last year. Very queer. I remember he told me about you that morning,--how well you swim, or something, and by Jove, you do swim well,--as well as you do everything else." He was not paying compliments. There was not the faintest suggestion of flirtation in his eyes. He made the statement of an accepted fact, and went on boyishly. "Do you wonder that I keep away from towns? Just look at it here. No umbrellas stuck about. No crowd of giggling women and cocktail hunters. No strings of stinking cars lined up to carry off soft people. Here's simplicity and truth. Will you ever get to like it, youngster?"

He was disappointing her. She wouldn't for the world have had him less charming than he was, or say the things that some men had said to her after bathing,--personal, fulsome things, caddish things. But,--she _must_ look nice, she felt nice, and surely there might have been just a little admiration in his eyes. Anyone would think that they had been boy and girl together. He accepted it as a matter of course.

"Yes," she said, before she could stop herself, "with you."

He laughed softly and gratefully, leaned forward and kissed her foot, then sprang up and bent over her, put one arm round her shoulders and one under her knees, quietly gathered her up shoulder-high. "Come on," he said, "it's time to dress and eat," and he carried her to where her clothes were lying, with his cheek against her breast.

When he put her down and saw her face, something went crack. Good God! They were not, then, in that dream of his, married, hand in hand, with a baby boy growing in the sun!

He bolted like a mountain goat.

*XXXIII*

The sight of him after he had put her down, scared, with his hands out as though they had been burned, and the complete acknowledgment of the ineptitude of apology that he gave by bolting, made Beatrix laugh. It caught her sense of comedy and left a picture on her mind to which she would always be able to turn to dispel depression. All the same her heart was thumping and her cheeks were hot. She exulted in the fact, now proved beyond argument, that she drew him, that he was all alive to her attraction. She thrilled again as she thought of how he had kissed her foot and the way in which he had carried her across the beach.

She found herself trying to find the right word to describe his strength and cleanness and physical beauty, the odd boyishness of him, the passion that was without animalism,--and failed. She got as far as to wish that she had run her fingers through his hair as she felt a strong desire to do,--and then began to dress quickly, drawing back, with an odd touch of puritanism, from that kind of thought.

"I would like to come here every fine day," she said, looking about, pretending that it was the view that appealed to her, and the color and the gentle break of the sea. "And I'm as hungry as a hunter now," and she knew that she was hurrying to see him again.

When she was dressed and had packed the bathing things into the bag she stood still for a little while under the shadow of the rocks, with dry seaweed all round her in a vague pattern. Privately and in a sort of way in secret from herself, she tapped at her heart and went in, afraid to take more than one quick look around. It was all untidy and chaotic. Someone had stamped about in that hitherto perfectly neat and undisturbed place. It was unrecognizable.... She ran away from it. What did it mean? Why did she begin to feel that she was not the old Beatrix, not quite so high-chinned and self-composed, not quite with the same grip on the reins, softer, simpler, with a queer new feeling of homesickness for a home that she didn't know?

"Now, now, my good girl," she said, "string up, pull yourself together. No sloppiness, please." But she went eagerly back over the uneven rocks and something was making her heart more untidy than ever.

She found the food laid out on a flat place and Franklin in the launch doing something to the engine. She whistled and he looked up. "I'm awfully hungry," she said.

"Right. I'll come. This engine's a bit groggy somewhere. I thought so as we ran in. Careless blighter, Jones." He washed his hands in the sea and came up, putting on his coat. "I hate messing about with machinery. I know next to nothing about it and if I can't get it right at once I have an unholy desire to smash. I've no patience with things I don't understand."

"That's why you're so impatient with me sometimes," she said to herself,--enormously surprised that she didn't say it aloud. Obviously something was happening to her. She liked the way in which he had set out the lunch and put the cushion so that the sun wouldn't fall on her face. It was competent,--and she admired that. He was taller than he had seemed to be on board and his grey eyes had a most intriguing way of going black.

Franklin hid behind an abrupt and hard-forced casualness, very conscious of having made a complete idiot of himself. He told her everything that there was to eat, knowing very well that her quick eyes had at once made an inventory, and looked after her with a rapid politeness. He immediately entered into a long, detailed account of a most uninteresting hunting trip in Central Africa and watched her like a hawk to pounce if she made any reference to bathing or beaches. Also he talked her down when she made one or two tentative efforts to lead the conversation to something human and wilfully became more technical and dry and endless.

Finally, having strained every nerve to stand it for his sake, she gave a little scream, and he stopped. But before he could ask what was the matter she said: "Nothing's bitten me and I haven't seen smugglers. I'm simply fed up with red monkies and Croo-boys and the whole of Central Africa. Tell me just one thing. How do you feel after eating four hard-boiled eggs running?"

He chuckled. "Hungry," he said, and got off his sweating horse. She was not going to hold him up to ridicule, and he was grateful.

They sat for a long time over lunch,--Franklin with his back to a rock and a well-worn pipe going; Beatrix leaning back on her hands with her hat off and the light on her hair. Suddenly Franklin sprang up. "Fog coming over," he said sharply. He stood over her and held out his hand.

She took it and he jerked her to her feet. She looked out and saw the _Galatea_ a long way off, disappearing behind what seemed to be a solid wall of grey smoke. "Does it matter?"

"Yes. We'll leave these things. Nip into the launch quick and I'll make a dash for the yacht." He gave her arm an impatient tap and she caught up her hat and got in. Hauling out the pin he threw it aboard, jumped into the stern, started the engine and backed out, turning with a swing when he was clear. The sea was at the stand, due to go out. Already the cowlike call of fog signals had begun far off. But he had taken his line for the yacht and went for her. "With ordinary luck we shall make her," he said. "I wish you'd brought your coat."

The fog rolled over them. Minutes before it had put out the sun. "What fun!" laughed Beatrix. "It will make my hair curl."

"It'll make mine like astrakhan," he said, "if this cursed engine begins any tricks. It's missing fire now, damn the thing!"

"Don't mind me," said Beatrix airily, "if you really feel the need to swear."

"I shan't."

She looked all around. There was nothing to see except a monotony of greyness. They were pushing through a thick, damp, mysterious series of closely hung veils that dragged softly across her face, it wasn't pleasant or funny. It was,--but with Franklin at her elbow it was disloyal even to let the word take shape in her mind. If only she had brought her coat, her thickest coat. She had hardly anything on. How melancholy those sea-voices were. She hated eerie sounds. She saw Franklin bend suddenly over the engine and pry and touch and say things under his breath. Every now and then the thing had furious palpitation. Then it seemed to her to be quarrelling together and throwing its parts about. It kicked and wheezed and struggled like a held rooster,--and stopped. She began to shiver. A dozen distant cows seemed to be calling anxiously for their young. She could hardly see the peak of the launch. She wasn't frightened. Only just a little anxious, or rather uncomfortable. She loved new things but this was, undoubtedly and without argument, too new.

"Hell!" said Franklin.

"Thank you," she replied. "You've said it for me."

He peered into her face. "Shall I tell you what's happened or not? I mean do you want to face things or be coddled?"

"I thought you were beginning to know me," she said.

"Right. Now listen. This dirty little engine's playing the fool. I've done everything I know to it, even to whispering endearing terms. But in one word, it beats me."

She nodded brightly, rubbing her thinly-clad knees together and putting her hands under her arms. "I see," she said. "Well?"

"That means that we're completely at the mercy of this rotten fog, and presently we shall drift out, maybe into trade lines. Hear the bellows of the freighters? We may be out all night with nothing to eat and drink and the risk of being run down."

Her attempt at pluck was heroic. "There aren't any nice, soft, cozy Jaeger dressing gowns in the locker, by any chance?"

"The Vanderdykes are all right," said Franklin, with queer enthusiasm. He pulled off his flannel coat. "Put this on."

"No, no."

"Put this on."

"I won't put it on."

He wasted no further words. He took first one soft damp arm and then the other, drew the sleeves over them, bent down and buttoned the coat up.

"Oh, that's lovely," she said; "as warm as a radiator. But what about you?"

"That's all right. Listen again. When McLeod finds that we don't get back he'll probably send off the big launch to hunt us up. The only way I can give them a line is to keep shouting. Very likely, giving me credit for being less a confounded fool than I am, he'll imagine two things,--either that I got off before the fog lowered and am able to fake the engine if anything happens to it, or that, seeing the fog coming over, I decided to stay on the island, in which case it would be possible for him to feel his way to land and pick us off. As it is, there's no compass aboard and I've no means of telling which way we're drifting, and if the fog lasts all night,--puzzle, find the yacht. There you have the worst and the best of it. Listen!"

"What is it?"

He put his hands up to his mouth and raised a tremendous shout. "Ahoy,--_Galatea_, ahoy, ahoy!"

There was no answer. The sound seemed to fall dead, as though up against a wall.

"Um," he said, and stood amidships with his legs wide apart and with the utmost precision, with regular pauses, turning his head to right and left, sent out long, steady calls. Some power-boat, feeling her way in from fishing, might come within hail and give them a tow, or the big launch might be poking about for them and pick up his voice. Good God, to think that he had lived to be a man without being able to master a damn fool engine! That was one of the worst points of being able to buy service. It plucked initiative out of the brain like the bones out of fish. "_Galatea, ... Galatea_.... Ahoy."