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Page 22
"And only you and your family are ashore here?"
"Yes, and sometimes Mark." She laughed an odd little laugh.
"Mark? Who's he?" he asked quickly.
He had not noticed the sudden coquettish pose and half-affected
bashfulness of the girl; he was thinking only of the possibility of
detection by strangers.
"Oh, he is Marco Franti, but I call him 'Mark.' It's the same
name, you know, and it makes him mad," said the girl, with the same
suggestion of archness and coquetry.
But all this was lost on Jarman.
"Oh, another Italian," he said, relieved. She turned away a little
awkwardly when he added, "But you haven't told me YOUR name, you
know."
"Cara."
"Cara,--that's 'dear' in Italian, isn't it?" he said, with a
reminiscence of the opera and a half smile.
"Yes," she said a little scornfully, "but it means Carlotta,--
Charlotte, you know. Some girls call me Charley," she said
hurriedly.
"I see--Cara--or Carlotta Franti."
To his surprise she burst into a peal of laughter.
"I reckon not YET. Franti is Mark's name, not mine. Mine is
Murano,--Carlotta Murano. Good-by." She moved away, then stopped
suddenly and said, "I'm comin' again some time when the thing is
working," and with a nod of her head, ran away. He looked after
her; could see the outlines of her youthful figure in her slim
cotton gown,--limp and clinging in the damp sea air, and the sudden
revelation of her bare ankles thrust stockingless into canvas
shoes.
He went back into his cabin, when presently his attention was
engrossed by an incoming vessel. He made the signals, half
expecting, almost hoping, that the girl would return to watch him.
But her figure was already lost in the sand dunes. Yet he fancied
he still heard the echoes of her voice and his own in this cabin
which had so long been dumb and voiceless, and he now started at
every sound. For the first time he became aware of the dreadful
disorder and untidiness of its uninvaded privacy. He could
scarcely believe he had been living with his stove, his bed, and
cooking utensils all in one corner of the barnlike room, and he
began to put them "to rights" in a rough, hard formality, strongly
suggestive of his convict experience. He rolled up his blankets
into a hard cylinder at the head of his cot. He scraped out his
kettles and saucepans, and even "washed down" the floor, afterwards
sprinkling clean dry sand, hot with the noonday sunshine, on its
half-dried boards. In arranging these domestic details he had to
change the position of a little mirror; and glancing at it for the
first time in many days, he was dissatisfied with his straggling
beard,--grown during his voyage from Australia,--and although he
had retained it as a disguise, he at once shaved it off, leaving
only a mustache, and revealing a face from which a healthier life
and out-of-door existence had removed the last traces of vice and
dissipation. But he did not know it.
All the next day he thought of his fair visitor, and found himself
often repeating her odd remark that she was "not that kind of
girl," with a smile that was alternately significant or vacant.
Evidently she could take care of herself, he thought, although her
very good looks no doubt had exposed her to the rude attentions of
fishermen or the common drift of San Francisco wharves. Perhaps
this was why her father brought her here. When the day passed and
she came not, he began vaguely to wonder if he had been rude to
her. Perhaps he had taken her simple remark too seriously; perhaps
she had expected he would only laugh, and had found him dull and
stupid. Perhaps he had thrown away an opportunity. An opportunity
for what? To renew his old life and habits? No, no! The horrors
of his recent imprisonment and escape were still too fresh in his
memory; he was not safe yet. Then he wondered if he had not grown
spiritless and pigeon-livered in his solitude and loneliness. The
next day he searched for her with his glass, and saw her playing
with one of the children on the beach,--a very picture of child or
nymphlike innocence. Perhaps it was because she was not "that kind
of girl" that she had attracted him. He laughed bitterly. Yes;
that was very funny; he, an escaped convict, drawn towards honest,
simple innocence! Yet he knew--he was positive--he had not thought
of any ill when he spoke to her. He took a singular, a ridiculous
pride in and credit to himself for that. He repeated it incessantly
to himself. Then what made her angry? Himself! The devil! Did he
carry, then, the record of his past life forever in his face--in his
speech--in his manners? The thought made him sullen. The next day
he would not look towards the shore; it was wonderful what
excitement and satisfaction he got out of that strange act of
self-denial; it made the day seem full that had been so vacant
before; yet he could not tell why or wherefore. He felt injured,
but he rather liked it. Yet in the night he was struck with the
idea that she might have gone back to San Francisco, and he lay
awake longing for the morning light to satisfy him. Yet when the
fog cleared, and from a nearer point, behind a sand dune, he
discovered, by the aid of his glass, that she was seated on the
sun-warmed sands combing out her long hair like a mermaid, he
immediately returned to the cabin, and that morning looked no more
that way. In the afternoon, there being no sails in sight, he
turned aside from the bay and walked westward towards the ocean,
halting only at the league-long line of foam which marked the
breaking Pacific surges. Here he was surprised to see a little
child, half-naked, following barefooted the creeping line of spume,
or running after the detached and quivering scraps of foam that
chased each other over the wet sand, and only a little further on,
to come upon Cara herself, sitting with her elbows on her knees and
her round chin in her hands, apparently gazing over the waste of
waters before her. A sudden and inexplicable shyness overtook him.
He hesitated, and stepped half-hidden in a gully between the sand
dunes.
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