Read Ebook: Ramshackle House by Footner Hulbert

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Ebook has 1688 lines and 49899 words, and 34 pages

It was delicious to her to have him softened and faltering like this. "I'm afraid of you, too," she confessed. "How silly we both are!"

For a moment or two they were wildly and unreasonably happy, standing there in the bland moonlight close together but not touching. His face was in the shadow but Pen could feel his eyes stabbing her out of the dark. Her own went down. They were like reeds shaken in the same gust. In that moment Pen knew that whatever bonds might be upon him out in the world, he was hers. Still he did not speak; he did not draw her to him. In the end she had to wrench herself away from the magnetic attraction of his body, or else she must have flung herself into his arms.

"Let's walk," she said hurriedly. "We're safe enough in this out-of-the-way corner. You must need exercise. We'll circle round the field. Over in the corner there's a path leading down to an arm of Back creek where Dad keeps his boat in the winter."

Don came down to earth with a sigh. He had a curious way, when his thoughts annoyed him, of shaking his head like a dog, to clear it. Without saying anything he tied the jute bag to an overhanging branch out of reach of four-footed prowlers, and came along with Pen.

They kept to the fence line, silent for the most part. Their breasts were oppressed by moonlight, that high, pure medium which nevertheless stirs us so poignantly. The moon herself is all very well in her way, a lovely lamp in the dark, but one can stare at the moon all night without being transported. One must turn one's back on the moon to experience her magic. It is the strange light she casts on the face of our mother Earth, and Earth's smile under moonlight, soft, subtle and infinitely suggestive, that thrill us, that disquiet us, that unlock our spirits. On the one hand as they walked the field lay spread with a bloomy, gossamer coverlet of moonlight; on the other hand the swelling tree masses rose in rich velvety blackness under a lazulite sky.

Their two shadows soberly preceded them, always with a narrow space of moonlight between. Pen resented that little gap. She had forgotten about the supposed other woman, or if she remembered she no longer cared. She lived in the moment only; there was no more past, no future. She was in the grip of sensations that scarcely permitted her to breathe. Yet she had to conceal from him those sighs with which she sought to relieve her breast. Sometimes she fell behind a step just for the satisfaction of looking at him without his knowing, at the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck, at his flat, straight back, at the curious grace of his level walk. He was wearing an old pair of trousers and a shirt of khaki that she had brought him as being less conspicuous in the woods than his own white clothes. The thin garments betrayed his beauty to her.

The moon was high in the sky and their shadows were short at their feet. Pen beheld a curious thing. The dewy grass refracting the strong moonlight made a silvery nimbus around the heads of the two of them.

"Look!" she said with her shaky little laugh. "We've been canonized."

"Not me," he said. "They just let me walk under your halo."

Having circled round two sides of the field, they climbed over another pole gate and were swallowed up in the woods. Instantly the silence wrapped them as in a cloak, and the heavy air became charged with a curious significance. High over head they glimpsed the moon pacing with them over the tree-tops. She splashed the trunks fantastically, and occasionally lay down a bar of silver on the path, but for the most part the underworld was black, black, black; a crouching blackness that held its breath as if in preparation for a spring. The path was well-beaten but narrow. They had to walk in single file, Pen ahead.

"I'm glad you're here," murmured Pen.

"It's a fearsome sort of place," he said. "It was not like this the other night we walked through the woods."

"These woods have not been cut out," said Pen. "The old presences have never been disturbed."

Finally the path with a sharp turn brought them abruptly out under the open sky again. It was as if something had been lifted off their heads. They had come to a low bank at the head of a straight, narrow arm of water thrust into the heart of the pines. A great bird arose from below them and passed away like a shadow with a soft swishing of wings. The path ended in a shaky little wharf with a single plank laid upon it. They stepped gingerly out upon it hand in hand, and stood looking down the reach. The South wind passed high above their heads and the surface of the water was perfectly unruffled.

At the moment the moon was looking down the straight arm so squarely one might have said she had cleft the opening herself with her silver blade of light. Down at the end of the narrow arm they had the sense of a wider body of water running at right angles, a pearly, fairy-like strait. On the point which separated the two bodies of water stood a little white house gleaming wanly in the moonlight. In a window of the house, a curious note in that dreamy world of opal and pearl, shone an insistent yellow light.

"Surely real people can't live there," murmured Don.

"The worst kind, unfortunately," said Pen. "That's where the oystermen go to get drunk."

They retraced their steps up the bank. When they trod firm earth again, Pen repossessed herself of her hand.

"Where now?" asked Don.

"There's no place to go but back."

"Not yet," he pleaded. "Let's stay here awhile. There's plenty of time. There are no mosquitoes to-night."

An old skiff had been dragged up on top of the bank and turned over.

"Sit here," he urged.

Blaming herself for her weakness, she sat upon it with her hands in her lap. The moonlight was strong upon her. There was a wall of undergrowth at her back. Her face and hands stood out against it sharply. Don dropped to the ground at her feet.

"It's damp there," she objected.

"Can't see you when I sit beside you," he said. "I can from here. With only your face and hands showing out of your black dress you look like a spirit."

"A lost spirit!" she said with her little laugh.

"Oh Pen!" he said in distress. "Why should you be unhappy?"

"I hate the moon!" she said. "It makes a fool of me!"

His touch of sympathy unnerved her. That and the glamorous destructive light that would not let her breast be. The last of her defenses collapsed. In spite of herself the tears welled up in her eyes and brimmed over. She lowered her head to hide them, but he caught the sparkle of the drops as they fell. It electrified him. He scrambled to his knees.

"Pen! Pen!" he whispered brokenly.

She covered her face with her hands. He dragged them down, and crushed them under his own hands on her knees.

"Pen!" he gasped. "It breaks my heart to see you! What is the matter?"

She strained away from him. "Nothing!" she said crossly. "I'm not the sort that cries!"

"But you're crying now. I see your tears!"

"It's nothing. I'm just nervous. Don't notice me."

"Oh Pen, I love you so!" he groaned. "It kills me to see your tears!"

She looked at him with a kind of horror.

He dropped his head in her lap. "There it's out!" he groaned. "All evening I've been fighting against it. Every night I've been with you. I swore I wouldn't tell you. But here I am ... just like a baby. God knows I'll regret it to-morrow!"

"But why?" she gasped.

"Because it drives me wild to think of bringing unhappiness into your life. I'd sooner jump off the wharf yonder. It's unmanly to tell you now!"

"Blessed unmanliness!" whispered Pen, brooding over him.

Presently she jerked her head up as if she needed more air, more light. The moon shone in her wet face. It was transfigured.

He was still humbled over her knees. "This isn't the way I wanted to come to the woman I love," he said bitterly. "I've nothing to offer you ... less than nothing ..."

"Do you want to buy me or to love me," she murmured with soft reproach.

He scarcely heard her. "It is impossible for you to respect a man who is as dependent on you as a baby!"

Pen put her cheek in his hair. "Foolish one! What has respect to do with it?"

"You can only be sorry for me!"

Her hands turned over and found his face. "Foolish! Foolish! Foolish!" she murmured. "You must have got your idea of loving out of books! ... How selfish you are!"

He raised his head, struck by the word.

"Pen! ... Pen!" he cried amazed and full of delight. Then added quaintly in a voice of reproof: "You're talking wildly!"

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