They pressed forward, eluding carefully what they thought was bog-land, only to discover on looking back, that they had been tricked by shadows. And shadows, again, resolved themselves into marsh-patches, yielding and treacherous. A fine rain sprayed their coats to a glitter. The moon had been beaten from her fields, leaving the world in a roar of darkness.... Once they halted abruptly on the verge of nothing, where the land had been eaten away. Once they followed the cliff that ran out sheer to a point, crested by dark shapes of granite, monsters thrown up æons ago by the waves.
Peter and Stuart stood motionless for several moments, rigid bodies thrusting at the wall of wind, that blew with never a drop nor yet a swell in the strength and sound of it; stripped from them all memory of a narrower stuffier world.
"I've never yet met the man who could tire me."
With a laugh, he turned, strode back to the mainland. Then, facing suddenly round, met her scrambling down from the granite. Met her, and put his arms about her--this time neither in support nor in guidance, but fiercely, and because of the thing that had lain crouching between them, now storm-whipped to sudden life. Her short hair beat and stung against his face. Their lips were stiff and crusted with salt. It was not a night for words. Once he spoke her name....
Later, swinging down the homeward path, they came upon sight of Carn Trewoofa, three or four stray lights splashing the darkness. It was good to know that one of these was from Merle's lamp. Good to imagine her sitting in the battered arm-chair by the window, thinking of the other two in the turmoil outside.
Good to be the two in the turmoil outside.
Stuart's departure meant for Peter and Merle a period of twoness deliciously free from the tension of extreme demand which he made upon their minds and bodies alike. Mentally and physically, they allowed themselves now to flop; excluding long tramps and dangerous climbs; mooching for the most part in and about the village, or among the shallower rocks; hardly talking; secure in the friendship that took much for granted.
The morning before Carn Trewoofa was to see the last of them, they awoke to a drenching downpour, which beat sea and moor and sky to one sodden colourless pulp. All day long the rain descended sullenly; and towards evening Merle coaxed Mrs. Trenner to transfer live fire, leaping and flaming on a shovel, from her kitchen to their sitting-room grate. Then she and Peter drew up their arm-chairs, definitely abandoned all idea of making an effort, and allowed themselves to be lulled to that half-hypnotic state of coma produced by warmth within and rain without; hush unbroken save by the muffled boom of unseen breakers on the beach.