Fear by Night (20 page)

He was only a third of the way across the strait, when he heard the booming sound again. It reminded him of something. A bittern? He wondered if there were bittern as far north as this. And then there was a swirl in the water ahead of him, and out of the mist there rose up a long black serpentine head and neck. The water dripped from it. The moon shone on it. It reared up and came at him in a roar of sound, the water boiling before it and rushing past in foam. Charles pulled violently upon his left-hand oar, but failed to get the boat clear. He had no time to do more than throw all his strength into that one desperate stroke, for in the same moment he was caught by the full force of the onset and plunged into the water. His head was struck, and he went down and for an instant lost himself. Time and his sense of direction were gone. When they returned, he felt that he was drowning and struck out for the surface.

He came up by the boat, which had capsized. One of the oars floated near, the other at some distance. He caught a glimpse of it as the haze closed down. There was nothing else to be seen. He discovered a hole in the boat, so wasted no time in trying to right it. He got it to the farther shore without incident and then went back for the oars.

It must be confessed that he disliked doing this as much as he had ever disliked doing anything in all his life. Things out of nature shake the nature in us. That snaky head and neck coming up dripping out of unknown depths and rushing upon him with horrid force had certainly shaken Charles. But if he didn't get the oars, he wouldn't be able to go back for Ann to-morrow. He thanked heaven that he had not persuaded her to come away with him to-night.

When he had retrieved the oars, he hefted them and the boat and made his way back to the car. He was, of course, wet through. He was also shaken and puzzled. And he was afraid, because Ann was still on the island.

CHAPTER XXIII

The morning came up in a mist that shrouded everything. Ann waked to find it curtaining her window, and was considerably dashed in spirits. If the fog was very thick, would Charles be able to find the landing-place? This was really a very frightening thought, because the little sandy bay was the only place on this side of the island where it was at all possible to land. There was one narrow inlet on the other side, but everywhere else the coast was defended by humped and pointed rocks which might be terribly dangerous in a fog.

She went and stood by the window and leaned out. The mist was white, dazzling, and impenetrable. She could not see the trees on the farther side of the lawn. It was just as if they did not exist. Yet she and Charles had stood under them last night, and Charles had held her close and kissed her. A most desolate, cold feeling swept over Ann. The fog seemed to have blotted everything out.

She shook herself impatiently. “Don't be such a gump! At your age! Doing lost dog just because there's a mist, which probably means that it's going to be an absolutely topping day!”

She went down to breakfast and sat there straining for the sound of Charles' step. The fog was certainly lifting. The faint wraith-like spectres of the trees could be discerned across the lawn.

“Nothing I 'ates like a fog,” said Mrs. Halliday. “Let me see what's happening, I say, and bad or good you know where you are. But a fog gives me the creeps. You don't know where you are, nor you don't know what's alongside of you, and if it's something that shouldn't be, you'll likely find it out too late. There was my own grandmother's nephew by 'er first husband, Abram Sidebotham by name, come home in a fog on the Tarriton turnpike with a girl as he was friendly with and wishing that he was something more. They wasn't engaged nor they wasn't walking out, but he'd tried to snatch a kiss and got 'is face smacked for him, and he was wishful for 'er better acquaintance. Annie was the girl's name, and some said she was 'andsome, but I couldn't see it myself—bit of a chit of a little thing and as quick as an adder, with a great fuzz-bush of hair a-hanging down her back. Well, Abram and she they walked a piece together, and it was frosty and a thick fog, and I won't say as he hadn't had 'is glass, nor I won't say as he hadn't had a glass too much. Anyhow it seems he tried to kiss 'er, and Annie she dodged away from him, so there they was, 'er a-dodging 'im, and 'im grabbing at 'er all over the highway, and the fog that thick you couldn't see your 'and before your face. Albert Larkin he come up with them in 'is gig driving very slow and careful acause of not being able to see, and he hears Annie give a screech, and he hears Abram yell out, ‘I've got yer!' And the language he used after that was what Albert couldn't bring 'isself to repeat, being Methody-reared. And all of a sudden the fog shifted the way it do, and by the light of Albert's gig-lamps there was Abram with his arm round the neck of Eli Todd's old donkey, cuddling its mane and saying, ‘I got yer, and I'm going to keep yer!' And a couple of yards away there was that piece Annie with 'er great bush of 'air that Abram thought he'd got hold of 'er by laughing and making game of him. Albert didn't hold 'is tongue neither, and pore Abram got so laughed at that he went and turned teetotal. Annie she took up with Albert Larkin, that was born to be poll-pecked if ever a young man was, and rule him she did good and proper, and all 'er eleven children likewise. So I don't 'old with fogs.”

“It's lifting,” said Jimmy Halliday. He had his own reasons for wanting it to lift and to stay lifted. He had a cargo to run and he wanted fair weather for the trip. A light mist was one thing—he wouldn't object to a mist, in fact it would make things all the safer—but a fog like this would be the devil.

It was lifting all right. The trees were not spectres any longer but trees seen through a haze. A little faint sunlight began to filter through.

Ann sat down to read a five-days-old paper to Mrs. Halliday, and found it very difficult to keep her mind on what she was reading. The old lady's remarks about car-bandits, vigorous though they were, hardly reached her—“A paperful of pepper right in the eyes—that's what they want. An uncle of mine he always made his girls carry pepper travelling lonely roads.”

The front door shut, and Ann jumped in her chair. She saw Jimmy Halliday go round the house and went back to her paper with a sigh. Mrs. Halliday shot her an angry, suspicious glance.

“Who was that went by?”

“Mr. Halliday,” said Ann.

“Then I'll thank you to keep your eyes for what you're supposed to be reading and not go looking out of the window after my son!”

The bright furious colour rushed into Ann's face. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and read in a muffled voice: “An unknown man who jumped from the running-board of the car and made off down Green Street is requested to communicate with the police.”

“And a lot of good it is asking him to do that!” said Mrs. Halliday. “And let me tell you, Miss Vernon, that if I hadn't thought as how you were a young lady that knew how to behave 'erself, I wouldn't have 'ad you in my house.”

Ann put down the paper.

“I'm leaving here to-day, Mrs. Halliday,” she said.

“And may I ask
h
ow?” said Mrs. Halliday with a tremendous aspirate.

Ann hesitated. Suppose Charles didn't come. Suppose he had lost his way in the fog. Suppose a hundred different things.… She did not dare to burn her boats. The angry tears were stinging her eyes. They made an iridescent halo about Mrs. Halliday's morning cap.

“Miss Vernon!”

Ann ran out of the room and banged the door.

The morning went on, slowly, draggingly, and in a rising mist of fear. The fog outside lifted, but the fear gathered thicker and thicker about Ann. Charles did not come, and every hour dragged by more slowly than the last.

She went up into her own room and sat there thinking of reasons which might have prevented Charles from coming. He might have overslept. He might have found a puncture. For the matter of that, he might have had almost any kind of mechanical breakdown. By twelve o'clock none of the reasons seemed to have any life in them. They faded out and left Ann alone in the fog.

She could not have said just at what point “Charles hasn't come” became “Charles isn't coming,” but by lunch-time she had given him up. Something had happened, and he wasn't coming. A verse from an old German folk-song came ringing in her head:

“Mein lieb is auf die wanderschaft hin.

Ich weiss nicht warum Ich so traurig bin.

Vielleicht ist er falsch, vielleicht ist er tot.

Drum wein ich die lieblichen äuglein rot.”

It went on ringing there, sometimes in German and sometimes in English.

“My love he is wandering far and near,

I know not why, but my heart it is drear.

Perhaps he is false, perhaps he is dead,

And so I weep and my eyes are red.”

It was a song of the most uncomfortable melancholy. Another of the verses said:

“Oh thistles and thorns they prick full sore,

But a false, false tongue hurts a heart far more.

No fire on earth so burns and glows

As a secret love that no man knows.”

In the last verse of all the poor forsaken damsel begs the wandering lover to return and shed one tear upon her grave.

“Dieweil ich dich so treulich geliebet hab.”

The sweet, melancholy cadence fell on Ann's heart, and for a moment there was a faint reaction. Charles loved her, and he hadn't gone away and left her. He wouldn't—he never would. She was just letting herself be mesmerized by a sad old song.

“Oh love of my heart, one thing I crave,

That you will stand by my lonely grave,

That you will drop one tear for me,

Because I so truly have lovéd thee.”

Ann reacted a little more vigorously. “Sloppy, sentimental idiot—you're just wallowing! You're being a coward and a fool, when you know perfectly well that Charles cares a lot more for you than you deserve! You know perfectly well he does!” The part of her that Ann was scolding struck back, and suddenly. “That's just it—he
wouldn't
go. Where is he? What's happened to him? Something's happened to him.”

She was so pale at lunch that Gale Anderson frowned above the cold suspicious glance he gave her. Jimmy Halliday pressed food upon her until she could have screamed. And Mrs. Halliday retailed a selection of anecdotes on the text of
Wilful waste makes woeful want
. “And leaving of food on plates is what I don't hold with and won't 'ave in my house. There was my cousin Sarah Rankin as reared 'er children on the outside crust of the loaf all hot from the baker, they having a fancy that way—and what they done with the crumb 'eaven knows, but I reckon it went to the pigs. And what come of it?” She fixed Ann's pallor with an accusing glare. “There was the eldest, Samson—he drunk 'is wife and children out of house and home. And Delilah that there was such a fuss over the christening of, parson holding it wasn't no Christian name and Sarah saying as it was in the Book and that was good enough for 'er and threatening to go over to the Methodies—Delilah, she had six children by 'er first 'usband, and married a widower with ten for 'er second, and lived like pigs, the lot of them, so as the whole village cried shame. And the third, Annie Amelia, she come on the parish, and none of the rest of them was any credit to the family. And what can you expect, with them brought up to waste good food?”

It was a most trying meal.

As soon as it was possible, Ann escaped from the house and went up on to the heather knoll at the top of the island. She could see the hills, and the loch, and the strait, and the bend of the road coming down to the waterside. If Charles came, she would see him come. She had still a little faint hope that he would come. Just when it seemed most dead it would spring up again. For he must come—he
must
. He couldn't leave her here—he wouldn't—not
Charles
. There was an answer to this stammering hope—a final, dreadful answer. Ann tried to prevent herself from hearing it, but it was getting harder and harder. Soon it would be impossible, and then she would have to hear it, and it would say:

“Charles won't come, because he can't.”

“He can't come, because something has happened.”

“He can't come, because he's hurt.”

“He can't come, because he's dead.”

Ann sat on a stone at the top of the knoll and stared at the strait. The mist had thinned and lifted, but the sky was not clear. There was a milky veil across the blue. The sun came through it, faintly warm and faintly golden. There were shreds and wreaths of mist in the clefts and hollows of the hills, and all their colours were faint, like colours remembered from a long time ago. The surface of the loch was dim, like bright glass that has been breathed upon. The outlet to the sea was lost in a thick haze. The air and the water were alike still and without movement.

Ann sat with her hands in her lap and looked at the road by which Charles must come.

She did not know how long she had sat there, when she heard a sound that was very far away. It jarred the edge of the silence. When it came again, it was louder. Ann strained towards it, listening. All at once her heart began to beat with a loud and joyful relief, because the sound was the throb of a motor. And it was coming nearer. Charles was coming. What a perfect, absolute fool she was to have been afraid! She wouldn't dare tell Charles what a fool she had been. Yes, she would—she
would
. It would be lovely to tell him, and to hear him say, “Oh, Ann—you blessed little idiot!” Great stupid tears brimmed up in her eyes and ran over. She dashed them away and jumped up, leaning forward so as to see the car the minute it came round the bend. Perhaps he would stop behind the hill and walk down to the waterside. Perhaps—

The sound was louder. Ann's hand came up to her breast and pressed down hard upon it.