The Wind and the Spray (22 page)

“It’s very valuable,” he said. “It’s indeed a little fortune. What I intend to do would only deplete your half, so you would need have no qualms as to my robbing myself.”

“Perhaps,” she said tautly, “it might not be the manner in which I want to spend my half. Every woman has the right to spend for herself.”

“If she knows what she is doing, yes, Laurel, but what you would propose to do is foolish, stupid, unwise.”

“How do you know what I propose, Nor?”

He left her side and went and sat on the edge of the big kitchen table. He took out the makings and rolled two cigarettes and gave one to her.

“I’ll tell you, shall I?” he asked. “You would propose to stop on here, just as you’re stopping now. You’re a nice-mannered child, very polite—very remorseful because of what you’ve just said. All right, then, that’s all to your credit
...
but it’s not enough, Laurel. I’m sorry, my dear.”

Perhaps—perhaps—” she said shyly, “there’s something more than that.”

“I doubt it,” he retorted brutally. “For all your nice manners, your kind nature, you’re still incapable of anything more than merely nice manners and kindness. You’re incapable of reaching a big decision, you’re a very pretty shell like the shells Jill and Meredith used to gather—but still only a shell for all that. You’re still a girl.”

“Girls grow up,” she told him soberly. She wanted suddenly and urgently to cross over to him, to tell him that she might have only been a girl when he had asked her to marry him, but it was different now, it was different here in her heart.

She did not say it. Again there was that set face, the cool reserve. He had become the mollus
k
again, he had retreated and he would not come out.

She watched him replace the ring in the little tin.

“Is it safe to leave it there like that?”

He shrugged. “Why not? Nobody knows.”

“This is a small island, someone could know.” She thought all at once of Jasper and his interest that day by the old rain-tank. “I wish you wouldn’t keep it by you, Nor,” she said.

He twisted his lips in a sardonic smile. “Frightened you might lose your passage home?” he taunted.

“It’s not that at all. I just think you’re being foolish.”

“Then don’t worry. Whalemen are honest to the core. I don’t know why it should be, but it is. I expect it might be their preoccupation with big things.” Again he shrugged.

Hesitantly she said, “It needn’t be a whaleman.”

“Anyone in mind?”

Now was her time to speak, and resolutely she said it. “Jasper.”

He grinned carelessly. “Jasper is gone this long time. I think the fire scared him out just as it does a snake.”

She opened her mouth. She opened it to say, “But he hasn’t gone, Nor. He never left here at all, he climbed up on a hill up there, and pitched a camp, and he is spying down on us, even spying down at this moment. Why,
why,
do you think?”

But the big man was putting down the letter.

“I’ll go ahead with the arrangements,” he said.

He went to the door, then turned.

“It seems late to say it now, Laurel, but if you can bring yourself to believe me I want you to know I’m sorry—very sorry—” He nodded to the letter again.

When he had gone she took up the letter. She took it but did not read it. She knew what Doctor Frith would have to say.

She had known a pain before, she had thought it big enough to fill eternity, but now there was a blackness as well as the pain, and an overwhelming loneliness and despair.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

BETWEEN them after that there was a polite friendliness. Nor considered Laurel in every way; Laurel referred continually to Nor and accepted his word.

But she did not accept it on the night that he told her that he was now making definite arrangements for her future. On the other hand, she did not rebel. She just sat and listened, eyes on the floor, her heart so full it seemed it must burst.

“You must let me know what appeals to you, Laurel, what, if any, are your preferences. Because you have been a secretary there’s no reason for you to remain a secretary. I want you to choose something you have always wanted but perhaps believed out of your reach.”

Flippantly she had answered, “The moon.”

“You’re very ambitious.”

“A star, then.”
...
Stars were for love, she thought, that Star that had risen in the east had begun all love.

He shot her a quick look, then for the time dropped the subject of her future.

“There are no stars tonight,” he pointed out.

“No.”—And there is no love either, Laurel thought. Aloud, she commented, “The weather has never settled down since that fog, has it, Nor?”

“We’re still in the centre of a depression. At any moment I expect the rains to start.”

“You sound like the wet and the dry, and there wouldn’t be those two extremes here.”

“No, there isn’t. However, if we start autumn with unsettled weather at Humpback, you can be sure it will continue. Frankly, I’m expecting deluges. I know my Island. It’s quite probable, girl, that you won’t be able to escape as quickly as you’d like.”

“I never wanted to escape, I’ve told you that.”

“Yes, you’ve told me, and told it very convincingly. It’s quite polite of you to repeat it now. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it, Laurel, I do. And I agree with you that it’s a good thing that we finish the affair on an affable note like this. You
’
re setting me a fine example, child, considerately persisting that you don’t want to go.”

What could she say in answer short of actually crying ou
t
her heart to him, going to him, putting her arms around him? You couldn’t
make
someone love you, however much you loved them. She sat silent, knowing the loneliness and despair once more.

He finished studying the sky, then referred to a weather graph. Nor took a lot of interest in the weather. That was to be expected in a sailor, Laurel thought.

He looked up at her, the frown that he often wore these days brin
gin
g the salt-bleached eyebrows together in one thick white line.

“Were you born on a Wednesday, Laurel?”

“I wouldn’t know.” She was surprised at the question. “Why?”

He tapped the graph. “I
believe
you were. I believe you’re a child of woe. Wednesday’s children are—recall the nursery rhyme?”

“Why do you say it of me, Nor?”

“You lost your mother; you lost your father; you were obliged to work for your living; you came to Humpback and
”
—he gestured briefly
—
“all that has happened since, fire, fog
...
the rest of it
...
came to pass; then you lost your brother
—
and now, my girl, unless I’m very mistaken, and graphs and gauges and skies and wind make no mistake I have found, you’re in for something rather special in elements.

“It hasn’t happened like this for years; the whaling schedule hasn’t been delayed like this for so long as I remember. We’re having a bad ran.”

“I must be the ill luck,” she said. “Never mind, Nor, your ill luck will be over soon.”

He did not comment on that. Instead he shrugged, “You couldn’t ask more of an adventure strip heroine. What will we call the strip? ‘The Calamity Girl’?”

She did not reply. She had gone to the window to look out for herself.

“There is no moon, and the stars are not out, but all the same it doesn’t look like the deluges you forecast.” She turned back to him. “It isn’t even sprinkling.”

“It’s beginning right now,” he corrected. “Listen.”

She listened
...
and it was.

It was only the gentlest of little feet on the roof, so she had not heard it, it was only the finest of mists on the pane, so she had not noticed the drops.

“It’s nothing,” she shrugged.

But the next morning the noise on the roof was deafening. Although it was not obscure as it had been when the fog had settled down on them, the drops were so big they ran into each other and Laurel could not see the
Clytie
as it put out beyond the lee of the Island.

It rained all day. Once when she donned mackintosh and galoshes and ran up to oust Plush from their yard she went ankle deep in black mud. She stared at her feet, and saw that a stream was flowing strongly down the slope and bringing with it all the mountain silt. “It’s the high level storage tank,” she thought. “The leak has worsened. With the rain it’s become quite a river. I must tell Nor as soon as the
Clytie
gets back. I should have told him before.”

She glanced up to Tweedledum and the clumsy old reservoir. She wondered how Jasper was faring on his knoll. It was depressing enough here, under shelter, so it must be very distressing up there. Surely, though, by this time, in weather like this, he had gone.

Still it rained.

Nor rang up on the house phone soon after she saw the
Clytie
come in at dusk.

“I don’t intend to get more wet than I am, Laurel,” he said. “I’ll camp here. Will you be all right?”

“Of course.”

“Not frightened?”

“Of course not.”

“You won’t see me tomorrow either. Much as I’d like a rest, like to rest the fellows, we must try to catch up on our delay.”

Again Laurel murmured, “Of course.”

She had an early tea, then went to bed. The house seemed to have a thousand creaks and squeaks, the long hall seemed to resound with sly footsteps. The rain kept on.

“I’ll never sleep,” she thought—but she did, and when she woke it was to a fine world.

But it was soon apparent, even to the inexperienced Laurel, that it was only to be the calm before the storm. Unmistakably the clouds were only sucking up more moisture, building their strength for the mightiest downpour of all. Was it because it was a small exposed island that Humpback received such extremes in weather, or was it, as Nor had said, just a run of bad luck?

She considered the bad luck list
...
first the storm when she had come, then the fire, later the hurricane, then the fog, now the rain
...
and as she arrived at the rain, the deluges started again, really in earnest this time, lashing at the windows, drumming at the roof, sneaking cold pools under each close-shut door.

Throughout the morning, hearing only the furied spurts of it. Laurel did not hear the stream.

At noon she brewed tea and stood by the sink drinking it. There was a slight pause as the rain prepared for another attack, and in the comparative silence she heard it, half song, half roar.

“What’s that?” She asked it aloud of herself.

She peered out, but could see nothing. The noise continued, and she decided to investigate. She put on her mac and hurried out.

The stream was a shock. It wasn’t a stream any more, it wasn’t even a river, it was a sinister little lake slapping fiercely over the entire lawn. Nor’s shrubs were submerged already to their bottom leaves.

Birds were screeching protests; many, frightened, had taken shelter, but Laurel could hear the beating of their unseen wings.

As she stood there, horrified, she heard the house phone shrill. She ran back and took up the receiver.

“Ridge here, Mrs. Larsen. I’ve just had a radio from the
Clytie,
from Nor.”

“Yes?”

“He said you’re to get out at once, go across to the settlement. I don’t know whether you’re aware of it or not, but there’s a small current running down by your house, probably by this time it’s quite a lake.”

“It is,” Laurel said.

“Nor anticipated that, evidently,” went on Ridge. So Nor
had
known something of what was going on. “He must have expected an easement, though,” continued Ridge, “otherwise he would have had you out before this. He said now for you to get over without delay. How bad is it, Mrs. L.? Will you need help to get out?”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that yet. It’s only ankle-deep.”

“Good. Then you can manage?”

“I can manage, and thanks, Mr. Ridge.”

“See you soon?”

“At once,” she promised, meaning that promise, and she put down the phone.

She didn’t take much, just a few toilet essentials, pyjamas in case she was away for the night, a toothbrush. Foolishly, but unable to stop herself, she bundled in a soft negligee that was still folded up in a towel and took that as well.

At the door she turned and went back to the shell table. For a moment she hesitated, then she took up Nor’s tin and withdrew the pearl. For some odd reason she felt she could not put it on her finger to carry it, so she slid it instead on some thin ribbon and thrust it down the neck of her dress.

There was nothing else now. She turned round and gave the house a long look, but she did not move away at once
...
This is the last long look, something positive within her said, this is the last time you will stand just like this and gaze at it all.

She was nudged back to awareness by the sound of the rain scratching at the window like a mad creature, moaning and beating as though to get in.

As she opened the door a shouting gale half lifted and pushed her back. She pushed back at it herself and came out.

Though it was early afternoon the sky was black with rain. It could have been night, she thought.

She was astounded at the change in the little lake in so short a time. In those ten minutes which must have been all she had used up to answer Ridge’s call and grab her things it had risen easily a foot.

She would not be picking a way across, not even squelching across, she thought ruefully, she would be wading. And, she added grimly, if I don’t hurry I’ll have to swim. She trod down from the soaked slippery step and went calf-deep in water. She began her way up the hill.