The Goose Girl and Other Stories by Eric Linklater

discovered in the world.’
    â€˜Quite simply,’ he said, ‘that we had been deceived.’
    â€˜But I don’t know what your belief had been.’
    â€˜Haven’t I told you?—Well, we in our innocence respected you because you could work, and were willing to work. That seemed to us truly heroic. We don’t work at all, you see, and you’ll be much happier when you come to us. We who live in the sea don’t struggle to keep our heads above water.’
    â€˜All my friends worked hard,’ she said. ‘I never knew anyone who was idle. We had to work, and most of us worked for a good purpose; or so we thought. But you didn’t think so?’
    â€˜Our teachers had told us,’ he said, ‘that men endured the burden of human toil to create a surplus of wealth that would give them leisure from the daily task of bread-winning. And in their hard-won leisure, our teachers said, men cultivated wisdom and charity and the fine arts; and became aware of God.—But that’s not a true description of the world, is it?’
    â€˜No,’ she said, ‘that’s not the truth.’
    â€˜No,’ he repeated, ‘our teachers were wrong, and we’ve been deceived.’
    â€˜Men are always being deceived, but they get accustomed to learning the facts too late. They grow accustomed to deceit itself.’
    â€˜You are braver than we, perhaps. My people will not like to be told the truth.’
    â€˜I shall be with you,’ she said, and took his hand. But still he stared gloomily at the moving sea.
    The minutes passed, and presently she stood up and with quick fingers put off her clothes. ‘It’s time,’ she said.
    He looked at her, and his gloom vanished like the shadow of a cloud that the wind has hurried on, and exultation followed like sunlight spilling from the burning edge of a cloud. ‘I wanted to punish them,’he cried, ‘for robbing me of my faith, and now, by God, I’m punishing them hard. I’m robbing their treasury now, the inner vault of all their treasury!—I hadn’t guessed you were so beautiful! The waves when you swim will catch a burnish from you, the sand will shine like silver when you lie down to sleep, and if you can teach the red sea-ware to blush so well, I shan’t miss the roses of your world.’
    â€˜Hurry,’ she said.
    He, laughing softly, loosened the leather thong that tied his trousers, stepped out of them, and lifted her in his arms. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked.
    She put her arms round his neck and softly kissed his cheek. Then with a great shout he leapt from the rock, from the little veranda, into the green silk calm of the water far below …
    I heard the splash of their descent—I am quite sure I heard the splash—as I came round the corner of the cliff, by the ledge that leads to the little rock veranda, our gazebo, as we called it, but the first thing I noticed, that really attracted my attention, was an enormous blue-black lobster, its huge claws tied with string, that was moving in a rather ludicrous fashion towards the edge. I think it fell over just before I left, but I wouldn’t swear to that. Then I saw her book, the
Studies in Biology,
and her clothes.
    Her white linen frock with the brown collar and the brown belt, some other garments, and her shoes were all there. And beside them, lying across her shoes, was a pair of sealskin trousers.
    I realised immediately, or almost immediately, what had happened. Or so it seems to me now. And if, as I firmly believe, my apprehension was instantaneous, the faculty of intuition is clearly more important than I had previously supposed. I have, of course, as I said before, given the matter a great deal of thought during my recent illness, but the impression remains that I understood what had happened in a flash, to use a common but illuminating phrase. And no one, need I say? has been able to refute