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When we got up she was turned the other way, but I couldn't help seeing her cheeks were red. It was terrible. I wondered if Fedderson would notice, though I might have known he wouldn't not him. He was in too much of a hurry to get at his Jacob's-ladder, and then he had to tell me for the tenth time what the Inspector'd said that day about getting him another light Kingdom Come, maybe, he said.
He was finishing off the Jacob's-ladder, and thoughtful, like a man that's lost a treasure. Once or twice I caught him looking about the room on the sly. It was pathetic, sir. Going up the second time, I stepped out on the walk-around to have a look at things. She was there on the seaward side, wrapped in that silky thing.
Then up came the sun, as it were in jerks, just to seaward of the easternmost point of land, flinging out a Jacob's-ladder path of light from itself to Elfride and Knight, and coating them with rays in a few minutes.
Such an Invisible-World of Satan exists in most human Houses, and in all human Palaces; with its imps, familiar demons, spies, go-betweens, and industrious bad-angels, continually mounting and descending by THEIR Jacob's-Ladder, or Palace Backstairs: operated upon by Conjurers of the Grumkow-Creutz or other sorts.
Well, sir, I saw them off next morning, down that new Jacob's-ladder into the dinghy-boat, her in a dress of blue velvet and him in his best cutaway and derby rowing away, smaller and smaller, the two of them. And then I went back and sat on my cot, leaving the door open and the ladder still hanging down the wall, along with the boat-falls. I don't know whether it was relief, or what.
He'd been working on that Jacob's-ladder a year, I guess, and every time the Inspector came off with the tender he was so astonished to see how good that ladder was that the old man would go to work and make it better. That's all he lived for. If I was reading, as I say, I daren't take my eyes off the book, or Fedderson had me. And then he'd begin what the Inspector said about him.
"Up Jacob's-ladder," said she, and hers was like the syrup of flowers. I shook my head. I was savage, sir. "The ladder's carried away." "I cast it off," said she, with a smile. "Then," said I, "you must have come while I was asleep." Another thought came on me heavy as a ton of lead. "And where's he?" said I. "Where's the boat?" "He's drowned," said she, as easy as that.
There was a long time I never noticed her, any more than you'd notice the cat. We used to sit of an evening around the table, as if you were Fedderson there, and me here, and her somewhere back there, in the rocker, knitting. Fedderson would be working on his Jacob's-ladder, and I'd be reading.
Next thing I knew, sir, I was down in the living-room, warm and yellow-lit, with Fedderson cocking his head at me across the table, where he was at that eternal Jacob's-ladder of his. "What's the matter, Ray?" said he. "Lord's sake, Ray!" "Nothing," said I. Then I think I told him I was sick.
The land was gone; the sky shut down heavy overhead; there was a piece of wreckage on the back of a swell, and the Jacob's-ladder was carried clean away. How that sea had picked up so quick I can't think. I looked at my watch and it wasn't four in the afternoon yet. When I closed the door, sir, it was almost dark in the store-room. I'd never been in the Light before in a gale of wind.
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