Frenchmans Creek - Daphne du Maurier

The chain rattled with a hollow sound in the deep pool beneath the trees, and the ship swung round to meet the last of the flood tide, and suddenly from nowhere came a swan and his mate, like two white barges sailing in company, and following them three cygnets, soft and brown. They went away down the creek, leaving a wake behind them as a vessel would, and presently when all was snugged down for the night and the decks deserted, the smell of cooking came from the galley forward, and the low murmur of voices as the men talked in the fo'c'sle.

The captain's boat waited beneath the ladder, and coming up from the cabin he called to Dona, who was leaning against the rail on the poop-deck watching the first star above a dark tree, and they pulled away down the creek where the swans had gone, the little boat lapping against the water.

Soon the fire glowed in the clearing, the dried sticks snapping and breaking, and this night they cooked bacon, curling and streaky and crisp, with bread that was burnt also by the fire and was toasted and black. They broke the bacon in their hands, and then brewed coffee, strong and bitter, in a saucepan with a bent handle, and afterwards he reached for his pipe and his tobacco, and Dona leant against his knee, her hands behind her head.

"And this," she said, watching the fire, "could be forever, if we wished. Could be tomorrow, and the next day, and a year ahead. And not only here, but in other countries, on other rivers, in lands of our own choosing."

"Yes," he said, "if we so wished. But Dona St. Columb is not Dona the cabin-boy. She is someone who has a life in another world, and even at this moment she is waking in the bedroom at Navron, with her fever gone, remembering only very faintly the dream she had. And she rises, and dresses, and sees to her household and her children."

"No," she said, "she has not woken yet, and the fever is still heavy upon her, and her dreams are of a loveliness that she never knew in her life before."

"For all that," he told her, "they are still dreams. And in the morning she will wake."

"No," she said. "No, no. Always this. Always the fire, and the dark night, and the supper we have cooked, and your hand here against my heart."

"You forget," he said, "that women are more primitive than men. For a time they will wander, yes, and play at love, and play at adventure. And then, like the birds do, they must make their nest. Instinct is too strong for them. Birds build the home they crave, and settle down into it, warm and safe, and have their babies."

"But the babies grow up," she said, "and fly away, and then the parent birds fly away too, and are free once more."

He laughed at her, staring into the fire, watching the flames.

"There is no answer, Dona," he said, "for I could sail away now in La Mouette and come back to you in twenty years' time, and what should I find but a placid, comfortable woman in place of my cabin-boy, with her dreams long forgotten, and I myself a weather-beaten mariner, stiff in the joints, with bearded face, and my taste for piracy gone with the spent years."

"My Frenchman paints a dismal picture of the future," she said.

"Your Frenchman is a realist," he answered.

"And if I sailed with you now, and never returned to Navron?" she asked.

"Who can tell? Regret perhaps, and disillusion, and a looking back over your shoulder."

"Not with you," she said, "never with you."

"Well then, perhaps no regrets. But more building of nests, and more rearing of broods, and I having to sail alone again, and so a losing once more of adventure. So you see, my Dona, there is no escape for a woman, only for a night and for a day."

"No, you are right," she said, "there is no escape for a woman. Therefore if I sail with you again I shall be a cabin-boy, and borrow Pierre Blanc's breeches once and for always, and there will be no complications of a primitive nature, so that our hearts and our minds can be easy, and you can seize ships and make your landings on the coast, and I, the humble cabin-boy, will brew your supper for you in the cabin, and ask no questions, and hold no conversation with you."

"And how long would we endure that, you and I?"

"For as long as we pleased."

"You mean, for as long as I pleased. Which would be neither for a night nor an hour, and anyway, not this night and not this hour, my Dona."

The fire burnt low, and sank away to nothing, and later she said to him, "Do you know what day this is?"

"Yes," he said, "midsummer day. The longest in the year."

"Therefore," she said, "tonight we should sleep here, instead of in the ship. Because it will never happen again. Not for us. Not in this way, in the creek here."

"I know," he said, "that is why I brought the blankets in the boat. And the pillow for your head. Did you not see them?"

She looked up at him, but she could not see his face any longer, for it was in shadow, the fire-light being gone, and then without a word he got up and went down to the boat, and then came back to her with the bedding and pillow in his arms, and he spread them out in the clearing under the trees, close to the water's edge. The tide was ebbing now, and the mud-flats showing. The trees shivered in a little wind, and then were still again. The night-jars were silent and the sea-birds slept. There was no moon, only the dark sky above their heads, and beside them the black waters of the creek.

"Tomorrow, very early, I shall go to Navron," she told him, "at sunrise, before you are awake." "Yes," he said.

"I will call William before the household is astir, and then if all is well with the children, and there is no need for me to stay, I will return to the creek."

"And then?"

"Well, I do not know. That is for you to say. It is unwise to plan. Planning so often goes astray."

"We will make a pretence of planning," he said, "we will make a pretence that you come back to breakfast with me, and afterwards we take the boat and go down the river, and you shall fish again, but this time perhaps more successfully than the last."

"We will catch many fish?"

"That we will not decide tonight. We will leave that until the moment comes."

"And when we have done with fishing," she went on, "we will swim. At noon, when the sun is hottest upon the water. And afterwards, we will eat, and then sleep on our backs on a little beach. And the heron will come down to feed with the turn of the tide, so that you can draw him again."

"No, I shall not draw the heron," he said, "it is time I made another drawing of the cabin-boy of La Mouette."

"And so another day," she said, "and another, and another. And no past and no future, only the present."

"But today," he said, "is the longest day. Today is midsummer. Have you forgotten that?"

"No," she said. "No, I have not forgotten."

And somewhere, she thought, before she slept, somewhere there is another Dona, lying in that great canopied bed in London, restless and lonely and knowing nothing of this night beside the creek, or of La Mouette at anchor there in the pool, or of his back against mine here in the darkness. She belongs to yesterday. She has no part in this. And somewhere too there is a Dona of tomorrow, a Dona of the future, of ten years away, to whom all this will be a thing to cherish, a thing to remember. Much will be forgotten then, perhaps, the sound of the tide on the mud-flats, the dark sky, the dark water, the shiver of the trees behind us and the shadows they cast before them, and the smell of the young bracken and the moss. Even the things we said will be forgotten, the touch of hands, the warmth, the loveliness, but never the peace that we have given to each other, never the stillness and the silence.

When she woke there was a grey light upon the trees, and a mist upon the water, and the two swans were coming back up the creek like ghosts of the morning. The ashes of the fire were white as dust. She looked at him beside her, as he lay sleeping, and she wondered why it was that men seemed children when they slept. All lines were smoothed away, all knowledge too, they became again the small boys they had been long ago. She shivered a little in the first chill of the day, and then, throwing aside the blanket, she stood with bare feet upon the ashes of the fire, and watched the swans disappear into the mist.

Then she leaned down for her cloak, and wrapped it about her, and turned away from the quay towards the trees, and the narrow twisting path that would bring her to Navron.

She tried to pick up the threads of her normal life. The children in their beds. James in his cot, with face flushed and fists clenched; Henrietta lying upon her face as she always did, her fair curls tumbled on the pillow; Prue, with open mouth, sleeping beside them. While William, faithful William, kept watch upon the house, and lied for her sake and his master's.

Soon the mist would clear, and the sun would come up over the trees beyond the river, and even now, as she came out of the woods and stood upon the lawn, the morning light laid a finger upon Navron, as it slept, still and shuttered, while she stood there watching it. She crept across the lawn, silver with dew, and tried the door. It was locked, of course. She waited a moment, and then went round to the courtyard behind the house, for William's window looked upon it, and it might be that she could make him hear, if she called softly. She listened beneath his window. It was open, and the curtain was not drawn.

"William?" she said softly. "William, are you there?"

There was no answer, and stooping, she picked up a little pebble and threw it against the pane. In a moment his face appeared, and he stared at her as though she were a phantom, and then he put his finger to his lips and disappeared. She waited, anxiety in her heart, for his face was white and haggard, the face of a man who had not slept. James is ill, she thought, James is dead. He is going to tell me that James is dead. Then she heard him draw the bolts gently in the great door, and the door itself open a small space to admit her. "The children?" she said, laying her hand on his sleeve, "the children, are they ill?" He shook his head, still motioning her to silence, glancing over his shoulder to the stairway in the hall.

She entered the house, looking about her as she did so, and then, her heart leaping in sudden understanding, she saw the great-coat on the chair, the ridingwhip, the usual disorder of arrival, and there was a hat flung carelessly upon the stone floor, and a second riding-whip, and a thick plaided rug.

"Sir Harry has come, my lady," said William. "He came just before sundown, he had ridden from London. And Lord Rockingham is with him." She said nothing. She went on staring at the great-coat on the chair. And suddenly, from above, she heard the shrill yapping of a little spaniel dog.

CHAPTER XVI

Once again William glanced up the stairway, his small eyes gleaming in his pale face, but Dona shook her head silently, and crossing the hall on tiptoe she led the way into the salon. William lit two candles and then stood before her, waiting for her to speak.

"What reason did he give?" she said. "Why have they come?"

"I gather that Sir Harry was becoming restless in London without you, my lady," said William, "and a word from Lord Rockingham decided him. It seems that his lordship met a relative of Lord Godolphin's at Whitehall, who told him that Sir Harry's presence in Cornwall was urgently needed at the present time. That is all I could discover from their conversation at supper, my lady."