The Beach of Atonement

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “I call him Hector because I think of him only as Hector.”

  The girl took up one of the buckets of frothy milk, a hint of defiance in her eyes. With two other buckets Hester and she walked to the house. Hester Long did not speak again until they were in the kitchen, when suddenly she turned to Edith, and, laying hands on her shoulders, said softly: “You have a battle to fight, dear. Let me help you win it. I am older than you, and I am covered with the scars of life. Please don’t call him Hector, or think of him as Hector. To us he is Mr. Cain.”

  Tears sprang into the blue eyes, and Hester turned to the boiling kettle on the stove and made fresh tea. Without glancing at Edith she knew the girl had seated herself beside the small table at the window, and was crying. It was best to let her cry then. Hester Long left her there, went to the boys’ bedroom, aroused them chidingly and cheerfully, told them what clothes to put on, and to be quiet and well-behaved, because their goddess, Miss Mallory, was in the kitchen waiting to breakfast with them. And they must be good boys, because mother had to go away for the day to visit poor Mr. Cain, who was sick.

  An hour or so later she was driving in her worn buggy on her way to the Beach of Atonement. The air of early morning was laden with bush scents, which one met in waves, sometimes sweetly fresh, sometimes raising strange elusive hauntings of memory, sometimes heavy and sickly. The quiet old horse she drove ambled along the main road to Dongara which skirted the coast sand-hills along the eastern slopes, the pace and the scene unregistered on Hester Long’s mind.

  She was thinking how she would carry out the task ahead. Much, of course, would depend on circumstances. She trusted that circumstances would not prove too much for her, such as her having to deal with a man wholly mad with drink. She had no liking for the prospect of being pursued as Edith Mallory was pursued, for if it did come to a struggle she would be at a hopeless disadvantage.

  Almost automatically her hands reined the horse to the right at the junction of the narrow beach track with the main road. Familiar with the way, the horse ambled along the level stretches, slowly pulled up the stiff gradients, and as slowly, proppingly, descended. It was with no consciousness of time that Hester Long found herself at the summit of Big Hill, where the immensity of the ocean lay below and before her, and the beach with all its many peculiarities lay stretched for inspection.

  Pulling her horse to a stop, she gazed steadily at Arnold Dudley’s camp, marked in the mass of green-bush by the white roof of the tent. There was no smoke denoting a fire and the presence of man, nor could she espy Arnold Dudley anywhere along the beach. Had he in his madness fallen from the rocks, or been swept into one of the terrible blow-holes of the Pontoon? Had his tortured soul found peace? Or was he down there at the camp, seated before the liquor-laden table, not drunk enough to be helpless, but in that stage of drunkenness when a man is a ravening beast?

  Hester Long proved her dauntless courage when she urged her horse down the steep hill towards the camp.

  She began to wish she had not come. She realized that she was perhaps foolishly placing herself in a position of grave danger. She also knew that her errand might well turn out to be one of mercy. Instead of a madman she might find a human being physically injured, in urgent need of help. Horse and buggy finally reached the foot of Big Hill, and then, with nerve-shocking suddenness, Arnold Dudley leapt out of the bush wall into the seat beside her.

  Hester Long fought back the scream that was on her lips. Dudley’s appearance had affected her as one is affected by the sound of a voice immediately behind when one has imagined oneself to be alone. The first shock was succeeded instantly by another.

  The man’s torn dungarees, his ripped foul shirt, his face, unwashed and covered with inch-long stubble, his truly ferocious eyes, would have been shocking to anyone, even if iron bars had held him prisoner. Her worst fears were realized. His insane laughter, rolling and echoing between the hills, sent a horrible chill through her body, and her physical frailty cried out against the iron grip of the hands that fell on her shoulders and wrenched her round to face him squarely.

  “You’re a funny old thing, Ellen, aren’t you?” he cried gleefully. “You go and throw yourself in the sea one minute, and the next you come riding along through the bush as fresh and innocent as a babe. Ha, ha, ha! Still, I knew you would come back. I knew you would hear my call and come back.” Then, with complete seriousness: “You see, Ellen, I have been sending out wireless waves calling you here; and all my friends, the crabs and the gulls and Tommy the shark, have been calling you, too.”

  “Very nice, I’m sure,” agreed Hester, with sarcasm that astonished her.

  “Of course, it is,” he said with a roar of laughter. “Go on, drive the chariot to my castle in Spain. The Lord of the Beach comes here with his wife. Say, Ellen—you haven’t kissed me yet.”

  His eyes, orbs of green fire, glared down into hers. His breath gave off the fumes of hell. His iron hands were upon her, clutching her arm, pressing her waist towards him. She wanted to scream, but found that to scream was beyond her power. Woman’s hideous fear of imminent outrage was upon her.

  “Elusive, eh?” he leered. “You always were elusive to me, Ellen, my sweet. Always wanting to run away, and always liking to be caught. There is no running away this time. You are going to let me see right down deep into your eyes. By Moses, you are! Your soul isn’t that pure that Arnold Dudley can’t look at it. No! Not after showing it to poor old maggot-eaten Tracy. Come on, now—a kiss—with your eyes open!”

  Hester saw his eyes close to hers. She felt his mouth on hers, hot, devouring. In that instant she saw Ellen, dainty, lovely, fastidious, gentle—and the way of her salvation was revealed even whilst his mouth covered hers and almost suffocated her. When he threw up his head and laughed with the triumph of a devil, she cried out passionately:

  “You damned skunk! You blasted filthy dirty dog! You . . . !” From her mouth poured as a river in flood a torrent of oaths and foul language which would have silenced an enraged bargee. “How dare you mistake me for your slut of a wife? Do you think every woman you meet is the harlot you’re married to? Let go my arm, damn you! If you don’t, I’ll tear your throat out with my teeth.”

  The weapon of vile abuse which for this one time in her life she used, knowing that it was the only weapon likely to save her, seared the gentle soul of brave Hester Long. Most of the foul words had no meaning for her whatever. She was not conscious of ever having heard them, and their use and repetition stunned her no less than they stunned Arnold Dudley. His hands fell away from her. His body moved to the extremity of the seat. Into his eyes came an expression of shocked, horrified wonder. The impossibility of Ellen uttering so terrible a string of obscenities—the impossibility divined by Hester in her desperate need—penetrated his drink-inflamed mind, shocked and shattered his brandy-created illusion, swamped and extinguished the furnace of his desires. The weapon of horrible words Hester Long had unsheathed served her better than she could have hoped; for Dudley had known intimately but one woman, who was his ideal still, an ideal utterly incapable of using vile language. Why, this was worse than coming upon his Ellen drunk!

  “Sorry!” he mumbled.

  Hester saw her victory. She clinched it by saying viciously:

  “Get out! Do you hear? Get out, and walk behind. I am going to your camp. Don’t you speak to me.”

  Arnold Dudley got out—and stood swaying at the side of the track, his body more at the mercy of the drink now that the madness of his mind was subdued. Hester drove on slowly, and, without looking back, knew he was following. Elation at her conquest of him surged through her, warming her body as old wine. She had him whipped, and was prepared if necessary to continue the whipping until he regained his normal senses. Arrived at the camp, she managed to turn the horse and buggy in the narrow way, when she descended and regarded the scene of litter and desolation with a sinking heart. Hands on hips, head thrown back, she examined the tattered, tottering figure
of Dudley, and said in almost a snarl: “You’ll want some clothes, Cain. And some boots. You can’t work on my farm without boots, and I am not going to have my friends see you in those rags. Get yourself clothes and boots, quick. I’m in a hurry.”

  “I—I—you don’t wansh worry about me. I’m or’ish, orl- right,” he muttered.

  “All right!” Hester echoed with withering scorn. “You look it! Get those clothes and boots. Go on, don’t argue.”

  He tried to meet her gaze, failed, and lurched into the tent obediently. Hester walked to the table, and inspected the now disordered array of bottles. One was partly filled. Two were full. The rest were empty. The partly-filled bottle and one of the full ones she smashed with Dudley’s setting-hammer. The single full bottle remaining she placed in the cavity beneath the buggy seat.

  When Arnold Dudley staggered into the sunlight he held in his arms several serviceable garments and his working boots. He was ordered with biting curtness to place the articles in the back of the buggy.

  “Now you can get in with me,” Hester commanded. And when, after several attempts, he did manage to climb up beside her, she said: “Keep as far away from me as possible. You stink.”

  The horse dragged the buggy up Big Hill and down the farther side. Arnold Dudley nodded. Presently he sank back with closed eyes. He slept, and on his face was an expression of utter weariness. Regarding him, Hester Long smiled gently, wistfully. She wanted to cry at the sight of him. She was trembling from reaction. Yet she was supremely happy whilst she drove him “home”.

  CHAPTER XIII

  A LADY WITH A LAMP

  DUDLEY awoke in strange surroundings. It was unfamiliar noise that awakened him—sharp metallic sounds, irregular in, sequence and in tone. The noise demanded an explanation, yet he felt too lethargic to seek it. A sharp stabbing pain back of his eyes forced him to close them, and when he turned over on his side he found that whatever he was lying on gave way with luxurious softness.

  Possibly he slept. When again he opened his eyes the pain in his head was more subdued. This time the noise above him shrieked for a name, and, knowing he would get no peace until he had labelled it, he sat up and swung his legs over to the floor, to look half-wildly about him.

  Then it was to discover that he had slept on a flock mattress laid over a wire spring mattress supported at each end by empty kerosene cases. He was in a small corrugated-iron room which contained, besides his bed, an old washstand on which was a glass carafe and a tumbler, a butter-churn, a clothes-mangle, and a heap of bags. Beyond the window the sunlight was reflected redly by the dense-leaved branches of a pepper-tree, and the tint told Arnold Dudley that the sun was setting, and he realized that the sounds that had awakened him were caused by the diminishing heat of the sun allowing the sheets of iron on the roof to contract.

  As to the place wherein he found himself he was completely at sea. That was a mystery to be solved later. The glass water-bottle and tumbler on the washstand caught his attention, and the only matter of importance then was to quench his terrific thirst. Standing on his legs he found that, although his mind was clear, he was still physically drunk. His walk to the washstand was as that of a man long confined to bed. But the water ! It gushed down his throat, sweet and cold, swept away the brimstone and carbolic, and weakened his legs still further. He almost fell on his way back to the bed, on which he rolled with a groan.

  Then memory, starting from a blank and fading out in sleep, brought partial enlightenment. He remembered quite clearly being in a buggy drawn by an old brown horse. The vehicle was at a standstill. He was listening, almost paralysed with astonishment, to some awful language hurled at him from the mouth of Hester Long. Even in the old wild days he had seldom heard such words from the lips of a man. The words uttered by the woman he had come to admire for her brave yet gentle qualities and sympathetic understanding were so terrible that it was worse than finding a baby’s corpse in a bed of lilies.

  How he came to be sitting with her in the buggy, why she was using that dreadful language, and why she spoke afterwards so sharply as she did, he could not remember or fathom. He did remember hearing her tell him to get some clothes and boots. He remembered obeying her, and, whilst doing so, hearing her smash the brandy bottles. That act, he decided, in summing up matters from the bed, was unwarranted and inexplicable. It was his brandy, his property. Anyway, he remembered being told to get into the buggy with her; remembered, too, being informed that he smelt—no, stank. That was the word. And the word stung, because Dudley had always been fastidious as to his person. And then he went to sleep, and now he was in this strange room or store.

  It was all very perplexing. Perhaps this was a dream, and the buggy incident as well. Doubtless he would awaken on his beach with the ever-lasting rumble of the surf filling the world. And then something gave a sharp tug at his hair, so sharp a tug that the pain of it sent him upright. He saw standing at the head of his bed a little boy about five years of age, golden-haired, rosy-cheeked, with mischievous eyes. The child regarded him steadily for a moment before clambering on the bed beside him, and, jumping on his back, pulling his hair again.

  It was by no means a playful tug. Dudley ducked his head and threw himself sideways, whereupon the child hid himself beyond the bed. The man, who seldom swore, uttered an oath and gazed wildly about for the extra-ordinary child.

  The sunlight had vanished and already gloom was settling within the room. Dudley felt tired and sick. Again he lay down. A few seconds later his hair was violently tugged once more.

  The second assault was too much for him. He cried out, leaping from the bed. On it stood the boy laughing silently, a cold malevolent light in his blue eyes.

  “What do you mean by it?” Dudley almost snarled. “Go away and leave me alone. I’m sick. Go away. D’you hear?”

  The imp apparently heard. Jumping off the bed, he ran to the butter-churn and disappeared. Dudley blinked his eyes. The disappearance was amazing, since the churn was but half the size of the child, yet it had distinctly gone into it. The man stood and stared at the butter-churn, then yelled when he felt something on his back and knew before it happened that his hair would be painfully pulled.

  “You little devil!” he screamed. “Go away—go awa ! Leave me alone—leave me alone, I tell you !” He stood in the centre of the room swaying on his feet; tears of mortification and anger in his eyes and voice. He heard the door open, and, spinning round, saw Hester Long enter hurriedly, and to her he burst out:

  “Why am I here to be tormented by a brat? Why don’t you look after your children, Mrs. Long? Take the little swine away before I—before I kill it.”

  “Ah!” said Hester Long softly. “Anyway, I am glad you have awoke, Mr. Cain. Now lie down again, and I’ll fetch you a nice cup of strong tea. The little boy won’t worry you again, or at least not after you have had your tea. Would you like a nice thin slice of fresh bread, with some of my own made butter?”

  “No, thank you.” Dudley almost collapsed on the bed. “I would appreciate the tea, though. Ugh!”

  He saw squatted on one of his knees a hideously loathsome toad with a child’s face. He heard Hester Long sigh a fraction of a second before he picked up a pillow, whirled it about his head, and brought it down on the reptile.

  Hester fled to the kitchen, where her two boys were at work over their evening lessons. As quickly as she could she uncorked Dudley’s bottle of brandy and poured a liberal portion into an enamelled pint pannikin. Filling it to the brim with milk and tea, she added sugar, and, not waiting to cut bread, picked up a canister of sweet biscuits and hurried back to her guest.

  She found him standing on the washstand, his eyes distended, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a look of absolute horror.

  “Get down, Mr. Cain,” she said firmly. “I’ll keep those things away while you drink your tea and eat a biscuit or two.”

  “Do you see them? Those scarlet centipedes? Look out! they’ll be all over you,” he said ho
arsely.

  “Come down at once! Do you hear?”

  The clear ringing command had its effect. Dudley got off the wash-stand and edged in eccentric curves towards her, his gaze riveted to the floor. When he, with effort, hook up, she was before him holding out the brimming pannikin of not too hot tea and brandy. The smell of the spirit reached Dudley’s nostrils, and he clutched the pannikin with both bands and drank as a man will who is dying of thirst. The biscuits he refused. The hot tea and brandy rushed through his veins as an ignited river of petroleum, flooding his body with exquisite warmth and pacifying his shrieking nerves. The empty pannikin he landed back to the waiting anxious Hester, and when again he looked on the floor he could see no awful Things in the dusk.

  “They are gone,” he said with relief that was almost ecstasy.

  Hester responded cheerfully. “They have a funny name. Do you know what my brother used to call them?”

  “No. I’ve never seen them before.”

  “I am most pleased to hear that. My brother used to call them ‘dingbats’.”

  Dudley stared at her. Then he laughed mirthlessly.

  “Thank you! I am glad I know,” adding seriously : “They horrified me. And the child—was he a dingbat, too?”

  “Of course he was. Are you feeling better now?”

  “Much. Mrs. Long, you’re a good Samaritan. Did you bring me here? Is this your place?”

  “Yes, to both your questions,” she said. “To-morrow, or the next day, I want to burn off fifty acres of scrub, and I badly want help. You want to get as much sleep as possible if you are to help, and you will, won’t you?”

  “I certainly will,” he agreed heartily. “I think I shall sleep now. I felt awful.”

  She smiled at him and straightened the bed-clothes, turning down the sheets invitingly; and when she was almost at the door she turned to say good night.

  “Would you mind telling me why you swore so fearfully at me down at my camp?” he asked her.