第32章

He looked at her and then towards the sea."I expect some friends who are coming for me in a boat.I suppose they can land easily here?""Didn't you yourself land here just now?" she said quickly.

He half hesitated, and then, as if scorning an equivocation, made a hasty gesture over her shoulder and said bluntly, "No, I came over the cliff.""Down the cliff?" she repeated incredulously.

"Yes," he said, glancing at his clothes; "it was a rough scramble, but the goats showed me the way.""And you were up on the bluff all the time?" she went on curiously.

"Yes.You see--I"--he stopped suddenly at what seemed to be the beginning of a prearranged and plausible explanation, as if impatient of its weakness or hypocrisy, and said briefly, "Yes, Iwas there."

Like most women, more observant of his face and figure, she did not miss this lack of explanation.He was a very good-looking man of middle age, with a thin, proud, high-bred face, which in a country of bearded men had the further distinction of being smoothly shaven.She had never seen any one like him before.She thought he looked like an illustration of some novel she had read, but also somewhat melancholy, worn, and tired.

"Won't you come in and rest yourself?" she said, motioning to the cabin.

"Thank you," he said, still half absently."Perhaps I'd better.

It may be some time yet before they come."She led the way to the cabin, entered the living room--a plainly furnished little apartment between the bedroom and the kitchen--pointed to a large bamboo armchair, and placed a bottle of whiskey and some water on the table before him.He thanked her again very gently, poured out some spirits in his glass, and mixed it with water.But when she glanced towards him again he had apparently risen without tasting it, and going to the door was standing there with his hand in the breast of his buttoned frock coat, gazing silently towards the sea.There was something vaguely historical in his attitude--or what she thought might be historical--as of somebody of great importance who had halted on the eve of some great event at the door of her humble cabin.

His apparent unconsciousness of her and of his surroundings, his preoccupation with something far beyond her ken, far from piquing her, only excited her interest the more.And then there was such an odd sadness in his eyes.

"Are you anxious for your folks' coming?" she said at last, following his outlook.

"I--oh no!" he returned, quickly recalling himself, "they'll be sure to come--sooner or later.No fear of that," he added, half smilingly, half wearily.

Mrs.Bunker passed into the kitchen, where, while apparently attending to her household duties, she could still observe her singular guest.Left alone, he seated himself mechanically in the chair, and gazed fixedly at the fireplace.He remained a long time so quiet and unmoved, in spite of the marked ostentatious clatter Mrs.Bunker found it necessary to make with her dishes, that an odd fancy that he was scarcely a human visitant began to take possession of her.Yet she was not frightened.She remembered distinctly afterwards that, far from having any concern for herself, she was only moved by a strange and vague admiration of him.

But her prolonged scrutiny was not without effect.Suddenly he raised his dark eyes, and she felt them pierce the obscurity of her kitchen with a quick, suspicious, impatient penetration, which as they met hers gave way, however, to a look that she thought was gently reproachful.Then he rose, stretched himself to his full height, and approaching the kitchen door leaned listlessly against the door-post.

"I don't suppose you are ever lonely here?""No, sir."

"Of course not.You have yourself and husband.Nobody interferes with you.You are contented and happy together."Mrs.Bunker did not say, what was the fact, that she had never before connected the sole companionship of her husband with her happiness.Perhaps it had never occurred to her until that moment how little it had to do with it.She only smiled gratefully at the change in her guest's abstraction.

"Do you often go to San Francisco?" he continued.

"I have never been there at all.Some day I expect we will go there to live.""I wouldn't advise you to," he said, looking at her gravely."Idon't think it will pay you.You'll never be happy there as here.

You'll never have the independence and freedom you have here.

You'll never be your own mistress again.But how does it happen you never were in San Francisco?" he said suddenly.

If he would not talk of himself, here at least was a chance for Mrs.Bunker to say something.She related how her family had emigrated from Kansas across the plains and had taken up a "location" at Contra Costa.How she didn't care for it, and how she came to marry the seafaring man who brought her here--all with great simplicity and frankness and as unreservedly as to a superior being--albeit his attention wandered at times, and a rare but melancholy smile that he had apparently evoked to meet her conversational advances became fixed occasionally.Even his dark eyes, which had obliged Mrs.Bunker to put up her hair and button her collar, rested upon her without seeing her.

"Then your husband's name is Bunker?" he said when she paused at last."That's one of those Nantucket Quaker names--sailors and whalers for generations--and yours, you say, was MacEwan.Well, Mrs.Bunker, YOUR family came from Kentucky to Kansas only lately, though I suppose your father calls himself a Free-States man.You ought to know something of farming and cattle, for your ancestors were old Scotch Covenanters who emigrated a hundred years ago, and were great stock raisers."All this seemed only the natural omniscience of a superior being.