The Beach of Atonement Read online

  Had Arnold Dudley not been a one-woman man—it is surprising how large a number of men are, in spite of the feminine cynics—it is quite probable that he would have turned to Hester Long; but the actions and the spoken thought of Ellen were too deeply imprinted on his mind and his heart ever to be marred or dimmed by a fresh experience. It was because he was a one-woman man that he had suffered so deeply her loss and was still to suffer it. The past was revealed, the future hidden from him; though it was less hidden from Hester Long, who had opened the book of his mind and had read therein.

  For an hour he sat there high above the beach, reveling in its beauty, in his possession of it, sometimes thinking of Ellen and often of Hester Long. With an audible sigh he rose, descended the hillock of sand, and, retrieving the empty biscuit-tin, returned to his camp, where for several moments he paused, undecided where to start. Then with sudden fierce energy he seized a shovel and dug a pit, and, collecting the empty tins, the bottles, and the paper, he dumped the litter into it and covered it out of sight. He proceeded to build a fire and boil water, making tea with some of it, and with the remainder washing down the table. Afterwards he brought out of the tent his blankets and hung them over bushes to air; then he fell to work within the tent, tidying it, and setting the mass of jumbled rations in their proper places and order.

  About three o’clock he donned his old tattered dungarees and boots, the latter now hard and dry and cracked by salt-water; and again went along to the beach with fishing lines, a song on his lips, and a gladness in his clear hazel eyes. Hatless, the wind played with his wavy dark brown hair, and its freshness touched his sun-burned face as though with cool, caressing fingers.

  The tide was coming in fast. Beyond the Ramparts the sea looked as calm as the proverbial mill-pond. Beyond the Pontoon the water was chopped by meeting waves, but even there the sea was comparatively calm. That day the serried ranks of water-hills did not fly high above the Pontoon edge with their usual brilliant abandon. They seemed hampered by lethargy or the desire to conserve their strength for a future onslaught, for when they met the wall of rock they rose sullenly and welled over upon it in a sweeping rush of white water.

  Dudley gained a position about a yard from the edge and cast the lighter of his lines. The heavy sea line he retained in his bag. He brought up a scarlet-backed, pink-bellied rock-fish, then a three pound bream, and later an emerald-green rock-fish round about a pound in weight.

  It was whilst rebaiting his hooks that the shark came slowly cruising by. The purposefully moving, sinister, triangular fin fascinated him, and he watched it with the hooks held in his two hands. From the north came the sea-brute, along a water valley, skirting the Boiling Pot, and cut the chop with its fin beyond the watching man. Now and then he caught a glimpse of its blue-grey back, and saw shivering in the surface water the dull white of its belly. It passed him, and still he watched it. He saw it circle and return, this time closer to the rock on which he stood with the welling waves sending their overflow sometimes almost as high as his waist.

  Whilst the beast drew opposite, Arnold Dudley noted how the symmetrical body was lifted and lowered by the incoming sea-hills, observed with admiration the mastery the beast had over its native element. Whether it saw him or smelt him he was undecided, but suddenly the moving fin slowed to a stop and disappeared.

  He thought the shark had gone deep after an unwary fish, and waited for the fin to reappear some distance further on. At one instant the level of the near sea was as high as his waist, the next it had sunk ten feet below his rocky platform. The fin did not appear at the expected spot, and at last he prepared to cast his line again.

  In the very act of drawing back his arm for the throw Dudley saw the shark directly opposite him, and not six yards from the Pontoon. It lay motionless, only the tip of its fin being visible. When the swell carried it upward it cut the horizon line, and when the water sank, Dudley gazed down on the motionless fish staring at him with horrible, malignant, agate eyes, even though they were softened by a few inches of translucent water.

  With the sea level with his waist, Dudley experienced a qualm of fear. He pictured the shark making a dash forward and seizing him the precise second it lifted above the rock. But reason pointed out his safety, and for a while he stood and watched.

  With marvellous ease the brute kept itself motionless, counteracting in some subtle way the attempts of the sea-currents to move its mass. Second after second, minute after minute, it lay watching the man, invisible, hatefully contemplative, terrible in its placidity.

  Dudley shivered. The beauty of his beach, after all, was only surface deep. Beneath the shimmering wonder of the sea lay ugliness, bestial and horrible. It was as though smiling, lovely nature kept hidden away her monstrosities conceived in storm and passion, or as a prosperous city magnate standing in his hall welcomes illustrious guests, knowing that in the back rooms of his house men and women he has ruined are waiting to receive alms of him.

  A poignant loathing swept over Dudley, held by those unwinking agate eyes. In a bouquet of roses he had discovered an adder, and with quick decision he retreated, determined to cast out this reptile fouling sweet-scented beauty.

  Winding the line on its short piece of board whilst he stumbled to the shore, he walked rapidly to his camp. There he unpacked a leg of mutton given him by Hester Long, and in this he made deep gashes with his skinning knife, and along the gashes inserted the white crystals of strychnine.

  Now running, he raced back to the Pontoon and stumbled over its uneven surface to its seaward edge. The shark, he saw, was north of the Boiling Pot, and, waiting, he saw it disappear in the distance beyond.

  For five long anxious minutes he waited—waited to witness its return, revealed by the triangular fin, yet he did not see its return. Suddenly he was shocked to behold it watching again in its former position. As a cat with a mouse, it had feigned retreat, intending to spring back unobserved within reach of its prey.

  Dudley tossed it the poisoned leg of mutton.

  The meat fell with a splash where the shark had been. Even whilst it was in the air, the fish had sunk. Dudley saw the meat disappear, saw it rise again to the surface, saw it carried upward by an incoming wave, up and up almost to the level of his head. He saw a streak of white, two inward-curving crescent rows of white teeth, then a blue-grey back, long and graceful, and the wide tail-fin.

  When the water fell the bait had gone.

  “It’s you for the tummy-ache now, you beast!” Dudley shouted.

  For a while he stayed there, watching the sea. But no more did the giant fish appear. He stayed for an hour, until the sun kissed the horizon and laid across the darkening sea a narrow carpet of crimson. And then far, away to the north, he observed a small flock of gulls, his gulls, hovering, hovering low over the water.

  With a feeling akin to exultation Arnold Dudley reached the narrow strip of sand lying along the rear of the Pontoon, seeming to divide it from the bluff headland, and there in a pool he gutted and scaled his fish. Again in his camp, he added wood to the embers of the fire, boiled the billy, and, after changing into dry clothes, fried the fish.

  He ate his supper whilst the stars appeared one by one, and his butcher-bird rendered his repertoire of melodies ; and, when he had finished and washed the utensils and put away the bread and the butter, he rolled a cigarette with thoughtful care and smoked it with the relish of a man who smokes but little.

  The recent exultation was replaced by a feeling of satisfaction, for that day he had removed two ugly blemishes from his beach—the indescribable litter of his camp, and the dreadful monster of the sea. With the darkness the wind fell to an utter calm. The birds slept, but the unsleeping sea rolled against the eternal rocks with subterranean thunderings, and on the steeply-shelving sand-beach with reverberating, sharply-defined crashes. The orchestra of the deep soothed Dudley to dreaminess, and he fell to wondering how much older the world would be when the sea-music ceased. And, thinking thus, he sudden
ly thought of Hester Long and her mysterious gift.

  Procuring his hurricane-lamp, he lit it, and from the truck took the flat brown paper parcel tied carefully with string. He took it to the table, and from his belt pulled out his skinning-knife. Yet he did not cut the string. For a while he stood, looking down on the parcel, the knife held under the cord. His mouth softened in a smile, and slowly he, laid aside the knife.

  He untied the knots with his fingers, asking himself who he was, to cut with a knife knots that the fingers of Hester Long had made? And when he had accomplished the task and spread out the covering, he discovered a book with light-blue covers. It was of foolscap size, and when he lifted a cover he saw that it was a new day-book. The pages were crisp and white, and at the top of each was a line of writing.

  Bending low, he read the writing, done in a neat round-hand, and found that each page was headed with a date beginning with 6th of April. Between cover and fly-leaf was a half-sheet of cheap notepaper, on which was written:

  A steam-engine has, of necessity, a safety-valve. Write your thoughts daily in this book. You will find keeping a diary a safety-valve, something through which you can pour off all those little things you feel unable to tell anyone.

  HESTER LONG.

  For a long time Arnold Dudley sat beside the table, thinking. Before he went to bed he got out pen and ink and wrote a few words on the flyleaf of the book.

  CHAPTER XVI

  DUDLEY’S STEP FORWARD

  THE Sunday following Dudley broke his promise to Hester Long. The decision that he could not keep it was made on the Saturday night, when he went over his trap-line with a hurricane-lamp. The line lay parallel with the beach, and at its farther end he climbed to the summit of the dividing sand-ridge and sat and gazed out over the sea, bathed in the light of the moon.

  The vivid daylight colours were reduced to a couple of silvery shades. Under the moon the heaving sea appeared the colour of new silver. On either side stretched a vast sheet of old silver, tarnished by the ages. The beach itself showed as a moonbeam sent downward beyond a veil of falling rain, whilst the sand-ridges took to themselves the shapes of strange blotched beasts deep in slumber.

  Seated there alone in limitless space Arnold Dudley came to feel his solitude. In that immensity he was as much a castaway as the lone sailor on a frail raft in the middle of a shipless ocean; but, whereas the sailor is cast away through misfortune, Dudley was cast away by his own act. For the first time full realization of that situation was evidenced to him.

  He had killed a man. Deliberately he had waited to kill. Apart from the ethics of the deed, its justice or otherwise, he had not the right to kill. The law of the country expressly forbade killing. In effect, the law laid it down that, no matter what the wrong, the wronged must not kill. It applied even to those cases where the law was helpless to right the wrong done. Civilization demands that there shall be no killing; the demand is based on self-preservation, which itself is blind instinct. A man who kills is hanged, but a man who robs another man of his woman and his honour is let off with a cash fine. In one way the fine assesses the woman’s value. A price is set on her chastity, and the price varies according to her social station. A poor woman’s chastity may well be assessed at ten pounds, and a rich woman’s chastity at ten thousand. To assess chastity in money is indeed not to honour woman.

  Dudley came to see the dishonouring of Ellen in a new light. It mattered little if his wife’s honour was valued or not valued. It mattered still less if the seducer was compelled to pay for his destruction of it with ten pounds or ten thousand pounds, or with his life. If it were possible to compel him to pay ten thousand millions, or his life ten times over, the woman would not regain her chastity.

  Had civilization decreed that the dishonoured husband be permitted himself to hang his wife’s seducer, there would be remarkably few domestic tragedies; for, unlike the murderer, who ninety times out of a hundred is mentally unbalanced, the seducer of a married woman is sane enough to weigh the consequences. But civilization decreed that a seducer must not be killed, decreed that the fallen wife should be ticketed in pounds, shillings, and pence.

  Dudley saw that, being a unit of civilization, he had outraged it by his killing of Tracy. And outraged civilization would avenge itself by killing him if and when it received the chance. It would ally itself with the dead Tracy against him. The shooting of Tracy was not merely a violence done to Tracy, it was a violence done to civilization.

  Cain slew Abel and was branded by God. Dudley had killed Tracy and was branded by man. He sat there above the silver sea, lonely and in solitude, because he was so branded, because he feared death at the hands of man ; and because, if he died at the hands of man for the killing of Tracy, Tracy’s blood atonement for the wrong done would be wiped out, and the wrong would remain unpunished to the debit of civilization.

  That was the basic reason why Arnold Dudley was there. A normal man, he wanted to live, but sincerely hoped that when death did come he would be able to meet it with fortitude. Life becoming as it then was, death would be welcomed if that death was not the result of his killing of Tracy.

  Dudley’s heart, as Pharaoh’s of old, remained hardened.

  Yet he came to take one step forward towards clearing his destiny. Fully recognizing what he was in the eyes of man, without questioning what he had become in the eyes of God, he saw that to fulfil his promise to Hester Long would be to place her in danger of legal trouble. She knew he was a murderer. The law demanded of her to become an informer, an accuser. That she was an ally, a defender, was, of course, natural to a woman like Hester Long. She insisted on continuing as his ally at least, and because of that Dudley saw that he must protect her against the greatness of her heart.

  Not again could he go to her house. To do so would but continue to expose her to the vengeance of the law. It would be an act unworthy of an honourable, a decent man. It would be repaying her gifts of gold with base metal.

  Solitude weighed heavily on him that night. The killing of Tracy had made him accursed, a man forced to shun his fellows, unable to accept the hand of human friendship, because acceptance would endanger the owner of that hand.

  It was as though the soul of Tracy laughed at him in mocking triumph. It was as though Tracy and he had been playing a game of poker. Tracy had won the Jack-pot when it was Jack high. He, Dudley, had scooped the pool when it was Ace high ; and now that the game was Jacks-on-the-Down Tracy had won again—won all that Dudley had won, and a little more besides. Yet the game between Arnold Dudley and Edmund Tracy was not finished. It was to proceed even up to the point when Dudley would toss his all in the pool between them.

  The sea midway between him and the horizon became strangely darkened, and it was this quite ordinary phenomenon that roused him from reverie. Glancing up, he saw creeping over the moon a small but dense cloud. Its eastern side was thick and reflected the moonlight dazzlingly white. The cloud was flanked by others, and they were the advance guard of an unbroken mass sweeping in from the west.

  The shadow on the glittering silver sheet raced towards him, uncontrollable as the tide. Second by second the silver sea was blotted out, second by second it shrank shoreward, now a broad ribbon, now a narrow ribbon, now but a wisp of silver straw. The gleaming beach faded magically. To Dudley it seemed as though the beach and he were being hurled through space into the shadow. It fell over him as a garment of dark purple velvet, and, standing up, he turned to see the shadow eating up the sand-dunes and tiny valleys, and finally the towering sand-hills beyond.

  Was it indeed rushing towards envelopment by the shadow of destiny? What lay behind that night and the to-morrow? Darkness! Eternal Darkness, wherein happiness and life are no more!

  Far out at sea he saw a patch of twinkling jewels. As though an Aladdin’s genie had created them from nothing, the jewels increased in number. They lay thickly, spreading every second north and south and east. The edge of them rolled towards him as the unrolling of a magic c
arpet. The sea-swept rocks were littered by countless diamonds. The sea-foam was laced with them.

  Out of the darkness sprang the beach in all its snowy purity. The purple velvet cloak was torn from him, and once more he stood in the radiant light. The darkness had been but a veil. Was he to pass through that other veil of darkness to gain the light of Eternity?

  Fantasy! It was only cloud shadows on the sea. Shadows only, preceding a greater shadow that spelled rain. Picking up his lamp and his bag of rabbit-skins, Dudley made his way to the end of the trap-line. Two hours had elapsed since he had last gone over it. Some of the traps held wide-eyed, terrified animals. These he did not reset. The others he sprang in passing by, merely pressing down the plate with his boot.

  The rain came before he reached camp. It rained as it can rain along that coast, and long before he arrived at his canvas home he was drenched to the skin. The fire was drowned out. The clock on the empty case at the head of his stretcher-bed notified him that it was twenty minutes past two.

  The butcher-bird awakened him at dawn. It sang merely a few bars, in a tone that expressed no joy. The rain still beat on the tent roof, little and big drops being clearly distinguishable by sound. It fell in sharply accentuated rattles driven before a rising wind, and from the beach came the voice of the surf, raised in an angry snarl.

  Arnold Dudley was thankful for the rain. Hester Long would not now expect him. He was thankful, too, that he had sprung the traps, for by doing so he was not compelled to go out over the line to take out a few unfortunate rabbits. He had worked hard that week, averaging probably eighteen hours in every twenty-four, and the coming of the rain gave him an excuse to lie abed. Good old rain! I t would make Hester Long’s newly-cleared fifty acres leap into green life.