'Baptism ever!' she frowned. 'Inadvertently did I utter Diadyomenos.

Asleep, I had dreamed--of you--enfranchised.'

From scorn to regret she modulated, and his blood sang to the dominant close.

She strained to dislocate sleep, on her back-thrown head planting both hands. Her fingers, with careless grip, encountered the pearls; they sprang scattering, and her dark hair drifted down. With languid indifference she loosened and fingered the length of soft splendours; another l.u.s.trous morsel flew and skipped to the boy's feet. Covetous longing fastened upon it, not for its rare beauty, its immense value. A thing that had pa.s.sed through her hands and lain in her hair was to him beyond price; and yet he forbore sternly to seek after possession, because an honest scruple would not allow that an orient pearl could come to his hands but by magic purveyance.

'If a name were to seek for me?' she was pleased to inquire, on the watch for colour which sprang when her words were gracious.

'I know,' he said, 'what most fitly would express you--oh! too well, for it is over a defect that secretions of the sea have constructed a shape of perfect beauty; the name of a pearl only--Margaret. If you--when you shall come to be baptized----'

'You dare!' she said, and froze him with her look.

'It has come into my mind that you may be a traitor.'

'No!'

'Hear now! Look me in the eyes and deny it if you can. It is for the sake of another that you seek after me; that persuading, beguiling, if you can coercing me--me--who spared you, tolerated you, inclined to you, you would extract from the sea an equivalent for her loss, and proclaim that her reproach is taken away.'

There was such venom in look and tone, that his face grew strained and lost colour.

'For your sake first and foremost.'

'By no means for your own?'

'Diadyomene, I would lay down my life for you!' he breathed pa.s.sionately.

'But not give up your soul--for me?'

Ever so gently she said this. The boy quivered and panted against suspecting the words of their full worth. She directed her eyes away, to leave him to his own interpretation. The sunlight turned them to gems of emerald; the wind swept her hair about her clear throat; one hand clasped the curve of her knee. Never yet had he touched her, never felt so much as a thread of blown hair against his skin. One hand lay so near, straitly down-pressed on the rough rock, fragile, perfect; sh.e.l.l-pink were the finger-tips. He said 'No' painfully, while forth went his hand, broad, sunburnt, ma.s.sive, and in silent entreaty gently he laid it over hers.

Cold, cold, cold, vivid, not numbing, thrills every nerve with intense vitality, possesses the brain like the fumes of wine. The magic of the sea is upon him.

Rocks, level sands, sky, sun, fade away; a misty whirl of the sea embraces him, shot with the jewelled lightnings of swift living creatures, with trains of resplendent shapes imperfectly glimpsed, with rampant bulks veiled in the foam of their strength. A roar is in his ears, in all his veins; acclaim and a great welcome of his presence swells from the deep, all life there promising to him dominion.

Intangible and inarticulate the vision spins; and through it all he knows, he feels, that beneath his palm lies the cold white hand of the fairest of the sea-brood; he perceives dimly a motionless figure seated, and the hand not in his clasps her knee, and the eyes look away, and the hair drifts wide. Then to his ears through the great murmurs comes her voice, soft and low and very clear, but as though it has come from a great way off: 'Lay your hand upon my breast--set your lips to mine--give up your soul.'

'Christ! Christ! ah, Lord Christ!'

Diadyomene's hand lay free. Christian stared at his palm to find that it had not come away bleeding. His lips were grey as ashes; he shook like a reed. With haggard eyes he regarded the serene visage where a smile dreamed, where absent eyes did not acknowledge that she had verily spoken. Virtue was so gone from him that he was afraid, of her, of the sun. He dropped to his knees for escape.

When he lifted his head, it was to solitude and long shadows. Her feet bruised his heart as he tracked the signs of her going; for they had approached him, and then retired; they had gone toward the sea, and half-way altered back by two paces; they had finished their course to the gorge and again turned; there they had worked the sand. A little folly!

Enacted it was a large frenzy.

Yet he took not a single pearl away.

Heavily drove the night, heavily drove the day over Christian, comfortless, downcast, blank. Was her going with anger and scorn divided by pity? or with stately diffidence? adorable, rendering him most condemnable.

The dredge rose and swung in to great sighs of labour. Black coral!

In choice branches hard from the core, all rarity was there; delicate pink and cream, scarce green, and the incomparable black. Precious--oh!

too precious for the mart--this draught was no luck, he knew, but a gift direct from Diadyomene; a goodwill token of her generous excuse sent for his solace. Fair shone love in the sky, and the taste of the day grew sweet. No scruple could hold out against this happy fortune.

When the black coral was sighted by Giles from the quay, he raised such a shout as gathered an eager knot. In a moment one flung up a hand, palm outwards, to display the doubled thumb. Every hand copied. Christian saw and went hot with anger, too plainly expressed in his dangerous eyes. Yet would he have little liked to see his treasures go from hand to hand.

'Not for present trade, I reckon?' asked Giles.

'No,' said Christian, 'my price can bide,' and he carried his prize away with him home.

Not even Rhoda could admire and handle that coral void of offence; Lois and Giles only. One little branch, sh.e.l.l-pink, took the girl's fancy; she turned it over, frankly covetous. Christian saw by her shy eyes and pretty, conscious smile she made sure he would presently say, 'Keep it, cousin.' He could not. A gift, fresh from the cold white hands of the sea-maid he loved, he could not give straightway into the ardent hold of one who offered, he feared, to him her young love.

So sweet and dear had Rhoda grown as cousin, as sister, he hated the suspicion that she could care for him more than he desired or deserved; he hated himself when, loving her most, for her sake he was cold and ungracious. Rhoda, wounded, resented the change with a touch of malice; she allowed the advance of the handsome idler Philip, no friend of Christian's liking, she knew, though to her his faults were not patent.

That gift withheld, on the morrow began Philip's benefit. Giles and Lois looked on, and neither wholly condemned the girl's feminine practice.

Then what could Christian do, hara.s.sed and miserable, but return to brotherly guardianship to keep a dear heart safe from the tampering of an arrant trifler.

Too fatally easy was it to win her away, to keep her away. She came like a bird to the lure, with her quick, warm response, making Christian wretched; he gladdened a little only when he encountered Philip's scowl.

Compared with this sore trouble, but a little evil to him seemed the sharp return of the public ban for comment on Diadyomene's gift. He was ready to flout it as before, not heeding more ominous warnings plain in bent thumbs, in black looks, in silences that greeted him, and in mutterings that followed. A day came when hootings startled him out of his obstinate indifference, when from ambush stones flew, one with b.l.o.o.d.y effect; a later day, when a second time he had brought in too invidious a taking.

'I sent no gift!' had declared Diadyomene, with wide, steady eyes, but that time Christian did not believe her, though hardly with blame of the untruth. On the morrow her second gift rose. When the boy sought her again she disclaimed once more; and curious of his perplexity and of his gashed face, drew from him something of his plight. Her eyes were threatening when she said, 'Fling away, then, what you fear to take.' To her face then he laughed for pride and joy that she should prove him.

When that same hour came round, he drew up her third gift.

He cared too little that in the interim a mischance had fallen against him; he had at last been descried fairly within the Sinister buoys, and chased by an unknown sail far west, escaping only under dark to circle for home beneath midnight stars.

'O d.a.m.nation!' was Giles's exclamation on the third prize. 'This won't do--'tis too like devil's luck. Ah, lad!' He faltered, caught at Christian, and peered in his face: 'You have not--you have not--got fee-penny of them below!'

Christian reeled. 'Dad, O dad!' he gasped.

'Steady, lad, steady! Here come spies as usual. There's no stowing a sc.r.a.p unseen. Ah, they gape! Here, clear off home with this confounded stuff. I'll see to the nets.'

Rhoda's eyes shone like stars, her cheeks were like angry dawn. She hovered about Christian with open devotion, at once tender and fierce, playing the child for some cover to that bold demonstration. Christian's heart shrank, for he could not understand her nor appreciate her. But Giles had a tale to unfold that brought light. Rhoda had come in flaming from a stormy pa.s.sage with Philip. He had gained her ear to hint a warning against Christian, justifying it against her pa.s.sion with a definite charge and instance that he had the evil eye. She, loyal in defence, carried away into attack, had rashly invaded with exasperating strokes.

'She's made bad blood, I doubt--the little hawk!' said Giles. 'He's mortal savage now, and there's mischief enough brewing without.'

'What do you know?'

'A sight more than I like, now I've gone to pry it out. It looks as if not a beast has gone and died by nature or mischance, not a bone gets out or broken, but there's a try to fix it on you with your evil eye. We've been in the dark overlong--though an inkling I must own to.'

'I too, by token of doubled thumbs.'

'Christian,' said the old man with authority, 'never again bring in the black or the green or any rarity; you can't afford it again.'

Christian's head rose defiantly.

'Drop your airs, you young fool! Why, your inches are enough against you as it is. If you weren't so uppish at times, there would now be less of a set against you.'

'On my word,' protested Christian, 'I have borne much and been silent. I know the young cur I owe for this scar, and have I laid a finger on him?

To turn the other cheek is beyond me, I own,' he added, with some honest regret.

It so fell out that on the very morrow that same toleration witnessed against him fatally. From the snap of a rabid dog a child died, under circ.u.mstances of horror that excited a frenzy against Christian, who had been seen handling the beast after the night of stoning, when the victim's brother it was who had marked him for life. So his iniquities crowned the brim, to seethe over with a final ingredient when mooting came along the coast of a trespa.s.ser off the Isle Sinister, by timing, incontestably, the alien.