Restless Earth/Chapter 5

For a man en route to Heaven, James Harley was singularly lacking in appreciation of his path. His gaze was upon infinity beneath the ground upon which he walked, and he saw nothing of the sun-splashed suburban houses on either hand, nor of the blue of the sky, nor of the sheen of the Tasman Sea visible between the trees straight ahead, nor of anything which was really worth looking at on this delightful summer afternoon, until he reached the junction of the road with the main thoroughfare to town.

There a voice greeted him with a low, “Jimmy!” and he raised his head incredulously, the blood suffusing his drawn features.

​The voice belonged to Patricia Weybourn. She was standing in the shade of the “tram-shelter,” her hands clasped tightly upon a fashionable hand-bag, pale of face, her lips parted in a nervous smile. Exquisitely attired, she was thinner than when he had last seen her, and her glorious eyes seemed larger than formerly. The flush which stained her cheeks could not long disguise the palor which had grown upon them in the suspense of the weeks since their last devastating meeting.

Harley stared at her stupidly for a few moments, then he laughed uncertainly. His heart was pounding madly.

“Well, well!” he exclaimed, for the benefit of two elderly intending passengers who were looking at him, frankly surprised that such a fashionable young lady should have such a disreputable acquaintance. “What brings you to this part of the world?”

“Business,” Patricia answered, aping his attitude, and looking up the street at the approaching tram-car.

“Business good?”

“We mustn’t complain. We are getting our share.”

“That’s good news.”

“Great weather.”

“Delightful. This gentle westerly on such a day makes life worth living.”

“Yes.”

The tram-car ground noisily to a stop. The two elderly passengers bustled to board it. Neither Patricia nor Harley moved. The tram-conductor looked at them expectantly, then twitched the bell-cord irritably, as though he were being cheated. The tram moved off down the hill.

They watched it go.

“Aren’t you going into town?” Harley asked, when the silence became unendurable.

“Presently. I have an hour or so to spare. I thought I might take a stroll along the beach.”

Harley looked hard at the shimmering tram-rails ​and shuffled uncomfortably on his feet. He could feel the blood rising again in his face.

“Mind if I come with you?” he managed at last.

Patricia touched his sleeve, and her voice was not entirely under control.

“We can’t stand here like fools, Jimmy. Let’s go where we can talk. Come along.”

Harley crossed the road by her side with eager alacrity, upright of carriage, confident, transformed; but this moment recognising the possibility that Patricia might have changed her mind about him, as she had reputedly changed it about many other men. If she had, he would soon prove to her that she erred.

“Feel the earthquake?” he asked conversationally, as they took the winding path across the river flats to the beach.

“Yes. Fairly severe one, wasn't it?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that the West Coast has had another shaking up. Let us hope it isn’t a disaster like the last one. Can you imagine what a disaster that Murchison shake would have been had the district been thickly populated—if there had been cities for those hills to explode on instead of farms?”

“It is hardly likely that another shake will have occurred in the same district, surely?”

“Earthquakes obey no laws, apparently. They bob up whenever and wherever it suits them. Where were you when this one happened?”

“At Mrs. Langham’s, fitting her for an evening gown.”

“Good Lord! Just across the gully? Did you see me dashing for the high country?”

“No,” Patricia laughed. “Did you?” “I did. I take no chances with those things. I pictured the house sliding into the gully.”

“That’s what I thought might happen to the Langham’s place. Mrs. Langham and I dashed out into the road.”

​Harley grinned.

“I'd hate to meet Mrs. Percival Quesne Langham at the bottom of the gully, or anywhere else, for the matter of that. I detest the woman.”

“So do I” replied Patricia viciously. “She’s poisonous! It’s one of the burdens I must bear for my sins that I have to be nice to the spiteful, gossiping snob. But there, business is business.”

“Is she a good customer?”

“Her husband must think so, if he judges by the bills I send him. I think she’s one of our worst. The figure of a draught-horse, and the taste of one! Presumes on her status in this small-town society to play the grand dame when she comes into the shop; and of course, we charge her accordingly.”

“She seems to spend a lot of her time lately in quizzing our place. I've suspected her of examining me through binoculars, as though I were an animal at the zoo.”

The fact did not seem to concern him vitally. He spoke with tolerant amusement, but Patricia saw nothing amusing in Mrs. Langham.

“I have an idea that the fitting of the evening gown was merely an excuse to get me alone so that she might pump me about you and—and Grace,” she said. “But she got nothing but a few jabs with pins for it if she did. Oh, I hate that woman! I’d dearly love the opportunity to topple her from her society perch. Good earth-dust is the only thing which will stop her mouth and blind her eyes!”

“Patricia! Temper!” chided Harley, possessing himself of her elbow and chuckling. “Tell me, what has she been saying about us to so upset you?”

“Lot’s of things,” exploded Patricia, and then became obstinately deaf to all his further questioning on the subject.

“Let us talk of something else, Jimmy,” she begged at last, turning her most radiant smile upon him and completely subjugating him. “The day is too wonderful to waste on unpleasant subjects.”

​“I agree with you there. Let’s talk about you.”

At that moment they opened out the long sweep of beach to the north, and Harley took a deep, satisfying breath of sea-air into his starved lungs, exhaling in a sigh of deep contentment.

Patricia looked at him with understanding.

“The beach is your battle-ground, isn’t it, Jimmy?” she smiled.

“Why do you say that?”

“It is here you fight your emotional battles—where you are not hemmed in by houses and curious people. Don’t be silly and ask me how I know. Have I not assisted in one?”

Harley looked out to sea and shook his head slowly.

“That was a wonderful night, Pat,” he murmured. “The most wonderful night in my life.”

“And in mine, Jimmy.”

He turned upon her swiftly, eagerly.

“Was it? Honestly?”

Patricia did not answer directly. She in turn looked out to sea, and he, in his turn, gazed wistfully at the profile of the adored.

“I love the beach, too,” she said softly. “I come here to—to breathe, very often.”

“And you have seen me here?”

“Often.”

“Then why, for pity’s sake, Pat, did you not speak to me and help me?”

“Because it would have been definitely outside the letter and spirit of our contract, Jimmy,” she answered, looking into his eyes. “One month, was it not? One month apart. One month in which to learn whether our bad luck was due to a full moon or to Destiny—God. The month is not ended until to-morrow———”

“And have you found out?” he asked eagerly, capturing her hands. “Have you?”

Patricia smiled enigmatically, and looked at him keenly.

​“Mrs. Langham is right in one thing, Jimmy,” she countered. “You’ve let yourself go. You look half-starved———”

“Oh, hang Mrs. Langham!”

“—your clothes are creased in the wrong places—your hair is too long. You look gaunt and almost disreputable.”

He smiled.

“Merely following my own literary conception of how a man in my position should look, Pat.”

Patricia snatched her hands away and spoke sharply.

“Don’t play with me, Jimmy!” she cried. “I have suffered enough in this last month. Mrs. Langham is right. I should have remembered you as I saw you watching the train which took Grace away. You are breaking your heart for her.”

“For whom?” asked Harley, wilfully dense. “Mrs. Langham?”

“For Grace! Grace! Oh, I’ve been a beast, Jimmy. I have thought you wanted me. I’ve seen you suffering, and I’ve crowed while I’ve cried over you, Jimmy. I’ve been a conceited beast, Jimmy, and this serves me right. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to talk to you just once more. Now I’m going away for good. I’m leaving New Plymouth———”

She turned and moved away, and Harley overtook her in two swift strides. He seized her by the elbows as he had seized her a month previously.

“Pat, you’ve got it all wrong. Grace is never coming back. Everything between us is finished. I’ve written and told her so. Mrs. Langham is wrong once again. Grace is not the woman I have been breaking my heart for.”

She freed herself with a sudden movement and stamped her foot at him.

“No! No, Jimmy! You mustn’t do it. No man in his right senses would seriously prefer a woman like me to a woman like Grace. I’m hard, sophisticated, painted; and men say things of me—truly. ​I appeal to your baser nature—and that only when I am near you. I should not have spoken this afternoon—I should never have come into your home.”

“Pat———”

“I am adept at seducing men,” she continued defiantly, “but I cannot hold them. Perhaps I have not tried seriously—and I am not going to try now. I am rotten in heart and habit, and I’m going away. I am easily forgotten. If you do not believe that, ask the men who have known me. Well, I’ve got what I deserved. I’m not going to cry about it. I’m only sorry for Grace. Tell her that, will you? I’m going to the other end of the world to try to forget—both of you.”

Again she turned away, and this time he had to run to overtake her. He seized her roughly, and crushed her in his arms.

“No, you don’t,” he growled through his clenched teeth. “You belong to me, and I’m going to keep you! I don’t care a damn how many men you have hunted and caught! You were merely hunting for a man who could catch you, and you’ve found him! You’re mine! Mine! And God help anyone who tries to take you from me!”

His eyes flamed as he crushed her lips with his. Superbly arrogant, his brutal strength, roused by overmastering passion, bruised her body and delighted her soul. She gave him kiss for kiss, clinging to him, murmuring softly in the ecstasy of complete surrender.

Becoming conscious of the amused regard of bathers some distance away, Harley released his woman, frowned upon his audience, and, with a gesture of authority, bade her precede him to the concealment of the sand-dunes.

“Jimmy! Jimmy! You poor, blind fool!” she breathed shakily as she sank down by his side upon the warm black sand.