“Why, the same as my sister’s,” Andrews replied, trying to sound amused and at his ease.
“I meant your Christian name, sir?” she went on, making rapid progress across the floor.
“Oh, Francis, of course. Hasn’t my sister spoken of me?” In the space between a sentence and a sentence, he had had time to watch the sunlight mould the girl’s face, give lightness to its somewhat heavy lines, smooth its perplexity into peace. A dark Elizabeth, he thought, watching her hair, how strange. He began to enjoy himself, the burden of his fear had dropped away and left him in the middle of a childish game in which there was no harsh reality. “Elizabeth,” he said, “have you never spoken of me to Mrs. Butler? I take it very ill, I really do. And I away at sea imagining that you thought of me.”
“Why, are you a sailor, sir?” Mrs. Butler said, not troubling to raise her eyes from the arc of floor in which her small fat arms swung. “I shouldn’t have thought it.”
“But then I’m a bad sailor,” he continued, his eyes on the sunlight or that part of it that lay across Elizabeth’s face. He was determined to make her smile. “When I heard how—he was dying, I left my ship. I thought my sister would want someone else besides you to protect her. You can’t imagine, Mrs. Butler, how often I’ve read of you under the stars.” He stopped. He had won his smile.
And yet now that he had won his smile, he was ill at ease. It reminded him, perhaps, of all hopeless and unattainable things—not desire then, for he was too weary for desire, but for civilisation. Civilisation meant for him the enjoyment of quiet—gardens and unboisterous meals, music and the singing in Exeter Cathedral. These things were unattainable because of Carlyon. Of the others he had no fear. They could not, he felt, escape from their environment—a rough, cursing, drinking life. He could escape from them in drawing rooms, but in the middle of however quiet a tea, however peaceful the lazy shadows of the fire, however soft the talk, the door might open, Carlyon enter.
Mrs. Butler cleaned on, her buttocks swaying rhythmically to the circular movement of her arms. He saw her suddenly as a hostile spy from reality, though it was not so that he would have phrased it. His fear was too sharp for abstractions. But unexpressed in conscious thought, he had felt of this house as of a cottage in a fairy-story. He had stumbled on it in a wood when blurred with sleep. It had given him shelter and a sense of mystery; it had not belonged to the world which he had known, the constant irritation and strain of the sea nor to the fear of the last few days. But Mrs. Butler had come from the town that morning. In crannies of her ears still lurked the sounds from which he had fled, the waves, fishwives’ voices, rattle of carts, “Mackerel, fresh mackerel,” gossip in the market, “Three of them escaped.”
Mrs. Butler had left the door open and through it he could see clearly in sunlight that which, when he came, had been obscured by weariness and night. He had thought of this cottage as alone in the middle of a wood. Now he could see that it stood at the edge of a mere coppice. Above the trees like a blister was the down over which he had come. “What’s that?” he said at a sound, unable to keep all sign of fear from his voice.
“Why, it’s only a cart,” the girl answered.
“A cart?” he cried and walked to a window. It was true. This cottage hidden, as he had thought, in a forest lay within a hundred yards of the high road. It was useless to tell himself that a high road was his safest place, that Carlyon, probably by now with a price upon his head, must equally fear the open. He was superstitious on the subject of Carlyon. He could not imagine Carlyon in hiding.
“A sailor?” said Mrs. Butler, her eyes fixed on the floor. “There’s sailors and sailors. There’s some as don’t like these gaugers, but I say as ’ow they be only doin’ their duty. They be paid for it same as me on this floor. And they get the worst of it most every time. Look at Tuesday.”
“What time’s this funeral?” Andrews asked, turning his back on Mrs. Butler with abrupt brutality. He was very conscious that behind his back she had raised an astonished head and was eyeing him with shrewd consideration. The girl he found had moved to the door and he followed her with a sense of relief, glad to leave behind, though only for a little, Mrs. Butler’s curiosity and her pretty, damp voice. “What time’s this funeral?” he repeated.
“They’ll be fetching him,” she said, “at eleven,” and her simple sentence cleared away the last illusion of isolation. Time was here in the cottage. Clocks ticked and hands went round as everywhere else in the world. He had a sense of time rushing past him, rushing like a Gadarene swine to destruction. Time squeaked at him as it passed at an increasing pace down a steep slope. Poets had told him over and over again that life was short. Now for the first time he knew it as a vital fact. He longed for peace and beauty, and the minutes were flying by, and he was still a fugitive, with mind muddled, obscured by fear of death.
“Shall
