11
Bellair believed about this being the last day. The authority was quite enough, but there was still something akin to eternity in the possible space of another daylight and distance. The announcement did not bring him an unmixed gladness, for the mysterious fear of the night haunted him—the thing that had come to him under the full and amazing moon while Fleury prayed.... Day revealed no sign. They sat speechless and bowed under the smiting noon—the little boat in the wide, green deep under a fleckless, windless sky, proud of its pure part in infinite space.
That was the day the child moaned, as significantly for the ears of men, as for the mother. He was a waif to look at—the little heart at times like one of them in stoicism—then nestling to the mother-breast and the turning away in astonishment and pain. The Mother’s eyes were harrowing.
“This is our last day,” Fleury repeated.
“I believe you,” she said.
“Then drink and eat——”
“I did—it is—it is—oh, I did!”
“Land or rain or a ship, I do not know—but this is the last day——”
Bellair regarded him, between his own wordless vapourings of consciousness. The preacher was like a guest, not of earth altogether—like one who would come in the evening.... Yes, that was it. He was like the old man who came to Olga, only young and beautiful. It did not occur to Bellair now that he was regarding his friend with a quality of vision that a well-fed man never knows.... That which he had fancied placid and boyish was knit and masterful. The cheeks and temples were hollowed, but the eyes were bright. There is a brightness of hunger, of fever, of certain drugs, but these were as different as separate colours—and had not to do with this man’s eyes. Nothing that Bellair knew but starlight could be likened—and not all starlight. There was one star that rose late and climbed high above and a little toward the north—solitary, remote, not yellow nor red nor green nor white, as we know it—yet of that whiteness which is the source of all. Bellair had forgotten the name, but Fleury’s eyes made him think of it.
... The woman’s head was lying back. Something that Bellair had noted a hundred times, without bringing it actually into his mind’s front, now appeared with all the energy of a realisation. Her throat was almost too beautiful. The diverging lines under the ear, one stretching down to the shoulder, the other curving forward around the chin, were shadowed a little deeper from her body’s wasting, but the beauty was deeper than flesh, the structure itself classic. It was the same as when he had noted her finger-nails. Beauty had brought him a kind of excitement, and something of hostility—as if he had been hurt terribly by it long ago. But this was different; these details had come one by one, as he was ready. Her integrity had entered his heart before each outer symbol. He had not seen her at all at first; recalled the queer sense of hesitation in raising his eyes across the table in the cabin of the Jade. He had studied her face in the open boat, but something seemed to blur his eyes when she turned to him to speak. Two are required for a real understanding. As yet they had not really met, not yet turned to each other in that searching silence which fathoms. But the details were dawning upon him. Perhaps that was the way of the Faraway Woman—to dawn upon one.