Mrs. Clouder left the window as the men came in, and sat down on the side of the big bed.
Her husband dragged the Preventive man to the window, where they waited for the next flash. Merry stood just inside the door and turned his cadaverous eyes upon the girl. Like every other man in Dymchurch, Merry realised that Abel Clouder had secured the best looking young woman on the Marsh, when he made Meg Mrs. Clouder. But if the men, including Merry, were envious of Abel, the women were no less jealous of Meg, for Abel was the jolliest and the most handsome of the young fishermen, and there had been many a heart aching when Abel had led Meg to the altar. However, this envy and jealousy were only on the surface. Deep down there was no one who did not wish this ideal couple well. All save Merry. Meg's beauty disturbed him and made him realise his inferiority to Abel, who had won the only girl whose physical attractions filled him with a wild desire for her. Accordingly he hated Abel, and Abel's popularity only served to increase the hatred.
The shrieking destruction of the wild elements outside entered his wicked soul and filled it with a devilish glee as he watched Meg seated on the bed, her pretty face clouded with anxiety as she watched and listened to the storm. His hungry eyes feasted on her beauty. Her clear-cut, almost classic, features, her broad honest brow with the light brown hair that crowned it and fell in a provocative kiss curl upon her firm young breast. Her eyes had the green of the sea in them, and he was afraid of them, but the suspicion of freckles under them somehow stirred his blood. She was dressed in an orange-coloured frock of rough cloth, open at the neck, but the gay colour only made her look more puritanical in his eyes. He hated purity, and the only useful reason for it as far as he could see, was that it was a quality made for destruction. His eyes that had been devouring Meg's face and figure, shifted to her feet. They were bare, and he had a mad desire to crunch those beautiful little bones between his teeth.
As the lightning flashed he watched her, enjoying the look of fear that crept into her usually fearless eyes. 'Yes, to crunch those ankles with my teeth. To see the colour of her blood. To bruise that healthy flesh.' The thought made him involuntarily draw in his breath with a vicious hiss. She turned for the first time and looked at him.
“Are you cold, Mr. Merry?” she asked.
“No,” he answered gruffly. “I've been wrapped up against the wet, but it's strangely hot for November.”
As he spoke, he unbuttoned his coat, pulled it from him and dropped it on the floor. Then he unwound his scarf and kept it on his hand, for the sky was again lighted up with a succession of sheet lightning, while the fire forks cracked and hissed down into the sea. For the first time he saw what the others had been watching, a sturdy brig with broken masts and fallen sails, being hurled nearer and nearer to the sea-wall. He listened to the conversation of the two men in the window.
“She's no doubt striking the sand already as she dips,” said Abel. “But she won't stick, not with that power of the sea. It'll lift her off every time. She'll be broke up within the groyne. Maybe she'll get hoisted on to the wall before she breaks her back. By gad. She's on fire, too. Look.”
The sky had gone black as the thunder crashed, but a dull red spot suddenly leapt into a fierce tongue of orange flame, and once more arose the wail as of lost souls. And that their bodies were lost there was no doubt. That flame, venomous and spiteful, had the ship. It was as though one element were striving with the other for the victim. Fire and water fought for the doomed vessel.
“Oh, poor people,” murmured Meg, trembling. “Can we do nothing but watch?”
“I fear that's what it will amount to, lass,” replied her husband. “It's no use trying to launch a boat, because it couldn't be done. But, as we were saying just now, a line might help 'em.”
The shrieking wind seemed to scoff at his words, for a sheet of water struck the lead-rimmed panes. Once more the lightning lit up sea and sky.
“She's nearer now,” said Abel. “But every time the waves drop her she sticks. When she stops shifting, if she does, I'll risk it.”
The forked spears of fire danced and darted in the sky as though daring him to make good his boast. Merry looked at the storm, not with the strength of pity that shone in Abel's eyes, but with the lust of destruction, and his black soul whispered secretly: 'If the storm will drag down the husband, then I will drag down the wife.' He looked at Meg, and overcame a wild impulse to seize her face and kiss her on the lips, but wisdom, or fear saved him from such folly as Meg stood up and said firmly: “You are not to go, Abel. It is madness.”
Abel, however, had decided that he must go. He turned to his wife and laid both hands upon her firm young shoulders.
“I'd sooner you loved me as a dead brave man, than as a living coward. You ain't going to make me unworthy of your love?”
“Mrs. Clouder, that ain't a sea to swim in I allow,” said the Preventive Officer. “There's but two men on Romney Marsh that might attempt it at a long hazard, and your man's the stronger swimmer of the two.”
“And is the other one a married man?” asked Meg.
The Preventive Officer shook his head. “It's the young vicar, I mean. Parson Bolden.”
“But look at that sea,” protested Meg.
“Why, there is the parson,” exclaimed Abel. “See him, crouching his way up by that boat-house wall. He's a dare-devil for all he's a parson.”
“There's quite a crowd of the lads collected,” said the Preventive man.
“Where?” asked Merry, going for the first time to the window. He had a purpose for doing it, too. He dropped his dark scarf upon the dark floor-boards. The light of the flickering candle did not betray this fact, as Merry leaned against the casement.
“On the lee side of the boat-house,” was the reply to Merry's question.
“Then it's time we joined 'em,” said Abel. “Have you got the key of the boat-house, in case them rescue ropes are needed, mate?”
“I've got it,” answered the Preventive man, making for the staircase. “Come on, Merry.”
Merry picked up his coat and began pulling it on as he followed down the stairs. But one look he shot as he went, and he saw Meg in her husband's arms, and he hugged his hatred to his soul.
“Give a look to the parlour fire below, lass,” said Abel, “and keep a kettle going. We may get one or two of 'em ashore in spite of all, and they'll want reviving.”
When Abel had his hand upon the bobbin of the front door, Merry put his hand up to his coat collar. “You go on. I'll join you,” he said. “I've left my scarf up in the bedroom.”
“You'd never pull this door to by yourself,” laughed Abel. “Here, Meg. Mr. Merry's left his scarf up there. Heave her down, will you?”
But this didn't suit Merry. He had a word to say to Meg alone and he meant to say it. He was up the stairs before Abel realised he was going, and he entered the bedroom without a word.
Meg had evidently neither heard her husband call nor Merry's footsteps, for she was kneeling beside the bed with her face buried in her arms. Feeling a heavy hand upon her bowed head rumpling her hair, she imagined that her prayer was answered and that her husband had returned to tell her that the seas were too high to adventure.
Smiling through her tears, she looked up into the cadaverous face of the miserable Merry. Facing what he could not begin to understand, the man's face appeared stupidly wooden. Although he knew he would not hesitate t cut a man's throat if he was sure of his own skin, he was amazed at his own audacity in thus confronting Meg, and the nearness of her beauty paralysed him.
Meg found herself suddenly afraid. Not so much of the man as of the storm and his sudden appearance alone in her bedroom. Behind his tall hovering figure the lightning danced. He had drawn away his hand with an awkward gesture of fear. It was his left hand, and the twitching fingers seemed self-conscious of what they had done. These fingers, well-used to the stain of blood, recoiled from the silken touch of that light brown hair. To gain confidence, they dropped subconsciously into the left coat pocket and closed around the handle of the ugly knife. Then, without knowing what he did, he drew his hand out of the pocket, so that half the blade was exposed to her eyes. Strangely enough, her fear vanished. Thinking of it later, she knew that she feared those empty, groping fingers more than the clenched fist.
“What do you want here?” she asked.
He turned away, muttering, “My scarf.” He hovered round the bed, pretending to search for it.
She rose from her knees, dashed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand, and in a business-like way went to the window-sill and picked up the candle. Her quick eyes immediately saw the scarf where he had dropped it. With her other hand she pointed to it.
“There it is,” she said, but made no attempt to stoop for it.
For a moment he watched her as she stood there in the candle-light, and a terrifying thought took hold of his brain. He knew that for this woman he could kill rashly, without taking pains for his own safety as he had always done before. The possible result of such foolishness frightened him. He somehow resented the power she had over him, and he vowed that though her spell might mean danger to him, he would utterly destroy her first.
The voice of Abel jerked him into action:
“Can't you find it, man? You're wasting time.”
“Got it,” answered Merry, as he shambled forward awkwardly and picked up the scarf. As he straightened himself up, he seemed surprised to find himself so close to her. There was only the candle which she held between them. Now, he decided, was the time to give her his message.
“Should anything happen to him,” he whispered, jerking his head toward the stairs, “I shall be here to take charge of you, see?”
Meg looked bewildered, as indeed she was. “I don't understand you, Mr. Merry,” she said.
“No?” he queried. “Well, you've made me understand something, you have. I see now why them damned fool moths gets caught up in the flame.”
As he spoke he had dropped the knife down into his pocket, and his fingers had fluttered in tiny circles above the lighted candle which she held between them. Then suddenly they had dropped, extinguishing the flame and plunging the bedroom into darkness. Before she could cry out in her astonishment, her head was clenched in the crook of his arm and she was half suffocated against the wetness of his coat. As he held her there, she heard once more a wail of agonised terror from the ship outside.
“Come on,” cried Abel, climbing the stairs.
She felt herself freed, and as the lightning flashed again she was alone.
“Have you got a light to rekindle the candle for Mrs. Clouder?” said Merry from the top of the stairs. “The draught blew the damned thing out.”
Abel produced a 'flasher' from his pocket and passing Merry on the stairs went into the bedroom. 'Flashers' were small pistols without barrels, about four inches long in all, with flintlock and a pan to hold about a quarter thimble-full of powder. 'Flashers' were used by the Dymchurch men to signal night messages to one another across the Marsh, or perhaps to the crew of a lugger awaiting a 'run' on Dymchurch Bay. They could also answer the innocent purpose of a tinder box.
Presenting the flasher at his wife's head, Abel growled in mock sepulchral tones, “Stand and deliver,” and then, as he flashed the powder and lit the candle, he added, laughing: “And how's that for your handsome Jimmie Bone?”
Jim Bone was the notorious highwayman who transacted a brisk business on the busy Dover Road and periodically went into hiding upon the Marsh when the chase became too hot. Though a hard man to cross, he was a good friend to his friends, amongst whom the Clouders were numbered.
“The seas are too high for you to attempt a rescue, Abel.”
“That's for the other lads to decide,” he answered. “If they think it's possible, I shall have to attempt something.”
Meg, who was seething with anger against Merry's madness, turned her temper against the villagers who took her young husband's strength and daring so much for granted.
“But why should you risk so much for others, for strangers? You forget you are married, Abel.”
“Not I,” he contradicted. “Why, that's the reason I'm married to you, and it's because I love you that I have to do more than the rest. Don't you see that I must do things that others can't or won't do in order to be a little more deserving of my good fortune?”
Meg smiled. “You're a clever old flatterer, Abel, and as obstinate as you are good-looking. But for all that, I want you to do something for me.”
“Why, anything, except to be a coward, and you wouldn't ask that I know.”
“I want you to take care of that man Merry,” she said solemnly.
“I reckon he can more than take care of himself, but why—”
“I mean avoid him,” she corrected. “Keep clear of him. He hates you, Abel, and he carries a knife.”
“Well, we all carry knives, but 'hates' me? Nonsense.” Abel laughed. “Now why should anyone take the trouble to hate a good enough natured fool like me? I haven't an enemy in the world, please God.”
“Perhaps there are some who are jealous of your good nature,” she said.
“Jealous?” he repeated. “My faith, the only jealousy I shall meet in my life will be your fault. Everyone's jealous that I happened to win you, Meg, and quite right too. But you can take it from me that Merry ain't that way. He's altogether too sour and selfish to be taken up with a pretty girl.”
“You may find you're wrong, husband, and later I'll tell you my reasons, but in the meanwhile don't give him a chance to use his knife behind your back.”
“Trust me for that, but the fellow's a coward. There's no danger from miserable Merry so long as Jack Ketch don't run out of rope. I must go, lass. I wouldn't have 'em say that Abel Clouder hung back. I love you too well, Meg.”
“Thank you, Abel,” she answered with a smile. “And as I love you, watch Merry.”
“Trust me,” he nodded, and with her kiss on his cheek, he went down the stairs and gave the sour Merry a hearty clump on the back which made him look the sourer.
“Now, lads, open the door, and let's see if we can cheat the devil and snatch a few souls from his grip. Ready? Then out into the lightning and the waves.”
A splash of spray in the passage, a gust of wind that set every beam and floor-board creaking, and then a silence, told Meg on her knees beside the bed that they had gone.
