She had clothed herself carelessly enough in garments which the girl gave, and which she enlarged to fit her, and in some which she found at the farmhouse or from the sea’s tribute. But she knew that these things must be left behind. The grave itself is scarcely more obdurate in its rejection of earthly treasures than was the way by which she wandered.
Only she made herself a bathing-dress to replace that which she had left behind on the first island, and this she now wore continually, to be ready when the chance offered.
It came on an August day, when the sky was white with high cumulous clouds and the sea breathed quietly. There was a slight breeze from the south-east. She had left the cottage in the early morning with no settled purpose and with no word to suggest that she might not be returning, though she had eaten with unusual heartiness, as one who did not know when or where the next meal would be taken; but when she had walked to the north side of the island, where the ground sloped very gradually, and the full tide, pausing on the turn, shone smooth and shallow, she knew that the sea’s call had come, and waded out to meet it. Casting off her garments with an exaltation of mind similar to that which she had felt when occupied before in the same way, she reached the deeper water, and the swell of a long wave raised her gently from her feet and bore her outward.
BOOK THREE: MARTIN AND CLAIRE
CHAPTER XIII
The later summer came, and Martin was still alone. He had made his headquarters about a mile away from his first location.
There was a single line of railway that had at one time carried some considerable traffic till the opening of another line had rendered it useless. The owners, for tactical financial reasons of no interest except to themselves, had continued to run a nominal service of an engine and a single coach upon it once daily. Apart from that, it had been unused for many years.
This line, meeting a high ridge of ground which extended from that on which Martin had taken his first refuge, was carried through a rather long tunnel.
By this time Martin had realised the urgency of making provision of food and warmth and shelter for the colder days which he supposed to be approaching.
He explored the entrance to this tunnel and found it to be dry for some distance.
There were recesses at intervals in the dark walls where he might cache the stores which he intended to accumulate. Here was a place which even the dogs, now becoming wild and wolf-like and a continual menace, would be unlikely to penetrate.
More important still, there was a hut for the use of workmen, small, but very strongly, built, at the side of the line at the tunnel entrance, and beside it there was a large dump of stacked coal.
Martin was now foraging with the skill of experience and over a wider area. He had discovered isolated houses, which were not burnt and which still contained many useful things, however much they might have been wrecked by storm, and their contents damaged by sun and rain. He had learnt his present needs and could gauge his future requirements.
He began a regular course of collection and storage.
The entrance to the tunnel was in a deep cutting between high banks topped by fence and hedge with fields beyond them. There was no road adjacent. He used to approach by different routes so that there should be no clear path to his hiding-place. There was a stile at the top of the bank on the western side of the line, with rough steps leading down to the northern entrance to the tunnel, and to the hut which was on the opposite side.
He would not make a practice of using this, but finding a large slab of stone in the adjoining field he had a fancy to balance it precariously on the top rail of the fence, thinking that if anyone should approach, especially in the night-time, when he might be sleeping in the hut, they would be sure to overset the stone and its descent would arouse and warn him.
He did not know what he feared, but he was becoming wild and shy, as were the creatures around him.
CHAPTER XIV
The summer waned and the days shortened, but the heat continued, though not without wind and storm and some intervals of heavy rain.
Martin’s stores accumulated till a day came that altered his life to its foundations, and put a swift end to the purpose for which he had worked with such patient industry.
He went out that morning, as he had gone several days previously, to the prosaic task of digging potatoes, which was quickly accomplished, and to the more laborious work of carrying them back to his hiding-place.
The last three months had made him leaner, browner, and more muscular than when he had parried Mrs. Templeton’s shallow blasphemies across the polished oak and shining glass and silver of his own dining-table. He still found means to shave, and to keep his hair short and untangled. His clothing was sufficient, though roughly used, and showing evidence of having been collected from miscellaneous sources.
He carried a light bamboo-shafted spear, a relic of Asian travel, which he had pillaged from the hall of a ruined house, and which he had found useful in protecting himself from dogs and cattle. He walked lightly and silently, with eyes that were alert and cautious.
He went by a woodland path that showed no change, and might have looked the same a thousand years earlier, leaving it for a narrow lane which was already deeply choked in herbs and grasses.
At the foot of the lane, where he would have crossed a wider road to the garden he sought, he came to a trampled place, and to the body of a dead woman.
She was young and had something of the comeliness of youth and health, marred by an expression of stubbornness or stupidity. Now her face was distorted from a death of violence. It was evident that she had been brutally handled and that she had resisted fiercely. Perhaps she would not have died had she not fought her persecutors with such savage anger.
But dead she was, and her death must have been very recent, for Martin, stooping to ascertain if any aid were possible, found that she was still warm. Her clothing was torn and disordered. Her arms were discoloured with bruises, and one was dislocated at the elbow.
After the first impulse of pity and horror, Martin looked round cautiously. He did not think this to be the work of one man, or of two. And men who would be capable of such a crime were not the kind which he would wish to meet without warning. He could do no good here. He retreated up the lane.
In a sheltered place he sat down and thought. He had not supposed that he was the only man living in a space of land which he knew to be many miles in area, and of which he did not know the northern or western limits. He had been puzzled that he had seen so few signs of human life, though he recognised that but for Helen’s accident he might have joined the rush to northward of which he had seen evidences when he had been foraging for her necessities while she lay in the marl pit.
But he had been less keen to search for others than to watch the shore for any sign of deliverance which might approach from the outer world.
Now there was evidence that men were near in some number—violent and lawless men. And the woman, whom he supposed that they had seized from some other community, even after the brutalities which she had suffered, showed by her appearance that she had been leading a sheltered and more civilised life than his own.
It was puzzling in several aspects.
While he considered it, he heard voices approach along the other side of the hedge against which he was sitting. The voices were rough and surly. He could not understand all they said, but it was plain that they were discussing the recent tragedy, which one of them regarded as a pleasant sport, and against which the other grumbled, as at a waste of good material which might have been conserved for other occasions, and for which he blamed the violence of a man that he described as “Muster Bellamy.”
“Wull, here he comes,” said the first voice, “tell ’im.”
The second voice became silent.
Martin, crouching in the ditch, knew that a man crossed the lane about twenty yards away. He could not see him clearly without exposing himself, which he would not risk, but he had an impression of
a huge and brutal form, nearer seven feet than six in height and of a corresponding bulk. He heard the men meet, but the protestant evidently considered that silence would be more discreet than speech. The only words that reached him concerned the snaring of rabbits.
He remained in the ditch for some minutes, and might have done so longer had he not realised that anyone coming up or down the lane could not fail to observe him.
He crept through the hedge to the further side and made his way along it, watching alertly for any sound or motion.
As he approached the wood, he heard voices again. He decided not to venture through it. Should he be able to do so unobserved he might be seen as he crossed the open field beyond; he might be followed, even without his own knowledge, and his lair be at the mercy of these intruders.
It was almost equally dangerous to remain where he was.
He wanted time for thought before he could decide whether or in what way, to approach these men or to avoid them entirely.
He decided to set out in the opposite direction, making a wide detour, and not returning homeward until the night should hide his movements.
With this object he proceeded with a furtive caution further than he had yet penetrated to the westward. Taking a southward bend after some miles of progress, without any further sound or sign of human life, had increased his confidence. He came to a place of slag heaps and silent shafts, where the face of the land was still blackened by activities which were now ended, it might be hoped forever.
At last he came to the sea. In a little sheltered hollow, where he could not be seen until after he would have heard the sound of approaching footsteps, he sat down and watched the water.
CHAPTER XV
The sun moved slowly down toward the west, and Martin sat and pondered the events of the earlier day. Solitary as he was, he had no mind to join the brutal crowd that he had overlooked in the morning. Still less was he willing to expose the precious store he had accumulated to their use or waste. He saw that it would be hard to remain unnoticed should they continue long in the neighbourhood. New and difficult problems might be at hand for solution. But they might not remain. He decided to regain his lair as secretly as he might, and to lie hidden there, for a time at least, in the hope of their passing.
But it would not be easy to cross the wilderness of slag-heaps and deserted shafts under continuous cover during the day or without accident in the darkness. He decided that the dusk would be his best time, either at night or morning. In the old days the earth was the more vacant of wakeful life when the sun came, but now he was less sure how it would be. Men might sleep in the heat of the day. They might like to find cover when the dusk was near. They might be watchful when the light stirred. Besides, he had no will to wait there through the night-time. He would start when the sun set, and there would still be light enough to guide him through the wood when he reached it. There he would wait, and cross the last fields in the darkness. Returning by a straighter way, the distance was not very great. That would be easy; and the safer choice. In the morning the lightest time would come when the patch would be plain to all, and the need for concealment greatest.
Having decided to wait, his thoughts wandered. He thought of Helen and the children that he had lost. There was no sane hope that they were still living. He felt an almost intolerable loneliness; and yet they seemed very far. Life was so different now.
His gaze sought absently over the tossing sunlit waters.
Something moved—was it a bird?—on the water. Far out—for his sight was keen—he saw it. It was like the arm of a human swimmer: the arm of one who swam slowly and very low in the water.
It seemed incredible, but it was so.
Mile beyond mile the desolate water stretched before him. Here and there it might show white and troubled where the land would scarcely be covered at fall of tide, but he knew that there was no land where life would have survived, nor had he seen a soul since....
And while he wondered, and very slowly, at little more than the tide’s pace, the swimmer came on. He was sure now that it was a man. He did not think of a woman. Could he give aid? Caution withheld him. If there were more evident need—But as yet he preferred to watch, and he shifted his position for one of better cover.
Then he saw that the swimmer had felt land and was erect for a moment. Then he was swimming again. Then he rose and commenced wading shoreward.
With a sudden amazement, and with an under-thought of excitement, Martin realised that she was a woman. A wild thought came that it might be Helen who had returned, and then a pang of sorrow that it was not she.
She came up from the water in the evening light, walking unsteadily as one in the last stage of exhaustion, and suddenly threw up her arms with a sound that was between laughter and a cry of exaltation, and walked on for a few steps further, and fell forward on the turf and did not move.
Martin hesitated. His weeks of wild and solitary existence, few though they were, and the experience of the morning, had taught him caution.
Was she alone? His eyes searched the sea, but they found nothing to explain her coming. Then he saw that she had risen to her knees and was commencing to pull off the sodden bathing-dress that clung so closely round her.
It was a chivalrous instinct of his earlier life that caused him to rise and hail her as he observed her purpose.
She stopped at once, and came quickly to her feet as he did this.
She stood still, and he advanced towards her.
He saw a woman beautiful of face and form. Young, and strong, and desirable.
She looked back without fear, but her glance was alert and doubtful.
She saw a man who was still young, though he had been younger. He was lean and straight, but not tall: somewhat taller than herself, perhaps, but looking shorter in the rough soiled clothes which he was wearing. He was bronzed by the sun, and his eyes were grey and keen, but they were eyes that did not tell his thoughts unless he willed them to do so.
He was not the hero of her dreams, but he was something better than Jephson, and her tired mind told her to trust him.
They stood silent for a time that seemed long, though it was not. At last he said: “You need food and rest. You had better come with me.”
“Yes,” she said, and commenced to move forward.
“Will you have my coat?” he asked, seeing how drenched was her only garment. He made a motion to give it.
“No,” she said, and after a pause: “It will dry.”
She seemed too tired for speech. Her eyes were dark with fatigue.
After a few steps, she put a hand on his arm as though for support or guidance. “Is it far?” she asked. He shook his head in reply, as though infected by her own reticence, but he was careful in choosing the softer way.
After a time he offered her his shoes, but she would not take them.
It was not yet dark, but he resolved to risk the return, avoiding the bank-tops and any place where they would show on the skyline.
Even in this desolation, that had been befouled by human folly beyond the rest of the earth’s surface, the green places were spreading, and it was seldom difficult to find a way where bare feet could pass uninjured.
When they gained the shelter of the wood they were walking more rapidly. She even appeared to hasten, as though anxious to complete the distance before her strength should fail her. Her mind was blank of all but weariness and the desire for sleep. His was wary now, with eyes and ears alert for any sound or motion.
But they came through it in safety, and he paused at the edge of the open field with a hand upon her arm to detain her till he felt assured of its solitude.
The un-mown grass was knee-deep, and they made slow progress through its heavy swathes.
“Is it far?” she asked again, but did not appear to hear his answer. There was a gorse-bush in their way, and she would have stumbled into it badly had he not drawn her aside.
It was evident that she could not go much further. With e
very step that approached his hiding-place he was more anxious lest they should be seen. He looked at her doubtfully. He did not think he could carry her far.
He tried to rouse her to a last effort, realising that if she once stumbled and fell it would not be easy to stimulate her to further progress. He spoke loudly, as to one who was deaf.
“We are very near now. But we must hasten. There is danger here. There are men about who must not see us.”
He could not have struck a better note. It penetrated the dim weariness of her mind, waking the thought of all from which she had fled, and the purpose that had driven her. She went on at a hastened pace across the final field, and slipped and stumbled down the steep bank of the cutting.
When she woke in the shelter of the hut, she had no memory of how she had reached it, but only of a waste of tossing waters and of a distant shore toward which she struggled, but which she knew that she would never reach.
CHAPTER XVI
Martin looked at her as she slept. She had fallen forward as he pointed to the bed which he had made in a comer of the cabin and had been asleep in an instant. He had prepared food, and tried in vain to rouse her to share it.
It would be better, he thought at last, to let her sleep till the morning. Her single garment had dried while they walked, and he had covered her with his own blankets.
Now he looked down somewhat doubtfully at the prize of his day’s hunting. Certainly it was the strangest find that he had dragged home to his hidden lair—and the most desirable? He was not sure.
How could he tell that she might not have friends at no great distance? Friends to whom she might wish to return tomorrow, and to whom she would betray his hiding-place? He was not a man of war, but a lawyer; and he knew that the reign of law was over. He must be prepared to conform his life to—
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