The Beach of Atonement Read online

  Almost had Arnold Dudley reached the grating when he went down, sucked deep by the water-devil. One year, two, three, five years dragged slowly away, and still he did not come up. Time! There was time no longer. Pain! No longer was there pain. Hester Long felt neither pain nor sense of time. As a statue she stood, whilst the man she loved died unseen.

  And presently she felt a strange gladness. Life became a thing of warmth once more. Flooding her as brilliant sunshine, knowledge was vouchsafed her of Arnold Dudley radiant, triumphant, gloriously redeemed.

  Without curiosity she saw the man she had met on the main road and thought to be a detective standing beside Edith Mallory. She saw her friend’s pitiful face for an instant lifted to his whilst she pointed to the place where Dudley had vanished. She saw beside this man a slender girlish figure dressed in navy blue, and wondered idly who she could be—idly, because in her ears rang the voice of Hector Cain, saying :

  “Thank you, Hester! Dear old pal! You understand.”

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  A WOMAN OF EMPIRE

  THE three months following the wreck of the S.S. Eipeluera on the coast north of Dongara, with the loss of twenty-three lives, was a period of tremendous activity for Hester Long. Leaving the Mallorys’ house every morning in her dilapidated buggy drawn by old Brownie, she returned by the same slow but sure conveyance in the evening of the day spent on her farm.

  The railway strike hindered the erection of her new home by a month, but when finally the men returned to work, without having won those union wage standards for the Blue Metallers’ Union, the material was quickly delivered at Dongara and the work started.

  Mr. and Mrs. Jessop being also badly hit financially by the cyclone, the fat and prosperous Mr. Smythe obtained the requisite assistance to make good the damage. Mrs. Brown having recovered her health, she sent her husband and her golden-hearted Joe to join with Tom Mallory in putting Hester Long on her feet once more. Under the supervision of a house-builder from Dongara the three men built Hester Long’s new house in a little less than eight weeks.

  It became her duty to keep the volunteer workers supplied with tea and food, a duty cheerfully and lovingly performed as the only possible expression of her gratitude; for those big-hearted Western Australians not only refused to accept wages, but also were most extraordinarily remiss in being unable to tell her what the building material cost and from whom it was bought. When the labour of love was finished, Hester Long possessed a six-roomed up-to-date bungalow-house.

  There followed in due course a house-warming, to which Hester Long invited all her friends, who were all her neighbours. The party was timed to start at five o’clock in the evening. To it came the Jessops with their innumerable children packed tightly on a buckboard ; Mr. and Mrs. Smythe in their ultra-modern single-seater; Mr. and Mrs. Brown in Joe’s antique Ford car ; and Tom and Edith Mallory, who rode over on hacks.

  Two surprises were given at that party. It was in full swing when Joe Brown arrived with a stranger driving a strange truck, on which was a case, many lengths of strong iron piping; and much wire. Hester wanted to go out and bring them in to supper, but Mrs. Brown and the other women cornered her in the new sitting-room, leaving the children and the men to slink out to join Joe and his companion.

  Hester Long did not see the wireless masts erected and the aerial swung from them, but she was astonished to see Joe and his father carry into the sitting-room an expensive wireless set, which they put on a table near the big-paned wide window. Through that window crawled the stranger, trailing copper wire behind him.

  They made her sit on a chair before the set. Whilst the stranger did things with a pair of wire-cutters, Tom Mallory fitted over her beautiful hair a pair of ear-phones. Expertly and silently the stranger worked, now with head-phones to his ears, and suddenly Hester Long heard the broadcasting announcer in Perth telling her that egg were from two and nine to three shillings per dozen. And, whilst listening, she caught sight of a small metal plate fitted to the front of the set and read on it :

  To HESTER LONG, who saved the sole survivor from the wreck of the S.S. Eipeluera, 16th May, 1929. From Hester Long’s Friends.

  For a little while her head was bowed, and then she stood up, took off the gleaming head-phones, and turned to her guests with moist shining eyes. Her lips were trembling. “My friends—my wonderful friends—” she said before she broke down. They smiled on her, and patted and fussed about her, but it was Edith Mallory who hugged her and cried softly with her. And after a little while it was Edith Mallory who whispered:

  “Tell them now, Hester.”

  More composed, but her eyes still bright with tears, Hester Long began to speak clearly and firmly. Without faltering, she said:

  “You all remember the man who attempted to save the captain of the ship, and lost his life in the attempt. You met him here the afternoon of my last burn. His name, as you know, was Hector Cain.

  “Edith and I first met him on the beach, and eventually got to know him rather well. There was some tragedy he was trying to live down, and he was bravely doing it when he sacrificed his life.

  “He came here when he heard that my sheep were being attacked by eagles. I promised to pay him a bonus of half a crown for every one he caught. He caught forty-seven, yet he would not take from me my promised bonus. Afterwards he worked for me for a few weeks and put up a line of fence for which I stipulated to pay twenty-two pounds a mile. This money also he refused to accept, saying that he owed me far more for friendship than the amount I owed him for work. Altogether he should have received from me seventy-five pounds twelve shillings and sixpence.

  “Mr. Cain at one time rendered Edith a great service, and she proposes to make the amount I have just named up to a hundred and fifty pounds. With this money, Edith and I want to create a lasting memorial, making the money a trust fund. It is not very much, and the annual interest would probably only amount to eight or nine pounds. Now that you are all here, we would like you to decide the form the memorial should take.”

  For a little while there was silence, excepting for Mrs. Jessop’s low crooning lullaby to her current baby. Joe Brown scratched his head unashamedly. Mr. Smythe pinched his fat upper lip. Mr. Brown suggested devoting the money to the purchase of clothing for the poorer children of Dongara, from which Mrs. Brown disagreed. Jessop’s eldest boy suggested the upkeep of a local cricket team, and was severely frowned down. Tom Mallory proposed the scheme that eventually was adopted.

  “Why not devote the annual interest to the expense of sending the best scholar at Dongara school every year to Perth for a certain number of days? The cost could be easily assessed. Perhaps at times the current interest could be increased by some such means as a bazaar. For instance, if three boys and three girls in charge of the schoolmaster and his wife could be sent every year to Perth for three days, the trip would be of enormous educational benefit to the children if they were shown the historic places of Perth and Fremantle.

  “You know this is the Centenary Year of Western Australia. Considering the wonderful growth of the State since Captain Stirling landed on the bank of the Swan River from the—the Parmelia, I think it was—to the present time, to my mind the rising generation should be guided to recognize the responsibilities of citizenship and become possessed of a keen pride in their State, their Country, their Empire.”

  “A good idea, Tom ! What do you think of that, Mrs. Long?” asked Mr. Smythe.

  “I think it is splendid,” declared Hester Long. “Don’t you, Edith?”

  “I do, indeed,” Edith cried, her face alight with an inward glory. “Yes, it is a good idea, Tom. And let it be called ‘The Hector Cain Educational Trip’.”

  And thereafter the house-warming proceeded to its destined hilarious end.

  * * *

  It was a few days later that Hester Long drove behind old Brownie to the Beach of Atonement, and pulled up for a little while in the clearing beside the track where Arnold Dudley had erected his
tent and parked his motor-truck.

  Nothing now remained of his occupation other than a few empty tins and a piece or two of discoloured paper. The little cleared spaces cut out of the thick-growing bush were memorials provided by Dudley himself. At one time Hester Long had thought of keeping those spaces always clear from the mass of space-hungry bush, but the idea of spending the money she owed him in perpetuating his memory had occurred and seemed better worth while. Already bush shoots were appearing from the old stumps and roots, and a year hence the clearings would be no more.

  Sighing softly, Hester urged on old Brownie and came at last to the open sandy place back of the Pontoon and directly against the hill of sand crowned by the Seagulls’ Throne. The birds were resting thereon, and at her coming rose and flew out along the beach for a little way, and then back again to the buggy suspicious of her, yet undoubtedly remembering the crusts thrown to them by that other benevolent human being.

  After hitching old Brownie to the post, Hester Long took from the seat of the buggy a large biscuit-tin and clambered down the low sand rampart to the rocky floor of the Pontoon, there to toss handfuls of crusts into the rock-pools left by the previous high tide, and standing watching the birds flutter and swoop upon them.

  Their number was eleven. Only eleven! She wondered what had become of the other six, and if those six would come back with the summer. Her plain, lined face was wistful, and from her lips fell the words:

  “Your gulls, Hector! I am feeding your gulls.”

  Afterwards she returned to the buggy for a book, and, knowing that now she could not possibly climb up to the Seagulls’ Throne, she walked out along the edge of the low bluff headland and seated herself at its point, there to look on the beach that had been his.

  The sun was warm and comforting. The sea was smiling, vivid blue, diamond-sprinkled. It caressed the squat Sugar Loaf and lazily welled up over the far edge of the Pontoon to send in to her line after line of milk-white foam. The Seaweed Mountain rested at the foot of the gleaming beach, a hummock of black and brown, mighty in aspect, yet an easy victim to the sea’s fury.

  His beach ! He called it the Beach of Atonement. There over those rocks he had died, and, dying, had salvaged his wrecked soul. Sad yet glad was Hester Long whilst she sat there, the pages of the Book of her Mind revealing pictures of him during those last tempestuous months—pictures of his stirring battles with the demons of solitude, and that last great moment when he had shot at her the brief, fateful question :

  “Don’t I?”

  And then the picture of her own terrific battle. Her “Yes!” had sent him to his death, yet to eternal life. Her “No !” would have prevented his making atonement, would have kept him chained to the desolate beach, eventually to die there unredeemed, a lunatic. For Ellen’s coming was too late—too late. How glad was Hester that strength had been given her to utter that “Yes!” when the little word was the hardest of any to be said!

  “Thank you, Hester ! Dear old pal! You understand.”

  It was as though Dudley stood there beside her and spoke once more. Her face was tilted upward and she seemed to wait expectantly, oblivious of the gulls returning now in twos and threes to their Throne high up behind her.

  The pages of the Book of Memory turned over. She saw how the ship’s grating carrying its human flotsam was being miraculously swept round the headland towards the floating mass of seaweed, for the water-devil seemed to have been satiated by Dudley’s sacrifice and to have had mercy on the castaway. And then that one wild impulse to do the work “he” had essayed to do. How she had raced down to the little beach above her children’s paddling pool then deep under water, but just then a calm back-water. How she had slipped out of her dress and clashed into the water to swim out to the grating, now inside the “race” from the Pontoon, and bring it ashore but fifty yards from the seaweed mass where Finlay, unable to swim, waded out to receive it and her.

  The castaway still lived. Finlay’s strength and slight knowledge of resuscitation, combined with grim determination to win, had assured the man’s rescue from death. So “he” had not died in vain ; and, even whilst Hester Long cried a little, and her small body shook a little from her sobs, she experienced joy and thankfulness that to her had fallen the task of helping “him” along his dreadful road to the wonderful goal.

  On her lap lay open the diary she had given “him”, and which Ellen Dudley had returned to her from among his possessions. A hundred times she had read every word “he” had written. A hundred times she had felt “his” depressions, “his” exaltations, “his” fears, and “his” poor hopes. And there, seated above “his” beach, she read once again the words “he” had written on the fly-leaf:

  “The day will come when I shall know that I cannot go on living. When I am dead, will the finder please return this book to Mrs. Hester Long, the finest woman I have ever known ?”

  And underneath:

  “Hester—‘The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, moves on: . . .’”

  The sun was sinking when at last she rose to her feet to go, realizing that it was late. Edith knew where she was, and would go home with her boys and milk the cows for her. Edith would not come with her that day, nor did she wish ever again to visit that beach.

  The small work-lined face, crowned by its wealth of light brown hair, shone with a glory when she said her au revoir to “his” beach. Standing at the edge of the bluff headland, gazing over the place where Arnold Dudley had died, gazing into the shining distance towards England, she was the embodiment of the Spirit of Empire. The gentle sea-wind played about her uncovered head, teased the hem of her white skirt.

  Never will the Empire go down whilst it can produce its Hester Longs.