The Destroying Angel

Grinning with amused toleration of his own perverse sophistry, he turned over on his side and struck out in the wake of the motor-boat. He had over a mile to go; but such a distance was nothing dismaying to a swimmer of Whitaker's quality, who had all his life been on very friendly terms with the sea.

No one held a watch on him; but when at length he waded ashore he was complacent in the knowledge that he had made very good time.

He found the motor-boat moored in shallow water at the end of a long and substantial dock. The name displayed in letters of brass on its stern was, frankly, Trouble. He paused waist-deep to lean over the side and inspect the cockpit; the survey drew from him an expression of approval. The boat seemed to be handsomely appointed, and the motor exposed by the open hatch of the engine pit was of a make synonymous with speed and reliability. He patted the flanks of the vessel as he waded on.

"Good little boat!" said he.

A weather-beaten sign-board on the dock advertised a surf-bathing station. Ashore a plank walk crossed first a breadth of sedge marsh and then penetrated a tumbled waste of dunes. Where the summits of the latter met the sky, there were visible a series of angular and unlovely wooden edifices.

Whitaker climbed up on the walk and made seawards. He saw nothing of the lady of the motor-boat.

In fact, for some time he saw nothing in human guise; from other indications he was inclined to conclude that the bathing station was either closed for the season or else had been permanently abandoned within a year or so. There was a notable absence of rowboats and sailing craft about the dock, with, as he drew nearer to the shuttered and desolate cluster of bath-houses, an equally remarkable lack of garments and towels hanging out to dry.

Walking rapidly, he wasn't long in covering the distance from shore to shore. Very soon he stood at the head of a rude flight of wooden steps which ran down from the top of a wave-eaten sand bluff, some ten or twelve feet in height, to the broad and gently shelving ocean beach. Whipping in from the sea, a brisk breeze, from which the dunes had heretofore sheltered him, now cooled his dripping bathing-suit not altogether pleasantly. But he didn't mind. The sight of the surf compensated.

He had long since been aware of its resonant diapason, betokening a heavy sea; but the spectacle of it was one ever beautiful in his sight. Whitecaps broke the lustrous blue, clear to its serrated horizon. Inshore the tide was low; the broad and glistening expanse of naked wet sand mirrored the tender blueness of the skies far out to where the breakers weltered in confusion of sapphire, emerald and snow. A mile offshore a fishing smack with a close-reefed, purple patch of sail was making heavy weather of it; miles beyond it, again, an inward-bound ocean steamship shouldered along contemptuously; and a little way eastwards a multitude of gulls with flashing pinions were wheeling and darting and screaming above something in the sea – presumably a school of fish.

Midway between the sand bluff and the breaking waters stood the woman Whitaker had followed. (There wasn't any use mincing terms: he had followed her in his confounded, fatuous curiosity!) Her face was to the sea, her hands clasped behind her. Now the wind modelled her cloak sweetly to her body, now whipped its skirts away, disclosing legs straight and slender and graciously modelled. She was dressed, it seemed, for bathing; she had crossed the bay for a lonely bout with the surf, and having found it dangerously heavy, now lingered, disappointed but fascinated by the majestic beauty of its fury.

Whitaker turned to go, his inquisitiveness appeased; but he was aware of an annoying sense of shame, which he considered rather low on the part of his conscience. True, he had followed her; true, he had watched her at a moment when she had every reason to believe herself alone with the sky, the sand, the sea and the squabbling gulls. But – the beach was free to all; there was no harm done; he hadn't really meant to spy upon her, and he had not the slightest intention of forcing himself upon her consciousness.

Intentions, however, are one thing; accidents, another entirely. History is mainly fashioned of intentions that have met with accidents.

Whitaker turned to go, and turning let his gaze sweep up from the beach and along the brow of the bluff. He paused, frowning. Some twenty feet or so distant the legs of a man, trousered and booted, protruded from a hollow between two hummocks of sand. And the toes of the boots were digging into the sand, indicating that the man was lying prone; and that meant (if he were neither dead nor sleeping) that he was watching the woman on the beach.

Indignation, righteous indignation, warmed Whitaker's bosom. It was all very well for him to catch sight of the woman through her cottage window, by night, and to swim over to the beach in her wake the next morning, but what right had anybody else to constitute himself her shadow?.. All this on the mute evidence of the boots and trousers: Whitaker to his knowledge had never seen them before, but he had so little doubt they belonged to the other watcher by the window last night that he readily persuaded himself that this must be so.

Besides, it was possible that the man was Drummond.

Anyway, nobody was licensed to skulk among sand-dunes and spy upon unescorted females!

Instantly Whitaker resolved himself into a select joint committee for the Promulgation of the Principles of Modern Chivalry and the Elucidation of the Truth.

He strode forward and stood over the man, looking down at his back. It was true, as he had assumed: the fellow was watching the woman. Chin in hands, elbows half-buried in sand, he seemed to be following her with an undeviating regard. And his back was very like Drummond's; at least, in height and general proportion his figure resembled Drummond's closely enough to leave Whitaker without any deterring doubt.

A little quiver of excitement mingled with anticipative satisfaction ran through him. Now, at last, the mystery was to be cleared up, his future relations with the pseudo suicide defined and established.

Deliberately he extended his bare foot and nudged the man's ribs.

"Drummond…" he said in a clear voice, decided but unaggressive.

With an oath and what seemed a single, quick motion, the man jumped to his feet and turned to Whitaker a startled and inflamed countenance.

"What the devil!" he cried angrily. "Who are you? What do you want? What d'you mean by coming round here and calling me Drummond?"

He was no more Drummond than he was Whitaker himself.

Whitaker retreated a step, nonplussed. "I beg pardon," he stammered civilly, in his confusion; "I took you for a fr – a man I know."

"Well, I ain't, see!" For a moment the man glowered at Whitaker, his features twitching. Apparently the shock of surprise had temporarily dislocated his sense of proportion. Rage blazed from his bloodshot, sunken eyes, and rage was eloquent in the set of his rusty, square-hewn chin and the working of his heavy and begrimed hands.

"Damn you!" he exploded suddenly. "What d'you mean by butting in – "

"For that matter" – something clicked in Whitaker's brain and subconsciously he knew that his temper was about to take the bridge – "what the devil do you mean by spying on that lady yonder?"

It being indisputably none of his concern, the unfairness of the question only lent it offensive force. It was quite evidently more than the man could or would bear from any officious stranger. He made this painfully clear through the medium of an intolerable epithet and an attempt to land his right fist on Whitaker's face.

The face, however, was elsewhere when the fist reached the point for which it had been aimed; and Whitaker closed in promptly as the fellow's body followed his arm, thrown off balance by the momentum of the unobstructed blow. Thoroughly angered, he had now every intention of administering a sound and salutary lesson.

In pursuance with this design, he grappled and put forth his strength to throw the man.

What followed had entered into the calculations of neither. Whitaker felt himself suddenly falling through air thick with a blinding, choking cloud of dust and sand. The body of the other was simultaneously wrenched violently from his grasp. Then he brought up against solidity with a bump that seemed to expel every cubic inch of air from his lungs. And he heard himself cry out sharply with the pain of his weak ankle newly twisted…

He sat up, gasping for breath, brushed the sand from his face and eyes, and as soon as his whirling wits settled a little, comprehended what had happened.

Half buried in the débris of a miniature landslide, he sat at the foot of the bluff, which reared its convex face behind and over him. Immediately above his head a ragged break in its profile showed where the sand, held together solely by beach grass, had given way beneath the weight of the antagonists.

A little distance from him the other man was picking himself up, apparently unhurt but completely surfeited. Without delay, with not even so much as a glance at Whitaker, he staggered off for a few paces, then settled into a heavy, lumbering trot westward along the beach.

This conduct was so inconsistent with his late belligerent humour that Whitaker felt inclined to rub his eyes a second time. He had anticipated – as soon as in condition to reason at all – nothing less than an immediate resumption of hostilities. Yet here was the fellow running away. Incomprehensible!

And yet, save at the first blush, not so incomprehensible: the chief of the man's desire had been unquestionably to see without being seen; his rage at being detected had led him to a misstep; now he was reverting to his original plan with all possible expedition. He did not wish the woman to recognize him; therefore he was putting himself out of her way. For she was approaching.

When Whitaker caught sight of her, she was already close at hand. She had been running. Now as their glances met, hers keenly inquiring of Whitaker's still bewildered eyes, she pulled up abruptly and stood astare. He saw, or fancied, something closely akin to fright and consternation in her look. The flush in her cheeks gave way to a swift pallor. The hands trembled that drew her beach-cloak close about her. She seemed to make an ineffectual effort to speak.

On his part, Whitaker tried to get up. A keen twinge in his ankle, however, wrung an involuntary grunt from him, and with a wry grimace he sank back.

"Oh!" cried the woman, impulsively. "You're hurt!" She advanced a pace, solicitous and sympathetic.

"Oh, not much," Whitaker replied in a tone more of hope than of assurance. He felt tenderly of the injured member. "Only my ankle – twisted it a few days ago, and now again. It'll be all right in a moment or two."

Her gaze travelled from him to the edge of the bluff.

"I didn't see – I mean, I heard something, and turned, and saw you trying to sit up and the other man rising."

"Sorry we startled you," Whitaker mumbled, wondering how the deuce he was going to get home. His examination of the ankle hadn't proved greatly encouraging.

"But I – ah – how did it happen?"

"A mere misunderstanding," he said lightly. "I mistook the gentleman for some one I knew. He resented it, so we started to scrap like a couple of schoolboys. Then … I wish to Heaven it had been his leg instead of mine!"

"But still I hardly understand…"

She was now more composed. The colour had returned to her face. She stood with head inclined a trifle forward, gaze intent beneath delicate brows; most distractingly pretty, he thought, in spite of the ankle – which really didn't hurt much unless moved.

"Well, you see, I – ah – I'm visiting Ember – the cottage next to yours, I believe. That is, if I'm not mistaken, you have the Fiske place?"

She nodded.