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 sea-wall. 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 to-night or in all time would he get as far as the bank. Suddenly, as he walked, he would hear a whisper out of the west. It would mean nothing to him at first, nor the wind feeling along his cheek. He would only say to himself that the trees were astir on the far point. Then he would hear a noise like a coming shower, and lift up his face to meet the first of the rain. But the sound that came after would come running along the sand, until every rib was vibrating its message to his feet. When he knew what it was, he would stand perfectly still, and then he would spring in the air and start to run. But, run as he might, he would never reach the shore, or stand on the gold road that would take him over to May. The white tide-horses were swifter far than he; their unshod hoofs would outrun his heavy boots. The sweeping advance-water would suddenly hem him in, swirling before his feet and shooting behind his back. He would run this way and that in the dark, but it would be no use. He would run and run, but it would never be any use....
From complete detachment she passed gradually to a comforting sense of quittance and ease. It was as if a burden that she had carried all her life had been cut away, so that she could lift up her head and look in front of her and breathe free. The sickening jealousy was gone, the gnawing pain at her heart, the fierce up-swelling of decimating rage, the long, narrowed-down brooding of helpless hate. Never again would she be able to see herself as the poor relation fawning at Eliza's skirts. The thing had been done at last which paid Eliza in full.
She had, as she came back within range of feeling again, one last, great moment of exultant pride. She seemed to herself actually to grow in size, to tower in the low room as the shadow of the home-comer had towered over ceiling and wall. Into the hands of this oppressed and poverty-stricken woman there had suddenly been given the heady power of life and death, and the stimulant of it was like wine in her thin blood, making her heart steady as a firm-blown forge. She felt strong enough in that moment to send every child of Eliza's out to its death in the maw of the Night Wave. She felt an epic figure poised on the edge of the world, heroic, tremendous, above all laws. Indeed, she seemed, as it were, to be the very Finger of God itself....
And then faintly the exultation sank; dimmed, rather, as on a summer day the sharpness goes out of the high lights on lawn and wall. The sun is not gone, but the farthest and finest quality of it is suddenly withdrawn. In some such way a blurring of vivid certainties came upon her brain. A breath of wind was blown sharply through the open window, and with a touch of surprise she found that she was cold. The fire, so lately encouraged by the visitor's presence, had died sulkily into grey clinkers tinged with red that had no more warmth to it than a splash of paint. The candle, on the other hand, had sprung into a tall flame from a high wick. It was as if it was making a last effort to illumine the world for the woman over whose mind was creeping that vague and blurring mist.
With the slackening of the mental tension her physical self slackened, too. She began to rock to and fro, muttering softly as she swayed.