CHAPTER V AMIDST THE BUSHES

After the first outburst of raving, impetuous grief, the grief of a child rather than the grief of a man, Gaspard rose up from where he had cast himself down by Yves. The sun had long passed from the sky and the star-smitten sea came in smoothly, rhythmically, breaking in foam on the starlit sands, and there on the sand lay Yves, listening to what the sea was saying.

His great right fist, clenched, was lying on his breast; one might have fancied that the meaning of it all and the mystery of that sky so filled with fire and passionate life, and those wastes of the ever-fretting sea, had been revealed to him in one stupendous moment, that he had struck himself on the breast in the stupefaction of wonder that he was gazing and listening, motionless before the revelation forevermore.

Yves from a common man had become at once and at a stroke a part of the immensity and the wonder of the night, the reachless stars and the fathomless sea; and, for a moment, Gaspard, standing before the body of the man he had slain, saw death as the prehistoric man saw it before language had robbed thought of its freshness and power. For a moment only, and then the stars became the stars again, and the sea the sea, and the dead body of Yves the body of a man he had slain in anger.

And now that his southern nature had spent itself in a28 wild outburst of grief just as a child spends itself in an outburst of weeping, thought came back.

Well, then?—whose fault was it?

The knife was flung with no intent to kill,—what right had he to die of a scratch like that?—and then the vile word—that was the last of a long series of injuries. And bit by bit his mind went back counting up the score of these “injuries,” right back to the tobacco-smelling bar of the Riga and to Anisette as he had last seen her, with her little grimy hand resting on the great hairy paw of Yves. That remembrance like a hideous lamp lit up all his grievances, enlarging them two-fold. No, he was not to blame; he had not meant to kill, and if he had, Dieu de Dieu, look at the provocation!

He stood for a moment, his chin resting in his hand, his eyes on the body before him; then he turned and, walking down to the sea-edge, dipped his hands and washed his face in the foam. As he turned up the beach again towards the trees, wiping his streaming face with the sleeve of his coat, he felt as though all the occurrences of the last few hours had happened years ago, so remote did they seem for the moment. The sight of the body lying there so still in the starlight brought him to a pause. Grief rushed back on him, driving all little and evil things from his mind. He stood looking at his handiwork. It had been an accident; he had not meant to kill; he did not even remember flinging the knife. The act had been automatic and committed in blind rage—all the same, he had killed Yves.

Then, loathing the business which had to be done, he seized the body of his dead companion by the shoulders and began to drag it towards the bushes.

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As he stepped from the bushes, his task accomplished, he cast his eyes over the beach. It lay white in the starlight, and there was nothing now to tell of tragedy but the knife lying there just as it had fallen after its murderous work. He picked it up, dug it in the sand, and replaced it in its sheath. The belt with the pouch of money lay under the trees; he picked it up automatically and, carrying it in his hand, turned to the little tent.

As he walked towards the tent two heavy hands seemed pressing down on his shoulders; unutterable weariness had suddenly fallen upon him, robbing him of mind and almost of movement, so that when he reached the tent he was staggering like a drunken man.

He crept under the shelter of the tent, and with the belt and the money beside him fell into a profound and dreamless sleep.