“Old Fleming still at the ‘Ship’?” he enquired, keeping his back turned. “And May?” His voice warmed again on the little name. “May’s married this many a year, I guess!”
“Nay, not she!” Sarah said. “She’s not wed, nor like to be.” Unconsciously she relaxed a little. “She was always terble sweet on Geordie, was May.”
The man looking out smiled at the light as if it had been a face. He spoke low, as if speaking to himself.
“I’d sure forgot!”
“I reckon she’s waiting for him yet, but I doubt she’ll wait till the Judgment, and after that!”
“She was always a sticker, was May. …” He swung round, cheerful again, though lacking the ecstasy with which he had come in. “Sweet on Geordie, was she? Well, I guess a live dog’s better than a dead lion! I’ll hop across for a chin.”
“You’ll loss yourself, crossing t’sand.”
“I’ve crossed it every night in my dreams!” He came back to her, with his face tender again, the thin flame of the candle showing his pleasant eyes and kindly lips. “Say, though!” he added anxiously. “I can come back?”
“Best bide at t’ ‘Ship.’ ”
“But I’d a deal rather sleep here!”
“Well, you wain’t, and that’s flat!”
“There’s Geordie’s bed, ain’t there?” he urged her, in pleading tones. “I’ll lay you’ve kept it fixed for him all along!”
“Ay—for Geordie!” said Geordie’s mother, setting her mouth.
“Couldn’t you kinder think I was Geordie once in a while?”
“Nay.”
“Not for a mite of a minute?” His voice shook.
“Nay, not I!”
He lifted his shoulders, and let them droop again. “I’m sure coming back, though!” he finished, in his persistent way. … “Stop a shake, though! What about the tide?”
His eyes turned from old custom to the table over the hearth, and, crossing over to it, he struck a light. The silver box in his hand flashed a tiny scintilla on the dusky air. He looked up at the table, but he did not see it, the match dwindling above his brooding face.
“You might ha’ been just a mite glad to see me!” he exclaimed wistfully, stamping it out upon the flags. “Why, you’d never ha’ known me from Adam if I hadn’t given you the call! It’ll give me the knock right out if May don’t know me neither when I sail in. They say sweethearts don’t forget, no more than mothers, but perhaps it’s all a doggoned lie!”
“She was Geordie’s lass—not yours!” Sarah told him, with jealous haste.
“Sure!” he said with a smile, and struck a second match.
Now he looked at the table in earnest, but only for a space. “Saturday,” she heard him murmuring, in an absent voice. “Martinmas, ain’t it? … Tide at ten. …”
She made a movement forward and put out her hands.
“Nay, but yon’s never—” she began; and stopped.
“Eh, old woman?”
“Nay, it’s nowt.”
“It’s Saturday, ain’t it?”
“I reckon it is.”
“Saturday’s my day for luck,” she heard him saying, as the match died down. “I’ve got a cinch on Saturdays, that’s sure!” The gaiety in his tone was only a mockery of what it had been before. “Tide at ten, eh?—and it’s six, now.” He drew his watch from his pocket and gave it a glance. “Well, so long! I’ll be right back!”
To both the moments seemed endless in which he moved across the floor. His look dwelt upon her in a last effort to reach her heart, and then lingered about the room on the dim fellowships of his youth. But even Geordie himself could hardly have touched her in that hour. The strongest motive that had ruled her life had her finally by the throat.
Yet she called to him even as he went, afraid, womanlike, of the sound of the shut door. “Jim!” she flung after him. “Jim, lad! … Jim!”
“Say! Did you call?” He was back again on wings.
“Nay … it was nowt.” She indicated the pocketbook within reach of her hand. “You’d best take yon truck along wi’ you an’ all.”
Even in his disappointment he was still able to smile. “It don’t need a safe between it and a Thornthet, I guess!” was all he said. In that moment, indeed, the money was nothing and less than nothing to them both. Sarah was honest to the core, and never remembered once that dead men tell no tales and that the sea does not betray. … The thing that had conquered her soul was at least also above that.
“Ten, wa’n’t it?” he asked, drifting reluctantly out again. His voice came from further away, like the gull’s voice from the sky. “So long! Cheero! I’ll be back again with the tide. …”
IV
She heard rather than felt the silence re-enfold the house, like the swish of a curtain softly tumbled down. She was vividly on the alert for every change in the brooding quiet, but she was not afraid of the inevitable sound that must shortly break it again. To herself she seemed to be shut into the very heart of things, where everyone knows his secret hiding-place to be. Nothing could hurt her there, because it was shut away from pain. Neither remorse nor fear could touch her in that calm.
Yet all the time her mind had followed the man who had gone out, hearing the thud of his feet on the sandy ground, and seeing the bulk of him huge on the seawall. The sound of his feet would be sharper on the beach, but when he got to the sand it would be muffled as if with cloths. When he came to the channel he would stand and hail, and the light from the “Ship” would lie on the water like a road. …
But never tonight or in all time would he get as far as the bank. Suddenly, as he walked, he would hear a whisper
