The Beach of Atonement Read online

  The blood rushed into Hester Long’s face. The beating of her heart became irregular and accentuated. The abrupt, stupendous question appeared to drain away her strength in sudden egress. She became weak, and into her reeling mind came the desire, the impulse, to fall forward into Arnold Dudley’s arms. Yet in that fatal moment reason came back to her. Even as the light of day brightened into a flaming radiance of new-won knowledge, she saw plainly the path she must tread. Laughing softly, tremulously, she answered him:

  “No, I don’t love you, Mr. Cain. What a foolish question to ask!”

  “It was not foolish at all,” he said swiftly. “Listen! I came to this beach to hide, to live in solitude. I met two women who, from the first, treated me as a human being and not as a mad dog. Through no conscious fault of mine one of them falls in love with me. Her innocence protected her, Mrs. Long. She had no inkling of the furnace which is devouring me. Before me she laid down her beauty. Think of that! Before me! Then think of what I have been and what I am. I was tempted. I was like the man in the Pyramid suddenly released and offered unlimited quantity of the drug he was deprived of. With harsh words I sent her away. Why? Because I am an honourable man? Because I am a noble man? Not at all. I sent her away still pure because I saw that the drug she offered me in her innocence was only a substitute for the real thing, which for me can only be given by my wife.”

  Hester Long was mentally stunned by this revelation, following so closely that other relating to herself. Dudley went on speaking, with increasing excitement in his voice.

  “Edith Mallory was kind to me, and I have done nothing but give her pain. You have been kinder still. You have gladly risked your purity of mind just to help one who cannot be helped. I would be an ingrate dog not to recognize it, not to appreciate your kindness which, being a part of you, you are unable not to render. If you had said you also loved me, my cup of bitterness would have overflowed, and I would have walked off the Pontoon.

  “I want you to understand that the furnace now burning me up is not the furnace of lust. It is of something far deeper-seated than that, something which goes deeper than my body, something which is rooted in my very spark of life. I have come to see that my love for Ellen is not such as the matter-of-fact emotion so glibly described by novelists. When I began to love Ellen I surrendered to her my soul’s independence. No longer was I a separate entity. I became a part of her, she a part of me. And now that we have become eternally separated, my soul is as a blind man’s body, rushing here, creeping there, in a fruitless search for the light. And it will never see the light.”

  Bent forward once again with his face supported by his hands, Hester Long watched a man in the throes of mental torture. She came to understand in a dim kind of way that which he was trying to tell her. She understood more plainly what a great love was, and was unable to swamp a sudden feeling of shame that she should so far forget her husband as to love this man. That she had loved her dead husband she was certain. That she loved Arnold Dudley now she was equally certain. Was that love? In loving two men was she loving either? The man she now loved, loved but one woman and was being eaten up by that love. If this man’s love for his wife was a sublime love, what degree of love was it she had had for her husband, and what was that which she now was being thrilled by? Was her capacity to love so small that her love was counterfeit?

  She did not know, and could not know, that the devil which added fuel to the furnace eating up Dudley was the devil of Solitude. If she had discerned that, she would have insisted on his leaving the beach and travelling, travelling anywhere. She was not to see, never having lived in solitude, that in solitude a man makes an all-powerful enemy—himself. Without natural association with his fellows his mind, instead of receiving impressions from without, is overwhelmed by the impressions, sub-consciously gathered and stored away, which it has received from the hereditary instincts of the body.

  Dudley’s desire for Ellen was becoming exaggerated because his mind was receiving no impressions from without himself. Prompted by the instincts of his body, Ellen had become abnormally necessary to him. To him, then, the future was void of any importance to his life.

  He possessed neither hope nor ambition. His mind derived nourishment only from the past, and like a healthy body fed by an unbalanced food diet his mind was being slowly poisoned to the living death we call madness.

  Whilst she did not understand the process, Hester Long could visualize the abyss towards which Dudley was rushing. If he was to avoid that abyss he must no longer continue to live alone there, or indeed anywhere else alone. Yet she wanted time to think before coming to the point of being able to put before him a proposition that was likely to be acceptable to him.

  “Tell me about your meeting with Edith,” she said.

  He related that meeting to Hester Long just as it had occurred. In so far as the speeches were concerned there was nothing in them to suggest that Edith Mallory loved the outcast. Arnold Dudley described the sequence of incidents as a parent might describe his child’s faults to a teacher, or his child’s symptoms to a doctor. Already knowing of her friend’s passion for Dudley, the fact of that was not so important as the fact that Edith had visited him, urged him to go away, offered him a loan to enable him to do so. And Edith Mallory had said not a word to her about it.

  Seated there beside this piece of human flotsam cast up on the beach of her life, Hester Long vainly sought a solution to a problem that was of more vital concern to her friend than to herself. Edith Mallory came first. At all costs to herself her life must not be wrecked as assuredly it would be if Dudley were tempted again. It was not fair to him. Hester Long decided there and then that Edith must be shown the precipice on which she stood. She must herself open before the girl the book of life and read to her some of its pages as yet unread.

  If it were so important to Dudley that he should give up his hermit life, it was a thousand times more important to Edith that he should do so. And for the first time since she had been there with him she remembered the stranger in the motor-truck.

  “Listen, Mr. Cain,” she resumed in her low voice.

  “Yesterday a man was asking about you. He looked like a detective. His questions were like those a detective would ask. It seems that he has been searching for you for months, and he seems to have got scent of you at Dongara. You see, you cannot stay here. I put him off. I told him you had gone north weeks ago. But he’ll come back again to Dongara, and the next time he will be sure to come here. You must not be here when he comes. You can see that, can’t you?”

  Dudley was staring across the gully at the further sand-hill, and failed to answer.

  “You are not listening, Mr. Cain,” she accused.

  “Indeed, I am,” Dudley replied. “While you were telling me of this detective I decided that I don’t care a curse if he finds me or not.”

  “But think!” Hester cried, aghast. “Think what they’ll do to you if they find you.”

  “They will see to it that I find rest and peace,” he rejoined grimly. “No. I’ve reached the stage when I no longer care what happens. I stay here.”

  “Very well. Then, if you won’t go for your own sake, go for the sake of Edith Mallory.”

  “I am sorry for Miss Mallory. But she need never come here again while I’m here. I am six miles from her. What difference would it make if I were six hundred?”

  “A great deal. If you were all that distance away she would no longer be able to yield to the temptation of seeing you.”

  “I cannot agree,” Dudley said stubbornly. “She knows I am a married man. I have told her I love my wife. She knows I can never love her. She knows, too; that it is folly to even hope that I should.”

  “You would not deliberately injure her, would you?” Hester was pressing an argument with the fervour of a politician.

  “No. I would certainly not injure her.”

  “Then remember that she is young, beautiful, and passionate. Whilst you remain here she will come
to see you again and again. In the end, Mr. Cain, you will irrevocably injure my very dear friend.”

  “I tell you I shall not.”

  “Are you then a St. Anthony?”

  Suddenly she saw him looking at her, almost glaring at her. When he spoke he nearly shouted.

  “No—I am not. But why, because she should be a little fool, should I leave my beach? Tell her not to come again, unless with you or her brother. Tell her to leave me alone. Why can’t I be left alone? Because I have made a hell for myself, why should she want to come into it? Make her leave me alone. You leave me alone, too! Let me be, damn you! Let me be.”

  “Mr. Cain!”

  Dudley sprang to his feet, the mental storm disfiguring his face. Raising his arms above his head, he beat his forehead with his clenched fist, and shouted to be let alone. Hester rose, too, frightened at his outburst, torn by pity and love for him. And then, as suddenly as he had leapt to his feet, he turned to her and threw himself down before her, bowing his head, and crying alternately for forgiveness and patience.

  “I didn’t mean that, Hester,” he moaned, and her Christian name on his lips sent the blood to her face and her hands to her lips. “Oh, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t think. I don’t know what I am saying half the time. I’ll go away. I’ll leave my beach, because—just because you want me to.”

  “I don’t want you to go,” Hester Long said firmly. “But I think you ought to go for your own sake, as well as for the sake of Edith Mallory. You can see that now, can’t you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’ll go. I’ll go now, directly you have gone. But no! I must first say good-bye to my beach. I must feed my birds for the last time. You go now, Hester. I’ll put in your horse.”

  Swiftly he arose, and with practised skill backed old Brownie into the shafts and harnessed him to the vehicle. He led the horse along to the cleared sand-patch, and, turning it there, led it back to the waiting woman, whose eyes now were bright with unshed tears.

  Restoring the seat, he handed her in and placed the reins in her hands, then stood and gazed idly, vacantly at the horse.

  “You will call in at my farm before you go right away, won’t you?” she asked softly.

  “Yes. I shall want some crusts for the gulls,” he said.

  “They always look for the crusts. Good-bye, Mrs. Long, good-bye!”

  Her hands were seized by his and tightly gripped. His face, as she saw it then, was terrible. The corners of his mouth twitched, the corners of his eyebrows twitched, as though afflicted by St. Vitus’s dance. His eyes! His eyes were green flames in whose depths his soul writhed in torment.

  “Good-bye! And don’t forget to call,” she reminded him, with stupendous courage.

  And then he let her hands go, and vanished. And when she looked back round the edge of the buggy hood, she saw him running up the sand-hill towards the Seagulls’ Throne. He was standing on the Throne when she reached the summit of Big Hill, standing as motionless as the rock itself.

  Whilst Brownie dragged the buggy home, Hester Long wept.

  CHAPTER XX

  FINLAY COMES TO THE BEACH

  AFTER a week spent fruitlessly in the locality of Walkaway, George Finlay returned to Dongara. For seven months he had toured the country and the pastoral districts of Western Australia in search of his old friend and recent employer. He had undertaken the search in the first place at the urgent entreaty of Ellen Dudley, and in the second place because his friendship with Dudley had been created and cemented by their sojourn in the lonely places of Australia.

  Put two men in a spot of the world where they seldom see a fellow-human, and in less than a month the probability will be that they will hate the sight of each other. If not that, their companionship will result in esteem, if not affection. The middle line of indifference is impossible.

  Ellen came one afternoon to George Finlay’s wife bearing the lines of tragedy on her chalk-white face, and an indescribable haunting regret in her beautiful eyes. Mrs. Finlay, a gaunt Irishwoman from County Clare, had met Ellen with a countenance as hard as quartz, but had succumbed with Irish quickness when she saw what lay in the depths of Ellen’s eyes.

  Arriving home from the warehouse, George found no dinner ready for him, and the two women locked in the front-room. Hugely indignant, he demanded to know why he was expected to live on air, and why his wife should entertain women visitors at an hour when she should be preparing for him necessary sustenance. He demanded this through the key-hole, and on being requested to “shut his face” had made himself tea and boiled four eggs. Afterwards, as an indication of annoyance, he had stormed the Swan Hotel, where he remained till nine o’clock, the hour when the working-man’s clubs are closed by law. Not being a plutocrat or a politician, he was then compelled to return home, determined to assert his manhood even to the extent of wrecking the furniture.

  To his vast surprise he found his lady and Ellen Dudley drinking tea in the kitchen, where on the table a strangely benevolent spouse had set in readiness for him two bottles of beer and a glass. Being a mere man, George Finlay fell head-first into the feminine trap, and, instead of describing to Ellen the various kinds of idiot she had been, he smiled on her and wished the world good luck—with one full bottle and one half-full bottle at his elbow, and one glass of beer in his weather-roughened hands.

  Of the ensuing conversation he retained but the essential points. There were three, all told. The first was that Ellen had become fascinated by Edmund Tracy’s personality. The quite ordinary friendship had gradually become more intimate in proportion to the growth of Tracy’s ascendency over her. Ellen’s fall occurred one evening when she and Tracy were motoring through the Darling Range—an evening planned weeks ahead by the astute philanderer.

  The result of that motor trip was to put Tracy in the position of a blackmailer and Ellen in the position of the blackmailed. Tracy pursued her during those week-ends he could escape from his business at Geraldton, threatening, if she did not submit to him, to expose her to her husband. And Ellen, knowing she could not fall lower than she had fallen already, was compelled to meet his demands.

  The second point was that Ellen did not love Tracy and never had loved him; that she had always loved Arnold Dudley and loved him still. It was a point entirely beyond Finlay’s comprehension, but a point nevertheless.

  The third and final point was of tremendous importance to George Finlay. Ellen Dudley wanted him to seek out her husband. She was by no means penniless, owing to Dudley’s generosity and her own prudence. She was willing and anxious to fit out Finlay with a new car or truck with which to carry on the search, besides financing him and his family. When successful, Finlay was to “pump” Dudley to ascertain if it were possible for Ellen to receive forgiveness. If so, Finlay was to return immediately to Perth and take Ellen to him, when she would be able herself to fight to regain his love, and to start life afresh with him somewhere remote from the chances of discovery.

  The reason why this third point was of paramount importance to George Finlay was that the search for Arnold Dudley would mean a short return to the glorious freedom he had so foolishly sacrificed when he allowed himself to become married to Nora Chancey.

  Steering a good second-hand truck, he left Perth three days later and drove straight to Geraldton, where he expected to take up the chase that would not last long—worse luck! Yet it had lasted month after month. The first month was great. He scoured the district around Mullewa, and proceeded then as far east as Magnet and Youanmee. The second month he drifted south along the great No. 1 Rabbit-proof Fence, and earnestly talked with the boundary riders. The third and the fifth month saw him eastward to Kalgoorlie, southward to Ravensthorpe, thence all through the “cocky” district in the triangle formed by the towns of Southern Cross, Bruce Rock, and Wyalcatchem.

  By that time he was becoming tired of his freedom. Nora’s cooking was remembered with increasing vividness, and Nora’s company, after all, was essentially preferable to his own.

>   About the time of Hester Long’s burn he returned to Perth, admitting failure, having covered twenty-seven thousand miles without having discovered a meagre clue. He then felt certain that Arnold Dudley had left the State, probably left Australia. He found Ellen thinner and wan with hopeless waiting, but he found his wife grimmer and more determined. It was she who suggested the possibility of Dudley never having gone as far north as Geraldton. The country between Perth and Geraldton Finlay had not touched ; and three days later, after the truck had been overhauled, he set off again, spurred by Ellen’s poignant grief and his wife’s unconquerable hope.

  And at Dongara he had talked with the storekeeper and obtained a description of a trapper which tallied with that of his friend. His meeting with Hester Long had balked him, but after examining the Walkaway district he determined to hark back to Dongara. Once again at the store, he learned that there was a track into the beach nine miles out, and also a track at the Nineteen Mile peg. Outside the store again, he was about to climb into the driving-seat when the storekeeper came out with Tom Mallory, who had entered a few seconds before.

  “This is Mr. Mallory,” the storekeeper said with evident respect.

  “You are looking for a man named Cain?” Mallory asked.

  Knowing that Dudley would almost certainly have changed his name, Finlay instantly recognized Dudley’s choice of the name, Cain, To choose that name would be just like his friend.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Bloke about thirty-five. Roman beak, brown hair, and green eyes which don’t blink much.”

  “That’ll be him. He’s trapping at the Nineteen Mile Beach.”