The Destroying Angel

BLIGHT

By the time he got back to the farm-house, the woman was up, dressed in the rent and stained but dry remnants of her own clothing (for all their defects, infinitely more becoming than the garments to which she had been obliged to resort the previous day) and busy preparing breakfast.

There was no question but that her rest had been sound and undisturbed. If her recuperative powers had won his envy before, now she was wholly marvellous in his eyes. Her radiant freshness dazzled, her elusive but absolute quality of charm bewitched – and her high spirits dismayed him. He entered her presence reluctantly, yielding alone to the spur of necessity. To keep out of her way was not only an impossibility, but would have served to rouse her suspicions; and she must not know: however difficult the task, he must dissemble, keep her in ignorance of his discovery. On that point he was resolved.

"Well, sir!" she called heartily over her shoulder. "And where, pray, have you been all this long time?"

"I went for a swim," he said evasively – "thought it might do me good."

"You're not feeling well?" She turned to look him over.

He avoided her eye. "I had a bad night – probably because I had too much sleep during the day. I got up feeling pretty rusty – the weight of my years. Cold water's ordinarily a specific for that sort of thing, but it didn't seem to work this time."

"Still got the hump, eh?"

"Still got the hump," he assented, glad thus to mask his unhappiness.

"Breakfast and a strong cup of tea or two will fix that," she announced with confidence. "It's too bad there's no coffee."

"Yes," he said – "sorry!"

"No signs of a response to our C. Q. D.?"

"None as yet. Of course, it's early."

He lounged out of the kitchen with a tin bowl, a towel and a bar of yellow soap, and splashed conscientiously at the pump in the dooryard, taking more time for the job than was really necessary.

From her place by the stove, she watched him through a window, her eyes like a sunlit sea dappled with shadows of clouds speeding before the wind.

He lingered outside until she called him to breakfast.

His stout attempts to match her cheerfulness during the meal fell dismally short of conviction. After two or three false starts he gave it up and took refuge in his plea of indisposition. She humoured him with a covert understanding that surmised more in a second than he could have compressed into a ten-minute confession.

The meal over, he rose and sidled awkwardly toward the door.

"You'll be busy for a while with the dishes and things, won't you?" he asked with an air meant to seem guileless.

"Oh, yes; for some time," she replied quickly.

"I – I think I'll take a stroll round the island. There might be something like a boat hidden away somewhere along the beach."

"You prefer to go alone?"

"If you don't mind."

"Not in the least. I've plenty to occupy my idle hands. If I can find needle and thread, for instance…" She indicated her clothing with a humorously rueful gesture.

"To be sure," he agreed, far too visibly relieved. Then his wits stumbled. "I want to think out some things," he added most superfluously.

"You won't go out of sight?" she pleaded through the window.

"It can't be done," he called back, strolling out of the dooryard with much show of idle indecision.

His real purpose was, in fact, definite. There was another body to be accounted for. It was quite possible that the sea might have given it up at some other point along the island coast. True: there was no second gathering of gulls to lend colour to this grisly theory; yet the danger was one to be provided against, since she was not to know.

Starting from its northwestern extreme, he made a complete circuit of the island, spending the greater part of the time along the edges of the western and southern bluffs, where he had not seldom to pause and scrutinize carefully the beach below, to make sure he had been deceived by some half-buried rock or curiously shaped boulder.

To his intense relief, he made no further discovery other than a scattering drift of wreckage from the motor-boats.

By the time he had finished, the morning was well advanced. He turned at length and trudged wearily up from the northern beach, through the community of desolation, back toward the farm-house.

Since breakfast he had seen nothing of the girl; none of the elaborately casual glances which he had from time to time cast inland had discovered any sign of her. But now she appeared in the doorway, and after a slight pause, as of indecision, moved down the path to meet him.

He was conscious that, at sight of her, his pulses quickened. Something swelled in his breast, something tightened the muscles of his throat. The way of her body in action, the way of the sun with her hair…!

Dismay shook him like an ague; he felt his heart divided against itself; he was so glad of her, and so afraid… He could not keep his eyes from her, nor could he make his desire be still; and yet … and yet…

Walking the faster of the two, she met him midway between the house and the beach.

"You've taken your time, Mr. Whitaker," said she.

"It was a bit of a walk," he contended, endeavouring to imitate her lightness of manner.

They paused beside one of the low stone walls that meandered in a meaningless fashion this way and that over the uplands. With a satisfied manner that suggested she had been seeking just that very spot, the girl sat down upon the lichened stones, then looked up to him with a smile and a slight movement of the head that plainly invited him to a place beside her.

He towered above her, darkly reluctant.

"Do sit down. You must be tired."

"I am."

Dubiously he seated himself at a little distance.

"And only your pains for your trouble?"

He nodded.

"I watched you, off and on, from the windows. You might have been looking for a pin, from your painstaking air, off there along the cliffs."

He nodded again, gloomily. Her comment seemed to admit of no more compromising method of reply.

"Then you've nothing to tell me?"

He pursed his lips, depreciatory, lifted his shoulders not quite happily, and swung one lanky leg across the other as he slouched, morosely eyeing the sheets of sapphire that made their prison walls.

"No. There's no good news yet."

"And you've no inclination to talk to me, either?"