Part 33 (2/2)
The gale was still booming overhead, but now with less force (or so he fancied); and the surf still crashed in thunders on the beach a hundred feet or more away; but the haze was lighter, and the blue of the sky was visible, if tarnished.
Looking straight ahead from where he sat, the sands curved off in a wide crescent, ending in a long, sandy spit. Beyond this lay a broad expanse of maddened water, blue and white, backed by the empurpled loom of a lofty headland, dim in the smoky distance.
On his right lay the green landscape, reminiscent even as the boat was reminiscent in whose shadow he found himself: both fragments of the fugitive impressions gathered in that nightmare time of landing. There was a low, ragged earth-bank rising from the sands to a clutter of ramshackle, unpainted, hideous wooden buildings--some hardly more than sheds; back of these and stretching away on either hand, a spreading vista of treeless uplands, gently undulant and richly carpeted with gra.s.s and under-growth in a melting scheme of tender browns and greens and yellows, with here and there a trace of dusky red. Midway between the beach and where the hazy uplands lifted their blurred profile against the faded sky, set some distance apart from the community of dilapidated structures, stood a commonplace farm-house, in good repair, strongly constructed and neatly painted; with a brood of out buildings.
Low stone fences lined the uplands with wandering streaks of gray. Here and there, in scattered groups and singly, sheep foraged. But they were lonely evidences of life. No human being was visible in any quarter.
With puzzled eyes Whitaker sought counsel and enlightenment of the woman, and found in her appearance quite as much to confound antic.i.p.ation and deepen perplexity. She was hardly to be identified with the delightfully normal, essentially well-groomed creature he remembered. What she had worn when setting forth to call on him, accompanied by her maid, the night before, he could not say; but it certainly could have had nothing in common with her present dress--the worn, stained, misshapen jacket covering her shoulders, beneath it the calico wrapper scant and crude beyond belief, upon her feet the rusty wrecks that once had been shoes.
As for himself, a casual examination proved that the rags and tatters adorning him were at least to be recognized as the remains of his own clothing. His coat was lost, of course, and his collar he had torn away, together with a portion of his s.h.i.+rt, while in the water after the disaster; but his once white flannel trousers were precious souvenirs, even if one leg was ripped open to the knee, and even though the cloth as a whole had contracted to an alarming extent--uncomfortable as well; while his tennis shoes remained tolerably intact, and the canvas brace had shrunk upon his ankle until it gripped it like a vise.
But all these details he absorbed rather than studied, in the first few moments subsequent to his awakening. His chiefest and most direct interest centred upon the woman; and he showed it clearly in the downright, straightforward sincerity of his solicitous scrutiny. And, for all the handicap of her outlandish dress, she bore inspection wonderfully well.
Marvellously recuperative, as many women are, she had regained all her ardent loveliness; or, if any trace remained of the wear and tear of her fearful experience, he was in no condition to know it, much less to carp. There was warm color in the cheeks that he had last seen livid, there was the wonted play of light and shadow in her fascinating eyes; there were gracious rounded curves where had been sunken surfaces, hollowed out by fatigue and strain; and there remained the ineluctable allurement of her tremendous vitality....
”You are not hurt?” he demanded. ”You are--all right?”
”Quite,” she told him with a smile significant of her appreciation of his generous feeling. ”I wasn't hurt, and I've recovered from my shock and fright--only I'm still a little tired. But you?”
”Oh, I ... never better. That is, I'm rested; and there was nothing else for me to get over.”
”But your ankle--?”
”I've forgotten it ever bothered me.... Haven't you slept at all?”
”Oh, surely--a great deal. But I've been awake for some time--a few hours.”
”A few hours!” His stare widened with wonder. ”How long have I--?”
”All day--like a log.”
”But I--! What time is it?”
”I haven't a watch, but late afternoon, I should think--going by the sun. It's nearly down.”
”Good heavens!” he muttered, dashed. ”I _have_ slept!”
”You earned your right to.... You needed it far more than I.” Her eyes shone, warm with kindness.
She swayed almost imperceptibly toward him. Her voice was low pitched and a trifle broken with emotion:
”You saved my life--”
”I--? Oh, that was only what any other man--”
”None other did!”
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