XVII
DISCOVERY
In time the discomfort of his posture wore through the wrappings ofslumber. He stirred drowsily, shifted, and discovered a cramp in hislegs, the pain of which more effectually aroused him. He rose, yawned,stretched, grimaced with the ache in his stiffened limbs, and went tothe kitchen door.
There was no way to tell how long he had slept. The night heldblack--the moon not yet up. The bonfire had burned down to a greatglowing heap of embers. The wind was faint, a mere whisper in the void.There was a famous show of stars, clear, bright, cold and distant.
Closing and locking the door, he found another lamp, lighted it, andtook it with him to the corner bedchamber, where he lay down withoutundressing. He had, indeed, nothing to change to.
A heavy lethargy weighed upon his faculties. No longer desperatelysleepy, he was yet far from rested. His body continued to demand repose,but his mind was ill at ease.
He napped uneasily throughout the night, sleeping and waking by fits andstarts, his brain insatiably occupied with an interminable succession ofwretched dreams. The mad, distorted face of Drummond, bleached anddegraded by his slavery to morphine, haunted Whitaker's consciousnesslike some frightful and hideous Chinese mask. He saw it in a dozenguises, each more pitiful and terrible than the last. It pursued himthrough eons of endless night, forever at his shoulder, blind andweeping. Thrice he started from his bed, wide awake and glaring,positive that Drummond had been in the room but the moment gone.... Andeach time that he lay back and sleep stole in numbing waves through hisbrain, he passed into subconsciousness with the picture before his eyesof a seething cloud of gulls seen against the sky, over the edge of acliff.
He was up and out in the cool of dawn, before sunrise, delaying tolisten for some minutes at the foot of the stairway. But he heard nosound in that still house, and there was no longer the night to affrightthe woman with hinted threats of nameless horrors lurking beneath itsimpenetrable cloak. He felt no longer bound to stand sentinel on thethreshold of her apprehensions. He went out.
The day would be clear: he drew promise of this from the gray bowl ofthe sky, cloudless, touched with spreading scarlet only on its easternrim. There was no wind; from the cooling ashes of yesternight'sbeacon-fire a slim stalk of smoke grew straight and tall before itwavered and broke. The voice of the sea had fallen to a muffledthrobbing.
In the white magic of air like crystal translucent and motionless, theworld seemed more close-knitted and sane. What yesterday's veiling ofhaze had concealed was now bold and near. In the north the lighthousestood like a horn on the brow of the headland, the lamp continuing toflash even though its light was darkened, its beams out-stripped by theradiant forerunners of the sun. Beyond it, over a breadth of waterpopulated by an ocean-going tug with three barges in tow and a becalmedlumber schooner, a low-lying point of land (perhaps an island) thrustout into the west. On the nearer land human life was quickening: hereand there pale streamers of smoke swung up from hidden chimneys on itswooded rises.
Whitaker eyed them with longing. But they were distant from attainmentby at the least three miles of tideway through which strong watersraced--as he could plainly see from his elevation, in the pale, streakedand wrinkled surface of the channel.
He wagged a doubtful head, and scowled: no sign in any quarter of a boatheading for the island, no telling when they'd be taken off the cursedplace!
In his mutinous irritation, the screaming of the gulls, over in thewest, seemed to add the final touch of annoyance, a superfluous additionto the sum of his trials. Why need they have selected that island fortheir insane parliament? Why must his nerves be racked forever by theirincessant bickering? He had dreamed of them all night; must he endure aday made similarly distressing?
What _was_ the matter with the addle-pated things, anyway?
There was nothing to hinder him from investigating for himself. The girlwould probably sleep another hour or two.
He went forthwith, dulling the keen edge of his exasperation with arapid tramp of half a mile or so over the uneven uplands.
The screaming was well-nigh deafening by the time he stood upon theverge of the bluff; beneath him gulls clouded the air like beesswarming. And yet he experienced no difficulty in locating the cause oftheir excitement.
Below, a slow tide crawled, slavering, up over the boulder-strewn sands.In a wave-scooped depression between two of the larger boulders, thereceding waters had left a little, limpid pool. In the pool lay the bodyof a man, face downward, limbs frightfully sprawling. Gulls fought forplace upon his back.
The discovery brought with it no shock of surprise to the man on thebluff: horror alone. He seemed to have known all along that such wouldbe the cause. Yet he had never consciously acknowledged the thought. Ithad lain sluggish in the deeps beneath surfaces agitated by emotionsmore poignant and immediate. Still, it had been there--thatunderstanding. That, and that only, had so poisoned his rest....
But he shrank shuddering from the thought of the work that lay to hishand--work that must be accomplished at once and completely; for shemust know nothing of it. She had suffered enough, as it was.
Hastening back to the farmstead, he secured a spade from the barn andmade his way quickly down to the beach by way of the road through thecluster of deserted fishermen's huts.
Fifteen minutes' walk brought him to the pool. Ten minutes' hard workwith the spade sufficed to excavate a shallow trench in the sands abovehigh-water mark. He required as much time again to nerve himself to thepoint of driving off the gulls and moving the body. There were likewisecrabs to be dealt with....
When it was accomplished, and he had lifted the last heavy stone intoplace above the grave, he dragged himself back along the beach and rounda shoulder of the bluff to a spot warmed by the rays of the rising sun.There, stripping off his rags, he waded out into the sea and cleansedhimself as best he might, scrubbing sand into his flesh until it wasscored and angry; then crawled back, resumed his garments, and lay downfor a time in the strength-giving light, feeling giddy and faint withthe after-effects of the insuppressible nausea which had prolongedintolerably his loathsome task.
Very gradually the bluish shadows faded from about his mouth and eyes,and natural colour replaced his pallor. And presently he rose and wentslowly up to the house, all his being in a state of violent rebellionagainst the terror and mystery of life.
What the gulls and the crabs and the shattering surf had left had beenlittle, but enough for indisputable identification.
Whitaker had buried Drummond.