The Golden Web Part 10

Once more he was alone. More impossible, even, than the grim monotony of the days in town seemed the thought of that prim country house, with its well-ordered days, its fas.h.i.+onable, easy-going crowd of people. He suddenly lost heart as he thought of Lady Olive and the prosecution of his well-ordered courts.h.i.+p. These things for the moment he felt were impossible. He wrote out a telegram and sent for a Bradshaw. The next day he disappeared from London.

CHAPTER XII

RUBY SINCLAIR

Twenty-four hours later, Deane walked upon a wilderness of marshy sands, glittering here and there with the stain of the sea, blue in places with the delicate flush of sea lavender. In the background, a village of red-tiled roofs. Before him, an empty sea. Behind and around, nothing but this stretch of bare, flat country, empty even of the sea until the tide should come and thrust its long arms of glittering silver up into the heart of the land. A few wandering gulls screamed overhead. From inland, a great silence. Here, too, the sea, flowing in upon the level sands, was quiet and noiseless. Deane felt every nerve of his body at rest. He realized to the full the marvelous joy of solitude. All the strain of those last few days seemed to have fallen away. He looked back upon that pa.s.sionate chapter of his life as a stranger might look back upon recorded happenings. The tragedy of Basil Rowan, condemned to death amid the awful silence of that spell-bound court, sitting now in his cell with his head turned toward the door, pa.s.sing through long hours of torture waiting for the reprieve which might never come, appealed to him now only as it might appeal to a million others who read the newspapers.

He was almost able to forget that it was he in a measure who was responsible for that episode. He was able, even, to forget the tragical side of Winifred Rowan's visits,--to remember only her gentle, appealing ways, her pa.s.sionate pleading, her grat.i.tude, tempered still with anxiety, which had triumphed at their last interview over the repugnance which she had at first plainly shown towards him. All these doings and happenings were of another world. Here, trouble and anxiety were like the noxious playthings of a race of children. The sea that rippled in so softly on to the firm sands remained untroubled. The seagulls wheeling above his head in lazy content filled the air with their soothing cries.

Everywhere the suns.h.i.+ne lay about the sea-stained places. The green marshes sparkled like emeralds. The wet seaweed, lying about in little heaps, seemed struggling to express new subtleties of color. Down one of the reaches came a brown-sailed fis.h.i.+ng-boat, steered by a man who lay at full length upon the deck, his head upon a coil of rope, one hand only grasping the tiller. A few cows were standing about in the drier part of the marshes, swinging their tails, and moving slowly from one to another of the little plots of herbage. The very smoke from those red-tiled cottages went straight to Heaven, unruffled by even the faintest of breezes. To Deane it seemed that he had found an idyll of still life, and with a strong instinct of relief, he felt the desire for sleep, so long denied him, creeping over his hot eyes. The drowsiness of the place numbed his senses. The pain ceased. He was content to forget.

He threw himself upon the sands, with his back to a sandy knoll covered with weedy green gra.s.s, and with the murmur of the sea in his ears, he slept.

Deane was awakened by a light touch upon his arm. He sat up, and was aware of a girl bending over him.

"I am sorry to disturb you," she said, "but if you sit there for another five minutes, you will be very wet."

The tide was already within a few feet of them. Deane realized the position and struggled to his feet. "It was very kind of you to wake me," he said. "I have come down here for a rest, and I suppose I was entering into the programme a little too thoroughly. After London, the sea air is just a little strong."

She looked at him with interest, and he returned the gaze. She was tall--almost as tall as he was himself--slim, with dark eyes, heavy eyebrows, and complexion burnt brown by exposure to all sorts of weathers. She wore plain tweed clothes, in the cut of which his critical eye quickly detected the village tailor. Yet there was something about her appearance which seemed to remove her definitely from behind the pale of rusticity. Her eyes were long, and a little narrow, her eyelids heavy, her mouth had a discontented turn at the corners, her whole expression was a trifle sullen. He was not in the least prepared for the change in her face when her forehead suddenly relaxed, the corners of her mouth softened, and her lips parted in a dazzling smile.

"You are a Londoner?" she asked simply.

"Very much so, I am afraid."

"Afraid?" she repeated incredulously.

"Why not?" he asked. "I am one of the slaves of the world, a man who sits in his office and toils, year in and year out. We're caught in the Golden Web, you see. The time comes," he continued, "when we find our way into a little corner of the earth like this, and one realizes the gigantic folly of it."

"Your point of view is interesting but unconvincing," she said.

"Why unconvincing?"

"Have you ever thought of the matter from the other point of view?" she asked,--"thought about those poor people, for instance, who have to live in a corner of the world like this, always? All these things, which rest and soothe you here, are beautiful by sheer force of contrast. For a few days--a week or so, perhaps--the contemplation of them would be restful.

You would lie about on the sands and in the suns.h.i.+ne and believe that you had found Paradise. And then I think that you would begin to get just a little discontented. The sun doesn't always s.h.i.+ne here, you know, and when the sun doesn't s.h.i.+ne, all the land is colorless. The sea is gray and ugly, the marshes are flat and dreary, the wind, even in the summer time, is cold."

He looked at her with interest. She had turned inland, walking very slowly, and he somehow or other found himself by her side, her self-invited companion.

"That is rather a pathetic picture," he said. "Anyhow, the solitude remains, and when one has lived with the roar in one's brain, year in and year out, the solitude itself is marvelous."

"And when one has lived," she said, "with the solitude always on one's nerves, lying about one's senses, as though one were the only live thing in a dead and forgotten world, don't you think that one may long for the roar, even as you have come here longing for the solitude?"

"We apparently represent the opposite poles," he remarked lightly. "Tell me, do you live here? I presume, from the feeling with which you speak, that you are a native."

"I have lived here for nine years," she answered. "I live in a small house, which you can see just behind the village there. It is very tiny, but very pretty to look at. I have lived there with an aunt who was a farmer's daughter, and is very domestic, and an uncle who was invalided early in life from the Indian Civil Service, and who has done nothing but play golf and fish and study his const.i.tution for the last fifteen years."

"You don't travel much, then?"

"I have not been out of this county," she answered, "since I first set foot in it, nine years ago. I had almost given up all hope of ever leaving it, until," she added, with a little sigh of content, "a few weeks ago."

He nodded sympathetically. "You are going to travel at last, then?" he asked.

"I hope so," she said. "I have an uncle come home from abroad, who, I believe, is very rich. He wrote to me the day he landed, saying that he was going to send for me to pay him a visit. I am expecting to hear from him now any day."

"He is in London?"

"In London!" with a little sigh. "Fancy," she went on, turning towards him, "I have never been in London! Just say that to yourself, and imagine what it means. The biggest town I have ever seen is King's Lynn.

Have you ever been to King's Lynn?"

He shook his head. "I am afraid not."

"Then you can't understand," she said,--"I couldn't make you understand--what it means to me to think that very soon I shall have a glimpse, at any rate, into the world. If I had met you three weeks ago, probably I shouldn't have dreamed of waking you up. I should have let you get wet and then laughed at you. If you had ventured to speak to me, I should probably have stuck my nose in the air and walked away. You see how mellowing an influence even the possibility of escape is."

"What a disagreeable young person you must have been!" he remarked.

She nodded. They were walking side by side now on the top of a tall d.y.k.e. On their left-hand side was the creek which flowed into the village from the sea.

"That is precisely my reputation," she declared. "My aunt detests me. My uncle is always irritable because I can beat him at golf. He is out playing over there now," she remarked, with a wave of her hand toward the furthest stretch of the marshes. "Do you play golf?"

Deane admitted that he did not.

"You came here, then, only to rest?" she said.

"Only to rest," he answered.

"Where are you staying?"

He turned around and pointed to the square stone tower which stood on the edge of the sea. "I am stopping there," he answered,--"the old Coastguard's Tower they call it, I believe. It is the queerest habitation I have ever been in."

"You wonderful person!" she declared. "How ever did you get old Pegg and his wife to clear out?"

"I paid them well," he answered. "At least I didn't do it myself. My servant comes from these parts, and he told me about the place and arranged everything. I am hoping to be able to buy it."

There was, as he had remarked from the first, not the slightest reticence about her. She had almost the frankness of a child.

"You have a servant?" she asked, looking at him with renewed interest.

"Do you mean that he is there with you now?"

Deane nodded. "I could scarcely be expected to cook for myself, could I?" he inquired. "He completes my establishment."

"I suppose," she said, "you are a rich man."

Deane shrugged his shoulders. "Wealth," he remarked, "is a relative thing."

"Oh! I don't understand those fine sayings!" she declared, a little impetuously. "I only know that to have money is grand, is wonderful. I would give anything in the world to be rich, to have money to spend as I wanted to spend it, and clothes, and jewels, and all the delightful little things of life, to go where I wanted, live as I wished, buy the things I wanted to buy. There's something hideous about being a pauper."