Part 2

He saw Kurz's hand with the heavy, silver signet ring on the smallest finger go up trembling to his beard. It was the old familiar gesture.

"Good?--Did you say good of me, Charlie?"

"Yes, yes!" He insisted eagerly. "Of course it was good of you to come and meet me."

"I--had--to--come."

For he a second he wondered.

"But how did you know?--Who told you?--I only just got here. No one--knew. How could you have known I was coming?"

He heard Kurz sigh; a long sigh that quavered at the end.

"I--? Ach!--how--I--hoped--!"

"That I would come?"

"That you would come, Charlie."

He could not fathom the look in Kurz's eyes. He had never seen a look like that in those eyes. He thought that it was not a human look.

"See here, Otto--What is it?"

Kurz made a little, appealing gesture with his long, trembling hands.

"Later--I--will--try--to--tell--you--"

"Later?"

Kurz nodded his great, shaggy head up and down.

"How did you come in here, Charlie?"

He was surprised at the question.

"How? Why, with my latch key, of course!"

He glanced over at the windows. The blinds were up. He could see the dark pressing against the glass; pressing tightly so that it spread. He started for the window. Kurz's voice stopped him.

"And your family? You have then seen your family, Charlie?"

He smiled.

"No. Not yet. They weren't here when you came in, were they?"

"No--no!--I--have--seen--no--one. I could not bring myself to go before any one. There was an old man. He was going down the hall. I waited till he passed. He must have come to light your lamp."

"Well, old Otto--They're not here. I've hunted all through the house for them. I rather think they must have gone down to Surrey. They've taken the servants with them. After a bit we'll walk over to the lodge and ask Bennet where my people are. That must have been Bennet you saw up here."

"Then you do not know?"

"Know what?"

"About your family?"

"But I just told you, Otto; they must've run down to our place in Surrey. I only came up here to get a look at the old room. I'll go down and ask Bennet presently."

A quick moan escaped through Kurz's set lips.

A sudden thought flashed to him.

"You, Otto--How did you get in here?--With them all away?--With the servants gone?"

He saw the muscles of Kurz's face twitch horribly.

"Ach--! You must not ask, Charlie. A little time, Charlie. There are things I do not myself know. Later--I--will--try--to--tell--you."

"Things you do not know, Otto?"

Kurz's mouth twisted itself into a distorted grin.

"I do not blame you for ridiculing me, Charlie. I always thought I knew everything. Later--; you will see."

"Why not tell me now?"

"No--no--!" Kurz's voice whined frantically. "I do not know if you yourself understand."

"I was only trying to help you, old chap."

"Help--! It is that I want. It is that which brought me here. It is because I must have you help me."

"You've only to say what you want."

"Your help--"

"You know I'll do whatever I can for you."

"Yes--; I hoped that. I counted--on--your--help."

He waited for Kurz to go on. Kurz sat there silent. The long, shaking fingers fumbled at each other.

"Well?"

"Later."

"All right--I don't know what you're driving at."

"Are--you--sure--you--do--not--know--?"

"But--If you don't want to tell me now; why, tell me in your own good time, old fellow."

"Yes. You are not angry? You do not care if I say it later?"

"Of course I don't care."

"Not--care--If--you--knew--; if--it--is--true--; you will care!"

He could not make out what Kurz meant.

"It's mighty nice seeing you," he said after a second's silence. "It's been a long time. Years since I've seen you."

"I came though, Charlie;--I had to come, Charlie."

"I'm jolly well glad you did!"

"You knew I would come."

He drew his brows together in a perplexed frown.

"I knew we would meet sometime."

"Yes. Sometime."

"And the sometime's now. Eh, Otto?"

"Now?" Kurz's big body strained forward. "What--is--it, Charlie--; this--now--?"

The frown stayed over his eyes.

"We were bound to come together again, old Otto. You and I were pretty good pals back there at your university. What a time we two had together! And old Mutter Schwegel! How old Mutter Schwegel fussed over us! How she took care of us! It all seems like yesterday--!"

Kurz got out of his chair.

"Old Mutter Schwegel--;" he muttered.

"Dear old Mutter Schwegel!"

Kurz's eyes stole away from his face.

"Later--I shall tell you of Mutter Schwegel too."

"And the talks we used to have--! The nightlong talks. We settled the affairs of the world nicely in those days. Didn't we, old Otto?"

"The--affairs--of--the--world--"

"And old Mutter Schwegel coming in to put out the light. And then standing there to hear what we had to say of life and of death."

"Of--life--and--of--death."

"And not being able to tear herself away to go to bed. She thought we were wise, Otto. She used to drink in every word we said. And then she'd scold us for staying up all night. Old Mutter Schwegel. I've thought of her often--"

Kurz made a movement toward him.

"And of me, Charlie?--You had thought of me?"

"I say, rather--! Many a time--when they called me back from the university--even after I went out to France--I thought of you."

His mind was muddled a bit. He put it down to the excitement of his coming home. That uncertain feeling came over him again quite strongly. But he had thought of Otto. He remembered he had thought of Otto a lot.

"And what was it you thought of me, Charlie?"

It came back to him that there had been one time when he had thought of Otto particularly. That one time when something tremendous had happened to him. He could not quite think what. He knew he had been glad when he thought of Otto because he had been spared inflicting the thing on him.

He could not get it clear.

He avoided looking at Kurz.

"Why--; why, I wondered what you were doing. All that sort of thing. You know what I mean."

"Yes. I know. I did go into the army, Charlie. It was that sort of thing you meant, Charlie?"

He felt himself start.

"I was afraid you would do that;" he said involuntarily.

"Yes. I, too, was afraid."

Kurz's voice was low.

"You? Afraid?"

"Ach, Charlie!--You know it. The fear it was not for myself!"

He walked over to the window. He stood there looking down at the huge boxwood hedges looming in thick gray bulks up from the smudging reach of the heavily matted shadows.

He turned.

"You funked meeting me--in--war?"

"Ach!--God forbid!--That--I--should--meet--you--in--war--!"

"I too;" he said it quickly. "I too was afraid that I should come upon you. It haunted me--; that fear I might harm you. It stayed with me--; day and night. I shouldn't want to hurt you, Otto. I--I prayed." It came back to him how often he had prayed it. "I always prayed that it might never be you!"

"Yes--; I know."

He went and stood close beside Kurz. He found himself staring at Kurz intently.

"But you're here;--in England. I say, did they make you a prisoner? Could my people get parole for you?"

"No. I do not think they do that here in your country. I do--not--need--parole, Charlie."

"I thought perhaps--"

"No--!"

"But how did you get here, then?"

"Charlie--; Charlie!--ach!--will--you--not--then--wait?"

"Come, come, old Otto. You've got something to tell me. If you don't want to say how you got here, why, all right. Only, you'd best get it off your mind. Whatever it is you'd better come out and say what you came to say."

Kurz slid back into the chair again.

The room was still. Heavy with silence.

"Yes. I'll tell you--if I can. Charlie, it is hard to say."

He tried to help Kurz.

"It's about this war of ours; that's it, isn't it?"

"About the war? Yes--!"

"Then tell me."

He saw Kurz's massive shoulders jerking.

"How--can--I--tell--you--? I do not think you understand. I do not even know if it is what I think it is. I cannot reason it out to myself. The power of reasoning has left me. I had no other knowledge than my reasoning. I do not know. Now, I do not know where I am--or--what--I--am--"

The maddened urge of Kurz's words struck him.

"You're here, old Otto;" he said it reassuringly. "Here with me. In my room. In England. You're with me, Otto!"

"Yes--with--you." And then beneath his breath he whispered: "Where--are--you--?"

He caught the smothered insistence of that last sentence. He smiled, forcing his lips to smile.

"Standing right in front of you, old man. Waiting for you to say what you came to--"

Kurz interrupted him.

"I--had--to come. I felt that I must come. I--came, Charlie. I got myself here, Charlie."

"Quite right, Otto."

"I want you to know first that I thought of you. That I was, as you say you were, afraid I might in some way injure you. I want to tell you that first."

"Good old sentimental Otto!"

"Sentimental?--Ach!--I am not sentimental. But I do not think you can understand how much you were to me back there at the university. I do not think you yourself knew how much you joyed in things. How happy your kind of thought made you."

He laughed.

"I always managed to have a rather corking time of it," he admitted.

"You loved everything so," Kurz went on. "At night when we talked it was you who believed in what you said. It was you who saw so clearly how well all things of life were meant. It was always I who questioned."

"But, I say, old Otto, your mind was so quick; so brilliant. You could pick flaws where I never knew they existed."

"It was you who had so much of faith, Charlie."

"How we did talk;" he said it to himself. "Talk and talk until old Mutter Schwegel, who was so keen for us, grew tired of listening and came and turned out the lamp."

"And how you spoke ever of your beliefs," Kurz's voice was hoarse. "It was so easy for you to know. You never questioned. You believed. It ended there, with your belief. You were so near to what you thought. It was a part of you. I--I stood away from all things and from myself. I would tell you that the mind should reason. I stayed outside with my criticism, while you--ach, Charlie!--How you did know!"

"And how you laughed at me for that!"

"But now, I do not laugh!" Kurz protested with wearied eagerness. "Now I come to you. I ask you if you know those things--now?"

"What things, Otto?"

"The things of life. The things of death."

"I know what I always knew," he said slowly. "I know that life is meant to live fully and understandingly and that death is meant to live on; fully and understandingly."

"And--you--do--understand--_now_?"

"I understand that always."

"You would not be afraid?"

"Of what?"

"Of--death?"

"No."

He stared out of the window.

The dense, opaque shadows pressing down on the garden. The shadows hanging loose and thick on the high, boxwood hedges. The dark, smooth, night sky.

And suddenly a faint tremor ran through him from head to foot. He pressed his face close to the glass. His hands went up screening a small space for his eyes.

In the still block of shadows, in the black mass of them, he had seen something; something had moved against the quiet clumping shadows.

"I say," he whispered. "There's some one coming up through the garden."

"Yes--yes."

They were silent for a long time.

Once he looked at Kurz huddled in the armchair; his face white and drawn; his eyes staring before him.

He thought he heard footsteps coming softly up the stairs; footsteps that came lightly and hesitated and then came on again.

"Charlie--!" Kurz stammered. "Charlie--!"

He felt that some one was standing in the open doorway.

He turned.

His eyes took in the well known figure. The sweet face with its red cheeks and its framing white hair. The short body. The blue eyes that were fixed on him.

"Mutter Schwegel!" He shouted.

Kurz leaped to his feet.

"What!"

He started for the door.

"Mutter Schwegel, who would have thought of your coming here. It has been a long time. I say!--But I am glad."

"Stop--!" Kurz's voice thundered behind him.

He wheeled to look at Kurz.

Kurz's eyes were riveted on the woman standing in the doorway.

"Aren't you glad to see Mutter Schwegel?" He asked. "When we've been talking of her all night?"

Kurz was muttering to himself.

"Mutter--Schwegel--;" Kurz mumbled. "Mutter Schwegel--! It--is--that--I--wanted--to--tell--you--about--Mutter Schwegel. It--is--as--I--thought. It--is--ach!--it--is--then--that--way--with--us--!"

He felt that the woman was coming into the room.

He turned and looked at her.

"Mutter--Schwegel--is--dead;" Kurz stammered.

He saw that the old woman smiled.

"She--is--dead. Dead--!" Kurz mumbled.

He smiled back at her.

"Dead--;" Kurz's voice droned shaking.

He saw the old woman go to the table.

He and Kurz watched her take the lamp up in her hands. He and Kurz saw her fingers fumbling at the wick. Kurz's quivering face stood out in the lamplight. The old woman was smiling quietly.

They saw her try to put out the light.

The lamp still burned.

"Mutter-Schwegel--is--dead--!" Kurz's voice quavered; and then it screamed. "Dead--," he shrieked; "we--are--all--of--us--dead--!"

That uncertain feeling came over him. And suddenly it went quite from him.

HAUNTED

He lived quite alone in the stone built shanty perched on the highest pinnacle of the great sun bleached chalk cliffs. All about him, as far as the eye could reach, lay the flat, salt marshes with their dank, yellowed grasses. Against the inland horizon three, gaunt, thin-foliaged trees reared themselves from the monotonously even soil. Overhead the cloud splotched blue gray sky, and below him the changing, motion pulled, current swirling depths of the blue green sea. And at all times of the day and the night, the wild whirring of the sea gulls' wings and the uncanny inhuman piercing sound of their shrieking.

He had lived there since that day when the fisherman had pulled him half drowned out of the sea. He could never remember where he had come from, or what had happened. All that he ever knew was that far out by the nets in the early morning they had come upon him and had brought him in to shore. Naturally, the fishermen had questioned him; but his vagueness, his absolute lack of belief that he had ever been anything before they had snatched him from the waters, had frightened them so that since that day they had left him severely alone. Fishing folk have strange, superstitious ideas about certain things. He had borne the full weight of their credulous awe. Perhaps because he, himself, thought as they thought. That he was something come from the sea, and of the sea, and always belonging to the sea.

He had built himself the stone shanty upon the highest pinnacle of those waste grown chalk cliffs; and he had stayed on and on, year in and year out, close there to the sea.

In winter for a livelihood he made baskets from the reeds he had picked in the swamps about him. In the summer he sold the vegetables he grew in the tiny truck garden behind his house. Somehow he managed to eke out a living.

The fishing folk in the small village at the foot of the cliffs saw him come and go along their narrow streets, morose and taciturn. He never spoke to any of them unless he had to. They in their turn avoided him with their habitual superstitious uneasiness. He went to and fro between his shanty and the village store when the need arose. The rest of the time he sat in front of his iron bolted door staring and staring down at the sea.

Daybreak and noon. Evening and night he sat there.

When the sky above was tinged with the first streaking colors of the dawn he watched the ghostly gray expanse of the ocean. When the sun was high in the heavens he looked steadily at the light-flecked spotted swells of the waves. When the shadows began to creep up from the earth he stared at the greater blackness that swam in glistening undulating darkness to him from across the water. And at night his eyes strained through the fitful gloom at the pitchy, turbulent sea.

It was like that in all kinds of weather. The spring tides, with their quick changes from calm to storm, and the slender silver crescent of the new moon hanging just above the horizon. The long summer laziness of the green ocean with its later gigantic flame-red moons and the wide yellow streak of phosphorescent light that streamed in moving ripples to him; the chill, lashing spray in autumn. The foam-covered seething breadth of it in winter when the blackness of the low night skies and the darkness of the high tides were as one menacing roaring turmoil churning itself into white spumed frenzy. It always held him.

He was a man of one idea: The sea. He was a man who drew his life from one source: The sea. It had taken his body and had tried to drown it; the sea had for that short time caught and gripped his soul. The slimy, wet touch of it was seared into him.

It fascinated him; it kept him near it so that he could not have gotten away from it, had he had the courage to want to get away. It kept him there as though he belonged to it; as though it knew he belonged to it; and knew that he knew it. And always and ever the sea haunted him.

The fishing men coming home late at night across the water had grown used to steering their course by the unreal light that trickled out to them from the shanty on the top of the cliffs. And in the dawn when they pushed their smacks off from the long, hard beach to sail out to the nets, they knew that from the high precipices above them the man was watching.

And outwardly they laughed at him; even when in their hearts they feared the thing they thought he was.

They could not understand him. They, who made their living from the sea, could not understand how he could be content to live the way he was living. They could not have known that he would infinitely rather have died than to have taken one thing from out the sea from which he had already filched his soul.

His enslavement by it had made him understand it a lot better than they understood it.

And so he lived the stupid, hypnotized life of one who is held so enchained and cowed that he could not think for himself, or of himself. Until that day when he first met Sally.

It was a sunny day late in the autumn that he stood in front of the weather beaten wooden hut of the village store, his arms filled with baskets. And as he stood there, Sally Walsh came from the store and out into the street.

She had seen the man a hundred times but she had never seen him so close. She stopped short and stared quite frankly at the bigness of him; at the heavily matted hair clinging so damply to his forehead; and at the white face so strange to her beside the sun-burned faces she had always seen. It was when, quite suddenly, he looked at her and she saw the odd blue green sea colored eyes of him, that she started to hurry on.

She had gotten half way down the street when he overtook her.

"D'you want--anything of--me?" He asked it, his blue green eyes going quickly over her slight form, her small face, and resting for a second curiously upon her masses of coiled golden hair.

"I--? why--no."

"You sure?"

"Sure."

She went on her way again and he stood there watching her go; then he turned abruptly and walked slowly back to the store.

It was not so long after that when he met her for the second time.

She was on her knees in the yard in front of her father's house mending the tar-covered fishing nets with quick deft fingers. He stopped at the gate. Feeling the intensity of his blue green eyes upon her, she looked up and saw him.

She got to her feet.

"It's a nice morning."

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 mass. 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.