Strange Yesterday (13 page)

He said to her then: “You must not be afraid. Here, we are alone, but we cannot help that now. Even over again, I would have done the same thing, for I could not see you dead. But we are alone, and we must make the best of it. You must not be afraid of me.”

“What,” she demanded, “makes you believe that I fear you?”

“I know.”

She could not question it again; it was much as though he was brutally tearing the veil away from certain things. She gazed at him and wondered that his nakedness was not revolting to her. She felt, though, that in very much the same manner she might admire an animal. He said:

“I know what you think me.”

“And am I not right?” she asked with a trace of weariness.

“You are.”

There she was taken aback. He had a strange, blunt manner of speech, the even, careful, clipped, precise speech of the American ship's officer. But he was blunt, without even a trace of sophistry or artfulness; in a way, he was simple.

“No,” she said, “you are not wicked. You are not wicked; you are a child.”

But he knew she was but making a play of bravado. She went on:

“You try to be wicked; if you were wicked, I would fear you.”

“You do not mean what you say. You do not even believe it. You do fear me. I saw it in your face, and I see it in your face now.”

“Yes, I fear you.”

“I am a murderer.”

“Yes.”

“But you do not know why I killed Lennox—why I killed Mr. Mitchell, why I killed the men in this boat, who would have killed me had I not, who would have taken you, and—You do not know why I left the gold I took by the might of my arm and my pistol, why I gave over the ship I served upon for years to a British frigate, why I deserted my men and the officers I served with—when I could have cut your throat and had the whole matter done with!”

“I do know,” she murmured, terribly tired.

Then he saw her face and he saw her eyes, and he dropped to a seat, putting his head in his hands. “You don't understand,” he muttered. “If you had to kill—or be killed—”

“Like a beast.”

“Yes, you little fool, like a beast! You live, but what is your life! We are beasts!”

“But even beasts do not murder.”

“They do not love.”

He faced her defiantly, his hair sweeping away from his cheeks, his blue eyes burning. He stood up, and he came towards her, hands hanging limp by his side. Stepping over the two seats, he stood before her.

“I love you,” he said. “I never knew what that meant, but I know now! I love you. Do you hear me? Why do you think I did all this,—for the sight of blood? I love you; I want you; and God, I'll have you!”

“You are a fool,” she said calmly.

His head was hot with blood and spinning; she filled his eyes, her dress so close to her that she might have been naked. Reaching out, he attempted to grasp her in his arms.

But she was beneath him. She had slipped past, springing over the center seat. As he whirled, she caught up the knife from where he had left it, on top of the air tank; and she faced him with the blade in her hand.

“You will cut yourself,” he remarked, coming towards her, thinking how tiny and futile she was after all.

Then she fainted. The knife slipped from her fingers, and she crumpled forward. As she fell, he sprang over the seats and caught her. In his arms, she was a bit of a light thing. Holding her as best he might, he sank to the seat, taking a wet rag and rubbing it over her face, pushing aside her hair. It was only a moment or two before she opened her eyes, but it seemed like hours. She said:

“Don't—please don't.”

He shook his head, biting his lips with such force that the blood came. “No!” he cried. “God help me, but I won't! I won't, I tell you! If you will only believe me. I cannot harm you. I am all that you think me to be, but I cannot harm you. Won't you understand that?”

She hesitated; for a moment she hesitated, such pain in her eyes as he had not before seen. Then she said: “I do not understand—or I do. I don't know.”

She spoke softly, her voice tired, hopeless.

“You do not hate me?” he whispered.

“I don't know. It is all so terrible. You do not know what they have been—these few days.”

“I know.”

“I would have killed you—when I had the knife.”

“I know that too,” he said.

Holding her in his arms, he felt her body tremble. Her eyes closed.

“If I were to kiss you?” he asked quietly.

“You must not.”

“But if I were?”

“I—don't know.”

Bending his head, he touched his lips to hers. She did not resist. Her eyes were closed, and she lay very inert. “Inez,” he whispered.

“Yes?”

“Look at me, Inez.”

Opening her eyes, she looked into his. Gently, he raised her, lifting her so that she might rest in the hollow of his arm. She was very light, alarmingly light. Hardly did he feel her as she lay against him. He turned her face.

“Inez, look at me,” he said again.

“You do not know what you are doing to me.”

“I know, Inez. Is it so terrible that you should love me? Is it not at least a little wonderful?”

“Who are you? What are you? I hated you. I still hate you. All this has been your doing—all this.”

“No, Inez.” Unconsciously, his arm tensed, locking her to him. “A beast,” he reflected, “will kill for its mate. Would you blame me for those things that make me what I am? Can you tell me, Inez, that you do not love me?”

“I cannot love you.”

“You would lie—because I am a beast, Inez?”

“My God! what do you want?”

“Everything I will undo, even as I have done it—or else I will die, Inez.”

Strangely she looked at him, and she said: “What is your name?”

“You do not know?”

“But tell me.”

“John—”

“That is all?”

“Yes, John.”

And that was the end of all that had gone before: he took her in his arms, and he buried his face in the rounding of her neck and shoulder, and he held all of her to him. She was sobbing, and, as though her body were a part of him, he felt each of her sobs, felt that racking of her form. He wondered that they had spoken before—words so meaningless. He wondered that they had not known this when first they had faced each other across the length of the table in the high-ceilinged dining-hall.

But perhaps they had. He asked her, and she nodded. “And that is why you hated me?” he said, the paradox open. Again she nodded. Closer he held her, but with a fear for the power of his arms. Upon her wet dress he laid his hand. It stole over her body while he pressed her close to him.

12

I
T
was afternoon, and the afternoon was closing into evening. There was a sun—the newer, brassier sort of a sun that is born after a rain—and it glazed the water; it glazed it until the burnishing resembled the polished surface of a steel shield. It was a strong sun, and it dried them. It was a good sun, and it warmed them. From east to west, it tilted its way, dipping obliquely, until it melted into the ocean. Such a sunset it was as a thousand other sunsets; and John Preswick had seen many upon the sea. They were different, but they were also the same. Yet this was the strangest sunset he had ever laid eyes upon.

There was not enough of a sea to do more than sway with the boat. As before the rain, the rise and fall was even, gentle, and large. The breeze was west and north. In a slow, aimless manner, it carried them along. There were oars in the boat, and often John Preswick eyed them, but he realized that he could make little progress against the hundreds of miles before hunger overtook them. Already he could feel the hunger gnawing at him. The girl must have been suffering more than he; when he told her that there was no food, she smiled a little and shook her head.

During the few hours that were left before darkness would fall, they sat together in the broad seat nearest the stern. Wearily, she leaned against him, and his arm still encircled her. It was strange, so very strange; nor did the strangeness depart with time. It was wonderful, too, thought John Preswick.

Her dress was drying, and slowly her hair was drying, losing its heaviness to fluff out under the sun. Often John Preswick would take a handful of her hair and slide it over his wrist—heavy brown hair with strange lights to it. He turned back the locks and looked at the cut where the bullet had scraped her temple. It was healthily clotted with blood, a scab already formed; the skin around it was fresh and free of any scarlet tinge. Asking her whether it pained, she shook her head. They did not speak much; the thing was one that would not bear talking of; it was enough to be together in that fashion. By glancing down, he could trace the line—from her head to her neck, to the swelling curve of her breasts, to her legs, curled behind her upon the seat. It was slim, and lovely, and good. It was warm, like the burning of a low fire.

She was so small—so small that she scarcely came to his shoulder; and she was very like a child, a tired child, one that was lost and not a little fearful. And she lay against him as a child might.

He was again in the dining-hall, facing the two women, immaculate, debonair, smiling, confident behind his heavy pistol; and there was the one, broken, and the other facing him, snapping at him, defiant. How long ago was it?—four days?—five? He was beating Lennox, holding him and beating in his face with the back and palm of an open hand while she watched him in horror. He was killing Lennox. Then the frigate. Mitchell dead, a bewildered, incredulous expression stamped upon his features in the instant before he toppled out of the boat. It whirled out of the five days, or four; he did not rightly know; yet it was more; it was eternity.

And now she lay against him, small and afraid; but she loved him.

He would not attempt to understand that. He would accept it without understanding; without the knowledge of how such a thing might be, he would live in it.

She was small, and so frail. Beside her, he was a giant, bare to the waist, clad thinly in broadcloth slacks. Against his bare breast she lay. That he could not understand. When he bent, his yellow hair was in her eyes. With something akin to terror in his heart, his hands would slide over her body.

The sun fell. And when the sun was gone, there was a twilight with reflected brightness. The cooler night slid onto the sea. They drank much water, and they strove to forget their discomfort. Later, he lay down upon the bottom of the boat, and she was beside him, in his arms. So readily she came to his arms!—as though she desired to accept the thing in every bit of its fullness, as though she were afraid of it, as he was. She said to him, as they lay there, the soft, cool wind playing over them:

“We shall die—in the end?”

“You mean—if there is no ship? But there will be a ship!”

“I shan't mind so much—now.”

“No,” he whispered desperately. “You must not think of that. There are so many other things!”

“What other things?”

“I must take you back. I must have a chance to undo it.”

“You already have, for the other is not the story.”

“What do you mean? No, you must think that we will live! There is your mother.”

She smiled and murmured: “And even for that I have forgiven you. I love you, John.”

He realized then that she was saying all of this because she believed so surely that they would die; and, as he could not help but see, that put a new face upon the matter. For if it had been in any other manner—all of this would have been impossible, as rightly it was. But they were going to die. She had said it, and she believed it; that he saw in her eyes. Well, why not? The ocean was wide, their boat a chip of wooden planking. Almost certainly, they would die, and that was by all means a proper ending. He must not speak of it to her, but indeed it was true. Nor did he so greatly care, nor was he afraid, nor was he, in his heart, regretful. For her, he felt; but he sensed somehow that to her it was as to him. It was a dream—had she called it a story? What of that?—and it is the way of dreams that they must end—perhaps in waking, perhaps at the Steer's Head, from which one could see the blue water. He did not give it a great deal of thought; he did not even think of it in those words; but he knew. He would not—quite—wake himself out of it; for he had no desire to wake himself from it; yet he did not long with any fervency for it to go on forever. Dreams are not made so…. But what was all this, when he was so clearly here in an open boat with the woman he loved? But he was going to die—

Upon the floor of the boat he lay, and she was in his arms, and about them for many hundreds of miles was a smooth, rising stretch of sea, dark sea, full of the brief colors of night, interminable sea. More than this he could not desire. He was not happy in the way of the evening before. This was different—so very different. But this was good—good as it was warm, and hot, and of flesh.

Her face was in his shoulder. It was strange to have her features pressing into his bare skin, to feel the contour of her nose and eyes and lips. Crossing a hand over her back, he smoothed it with his wide fingers. They were alone; and it was quiet, for they did not speak. Sometimes, she looked up at him and smiled. Then, deep in her brown eyes, he imagined he saw things that no man should see—unless they lay, as he, upon death's brink.

And, again, she would move from him, that he might bury his whole, tawny head in her breast.

“Now,” she said softly, “I do not wonder that you killed, for I know now that men must fight, that men must kill. I don't know how I know, or why—when it is so mad—but I know.”

And then: “What a strange man you are! If you were new to me—But you are not! Even in my dreams I knew you, and long ago, so long that I can hardly remember, I saw your face, and spoke with you, and in many years from now—You will not understand that—because I hardly understand it myself. It was you—not a dream. Do you think this to be a dream? It is not.”