The Well-Beloved | Page 8

very strange to you, I
dare say? That is, may I ask you to lend me some money for a day or
two? I have been so foolish as to leave my purse on the dressing- table.'
It did appear strange: and yet there were features in the young lady's
personality which assured him in a moment that she was not an

impostor. He yielded to her request, and put his hand in his pocket.
Here it remained for a moment. How much did she mean by the words
'some money'? The Junonian quality of her form and manner made him
throw himself by an impulse into harmony with her, and he responded
regally. He scented a romance. He handed her five pounds.
His munificence caused her no apparent surprise. 'It is quite enough,
thank you,' she remarked quietly, as he announced the sum, lest she
should be unable to see it for herself.
While overtaking and conversing with her he had not observed that the
rising wind, which had proceeded from puffing to growling, and from
growling to screeching, with the accustomed suddenness of its changes
here, had at length brought what it promised by these vagaries--rain.
The drops, which had at first hit their left cheeks like the pellets of a
popgun, soon assumed the character of a raking fusillade from the bank
adjoining, one shot of which was sufficiently smart to go through
Jocelyn's sleeve. The tall girl turned, and seemed to be somewhat
concerned at an onset which she had plainly not foreseen before her
starting.
'We must take shelter,' said Jocelyn.
'But where?' said she.
To windward was the long, monotonous bank, too obtusely piled to
afford a screen, over which they could hear the canine crunching of
pebbles by the sea without; on their right stretched the inner bay or
roadstead, the distant riding-lights of the ships now dim and
glimmering; behind them a faint spark here and there in the lower sky
showed where the island rose; before there was nothing definite, and
could be nothing, till they reached a precarious wood bridge, a mile
further on, Henry the Eighth's Castle being a little further still.
But just within the summit of the bank, whither it had apparently been
hauled to be out of the way of the waves, was one of the local boats
called lerrets, bottom upwards. As soon as they saw it the pair ran up
the pebbly slope towards it by a simultaneous impulse. They then

perceived that it had lain there a long time, and were comforted to find
it capable of affording more protection than anybody would have
expected from a distant view. It formed a shelter or store for the
fishermen, the bottom of the lerret being tarred as a roof. By creeping
under the bows, which overhung the bank on props to leeward, they
made their way within, where, upon some thwarts, oars, and other
fragmentary woodwork, lay a mass of dry netting--a whole sein. Upon
this they scrambled and sat down, through inability to stand upright.

1. V. A CHARGE
The rain fell upon the keel of the old lerret like corn thrown in handfuls
by some colossal sower, and darkness set in to its full shade.
They crouched so close to each other that he could feel her furs against
him. Neither had spoken since they left the roadway till she said, with
attempted unconcern: 'This is unfortunate.'
He admitted that it was, and found, after a few further remarks had
passed, that she certainly had been weeping, there being a suppressed
gasp of passionateness in her utterance now and then.
'It is more unfortunate for you, perhaps, than for me,' he said, 'and I am
very sorry that it should be so.'
She replied nothing to this, and he added that it was rather a desolate
place for a woman, alone and afoot. He hoped nothing serious had
happened to drag her out at such an untoward time.
At first she seemed not at all disposed to show any candour on her own
affairs, and he was left to conjecture as to her history and name, and
how she could possibly have known him. But, as the rain gave not the
least sign of cessation, he observed: 'I think we shall have to go back.'
'Never!' said she, and the firmness with which she closed her lips was
audible in the word.

'Why not?' he inquired.
'There are good reasons.'
'I cannot understand how you should know me, while I have no
knowledge of you.'
'Oh, but you know me--about me, at least.'
'Indeed I don't. How should I? You are a kimberlin.'
'I am not. I am a real islander--or was, rather. . . . Haven't you heard of
the Best-Bed Stone Company?'