Section 3
I sought them in vain the next morning, but after midday I came in
quick succession on a perplexing multitude of clues. After failing
to find any young couple that corresponded to young Verrall
and Nettie, I presently discovered an unsatisfactory quartette of
couples.
Any of these four couples might have been the one I sought; with
regard to none of them was there conviction. They had all arrived
either on Wednesday or Thursday. Two couples were still in occupation
of their rooms, but neither of these were at home. Late in the
afternoon I reduced my list by eliminating a young man in drab, with
side whiskers and long cuffs, accompanied by a lady, of thirty or
more, of consciously ladylike type. I was disgusted at the sight
of them; the other two young people had gone for a long walk, and
though I watched their boarding-house until the fiery cloud shone
out above, sharing and mingling in an unusually splendid sunset,
I missed them. Then I discovered them dining at a separate table
in the bow window, with red-shaded candles between them, peering
out ever and again at this splendor that was neither night nor day.
The girl in her pink evening dress looked very light and pretty
to me--pretty enough to enrage me,--she had well shaped arms and
white, well-modeled shoulders, and the turn of her cheek and the
fair hair about her ears was full of subtle delights; but she was
not Nettie, and the happy man with her was that odd degenerate type
our old aristocracy produced with such odd frequency, chinless,
large bony nose, small fair head, languid expression, and a neck
that had demanded and received a veritable sleeve of collar. I
stood outside in the meteor's livid light, hating them and cursing
them for having delayed me so long. I stood until it was evident
they remarked me, a black shape of envy, silhouetted against the
glare.
That finished Shaphambury. The question I now had to debate was
which of the remaining couples I had to pursue.
I walked back to the parade trying to reason my next step out, and
muttering to myself, because there was something in that luminous
wonderfulness that touched one's brain, and made one feel a little
light-headed.
One couple had gone to London; the other had gone to the Bungalow
village at Bone Cliff. Where, I wondered, was Bone Cliff?
I came upon my wooden-legged man at the top of his steps.
"Hullo," said I.
He pointed seaward with his pipe, his silver ring shone in the sky
light.
"Rum," he said.
"What is?" I asked.
"Search-lights! Smoke! Ships going north! If it wasn't for this
blasted Milky Way gone green up there, we might see."
He was too intent to heed my questions for a time. Then he vouchsafed
over his shoulder--
"Know Bungalow village?--rather. Artis' and such. Nice goings on!
Mixed bathing--something scandalous. Yes."
"But where is it?" I said, suddenly exasperated.
"There!" he said. "What's that flicker? A gunflash--or I'm a lost
soul!"
"You'd hear," I said, "long before it was near enough to see a
flash."
He didn't answer. Only by making it clear I would distract him until
he told me what I wanted to know could I get him to turn from his
absorbed contemplation of that phantom dance between the sea rim and
the shine. Indeed I gripped his arm and shook him. Then he turned
upon me cursing.
"Seven miles," he said, "along this road. And now go to 'ell with
yer!"
I answered with some foul insult by way of thanks, and so we parted,
and I set off towards the bungalow village.
I found a policeman, standing star-gazing, a little way beyond the
end of the parade, and verified the wooden-legged man's directions.
"It's a lonely road, you know," he called after me. . . .
I had an odd intuition that now at last I was on the right track.
I left the dark masses of Shaphambury behind me, and pushed out
into the dim pallor of that night, with the quiet assurance of a
traveler who nears his end.
The incidents of that long tramp I do not recall in any orderly
succession, the one progressive thing is my memory of a growing
fatigue. The sea was for the most part smooth and shining like a
mirror, a great expanse of reflecting silver, barred by slow broad
undulations, but at one time a little breeze breathed like a faint
sigh and ruffled their long bodies into faint scaly ripples that
never completely died out again. The way was sometimes sandy, thick
with silvery colorless sand, and sometimes chalky and lumpy, with
lumps that had shining facets; a black scrub was scattered, sometimes
in thickets, sometimes in single bunches, among the somnolent
hummocks of sand. At one place came grass, and ghostly great sheep
looming up among the gray. After a time black pinewoods intervened,
and made sustained darknesses along the road, woods that frayed
out at the edges to weirdly warped and stunted trees. Then isolated
pine witches would appear, and make their rigid gestures at me as
I passed. Grotesquely incongruous amidst these forms, I presently
came on estate boards, appealing, "Houses can be built to suit
purchaser," to the silence, to the shadows, and the glare.
Once I remember the persistent barking of a dog from somewhere inland
of me, and several times I took out and examined my revolver very
carefully. I must, of course, have been full of my intention when
I did that, I must have been thinking of Nettie and revenge, but
I cannot now recall those emotions at all. Only I see again very
distinctly the greenish gleams that ran over lock and barrel as I
turned the weapon in my hand.
Then there was the sky, the wonderful, luminous, starless, moonless
sky, and the empty blue deeps of the edge of it, between the meteor
and the sea. And once--strange phantoms!-- I saw far out upon
the shine, and very small and distant, three long black warships,
without masts, or sails, or smoke, or any lights, dark, deadly,
furtive things, traveling very swiftly and keeping an equal distance.
And when I looked again they were very small, and then the shine
had swallowed them up.
Then once a flash and what I thought was a gun, until I looked
up and saw a fading trail of greenish light still hanging in the
sky. And after that there was a shiver and whispering in the air,
a stronger throbbing in one's arteries, a sense of refreshment,
a renewal of purpose. . . .
Somewhere upon my way the road forked, but I do not remember
whether that was near Shaphambury or near the end of my walk. The
hesitation between two rutted unmade roads alone remains clear in
my mind.
At last I grew weary. I came to piled heaps of decaying seaweed
and cart tracks running this way and that, and then I had missed
the road and was stumbling among sand hummocks quite close to the
sea. I came out on the edge of the dimly glittering sandy beach,
and something phosphorescent drew me to the water's edge. I bent
down and peered at the little luminous specks that floated in the
ripples.
Presently with a sigh I stood erect, and contemplated the lonely
peace of that last wonderful night. The meteor had now trailed its
shining nets across the whole space of the sky and was beginning
to set; in the east the blue was coming to its own again; the sea
was an intense edge of blackness, and now, escaped from that great
shine, and faint and still tremulously valiant, one weak elusive
star could just be seen, hovering on the verge of the invisible.
How beautiful it was! how still and beautiful! Peace! peace!--the
peace that passeth understanding, robed in light descending! . . .
My heart swelled, and suddenly I was weeping.
There was something new and strange in my blood. It came to me that
indeed I did not want to kill.
I did not want to kill. I did not want to be the servant of my
passions any more. A great desire had come to me to escape from
life, from the daylight which is heat and conflict and desire, into
that cool night of eternity--and rest. I had played--I had done.
I stood upon the edge of the great ocean, and I was filled with an
inarticulate spirit of prayer, and I desired greatly--peace from
myself.
And presently, there in the east, would come again the red discoloring
curtain over these mysteries, the finite world again, the gray and
growing harsh certainties of dawn. My resolve I knew would take up
with me again. This was a rest for me, an interlude, but to-morrow
I should be William Leadford once more, ill-nourished, ill-dressed,
ill-equipped and clumsy, a thief and shamed, a wound upon the face
of life, a source of trouble and sorrow even to the mother I loved;
no hope in life left for me now but revenge before my death.
Why this paltry thing, revenge? It entered into my thoughts that
I might end the matter now and let these others go.
To wade out into the sea, into this warm lapping that mingled the
natures of water and light, to stand there breast-high, to thrust
my revolver barrel into my mouth------?
Why not?
I swung about with an effort. I walked slowly up the beach thinking. . . .
I turned and looked back at the sea. No! Something within me said,
"No!"
I must think.
It was troublesome to go further because the hummocks and
the tangled bushes began. I sat down amidst a black cluster of
shrubs, and rested, chin on hand. I drew my revolver from my pocket
and looked at it, and held it in my hand. Life? Or Death? . . .
I seemed to be probing the very deeps of being, but indeed
imperceptibly I fell asleep, and sat dreaming.
