The lagoon which had been friendly and pleasant seemed lonely now. It would be wiser to walk away and get on the public road. She half turned, then heard a more urgent shout. He beckoned again, and she began to walk slowly round the lagoon, intending to dodge into the bushes at any suspicious move. For the first part of the way the shore curve took her rather farther from him. Then the inlet of a stream five feet across made her seek round through the bushes. She scrambled up a mound and was diverted by sprawling brambles. When she saw the light of the open lakeside again she was closer to the stranger than she had expected. She stopped just in the hiding of a blackthorn shrub whose last flowers looked drab, as if they had mistaken their time of blooming. Unintentionally her left hand touched one of the sharp spikes. When she snatched it away a blood prick showed on the ball of the first finger. She raised her hand at the same time leaning forward. The finger never got to her mouth, for what she saw made her start impulsively from cover. The fall of the ground helped her into a run, and she went with the wind, nearly as fast, so that it felt no longer fresh but warm with her. Soon she was under the beginning of the grassy cliff.
“Careful!” came a warning shout. She slowed to walking pace and studied him as she advanced. The chair, of brown basketing, was near the centre of an oval flat between cliff and shore, and the rims of the wheels were four inches under the clayey surface. The man appeared young, about twenty-five, Flo guessed, and had a sallow rectangular face and towsled hair, dark peat colour. He sat very broad in the chair facing her and smiled disparagingly. “Better not come any closer,” he advised gruffly when she was at the edge of the flat, and still twenty paces off. “If you’d go and fetch Bert . . . Bert Nadin . . . though, I’d be glad.”
“Why . . . can’t I help?” Flo asked, breathing fast.
“You’ll mucky yourself to blazes,” he said, his voice very deep with a kind of caressing quality, his eyes going down momentarily to her shoes. “I ought to have had more sense, the number of times I’ve been . . . but I thought it looked all right.” He held up his hands, palms towards her. Brown mud blotched them all over. “That’s what you’ll get if you come.”
His legs looked shrunken. They gave her a feeling of horror, coupled with a more powerful feeling of pity. Without considering what he had said she stepped forward impulsively on to the bare brown patch. Instantly her heel went in. Just under the apparently dry surface there was a layer of nearly liquid mud. She slipped and precariously recovered. She held her legs stiffly as if she was on ice.
“I told you; you should go for Bert,” he said sympathetically.
But it was absurd to go back when he was so short a distance away. She did not reply, but went on again gingerly.
“I doubt whether you’ll be able to do it; it’s like glue,” he said, as she put her hands on the chair back. It was a quiet comment in which she felt that he also expressed thanks, His towsled hair was just below her. There was a faint golden gloss in the depth of the brownness.
“Which way,” he asked, “on or back? Which can you manage best?”
“Push, I think.”
“You’ll probably manage pulling better,” he suggested, though not insisting.
“Push,” she ordered and put her weight against the handle. His hands closed broadly on the wooden hand-wheels which were outside the ordinary wheels and of a somewhat smaller circumference. The chair moved a little. Flo strained against it. Unexpectedly both her feet slipped and she held on to save herself.
“We’re digging in; better try backward,” he advised. “You shouldn’t . . .”
“I don’t know whether I can stand backward,” she said, laughing rather uncertainly.
“If I come over on you, you’ll know about it,” he said, laughing also, but in a way that calmed her. “I’ve been in this mess before; it’s not as simple as it looks.”
“It’s only about a couple of yards this way,” she said hopefully, looking if there was more solid footing anywhere. A stone as big as her fist attracted her and she set her sole against it testingly, but after very slight pressure it skidded, leaving a greasy trail. “What horrid stuff,” she exclaimed.
“Yes; you shouldn’t have bothered,” he said at once with regret, taking all blame. “I shouldn’t have waved, only I must have been here an hour.”
“An hour! Try again,” she ordered, resuming charge.
He leaned and gripped the hand-wheels low down. Flo turned partly sideways to get the purchase of the full length of her shoes. The wheels made a quarter turn reluctantly. All at once she felt the weight of the chair towards her increase alarmingly. With a violent effort she threw it back. It poised for a moment, on balance, then fell to normal.
“I thought it was a gonner,” he said quietly and chuckled; but Flo trembled. “It’s always liable to tip. You should pull on the lower handle; it’s more awkward, but it’s best,” he said as though apologizing.