Part 12

All the next day he thought of his fair visitor, and found himself often repeating her odd remark that she was “not that kind of girl,” with a smile that was alternately significant or vacant. Evidently she could take care of herself, he thought, although her very good looks no doubt had exposed her to the rude attentions of fishermen or the common drift of San Francisco wharves. Perhaps this was why her father brought her here. When the day passed and she came not, he began vaguely to wonder if he had been rude to her. Perhaps he had taken her simple remark too seriously; perhaps she had expected he would only laugh, and had found him dull and stupid. Perhaps he had thrown away an opportunity. An opportunity for what? To renew his old life and habits? No, no! The horrors of his recent imprisonment and escape were still too fresh in his memory; he was not safe yet. Then he wondered if he had not grown spiritless and pigeon-livered in his solitude and loneliness. The next day he searched for her with his glass, and saw her playing with one of the children on the beach,--a very picture of child or nymphlike innocence. Perhaps it was because she was not “that kind of girl” that she had attracted him. He laughed bitterly. Yes; that was very funny; he, an escaped convict, drawn towards honest, simple innocence! Yet he knew--he was positive--he had not thought of any ill when he spoke to her. He took a singular, a ridiculous pride in and credit to himself for that. He repeated it incessantly to himself. Then what made her angry? Himself! The devil! Did he carry, then, the record of his past life forever in his face--in his speech--in his manners? The thought made him sullen. The next day he would not look towards the shore; it was wonderful what excitement and satisfaction he got out of that strange act of self-denial; it made the day seem full that had been so vacant before; yet he could not tell why or wherefore. He felt injured, but he rather liked it. Yet in the night he was struck with the idea that she might have gone back to San Francisco, and he lay awake longing for the morning light to satisfy him. Yet when the fog cleared, and from a nearer point, behind a sand dune, he discovered, by the aid of his glass, that she was seated on the sun-warmed sands combing out her long hair like a mermaid, he immediately returned to the cabin, and that morning looked no more that way. In the afternoon, there being no sails in sight, he turned aside from the bay and walked westward towards the ocean, halting only at the league-long line of foam which marked the breaking Pacific surges. Here he was surprised to see a little child, half-naked, following barefooted the creeping line of spume, or running after the detached and quivering scraps of foam that chased each other over the wet sand, and only a little further on, to come upon Cara herself, sitting with her elbows on her knees and her round chin in her hands, apparently gazing over the waste of waters before her. A sudden and inexplicable shyness overtook him. He hesitated, and stepped half-hidden in a gully between the sand dunes.

As yet he had not been observed; the young girl called to the child and, suddenly rising, threw off her red cap and shawl and quietly began to disrobe herself. A couple of coarse towels were at her feet. Jarman instantly comprehended that she was going to bathe with the child. She undoubtedly knew as well as he did that she was safe in that solitude; that no one could intrude upon her privacy from the bay shore, nor from the desolate inland trail to the sea, without her knowledge. Of his own contiguity she had evidently taken no thought, believing him safely housed in his cabin beside the semaphore. She lifted her hands, and with a sudden movement shook out her long hair and let it fall down her back at the same moment that her unloosened blouse began to slip from her shoulders. Richard Jarman turned quickly and walked noiselessly and rapidly away, until the little hillock had shut out the beach.

His retreat was as sudden, unreasoning, and unpremeditated as his intrusion. It was not like himself, he knew, and yet it was as perfectly instinctive and natural as if he had intruded upon a sister. In the South Seas he had seen native girls diving beside the vessels for coins, but they had provoked no such instinct as that which possessed him now. More than that, he swept a quick, wrathful glance along the horizon on either side, and then, mounting a remote hillock which still hid him from the beach, he sat there and kept watch and ward. From time to time the strong sea-breeze brought him the sound of infantine screams and shouts of girlish laughter from the unseen shore; he only looked the more keenly and suspiciously for any wandering trespasser, and did not turn his head. He lay there nearly half an hour, and when the sounds had ceased, rose and made his way slowly back to the cabin. He had not gone many yards before he heard the twitter of voices and smothered laughter behind him. He turned; it was Cara and the child,--a girl of six or seven. Cara's face was rosy,--possibly from her bath, and possibly from some shame-faced consciousness. He slackened his pace, and as they ranged beside him said, “Good-morning!”

“Lord!” said Cara, stifling another laugh, “we didn't know you were around; we thought you were always 'tending your telegraph, didn't we, Lucy?” (to the child, who was convulsed with mirth and sheepishness). “Why, we've been taking a wash in the sea.” She tried to gather up her long hair, which had been left to stray over her shoulders and dry in the sunlight, and even made a slight pretense of trying to conceal the wet towels they were carrying.

Jarman did not laugh. “If you had told me,” he said gravely, “I could have kept watch for you with my glass while you were there. I could see further than you.”

“Tould you see US?” asked the little girl, with hopeful vivacity.

“No!” said Jarman, with masterly evasion. “There are little sandhills between this and the beach.”

“Then how tould other people see us?” persisted the child.

Jarman could see that the older girl was evidently embarrassed, and changed the subject. “I sometimes go out,” he said, “when I can see there are no vessels in sight, and I take ray glass with me. I can always get back in time to make signals. I thought, in fact,” he said, glancing at Cara's brightening face, “that I might get as far as your house on the shore some day.” To his surprise, her embarrassment suddenly seemed to increase, although she had looked relieved before, and she did not reply. After a moment she said abruptly:--

“Did you ever see the sea-lions?”

“No,” said Jarman.

“Not the big ones on Seal Rock, beyond the cliffs?” continued the girl, in real astonishment.

“No,” repeated Jarman. “I never walked in that direction.” He vaguely remembered that they were a curiosity which sometimes attracted parties thither, and for that reason he had avoided the spot.

“Why, I have sailed all around the rock in father's boat,” continued Cara, with importance. “That's the best way to see 'em, and folks from Frisco sometimes takes a sail out there just on purpose,--it's too sandy to walk or drive there. But it's only a step from here. Look here!” she said suddenly, and frankly opening her fine eyes upon him. “I'm going to take Lucy there to-morrow, and I'll show you.” Jarman felt his cheeks flush quickly with a pleasure that embarrassed him. “It won't take long,” added Cara, mistaking his momentary hesitation, “and you can leave your telegraph alone. Nobody will be there, so no one will see you and nobody know it.”

He would have gone then, anyway, he knew, yet in his absurd self-consciousness he was glad that her last suggestion had relieved him of a sense of reckless compliance. He assented eagerly, when with a wave of her hand, a flash of her white teeth, and the same abruptness she had shown at their last parting, she caught Lucy by the arm and darted away in a romping race to her dwelling. Jarman started after her. He had not wanted to go to her father's house particularly, but why was SHE evidently as averse to it? With the subtle pleasure that this admission gave him there was a faint stirring of suspicion.

It was gone when he found her and Lucy the next morning, radiant with the sunshine, before his door. The restraint of their previous meetings had been removed in some mysterious way, and they chatted gayly as they walked towards the cliffs. She asked him frankly many questions about himself, why he had come there, and if he “wasn't lonely;” she answered frankly--I fear much more frankly than he answered her--the many questions he asked her about herself and her friends. When they reached the cliffs they descended to the beach, which they found deserted. Before them--it seemed scarce a pistol shot from the shore arose a high, broad rock, beaten at its base by the long Pacific surf, on which a number of shapeless animals were uncouthly disporting. This was Seal Rock, the goal of their journey.

Yet after a few moments they no longer looked at it, but seated on the sand, with Lucy gathering shells at the water's edge, they continued their talk. Presently the talk became eager confidences, and then,--there were long and dangerous lapses of silence, when both were fain to make perfunctory talk with Lucy on the beach. After one of those silences Jarman said:--

“Do you know I rather thought yesterday you didn't want me to come to your father's house. Why was that?”

“Because Marco was there,” said the girl frankly.

“What had HE to do with it?” said Jarman abruptly.

“He wants to marry me.”

“And do you want to marry HIM?” said Jarman quickly.

“No,” said the girl passionately.

“Why don't you get rid of him, then?”

“I can't, he's hiding here,--he's father's friend.”

“Hiding? What's he been doing?”

“Stealing. Stealing gold-dust from miners. I never cared for him anyway. And I hate a thief!”

She looked up quickly. Jarman had risen to his feet, his face turned to sea.