“Is that you?” she said, without looking up. “Put these in the cupboard,” and when he had obeyed her she returned to the fire and bending down to poke the coals murmured with a half-amused asperity, “A couple of fools.”
Andrews shifted from one foot to another. He found, faced by this devastating matter of factness, an inability to utter his thanks. He plucked nervously at a button and at last burst out in a tone almost of resentment, “I’m grateful.”
“But what’s it all about?” she asked spreading out her hands in a gesture of humorous perplexity. “I hate mysteries,” she added, herself mysteriously brooding behind dark eyes flecked only on the surface by amusement.
“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Andrews replied and muttered in so low a tone that Elizabeth was forced to lean forward to catch his words, “A sort of Judas.”
“Do you expect me to believe all that he said,” she stared at Andrews in wide-eyed, innocent astonishment. “He’s your enemy.”
“Would you believe what I said?” he asked with angry foreknowledge of the answer.
“Of course,” she said. “Tell me.”
He watched her in amazement. All his sentimental melodramatic instincts rose up in him to take advantage of the occasion. O, the blessed relief, he thought, to stumble forward, go down on my knees to her, weep, say “I am tired out. A hunted man pursued by worse than death.” He could hear his own voice break on the phrase. But as he was about to obey those instincts, that other hard, critical self spoke with unexpected distinctness. “You fool, she’ll see through that. Haven’t you enough gratitude to speak the truth?” But then, he protested, I lose all chance of being comforted. But when he looked at her, the critic won. He stood where he was with hands clasped behind his back and head a little bent, but eyes staring intently, angrily for the first sign of contempt.
“It’s all true,” he said.
“Tell me,” she repeated.
“It’s not a story which would interest you,” he protested, in a vain hope of avoiding further humiliation.
She sat down and leaning her chin on her hand watched him with a friendly amusement.
“You must earn your night’s lodging with the story,” she said. “Come here.”
“No,” he clung as a desperate resort to a position in which he could at least look physically down upon her. “If I must speak, I’ll speak here.”
He twisted a button round and round till it dangled loosely on its cotton stalk. He did not know how to begin. He shut his eyes and plunged into a rapid current of words.
“We were running spirits from France,” he said, “and I betrayed them. That’s all there is to it. I wrote to the Customs officer at Shoreham and gave a date and an hour and a place. When we landed the gaugers were waiting for us. There was a fight, but I slipped away. It seems that a gauger was killed.” He opened his eyes and gazed at her angrily. “Don’t dare to despise me,” he said. “You don’t know why I did it, my thoughts, feelings. I’m a coward, I know, and none of you can understand a coward. You are all so brave and quiet, peaceful.”
She took no notice of his angry outburst, but watched him thoughtfully. “I wonder why you did it?” she answered.
He shook his head and answered in a kind of deep hopefulness, “You wouldn’t understand.”
“But why,” Elizabeth asked, “did you ever start smuggling? You are not made for that work.”
“My father was a smuggler,” Andrews said. “A common, bullying smuggler, but damnably clever. He saved money on it and sent me to school. What was the use of having me taught Greek, if I was to spend my life like this?” and his hand in its vague comprehensive gesture included the bare room, the cold night, his muddy clothes and fear. He came a little nearer to the fire.
“I will tell you why he sent me to school,” he said, leaning forward as though to impart a confidence. “It was so that he could brag about it. He was proud of his success. He was never caught and they never had any evidence against him. His crew worshipped him. I tell you he’s become a legend on this coast. I’ve never dared to say these things about him to anyone but you. And all the time I was at sea, I could see how they wondered that such a mountain could bring forth such a mouse.”
“Why do you hate your father so?” Elizabeth asked. “Is it because of this?” and with her hand she imitated the comprehensive gesture which he had made a minute before.
“Oh, no,” he said, “no.” He watched her with a despairing intentness and a hopeless longing for some sign of comprehension. He pleaded with her not as an advocate to a jury but as a prisoner already condemned to his judge. “You can’t understand,” he said, “what life was like with these men. I could do nothing which was not weighed up with my father and found wanting. They kept on telling me of his courage, of what he would have done, what a hero he was. And I knew all the time things they didn’t know, how he had beaten my mother, of his conceit, his ignorance, his beastly bullying ways. They gave me up in the end,” he said smiling without any gaiety. “I was of no account. They were kind to me, charitably, because that man was my father.”
“But why, why,” she asked, “did you ever mix yourself up with them?”
“That was Carlyon,” he said softly, wondering whether the twisted feeling at his heart when he uttered the name was love or hate. It was at any rate something bitter and irrevocable.
“The man who was here?”
“Yes,” Andrews said. “My father was killed at sea and they dropped the body overboard, so that even when he was dead, the law had no evidence against him. I
