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A stealthy murmur of smothered voices was going on quite close somewhere. It stopped. A minute passed; suddenly came the soft thud as of something falling. I sprang out of bed and rushed to the window. Nothing but in the distance something that sounded like footsteps. An owl hooted; then clear as crystal, but quite low, I heard Pasiance singing in her room: "The apples are ripe and ready to fall.
It was some minutes before we came on deck again; and there, in the dinghy, being pulled towards the cutter, sat Pasiance. "If I'd known this," stammered Dan, getting red, "I wouldn't have come." She had outwitted us, and there was nothing to be done. It was a very pleasant sail. The breeze was light from the south-east, the sun warm, the air soft.
There too was Zachary Pearse seated on the edge of his dinghy. "A five-knot breeze," he said, "I'll run you down in a couple of hours." He made no inquiry about Pasiance, but put us into his cockleshell and pulled for the cutter. A lantern-Jawed fellow, named Prawle, with a spiky, prominent beard, long, clean-shaven upper lip, and tanned complexion a regular hard-weather bird received us.
She caught it up and walked away. Some one, I don't know which of us, sighed, and Pearse cried "Done!" The bargain had been driven. "Good-bye, Mr. Pearse," said Dan; "I guess that's all I'm wanted for. I'll find my pony waiting in the village. George, you'll see Pasiance home?" We heard the hoofs of his pony galloping down the road; Pearse suddenly excused himself, and disappeared.
There's one I know, not too warm and not too cold, where you can sit all day in the shade and watch the creepers, and the cocoa-palms, still as still; nothing to do or care about; all the fruits you can think of; no noise but the parrots and the streams, and a splash when a nigger dives into a water-hole. Pasiance, we'll go there! With an eighty-ton craft there's no sea we couldn't know.
A single sunbeam was slanting across from one of my windows to the other, and there was the cool sound of milk dropping into pails; then, all at once, a stir as of alarm, and heavy footsteps. I opened my door. Hopgood and a coast-guardsman were carrying Pasiance slowly up the stairs.
He just came forward, took her face in his hands, gave it a great kiss, and walked away. Pasiance dropped on the floor in the dark passage, and buried her face on her arms. "Leave me alone!" was all she would say. After a bit she dragged herself upstairs. Presently Mrs. Hopgood came to me. "Not a word out of her an' not a bite will she ate, an' I had a pie all ready scrumptious.
I hate every one! Let him do what he likes, I don't care." John Ford's face turned quite grey. "Pasiance," he said, "did you want to leave me so much?" She looked straight at us, and said sharply: "What's the good of telling stories. I can't help its hurting you." "What did you think you would find away from here?" She laughed. "Find? I don't know nothing; I wouldn't be stifled anyway.
He whistled; and out came Pasiance in a geranium-coloured dress, looking like some tall poppy you know the slight droop of a poppy's head, and the way the wind sways its stem.... She is a human poppy, her fuzzy dark hair is like a poppy's lustreless black heart, she has a poppy's tantalising attraction and repulsion, something fatal, or rather fateful.
She looked up with a start, threw the music from her, and resumed her place. During evening prayers, which follow every night immediately on food, her face was a study of mutiny. She went to bed early. It was rather late when we broke up for once old Ford had been talking of his squatter's life. As we came out, Dan held up his hand. A dog was barking. "It's Lass," he said. "She'll wake Pasiance."
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