The Good Comrade Part 15

This was the first time she had spoken even indirectly of her own future movements. "But, perhaps," he suggested, "if you stay, you may find a back way to your object after all."

She shook her head. "It is the back way I tried. No, there is no way; it is blocked. I know, because it is myself that blocks it."

"In that case," he said, "I'm afraid I must agree with you; there is no way; oneself is about the most insurmountable block of all. I might have known that you were hardly likely to make any mistake as to whether you were really beaten or not."

"I should not think it was a mistake you were likely to make either,"

she observed.

"You think not? Well, I had no chance this time; the fact has been made pretty obvious to me."

She did not say she was sorry; in her opinion it was an impertinence to offer condolence to failure. "I suppose," she said, after a pause, "there is not a back way--a door, or window, even, to your object?"

"Unfortunately, no. There are no windows at the back; and as to the door--like you, it was that which I tried, with the result that recently--yesterday, in fact--I was metaphorically shown out."

Julia had learnt enough by this time, though she had not been told for certain, that her first suspicions were right; to be sure, it was the explosive which took Rawson-Clew to the little village evening after evening. She had gathered as much from various things which had been said, though she did not know at all how he was trying to get it, nor in what way he had introduced himself to Herr Van de Greutz. Whatever method he had tried it was now clear he had failed; no doubt been found out, for the chemist, unlike Joost Van Heigen, was the very reverse of unsuspecting, and thoroughly on the look-out for other nations who wanted to share his discovery. For a moment Julia wished she had been in Rawson-Clew's place; of course she, too, might have failed--probably would; she had no reason to think she would succeed where he could not; but she certainly would not have failed in this for the reason she had failed with the blue daffodil. The attempt would have been so thoroughly well worth making; there would have been some sport in it, and a foe worthy of her steel. In spite of her desire for the simple life, she had too much real ability for this sort of intrigue, and too much past practice in subterfuge, not to experience lapses of inclination for it when she saw such work being done, and perhaps not done well. Of this, however, she naturally did not speak to Rawson-Clew; she rearranged her flowers in silence for a little while, at last she said--

"It is hateful to fail."

"It is ignominious, certainly; one does not wish to blazon it from the housetops; still, doubtless like your crochet work, it is good discipline."

"Maybe," Julia allowed, but without conviction. "Yours seems a simple failure, mine is a compound one. If it is ignominious, as you say, to fail, it would have been equally ignominious in another way if I had succeeded. I could not have been satisfied either way."

"That sounds very complicated," Rawson-Clew said; "but then, I imagine you are a complicated young person."

"And you are not."

"Not young, certainly," he said, lighting another cigarette.

"Nor complicated," she insisted; "you are built on straight lines; there are given things you can do and can't do, would do and would not do, and might do in an emergency. It is a fine kind of person to be, but it is not the kind which surprises itself."

Rawson-Clew blew a smoke-ring into the air; he was smiling a little.

"How old are you?" he said. "Twenty? Almost twenty-one, is it? And until you were sixteen you knocked about a bit? Sixteen is too young to come much across the natural man--not the artful dodging man, or the man of civilisation, but the natural, primitive man, own blood relation to Adam and the king of the Cannibal Islands. You may meet him by and by, and if you do he may surprise you; he is full of surprises--he rather surprises himself, that is, if his local habitat is ordinarily an educated, decent person."

"You have not got a natural man," Julia said shortly; she was annoyed, without quite knowing why, by his manner.

"Have I not? Quite likely; certainly, he has never bothered me, but I should not like to count on him. Since we have got to personalities, may I say that you have got a natural woman, and plenty of her; also a marked taste for the works of the machine, in preference to the face usually presented to the company?"

"The works are the only interesting part; I don't care for the drawing-room side of things; they are cultivated, but they are too much on the skin. I would much rather be a stoker, or an engineer, than sit on deck all day and talk about Florentine art, and the Handel Festival, and Egyptology, and the gospel of Tolstoy, and play cricket and quoits, and dance a little, and sing a little, and flirt a little, ever so nicely. Oh, there are lots of girls who can do all those things, and do them equally well; I know a few who can, well off, well-bred girls--you must know a great many. They are clever to begin with, and they are taught that way; it is a perfect treat to meet them and watch them, but I never want to imitate them, even if I could--and there is no danger of that. I would rather be in the engine-room, with my coat off, a bit greasy and very profane, and doing something. There would be more flesh and blood there, even if it were a bit grubby; I believe I'm more at home with people who can do--well, what's necessary, even if it is not exactly nice."

Rawson-Clew knew exactly the kind of woman she had described for the deck--he met them often; charming creatures, far as the poles asunder from the girl who spoke of them; he liked them--in moderation, and in their place, much as his forebears of fifty years ago had liked theirs, the delicate, sensitive creatures of that era. He had never regarded Julia in that light; he found her certainly more entertaining as a companion, though also very far short of the standard as a woman and an ornament.

"The people in the engine-room," he observed, "would certainly be more useful in an emergency; still, life is not made up entirely of emergencies."

"No," Julia answered; "and in between times such people are better not on show--I know that; that is why I do not care for the drawing-room side of things, I don't know enough to s.h.i.+ne in them."

"Do you think it is a matter of knowledge?" he asked, "or inclination?

If it comes to knowledge I should say you had a rather remarkable stock of an unusual sort, and at first hand. That may not be what is required for a complete drawing-room success, though I am not sure that it is not more interesting--say for an excursion--than a flitting glance at the subjects you mention, and about eighteen or twenty more that you did not."

Julia looked up, half pleased, doubtful as to whether or not to interpret this as a compliment; she never knew quite how much he meant of what he said; his manner was exactly the same, whether he was in fun or in earnest. But if she thought of asking him now she was prevented, for at that moment Mr. Gillat's watch slipped out of her belt into her lap, and she saw the time.

"How late is it!" she exclaimed. "We ought to have started half-an-hour ago; it will take me two hours, and more, to get home from here, even if I go by the tram in the town."

She rose as she spoke, and he rose more slowly.

"Shall I take your flowers for you?" he asked. "They seem rather inclined to tumble about; don't you think they would be safer in my pocket? As you say you are going to dry them, it won't matter crus.h.i.+ng them."

She gave them to him, and he put the sweet-smelling bunch into his pocket, then they started for the edge of the wood.

"It is much colder," Julia said; "and the sun is all gone; I suppose the clouds have been coming gradually, but I did not notice before. If it is going to rain, we shall get decidedly wet before we get back."

"I am afraid so," he agreed; "you have no coat."

She told him that did not matter, she did not mind getting wet, and she spoke with a cheerful buoyancy that carried conviction.

When they reached the outskirts of the wood, however, they saw there was not much chance of rain, but a much worse evil threatened. All the distance on the seaward side was blotted out, a fine white mist shut out the curving land in that direction. It was blowing up towards them, rolling down the little hills in billowy puffs, and lying filmy, yet dense, in the hollows, moved by a wind unfelt here.

"A sea fog," Julia said; "I wonder how far it is coming."

Rawson-Clew wondered too; he thought, as she did, that there was every chance of its coming far and fast, but it did not seem necessary to either of them to say anything so unpleasantly and obviously probable.

They set out homewards as fast as they could; it was a long way to the place where they had climbed up, unfortunately all across open country, entirely without roads or definite paths, and the drifting sea fog was coming up fast, bound, it would seem, the same way. Soon it was upon them; they felt its advance in the chill that, like cold fingers, laid hold on everything; it came quite silently up from behind, without noticeable wind, eerily creeping up and enfolding everything, putting a white winding-sheet not about the earth only, but the very air also. The cotton blouse that Julia wore became limp and wet as if it had been dipped in water; she could see the fog condensing in beads on her companion's coat almost like h.o.a.r frost; it lay on every low-growing rose bush and bramble that they stepped upon, a curious transformer of all near objects, a complete obliterator of all more distant ones.

They pushed on as quickly as might be, climbing little hills, descending into hollows; stumbling among rabbit holes, threading their way through thickets; apparently finding something amusing in the patriarchal colonies of rabbit burrows that tripped them up, and stopping to argue, though hardly in earnest, as to whether they had pa.s.sed that way or not, when some white-barked tree, or other landmark, loomed suddenly out of the thickening mist. Once it seemed the fog was going to lift; Julia thought she saw the outline of a distant hill, but either it was closed in again directly, or else she mistook a thicker fold of cloud for a more solid object, for it was lost almost before she pointed it out.

For something over two hours they walked and stumbled, and went up small ascents and came down small declines; then suddenly they came upon the white-barked tree again. It was the same one that they had seen more than an hour and a half ago; Rawson-Clew recognised it by a peculiar warty growth where the branches forked; they had now approached it from the other side, but clearly it was the same one, and they had come round in a circle.

He stopped and pointed it out to her. "I am afraid," he said, "we had better do what is recommended when the clouds come down on the mountains."

"And that is?" Julia asked.

"Sit down and wait till they s.h.i.+ft."

She could not but see the advisability of this, also she was very tired, the going for these two hours had not been easy, and it had come at the end of a long day. She would not admit, even to herself, that she was tired, but she was, so she agreed to the waiting; after all, it was impossible to pretend longer that they were going to get home easily, and were not really hopelessly astray.

"We will go a little way in among the trees," Rawson-Clew said; "it is more sheltered, and we shall be able to find the way quite as easily from one place as another when the fog lifts."

They found as sheltered a spot as they could, and sat down under a big tree; as they did so his hand came in contact with Julia's wet sleeve and cold arm. "How cold you are!" he said. "You have nothing on."

"Oh, yes, I have," she a.s.sured him. "I did not avail myself of your permission this morning."

He took off his coat and put it round her.

But she threw it off again. "That won't do at all," she said; "now you have nothing on, and that is much more improper; women may sit in their s.h.i.+rt sleeves, men may not."

"Don't be absurd!" he said authoritatively; "you are to keep that on,"

and he wrapped it about her with a decision that brought home to her her youth and smallness.