The Destroying Angel Part 34

"Please don't speak of it--I mean, consider it that way," he stammered.

"What I want to know is, where are we?"

Her reply was more distant. "On an island, somewhere. It's uninhabited, I think."

He could only echo in bewilderment: "An island...! Uninhabited...!"

Dismay a.s.sailed him. He got up, after a little struggle overcoming the resistance of stiff and sore limbs, and stood with a hand on the coaming of the dismantled cat-boat, raking the island with an incredulous stare.

"But those houses--?"

"There's no one in any of them, that I could find." She stirred from her place and offered him a hand. "Please help me up."

He turned eagerly, with a feeling of chagrin that she had needed to ask him. For an instant he had both her hands, warm and womanly, in his grasp, while she rose by his aid, and for an instant longer--possibly by way of reward. Then she disengaged them with gentle firmness.

She stood beside him so tall and fair, so serenely invested with the flawless dignity of her womanhood that he no longer thought of the incongruity of her grotesque garb.

"You've been up there?" he asked, far too keenly interested to scorn the self-evident.

She gave a comprehensive gesture, embracing the visible prospect. "All over.... When I woke, I thought surely ... I went to see, found nothing living except the sheep and some chickens and turkeys in the farmyard.

Those nearer buildings--nothing there except desolation, ruin, and the smell of last year's fish. I think fishermen camp out here at times. And the farm-house--apparently it's ordinarily inhabited. Evidently the people have gone away for a visit somewhere. It gives the impression of being a home the year round. There isn't any boat--"

"No boat!"

"Not a sign of one, that I can find--except this wreck." She indicated the cat-boat.

"But we can't do anything with this," he expostulated.

The deep, wide break in its side placed it beyond consideration, even if it should prove possible to remedy its many other lacks.

"No. The people who live here must have a boat--I saw a mooring-buoy out there"--with a gesture toward the water. "Of course. How else could they get away?"

"The question is, how we are to get away," he grumbled, morose.

"You'll find the way," she told him with quiet confidence.

"I! I'll find the way? How?"

"I don't know--only you must. There must be some way of signalling the mainland, some means of communication. Surely people wouldn't live here, cut off from all the World.... Perhaps we'll find something in the farm-house to tell us what to do. I didn't have much time to look round.

I wanted clothing, mostly--and found these awful things hanging behind the kitchen door. And then I wanted something to eat, and I found that--some bread, not too stale, and plenty of eggs in the hen-house....

And you--you must be famished!"

The reminder had an effect singularly distressing. Till then he had been much too thunderstruck by comprehension of their anomalous plight to think of himself. Now suddenly he was stabbed through and through with pangs of desperate hunger. He turned a little faint, was seized with a slight sensation of giddiness, at the thought of food, so that he was glad of the cat-boat for support.

"Oh, you are!" Compa.s.sion thrilled her tone. "I'm so sorry. Forgive me for not thinking of it at once. Come--if you can walk." She caught his hand as if to help him onward. "It's not far, and I can fix you something quickly. Do come."

"Oh, surely," he a.s.sented, recovering. "I am half starving--and then some. Only I didn't know it until you mentioned the fact."

The girl relinquished his hand, but they were almost shoulder to shoulder as they plodded through the dry, yielding sand toward firmer ground.

"We can build a fire and have something hot," she said; "there's plenty of fuel."

"But--what did you do?"

"I--oh, I took my eggs _au naturel_--barring some salt and pepper. I was in too much of a hurry to bother with a stove--"

"Why in a hurry?"

She made no answer for an instant. He turned to look at her, wondering.

To his unutterable astonishment she not only failed to meet his glance, but tried to seem unconscious of it.

The admirable ease and gracious self-possession which he had learned to a.s.sociate with her personality as inalienable traits were altogether gone, just then--obliterated by a singular, exotic att.i.tude of constraint and diffidence, of self-consciousness. She seemed almost to shrink from his regard, and held her face a little averted from him, the full lips tense, lashes low and trembling upon her cheeks.

"I was ... afraid to leave you," she said in a faltering voice, under the spell of this extraordinary mood. "I was afraid something might happen to you, if I were long away."

"But what _could_ happen to me, here--on this uninhabited island?"

"I don't know.... It was silly of me, of course." With an evident exertion of will power she threw off this perplexing mood of shyness, and became more like herself, as he knew her. "Really, I presume, it was mostly that I was afraid for myself--frightened of the loneliness, fearful lest it be made more lonely for me by some accident--"

"Of course," he a.s.sented, puzzled beyond expression, cudgelling his wits for some solution of a riddle sealed to his masculine obtuseness.

What could have happened to influence her so strangely? Could he have said or done--anything--?

The problem held him in abstraction throughout the greater part of their walk to the farm-house, though he heard and with ostensible intelligence responded to her running accompaniment of comment and suggestion....

They threaded the cl.u.s.ter of buildings that, their usefulness outlived, still enc.u.mbered the bluff bordering upon the beach. The most careless and superficial glance bore out the impression conveyed by the girl's description of the spot. Doorless doorways and windows with shattered sashes disclosed glimpses of interiors fallen into a state of ruin defying renovation. What remained intact of walls and roofs were mere sh.e.l.ls half filled with an agglomeration of worthlessness--mounds of crumbled, mouldering plaster, shards, rust-eaten tins, broken bottles, shreds of what had once been garments: the whole perhaps threatened by the overhanging skeleton of a crazy staircase.... An evil, disturbing spot, exhaling an atmosphere more melancholy and disheartening than that of a rain-sodden November woodland: a haunted place, where the hand of Time had wrought devastation with the wanton efficacy of a destructive child: a good place to pa.s.s through quickly and ever thereafter to avoid.

In relief against it the uplands seemed the brighter, stretching away in the soft golden light of the descending sun. The wind sang over them a boisterous song of strength and the sweep of open s.p.a.ces. The air was damp and soft and sweet with the scent of heather. Straggling sheep suspended for a moment their meditative cropping and lifted their heads to watch the strangers with timorous, stupid eyes. A flock of young turkeys fled in discordant agitation from their path.

Halfway up to the farm-house a memory shot through Whitaker's mind as startling as lightning streaking athwart a peaceful evening sky. He stopped with an exclamation that brought the girl beside him to a standstill with questioning eyes.

"But the others--!" he stammered.

"The others?" she repeated blankly.

"They--the men who brought you here--?"

Her lips tightened. She moved her head in slow negation.

"I have seen nothing of either of them."

Horror and pity filled him, conjuring up a vision of wild, raving waters, mad with blood-l.u.s.t, and in their jaws, arms and heads helplessly whirling and tossing.

"Poor devils!" he muttered.

She said nothing. When he looked for sympathy in her face, he found it set and inscrutable.

He delayed another moment, thinking that soon she must speak, offer him some sort of explanation. But she remained uncommunicative. And he could not bring himself to seem anxious to pry into her affairs.

He took a tentative step onward. She responded instantly to the suggestion, but in silence.