By this time the moon was rising, and, in spite of the driving clouds which had not all dispersed, at times it shone clear. Beneath it the stretch of sand lay pale and desolate, a new-formed landscape of fresh contours, loosely-piled hills and shallow scooped hollows shaped by to-day's wind. An easy place for a man to miss his way with a gale blowing and the sand dancing blinding reels. A hard place for a man to travel far when he had to face the wind; a strong man would have found it very tiring, a weak man might well have given it up, driven to waiting for a lull in the weather. As for a man in the Captain's health—when Julia thought of it she hurried on, although she knew if her father had to-day, as he had all through his life, followed the line of least resistance, the chances were that her help would be of little avail to him now.
She carried her lantern low, looking carefully for footprints; soon, however, she put it out; she would do better without in the increasing moon-light. But she found no prints; after all, as she remembered, she was hardly likely to; the wind and blowing sand would have obliterated them. Over the first level of sand she went to the nearest rise without seeing anything; up to that and down the following hollow, looking in every curve and indentation, still without seeing anything. Then she began to climb the next rise. The moon was struggling through a long cloud, one moment eclipsed, the next shining with a half radiance which made the landscape unevenly black and white. For a second it looked out clear, and the sand showed like silver, tear-spotted with ink in the hollows; then the cloud swept up and all turned to a level grey. She had climbed to the top of a rise by now, sinking deep and noiseless into the soft sand. It was too dark to see what was below; all was shadow, black shadow—or was it a blackness more substantial than shadow?
The cloud passed from off the moon's face, the light shone out once more, turning the sand to silver. All the great empty space, where the dying wind still throbbed, was white silver, except down in the hollow where, black and still, lay the man who had followed the line of least resistance.
CHAPTER XXIII
PAYMENT AND RECEIPT
On the day of Captain Polkington's funeral, a letter was brought to White's Cottage. Julia herself took it in, and when she saw that it was from Holland she asked the postman to wait a minute as she would be glad if he would post a letter for her. He sat down, nothing loth; the cottage was the last place on his round and he never minded a rest there. He waited while Julia went up-stairs with her letter. She opened it before she got to her room and barely read the contents; there was enclosed a cheque for thirty pounds, the price of "The Good Comrade."
It had come, then, at last, this money for which she had been waiting two years—but too late. The man in whose name she would have paid the debt lay dead. She had planned to clear him without his knowledge, reinstate him in the good opinion of his debtor without letting her hand be seen; and she could not, for he was dead, and there was no hand but hers, and no name to clear. It was not a week too late, yet so much, so bitterly much. Too late for her cherished plan, too late for any of the things she had hoped, too late for triumph, or joy, or satisfaction; too late to demonstrate the once hoped for equality; too late for the fulfilling of anything but a dogged purpose. For a moment she looked at the cheque, feeling the irony which had sent her the means of paying his debt now that her father lay in his coffin, indifferent to his good name and his honour; unable, alike, to clear or be cleared, to wrong or be wronged; removed by kindly death from the scope of earthly judgment, even the just thoughts of one who had suffered on his account.
She put down the cheque and pencilled some hasty words—"In payment of Captain Polkington's debt (to Mr. Rawson-Clew) discharged by Hubert Farquhar Rawson-Clew on the—November 19—"