Part 9 (1/2)

He wheeled to look at Kurz.

Kurz's eyes were riveted on the woman standing in the doorway.

”Aren't you glad to see Mutter Schwegel?” He asked. ”When we've been talking of her all night?”

Kurz was muttering to himself.

”Mutter--Schwegel--;” Kurz mumbled. ”Mutter Schwegel--!

It--is--that--I--wanted--to--tell--you--about--Mutter Schwegel.

It--is--as--I--thought.

It--is--ach!--it--is--then--that--way--with--us--!”

He felt that the woman was coming into the room.

He turned and looked at her.

”Mutter--Schwegel--is--dead;” Kurz stammered.

He saw that the old woman smiled.

”She--is--dead. Dead--!” Kurz mumbled.

He smiled back at her.

”Dead--;” Kurz's voice droned shaking.

He saw the old woman go to the table.

He and Kurz watched her take the lamp up in her hands. He and Kurz saw her fingers fumbling at the wick. Kurz's quivering face stood out in the lamplight. The old woman was smiling quietly.

They saw her try to put out the light.

The lamp still burned.

”Mutter-Schwegel--is--dead--!” Kurz's voice quavered; and then it screamed. ”Dead--,” he shrieked; ”we--are--all--of--us--dead--!”

That uncertain feeling came over him. And suddenly it went quite from him.

HAUNTED

He lived quite alone in the stone built shanty perched on the highest pinnacle of the great sun bleached chalk cliffs. All about him, as far as the eye could reach, lay the flat, salt marshes with their dank, yellowed gra.s.ses. Against the inland horizon three, gaunt, thin-foliaged trees reared themselves from the monotonously even soil. Overhead the cloud splotched blue gray sky, and below him the changing, motion pulled, current swirling depths of the blue green sea. And at all times of the day and the night, the wild whirring of the sea gulls' wings and the uncanny inhuman piercing sound of their shrieking.

He had lived there since that day when the fisherman had pulled him half drowned out of the sea. He could never remember where he had come from, or what had happened. All that he ever knew was that far out by the nets in the early morning they had come upon him and had brought him in to sh.o.r.e. Naturally, the fishermen had questioned him; but his vagueness, his absolute lack of belief that he had ever been anything before they had s.n.a.t.c.hed him from the waters, had frightened them so that since that day they had left him severely alone. Fis.h.i.+ng folk have strange, superst.i.tious ideas about certain things. He had borne the full weight of their credulous awe. Perhaps because he, himself, thought as they thought. That he was something come from the sea, and of the sea, and always belonging to the sea.

He had built himself the stone shanty upon the highest pinnacle of those waste grown chalk cliffs; and he had stayed on and on, year in and year out, close there to the sea.

In winter for a livelihood he made baskets from the reeds he had picked in the swamps about him. In the summer he sold the vegetables he grew in the tiny truck garden behind his house. Somehow he managed to eke out a living.