Authors: Mazo de la Roche
Tags: #FIC045000 – FICTION / Sagas
Mrs. Court had explained—“Sarah cannot play without me! No use in taking her fiddle that I can see.”
Arthur had answered silkily—“Sarah must learn to play with Finch, for my sake.”
Sarah had agreed to take it, hut she doubted if she would play it when she had the sea to play with.
When they reached Polmouth, the rain was a deluge. When they stopped before the gate of Penholme, they saw the house behind a leaning wall of rain. The dash from motor to porch was a scurry under a wave. The maids ran here and there with the luggage. Leigh was glad that he had told no one in the place that he was newly married.
As they sat about the square expanse of the mahogany table, eating their tea, his eyes roved distractedly about the room.
“I can’t bear it,” he kept repeating. “I simply can’t bear it.”
“Don’t glare about so,” advised Finch. “Keep your eyes on Sarah.”
“But what a blasphemous setting for her! I can’t and won’t bear it.”
“What shall you do?”
“Turn half the things out of this room. You’ll see. Just wait until I’ve finished this preposterous saffron cake!”
Sarah, appealed to, thought the room was very nice.
When tea was over and they had got the servants out of way, Arthur linked arms with the other two and made the rounds of parlour, dining room, and little morning room. Each, he declared, was more contrary to art and nature than the other. The walls of all the rooms, including the hall, were hung with gilt-framed oil paintings by an artist named Stephen Gandy. They were all of Cornish scenes. Cornish cows stood footless in tangled meadows. Cornish waves poppled against turgid Cornish cliffs. Enormous, stiff-tailed setters gazed upwards at a falling bird. Sheep were lost in snowdrifts. Ships were wrecked. All, all Cornish.
“Oh, Stephen Gandy!” cried Arthur. “If only I had you by the throat! Tomorrow’s sun would rise on one Cornishman the less!”
Sarah said she liked the pictures.
“My adored one,” he explained, taking her hand, “if you like them it is because you see them in a golden mist of love for me! Don’t you think that is so?” He looked at her in a way Finch thought was strange. His eyes had an excited glitter in them, his mouth looked strained, as though his smile were forced. He looked afraid.
Finch thought—“This is terrible. Why am I here?”
Arthur said—“I will bear with the pictures, but I will not endure the mats and the tidies!”
Scattered over the floors and in the doorways they counted thirteen mats, and, on the chair backs, nine tidies. Finch and Arthur carried them by armfuls to an upstairs room. To it also they carried innumerable glass and china ornaments of tortured shape. The furniture must be all changed about. Arthur discovered an old table and some chairs that pleased him, and brought them out of their retirement into the light. He swathed the glaring electric globes in coloured scarves of Sarah’s trousseau. He was in despair over three grim aspidistras in ornamental pots until Finch offered to keep them in his bedroom.
“You’re sure you don’t mind having them? They won’t keep you awake?”
“Oh, hell,” said Finch. “What do you take me for?”
“If I slept in the room with them, do you know what would happen? In the morning they would be more overgrown, more disgustingly green, more macabre. But I should be dead!”
“I know,” returned Finch solemnly. “But you’re so frightfully sensitive, Arthur, and I’m not.”
“Listen to that rain! Do you think it’s a bad omen?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you think Sarah cares very deeply for me?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Finch, will you play to us tonight?”
“As long as you like...”
The three sat smoking about the red and green tiles of the grate. There was a blazing fire. The little German inlaid clock chimed the hour.
“I shall now make my Cornishman’s prayer,” declared Arthur. “‘From ghosties, and ghoulies, and long-tailed gandies, Good Lord deliver us!’”
B
Y THE
S
EA
T
HEY WERE TAKING
their first picnic to the shore. After three days of wind and rain the sun shone warmly and a period of tranquil summer weather was foretold. The wings of the gulls shone between sea and sky of equal blueness. All the life of Polmouth that had retreated, damp and discouraged, to the shelter of its slated roofs now leaped out rejoicing. On the links the figures of golfers were dotted with upraised bare forearms. On the downs the black-faced sheep exposed the dampness of their wool to the sun. On the porches of the boarding houses appeared rows of drying bathing suits. Soon after sunrise the hardiest strode to the sands, towels hung about their shoulders. All day long the bathing continued. In the heat of the day the throng of bright-coloured figures glowed like tropic flowers in the surf. Strong-limbed boys and girls hurled themselves on painted surfboards and were carried, half-smothered in foam, to the gleaming sands. They were careless of the changeful currents and gave little heed to the coast-guardsman who shouted warnings to them through a megaphone. As he wiped his mouth after each brazen warning he would growl to himself, in his natural
voice—“Let ’un drown then! And serve ’un right! What do they think I am? A nursery-maid? Next time I’ll let ’un drown and no mistake.” Little bronze, half-naked children scuttled here and there carrying tin pails and spades. Elderly ladies clutching reticules walked gingerly in the advancing foam, their upheld skirts showing plump white legs, while they kept a wary eye on their black stockings and shoes perched on some shell-encrusted rock. In gravelly recesses between the jutting cliffs little groups lay basking in the sun or reading novels with its light full on the page.
Along the edge of the cliffs, high above these scenes, Finch and Arthur were carrying baskets for the first picnic on the shore. Behind them, so that it was necessary for them to wait every little while in order that she might overtake them, came Sarah. She glided empty-handed on the smooth turf, frequently pausing, on the very edge of the cliff, to look below.
“Do be careful, Sarah!” Leigh would cry, in sudden fright. “Don’t you see how dangerous it is? One slip, and you’d be flying down that precipice!”
For a time she would be careful, but soon again she would be hovering like a seabird on the edge of the cliff. She seldom spoke, but once she pointed across the sea and said—“Over there is Ireland.”
The youths felt so full of life that they would have liked to run up and down the sweeping roll of the downs. But there was Sarah to be waited for, watched over. In all his aching curiosity about her, Finch discovered no slightest change in her attitude either toward himself or Arthur since her marriage. She spoke in the same sweet, almost inaudible tone. She listened to their conversations and laughter in silence. Occasionally, Finch fancied, she threw him a look of
evasion. At times Arthur showed an almost agonised desire to understand her. At other times, he appeared to strive to ignore her and to delight in the presence of Finch. His attitude towards her was at once protecting and tormented because of his inability to draw near to her.
Her most urgent need seemed to be, as before her marriage, the need for solitude. Finch could not help recalling Mrs. Court’s nicknames of Mouse and Mole. But, as the month drew on, she had moments of wild gaiety. This was evinced, not by laughter or movement, but by change of expression. Her look of detachment would vanish and her aspect become one of untamed joy in wind and sea.
Although so often they must wait for her as she glided over the smooth undulations of the downs, it was she who urged that they go on and on, always seeming to see in the cliff just beyond, the perfect view, the perfect place for rest. At last, on the tallest cliff, on the one that pressed farthest out to sea, she stopped and, taking the red shawl from Arthur, spread it for herself on the grass. He and Finch set down their baskets and stretched themselves at full length. No bathers were visible here, only, far below, a man was leading a plunging team across a stony ridge cast up by the sea to where he would fill his waggon with stones for building. The stamp of hooves, the rattle of rolling stones, rose sharply above the languorous wash of the midsummer sea.
Finch lay still, listening. He felt the magnetic draw of the dark cliff beneath him. He felt the vibration of the sea through the interminable congregation of rock and earth and subterranean spring that formed it. He watched the seagulls like wind-tossed lilies drift above him. He felt conscious of the beating of the hearts of his companions. Like the beat of an advancing tide he felt their nearness. He remembered
what Arthur had said about their love being clear and bright... a three-pointed star... He wished that he could put the thought of Sarah from him.
After a while Arthur began to unpack the basket. He was eager to see what the cook had given them. He set out the plate of sandwiches, the tomatoes, the cakes, the box of raspberries, the bowl of Cornish cream. Finch had carried some bottles of Somerset ale.
“I’ll be hanged,” ejaculated Leigh, “if we haven’t forgotten the opener. How are we going to open the ale?”
“I’ll knock the heads off the bottles,” answered Finch blithely.
He crept to the edge of the cliff, carrying a bottle, and peered over the side. The dark plane of shale and slate swept down into the black shadow of a cave guarded by jagged pinnacles of rock. What would it be like, he wondered, to drop over the edge of the cliff, end all, discover all, in one brief moment. He saw himself sinking, not plunging, downward, into the translucent greenness of forward-sliding waves. Ah, but it should be done at high tide, not to fall on those black pinnacles!
Arthur’s voice recalled him. “What’s the matter, Finch? Can’t you find a rock to hit it on?”
Finch struck the neck of the bottle on a sharp projection. A swirl of small birds rose from the face of the cliff. Foam spurted over his hand and spattered his face. He returned to the others, grinning. Flakes of foam made his grin ridiculous. Arthur shouted with laughter but Sarah said coldly:
“You have cut your wrist.” She took her handkerchief and pressed it on the cut.
“Oh, I’m sorry, old man!” exclaimed Leigh. He filled three glasses with the ale.
“It’s nothing,” muttered Finch. He sat very still, as Sarah bound the handkerchief about his wrist, his nerves strangely aquiver.
“It’s too small,” she said. “Look, the blood is coming through!”
“Don’t ask me to look,” said Leigh hastily. “The sight of blood makes me sick.”
“It doesn’t me,” said his wife. “I like it.”
Leigh gave her a horrified look. “Sarah! You don’t know what you are saying, darling.”
“Yes, I do! It stirs something in me.”
“What sort of something?”
“Old and fierce and wicked.”
Leigh gave a forced laugh. “Take your hand away from her, Finch. She’s dangerous!”
She put the hand away from her. “Finch understands.”
“Do you, Finch?”
“I think I do.”
“Explain then. She frightens me.”
“I can’t explain.”
“Why?”
“It’s just a feeling.”
“Well, I’ll explain for you. You’re both Courts, and you have the same bloodthirsty old ancestors behind you.”
Down below the man had loaded his waggon with stones. The horses were struggling across the stony ridge with it. They plunged, with scraping, clattering hooves and straining flanks. Patches of sweat appeared on their heaving sides. The man, cracking his whip, stumbled beside them. One of them stumbled, fell, was up again. In a last savage and despairing effort they dragged the load over the ridge, across the shingle, and halted on the grassy sward. For a few moments they
relaxed, the horses with drooping heads, the man nursing a strained elbow.
The three on the sunny cliff-side reclined watching the scene below in silence. Delicate spirals of smoke curled above their heads. The white clothes of the young men and the red of the shawl on which Sarah sat were very distinct to the driver of the team when he raised his eyes in their direction. The tide advanced murmurously in a long rippling line, its advance scarcely perceptible until it gained some new outpost of the shore.
“What a pity,” said Leigh, “that we have no bathing suits! We must buy some in the town.”
After that they went bathing almost every day, the limbs of Arthur and Finch turning a ruddy brown, and Sarah’s coffee colour. She bought a black bathing cap that fitted closely about her face, so that it looked like a strange pale flower appearing from its dark sheath. They had almost to carry her down the steep steps cut in the rock. She relaxed in their arms ike a young child, seeming to give no thought to the difficulty of the descent. The cave was assigned to her for a chamber while they undressed in a sand-strewn crevice of the cliff. Then she must be guided among the small sharp rocks jutting from the sand. Finch cast a shy look at her legs, wondering that she was not able to make better use of them. They were thin but shapely. When she was safely on the sands, that gleamed like wet brown satin, she glided at her accustomed pace to the surf. The sea looked far away, glancing in the sunlight, tossing up its foam, singing to itself. The footprints of the three slowly filled with water. Then suddenly they were in the sea. They took hands and danced up and down. They splashed and were half blinded in the translucent singing world of the waves. Sarah fell and they caught her up, holding
her in their wet arms, expecting her to scream, to be joyously frightened, but she lay in their arms as she had lain when they carried her down the steps in the cliff. They left her and dashed forward breasting the waves. When she was left she lay down on the rim of the foam, letting it wash over her.
On calm days they tried to teach her to swim. Obediently she made the strokes, as they commanded, but the moment they relinquished their hold of her she sank.
“There is no use in trying, my angel!” cried Leigh. “You’ll never be a swimmer!”
“If I could find a proper place,” she replied, “I think I could.”
One day, when they had swam out farther than usual, they returned to find the shore empty.