"So of course," wrote Betty Flanders, pressing her
heels rather deeper in the sand, "there was nothing for it but to
leave."
Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale
blue ink dissolved the full stop; for there her pen stuck; her eyes
fixed, and tears slowly filled them. The entire bay quivered; the
lighthouse wobbled; and she had the illusion that the mast of Mr.
Connor's little yacht was bending like a wax candle in the sun. She
winked quickly. Accidents were awful things. She winked again. The
mast was straight; the waves were regular; the lighthouse was
upright; but the blot had spread.
"⌠nothing for it but to leave," she read.
"Well, if Jacob doesn't want to play" (the shadow
of Archer, her eldest son, fell across the notepaper and looked
blue on the sand, and she felt chillyâit was the third of September
already), "if Jacob doesn't want to play"âwhat a horrid blot! It
must be getting late.
"Where IS that tiresome little boy?" she said. "I
don't see him. Run and find him. Tell him to come at once." "⌠but
mercifully," she scribbled, ignoring the full stop, "everything
seems satisfactorily arranged, packed though we are like herrings
in a barrel, and forced to stand the perambulator which the
landlady quite naturally won't allowâŚ."
Such were Betty Flanders's letters to Captain
Barfootâmany-paged, tear-stained. Scarborough is seven hundred
miles from Cornwall: Captain Barfoot is in Scarborough: Seabrook is
dead. Tears made all the dahlias in her garden undulate in red
waves and flashed the glass house in her eyes, and spangled the
kitchen with bright knives, and made Mrs. Jarvis, the rector's
wife, think at church, while the hymn-tune played and Mrs. Flanders
bent low over her little boys' heads, that marriage is a fortress
and widows stray solitary in the open fields, picking up stones,
gleaning a few golden straws, lonely, unprotected, poor creatures.
Mrs. Flanders had been a widow for these two years.
"Jaâcob! Jaâcob!" Archer shouted.
"Scarborough," Mrs. Flanders wrote on the envelope,
and dashed a bold line beneath; it was her native town; the hub of
the universe. But a stamp? She ferreted in her bag; then held it up
mouth downwards; then fumbled in her lap, all so vigorously that
Charles Steele in the Panama hat suspended his paint-brush.
Like the antennae of some irritable insect it
positively trembled. Here was that woman movingâactually going to
get upâconfound her! He struck the canvas a hasty violet-black dab.
For the landscape needed it. It was too paleâgreys flowing into
lavenders, and one star or a white gull suspended just soâtoo pale
as usual. The critics would say it was too pale, for he was an
unknown man exhibiting obscurely, a favourite with his landladies'
children, wearing a cross on his watch chain, and much gratified if
his landladies liked his picturesâwhich they often did.
"Jaâcob! Jaâcob!" Archer shouted.
Exasperated by the noise, yet loving children,
Steele picked nervously at the dark little coils on his
palette.
"I saw your brotherâI saw your brother," he said,
nodding his head, as Archer lagged past him, trailing his spade,
and scowling at the old gentleman in spectacles.
"Over thereâby the rock," Steele muttered, with his
brush between his teeth, squeezing out raw sienna, and keeping his
eyes fixed on Betty Flanders's back.
"Jaâcob! Jaâcob!" shouted Archer, lagging on after
a second.
The voice had an extraordinary sadness. Pure from
all body, pure from all passion, going out into the world,
solitary, unanswered, breaking against rocksâso it sounded.
Steele frowned; but was pleased by the effect of
the blackâit was just THAT note which brought the rest together.
"Ah, one may learn to paint at fifty! There's TitianâŚ" and so,
having found the right tint, up he looked and saw to his horror a
cloud over the bay.
Mrs. Flanders rose, slapped her coat this side and
that to get the sand off, and picked up her black parasol.
The rock was one of those tremendously solid brown,
or rather black, rocks which emerge from the sand like something
primitive. Rough with crinkled limpet shells and sparsely strewn
with locks of dry seaweed, a small boy has to stretch his legs far
apart, and indeed to feel rather heroic, before he gets to the
top.
But there, on the very top, is a hollow full of
water, with a sandy bottom; with a blob of jelly stuck to the side,
and some mussels. A fish darts across. The fringe of yellow-brown
seaweed flutters, and out pushes an opal-shelled crabâ
"Oh, a huge crab," Jacob murmuredâand begins his
journey on weakly legs on the sandy bottom. Now! Jacob plunged his
hand. The crab was cool and very light. But the water was thick
with sand, and so, scrambling down, Jacob was about to jump,
holding his bucket in front of him, when he saw, stretched entirely
rigid, side by side, their faces very red, an enormous man and
woman.
An enormous man and woman (it was early-closing
day) were stretched motionless, with their heads on
pocket-handkerchiefs, side by side, within a few feet of the sea,
while two or three gulls gracefully skirted the incoming waves, and
settled near their boots.
The large red faces lying on the bandanna
handkerchiefs stared up at Jacob. Jacob stared down at them.
Holding his bucket very carefully, Jacob then jumped deliberately
and trotted away very nonchalantly at first, but faster and faster
as the waves came creaming up to him and he had to swerve to avoid
them, and the gulls rose in front of him and floated out and
settled again a little farther on. A large black woman was sitting
on the sand. He ran towards her.
"Nanny! Nanny!" he cried, sobbing the words out on
the crest of each gasping breath.
The waves came round her. She was a rock. She was
covered with the seaweed which pops when it is pressed. He was
lost.
There he stood. His face composed itself. He was
about to roar when, lying among the black sticks and straw under
the cliff, he saw a whole skullâperhaps a cow's skull, a skull,
perhaps, with the teeth in it. Sobbing, but absent-mindedly, he ran
farther and farther away until he held the skull in his arms.
"There he is!" cried Mrs. Flanders, coming round
the rock and covering the whole space of the beach in a few
seconds. "What has he got hold of? Put it down, Jacob! Drop it this
moment! Something horrid, I know. Why didn't you stay with us?
Naughty little boy! Now put it down. Now come along both of you,"
and she swept round, holding Archer by one hand and fumbling for
Jacob's arm with the other. But he ducked down and picked up the
sheep's jaw, which was loose.
Swinging her bag, clutching her parasol, holding
Archer's hand, and telling the story of the gunpowder explosion in
which poor Mr. Curnow had lost his eye, Mrs. Flanders hurried up
the steep lane, aware all the time in the depths of her mind of
some buried discomfort.
There on the sand not far from the lovers lay the
old sheep's skull without its jaw. Clean, white, wind-swept,
sand-rubbed, a more unpolluted piece of bone existed nowhere on the
coast of Cornwall. The sea holly would grow through the
eye-sockets; it would turn to powder, or some golfer, hitting his
ball one fine day, would disperse a little dustâNo, but not in
lodgings, thought Mrs. Flanders. It's a great experiment coming so
far with young children. There's no man to help with the
perambulator. And Jacob is such a handful; so obstinate
already.
"Throw it away, dear, do," she said, as they got
into the road; but Jacob squirmed away from her; and the wind
rising, she took out her bonnet-pin, looked at the sea, and stuck
it in afresh. The wind was rising. The waves showed that
uneasiness, like something alive, restive, expecting the whip, of
waves before a storm. The fishing-boats were leaning to the water's
brim. A pale yellow light shot across the purple sea; and shut. The
lighthouse was lit. "Come along," said Betty Flanders. The sun
blazed in their faces and gilded the great blackberries trembling
out from the hedge which Archer tried to strip as they passed.
"Don't lag, boys. You've got nothing to change
into," said Betty, pulling them along, and looking with uneasy
emotion at the earth displayed so luridly, with sudden sparks of
light from greenhouses in gardens, with a sort of yellow and black
mutability, against this blazing sunset, this astonishing agitation
and vitality of colour, which stirred Betty Flanders and made her
think of responsibility and danger. She gripped Archer's hand. On
she plodded up the hill.
"What did I ask you to remember?" she said.
"I don't know," said Archer.
"Well, I don't know either," said Betty, humorously
and simply, and who shall deny that this blankness of mind, when
combined with profusion, mother wit, old wives' tales, haphazard
ways, moments of astonishing daring, humour, and sentimentalityâwho
shall deny that in these respects every woman is nicer than any
man?
Well, Betty Flanders, to begin with.
She had her hand upon the garden gate.
"The meat!" she exclaimed, striking the latch
down.
She had forgotten the meat.
There was Rebecca at the window.
The bareness of Mrs. Pearce's front room was fully
displayed at ten o'clock at night when a powerful oil lamp stood on
the middle of the table. The harsh light fell on the garden; cut
straight across the lawn; lit up a child's bucket and a purple
aster and reached the hedge. Mrs. Flanders had left her sewing on
the table. There were her large reels of white cotton and her steel
spectacles; her needle-case; her brown wool wound round an old
postcard. There were the bulrushes and the Strand magazines; and
the linoleum sandy from the boys' boots. A daddy-long-legs shot
from corner to corner and hit the lamp globe. The wind blew
straight dashes of rain across the window, which flashed silver as
they passed through the light. A single leaf tapped hurriedly,
persistently, upon the glass. There was a hurricane out at sea.
Archer could not sleep.
Mrs. Flanders stooped over him. "Think of the
fairies," said Betty Flanders. "Think of the lovely, lovely birds
settling down on their nests. Now shut your eyes and see the old
mother bird with a worm in her beak. Now turn and shut your eyes,"
she murmured, "and shut your eyes."
The lodging-house seemed full of gurgling and
rushing; the cistern overflowing; water bubbling and squeaking and
running along the pipes and streaming down the windows.
"What's all that water rushing in?" murmured
Archer.
"It's only the bath water running away," said Mrs.
Flanders.
Something snapped out of doors.
"I say, won't that steamer sink?" said Archer,
opening his eyes.
"Of course it won't," said Mrs. Flanders. "The
Captain's in bed long ago. Shut your eyes, and think of the
fairies, fast asleep, under the flowers."
"I thought he'd never get offâsuch a hurricane,"
she whispered to
Rebecca, who was bending over a spirit-lamp in the small room next door.
The wind rushed outside, but the small flame of the spirit-lamp burnt
quietly, shaded from the cot by a book stood on edge.
Rebecca, who was bending over a spirit-lamp in the small room next door.
The wind rushed outside, but the small flame of the spirit-lamp burnt
quietly, shaded from the cot by a book stood on edge.
"Did he take his bottle well?" Mrs. Flanders
whispered, and Rebecca nodded and went to the cot and turned down
the quilt, and Mrs. Flanders bent over and looked anxiously at the
baby, asleep, but frowning. The window shook, and Rebecca stole
like a cat and wedged it.
The two women murmured over the spirit-lamp,
plotting the eternal conspiracy of hush and clean bottles while the
wind raged and gave a sudden wrench at the cheap fastenings.
Both looked round at the cot. Their lips were
pursed. Mrs. Flanders crossed over to the cot.
"Asleep?" whispered Rebecca, looking at the
cot.
Mrs. Flanders nodded.
"Good-night, Rebecca," Mrs. Flanders murmured, and
Rebecca called her ma'm, though they were conspirators plotting the
eternal conspiracy of hush and clean bottles.
Mrs. Flanders had left the lamp burning in the
front room. There were her spectacles, her sewing; and a letter
with the Scarborough postmark. She had not drawn the curtains
either.
The light blazed out across the patch of grass;
fell on the child's green bucket with the gold line round it, and
upon the aster which trembled violently beside it. For the wind was
tearing across the coast, hurling itself at the hills, and leaping,
in sudden gusts, on top of its own back. How it spread over the
town in the hollow! How the lights seemed to wink and quiver in its
fury, lights in the harbour, lights in bedroom windows high up! And
rolling dark waves before it, it raced over the Atlantic, jerking
the stars above the ships this way and that.
There was a click in the front sitting-room. Mr.
Pearce had extinguished the lamp. The garden went out. It was but a
dark patch. Every inch was rained upon. Every blade of grass was
bent by rain. Eyelids would have been fastened down by the rain.
Lying on one's back one would have seen nothing but muddle and
confusionâclouds turning and turning, and something yellow-tinted
and sulphurous in the darkness.
The little boys in the front bedroom had thrown off
their blankets and lay under the sheets. It was hot; rather sticky
and steamy. Archer lay spread out, with one arm striking across the
pillow. He was flushed; and when the heavy curtain blew out a
little he turned and half-opened his eyes. The wind actually
stirred the cloth on the chest of drawers, and let in a little
light, so that the sharp edge of the chest of drawers was visible,
running straight up, until a white shape bulged out; and a silver
streak showed in the looking-glass.
In the other bed by the door Jacob lay asleep, fast
asleep, profoundly unconscious. The sheep's jaw with the big yellow
teeth in it lay at his feet. He had kicked it against the iron
bed-rail.
Outside the rain poured down more directly and
powerfully as the wind fell in the early hours of the morning. The
aster was beaten to the earth. The child's bucket was half-full of
rainwater; and the opal-shelled crab slowly circled round the
bottom, trying with its weakly legs to climb the steep side; trying
again and falling back, and trying again and again.