by R. A. Dick
“I must say you don’t sound unhappy,” Lucy said, “nor morbid, nor supernatural. I don’t feel a bit shivery when you visit me.”
“Well, you soon will,” said the captain, “if you don’t hop into bed. There’s a sea-mist blowing up—I’d sooner sail a ship through a nor’easter than a fog in the Channel,” he went on as Lucy obediently turned away from the open window. “There’s haunting for you—ghosts of ships wailing their sirens, and you driving your own into nothingness, as if you’d gone over the edge of the world. Tuck yourself up now, like a good girl, and I’ll tell you about the time a steamer rammed us in a fog off The Nore, when I was an apprentice in sail.”
“How can I tuck myself up when I’m not undressed yet?” said Lucy.
“Well, go ahead and undress,” said the captain, “it won’t worry me.”
“I was thinking of myself,” said Lucy stiffly. “Will you please go away?”
“There’s no need for my going,” replied the captain, “clothes or the lack of them mean nothing to me.” There was a chuckle, followed by a long silence. Lucy tentatively removed her dress.
“You’ve pretty shoulders,” said the captain dispassionately, “and a damn fine figure.”
“Oh, dear!” said Lucy, seizing her dressing-gown from its hook and holding it in front of her. “Are you still there? I thought you’d gone.”
“You wear the wrong sort of clothes,” the captain went on imperturbably, “and far too many of them. No one would ever guess you were a miniature Venus de Milo in all that upholstery you drape over yourself—there’s no need to blush though pink cheeks become you.”
“You’re hateful,” said Lucy, putting her hands up to her burning face and thereby dropping the dressing-gown. She picked it up quickly and put it round her.
“Go away, you horrible man, go away,” she ordered.
“Now, now, Lucia, control,” said the captain soothingly, “there’s no need to fly into a tantrum. Bodies as bodies mean damn little to me as I’ve told you before. All this nonsense about nudity is blasted rot anyway.”
“Will you go?” Lucy said, her temper rising.
“Dammit, no!” said the captain, “but I’ll turn what you would call my back.”
There was another silence. Lucy turned off the light and finished her undressing. She put on her old-fashioned nightdress, with its frilled collar and cuffs, and she stood looking out at the stars and the bright path of moonlight stretched across the dark water, till it seemed to her that she became part of something much greater than herself, in which there was no room for false pride, nor false modesty, nor false imaginings.
“Good night,” she said gently, “I’m sorry I was cross.”
“Oh, Lucia,” the captain said softly, “you are so little and so lovely. How I would have liked to have taken you to Norway and shown you the fiords in the midnight sun, and to China—what you’ve missed, Lucia, by being born too late to travel the Seven Seas with me! And what I’ve missed, too.”
III
Summer sailed its magnificent way into autumn and autumn into the shelter of winter’s harbouring, and life went on in growth and peace at Gull Cottage.
The children were happy at their schools. Cyril was top of his class, with distinction in Latin, and wanted a microscope for his Christmas present. Anna was bottom in her exams, danced a solo at the end of term entertainment, and wanted a gramophone. Christmas day was the happiest that Lucy had spent since she was herself a child. Nothing marred the day that began with stockings full of home-made offerings, and continued through turkey, plum pudding and crackers, and a carol service, and chestnuts roasted in the open fire after supper, to contented sleep, with the glittering, star-spangled Christmas tree spreading its fairy-tale branches over the hours as if it had, indeed, a magic power to transform even dishwashing into romance.
And winter woke from its slumber, and spring voyaged forth once more, and Lucy bought a dog. Not long after they were married Lucy had expressed her longing for an animal about the house, and Edwin had presented her with a pedigreed Pomeranian that had yapped its delicate way into an early grave, regretted by no one; but this little creature, bought casually from a man by the curbside, was just a dog, partly Sealyham and partly terrier, and altogether amusing and companionable.
With Tags, as she called him, she went farther and farther afield after the housework was done, coming home with glowing cheeks to listen to the children’s adventures and exchange for them her own.
And almost every evening Captain Gregg visited her and told her tales of the sea and his own youth.
“Are you old now?” asked Lucy one evening after a particularly stirring account of a voyage through the South Seas.
“There is no old nor young for us,” replied the captain. “There is just being—no age and no time, no height and no depth—only immortality and eternity and vision.”
“It sounds frightening and rather dull,” said Lucy.
“Because, as I have told you so many times, I have no words to make you understand,” said the captain. “It’s all the beauty and serenity and nobility you have ever experienced on earth. It’s all your grandest and most generous feelings, and the finest sunsets and greatest music—and then you’re only on the fringe of understanding.”
“I don’t see why you ever leave it, if it’s so lovely,” said Lucy.
“I’ve told you the answer to that, too,” replied the captain. “I’m a pig-headed fool, and I hate leaving things half done.”
“But you haven’t,” said Lucy. “You’ve cleared everything up. I’ve made that will leaving the house to your old sea captains. Don’t you trust me?”
“Not altogether,” said Captain Gregg, “you are so young.”
“Young!” repeated Lucy. “I’m thirty-four!”
“In years perhaps,” replied the captain. “In experience you are about seventeen, and you don’t look much more when you are playing with Anna or that ridiculous dog. Suppose you were to marry again!”
“I wouldn’t think of marrying again,” Lucy declared.
“Someone might think of marrying you, though,” said the captain. “You are really very pretty.”
“Oh,” said Lucy, flushing, “am I?”
“Don’t be so coy, dammit,” said the captain. “You must know you’ve got naturally curly hair, and eyes as blue as a calm sea, and ears like—like little pink shells. Surely you must get a feeling of pleasure at your own appearance every time you look in the glass.”
“No,” said Lucy honestly, “I’m usually scowling at myself when I look in the mirror, trying to get a straight part in my hair. And I never have liked my nose.”
“It’s a dear little nose,” said the captain. “What’s wrong with your nose?”
“It’s got freckles on it,” said Lucy.
“There are exactly seven freckles,” said the captain, “and I like them.”
“I always wanted an aristocratic Roman nose,” Lucy went on, “like my father’s.”
“Which would be as out of place in your little face as an elephant’s trunk on a marmoset, but, as I was saying, someone might easily want to marry you, very easily, and you are extremely susceptible.”
“I’m not,” retorted Lucy.
“How do you know?” asked the captain. “What men have you met since you were widowed?”
“Mr. Coombe——”
“A codfish with a conscience!”
“Dr. Hamer——”
“Married to his profession and a wife and four children!”
“The vicar and the curate——”
“One a celibate and the other an adenoidal nonentity!”
“Oh, don’t be so critical,” said Lucy. “Were you so handsome?”
“I may not have been handsome,” said the captain, chuckling, “but I could make myself felt, and not only with a rope’s end. Why, I could have twisted you round my little finger, me dear, as any man with any pretensions to be a man could.”
“You couldn’t—they can’t,” protested Lucy.
“What do you bet?” asked Captain Gregg.
“I don’t bet,” Lucy replied primly.
“Well, I do, my greatest weakness was a good gamble, and I lay you your rose trees to a new monkey-puzzle tree that you’d fall for the first attractive man who showed he admired you.”
“You don’t sound in the least unearthly in spite of all your fine talk just now,” Lucy said hotly. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“But damn it, me dear, even a ghost must have his fun, and I give up a good deal of peace one way and another to hang about down here, keeping an eye on you and helping you out.”
“I don’t need any help, thank you,” said Lucy. “I can manage quite well alone, and I am to be trusted—completely.”
IV
There were clouds sailing up over the western horizon as Lucy set out for her walk on the following afternoon with the dog Tags; but she took the cliff path to the east, where the sun still shone out of a cloudless blue sky, and she went without raincoat or umbrella.
Tags careered over the short turf on the scent of rabbits, nose down, his undocked tail waving like a plume, yelping with excitement at each fresh trail, digging frantically in each fresh burrow with his terrier paws, his eyes snapping under his Sealyham fringes, till suddenly he disappeared. He was there, and then he was no longer to be seen, and Lucy running forward found that he had dug himself into a hole, which had collapsed on top of him.
“Tags! Tags!” she cried, and going down on her knees, dug with feverish hands at the earth that covered him. But the dog had crawled in to some distance, and dig as she might, she could not get at him. Realizing that her efforts were hopeless, she jumped up and ran blindly forward, running as much from her own ineptitude and the horror of the buried Tags, as in any real hope of aid, for where could she find help on the lonely, windswept cliff? And with this despair in her mind she fell into the arms of a man coming up the steep slope from the valley below.
“Come, come quickly,” she said as soon as she could find the words, and, taking his arm, she dragged him back to the place where she herself had dug with such futility.
“Dig!” she gasped, and at the urgency in her voice the man stooped without questioning and began to hurl aside the mound of earth. Presently the limp flag of Tags’ tail appeared, and his rescuer, thrusting in his arms up to the elbow, drew out the small earth-stained body and began to press up and down on the ribs, till breathing returned. Then he pulled out a flask from his hip-pocket and, prying open Tags’ jaws, poured a few drops of the brandy down his throat.
“There you are, old chap,” he said as Tags spluttered, choked, and sneezed. “That will put new dog into you—and what about you?” he added, turning to Lucy. “You look as if you could do with some new dog, too!”
“I’m all right,” said Lucy, sitting abruptly on the grass, for her knees certainly had no strength in them. “It was so horrible—knowing he was in there—and being so helpless—so stupidly helpless.” She held out her small earthy fingers with a gesture of disgust at their incapacity.
“It was a man’s job,” said Tags’ rescuer, “and I’m very glad that I was near enough to be the man. Rather strange, really,” he went on. “I was on my way to my cottage down there, and something made me suddenly change my mind and come up this way—almost as if a voice spoke to me.”
“Oh,” said Lucy, flushing, “a voice?”
“I don’t mean a human voice,” said the man.
“No, I was afraid you didn’t,” said Lucy, her cheeks flaming.
“Afraid!” repeated the man. “Why afraid? You needn’t be alarmed, I’m not one of these psychic people—I mean I don’t go in for voices with a capital V—but surely you know what I do mean. Everyone must have these sudden intuitions at times. It’s telepathy really, I imagine, though I must confess this sounded oddly like a man speaking to me. ‘Go back to the top of the cliff,’ he said. It gave me quite a shock.”
“Was that all the man—the voice said?” Lucy asked stiffly.
“Yes, why?” said the man.
“Oh, look at Tags—do look at Tags!” Lucy began to laugh, almost hysterically, as she pointed to the little dog, who, staggering to his feet and shaking the earth from his fur, had returned to the collapsed burrow and was feebly pawing at the upset soil.
“I say, you really must have a little of this,” said the man, producing his flask again as Lucy continued to laugh immoderately. “It will pull you together quicker than anything.”
“I’m quite together, thank you,” said Lucy. “I’m perfectly all right.”
“You certainly look it,” the man said admiringly. The breeze whipped her fair curls round her bright cheeks, and her blue eyes glowed with anger, though he had no idea of the feeling that made them sparkle so brilliantly.
“Thank you very much for helping us,” Lucy said, and went towards Tags to put him on his lead. “I think we’ve had enough rabbit-hunting for one day.”
The black clouds were coming up fast now on the wind, and heavy raindrops began to fall.
“There’s going to be quite a shower,” said the man. “You’d better come along to my cottage and shelter till it’s over.”
“No—no, thank you,” said Lucy rather violently.
“Afr——aid, afr——aid!” the wind seemed to whistle in her ears—or was it the wind?
“You’ll be soaked to the skin,” the man said solicitously. “I do wish you’d come—these April showers don’t last long, and after a shock like that, the dog ought not to get wet—see, you’re getting wet already.”
“Afr——aid, afr——aid!” whistled the wind.
“I’m not,” said Lucy.
“Oh, but you are,” said the man, “and I’m going to insist on your coming with me. It’s only down that slope amongst that clump of trees.” Taking her arm, he led her down the hill to a little stone cottage that perched on a grassy ledge, half-way down the face of the cliff. It was hidden by a huddle of ancient, wind-bent trees, which stretched out their gnarled branches like witches’ arms in curse or benison.
“I never knew there was a cottage here,” Lucy said as she stood on the door-step under the sheltering thatched eave while he opened the door for her.
“It’s well concealed,” he replied. “Sometimes I like privacy even at the cost of primitiveness. The water has to be carried a mile every day, and my bath is the sea, which is cold enough in this weather, but it suits me at present.”
The door opened into a living-room, and an open door on the right showed a bedroom beyond, furnished with bare necessities of bed, table, and chair. The living-room showed more attempt at comfort; there was a rug on the stained wood floor, cretonne curtains at the small lattice windows, a horsehair sofa and armchair drawn up to the oven fireplace, and a red table-cloth on the round table that held an oil lamp, a jumble of books and papers, and a jam jar full of cowslips and violets, picked with too short stalks, as a child picks flowers with too eager hands.
It was the sight of this pathetic attempt at decoration that restored Lucy’s confidence. Her thoughts turned away from herself entirely to this man, this stranger, who had come to her assistance so willingly. Who cooked for him, who swept his floors, who mended his clothes and washed his dishes? she wondered.
She seated herself in the armchair that he pulled forward for her, and watched him as he knelt on the hearth with his back to her, putting a match to the fire laid behind the black bars to one side of the little oven. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of about her own age, with curly red-brown hair that grew rather too long over curiously small ears. He wore a smart tweed coat and well-creased grey flannel trousers, but there was a hole in the heel of one of his grey socks, and his brogues needed patching. A maternal feeling of pity swept over her. Had he no one to look after him, living alone in this poor little place?
“I think a cup of tea would fill the bill,” he said. He
pushed open a door at the back leading into a scullery, went in, filled a kettle from a bucket of water, and returning, placed it on the hob over the now crackling fire.
“Thank you, I’d love a cup,” said Lucy. “Do you do everything for yourself?” she asked as he went to and from the scullery, bringing a brown china teapot, a couple of teacups, a crusty loaf, a dish of jam and a square of yellow butter, sugar and milk.
“A woman from the farm comes in once a day to clear up and do a bit of cooking,” he replied. “Otherwise I manage very well.”
It was cosy in the little room, with the fire chattering up the chimney, and the rain beating against the windowpane outside. Tags lay at her feet, in the twitching sleep of dog exhaustion. He had saved Tags’ life—a bond of gratitude stretched between her and this stranger. She had been ridiculous to think that Captain Gregg had had anything to do with their meeting … she mustn’t allow that old ghost to become an obsession with her … perhaps Eva had been right … perhaps she was becoming odd.… This at least was a perfectly normal meeting, it must be—and that voice was telepathy, as the man had said himself, and in her own case imagination and the whistling of the wind.
“Have you been here long?” she asked, leaning back in the chair.
“About a week,” he replied. His eyes were the same colour as his hair, red-brown; there was a cleft in his chin; he wore a jade signet ring on the little finger of his left hand.
“It’s a lovely place. How did you find it?” asked Lucy.
“I saw an advertisement in a paper,” he replied.
“It’s so peaceful,” said Lucy.
“Most women would say, it’s so lonely,” he said.
“I love loneliness,” said Lucy.
“Have you ever tried it?” he asked.
“Indeed, yes,” answered Lucy. “I’m alone all day while the children are at school.”
