Daphne du Maurier - Frenchmans Creek

"Exactly, my lady."

"What do you know of the habits of butterflies?"

Dona turned, and William's master stood before her, his hands busy with a line which he was knotting, and which he slipped through the eye of a hook, breaking the loose end between his teeth.

"You walk very silently," she said.

"A habit of long practice."

"I was merely making an observation to William."

"About butterflies I gather. And what makes you so sure of their happiness?"

"One has only to look at them."

"Their fashion of dancing in the sun you mean?"

"Yes."

"And you feel like doing the same?"

"Yes."

"You had better change your gown then. Ladies of the manor who drink tea with Lord Godolphin know nothing of butterflies. I will wait for you in the boat. The river is alive with fish." He turned his back on her, and went off again to the river bank, and Dona, sheltered by the spreading oak, stripped herself of her silk gown, and put on the other, laughing to herself, while her ringlets escaped from the clasp that held them, and fell forward over her face. When she was ready she gave her silk gown to William, who was standing with face averted by his horses' heads.

"We shall go down river with the tide, William, and I will walk up to Navron from the creek."

"Very good, my lady."

"I shall be in the avenue shortly after ten o'clock, William."

"Yes, my lady."

"And you can drive me to the house as though we were just returning from Lord Godolphin's."

"Yes, my lady."

"What are you smiling at?"

"I was not aware, my lady, that my features were in any way relaxed."

"You are a liar. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, my lady."

She lifted her old muslin gown above her ankles, tightening the sash at her waist to keep it in place, and then ran barefoot through the trees to the boat that was waiting beneath the bank.

The Frenchman was fixing the worm onto the line, and looked up with a smile. "You have not been long." "I had no mirror to delay me." "You understand now," he said, "how simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten." She stepped down into the boat beside him. -

"Let me fix the worm on the hook," she said. He gave her the line, and taking the long paddles he pushed down stream, watching her as she sat in the bows of the boat. She frowned, concentrating on her task, and because the worm wriggled she jabbed her fingers with the hook. She swore under her breath, and glancing up, saw that he was laughing at her.

"I cannot do it," she said, angrily, "why must a woman be so useless at these things?"

"I will do it for you directly," he said, "when we are farther down stream."

"But that is beside the point," she said. "I wish to do it myself. I will not be beaten."

He did not answer, but began whistling softly to himself, and because he took his eye from her, watching a bird flying overhead, saying nothing to her, she settled once again to her task, and presently cried out in triumph, "I have done it, look, I have done it," and held up her line for him to see.

"Very good," he said, "you are making progress," and resting on the paddles, he let the boat drift with the tide.

Presently, when they had gone some distance, he reached for a large stone under her feet, and fastening this to a long length of rope he threw it overboard, so that they came to anchor, and they sat there together, she in the bows of the boat and he on the centre thwart, each with a fishing-line.

There was a faint ripple on the water, and down with the ebbing tide came little wisps of grass, and a fallen leaf or two. It was very still. The thin wet line between Dona's fingers pulled gently with the tide, and now and again, from impatience, she pulled it in to examine the hook, but the worm remained untouched, save for a dark ribbon of seaweed that clung to the end of the line. "You are letting it touch the bottom," he said. She pulled in a length or so, watching him out of the tail of her eye, and when she saw that he did not criticise her method of fishing, or intrude upon her in any way, but continued with his own fishing, quietly content, she let the length of line slip once more between her fingers, and began to consider the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, the shape of his hands. He had been drawing as usual, while he waited for her, she supposed, for in the stern of the boat, under some fishing tackle, was a sheet of paper, bedraggled now and wet, and a rough sketch of a flight of sanderling, rising from the mud.

She thought of the drawing he had made of her, a day or so ago, and how different it was from that first one he had done, the one he had torn in fragments, for the new drawing had caught her in a laughing mood, leaning over the rail of the ship and watching the comic Pierre Blanc sing one of his outrageous songs, and later he had nailed it up on the bulkhead of his cabin, over the fireplace, scrawling the date at the bottom of the paper.

"Why do you not tear it up, like you did the first?" she had asked.

"Because this is the mood I would capture, and remember," he had said.

"As being more fitting to a member of the crew of La Mouette?"

"Perhaps," he answered, but he would say nothing more. And here he was now, forgetful of his drawing, intent only upon this business of fishing, while only a few miles away there were men who planned his capture, his death, and even at this moment possibly the servants of Eustick, and Penrose, and Godolphin were asking questions along the coast, and in the scattered hamlets of the countryside.

"What is the matter?" he said quietly, breaking in upon her thoughts. "Do you not want to fish any more?"

"I was thinking about this afternoon," she said.

"Yes, I know, I could see that by your face. Tell me about it."

"You should not stay here any more. They are beginning to suspect. They were all talking about it, gloating over the possibilities of your capture."

"That does not worry me."

"I believe them to be serious, Eustick had a hard, obstinate look about him. He is not a pompous dunderhead like Godolphin. He means to hang you from the tallest tree in Godolphin's park."

"Which is something of a compliment after all."

"Now you are laughing at me. You think that, like all women, I am afire with rumours and gossip."

"Like all women you like to dramatise events."

"And you to ignore them?"

"What would you have me do then?"

"First I would beg you to be cautious. Eustick said that the country people know you have a hiding-place."

"Very possibly."

"And one day someone will betray you, and the creek will be surrounded."

"I am quite prepared for that."

"How are you prepared?"

"Did Eustick and Godolphin tell you how they proposed to capture me?"

"No."

"Neither shall I tell you how I propose to evade them."

"Do you think for one moment I should…"

"I think nothing - but I believe you have a fish on your line."

"You are being deliberately provoking."

"Not at all. If you don't want to land the fish give the line to me."

"I do want to land it."

"Very well then. Haul in your line."

She proceeded to do so, reluctantly, a little sulky, and then - feeling suddenly the tug and the pull upon the hook - she began to haul faster, the wet line falling upon her lap and down to her bare feet; and laughing at him over her shoulder she said, "He's there, I can feel him, he's there, on the end of the hook."

"Not quite so fast," he said quietly, "you may lose him. Gently now, bring him to the side of the boat."

But she would not listen. She stood up in her excitement, letting the line slip for a moment, and then pulled harder than ever, and just as she caught the white gleam of the fish streaking to the surface it jerked upon the line, flashing sideways, and was gone.

Dona gave a cry of disappointment, turning to him with reproachful eyes. "I have lost him," she said, "he has got away."

He looked up at her, laughing, shaking the hair out of his eyes.

"You were too excited."

"I can't help it. It was such a lovely feeling - that tug on the line. And I wanted to catch him so much."

"Never mind. Perhaps you will catch another."

"My line is all in a tangle."

"Give it to me."

"No - I can do it myself."

He took up his own line once again, and she bent down in the boat, gathering the hopeless tangle of wet line into her lap. It had twisted itself into countless loops and knots, and as she strove to unwind it with her fingers it became more tangled than before. She glanced at him, frowning with vexation, and he stretched out his hand, without looking at her, and took the tangle from her. She thought he would mock her, but he said nothing, and she leant back in the bows of the boat and watched his hands as he unravelled the loops and turns of the long wet line.

The sun, away in the west, was flinging ribbons across the sky, and there were little pools of golden light upon the water. The tide was ebbing fast, gurgling past the bows of the boat.

Farther down stream a solitary curlew padded in the mud, and presently he rose in the air, and whistled softly, and was gone.

"When shall we build our fire?" said Dona.

"When we have caught our supper," he answered.

"And supposing we catch no supper?"

"Then we cannot build a fire."

She went on watching his hands, and miraculously, it seemed to her, the line became straight again, and loosely coiled, and he threw it once more over the side and gave her the end to hold.

"Thank you," she said, her voice small, rather subdued, and looking across at him she saw that his eyes were smiling in the secret fashion she had grown to expect from him, and she knew, in some strange way, that the smile was connected with her although he said nothing, and she felt light-hearted suddenly, and curiously gay.

They continued with their fishing, while a single blackbird, hidden in the woods the other side of the river, sang his intermittent song, meditative and sweet.

It seemed to her, as they sat there side by side, without a word, that she had never known peace before, until this moment, that all the restless devils inside her who fought and struggled so often for release, were, because of this silence and his presence, now appeased. She felt, in a sense, like someone who had fallen under a spell, under some strange enchantment, because this sensation of quietude was foreign to her, who had lived hitherto in a turmoil of sound and movement. And yet at the same time the spell awoke echoes within her that she recognised, as though she had come to a place she had known always, and deeply desired, but had lost, through her own carelessness, or through circumstance, or the blunting of her own perception.

She knew that it was this peace that she had wanted when she came away from London, and had come to Navron to find, but she knew also that she had found only part of it alone, through the woods, and the sky, and the river, it became full and complete when she was with him, as at the moment, or when he stole into her thoughts.

She would be playing with the children at Navron, or wandering about the garden, filling the vases with flowers, and he away down in his ship in the creek, and because she had knowledge of him there her mind and her body became filled with life and warmth, a bewildering sensation she had never known before.

"It is because we are both fugitives," she thought, "there is a bond between us," and she remembered what he had said that first evening, when he supped at Navron, about bearing the same blemish. Suddenly she saw that he was pulling in his line, and she leaned forward in the boat, her shoulder touching his shoulder, and she called excitedly, "Have you caught something?"