Part 3

The third day he stood upon the edge of the precipice.

It was a gray fog drenched day. The mist dripped all about him. The opaque veil of it shut out everything in wet obliteration. He stood quite still knowing that beneath its dank dribbling thickness, the sea churned wildly in its rising tide.

And standing there motionless he heard a voice calling through the quiet denseness of the fog. A voice coming from a distance and muffled by the mist. He started. It was her voice calling to him from the narrow pathway that wound up the chalk cliffs to the back of his shanty.

"Mister--oh, Mister."

He reached his hand out in front of him trying to break the saturating cover of the fog. He went stumbling unseeingly toward the rear of the house.

"Mister--oh, Mister."

The rear of the shanty. His feet sank down into the turned soil of the truck garden. He stood still.

"Here."

"Mister;" the voice of her was nearer. "Where are--you--?"

He could not see in front of him. He felt that she was close.

"Here;--little girl."

He saw the faint outline of her shadow then through the obliterating denseness of the mist.

"Some fog; ain't it, Mister?"

"Stay where--you are. There's the precipice."

"I ain't afraid of no precipice."

"Stay--where--you--are!"

He could hear the dripping of the mist over the window ledges. And then he thought he heard, smothered by the weight of the fog, the pounding of the sea.

"You surprised to see me? But you ain't able to see me. Are you?"

"No."

"You ain't surprised?"

Down there at the base of the chalk cliffs the sea was still; waiting.

"You--shouldn't--have--come."

"Why--you don't mean;--you ain't trying to tell me;--you--don't--want--me--here?"

Great beads of moisture trickled down across his eyes.

"Little girl--; I just said you shouldn't have come. Not up here in this kind of weather."

"Oh, the weather!" She laughed. "I ain't the one to mind the weather, Mister."

Again he reached his hand out in front of him in an effort to rend the suffocating thickness of the fog. His fingers touched her arm and closed over it. From below him came the repeated warning roar of the waves.

"Can you find your way home--by yourself--little girl?"

"I ain't going home, Mister;--not yet. I came up here to get that basket you said you had for me; you know, the medium sized one."

"I'll give it to you--now."

Her hand caught at his hand that lay on her arm. Her fingers fastened themselves around his and held tightly. He had never felt anything like that. The touch of them was cool and fresh, like sea weed that had just drifted in from the sea.

And then from far off across the water came the shrill, piercing shriek of a gull.

He felt her start.

"That's only a sea-gull, little girl."

"I know, Mister. But don't it sound strange; almost as if it were the sea itself; calling for something."

For a second he could not speak.

"Why--;" his voice was hoarse, "Why d'you say that?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I get to feeling mighty queer about that water out there."

"You mean--; why--you ain't afraid of it, little girl, are you?"

"Afraid? There ain't nothing that I'm afraid of, Mister. Why, I'd go anywhere and not be afraid--"

He repeated her words very slowly to himself.

"You'd--go--anywhere--and--not--be--afraid--"

He thought then that the fog was lifting. A sickly, yellowish glow filtered through the heavy grayness. He could see her more distinctly.

"There's only one thing about the sea, Mister, that'd scare me, and that's--"

She broke off abruptly.

"What, little girl?"

"Why, Mister; why, I can't hardly say it. But there's Pa and there's my brother, Will. If anything ever happened--; if the sea ever did anything to Pa or Will, why--I guess, Mister, I'd just die."

"Don't!" He said quickly. "Don't you talk like that."

For a second they were silent.

The sun was breaking through the dwindling thickness of the mist. He could see it lifting in a faint gray line, uncovering the reach of the flat salt marshes with their dank yellowed grasses; a thin silver net of it hung for a second between the sky and the earth, and was gone.

From the base of the chalk cliffs came the sound of the sea lapping and lapping with insistent cunning.

She dropped his hand and she stood there looking up to him, scanning his white face with those childlike eyes of hers.

"You live up here because of the sea, Mister?"

"Yes."

"You ever feel the sea's something--alive, like you and me?"

"You--feel--that--too?"

"Yes," she said slowly, "and I knew you felt it, because the first time I saw you--why--you're somehow--something like the sea."

His hands clinched at his sides. His breath came in quick rasping gasps.

"I'll get your basket," he muttered.

He rushed into his one room shanty and caught up the basket nearest to him and went out again to her.

She took the basket from him in silence. She slipped the handle of it on to her arm. Her hands rubbed against each other; the fingers of them twining and intertwining.

"I'll be going now, Mister."

"Yes."

"I've got to be getting home before Pa and Will go out to the nets."

"Good-by, little girl."

"Good-by, Mister; and--thanks."

He stood there and watched her go from the back of his stone built shanty down the narrow winding path that lay along the sun bleached chalk cliffs. She went quickly and lightly down the steep incline, her small slender figure in its blue print dress, with the sun bringing out the burnished glints in her golden hair. His eyes strained after her. In a short while he lost her from sight.

He went back to his basket making then.

And as he sat there, his fingers weaving and bending the supple reeds, mechanically working them into shape, he tried to shut out all thought of her; to feel as though she had never come to him; to rivet his attention upon the insistent pounding of the sea that hurled itself again and again at the base of the chalk cliffs; calling and calling to him.

After a while the early deep blue dusk of the twilight came.

He got stiffly to his feet.

The long moving shadows were quivering in fantastic purpled patterns on the ground about him. Great daubs of them clung in the crevices of the chalk cliffs. A mat of shadows crept over the flat salt marshes and through the dank yellowed grasses. There was a sudden chill in the wind that came to him from off the water. A flock of screeching sea-gulls wildly beating their wings, rose from the cliffs and whirred out toward the open sea, the uncanny piercing sound of their shrieking coming deafeningly back to him.

He stood there staring at the ocean, his head well back; his nostrils dilated; his blue green eyes strangely wide.

Far in the distance against the graying horizon he could see the choppy white capped waves racing over the smooth dark water. Even as he looked the sea began to rise in great swollen billows. The wind too was rising. He could hear the distant cry of it.

His heart began to thump wildly. He knew what was going to happen; just as he always knew. He could feel what the sea was going to do.

He stood there undecided.

A quick picture came to him of the storm.

He had seen it all before. He had stood there on the chalk cliffs and watched it all: Watched the shattered broken logs; the swirling sucking water. The sea had held him under its spell; had compelled him to witness its maddened, infuriated stalking of its prey.

Her people were out there. Her Pa and her Will. Why had she told him that? Why had she said if anything ever happened to them she would die? Why?

He could just make out the stiff sticks of the nets reaching thin and dark from the surface of the gray water against the lighter gray skies; and the boats rowing toward them. The boats with the fishermen. He could see the slender patches of them rising and falling with the waves, going slowly to the nets. He could distinguish the small, dark shadows of the men, rowing. They had pulled him out of the sea in that early morning; he who was something come from the sea, and of the sea; and always belonging to the sea.

To--betray--the--sea--

The waves were racing in to the shore. The thumping, deafening boom of them there at the base of the chalk cliffs below him.

He tried to tear his eyes away from it. It held him as it ever held him. It kept him there as though he belonged to it. As though it knew he belonged to it; and knew that he knew it. A strange uneasiness arose within him. Even before he was conscious of it, he felt that the sea had sensed it. Its insistent angry pounding threatened him.

She had said that she would die.

Below him the swirling, churning sea.

He turned then and went very slowly down the narrow, winding path that led along the sun bleached chalk cliffs. Through the deep blue dusk of the evening he went, and the gray blotched reach of the flat salt marshes with their dank yellowed grasses lay all about him; and overhead the cloud spotted, moving gray of the sky, and beneath him the raging sea that called to him; and called.

He never stopped until he came to the weather darkened shanty where she lived.

He paused then at the gate.

A lighted lamp was in one of the windows on the ground floor. The soft glow of it streamed in a long ladder of light out to him in the darkness.

He opened the gate and went haltingly across the yard, and after a moment's hesitation he knocked at the door.

At the far end of the street the sea thudded over the yellow sanded beach; the pale stretch of it coming out of the grayness in a long white line.

She answered his knock.

The light from the lamp swept through the open doorway.

Something in his face terrified her; something that she had never before seen in those blue green eyes, the color of the sea.

"What is it? What's happened?"

He stood there just looking down at her.

"Oh, Mister, tell me; please--what is it?"

Her two hands went up to her throat and caught tightly at her neck.

"There's--a--storm--"

She looked out into the quiet, darkening evening.

"A storm?"

"There's a bad storm--; coming."

He could hardly say the words.

She stared up at him; her childlike eyes were very wide.

"Will it--be--soon--?"

He never took his blue green eyes from off her face.

"It's coming--quick."

"They're out--Pa--and--Will."

He said it very quietly then.

"That's why I'm here."

"How can we--get them--back?"

"Oh, little girl;" he muttered. "Little girl--"

"How, Mister; how?"

"I'll get a boat."

"There's Sam Wilkins' smack--down there at the wharf. We could take that."

"Then--I'll go--after them."

They went from the door together down the street and out onto the back patch of the wharf. Through the grayness they could see the boat rocking on the water at the farther end. The wail of the rising wind; the pounding of the sea; and close to them the muffled, bumping sound of the smack thrown again and again at the long wooden piles of the wharf.

For a second they stood quite still.

"I'm going," he said.

Her arms went suddenly up around his neck. Her lips brushed across his. He felt her body shivering. He caught and held her to him; and then he let her go and went quickly to the end of the wharf and pulled the boat alongside and stepped into it.

He looked up at her standing there against the gray sky. He could see the white patches of her face and her hands and the pale mass of her hair that the wind had loosened. And down through the draggling grayness he distinctly saw her childlike eyes searching for his.

Before he could stop her she was in the boat.

"Get--back."

"I'm going."

"Quick--get--back."

"I'm going--with--you."

"You can't--; you don't know."

"I'm not afraid. Honest--I'm--not."

"You don't know what it means!"

"I'm--not--afraid."

"Little girl--I ain't going--if you go."

"You've got--to--go."

He repeated her words.

"I've--got--to--go."

"If you don't take me with you;" he had never heard her voice like that--"I'll come out myself. You can't leave me--you can't!"

The rain began then. Great drops of it fell into his face. The whining of the wind was terrific.

"You--don't know what it--means."

"I do know;--oh, God,--I do."

He caught up his oars then.

He rowed with all his strength. The whole thing was so strange to him. Her going. Their being out on the water. The rowing.

The waves rose in tremendous black swells all about them. The rain and the spray drenched them. The wind rocked the small boat. The whistling wail of it; the lowering cloud sprawled pitchy sky.

He pulled in silence until they came to the nets.

She stood up in the boat and called; again and again her voice rose into the wind.

"Sit down!" He told her.

A distant shout answered her.

He bent to his oars then till he came to the cluster of smacks on the other side of the nets.

"Pa--;" she cried.

"Sally--! What you doing here?"

"Pa--; there's a storm."

"I can see that."

"Pa--come on back--to shore."

"You get on back, Sally. It'll blow over."

She turned to him then.

"You tell him;" she said it desperately. "You--tell--him."

He waited until he got just alongside of the fishing smack.

"It's going to be--a--bad--one."

He said it slowly.

He thought then that the angry swirling of the sea became more infuriated; that the swell of the waves was greater. Far in the distance he heard the inhuman, piercing shriek of the sea-gulls.

"Who's that there, Sally?"

"It's--me."

He saw that both of the men in the smack leaned toward him.

"What?"

"It's--it's--me."

"You!"

"Go on back, Pa;--Will, make him--go on back. Get the others to go;--please--Pa;--please."

For answer he heard the man's shout to the other boats about the nets.

"Storm--lads;--make--for--shore."

He saw a moment's hesitation in that cluster of fishing smacks and then one by one he watched them pull away from the nets and row toward the beach.

He reached out his hand and caught hold of the other boat's gunwale.

"Make--the little girl--go--back with--you."

"Come on, Sally. Hop across there. Pa'll help you."

"We'll follow you, Pa."

"All right."

"Tell--the--little girl--to go with you!"

"With--me?"

"Tell--her!"

"You go on, Pa. We'll come right after you."

He felt the boat at his side give a quick lurch. His hand slipped into the water. He could feel the sea pulling at it. His own smack rocked perilously for a second. And then he saw the girl's father and brother rowing toward the beach.

"What--what'd--you--do--that--for?"

She did not answer him.

A wave broke over the bow of his boat.

In the darkness he could see her crawling on her hands and knees along the bottom of the smack to him. He reached down and caught her up in his arms.

"Will they get back--safe?" She whispered it.

"Yes."

"Sure?"

"They're there--now."

And then the storm broke. The lightning flashed in zigzagging, blindly flares across the dark of the sky. The thunder rumbled in clattering crescendo. The sea tore and swirled and sucked. Wave after wave broke over the small boat. She rocked and pitched and swivelled. The oars were washed away. The rain and the wind stung them with their fury. The spray cut into their faces. From far off came the uncanny, inhuman, piercing sound of the sea-gulls' shrieking.

He knew then that the time had come.

He held her very close to him.

He had filched his soul from the sea. He who was something come from the sea, and of the sea; and always belonging to the sea.

He had betrayed the sea.

"Little girl."

"I'm not--afraid."

"Little girl."

"I couldn't stay on--without you. I always knew--always--that some time you'd--go--back."

"You're not--scared?"

"Just--hold--me--tight."

The foam covered seething breadth of the water churning itself into white spumed frenzy. The dark, lowering skies. The black deep pull of the sea.

"Tighter--"

FLOWERS

The night wind brought him the smell of flowers.

For a moment he fought against the smothering oppression of the thing he hated; for a second the same struggle against its stifling weight.

His eyes closed with the brows above them drawn and tight. His teeth caught savagely at his lower lip, gnawing at it until the blood came. His hands, the fingers wide spread, the veins purple and standing out, moved slowly and tensely to his throat.

How he dreaded it! How he abominated the thing! How he loathed the subtle, insidious fragrance! How he abhorred flowers--flowers!

With a tremendous, forcing effort he opened his eyes.

The same garden. The same sweeping reach of flowers. Flowers as far as he could see. Gigantic blossoming clumps of rhododendron. Slender, fragile lilies of the valley showing white and faint on the deep green leaves. Violets somewhere. He got the sickeningly sweet scent of them. Early roses growing riotously. He detested the perfume of roses.

Overhead the darkening sky that held in the west the thin gray crescent of the coming moon.

And all through the garden the first dull blue shadows of evening. Shadows that blurred around the shapes of flowers; shadows that spread over the flowers, smearing out the spotting color of them until they were a gloom-splotched, ghostly mass. Shadows that brought out in all its pungent power the assailing, suffocating smell of the flowers.

He stood there waiting.

He could feel his heartbeats throbbing in his temples. His breath came in long racking gasps. His one thought was to breathe regularly. One--two--He tried to think of something other than his breathing. The intangible odor of the flowers choked him with their stealthy cunning.

It was always like this at first. He had always to contend silently and with all his strength against this illusive, abominated thing poured out to him by the flowers.

His strangling intaking of breath. One--two--

Never in all his life had he been without his horror of flowers; never until now had he known why he hated them. Lately he had begun to wonder if they hated him.

It would be better when she came.

They were her flowers. Her flowers that took all her time; all her thoughts; all her caring and affection. Her flowers that grew all about her. Her flowers that held her away from him. He hated her flowers.

One. Two.

It would be quite all right when she was there.

Her flowers would not harm her.

And then he heard the soft, uneven rustling of her skirts.

He looked up to see her walking toward him down the long lane of her flowers. Through the drenching grayness he could see that she wore the same light dress that made her tall and clung to her in folds so that her figure seemed to bend. He could distinguish the heavy shadowy mass of her uncovered hair. Her eyes, set far apart and dark, fixed themselves on him. A quick light flooded into them. In the dusk he saw that her hands were clasped together and that they were filled with lilies.

"Throw them away," he said when she stood beside him.

"They're so pretty," she told him, staring down at the lilies. "You'll let me keep these; just this once?"

"Throw them away," he repeated. "I can't stand the sight of them. You know that. Why must you go on picking the things and picking them?"

She shrugged her shoulders. Her eyes left his face.

"I love them," she said simply.

"Love?" He laughed. "How can you love flowers?"

"Oh, but I can."

"Well, I can't!" He had been wanting her to know that for a long while.

"Why not?" She asked him.

He could not bring himself to tell her why not.

"Throw them away!"

She let the lilies sift through her fingers one by one. And then the last fell to the ground.

"Are you satisfied?"

"No," he said. "What good does it do, anyway? The next time it'll be the same again. It always is."

She reached out a hand and touched his arm.

"But I never know when you're coming. If I knew I wouldn't be picking flowers. I can't help having them in my hands when you come, if I don't know, can I?"

"It isn't that."

He covered her hand lying on his arm with his hand.

"What is it, then?"

She pulled her fingers from under his and drew away a bit.

He made up his mind to try and tell her.

"It's the flowers. I should have told you long ago. Even at the beginning when we first--When I first came here, I--"

She interrupted him.

"When was that? How long ago?"

"How can I tell? Ages ago."

"It does seem;" she said it slowly. "It does seem as if you had always come here. I can't remember the time when you didn't come. It's strange, isn't it? Because, you know, there was a time when you weren't here. That was when I began with the flowers."

"I wish you'd never begun," he muttered. "That's what I've got to say to you. I hate flowers. I've always hated them! I never quite knew why till I came here and found you loving them so much. You never think of anything, or talk of anything but your flowers. If you must know, that's why I hate them!"

"How silly of you!"

He thought she smiled.

"It's not," he said. "There's nothing silly about it. I'd like to have you think of other things. There're plenty of other things. I want you to think of them. I--want--"

He broke off abruptly.

"What do you want?"

"I--I--want--you--I can't say it!"

For a little while they were silent. It grew darker. The shadows that lay along the ground moved upward through the bushes of rhododendron. He watched the fantastic mesh of them shifting there. The gray of the crescent moon grew faintly yellow. His eyes roved over the shadow splashed reach of flowers. The heavy odor of them sickened him.

"If only you'd try to like them!" She said it wistfully.

"It's no use. I couldn't."

"If you worked among them the way I work, perhaps you could."

"I tell you I couldn't!"

"But they're so lovely." Her hand went out and touched a rose. "It's taken me years to perfect this one. You can't see in this light. But during the day--; why don't you ever come here during the day?"

"I don't know," he told her quite truthfully.

"During the day," she went on, "you ought to see it. It's yellow; almost gold. And its center--That's quite, quite pink with the very middle bit almost scarlet. I love this rose."

He thought then that he could smell the particular fragrance of the one rose permeating subtly through the odor of all those other flowers. She loved that yellow and gold and scarlet rose.

"Good heavens," he said, "do stop telling me how much you love your flowers!"

"If you were with them all the time--"

He did not let her finish.

"That's all you do, isn't it? Just care for your flowers all day long?"

"Why, yes." She was surprised. "Of course it's all I do. It's all I care about doing. It takes every minute of my time. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, I know it." His tone was gruff.

"Then why do you always talk about it like this?" She asked him. "I've done it for years. Ever since I can remember. It's hard work, but I like doing it. I don't think you know how alone I've always been. I'm afraid you don't realize that. Not really, anyway. I've just never had anything to care about until I started in with the flowers. I don't know if I ought to tell you--"

She stopped speaking quite suddenly.

"What?"

"I don't think you'd like to know what I was going to say."

"Tell me," he insisted.

"Well." She spoke slowly. "Sometimes I feel as though--It's so hard to say. But sometimes I feel as if the flowers know how much I care and--and as if they care too."

"Why d'you say that?"

"I don't quite know. Only they're living things; they are, aren't they?"

"I suppose they are; but that's no reason for you to encourage yourself in all those queer ideas about them."

"Queer ideas?"

"You know the sort of thing I mean."

"I don't. What sort?"

He thought then that her voice had a hurt sound drifting through it.

"Loving them. For one thing."

"But what can I do? What else have I to love? I've just told you how much alone I am. All the time, really. The flowers are the only things I have. I've just told you that."

He waited a second.

"You have me," he said.