The Beach of Atonement Read online

  The shooting of the fox, the poisoning of the shark, the visit of the sportsmen and those of Hester Long, were as landmarks to Dudley during his sojourn on the Beach of Atonement. They were the rare breaks in his otherwise monotonous existence. As milestones passed in a fast motor-car are noticeable against long strips of uninteresting country between, those incidents stood out milestones in Dudley’s uneventful life.

  They were events to look back upon, to keep fresh in memory like ports of call during a long ocean voyage. Of necessity, in a written history they occur in close succession ; therefore it must be emphasized that during Dudley’s solitude the periods of drudgery and the periods of self-contemplation were enormously protracted as compared with the few fleeting occasions of exceptional interest.

  Whereas the walk from his camp to the road had taken barely an hour, almost three hours were occupied pushing through the bush from the road to the beach some two miles south of the Pontoon. Cresting the last sand-ridge, the blue of the sea and the white of surf and sand that brilliant day brought to his mind the gaudy pictures of home or foreign resorts used in advertising sea trips. In all that panorama of land and sea there were remarkably few colours, but those colours were astoundingly brilliant.

  Tired, he seated himself on the ridge, rolled himself a cigarette, and fell to wondering which of the women had braved the darkness of a wet night to ascertain if he were all right. And, whilst thus thinking, half an hour later he heard the same sound which had come out of the night. A horse champed its bit. It made him leap to his feet and swing round, and then he saw down in the gully behind the beach a black, spirited gelding on which sat Edith Mallory.

  The distance between them was a possible sixty feet, and for quite sixty seconds the two regarded each other with unconscious interest. She saw a lithe athletic man, dressed in dungaree trousers, and blue cotton shirt opened wide at the neck and the sleeves rolled to his elbows a man whose hair glinted as old copper in the sun, and possessing, set in a ruddy handsome face, a pair of keen, narrow-lidded, hazel eyes, He saw seated on a young horse the spirit of feminine youth, a vision of feminine loveliness entrancing enough to dazzle a St. Anthony.

  She, too, was hatless. Her unsheared hair glinted as new copper wire, wire so fine that there seemed to be millions of strands. A pair of wide blue eyes set in a rose-complexioned face gazed up at him with an expression wholly baffling. And when she dismounted with effortless grace he came to appreciate for the first time her beauty of face and form. It was then he spoke.

  “Good morning, Miss Mallory!” he called out affably. “Come along up and say how-do-you-do to my Beach.”

  Waiting, he watched her tie the horse’s reins to a bush before climbing up the sand-slope to his side. He saw that she then did not look at him, nor did so until she had gazed first north and then south over the wide stretch of sand and rolling surf.

  “Mrs. Long is anxious to know why you didn’t go there to dinner yesterday,” she said, with evident seriousness. “You promised to go every Sunday.”

  “Promises, like laws, are made to be broken.”

  “Not by nice people.” He found himself regarded in her old provocative way, through eyes that examined him with curious interest.

  “I am not a nice person,” he pointed out.

  “Don’t let us equivocate,” she said, stressing slightly the pronoun. She waited as though still desirous of an explanation. For a second their eyes met, his full of bitter sarcasm, hers undeniably stern, with the sternness of youth.

  “Let us sit down and talk,” Dudley proposed, and when he was seated with her face turned to the sea he went on.

  “You know, don’t you, that I killed a man?”

  Her lips moved, and very, faintly came the affirmative.

  “You know what they call a man who kills—a murderer,” Dudley said quietly. “That neither you nor Mrs. Long has, so far, informed the police of my whereabouts makes you both my accomplices or accessories after the fact, or something equally obnoxious to the law. Both of you have been kind to me, exceedingly kind. It would, indeed, be a poor way of returning your kindness were I to risk the law finding me in your presence and discovering that you know me for what I am.”

  Pausing, he waited for her comment. None came, so he went on:

  “You see; by accepting Mrs. Long’s hospitality in these circumstances, I am taking advantage of her goodness. Also you must see that my association with her children is not, and could not be, good for them. They must not grow up influenced in the slightest degree by contact with such as I am. I am sorry I made her a promise, but her wonderful kindness to me made me forget for the time that I am a criminal. Will you please explain what I have said to her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Dudley stared at her in surprise.

  “Just because!”

  “Why not tell me?”

  He was looking at the clear-cut profile and saw the white lids flutter before her eyes. And quite suddenly the face was turned on him and in her eyes were tears. They surprised him more than her refusal to convey to Hester Long the reason of his failure to keep his word.

  “Don’t you understand that Hester is one of the sweetest women alive?” she cried. “Haven’t you yet found out that she is the most understanding woman in the world? Do you think that if she thought for a moment that your presence would harm her children, for whom she had fought and is fighting so hard a battle to protect from poverty and harm, she would have asked you to spend every Sunday with them?”

  The fervency of her utterance surprised him yet further. Her effort to keep calm during what, to him, was a matter-of-fact discussion puzzled him. He remained silent, a silence that invited her to proceed.

  “Have you ever read the New Testament?” she asked.

  “I read it right through once.”

  “Do you remember if Christ turned away from a sinner—a murderer even?”

  “No.”

  “Then why should Hester Long? Why should I? You say you are a murderer, meaning that you are something foul. As though you wanted to rob the man you killed of something, whereas he had robbed you of something he could never give back, even had he wished: I—I’m afraid I can’t reason very well, Mr. Cain; but it does seem to us that you had right and justice on your side.

  “Then, again, once Hester had cause to feel as you felt when you found out things. She doesn’t know I know, and never you breathe a word! There was a woman who tried to get her husband. She lives in Dongara. She tried her hardest in a most brazen way, and Hester had to fight to keep her husband. Not openly, you know. Hester Long’s too fine a woman for that. If I had been Hester Long I would—would have killed her.”

  Dudley shook his head.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” he argued in an effort to change her mood, which he could not understand. “You are too sensible for that. Quite aside from the immorality of my act, the act was that of a fool. Mrs. Long was right there. I should have let them alone. Time would inevitably have avenged me much better than a bullet. What we have to consider is that the act was committed, that the law of the country says that such an act is murder, and clearly states that the penalty is death. It also lays it down that to knowingly harbour a murderer is an offence to be punished. Mrs. Long, I know, willingly risks punishment. We agree that she does so because of her wonderful sympathy; but that makes it all the more urgent for me not to permit her to run the risk.

  “You see, Miss Mallory, don’t you? I am doomed to live an outcast life. To accept friendship is to risk involving my friends in my troubles. You two are just wonderful in keeping my secret. Your thoughts of me and for me arc worthy of a better object.”

  “But you can’t go on living like this?” she expostulated, her face vivid with sudden colour.

  “I must, for I can’t go on living otherwise. I must lie on the bed I’ve made.”

  “The bed is not of your making,” she said fiercely.

  After that outburst she fell silent, and the
y both stared out over the sea. Presently he sighed, knowing not why. When he again looked at her he saw tears slowly falling down her cheeks.

  “Why, Miss Mallory, you’re not crying, surely? Have I said anything to hurt you?”

  “Everything you say hurts me. Everything about you hurts me. I hate to see you here on this lonely beach. I hate to think of you being here. There is no justice in it. I—I—Oh! won’t you go away? Can’t you go to some other country where you could mix with people and be happy?”

  “Happy! I shall never again be happy.”

  “But would you go? I could—I could lend you money to go with, and you could pay me back some day. I—I wouldn’t want any interest, of course, excepting just a letter now and then. I’d like to know where you were, and if you were happy.”

  Arnold Dudley was too fine a man to laugh or sneer at her suggestion. He saw that, after all, she was almost a child, quite inexperienced in the world—a child who evidently liked him, and wanted impulsively to help. He said gravely:

  “You are very kind, and I appreciate the spirit in which the offer is made. To go back to a city, even in a far country, would not help me to be happier. Every time I saw happiness it would embitter me further. I would rather stay here on what has become my beach. Yet, if you wish it, I will go away, far away, and find another beach. Although why you should wish it I don’t know.”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Suddenly she stood up. Her eyes were dry and clear and shining. They made him think of Ellen’s eyes when she first had loved him, and often after they were married. And then he knew. She was too unsophisticated to hide it from him. He never knew how it was that he came to hold her hands in his, and stand looking down into her upturned face. Even his voice sounded in his ears as that of another man.

  “Don’t tell me,” he advised her gently. And then, with over the crest of a northern sand-ridge. She never looked back, and when she had gone Arnold Dudley flung himself down and hid his face in his arms.

  For when he had heard her sob a small thin voice had whispered: “She loves you, Arnold. Take her—take her—take her!”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  BATTLING WITH SATAN

  FOR the next ten days Arnold Dudley worked at high pressure, forced on by a mental feverishness that had had its re-birth in the meeting with Edith Mallory on the southern sand-hill.

  The first long battle with the devil of sex had ended when Hester Long rescued him from a drunken debauch—had ended in the utter rout of the devil. Hester Long’s influence had been an all-powerful ally, and so long as that influence continued the outcast had enjoyed a period of mental quietude. A man living in a great city, or even a small town is armoured by various interests, amusements, books, ambitions. A man living alone, cut off from his fellow men, utterly without the armour of the city man, is wholly defenceless. Not only that, but the unnatural life he leads is a breach in his defences, a breach inviting attack by his hereditary instincts, and this crafty sex devil strikes when the defender least expects the attack or has temporarily forgotten the enemy.

  When Edith Mallory, herself going through a hell of unrequited love, unconsciously betrayed herself to the man she adored, she gave the devil of sex his chance to strike. The blow was shrewdly given. The effect was first to tempt Arnold Dudley to take advantage of his new-won knowledge that Edith loved him. That temptation he successfully resisted—a success highly creditable to one in his position—but the effect passed on, and inflamed his old longing for the reciprocal love of Ellen.

  The revelation of Edith Mallory came to be an obstacle lying in the straight path of his desires—an obstacle that had temporarily balked, but one that he had rounded easily, thence to continue along the straight path. For to the one man was the one woman. Dudley’s love for his wife was supreme. In the years before he met Ellen he had flirted with several women more or less seriously. He thought then that each flirtation was the manifestation of love. He knew that that was not so when he came to love Ellen. After three years of married life his love for Ellen was far more profound than before their marriage. The intimacy of married life proved the real foundation of sexual love. In Ellen he found the twin of himself, the second half of every human being. The realization of that, the tranquil satisfaction it gave him, had possibly made him a little inclined to take Ellen’s love for granted, but not a whit the less appreciative of it.

  Edmund Tracy had disrupted that sublime state. Yet so powerful a hold had it got over Dudley’s very existence that, had it not been for his disastrous crime, he would gladly have taken Ellen back, and honestly tried to banish from his mind the incident of Tracy so that he and Ellen might re-enter their former blissful estate.

  In his solitude that former blissful estate remained the one goal of life worth striving for. It was not so much woman that his body craved for, as Ellen for whom his spirit craved. His solitude taught him that Ellen’s body was a magnet to the metal filings of his body in a far less degree than the magnet of Ellen’s soul to the meal of his. The possession of Ellen satisfied the longings of body and soul alike, which was the intention of God when he created Eve.

  Had Ellen died, Dudley never again would have taken a wife. City interests would have armoured him against the sex devil, relieved him of the terrible warfare of sex instincts, enabled him to go on living his life steadfastly alone, keeping before him the ideal of his past life with Ellen.

  The ideal was yet his, in spite of the devil’s subtle assaults. The assaults at first only caused more poignant desire for the ideal state of marriage which had been his. Succeeding assaults showered upon him in his defencelessness wore his nerves to a thin edge, and drove his mind to the very verge of insanity.

  The temptation to take what Edith Mallory offered him when she gazed straight at him with shining eyes affected him little, in comparison with the dreams that disturbed his short snatches of slumber. They were not dreams quickly forgotten, if remembered at all. They were dreams vivid, in perfect sequence of action and time.

  In them he was chained to his bed with Ellen standing beside it, her hair dishevelled, her face distorted by mental anguish, in her eyes that shining light that every man has seen in the eyes of a woman who loves him. Trying to rise, he knew he was unable, and coming to know that he watched, Ellen slowly retreated from him as though drawn back and away by the spirit of Tracy.

  Or they would be standing each on a rock with a chasm between them. Ellen would smile at him wistfully, the mystery of woman in her violet eyes, the lure of her sex visible about her adorable mouth. He would look at the chasm and see it could not be crossed, and then wildly seek a way round to her whilst slowly she drew away into the mist.

  It was always thus. Always did Ellen invite him, always did she call to him. And always was he unable to respond, always was she drawn away from him.

  From those dreams he awoke trembling. In a while the trembling subsided and a physical ache grew and grew into sharp pain below his heart. Whilst his body and his mind cried for rest he forced himself to rise and stride with faltering steps down to the beach or over the endless sand-ridges till dawn came, when he returned to his work and kept at it till nightfall and long after.

  His mind flogged his tortured muscles into continuous action. Work was the antidote. Hester Long had said so repeatedly. Work, therefore, he did as seldom man has ever worked. His trap-lines radiated from his camp as the spokes of a wheel. In ten days he trapped over a thousand rabbits. Between visits to the traps he employed himself digging out the rabbits from their burrows, moving tons of sand. Or laboriously he tracked a fox for miles, and if he ran it to earth fell to like a maniac searching for gold in an ash-heap, digging that fox out of its hole.

  Hester Long’s advice that work was the healer of all spiritual wounds, was the weapon with which to defeat any kind of devil, was sound in so far as the receiver of the advice lived among his kind. Her advice failed to meet the needs of this man, living in unnatural solitude and haunted by such a
love as he held for his wife.

  There came a day when Dudley’s body refused further to obey the commands of his mind, when even his brain refused to function. For seventy-two hours he had not slept. He had not dared to sleep. Those sweet, alluring dreams were too terrible to face. Night and day he had trapped and dug, drinking much tea, eating little food. It was a supreme effort to flee the torturer named Desire. And it failed. The torturer dogged his weary, shuffling feet, nudged his elbow constantly, and incessantly whispered in his ears:

  “Ellen! The lovely Ellen! You’ve lost Ellen! Fool! Fool that you were to shoot Tracy! Tracy alive—and Ellen you might have re-won!”

  On her way to the beach to ascertain why he had failed to keep his promise to take Sunday dinner with her and her boys, Hester Long came upon him sprawled across the winding track midway between his camp and the main road. He lay in a sharp bend, and her old horse stepped a yard from his rough-clothed body to gaze on it unconcernedly.

  With the colour suddenly drained from her plain face, her clear grey eyes quickly clouded with dread, she bade the two children stay in the buggy whilst she jumped out and ran forward to the outcast. He lay on his face, which was pressed into the fine moist sand, one arm lay beneath him, the other stretched out beyond his head.

  Hester Long, when she flung herself to her knees beside lane, had all she could do to repress a scream. She thought him dead, and, thinking this, came to know that she almost loved him. Her actions to herself appeared abnormally slow. Thoughts of Edith Mallory, and her hopeless love for this man, raced through her brain even when she touched Dudley’s neck and found it warm. The relief that surged through her at discovering that he was not dead almost deprived her of power to regain her feet. Her face was aflame with glory the instant she stood over him, her head thrown back, her hands pressed to her breasts.