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Title: The Unknown Sea
Author: Clemence Housman
Release Date: October 5, 2010 [EBook #33945]
Language: English
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THE UNKNOWN SEA
BY
CLEMENCE HOUSMAN
[Decoration]
LONDON _DUCKWORTH and CO._ 3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. 1898
_All rights reserved_
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty
THE UNKNOWN SEA
CHAPTER I
A solitary fisher ploughed the lively blue of a southern sea. Strength of
limb, fair hair, and clear grey eyes told of a northern race, though his
skin had been tanned to a red-brown, dark as the tint of the slender,
dark-eyed, olive-skinned fishers born under these warm skies. In stature
and might a man, he was scarcely more than a boy in years; beardless yet,
and of an open, boyish countenance. As his boat raced eagerly forward he
laughed for pride of heart, and praised her aloud after a fashion native
to the south: she was his beloved, his bird, his blossom, his queen; and
for his warrant well built she was, promising strength and speed in due
degrees, and beautiful obedience to him. Her paint was bright, her ruddy
canvas unstained, in contrast to a pile of tackle, black from age and
use: the nets and the weighted cross-beams of coral fishing.
White wings against the sky, and white crests upon the sea, broke the
entire blue. Far away to eastward, faint and hazy, suave lines extended;
but a coast that the boy neared lifted gaunt and desolate cliffs,
overlooking a waste of roaring breakers. Midmost of these, sheer and
black as the crags beyond, a dark mass rose dominant, like a sullen
outcast from the land holding rule, whose mere aspect fitted well the
name, Isle Sinister, without an evil implication that went therewith. The
young fisher's memory was stored with dark tales, born long ago to night
and fear, cherished by generations into fine growth, not by such as he to
be utterly scouted. The sound of buoy-bells reached his ears for warning,
but he eyed the intricate lines of breakers, he recalled ominous reports,
only to estimate the nerve of body and mind needful to any mortal bent
there upon a perilous trespass.
For a tale went that kept every fisher well aloof, to shun a danger worse
than shipwreck. Little gain was it held for any once driven within the
buoy-bells to work clear again to open sea, since sorrow and disaster
would dog thenceforward, nor cease till due forfeit were paid: the boat
broken up and burnt, her very ashes delivered to the sea. Woe even to the
man who dare take any least splinter to burn on his hearth, for sickness
and death would desolate his home. Nay, if a shifting wind but carried
the ashes landwards, blight or murrain would follow surely. So went
tradition, and conviction attended it well, since not within memory had
any hardy or unfortunate supplied a living test. Now truly this boy, who
came coasting perilously, needed to have in his veins the blood of an
alien race, over and above youth and great strength, to be traversing a
superstition of such dark credit, in others bred deep and strong.
Years ago he had been fascinated by the terrors and mystery of the place,
and with a human desire after the unattainable, most strong and
unregulated in youth, he had fearfully longed for a strength to do and a
heart to dare more than all his world: to get footing where never man had
stood: to face black luck and its befitters with a higher faith, defying
a supremacy of evil. Very early, out of the extravagant vagaries of a
child's brain, an audacious word had escaped, sped by a temper aflame,
for which he had suffered--from youngsters a day's derision, from a
strict elder a look that was worse disgrace. He deemed that might come to
be recalled to his credit. Now that he was grown to a strength
unmatched, with a heart proud and eager, impatient of any mastery not of
love and reverence, a notion pleased him that like enough these tales had
been magnified to recover the self-esteem of balked adventurers: a
presumption not extreme in one whose superb strength had lowered old
records, who found that none could withstand him to his full
satisfaction. Here in the bright sunshine of high day, the year's eager
spring quick in every vein, young virile audacity belittling all hazards,
the lad's heart rode so high and sure that he could laugh outright in
answer to the expostulation of the Sinister buoys. Yet he crossed himself
more than once.
'We will do it, Beloved, you and I.'
To and fro he hovered awhile to consider the lie of the reefs and select
his way. Then the sail clapped and swelled again, and the boat heeled, as
boldly he turned her, and steered within the buoy-bells away for the
breakers. Again he crossed himself as now were he and his boat committed
on a challenge to fortune.
Gracious to bold and dexterous handling the boat glided into the maze.
The disposition of the outer channels was so favourable as to have gone
far in beguiling the boy to his rash undertaking; but there were hedges
of wicked breakers that thwarted him and turned him aside disappointed.
Creeping along warily with only a corner of sail, steering with fine
sleight through the narrows, and avoiding eddies, he carried his boat
unscathed where never another man he knew could dare to follow. But ah!
how meagre was that satisfaction, since far, yet too far from him the
Isle Sinister held reserve. But at least he was able to scan the rocky
mass to advantage. It towered up with straight, repellent walls towards
the land; it sloped down steeply where he desired to win; but there to
balk him, minatory in aspect, stood the Warders--five detached rocks--so
lofty that the highest columns of surf spouting there fell short of their
crowns. The ugliest threat he recognised bided there, close against
success.
'No fault is yours, Beloved, if we cannot do it: nor hardly mine either,
I think. Were but one other with us we might be well-nigh confident. With
Philip at the oars! None we wanted to share with us--and yet! Ah! no. Not
he nor any would.'
He was deeply involved. At least a mile of grim discouragement stretched
on every hand. Then he came upon the sunken hulk of an old wreck.
Fiercer eddies and narrower channels constrained him to drop sail and
take to the oars. A hard, dangerous, disheartening struggle set him
nearer by a poor measure, but lost him in hope on the way.
'Fools and cowards all! Pleased would they be were I foiled, they
knowing. How they would jeer; ay, with worse, too. It might go hard with
me. But you, Beloved, never fear that I should fail you, if they
tried--no, they would not,--not if they care for whole bones.
'To think that if we win, not for months may I praise you by the tale,
not till we both have disproved and outlived the following of bad luck.
Defend us from one spying us here.'
The boy glanced about with anxiety, giving special scrutiny to one high
cliff opposite. There, scarcely distinguishable from the crags, stood up
a grey tower, the bell-tower of an ancient devout institution, the House
Monitory. His face grew rigid under a sudden apprehension. If he were
sighted from above, what should stay those bells from knelling for him.
He held his breath, and listened for them to break silence on the
instant, realising one peril which he had not before considered. 'Hark!'
would go the word, 'why does the House Monitory ring? in daylight, in
fair weather? Who can be in peril off the Isle Sinister?' From cliffs to
coves the word would drop, and start the swiftest sails out to
investigate, for his exposure to ridicule or worse.
In a past century three bells had been towered there: consecrated and
named after three Saints, to knell for souls that passed, unconfessed,
unhouseled, in that place of wrecks; to be potent against the dominion of
powers darker than death, too regnant there. The best, the only, succour
was this that human fellowship could accomplish for doomed lives. Now,
though cultured intelligence smiled at the larger superstition, the
simple held it at its old worth; and still, to the comfort of their
souls, a pious community kept the custom, serving the bells; and for
their more tangible welfare tended a beacon light.
A little chill ran in the boy's veins as he anticipated the outbreak of
those ominous bells; never yet had they rung for any, far involved as he,
who had known escape. He betook himself more desperately to his
endeavour. Necessity pressed him hard, for the tide ran, and suddenly
declared that retreat to the open sea was cut off: where he had sailed
free channels rocks grinned; reason withstood a fancy that they had lain
in ambush, and risen actually to hem him in. Twice he risked with the
narrowest of chances, and slid safe on the heave of a wave; on the third
challenge a treacherous, swirling eddy caught the boat, swung it aslant,
crashed it upon a lurking rock. A plank gave way splintered, and water
spirted within.
The boy rowed desperate, straining by quick strokes and few, after
deliverance from the narrows. Yet when he dared to lay aside the oars for
an instant to check the leak, the boat was pitching with threats close in
on every side. He could spare only a moment to catch up his coat, plug
with it hastily, and drag atop the heavy cross-beams of his tackle; quick
upon the oars again he needed to be, desperate of baling. Still the water
oozed and trickled in, to lie up to his ankles and slowly to rise. There
was no making out to sea; from the Isle Sinister he owned himself cut off
by thick-set barriers; only the shore remained not absolutely
unattainable though furthest it was.
Patiently and cautiously the boy felt his way. From stroke to stroke he
held on safely, steady, quick-eyed, but told by the gradual water
against his shins that his boat must shortly founder. Conscience smote
him hard; the near sure prospect of swimming for bare life among the
breakers opened his eyes. He had held as his very own to risk at will his
boat and his life; now, with pangs of remorse, he recognised the superior
claim of a grey-haired couple, who had been parents to him, who bereft of
him would go down to the grave in grief and poverty. Of life, and the
means of living, but little right had he to dispose, considering their
due and their need.
The gunwale sank low, lower, till a lurch might displace the cross-beams,
for they lost in weight as the water within the boat deepened. Yet point
by point success attended, and released the foolhardy lad and his boat
from dire extremity. They have chance of clean deliverance; they are past
the last girdle of breakers, hardly a furlong from the shore; they are
upon sleek water, with the tide against them but lazily.
The boy rowed on with long, smooth strokes; the mere sway of his body was
as much as the boat could carry, so little above the water was the
gunwale. He had halved the distance, when down she went beneath him; and
he swam, waded, stood ashore, the first man who had ever won there
living by way of the sea.
But little elate could he be. He could glean drifting oars and
stretchers, his boat might be recovered from the out tide, but the Isle
Sinister lay remote as ever. And his heart had fallen.
Ugly necessity gave no choice but to face the breakers again in retrace
of his perilous way; for an alternative he could not entertain that would
entail certain evils more to be dreaded than any risk.
Straying aimlessly along the desolate shore, the boy pondered, nervous
now of many risks he had braved hardily. He stopped once at sight of a
grey patch of calcined rock. There it must have been that, not so long
ago, wreckage had been gathered and burned scrupulously, and with it the
bodies of two drowned men, according to the custom of the coast.
Instinctively he crossed himself, with a brief prayer for the souls of
those two, cut off from life in that evil place, where no help had
reached but the heavy knell, pitiful.
Greatly desiring the silence of the bells, if he were to escape with
life, the boy turned his eyes aloft, inclining to bespeak it. A lively
suspicion of hunger impelled decision; and up the cliff he went, his
abashed vigour fain of any new output. An uncertain path promised fairly
till half way, where a recent lapse turned him aside on to untried slopes
and ledges: a perilous ascent to any not bold and sure and practised. The
spice of danger kindled the boy's blood; he won to the top with some loss
of breath, but his head was high, and his heart was high, and ultimate
failure envisaged him no longer.
He stood among graves.
CHAPTER II
The lonely community had laid its bones to rest in a barren acre. No
flower could bloom there ever, only close, dun turf grew. Below, the
broken, unquiet sea dirged ceaselessly. The spot was in perfect keeping
with the sovereign peace of the grave; that blank, unadorned environment
of nature had the very beauty that can touch human sense with the concord
of death. The young fisher stood motionless, as if his presence were
outrage to the spirit of the silent dwellers below, so eager was he for
life, so brim with passion and play and hearty thirst for strong years of
sunshine and rain. 'Yet how so,' said his heart, 'for I too shall come to
die?'
Softly and soberly he took his way past the ranks of low mounds, and
considered his approach to the House Monitory, whose living dwellers
might be less tolerant of his trespass. For he realised that he had come
within their outer precincts unallowed. On the one hand lay a low wall
to indicate reserve; on the other he approached the base of the
bell-tower itself, and the flanks of the House Monitory. He looked up at
the walls, fully expecting to be spied and brought to rebuke; but all was
blank and quiet as among the dead outside. The tower rose sheer into the
air; for the rest, a tier of the cliff had been fashioned for habitation
by the help of masonry and some shaping and hollowing of the crude rock.
The window lights were high and rare. Except from the tower, hardly could
a glimpse below the sky-line be offered to any within.
He came upon a door, low and narrow as the entrance of a tomb. It looked
so obdurate he never thought to knock there. Then the sound of low,
monotonous chanting, by women's voices, poor and few, told him that he
stood without their chapel; and he understood that the low door giving
upon the place of graves had not been fashioned for the living. Truly he
was alien and incongruous, although that day he had surely been many
degrees nearer death than any dweller there.
He made for the boundary wall, overleaped it, and then by legitimate
pathways came before the entrance door. There he stood long, not finally
determined what he had come to say. It was repugnant to him to ask of any
mortal cover for his doings, the more when they were somewhat amiss.
While he stood, casting about for decision, he was a-stare heedlessly on
a rocky spur near by that bore the moulding of three figures. High upon
its face they stood, where a natural suggestion had been abetted by man,
a rough pediment shaped above, a rough base below, and the names hewn
large: St. Mary, St. Margaret, St. Faith. Of life size they were, and
looked towards the sea.
Ashamed of his own indecision, the boy lifted his hand and knocked at the
wicket, so to force a resolution within the limit of seconds left. The
stone figures clapped back an echo. His heart sprang an invocation in
response, and straightway he relinquished thought of asking an irksome
favour of lower agents. So when the wicket opened, this was all he had to
say: 'Of your charity give food to a hungry body.'
To the pale, spare Monitress, half shrouded in the gloom, the ruddy young
giant, glowing in the sunshine, said this: 'Of your charity give food to
a hungry body.' She paused and looked at the boy, for his great stature,
his fair hair, and grey eyes made him very singular.
The questioning he half feared and expected did not come. The Monitress
withdrew silently, and presently returning handed a portion of bread. She
said, 'Not food for the body, but prayer for the soul is chiefly asked of
our charity.'
The boy's face flamed, understanding how he was rebuked. Thanks stumbled
on his tongue, and no word to excuse could come; so the wicket closed
upon his silence.
Not so closely but that the Monitress could look again, to sigh over that
creature of gross wants with angel-bright hair. Surprised, she saw that
he was instantly away, and mounted high by the three stone saints. She
saw that he touched their feet reverently, that he knelt down, crossed
himself and prayed, in a very seemly fashion. She went away, of her
charity in prayer for his soul.
He stood there still, after his prayer was finished, and his bread, and
looked over the sea long and earnestly; for from that high ledge he saw
away to the Isle Sinister, encompassed with its network of reefs; the
tide running low showed them in black lines, outspread like a map below.
An audacious design he revolved, no less than to achieve the Isle
Sinister yet. The long lines of reefs forbade his boat, but him they
fairly invited, if strong swimming and deft footing could pass him on,
from rock to wave, and from wave to rock, out to the far front of the
great mass where the Warders stood.
He argued with his conscience, that it was no such risk as that he was
bound to encounter for regaining the open sea, since this attempt need
never commit him past retreat.
Sighting his boat uncovered, without delay he went down. He got it
emptied, the leak plugged quite sufficiently for the time, the anchor set
out against the return of the tide; then he raced, plunged, and swam for
the Isle Sinister.
The first stretch went fairly; he met the rough handling of the waves as
a sturdy game, and opposed with an even heart. Before long he had to
recognise grim earnest, and do battle with all his might, so hard were
the elements against him and so cruel. The waves hustled and buffeted and
hurled; and though he prevailed by slow degrees, the rocks connived for
his detriment. Again and again he won to a resting-place, so battered,
breathless, and spent, that to nourish fortitude, he needed to consider
the steady ascent of the vast rock up from the horizon against his
nearing. A moment of elation it was, when, looking back to compare, he
noted that the shore cliffs were dwarfed by the nearer proportions of the
Isle.
But his stout heart made too little allowance for the strain upon loyal
members, so that at last he bungled, fell short at a leap disastrously,
and was swept away, hardly escaping, gashed and stunned. His memory
afterwards could but indistinctly record how he fared thenceforward with
rock and wave. A nightmare remained of swirling waters mad for his life,
and of dark crags swinging down upon him; coming nearer, swinging lower;
with a great shock they smote him. So he came to the Isle Sinister.
He clung precariously, lashed by the waves into an effort after a higher
ledge. As he drew himself up to safety, his brain was clearing and his
breath extending, nor was it long before his faculties were in order for
wonder, gratulation, exultation. Then he shouted aloud. Against the roar
of the surf his voice struck out wild and weak. The ledge was so narrow,
that while his back rested against the rock his feet dangled; he was
nearly naked; he was bleeding; soon for return he must face peril again.
Looking down at the waters below, leaping and snarling, and over the wild
expanse he had passed, to the shore half a league away, counting the cost
in wounds and bruises, still his young heart mounted above pain and
doubt, to glory in indomitable strength. He flung back his wet head to
laugh and shout again and again, startling sea-birds to flight and
bringing out echoes hearty enough to his ears.
Surely that rock answering so was the first Warder.
Spite of weariness and unsteadiness of head, he got on his feet, and
passed from that difficult ledge of rock round to the front, where by
steep grades the Isle showed some slight condescension to the sea. As he
advanced he tried for ascent, unsatisfied still.
The five Warders stood in full parade; their rank hemmed him round;
against his level the shadow of the Isle rested above their knees,
between each and each a narrow vertical strip of sea and heaven struck
blindingly sweet and blue. Sea-birds wheeled and clamoured, misliking
this invasion of their precincts. To his conceit the tremendous noise of
the breakers below sounded an unavailing protest against his escape.
He came upon a sight that displaced his immediate desire to scale the
heights above: from the base below the tide had withdrawn, and there lay
a stretch of boulders and quiet rock pools within a fringe of magnificent
surf. Down he sped straightway to hold footing debatable with the jealous
sea. Close against the line of surf, at a half-way point between the
solid wall of the Isle and the broken wall of the Warders, he looked up
at either height north and south. Equal towards the zenith they rose,
here based upon sombre quiet, there upon fierce white tumult, that sent
up splendid high columns, whose spray swept over the interspace of
tumbling sea and touched the shine of the pools with frore grey. He
sighed towards those unattainable Warders.
The air was charged with brine; its damp stayed on his skin, its salt on
his lips. Thirsting, he went about with an eye for a water-spring, and
made straight for a likely cleft. Darkest among the many scars of the
rock it showed; deep it went, and wound deeper at his nearing. He entered
the gape over boulders, and a way still there was wide before him; he
took nine paces with gloom confronting, a tenth--aslant came a dazzling
gleam of white. Amazed he faced to it, held stone-still an instant, sped
on and out; he stood in full sunlight, and winked bewildered at the
incredible open of fair sands before him.
The wonder dawned into comprehension. Though far eyes were deluded by a
perfect semblance of solidity, the half of the Isle was hollow as a
shell. Over against him rose the remaining moiety; high walls of rock
swept round on either side, hindered from complete enclosure by the cleft
of his entrance. He turned and looked back through the gorge, and again
over the sunlit open; it was hard to believe he was out of dreamland, so
Eden-bright and perfect was this contrast to the grand sombre chasm he
had left. White and smooth, the sands extended up to the base of the dark
rocks. There rich drapery of weed indicated the tide-mark; strips of
captured water gleamed; great boulders lay strewn; coves and alcoves
deeply indented the lines of the enclosing walls. To the boy's eyes it
looked the fairest spot of earth the sea could ever find to visit. Its
aspect of lovely austere virginity, candid, serene, strictly girt,
touched very finely on the fibres of sense and soul.
He stepped out on firm blanch sand ribbed slightly by the reluctant ebb.
Trails of exquisite weed, with their perfect display of every slender
line and leaf betokened a gracious and gentle outgoing of the sea. In
creamy pink, ivory, citron, and ranges of tender colour that evade the
fact of a name, these delicate cullings lay strewn, and fragile shells of
manifold beauty and design. There, among weed and shell, he spied a
branch of coral, and habit and calling drew him to it instantly. He had
never fetched up its like, for the colour was rare, and for its thickness
and quality he wondered. Suddenly the coral drops from his hand; he
utters an inarticulate cry and stands amazed. His eye has fallen on a
mark in the sand; it is of a human footstep.
Blank disappointment at this sign of forestalling struck him first, but
startled wonder followed hard, and took due prominence as he looked
around on his solitude encompassed by steep black heights, and heard the
muffled thunder outside that would not be shut off by them. He stooped to
examine the naked footprint, and was staggered by the evidence it gave;
for this impression, firm and light, had an outward trend, a size, a
slightness, most like a woman's. It was set seaward towards the gorge. He
looked right and left for footprints of return--none were there! A lone
track he saw that led hardly further, growing faint and indistinct, for
the feet had trodden there when the wash of the ebb was recent.
He turned, and following reversely at a run, came to the far wall, where
every sign failed among pools and weedy boulders; circled with all speed,
snatching a sight of every cove and cleft, and then sprang back through
the gorge.
The gloom and the fierce tumult of that outside ravine smote with a shock
upon masculine wits that now had conceived of the presence of a woman
there. Compassion cried, Poor soul! poor soul! without reservation, and
aloud he called hearty reassurance, full-lunged, high-pitched. Though but
a feeble addition to the great noises there, the sea-birds grew restless:
only the sea-birds, no other living thing moved in response.
He made sure of a soon discovery, but he leapt along from boulder to
boulder, hunting into every shadow, and never a one developed a cave; but
he called in vain. The sea limited him to a spare face of the Isle; when
that was explicit, he was left to reckon with his senses, because they
went so against reason.
The irreconcilable void sent him back to the first tangible proof, and
again he stood beside the footprints pondering uneasily. Had he scared a
woman unclothed, who now in the shame and fear of sex crouched perdue?
But no, his search outside had been too thorough, and the firm, light,
even pace was a contradiction.
Up and down he went in close search, but no other sign of human presence
could he find, not a shred of clothing, not a fragment of food. That
single line of naked footprints, crossing the level sands from
inscrutable rock to obliterate sea, gave a positive indication
circumstantially denied on every hand. The bewildered boy reckoned he
would have been better satisfied to have lighted on some uncanny slot of
finned heels and splay web-toes, imperfectly human; the shapely print
excited a contrast image of delicate, stately, perfect womanhood, quite
intolerable to intellect and emotion of manly composition.
The steeps all round denied the possibility of ascent by tender feminine
feet; for they thwarted his stout endeavour to scale up to the main rock
above, that from the high wall receded and ascended in not extreme grades
to the topmost pitch, where the sun was hanging well on the ponent slope.
His strict investigation took him round each wide scallop of the
enclosure, a course that was long to conclude by reason of exquisite
distractions that beset every hollow of the way. For the clear rock pools
he found in these reserves held splendours of the sea's living blossoms:
glowing beds of anemones full blown, with purples of iris and orchis,
clover red, rose red, sorrel red, hues of primrose and saffron, broad
spread like great chrysanthemums' bosses. And above the wavy fringes,
never quite motionless, dark wet buds hung waiting for the tide; and the
crystal integrity mirroring these was stirred by flashes of silver-green
light, the to-and-fro play of lovely minute rock-fish.
He had circled two-thirds and more when to his vigilant perceptions a
hint came. Some ribbons of glossy weed hanging from shoulder height
stirred a trifle overmuch in their shelter to the touch of wind.
Instantly the wary boy thrust a hand through and encountered, not rock,
but a void behind; he parted the thick fall of weed, and a narrow cleft
was uncurtained, with blackness beyond, that to his peering dissolved
into a cool, dim sea-cave, floored with water semilucent, roofed with
darkness. Eagerly he pressed through, and dropped knee-deep into the
still, dark water. Involuntarily his motions were subdued; silently,
gently, he advanced into the midst of encompassing water and rock and
darkness.
Such slight intrusion of daylight as the heavy kelp drapery allowed
slanted into the glooms in slender, steady threads; from his wading hosts
of wan lights broke and ran for the walls, casting up against them paler
repeats; when he halted, faint sound from them wapped and sobbed,
dominant items in a silence hardly discomposed by the note of far-off
surf, so modulated by deflecting angles as to reach the ear faint and low
as the murmur that haunts the curves of a shell.
For a long minute he stood in the midst motionless, while the chill of
the water told on his blood, and the quiet darkness on his spirit.
Mystery stepped here with an intimate touch, absent when under the open
sky the sands presented their enigma. His heart did not fail; only
resolution ordered it now, not impulse.
He spoke again to presumable ears. Only his own words he heard multiply
in fading whispers through the hovering darkness. Silence came brooding
back as he stood to hearken.
As his eyes dilated to better discernment, he suspected that an aisle
withdrew, from a faint pallor, narrowing as it tended towards his height,
explicable if water receded there, gathering vague translucence from some
unseen source of light. To verify, he was advancing when a considerate
notion turned him about. He left the dim cavern, returned in the blinding
sunshine to the footprints, knelt by the last, and set his fingers in the
sand for inscription. For a long moment he considered, for no words
seemed effectual to deliver his complexed mind. When he wrote it was a
sentence of singular construction, truly indicative of how vague awe and
dread had uprisen to take large standing beside simple humane solicitude.
He traced three large crosses, and then three words. Simple construing
would read thus: 'In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost
at your service.' Moderately content with that rendering, he transcribed
it thrice on the rocks, graving with the branch of coral. At either end
of the entrance gorge he set it, and again large and fair above the
hidden mouth of the cave.
Back into darkness he dived to take up research, and wading towards the
tremor of light, entered a long recess that led under low arches of rock,
till light grew more definite, and the water-way ended, closed in by a
breastwork of rock. But, this surmounted, the boy saw water again, of
absolute green, dark as any stone of royal malachite. The level was lower
by several feet, perhaps the true tide-level, perhaps yet another limited
reservoir that the sea replenished daily. He slid down the scarp and went
on, heartened by the increase of light.
The depth of the water varied, and the boy swam more often than he waded.
The colour of the water varied; now it strengthened into a lucent green,
now darkness threatened it, and he swam warily till it altered again,
unaccountably. As his passing troubled the placid water, and ripples of
colourless light, circling away from him, sent wavering lines of dim
light rippling in response upon the sides of the passage, he caught
vague, uncertain glimpses of dark rich colour mantling the rocks.
Suddenly, when light and colour were strongest, his way was barred, a
wall of rock closing it abruptly. Baffled and perplexed, the boy swam to
and fro in vain quest of an outlet, till his wits leapt on a fair surmise
that inlets for light there must be submerged. Down he dived, groped,
found justification in the arching rock, emerald flooded, struck boldly
through it, and rose to the surface beyond.
A glory of light and colour dazzled him, momentarily repulsing his
faculties from possession of a grand cavern, spacious, lofty, wonderful,
worthy to be the temple of a sea-god.
He found recovery, he found footing, then straightway lost himself in
wonder, for such splendours he had never dreamed could be.
Fathoms overhead the great vault hung unpropped. Sunlight shot in high up
in rays and bars through piercings and lancet clefts, and one large rent
that yet afforded no glimpse of the blue. The boy's eyes wavered and sank
for solace to the liquid paving below, flawless and perfect as the jasper
sea of heaven. There pure emerald melted and changed in subtle gradations
to jade green and beryl green; from pale chrysoprase to dark malachite
no stone of price could deny its name to colourings else matchless. And
there reflection struck down a rich inlay that sard could not excel: not
sard, agate, essonite, chalcedony, in master work of lapidaries; for the
sombre rocks were dressed with the deep crimson of sea-moss, velvet fine.
Amid the sober richness of weeds hung the amber of sponge-growths, blonds
to enhance intense tertiaries. He saw that nature's structure showed
certain gracious resemblances to human architecture: sheer rocks rose up
from the water like the shattered plinths of columns; there were apses;
there were aisles receding into far gloom; rayed lights overhead made a
portion raftered, and slanting down a way hinted gothic sheaves and
clerestory ruins. Temple and palace both it was to the eyes of the
intruder. He could not conceive of any mortal, though noble and exalted
among men, entering, possessing, presiding adequately in this wonderful
sea sanctuary that nature had fashioned so gloriously, and hidden away so
cunningly, with a covering of frowning crag, and fencing of reef and
wave. He amended the thought to except the noblest dead. Supreme in
dignity, excellent even here, high death crowning high life might be
worshipped duly by such sepulture. A slab of rock like an altar tomb in
the midst touched his perceptions to this issue.
CHAPTER III
Importunate above measure grew the question, barely displaced in the full
flood of discovery: Was the unseen habitant familiar here? present here
by some secret, easier ingress? He drew himself up from the water on the
first rock, and, quiet as a watching otter, leant prone, till his
faculties, abroad with wonder and awe, returned to level service. Not a
sound, not a ripple came to disprove his utter solitude.
He slipped back into the water to examine further; a sense of
profanation, not to be shaken off, subdued his spirit, and constrained
him to diffident movement through the exceeding beauty of those jewelled
aisles. Wherever he went play of light and colour encircled him: luminous
weavings that strayed into shadowy angles, investing and adorning with
delicate favours. Slender isles crept away into gloom, extending into
mystery the actual dimensions of the great cavern: these he must enter,
every one, for his thorough satisfaction. More than once the marbling
and stains of the rocks deluded him, so like were they to frescoes--of
battle array in confusion under a fierce winged sunset, of sea-beasts
crouched and huddled, prone and supine, and again of sea-beasts locked
together in strife. He came upon the likeness of a skull, an ill omen
that dealt him a sudden thrill of superstitious fear. It needed close
scrutiny in the vague light to decide that no hand of man had shaped all
these. Once light broke in from above, and he saw overhead a narrow strip
of intense blue, and a white flash from the wing of a passing sea-mew. He
tried to scale the cleft, so to reach the heights of the main island; but
the steep rocks gave no sufficient foothold, and he dropped back into the
water bruised and discomfited. Tunnels and archways there were, too low
and strait to let him pass. Attempting an arch, submerged like the way of
his entrance, his broad shoulders got wedged, and he struggled back,
strangling, spent, and warned against needless hazards.
He never noticed that in the great cavern one after another the rays of
sunlight overhead shifted and withdrew, till twilight, advancing below,
surprised him. His reckoning of time had been lost utterly, charmed out
of him in the vast of beauty and mystery. In a moment he also realised
that the lowest tiers of rocks had vanished below the water. The tide was
rising. Hurriedly he shot away for return, and groped along the dim
passage. The water had risen half-way towards the upper level, so that he
mounted there with no difficulty, and made his way on, through the
entrance cave, through the kelp-curtained cleft, and out again upon the
smooth white sands.
Too late! That he knew by the sound of heavy waves booming from the outer
ravine before his eyes could certify how the tide had made hours'
advance, and was coming in with a strong, resistless swell that would
make short work with the best swimmer alive. He scrambled up to a
shoulder to get a sight of the reefs that had helped him on his way; the
nearest was already gone, and a tumbling whirlpool marked its place.
Except in the slack of the ebb it were madness to make the attempt.
Sunlight still touched the heights, but the quick southern twilight makes
short stand against night. Without question, till daybreak came with
another ebb, on the Isle Sinister must he abide.
To make the best of his case, he sought while daylight lasted after
shell-fish to stay his growing hunger. Then in the dusk he gathered dry
weed and spread it for his couch on a ledge as high above the tide-mark
as he could reach. It was a lateral cleft, as good for his purpose as any
there. But he selected it not wholly with regard to comfort of body; its
high remove above the mysterious footprints lent it best recommendation.
For with growing darkness came a dread upon him; in an access of arrant
superstition he conceived of some unimaginable thing stealing near upon
woman's feet. Reason stood up for a mild human presence if any, but on
ground no better than a quicksand, very lacking in substantial elements.
Whence had those feet come? whither had they gone? He could not imagine a
hiding too fine for his best vigilance, not in the open at least, in
directions that the footprints positively indicated.
As darkness fell, all the tales that had made the place sinister in name
and reputation came thronging his mind, assuming an aspect more grim than
they ever before had worn. The resolution, the firm reason he had relied
on for defence, began to quail before dread odds. What wonder? That day
such an assault against reason had been made, such a breach lay wide and
unrepaired, as left self-possession hard bestead. Then was he faithful to
right worship; he prayed, and mortal terror invested him no longer.
Though faulty, ignorant, superstitious, the young fisher was, a rare
sincerity ruled his spirit, an essential quality if prayer be to any
purpose, even great in efficacy by its own intrinsic value.
As, crossing himself, he lay down and turned to sleep, plainly above the
surf the Warders returned him the sound of a far-off bell--of three bells
tolling together. He knew the voice of the House Monitory. Most
comfortable was it, an expression of human commiseration extended to him,
of special virtue also, he believed, to succour souls against leaguers of
darkness. All night he knew, aloft on the cliff in the desolate bell
tower, a monitress would serve each bell, and two would wait on a
beacon-light, and the prayers of the five would not cease for souls of
the living and souls of the dead, victims to fell powers of the sea. Ah,
blessed bells! And ah, dear saints whose names they bear!--St. Mary, St.
Margaret, St. Faith! The House Monitory prays to the dear saints; but the
simple, the ignorant, who go most in peril of that dangerous coast, when
they bless three names--St. Mary's, St. Margaret's, St. Faith's--do not
discriminate consciously between the saints whose influence lives in
heaven, and the bells that ring in evidence of how that influence lives
on earth. He fell asleep.
The tide came in, crept up the sand, blotted out footprints and weeds,
covered anemone pools and boulders, reached the full, turned and ebbed
back again. The moon rose, and as she mounted the dark clear-cut shadows
of the rocks shrank. The lad slept the dreamless sleep of healthful
weariness, till midnight was long past, and a wide stretch of sand lay
bare again. Then in her course the moon put back the shadows that had
covered his face; his breathing grew shorter; he stirred uneasily, and
woke.
Looking down, he saw the sand bared of the sea, white and glistening in
the moonlight. Quite distinct came the even stroke of the bells. The
night wind had chilled him, half naked as he was, so he crept from his
niche and dropped to the sands below, to pace away numbness. Only a few
steps he took; then he stood, and not from cold he trembled. A line of
footprints crossed the sand, clear and firm, and so light, that the
dainty sand-wrinkles were scarcely crushed out beneath them. And now the
mark of the heel is nearest the sea.
He knelt down to peer closer, stretched a hand, and touched one
footprint. Very fact it was, unless he dreamed. Kneeling still, he
scanned the broken lights and shadows that clung round the margin of
rock-girt sand. Ha! there in the shadow moves something white; it is
gliding half hidden by boulders. A human figure goes there at ease,
rising, stooping, bending to a pool. Long it bends, then with a natural
gesture of arms flung up, and hands locked upon the nape, steps out into
the full moonlight, clear to view.
The kneeling boy thrills to the heart at the beautiful terror. Whiter
than the sands are the bare, smooth limbs, and the dark, massed hair is
black as are the night-shadows. Oh! she comes. Does she see? does she
care? The light, swift feet bring her nearer, straight on, without a
falter. Her shadow falls upon him, and she stays and stands before him,
beautiful, naked, and unabashed as a goddess.
Could she be one of God's creatures? No! Yet because she was shaped like
a woman, youthful pudicity, strong in the boy, bent his head, lowered his
eyes to the ground. He felt a shame she could not know, for her shadow
moved, her white feet came within the range of his lowly vision. Perfect
ankles, perfect feet, foam-white, wonderfully set! When the Evil One
wrought in human shapes, surely his work was ever flawed as to feet!
Still kneeling, he lifted his head, encountered her gaze, and made the
sign of the cross. She met his eyes with a merciless smile, but before
the sign stepped back uneasily; yet her beauty remained unblighted. Then
must it be that a sea-witch could be young and fair, of loveliness
innate, not spell-wrought to ensnare him. He dreaded her none the less,
afraid as never he had been in his life before.
And yet, because his eyes were steady to meet hers, she read such
defiance as she would not suffer. She clapped her hands together, and
laughed in cruel triumph till echoes sprang.
'You are a dead man. Do you know?'
He stood and fronted her boldly now, recovering faith, most needful for
the encounter. By what he could see of her face it was cruel and cold as
death itself, and the gleam of her eyes was like the keen, sharp glitter
of a treacherous sea. For he had not seen, when his eyes had been on the
ground, on her feet, a flash of wonder and pity, for one instant
softening. Wonder at his large-limbed youth remained covert; but his
defiant eyes, his gesture, had routed pity.
'Your bones shall lie apart,' she cried. 'I will choose a fair nook for
you in the great sea sepulchre. All the bones of other wretches who have
perished among these rocks lie piled in a common heap--piled high! But
you alone of many a score having set foot alive in this my garden--by
strength, or courage, or cunning--no matter how, your momentary success
shall receive some recognition. Maybe, if I remember, when your skull is
white and bare, I will crown it with sea-blossom now and then; and
whenever I pass by, cast you a tribute of coral, till the hollows of your
ribs are overfilled.'
He felt that she had the power to make good her taunting words.
'I have faced death before now,' he answered simply.
She was angered, and hated him, because he stood upright before her, with
eyes that did not waver, and words like proud disdain. She longed to
abase him before she compassed his death.
'How shall I take the forfeit? Shall I bid sea-serpents crawl from the
ooze of the deep to crush out your life in scaly folds; or set a watch of
sharks about my garden to tear your live limbs piecemeal when you venture
hence; or make the waves my agents to toss you and wrestle with you, to
batter out all comeliness of form, and break your bones as reeds beneath
the gale?'
Look, tone, gesture, drove home the full horror of her words. Brave as
the boy was, the blood forsook his cheek, a momentary tremor passed, and
involuntarily his eyes turned to the eastern sky, whereunder lay a
well-known shore, and his home, and the grey-haired couple, who, bereft
of him, would go to the grave sorrowing. They faced each other in
silence, as two wrestlers mark each the other's strength. A strangely
unequal pair! The tall lad, long-limbed, muscular, broad-chested, the
weight of whose finger was stronger, than her full-handed might, knew he
was powerless, knew at least that no physical strength could prevail
against the young witch; she, slender, smooth-limbed, threatened him with
torture and death, strong in witch-might and witch-malice.
Keen-eyed, she had seen that he quailed, and softening, was half minded
to forgive his trespass.
'Kneel again and pray for your life; perchance I yet may grant it you.'
Should his christened body grovel to her, a witch? A ring of scorn was in
his answer.
'Not to you,' he said; 'I kneel and pray only when I love and fear.'
She hated him again: he meant that her he hated and despised.
'Fool!' she cried, raging, 'you defy me? Do you not know that you are
wholly in my power?'
'Not wholly--no. Though, because I have done amiss, my life be given into
your hands, my soul is in God's.'
She put her hands to her brow suddenly, as though she had received a
blow. She stood quite silent. Then she looked about her as though she
sought vaguely for something she could not find. Anger had passed away.
'Your soul!' she said, on a note of wonder. 'Your soul!' she repeated,
and broke into a scornful laugh. 'Ay, I remember something: I had a soul
once; but it is gone--dead. I gave it in exchange for sea-life,
sea-power, sea-beauty. I drank of the nepenthe cup, and in it my past was
washed out and my soul was drowned.'
'Wretched creature!' he cried, 'better for you had it been your
death-draught.'
She read in his face horror, pity, loathing, and longed with her whole
being to abase him lower than she was in his eyes. Better than to slay
outright would it be to break down the self-respect that would not stoop
before her even to escape death. Oh, but she would try for very perfect
revenge; not by quick death, cheap and insufficient; not by captivity and
slow death--no, not yet. He should live, yes--and go free, and then she
would conquer him body and soul; biding her time, plotting, waiting in
patience, she would so make her triumph full, complete, absolute, at
last.
Involuntarily she had drawn away into the shadow of the rocks, leaving
the lad standing alone in the moonlight. She saw that his lips moved. He
was praying silently, unmindful of her. With her dark brows drawn
together and a smile of scorn she wove cunning plans for his ruin.
Swiftly she chose her line: for a witch confident, audacious, subtle, it
was a game easy and pleasant to play.
Again the boy saw her stand before him. Her face was mild, her voice low
and gentle.
'Tell me your name.'
'Christian.'
She threw back her head with an uneasy movement, but recovering
instantly, resumed her part.
'How came you here? and why?' Though not to be lightly reassured, he told
her frankly. Her dark eyes were intent upon his face; then they dropped,
and then she sighed, again and again. Her breast was heaving with a storm
of sighs.
'Oh!' she broke out, with a voice of passionate grief. 'Oh, shame! you,
who have the wide world whereon you may range, you will not leave me this
one poor shred of land. A greedy breed it is dwelling ashore, that must
daily be rifling the sea of its silver lives, of its ruddy thickets, and
will yield no inch in return. And you have outpassed your fellows in
greed--you have owned it--you have boasted. Ah! I grant your courage and
strength excellent, taken by the measure of the land; but, oh, the
monstrous rapacity!'
Her voice broke with indignation. She turned aside and surveyed the
moon-white level. Soon she resumed in a quick, low whisper.
'How can I let him go? How can I? Oh dear, fair garden-close, mine, mine,
all mine alone till now--if your shining pools never mirror me again, if
your sands take the print of my foot never again--oh no--I
cannot--no--no--'
Swift pity responded as her lament sank away to a moan.
'Never think so! One brief trespass made in ignorance is all you have to
resent--is all you shall have: not a soul shall have word by me of your
favoured haunt. Moreover,' he added and smiled, 'I know no man who could
win here, were he minded to more strongly than I.'
She smiled back. 'Then go in peace.' She passed him by to follow the sea.
This sudden grace struck him dumb. All too briefly glanced and worded was
it for his satisfaction. So fair at heart she was too. A first young
flicker of male worship kindled in the boy's eyes as he turned to look
after her going.
She halted, facing, and lifting her hand to him.
'Your boat was broken, you say,' she said as he came. 'I tell you, your
peril will be more extreme when you try the reefs again for an outlet,
except you have a pilot of me.'
'You!' he said.
'Not I,' she laughed. 'The guide that I shall send will be a gull pure
white, whose flight you shall follow. I have trusted you; do you trust
me?'
'I will, I will.'
'A strict promise! Though you seem to be going upon certain death, you
will trust and follow?'
'I will trust and follow, on my word, strictly kept as the oaths of the
many.'
'Your pilot you will know by his call. Listen: "Diadyomene! Diadyomene!"'
she shrilled like a sea-bird. 'It is my name--Diadyomene--of a good
signification for you. I hold your promise; when you hear "Diadyomene"
you are pledged to follow.'
She waited for no answer; with a gesture of farewell was away for the
sea, from the moon-white sand springing into the shadows over the harsh
interval of boulders. The vista let a vague moving shape show, lessening
as she sped across the desolate chasm without. One strip of moonlight lay
half-way, at the edge of the retreating sea. There a swift silver-white
figure leapt clear, with dark hair flying an ineffectual veil, with arms
rising wide in responsive balance to the quick free footing. It was
gone--gone utterly--a plunge beyond restored her to her sea.
Christian stood motionless long after she had disappeared, so long that
the moon paled, that dawn quickened in the east, that day spread wide.
Responding to the daylight, broad awake rose reason to rebuke his senses
for accepting fair words and a fair shape as warranty for fair dealing.
And till midday reason domineered; while he abode the slack, while he
battled for shore, while he mended and launched, while the cry
'Diadyomene! Diadyomene!' swept down on white wings, went before,
shifted, wheeled; while, so guided, reefs and breakers threatened close
on every hand, fell behind and left him scatheless.
Oh, safe upon the waveless blue reason fell prostrate, abashed; and the
heart of Christian, enfranchised, leapt high in exultation, so that with
laughter, and glad praise, and proud and happy calls of farewell, he set
sail for home and was carried away from the Isle Sinister.
CHAPTER IV
Though day was high, Lois, the mother adoptive of Christian the Alien,
sat in shadow, for her small lattice was nearly blinded by the spread of
vivid fig-leaves jealous for the sun. Flawless order reigned in the
simple habitation. No sign of want was there, but comforts were few, and
of touch or tint for mere pleasure there was none. Over an opened Bible
bent a face worn more by care than time. Never a page was turned; the
hands held the edges, quiet, but a little tense. For an hour deliberate
calm held.
Then the soft, quick pat of bare feet running caused a slight grip and
quiver. The door swung wide, not ungently, before Christian flushed and
breathless, and a flash of broad day framed with him. He peered within
with eager, anxious eyes, yet a diffident conscience made him falter.
'What have I done? Oh, mother!'
So frail she seemed to his large embrace. In his hand hers he felt ever
so slightly tremble. He knelt beside her, love and reverence big in his
heart.
'Why should you trouble so?' he said.
She laid her hands on his head for pardon. 'Christian,' she said, 'were
you in peril last night?'
'Yes.'
She waited for more to follow, vainly.
'What was it? Where have you been? What have you done?'
'Mother, you were praying for me!'
'Answer, Christian.'
'I gave a promise. I thought I owed it--yes, I think so,' he said,
perturbed, and looked in her eyes for exoneration. There he read
intelligence on a wrong tack that his honesty would not suffer.
'No, mother, it was not on a venture--I have come back empty-handed. I
mean not such a venture as you think,' he corrected, for among the
fishers the word had a special significance, as will show hereafter.
'Say at least,' said Lois, 'you have done nothing amiss--nothing you
would be ashamed to tell me.'
'But I have,' he confessed, reddening, 'done amiss--without being greatly
ashamed--before.'
His heart sank through a pause, and still lower at his mother's question,
spoken very low.
'Then I am to know that though I should question, you would refuse an
answer to me?'
He could not bear to utter the word till she insisted.
Her face twitched painfully; she put him back, rose, and went pacing to
and fro. Helplessly he stood and watched her strange distress, till she
turned to him again.
'My boy--no--you can be a boy no more; this day I must see you are a man.
Listen, Christian: I knew this day must come--though it seems oversoon to
me--and I was resolved that so soon as you should refuse any confession
to me, I--I--must make confession to you.'
She silenced his pained protest, and went on.
'When my child was born, eighteen years ago come Christmas Eve, our
priest was no worthy man as now; little good was known of him, and there
was bad guessed at. But there was this that none here guessed--I only.
And you must know--it is part of my confession.'
She spoke painfully, sentence by sentence. After eighteen years her voice
yet vibrated with hot, live passion.
'My sister--my young sister--came to make her home with us; she would,
and then she would not, for no cause--and went away. She died--she died
on the night my child was born--and hers. Then I vowed that neither I nor
my child should receive sacrament of God from that man's hands. He dared
no word when I passed by with my unbaptized child in my arms; he met my
eyes once--never after. We were two living rebukes, that he but no other
could read plain enough. 'Twas in those days that my man Giles went
seafaring, so the blame was the more all mine. He indeed, knowing all
from me, would have had the child away to be baptized of other hands. But
in those days the nearest were far, and I put him off with this plea and
that; and come a day, and gone in a day, and months away, was the way
with him then. For this thwart course, begun out of fierce resentment, so
long as that did not abate, I found I had no will to leave. Yet all along
I never meant to hold it over a week more, or a week more, or at most a
month more. So two years went, and a third drew on, and that wolf of the
fold was dead.
'On the day he was laid underground God took my child from me.
'I knew--the first word of missing--I knew what I had done. Conscience
struck away all hope. From the print of children's feet we traced how
the smallest went straying, how little hands shell filled went grasping
for more. I gleaned and keep. They said it was hours before, at the ebb.
Then the tide stopped us, and that was all.
'In my bitter grief I said at the first that God was just but not
merciful; since He took the dear body from me and hid it in the sea that
I, who had not wrapped it for christening, should never wrap it meetly
for the grave. Most just, most merciful! afterwards He sent you to me by
the very sea. I knew and claimed you as you lay on the shore, a living
child, among twoscore dead men, and none withstood me.
'In ignorant haste, eager to atone, I was loath to believe what the cross
at your neck told, with its three crosses inscribed, and your sole name
"Christian," and on the reverse a date. Like a rebuff to me then it was,
not realising that I was to work out an atonement more full and complete.
I have tried. O Christian, it will not be in vain!
'All these years your conscience has been in my keeping; you have freely
rendered to me account of thoughts and deeds, good and ill; you have
shared no secret, no promise apart from me. To-day you tell me that your
conduct, your conscience, you will have in your own sole charge.
'My boy, you do no wrong; this is no reproach, though I cannot but grieve
and fear. But know you must now, that in you I present to God my great
contrition; in you I dare look for His favourable grace made manifest; a
human soul seeks in you to see on earth salvation.'
Christian shrank before the passionate claim. His sense of raw, faulty
youth was a painful shame, confronted by the bared remorse of this
austere woman, whom his heart held as mother and saint. 'O God, help us,'
he said, and his eyes were full of tears.
'Ay, Christian,' she said, 'so I prayed last night.'
'Mother,' he said, awed, 'what did you know? how did you know?'
'Nothing, nothing, only great fear for you, and that sprung of a dream.
Often the wind and the waves have crept into my sleep and stolen you from
me. Last night I dreamed you lay dead, and not alone; by you lay my
little one, a small, white, naked shape crouched dead at your side. I
woke in great fear for you; it would not pass, though the night was
still; it grew rather, for it was a fear of worse than death for you.
Yes, I prayed.'
Through his brain swept a vision, moonlighted, of the fair witch's haunt,
and her nude shape dominant as she condemned him. The omniscience of God
had been faint sustenance then compared with this feeble finite shadow of
the same that shot thrilling through the spirit of the boy. So are we
made.
Outside a heavy step sounded, and a voice hailed Christian. 'Here, boy,
lend a hand.'
He swung out into the clear world. There Giles, empty-handed, made for
the rear linhay, and faced round with a puckered brow.
'What the devil have you been up to?'
'Trying her paces,' said Christian.
'Who's to blame then--you or she?'
'Oh, not she!' said Christian hastily, jealous for the credit of his new
possession.
'Well, well, that ever such a duffer should be bred up by me,' grumbled
Giles. 'Out with it all, boy. How came it?'
Christian shut his mouth and shook his head.
'What's this? Don't play the fool. As it is, you've set the quay buzzing
more than enough.'
'Who cares?'
'And you've broken Philip's head within two minutes of touching, I
believe.'
''Twas done out of no ill-will,' protested Christian. 'A dozen swarmed
over, for all the world as if she were just carrion for them to rummage
like crabs. So I hitched one out again--the biggest by preference,--and
he slipped as you called to speed me off here. If he took it ill, 'tis no
great matter to square.'
'I would for this once he or any were big enough to break your head for
you as well as you deserve,' said Giles savagely.
'We're of a mind there,' said Christian, meekly and soberly.
Giles perversely took this as a scoff, and fumed.
'Here has the wife been in a taking along of you; never saying a word,
going about like a stiff statue, with a face to turn a body against his
victuals; and I saying where was the sense? had you never before been
gone over a four-and-twenty hours? And now to fix her, clean without a
cause, you bring back a hole to have let in Judgment-day. Now will come
moils to drive a man daft.
'And to round off, by what I hear down yonder, never a civil answer but a
broken head is all you'll give. "Look you there now," says Philip, and I
heard him, and he has a hand clapped to his crown, and he points at your
other piece of work, and he says, says Philip: "Look you there now, _he_
was never born to drown," and he laughs in his way. Well, I thought he
was not far out, take it either way, when I see how you have brought the
poor thing in mishandled. It passes me how you kept her afloat and
brought her through. Let's hear.'
Though Giles might rate, there was never a rub. Years before the old man
and the boy had come to a footing strangely fraternal, set there by a
common despair of satisfying the strict code of Lois.
Again Christian shook his head. Giles reached up a kindly hand to his
shoulder.
'What's amiss, boy? It's new for you to show a cross grain. A poor spirit
it is that can't take blame that is due.'
Christian laughed, angry and sore.
'O Dad!' he said, 'I must blame myself most of all. Have your say. Give
me a taste of the sort of stuff I may have to swallow. But ask nothing.'
Giles rubbed his grey locks in perplexity, and stared at the perverse
boy.
'It can't be a venture--no,' he thought aloud. 'Nor none hinted that.
'Well, then; you've been and taken her between the Tortoises, and bungled
in the narrows.'
Christian opened his mouth to shout derision at the charge, gasped, and
kept silence.
'There's one pretty guess to go abroad. Here's another: You've gone for
the Land's End, sheared within the Sinister buoys, and got right payment.
That you can't let pass.'
'Why not that?' Christian said, hoping his countenance showed no guilt.
'Trouble will come if you don't turn that off.'
'Trouble! Let them prate at will.'
'Well,' complained Giles, 'I won't say I am past work, but I will own
that for a while gone I had counted on the near days when I might lie by
for a bit.'
'But, Dad, that's so, all agreed, so soon as I should have earned a boat
of my own, you should have earned holiday for good.'
'Then, you fool, speak clear, and fend off word of the Sinister buoys, or
not a soul but me will you get aboard for love or money.'
Eager pride wanted to speak. Giles would not let it.
'You think a mere breath would drive none so far. Ay, but you are not one
of us, and that can't be forgot with your outlandish hair and eyes. Then
your strength outdoes every man's; then you came by the sea, whence none
know, speaking an unknown tongue; and then----' Giles paused.
The heart of the alien swelled and shrank. He said very low: 'So I have
no friends!'
'Well,' Giles admitted, 'you would be better liked but for a way you have
sometimes of holding your head and shutting your mouth.'
He mimicked till Christian went red.
'Do I so? Well,' he said, with a vexed laugh, 'here's a penance ready
against conceit. The Tortoises! I indeed! and I must go humble and dumb.'
'Such tomfoolery!' cried Giles, exasperated. 'And why? why? There's
something behind; you've let out as much. I don't ask--there, keep your
mystery if you will; but set yourself right on one point--you will--for
my sake you will.'
Christian looked at the old man, bent, shrunken, halt, and smiled out of
bland confidence.
'The burden shall not light on you, Dad. And has no one told you what I
have done single-handed? just for display of her excellent parts, worked
the boat and the nets too, and hauled abreast of any. Not a boat that
watched but cheered the pair of us.'
'I heard, I heard,' said Giles ungraciously. 'A show off for an hour or
two. What's that to work week in, week out?'
Christian was looking aside. He saw the head of Lois leaning out,
attentive to all.
He took a heavy heart out of her sight. 'She does not trust me,' he said
of her face.
CHAPTER V
Scattered far and wide over the fishing-grounds lay the coral fleet.
There, a solitary, went Christian to a far station. Yet not as an
outcast. He had tried his strength against his world, and the victory
inclined to him. For a week he had been baited hard and cut off, as Giles
had forewarned; and through it all he had kept his own counsel, and his
temper, and his place with the fleet, defiant, confident, independent.
And luck attended his nets. Therefore another week saw unsubstantial
suspicion waning; scoffs had their day and died of inanition; and the
boy's high-hearted flouting of a hard imposition annulled its rigour. Not
a few now would be fain to take their chance with him. For Giles's
consolation he had not rejected all advances, yet as often as not he
still went alone, declining another hand. Thrift and honest glorying in
his strength so inclined him, though a perverse parade may not be
disclaimed. Yet none of these accounted for a distinct gladness for
solitude that grew unawares.
What colour were her eyes? The moonlight had withheld certainty, and he
had not given his mind to it then. Dark, he knew, to match her hair: rare
eyes, like pansies dewy in shade?
Down swung with their swags of netting the leaded cross-beams from his
hands into the shadowed water, and its dark, lucid green was faced with
eddies. Down, deeper than the fathoming of his eyes, plunged his spirit,
and walked the sea's mysteries in vain imaginings. Mechanically he set
the boat crawling while he handled the guys. A trail of weed swam dim
below; it entangled. His wits said weed, nothing but weed, but his pulse
leapt. Day after day, not to be schooled, it had quickened so to
half-expectancy of a glimpse at some unguessed secret of the deeps. He
was glad to be alone.
Body and mind he bent to the draught, till the cross-beams rose, came out
dripping up to the gunwale, and neatly to rest. A ruddy tangle hung among
the meshes. He paused before out-sorting to resolve an importunate doubt:
was this more than mere luck to his nets? It was not the first time he
had had occasion to debate an unanswerable question. The blank westward
seas, near or far, returned no intelligence to his eager survey, nothing
to signify he was not quit of obligation.
A witch she was, of an evil breed, one to be avoided, pitied, and
abhorred. No conscious impulse moved Christian to seek her again, though
her beauty was a wonder not to be forgotten, and she had dealt with him
so kindly. Yet of the contrary elements of that strange encounter the
foul stood unchanged, but the fair had suffered blight, because from the
small return demanded of him his mother's heart had taken hurt. A full
confession would indeed but change the current of distrust. He sighed,
yet smiled a little; he would have to own that a wish persisted to know
the colour of those eyes.
From the sweat and ache of toil he paused a moment to see where he lay.
Under a faint breath from the south he had been drifting; the fleet also
had drifted to leeward.
Within a grand enclosure, satisfying coolness and peace, and splendid
shade reigned, for no man's solace and reward.
The sun rode high, and the west breathed in turn, bringing a film of
haze. A delicate blue veil, that no eye could distinguish from the
melting blue of sea and heaven, an evanescent illusion of distance, hung,
displacing the real.
Above the boy's head a seagull dipped and sailed. It swooped low with a
wild note, 'Diadyomene, Diadyomene,' and flew west.
Christian upturned a startled face. The drifting fleet had vanished; he
was alone with the gracious elements.
Too loyal of heart to dream of excuse, he rendered instant obedience to
the unwelcome summons, headed round, hoisted every stitch, and slanted
away after the white wings. Yet he chafed, angry and indignant against so
unwarrantable an imposition on his good faith. Go he must, but for a fair
understanding, but to end an intolerable assumption that to a witch
creature he owed payment indefinitely deferred at her pleasure.
He owed her his life; no less than that she might exact.
He found he was smiling despite a loath mind and anxious. Now he would
see of what colour were her eyes.
The young witch Diadyomene leaned forward from a rock, and smiled at the
white body's beauty lying in the pool below. She was happy, quivering to
the finger-tips with live malice; and the image at her feet, of all
things under heaven, gave her dearest encouragement. Her boulder shelved
into a hollow good for enthronement, draped and cushioned with a shag of
weed. There she leant sunning in the ardent rays; there she drew coolness
about her, with the yet wet dark ribbons of seaweed from throat to ankle
tempering her flesh anew. No man could have spied her then.
By a flight of startled sea-birds, he nears. She casts off that drapery.
Through the gorge comes Christian, dripping, and stands at gaze.
With half-shut eyes, with mirth at heart, she lay motionless for him to
discern and approach. She noted afresh, well pleased, his stature and
comely proportions; and as he neared, his ruddy tan, his singular fair
hair and eyes, she marked with no distaste. The finer the make of this
creature, the finer her triumph in its ruin.
He came straight opposite, till only the breadth of water at her feet was
between.
'Why has "Diadyomene, Diadyomene" summoned me?' he said.
Against the dark setting of olive weed her moist skin glistened
marvellously white in the sun. A gaze grave and direct meeting his could
not reconcile him to the sight of such beauty bare and unshrinking. He
dropped self-conscious eyes; they fell upon the same nude limbs mirrored
in the water below. There he saw her lips making answer.
'I sent you no summons.'
Christian looked up astonished, and an 'Oh' of unmistakable satisfaction
escaped him that surprised and stung the young witch. He stood at fault
and stammered, discountenanced, an intruder requiring excuse.
'A seagull cried your name, and winged me through the reefs to shore, and
led me here.'
'I sent you no summons,' she repeated.
A black surmise flashed that the white bird was her familiar, doing her
bidding once, this time compassing independent mischief. Then his face
burned as the sense of the reiteration reached his wits: she meant to
tell him that he lied. Confounded, he knew not how to justify himself to
her. There, below his downcast eyes, her reflected face waited, quite
emotionless. Suddenly her eyes met his: she had looked by way of his
reflection to encounter them. Down to the mirror she dipped one foot, and
sent ripples to blot out her image from his inspection. It was a mordant
touch of rebuke.
'Because I pardoned one trespass, you presume on another.'
'I presume nothing. I came, unhappily, only as I believed at your
expressed desire.'
'How? I desire you?' She added: 'You would say now you were loath to
come.'
'I was,' he admitted, ashamed for his lack of gratitude.
'Go--go!' she said, with a show of proud indifference, 'and see if the
gull that guided you here without my consent will guide you hence
_without my consent_.'
Insult and threat he recognised, and answered to the former first.
'Whatever you lay to my charge, I may hardly say a word in defence
without earning further disgrace for bare truth.'
'You did not of yourself return here? For far from you was any desire
ever to set eyes on me again?'
So well did she mask her mortal resentment, that the faint vibration in
her voice conveyed to him suspicion of laughter.
'On you--I think I had none--but for one thing,' he said, with honest
exactitude.
'And that?'
Reluctantly he gave the truth in naked simplicity.
'I did desire to see the colour of your eyes.'
She hid them, and broke into charming, genuine laughter.
'Do you know yet?' she said.
'No, for they are set overdeep for a woman, and the lashes shadow so.'
'Come nearer, then, and look.'
He stepped straight into the pool knee-deep and deeper, and with three
strides stood below. She bent her head towards him with her arms upon her
knee, propping it that a hand might cover irrepressible smiles. Her
beautiful eyes she opened wide for the frank grey eyes to consider. Many
a breath rose and fell, and neither offered to relinquish the intimate
close.
Beautiful eyes indeed! with that dark, indescribable vert iris that has
the transparent depth of shadowed sea-water. They were bright with happy
mirth; they were sweetly serious; they were intent on a deep inquiry into
his; they were brimming wells not to be fathomed; oh, what more? what
haunted their vague, sad, gracious mystery?
'Are you satisfied yet of their colour?' she asked quietly, bringing him
to a sense of the licence he indulged.
'Of their colour--yes.'
'How, then, are you not satisfied?'
'I do not know.'
'Bare truth!'
'What thoughts, then, lay behind while you looked down so?'
She kept her mouth concealed, and after a pause said low as a whisper:
'Looking at your eyes, I wondered if they would alter greatly when your
time came--to die.'
'Ah, no, no,' he said, startled; 'how could you!' His mind only caught
the suggestion to reflect upon her transparent eyes stricken with the
tragedy of death. From so gentle a tone he could not gather a sinister
hint; moreover, she smiled to effect a blind.
'Now that your quest is over, I in turn desire certain knowledge. Gratify
me, and so shall your rash footing here to-day stand redeemed.'
She signed for him to follow, and led the way by rock and pool to the
entrance of the cave. There upon a boulder she leaned, and pointed him up
to the rock above, where the rough inscription he had set there remained
unimpaired.
'That is your handiwork?'
'Yes.'
'What does it mean?'
His heart thumped. To her he had addressed that legend, not knowing what
she was.
'I do not know that you are fit to hear.'
Her just indignation refrained from him, and his heart smote him.
'Ah! I should not judge. Hear then!' and he read.
For an instant her face fell, troubled, and she moved restlessly.
'And who are They? Who is the Father?'
'God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.'
'He did not make me.'
'But He did.'
'Say that He made you if so you please: I speak for myself. Pass on now.
Who is the Son?'
'Jesus Christ His Son, our Lord, who suffered and died to save us from
our sins.'
'Suffered and died!' she exclaimed, and then added, 'I have no sins.'
'Ah, you have!' said Christian, aghast.
'You may have, may be, but not I. Pass on. Who is the other one?'
'The Holy Ghost the Comforter.'
'Whose comforter? Theirs? yours? not mine--I need no comfort.'
When he said, 'O poor, lost soul, God have mercy!' she rose to passion.
'You shall not say so; I will not endure it. And why should you look at
me so? and why should you speak it low? Am I to be pitied--and pitied of
you, who but for my pity would by now be a shredded and decayed patch
sunk deep?'
'My body.'
Diadyomene recovered herself instantly, recalled to the larger conquest
she designed.
'Yet pass on again: there is more--"At your service!" Whose?'
'Yours.'
'Mine! That is not possible,' she said coldly; 'nor of the whole can I
make sense.'
'It means that I offered to serve her whose footprints I had
seen--yours,--and pledged myself by the sacred names that she should have
no fears.'
'Fears!'
Christian flushed painfully. It was not possible to intimate to her how
he had considered that a woman unclothed would surely shrink from a man's
presence.
'You make for a simple end by strange means!'
'How is it,' she resumed, 'that since quite freely you pledged yourself
so sacredly to my service, you came most unwillingly when you thought I
had need of you?'
Before her penetrating gaze shame entered.
'For your need I would have come gladly; yes--I think so--in spite of
incurring worse; but for your pleasure----'
'Not, for instance, had I wished to see the colour of your eyes?'
It was but poor sport to put him out of countenance. Quite kindly she
asked, 'What now have you incurred that worse should be to dread?'
He began of the name 'Sinister,' and of all it implied. She laughed,
asking him why he should expound that. He went on to the definite ills
that had beset him, because the injury to his boat betrayed him to
inquisition.
'But how?' she asked; 'you admitted nothing, else you failed in your
promise to me.'
'No, but challenged, I could not deny I had dared here.'
'Why not?'
'It would not have been true,' he said, puzzled.
Diadyomene opened her eyes wide and laughed.
'And do you use your powers of speech only to say what is true?'
'Yes,' he said, indignant. 'How else?'
'Now I,' she said, 'use speech to disguise truth, with foul or with fair,
or sometimes to slay and bury it out of sight.'
'Then, when you declared you had not summoned me, was that untrue?'
'If I now answered "Yes" or "No," you could be no nearer satisfaction;
for you have not the wit to weigh my word with mood, disposition,
circumstance, to strike a balance for truth.'
Christian pondered, perplexed and amazed at that perverse argument.
'I would another were here to unreeve this tangle you are in. There is
one, wise, tender, a saint.'
Diadyomene levelled her brows.
'A woman! And you love her!' she said, and astonished the inexperienced
boy.
'Above all! She is mother to me.'
He said timidly: 'Of all evils incurred by my presumption here, the worst
is that between her and me your secret stands a bar to perfect
confidence. I did not guess it would gall her so. I may not tell you
how.'
'Yes, tell me.'
'I cannot.'
'A secret.'
'Not strictly; some day I might, but not now.'
She shot a keen glance, suspicious by that heedless reservation that,
after all, he was shrewdly playing his own game. He went on.
'With her your secret would be absolutely safe; and if her you would but
include----'
'But I will not,' she said peremptorily, 'nor shall you take counsel with
her, nor come back well charged for convincing me of what you may be
pleased to call sin; for presently we part for ever--for ever, alive or
dead.'
That struck silence for a minute. Then Christian straightened and said:
'I have then much to say first. I have a message to you.'
'To me--a message!'
'The message of the Gospel. In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost.'
'Ah yes,' she said; 'we were to return to that. "Suffered and died," you
said of one--the Son.'
The young gospeller took up his task void of all vain conceit; but
humility, simplicity, and honesty alone could not prevail over the
quick-witted witch when she was bent on entangling him. A long hour he
laboured with the story of the Redemption, she questioning to his
bewilderment, involving him in contradiction, worsting him again and
again, though he would not know it; till, weary of harassing, she heard
him in silence, with an unmoved attention that was worse discouragement.
His own incompetence he had known, but he had not thought himself so
unstable that the pressure of patient eyes could weigh down his clear
sense; that the lifting of night-black hair in the light wind, the curve
of a neck, the slow play of idle hands, could distract him. He knew he
had failed utterly, that he did not deserve to succeed before ever her
comment began.
'O the folly of it!' she said with wonder and scorn. 'Truly I am well
quit of a soul if it bring intelligent creatures of flesh and blood to
worship, as highest excellence conceivable, a joyless life, a degraded
death. For others? The more foolish. And you would have me repent and be
converted to that? I--I repent, who have gained this?'
She rose to her feet, flung up head and arms; her bosom heaved with a
breath of ecstasy, her lips parted, her eyes shone; the glory, power,
magic, of the deep flashed into visible embodiment in her. The perfect
woman, possessed by the spirit of the sea, unawares took worship of the
boy's heart. To seal her supremacy, a wave leaping in the gorge broke to
him the unnoted advance of the tide. He thrilled as though the sea had
actually responded to her passion.
To a new, wonderful note of power and sweetness she began, with a face
and gesture that alone were eloquent:
'O poor mortal! the deeps to you are abysses of death, while the
storm-winds, ravening, hunt you. Oh, 'tis pitiful! Deep, deep in the
heart of the sea dwells eternal peace, and fear is dead to all who dwell
there. Starry sea-blossoms grow stilly, by the winnowing of broad fins
stirred only. When stormy terrors fall with black night on you above,
with me below is a brooding blank of light and sound, and a darkness that
can be felt lulls every sense. From that deep calm I float, I rise, to
feel the upper pulses of the sea; to meet strong currents that in the
very hair wake vigour; to leave silence far underfoot; to taste of the
glorious battle of wind and wave. Strong, foam-headed bearers take me,
whirl me as I will. There is madness, rout, and drunken frenzy of the
elements for honour of my presence. O the roar! O the rains! O the
lightning!
'Deep, deep in the heart of the sea the broad glare of this full sunlight
is softened into a mystery of amber twilight, clear and cool; and
quivering cloud-shadows dim it to pearl, and sunset throbs into it a
flush. There the light of the white moon is a just perceptible presence
of grey silver to tell me a night is cloudless. She draws me--she draws
me--to her I yearn. My heart, my love, my life, rise large and buoyant in
worship of her. To her fair face you have never looked up as I, at poise,
with earth far below and the air fathoms above. Ah, so large and near and
gracious she lies! In the faint swell of a calm she shrinks and expands,
as though she breathed with me--with the sea; a ripple of wind will comb
her into quivering lines of silver; and the heave of a wave shatter her
to fragments that vainly slide and dance to close back into the perfect
disk. Involuntarily your hands would snatch at the near splinters of
living silver. I rise through them to rarer air, and lo! my moon has fled
up immeasurably, and shines remote, concentrated, placid.
'Deep, deep in the heart of the sea, within unhewn walls, are splendid
courts, where marbles discover their shy translucence, and drink mellow
life from widespread floors of sand, golden, perfect, unwrinkled and
unstained from age to age; and drink milky fire that hangs where nebulous
sea-stars cluster that night may never prevail. Inmost wait vacant
shrines to gratify worship of sleep and dreams--pure amber one, great
crystals one, and rainbow spars. One there is of moony mother-of-pearl,
meetest covert of rest, when life grows a little weary of conquest and
play, and greatly enamoured of dreams. Ah, dreams! You with a soul--can
you dream? Nay--but I will not know.
'Deep, deep in the heart of the sea hide brine-bred monsters; living
there, dying there; never touching the thin, vacant air, never facing the
broad eye of heaven. Quick death by the grip of huge jaws meets the
drowning there. Your might--yours--is puny: you never could cope with the
fierce sea-wolves. And your limbs are heavy and slow: you could not play
with the dolphin and mock at the shark. To me come all by love or fear.
The frailest shape afloat, that fears a shadow, into my palms drops from
the waves; and uncouth herds leave browsing to hustle their finned heads
under my hands. And the terrible breeds, the restive, I catch by the mane
and school, against their resistance driving sharp ivory hard between the
joints of their mail. How they wrestle and course, as pride of their
strength is mine, and joy of their speed is mine--ah! most supremely
when they most dispute it. Your eyes declare wonder, since your broad
limbs could match the banded strength of a score of my slight mould. I
grant it here, where the touch of the earth and the touch of the air are
dull, faint, weak, to flesh and blood nourished of the deeps; but life
and vigour and strength transcendent evolve from the embrace of the salt,
cold sea, from deep indraughts of keen brine.
'Down in the deepest lies sleeping the oldest of living creatures, placid
in a valley of the sea. His vast green coil spreads out for leagues;
where his great heart beats slow the waters boil; he lifts an eyelid, and
the waves far, far above are lit with phosphor light. Runs a tremor
because of his dreams, I sink to the weedy ears and chant peace,
unaffrighted, sure that no fret can withstand my song. Shall he once roar
and lash with all his spines, your coasts will crumble and be not.
'What, you--you with a soul, get quickened breath and eager eyes from a
few empty words, as though even in you woke the sting of a splendid
desire for entering the reserves of the sea, with intimacy and dominion
like mine. No--no--stand off! content you with the earth and air.
Never--never shall you lay your hand upon my breast, nor set your lips to
mine, nor gain the essential word, for you count your soul as priceless,
and never will let it go.'
She ceased. Christian suddenly crossed himself, turned his back, and went
from her and her magic. The forward tide checked his feet; its crisp
murmur and great undertones uttered a voluble, soft chorus on that
strange monologue. He came to himself to know that he offered outrageous
offence to virgin pride, unwarrantable, and far from his mind. Her free,
bold words were too coldly proud for any thought of disrespect. He turned
again hastily. She was gone.
He sprang to the brimming cave. 'Diadyomene,' he called; 'Diadyomene,'
and followed up the moving water; but he had no definite sight of her,
and got no answer till he came to the great cavern. No witch she looked
beside the jasper mirror, but just a slender, solitary maiden. She did
not lift her pensive head, nor move nor look at him as he drew to her.
'Diadyomene,' he supplicated, 'have out on me all that is in your mind.
Call me dumb-squint, beetle-head in mind and manners.'
With a quite impassive countenance she answered gently:
'It is in my mind that the sun is low and the tide high. It is in my mind
to put you in a way where both may yet serve for your safe homing.'
Out came a sovereign smile of humour, sweet raillery, and condonation
blended, instant on her investigation of his eyes. Humbled and exalted at
one fine touch, Christian's judgment surrendered to her. She hindered a
word of it.
'I can show you an outlet that will take you to a sheltered reach behind
the landward walls of this Isle. So will you evade the worst races of the
tide. Furthermore, from the mainland to the open you will need aid.'
He answered unsuspiciously that of her grace he had learned the reefs
fairly.
'Ah yes, and conned through but once,' she said smoothly, and eyed him.
'Conned twice--once either way.'
'I sent you no summons,' she expostulated quietly.
'Do you think that I have lied to you?'
She did not answer.
With indignant emphasis he repeated, 'Do you think I have lied?'
'Do you think _I_ have?'
Not a quiver crossed her front with the mendacious alternative; not even
for laughter, when the face of Christian lent ample occasion; for, as a
fish with a barb in the gullet not to be spewed out, was he impotent and
spun.
While still he gasped, Diadyomene slid forward into the deep and bade
haste for daylight. Fine swimmer he was, but his strokes compared ill
with an effortless ease like a wing-wide bird's. Refraction gave her
limbs a lovely distortion, and pearly soft they were through the beryl
wash. Behind her merged head the level just rocked and quivered; cleft by
his chin it rebelled in broad ripples. She turned her head, curious of
his clumsy method; she could not forbear a smile; she reverted hastily
beyond the blind of her floating hair.
But he could not follow where she offered to lead, for she dropped her
feet, and sank, and walked the under-floor of rock, entering a deep
gallery. He dived, entered after, then breath gave out, and he shot back
to gasp.
She presented a face of grieved surprise. 'There is another way to the
same end,' was all she said on his deficiency.
He mounted after her then, by shelf and ridge, an intricate, retiring
way, till she showed him a dark gulf at their feet.
'Leap!' she said, 'no hurt lies there.'
Utter blackness lay below, repugnant to his nerves; yet not therefore he
stayed.
'Diadyomene,' he said, with desperate temerity, 'you do not forbid me
ever to see you again.'
Daylight struggled feebly in there. Her answer was not direct, and it
laboured.
'I have no--desire--ever to see you again.'
Quick for once: 'Have you a desire never to see me again?' he said, and
held his breath.
He saw her step to the verge, lift her arms, and poise. She delivered an
ingenious masterstroke to wound.
'Be under no such apprehension. I will convince you: for your assurance I
will go first.'
'Hold back!' with a savage sob cried Christian; leapt, and dropped with
straightened feet perpendicular in the gulf.
With a thin sigh and a vigorous kiss two elements received his descent.
Diadyomene leaned over the dark, and called 'Farewell.' The word was
echoed back by him hoarsely; and again from further distance it came,
ringing sound.
Beneath her breath she said, 'Some day I will have grey eyes weeping
before my face.' Then laughter possessed her, and away she sprang, to
revel in the release of peals of wicked delight.
Very cold-hearted the sea-bred are, and their malice is very keen.
CHAPTER VI
Lois drew forward a young creature, whose dark head did not fully uplift.
'Christian,' she said, 'this is your cousin Rhoda.'
He blurted out 'Cousin!' in astonishment. Two faces stiffened; the girl's
eyes declined.
'My niece,' said Lois briefly, 'and so cousin by adoption.'
Giles kicked his heel, so he guarded his tongue duly.
Considerate of embarrassing the girl with open observation, he took note
discreetly how kin was just legible on the two faces. The eyes of both
were set overdeep for womankind; they were alike in the moulding of the
bones; but the face of Rhoda gave promise of a richer beauty than could
ever have been the portion of Lois. For a minute it bloomed in a vivid
blush, for their eyes met as she, too, by stealth was observing him for
his great height and breadth and alien complexion.
When afterwards his mother said, 'You know whose child she is?' he
answered, 'Yes.'
'Christian, I thank God for my good man.'
Her sense he could not adjust till long afterwards, when a fuller account
of Rhoda's past was given to him. Now Giles told but little.
'No, she had never set eyes on her before. I? Oh yes, I had--the pretty
little piece! But when I bring her in, and have said no more than one
cough, the wife goes clean past me, and has the girl in her arms, and
calls her by her sister's name, and sobs hard and dry like a man. It
turned me silly and rotten, it did. I knew for a minute she didn't fairly
know it was not somehow her sister; no older than Rhoda she was, poor
thing, when she last stood under our roof; and their last parting had not
been over tender. Well, I had messed the business--I knew I should,--for
there was the wife going on, saying things, and there was Rhoda getting
scared and white, and putting out a hand to me. And then I go one worse,
for I get hold of her, and say, "She takes you for your mother, child,"
that the wife may get the hang of it; and at that down she sits sudden,
all of a shake. But the poor wench says, "My _mother_!" for--well, I
suppose I had lied sometime--she thought she was the truly begotten
orphan of an estranged brother. Nothing would come handy but the
truth--the wife being there; so I even told it all. Yes, I did, though it
did seem cruel hard for a young wench to have that story from a beard.
But it worked well; for when the poor child knew not how to bestow her
eyes, nor to bear the red of shame, up stands the wife to her, just woman
by woman, and looks fierce at me, and to her Rhoda closes all a-quiver,
and in a moment the wife has kissed her, blight and all, and Rhoda is
crying enough for both. That was over an hour before you came in on us,
when out jumped "cousin" and "niece" to clinch the business. I knew she
would never go back on them. To think that all these years--well--well.'
'Well, Dad--all these years?' said Christian, incited by Lois's words to
be curious of Giles's conduct; for he was a comrade of easy imperfection,
not insistent of the highest rectitudes, nor often a consistent exemplar
of Lois's strict precepts. Giles drew in.
'A grape has grown from a thorn, that's all,' he said.
'But how came you----'
'And a pumpkin has overgrown too. Here--clear out, you've left a moderate
body no room to turn.'
So Christian understood he was to be excluded from full confidence. Loyal
every inch of him, he respected Giles's reserve and never questioned
Rhoda herself. He did but listen.
Clear, colourless years, regulated under convent control, was all the
past she knew; serene, not unhappy, till the lot of a portionless orphan
lay provided for her in a sordid marriage, that her young instinct knew
to be prostitution, though the Church and the world sanctioned it as a
holy estate. To her this blessed transplantation into a very home gave a
new, warm atmosphere that kindled fresh life. The blanch bud expanded and
glowed, fresh, dewy, excellent as the bloom of her name. And very sweet
incense her shy gratitude distilled.
It was to Giles she gave her best affection, to Lois most reverence and
devotion. But to Christian went a subtle tribute, spontaneous even in an
innocent convent-girl, to an admirable make of manhood; some quick
shivers of relief that a certain widower with yellow teeth did not
possess her. And in Christian thrilled an equivalent response; though he
knew not how Rhoda's maiden charm, her winning grace, her shadow even,
her passing breath, evoked unaware, with a keen, blissful sting at heart,
vivid remembrance of the sea-witch Diadyomene.
'She likes the old hunks best of the lot,' said Giles with complaisance.
'My bright little bird! There's never a one of you young fellows stands
to cut me out.'
He cocked an eye at Christian.
'Now Philip comes along, and will have her for seeing the caught
frigate-bird. And off she is flying, when back she skims and will have me
too. Oh! but he looked less than sweet, and he's a fine figure too for a
maid's eye, and a lad of taste--he is.'
'He! May be, for his fancies are ever on the brew, hot or cold,' said
Christian in scorn.
'She's a rare pretty wench, and a good,' said Giles, with a meditative
eye.
'She is: too rare and good for any of Philip's make; an even blend of
conceit and laziness is he.'
'That's so, that's so,' returned Giles coolly to this heat, 'but I don't
say he would make a bad pair for just so much as the boundary walk.'
'How!' said Christian 'but she will walk with me--she's my cousin.'
'Have you asked her?'
'No.'
'Well, I think she's worth an asking. She's shy, and she's nice, and
she's got a spirit too, and more than one, I wager, won't be backward.
Rhoda! Rhoda! why, what's this grave face you are bringing us, my
pretty?'
The girl's eyes addressed Christian's with childlike candour and wonder.
'Why is it,' she said, 'that the mother of that tall Philip doubles her
thumb when you pass by?'
He flushed with knit brows, but laughed and jested: 'I guess because she
does not like the colour of my hair.' But Rhoda had noted a pause, and a
quick turn of the eye upon Giles.
'When the boundary is walked, Rhoda, will you pair with me?'
'Oh!' she said, 'Philip wanted to bespeak me, and I said him no, till my
uncle should have had the refusal of me first.'
She curtsied before the old man in bright solicitation.
'Ah! my maid, here's a lame leg that can't manage the steep. You must
take my proxy, Christian here.'
'But that's another matter,' she said; 'I doubt if I be free.'
Christian's face clouded, but he had no notion of pressing her to
exchange obligation for inclination. When he was away, Rhoda asked,
troubled and timid:
'I have vexed him. Is it for this? or that I was curious----'
'About that doubled thumb? Not that. He'll clear that to you himself if I
know him. Well, then, I will, to spare it him.'
He set forth Christian's position and the ordeal not yet quite suspended.
Rhoda went straight after Christian. She presented both hands to him.
With a glowing cheek and brave eyes, 'I will walk with you!' she said.
'I am proud, cousin! But so? What of Philip?'
With a saucy sparkle she said, 'Do not flounces become a girl's wear,
then? You shall see. Or do you expect a broken head of him?'
There was more of childish mischief than of coquetry in her face.
'Stay, Rhoda, I have to tell you something.'
'No need--no need. Can you think I have not heard?' and she left him to
slow enlightenment.
Thereafter brotherly solicitude and responsibility developed in
Christian, and his liking for the bright young creature grew warm, in
natural degree to match the shy preference and grateful glow that
answered for her appreciation.
Soon, so soon, his jealousy, his honest, blameless jealousy, came to be
piercingly sweet to the girl's heart. How else, when day by day Giles
instructed her of his worth with tales of his champion feats, and of all
his boyhood, its pranks and temerities, its promise by tender honour and
fortitude of the finest quality of man; when her own observation told her
that in the ranks of youth he was peerless, in strength, in outward
fashion, in character, in conduct; generous, gentle, upright; of a
sensitive conscience that urged extremes of pride and humility; and
brave. And to her this worshipful youth condescended; nay, but it was
even with deference that he honoured her and attended. One touch of
saintliness that had rarefied him was dispelled to her naughty content.
'Rhoda, my child,' said Lois, 'where is the Book? Bring it.' And away the
girl went.
Lois had found that the Bible, formerly left mostly to her sole use, had,
since Rhoda's coming, made unseen departures and returns. Well pleased
with the girl's recluse piety, she was awhile patient of its want.
'Do you leave the Book outside, child? When it is out of hand, you should
lay it back here.'
'It was in the linhay,' said Rhoda, 'and not out of hand. And do you
think 'tis I who take it? 'Tis Christian.'
'Christian!' said Lois, in a voice of such surprise that Rhoda was
disillusioned. 'Then do you never study the Book alone?'
'No,' confessed Rhoda, 'I but listen to your reading and the Church's.'
Lois was disquieted. She had ever secretly deplored the infirm masculine
constitution of Giles and Christian, who accepted from her a spiritual
ration with never a sign of genuine, eager hunger of soul. Yet this
departure was little to her liking. Though fain would she have recognised
the working of the Spirit, she dreaded rather that this was no healthy
symptom in Christian's raw development. A cruel stroke to her was this
second reserve of independence, invading the fastest hold of a mother's
influence. Back came the earlier conviction that her boy's withdrawal
from her must be for wrong-going, and the strain of watchful scrutiny
and prayer returned. It had slackened when her God had shown such favour
as to take out of her soul that iron that for years had corroded there,
that she had vainly striven to expel.
She approached Christian with a diffidence that was painful to him to
perceive; she recommended counsel in any difficulty--not her own, she
said sincerely, though with a touch of bitterness. He was embarrassed by
her close, tender surveillance.
'I have already taken counsel,' he admitted, 'and I think I have got
understanding--at least I have got certain information by heart.'
'Of his Reverence?'
'Yes.'
'Christian, you are not of the doubters?'
'No, mother, of the ignorant.'
Her piercing eyes examined his.
'Who has told you so? You did not know it of yourself. What evil
communication corrupts you?'
There was no answer but the sufficient one of the boy's conscious face.
There was that in the fire of it that inspired Lois to groan in her
heart: 'My boy has met a daughter of perdition.'
She did not miss her Bible again.
Lois's divination of the truth preceded Christian's, though again into
the presence of Diadyomene had he made his way. There he went
high-hearted on a service that sanctioned all risks--the recovery to the
fair witch of her lost soul, fair too he was sure.
When he summoned her to baptism with the first breath, she laughed him
off. No, no, she would have none of it. Let him tell her first that of
the nature of a secret, as he said he would some day. And Christian,
seeing it was indeed germane, delivered the story of the child cut off
unbaptized, to the mother's undying remorse. She rewarded him.
'And she would have cared for the little dead body to kiss! Ah, poor
mother!' she said softly and regretfully, so that his eyes grew moist.
'Diadyomene, if I die of the sea, would you be so far pitiful as to
render to her my body again?'
'No,' she mocked; 'I myself would keep it. Did I not promise as much at
the first?' Then she derided the poor limitation that would die of the
sea through foolish preference of a soul.
He took up his mission with all his best powers well ordered; but to no
purpose he persisted--she fenced too well for him. She began by denying
any value to her soul; before they ended she challenged him to prove his
own existence; and, to his amazement, he found that he could not against
her, and rude demonstration he did not dare.
He brought off with unsuccess, great joy by her least favour, sharp
stings by her least resentment, yet no suspicion that the sea-witch had
him in the toils.
Giles mending Rhoda's shoes clacked fondly: 'A pretty little foot she
has. Such a pit-a-pat little pair I never did see.'
Away to sacred white sands flew Christian's thoughts: he wondered if
slender footmarks lay there, and which way set. A little folly came into
his mind: to plant his bare feet over those dints pace by pace--delicate
near paces; for the soles of his feet to walk intimate with the mould of
hers. The little folly in his mind extended, set also his palm to the
sand, his cheek, his brow. He came to himself from foot to face tingling,
and amazed.
'A sweet, pretty wench!' was Giles's refrain. 'Eh?'
Christian assented.
'One more to my taste does not tread shoe-leather. Eh?'
With a singular expression Christian gave a 'No' of sufficient emphasis.
He looked at Rhoda and grew red.
Rhoda and Christian went amidst the fig-tree and trained it up to the
eaves. Lois and Giles looked on from the porch; when they spoke, it was
low as the rustle of the boughs. 'Young Adam and Eve' slid to Christian's
ears. He looked at Giles; saw the fond, complacent smile and the shrewd
eye; saw his mother's face, grave, concerned, tender; glanced down at
Rhoda, and met her shy, happy eyes. He understood, and like lightning
shot the revelation that with body and soul he loved Diadyomene.
CHAPTER VII
He found her curved in a nest of sleep full in the sun. Her breath was
gentle as childhood's, and as guileless her face. Her head was regal, for
the hair dried crowned it in a dark coil wound and bound with wisps of
splendid pearls.
The young lover's passion resolved itself into prayer. As never before in
his life, with concentration and fervour he importuned his God for the
redemption of her lost soul. The shadow of his crest edged her shoulder;
a movement brought to the line of her cheek the shadow of his. At that,
prayer failed for an amorous instant; eclipse dipped across her brow;
sleep parted; she was looking at him.
'Ah, Grey Eyes!' she said, and smiled.
'Be gracious by one little word, Diadyomene. Why never yet will you call
me by my name?'
'Your name? No, 'tis an ill-made name. Put it away and bear another that
I will choose.'
'I could not. Yet what would you choose?'
'Diadyomenos, may be!' she said softly, smiling.
The honour of the consort name caught his breath.
'But I could not; not even for that could I lay aside the name I had in
baptism.'
'Baptism ever!' she frowned. 'Inadvertently did I utter Diadyomenos.
Asleep, I had dreamed--of you--enfranchised.'
From scorn to regret she modulated, and his blood sang to the dominant
close.
She strained to dislocate sleep, on her back-thrown head planting both
hands. Her fingers, with careless grip, encountered the pearls; they
sprang scattering, and her dark hair drifted down. With languid
indifference she loosened and fingered the length of soft splendours;
another lustrous morsel flew and skipped to the boy's feet. Covetous
longing fastened upon it, not for its rare beauty, its immense value. A
thing that had passed through her hands and lain in her hair was to him
beyond price; and yet he forbore sternly to seek after possession,
because an honest scruple would not allow that an orient pearl could
come to his hands but by magic purveyance.
'If a name were to seek for me?' she was pleased to inquire, on the watch
for colour which sprang when her words were gracious.
'I know,' he said, 'what most fitly would express you--oh! too well, for
it is over a defect that secretions of the sea have constructed a shape
of perfect beauty; the name of a pearl only--Margaret. If you--when you
shall come to be baptized----'
'You dare!' she said, and froze him with her look.
'It has come into my mind that you may be a traitor.'
'No!'
'Hear now! Look me in the eyes and deny it if you can. It is for the sake
of another that you seek after me; that persuading, beguiling, if you can
coercing me--me--who spared you, tolerated you, inclined to you, you
would extract from the sea an equivalent for her loss, and proclaim that
her reproach is taken away.'
There was such venom in look and tone, that his face grew strained and
lost colour.
'For your sake first and foremost.'
'By no means for your own?'
'Diadyomene, I would lay down my life for you!' he breathed passionately.
'But not give up your soul--for me?'
Ever so gently she said this. The boy quivered and panted against
suspecting the words of their full worth. She directed her eyes away, to
leave him to his own interpretation. The sunlight turned them to gems of
emerald; the wind swept her hair about her clear throat; one hand clasped
the curve of her knee. Never yet had he touched her, never felt so much
as a thread of blown hair against his skin. One hand lay so near,
straitly down-pressed on the rough rock, fragile, perfect; shell-pink
were the finger-tips. He said 'No' painfully, while forth went his hand,
broad, sunburnt, massive, and in silent entreaty gently he laid it over
hers.
Cold, cold, cold, vivid, not numbing, thrills every nerve with intense
vitality, possesses the brain like the fumes of wine. The magic of the
sea is upon him.
Rocks, level sands, sky, sun, fade away; a misty whirl of the sea
embraces him, shot with the jewelled lightnings of swift living
creatures, with trains of resplendent shapes imperfectly glimpsed, with
rampant bulks veiled in the foam of their strength. A roar is in his
ears, in all his veins; acclaim and a great welcome of his presence
swells from the deep, all life there promising to him dominion.
Intangible and inarticulate the vision spins; and through it all he
knows, he feels, that beneath his palm lies the cold white hand of the
fairest of the sea-brood; he perceives dimly a motionless figure seated,
and the hand not in his clasps her knee, and the eyes look away, and the
hair drifts wide. Then to his ears through the great murmurs comes her
voice, soft and low and very clear, but as though it has come from a
great way off: 'Lay your hand upon my breast--set your lips to mine--give
up your soul.'
'Christ! Christ! ah, Lord Christ!'
Diadyomene's hand lay free. Christian stared at his palm to find that it
had not come away bleeding. His lips were grey as ashes; he shook like a
reed. With haggard eyes he regarded the serene visage where a smile
dreamed, where absent eyes did not acknowledge that she had verily
spoken. Virtue was so gone from him that he was afraid, of her, of the
sun. He dropped to his knees for escape.
When he lifted his head, it was to solitude and long shadows. Her feet
bruised his heart as he tracked the signs of her going; for they had
approached him, and then retired; they had gone toward the sea, and
half-way altered back by two paces; they had finished their course to the
gorge and again turned; there they had worked the sand. A little folly!
Enacted it was a large frenzy.
Yet he took not a single pearl away.
Heavily drove the night, heavily drove the day over Christian,
comfortless, downcast, blank. Was her going with anger and scorn divided
by pity? or with stately diffidence? adorable, rendering him most
condemnable.
The dredge rose and swung in to great sighs of labour. Black coral!
In choice branches hard from the core, all rarity was there; delicate
pink and cream, scarce green, and the incomparable black. Precious--oh!
too precious for the mart--this draught was no luck, he knew, but a gift
direct from Diadyomene; a goodwill token of her generous excuse sent for
his solace. Fair shone love in the sky, and the taste of the day grew
sweet. No scruple could hold out against this happy fortune.
When the black coral was sighted by Giles from the quay, he raised such a
shout as gathered an eager knot. In a moment one flung up a hand, palm
outwards, to display the doubled thumb. Every hand copied. Christian saw
and went hot with anger, too plainly expressed in his dangerous eyes. Yet
would he have little liked to see his treasures go from hand to hand.
'Not for present trade, I reckon?' asked Giles.
'No,' said Christian, 'my price can bide,' and he carried his prize away
with him home.
Not even Rhoda could admire and handle that coral void of offence; Lois
and Giles only. One little branch, shell-pink, took the girl's fancy; she
turned it over, frankly covetous. Christian saw by her shy eyes and
pretty, conscious smile she made sure he would presently say, 'Keep it,
cousin.' He could not. A gift, fresh from the cold white hands of the
sea-maid he loved, he could not give straightway into the ardent hold of
one who offered, he feared, to him her young love.
So sweet and dear had Rhoda grown as cousin, as sister, he hated the
suspicion that she could care for him more than he desired or deserved;
he hated himself when, loving her most, for her sake he was cold and
ungracious. Rhoda, wounded, resented the change with a touch of malice;
she allowed the advance of the handsome idler Philip, no friend of
Christian's liking, she knew, though to her his faults were not patent.
That gift withheld, on the morrow began Philip's benefit. Giles and Lois
looked on, and neither wholly condemned the girl's feminine practice.
Then what could Christian do, harassed and miserable, but return to
brotherly guardianship to keep a dear heart safe from the tampering of an
arrant trifler.
Too fatally easy was it to win her away, to keep her away. She came like
a bird to the lure, with her quick, warm response, making Christian
wretched; he gladdened a little only when he encountered Philip's scowl.
Compared with this sore trouble, but a little evil to him seemed the
sharp return of the public ban for comment on Diadyomene's gift. He was
ready to flout it as before, not heeding more ominous warnings plain in
bent thumbs, in black looks, in silences that greeted him, and in
mutterings that followed. A day came when hootings startled him out of
his obstinate indifference, when from ambush stones flew, one with bloody
effect; a later day, when a second time he had brought in too invidious
a taking.
'I sent no gift!' had declared Diadyomene, with wide, steady eyes, but
that time Christian did not believe her, though hardly with blame of the
untruth. On the morrow her second gift rose. When the boy sought her
again she disclaimed once more; and curious of his perplexity and of his
gashed face, drew from him something of his plight. Her eyes were
threatening when she said, 'Fling away, then, what you fear to take.' To
her face then he laughed for pride and joy that she should prove him.
When that same hour came round, he drew up her third gift.
He cared too little that in the interim a mischance had fallen against
him; he had at last been descried fairly within the Sinister buoys, and
chased by an unknown sail far west, escaping only under dark to circle
for home beneath midnight stars.
'O damnation!' was Giles's exclamation on the third prize. 'This won't
do--'tis too like devil's luck. Ah, lad!' He faltered, caught at
Christian, and peered in his face: 'You have not--you have not--got
fee-penny of them below!'
Christian reeled. 'Dad, O dad!' he gasped.
'Steady, lad, steady! Here come spies as usual. There's no stowing a
scrap unseen. Ah, they gape! Here, clear off home with this confounded
stuff. I'll see to the nets.'
Rhoda's eyes shone like stars, her cheeks were like angry dawn. She
hovered about Christian with open devotion, at once tender and fierce,
playing the child for some cover to that bold demonstration. Christian's
heart shrank, for he could not understand her nor appreciate her. But
Giles had a tale to unfold that brought light. Rhoda had come in flaming
from a stormy passage with Philip. He had gained her ear to hint a
warning against Christian, justifying it against her passion with a
definite charge and instance that he had the evil eye. She, loyal in
defence, carried away into attack, had rashly invaded with exasperating
strokes.
'She's made bad blood, I doubt--the little hawk!' said Giles. 'He's
mortal savage now, and there's mischief enough brewing without.'
'What do you know?'
'A sight more than I like, now I've gone to pry it out. It looks as if
not a beast has gone and died by nature or mischance, not a bone gets out
or broken, but there's a try to fix it on you with your evil eye. We've
been in the dark overlong--though an inkling I must own to.'
'I too, by token of doubled thumbs.'
'Christian,' said the old man with authority, 'never again bring in the
black or the green or any rarity; you can't afford it again.'
Christian's head rose defiantly.
'Drop your airs, you young fool! Why, your inches are enough against you
as it is. If you weren't so uppish at times, there would now be less of a
set against you.'
'On my word,' protested Christian, 'I have borne much and been silent. I
know the young cur I owe for this scar, and have I laid a finger on him?
To turn the other cheek is beyond me, I own,' he added, with some honest
regret.
It so fell out that on the very morrow that same toleration witnessed
against him fatally. From the snap of a rabid dog a child died, under
circumstances of horror that excited a frenzy against Christian, who had
been seen handling the beast after the night of stoning, when the
victim's brother it was who had marked him for life. So his iniquities
crowned the brim, to seethe over with a final ingredient when mooting
came along the coast of a trespasser off the Isle Sinister, by timing,
incontestably, the alien.
When the fleet lay spread dredging, Christian, obedient to direction from
Giles, stationed his boat in the midst; but one by one his neighbours
edged away, till he lay isolated deliberately. This manifestation of
mislike was not unexpected, but it galled that weary day when the burdens
of his life were weighing heavy.
Exceeding the gross of more solid apprehensions, Rhoda's face haunted him
to disquiet. By an unjust transfer, shame possessed him, even as when
Diadyomene had advanced naked and unabashed before his diffident eyes.
Indefinite reproach clamoured all day at his conscience, What have I
done? what have I done? And a further unanswerable question, What can I
do? beset him to no purpose.
Before his mind hung a vision of prompt, delicious escape, which he did
not banish, only because he did not think it could seriously attempt his
will. But the hours told so on the aching boy, that for once he abandoned
his own strict standard of fortitude, and his distress cried aloud to
solitude, 'Diadyomene! O my love, Diadyomene, Diadyomene!'
First, a silver shoal close beneath his eye leapt into air and slid
again; then his stare discerned a trail of weed upfloating tranquilly:
no weed, two dim hands part it to the showing of a moony countenance
graciously inquisitive, and pearly shoulders brightening as they rose,
till glistening white to the air Diadyomene lay afloat cradled by happy
waves.
'Diadyomenos!' she said softly, and her eyes invented dreams.
For an instant, so mad was Christian rendered by this consummate favour,
that he clutched the gunwale on an impulse to over-leap it finally. Like
hounds straining on the leash, natural passions tried the control of the
human soul. He dared not speak.
Diadyomene drifted gently lower with never a word more, and lower yet
imperceptibly, till her upturned face began to dim. She poised. Ah,
beautiful reluctance! Unaffronted? O heart that aches, that breaks to
give worthy response! He saw her lips moving; he knew what speech they
framed as certainly as though he could hear: your hand upon my
breast--your lips to mine--demanded of him.
Christian fell back, and crouched, and lay sobbing dry-eyed until
twilight drew.
Home he came. By the way none greeted him of all he met, and a many they
were for the hour; and none hooted after him, but shrilling whistles at
his back made him turn to wonder what was afoot. Quick figures dodged
past him and sped.
Apprehension dawned when he crossed the threshold to find two scared
women, and Giles ghastly and bandaged.
'Who did this?'
'An accident, an accident,' muttered the old man, seeing the boy ablaze
with wrath and pity before ever he heard a word.
Out came a tale of outrage: while the house was empty, Lois and Rhoda
away bleaching, the linhay had been forced, and the coral laid there,
Christian's store of precious, sacred coral, looted entire. Giles, coming
on the scene, had been tripped up and left for stunned by one unaware how
an unhappy blade had gashed his fall.
'And who did it?' said Christian, hoarse with his passion.
'Don't say!' ordered Giles, and the women were mute.
'I will know,' he cried, stamped out ungovernable, and beat away.
The three looked at each other, pale and fearful. Then Giles staggered to
his feet. 'Help me after him, wife.'
'Rhoda,' said Lois, 'go quick for his Reverence--if he be abroad, follow
him quick.'
Seething with just indignation, Christian sped reckless after vengeance.
Alarm of his coming sprang up and flew before him along the shore. Thence
struck the ring of axes, thence shone the flare of torches, showing a
black, busy swarm. Like a wounded beast he yelled out once: the Beloved,
his boat, lay there under torture and dismemberment. Then he hurled upon
the throng, raging to kill.
Two went down instantly, damaged for life under his bare hands, but the
rest by sheer weight of numbers overbore him. Axes rose imminent, but
there was no room for a sure stroke in the close, desperate wrestle.
Thrice Christian gained his feet again; then had he no need to strike any
man but once; those he gripped in the downfall had broken bones of him.
Cries and curses thickened, he only fought mute. Foul strokes on him were
fair enough: they struck him together, they struck from behind, they
caught him by the knees and toppled him down, they fell on him prostrate,
they trampled and kicked. He was on his feet again, breathed and fain,
when one from behind got in a stroke at his head with a spar; then he
flung up his hands and dropped among them.
When Christian came to himself he was made fast hand and foot. Torches
and dark figures flashed and swayed before his giddy sight; all round
they hemmed him in. He wanted sense, remembrance, and settled vision.
What meant this savage, cruel hate looking out of every face? these
yells, curses, and accusations dinning at his ears? He was bound upright
in the midst--where? no, where! One came and wrenched off remnants of his
shirt; another stood by making ready. The wretched boy understood, and
strained and struggled desperately for freedom.
Such a scene was not unprecedented among the fishers. According to a
rough, unwritten law, the punishment of thieves they took into their own
hands, and enforced confession and restitution. Scrupulous to a fault,
honourable, proud, Christian maddened at the intolerable degradation
threatening. A thief's portion dealt out to him! the shame of it he could
not bear.
The circle of pitiless, excited eyes watched the swell of splendid
strength expended to exhaustion against stock and cord. He could not
escape from bonds; he could not escape from life; with bleeding wrists,
panting, trembling, sane, impotence confronted him with his inevitable
award.
The shame of it he had to bear. And he could not even effectually hide
his face.
He heard the common formula when confession was demanded concerning
unlawful takings. Truly his eyes looked wicked then, and his teeth showed
in a vicious grin. He heard more, charges so monstrous, that he deemed
them sprung of mere insolent mockery, or else of delirium. Dead silence
fell, that he might answer. He would not. Oh, frenzy was returning,
revolting him against meet despair.
The pain that he had to bear broke upon his body.
Of all the watching throng, none pitied him, none questioned the just
rigour of any penal extreme upon him. To the long distrust and the later
developed abhorrence, the day had brought forth a new fierce lust after
vengeance, exasperated now the might of his hands, superhuman, had done
such terrible work. None but with pulse of satisfaction must keep time to
the stroke of the subjugated boy's long torture; none but would reckon
long fortitude to his last discredit.
How long? How long? As, motionless and bleeding, he gave no sign of
failing endurance, resentment kindled against his indomitable obstinacy,
and silence for his benefit no longer held. A mutter ran: 'The devil has
cared for his own--he cannot feel.' And to make sure that he had not
passed from consciousness, a torch was shifted to show his face. It was
pale as death, and beaded with great sweat; but his eyes were wide and
steady, so they cursed and went on.
The long-suffering northern spirit, the hardy carcass that did not give
out, excelling the make of the south, outstayed the patience of
animosity. High upon a clamour swelling anew one cried, 'Try fire!'
snatched a torch, and tested the substance of an arm. It was Philip. When
Christian's eyes struck at his he defied them with his thumb.
Yelled a confused chorus: 'There, see there! proof enough. Make an end of
the creature! Send him back to the devil by the way he came!' The note of
death was recognised of the victim; he blessed it, for his agony was
great.
But a little way on was the stretch of sand where, fourteen years before,
the sea had cast up a bright alien child. Thither was drawn the
half-killed boy; and there, made fast to a mooring-post, with his face
set to the sea, knee-deep in the tide, he was left to die. Along the
shore pickets were formed to preclude a miscarriage to justice; and
there, while the sea trod forward, the flame of mob violence died down to
its underglow of settled vengeance, and torches were douted and silence
fell as the eyes of men began to shirk their fellows', and their ears to
prickle at a word.
Christian lifted his head to comprehend immense clear spaces of sea and
night, and a black triumph. Not death was before him now, but a new life.
Hopeless patience departed before passions during long torture
suppressed, and infernal laughter rolled in his heart at the prospect of
a consummate vengeance when the powers of the sea should work with his
will. He knew she would come. Undoubting the extent of her knowledge, her
power, her gracious surveillance, he knew she would come, to offer a
splendid exchange for death. O excellent compensation! The touch of her
hand, the touch of her lips, the opening world of vast delight, and
therewith power to satiate all his hates.
With every breath torment heaved over him still; raging thirst was there
for fierce affliction, the cruel sting of brine touched his wrists,
appalling in its promise of intolerable exasperation to raw wounds. Would
she come, as before, with sweet despatch if he could call 'Diadyomene'?
But he would not; because of other ears he would not utter her name; nor
ever because of other eyes entreat her from the cover of the wave. Ah
God, he prayed, give me heart to endure!
His sight was unsteady, so that the whirling of the stars and the
exaggerated swell of the slow waves vexed his failing brain. But he dared
not close his eyes, lest, ignoring her advent, he should lose her and
die.
The disworship of an earlier hour, the comfortless void days, the bitter,
hard reserves, drew form from delirium; they stood in rank, hateful
presences, deriding the outcast: but to pass, he knew, as a sleeper can
know of a dream--to pass when the magic of the sea should flow through
his veins. My past washed out and my soul drowned.
Ah God, he prayed, grant that I remember! Ah God, he prayed, grant
that I forget! Strong hate and strong affection rose dominant in
turn. Stronger rose affection: through waves of delirium the dear
home faces came and looked at him; the reproach of their eyes
pierced deep. What have I done--what can I do? he challenged. God
keep you all, dears! Oh, shut your eyes, there is no other way. And
still they looked--Lois--Giles--Rhoda--sorrow of condemnation,
sorrow of pity, sorrow of amazement; till before their regard he
shrank and shuddered, for they delivered to his conscience a hard
sentence--his God, their God, willed that he should die.
The tide was up to his belt before ever the human soul staggered up to
wrestle. Too swiftly now it rose; too short was the span of life left. He
was not fit to die: evil impulses, passions black as murder, were so live
and strong in him. He could not die--he could not. To be enforced from
mere life were bitter; to choose noble death were bitter; but to choose
such a death as this, pitiful, obscure, infamous, to eschew such a life
as that, glorious, superlative,--too hard, too cruel a trial was this for
human endurance--he could not do it.
Yet he prayed voiceless: Diadyomene, Diadyomene, haste to deliver me; for
the will of God roars against me, and will devour.
For pity, dear faces, keep off, or she may not come. She would quit me of
this anguish--who could will to bear this gnawing fire? They, too, shall
have torment, and die with horrors. The waves shall batter and break,
and sharks shall tear their live limbs piece-meal, and down in the ooze
coils of serpents shall crush them out. Ah God! ah God! I love her so.
Would hell be undesirable if you were there, or heaven perfect if you
were not? O poor soul, poor soul! who will have mercy? Kiss her, mother,
dear; upon her breast lay your hand when she comes. O poor mother, who
had not a little dead body to kiss! Go, go--I cannot bear your eyes. I
want----Ah, ah, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
He surrendered, and the tide was breast high.
Solitude drifted back, and cleared vision without and within. The
despotism of torture succeeded on the exclusion of throes more virulent.
He prayed for swift death, yet shrank humanly as promise swung hard at
his face. He prayed against Diadyomene, and yet strove with wide eyes to
prevent the darkness, quailing, pulsing at gleam of wave and sweep of
weed. He would give up his soul if it were possible, not for carnal
exchange, but that hers might revive.
Would she of the cold sea nature care greatly for his death? Would she
remember where the outcast body lay, and fulfil her word uttered in scorn
to lay sea-blossoms about the skull? Dead, void of pain, unresponsive to
her touch could he be! O fair, calm life of the sea! O fair, calm
sea-queen! No, no, not for him--death, only death, for him. God's
merciful death.
The enfeebled brain fails again; sense and will flicker out into misty
delirium; from helpless memory a reek distils, and the magic of the sea
is upon him.
Through waves heaving gigantically to isolate him from the world, the
flash and spin of eager life beckoned the blood left in him; great
strengths loomed, his on the loosening of knots of anguish; a roar ran in
his veins, noise and tremor beating through him, fluid to it but for his
bones. Came trampling and singing and clapping, promising welcome to
ineffable glories, ravishing the heart in its anguish to conceive of a
regnant presence in the midst. Coming, coming, with ready hands and lips.
Came a drench, bitter-sweet, enabling speech: like a moan it broke weak,
though at his full expense, 'Diadyomene.' Came she.
Delirium flashes away. Face to face they hang, shattered life and lost
soul. He shudders hard. 'Deliver us from evil,' he mutters, and bows his
head for a fatal breath and escape.
CHAPTER VIII
'Too late. Wait till the tide go down. What was there?'
Hearts quailed at the sound that drove in, for it was not the last voice
of a spent mortal, but shrill, but fierce, but like the first voice of
his indignant ghost. Four only did not recoil; the rest, half-hearted
brought to the rescue, urged again: 'Wait till the tide go down,' pulling
back the two women from insane wading. But Giles was forward, staggering
in the tide, floundering impotent against it; and his Reverence turned
upon them as intolerable a countenance as when through his black flock he
drove, threatening the curse of Heaven. Therefore two, though loath, swam
out to fetch in the boy's body. They cut the ropes from him, and lifted
him along with the waves to hard land.
Rhoda shrieked at sight of the deathly inertness and the rent flesh, and
hopeless, fell to an anguish of weeping; but Giles and Lois, tearless,
mute, with hand and ear over his heart, sought and sought for sign of
life, finding none. Pitiless aid brought a torch, and held it to dispel
all hope of a flicker of life. Could any look on the sad, serene face and
still pronounce him worthy of death, worthy the burial of a dog? They
did, even those whom kindness to the parents had constrained far, for
among themselves they said: 'Persuade them away, and his Reverence. Best
to serve the body with its grave quick and meet, in the sea, lest they
want it laid in holy ground.' But Lois, who would not believe her son yet
dead, and Giles, who could not believe him still alive, would have and
hold him, living or dead, and none with heart of flesh could withstand
them. So the limp, lifeless burden was taken up along the weary shore,
past the doors of the street, close shut every one, and delivered to the
weak shelter of home for the nonce.
Against life and decent burial had Christian's last desire been: these to
impose was all the service great love for him could conceive, though the
broken body, dreadful to see, dreadful to handle, made silent appeal
against a common valuation of life. Through tireless effort to provoke
breath despair hovered, hour-long, till response came in a faintest
flutter of life at lips and heart; and chafed with cordials and wrapped
about with warmth, the shadow of pain drew over his face and weak spasms
flexed his hands as tyrannous vitality haled back the reluctant spirit
into bondage. His eyes opened upon them with sense and recognition, a
feeble effort to move fetched a groan, and again he relapsed deathlike.
So and again all through the long night watches the desperate debate of
life and death lasted.
Through close window and door the sigh of the night and the moan of the
far sea spoke continually, and covered to dull and finite ears the sound
of the sunrise coming over the distant hills.
Not dead, and not dead, and yet again not dead! With that recurrent
stroke of sense was welded again the mortal unit half gone to
dissolution. Day came filtering in on wan faces brightened to fearful
hope, for Christian assuredly lived and would live: consciousness held,
and his eyes waked and asked. The four knelt together, and thanked their
God aloud for his life, tears running free; he turned his head away in
great despair, knowing that he was condemned.
Whose prayers should prevail, theirs or his? He must die: he would die.
But every hour brought firmer denial to his pitiful desire for death.
What had he done, his anguish cried up to heaven, that his God should
withhold an honest due? For death and its blessed ease and safety had he
renounced the glorious sea-life, not for this intolerable infliction of a
life miserable, degraded, branded for ever with memory of one disgraceful
hour.
Fever declared that always still he stood within a circle of fire; his
skin was hot with the heat of men's eyes; the stroke of his blood was
pain and shame that he had to bear; always, always so it would be.
Healing came to close the wounds of his body, but the incurable wounds of
a proud spirit gaped and bled hot and fresh, and even under the pitying
eyes of love quivered and shrank. A sound from the outer world, of
footstep or voice, crushed him intolerably under fresh weights of
degradation.
The sound of footstep and voice would start hasty barring of shutter and
door, hinting to him that his doom of life was yet remittant.
With infinite caution, and despite his great weakness and pain, he got
his knife into his own secret keeping. Out of sight it lay bare for a
fond hand to kiss its sweet keen line: life held some blisses it could
promise him yet.
Indefinite revenge was not enough: the thought of actual elaborate murder
grew so dear, he would not for any price forgo it. Himself would be
satisfied, his hands, his eyes, his ears, with the circumstances of a
bloody despatch from life of him, and him, and him, each witness of his
torture and shame, beneath whose remembered eye his spirit now shrieked
and writhed. Let him so doing perish body and soul. So low in the dust
lay he, the dear hope of Lois, because the heart of his pride was broken.
Imperfectly he heard a young voice passionately urging for vengeance,
retribution, redress, asking after the law of the land against a brutal
custom carried to unaccustomed extreme.
Redress! His eyes he shut when his lips bade the girl believe that he had
no desire to invoke any earthly powers to avenge his wrongs. On his hand
her tears fell like rain; she bowed her head at his knees, with wonder
within at the christian saint of so perfect a heart. Back to bare steel
crept his hand, tear-wet.
But his fierce hate betrayed him. A gust of fever and madness lifted him
up, enraged at the body unready, the burnt right arm unready; his left
hand and the devil in him snatched out the knife, and drove it at the
planks on his level in one instant of exuberant capacity. In and out
again it went; he sobbed a great laugh for the cost and its sufficiency,
and with spent force fell back a-sweat. Swift in trod Lois, and he was
still, with the blade out of sight, not knowing that clean through the
inches of wood the bright blade had looked in a line of sunlight straight
to his mother's eye.
She was not gentle then, nor cared for his hurts; with quick mastery of
him while he cowered and winced in nerveless collapse, she discovered and
plucked away his naked paramour. Dumb-struck she stood in accomplished
dismay. Into the impotent wretch defiance entered; with insolent
assertion his eyes affronted hers; unmasked, from his face looked the
very truth of hatred and lust of blood, shameless at exposure.
Mother and son drew breath for battle.
'What name shall I call you by?' she cried. 'You have borne that name of
Christ all your life, and now do renounce His cross.'
'Diadyomenos' sang to him out of the past.
'Your face is the face of Cain already, not the face of my son, my dear
son given me by the mercy of God. It is like the curse of God!'
She fell on her knees and grasped him hard. Her prayers came upon him
like terrible strokes; heaviest to reach him were prayers to her God. He
would not answer nor say amen; his own one passionate prayer had been
unregarded, and he hardened his heart.
'I took you from the death of the sea, and loved you and cared for you as
more to me than the child of my body. And when with manhood and freewill
came trial by sorrow and pain--hard, oh! hard indeed--then I saw my
blessing in you and touched reward. My son, my son, the son that never
was, was brave and patient and long-suffering and meek, because he lay at
the feet of the Lord Christ a faithful follower and servant; he never
complained, nor cherished an evil hate; he forgave, and asked that none
should avenge him. Who then, among mothers, could rejoice as I, and so
glory in her son? Ah! ah! like a serpent tongue it flickered in the
sunlight! Christian, the wretchedest of mothers asks you to have mercy
upon her. Ah, you will--must. I will not rise from my knees, nor take my
hands from you, except you promise to put vengeance out of your heart.
Your hate blasts me, me first before all others. Your blade threatens my
heart, will pierce it through if it strike for another's.' She was
moaning for woe of that hurt. He turned his face away, obdurate still,
though the reproach of undeserved esteem had gone deep as any of
undeserved shame.
The moaning fell into low prayer. The guilty soul heard that it was not
for him she prayed; the old weary penitence for an unredeemed
transgression was all her burden now: a sign she asked, one little sign
that her poor effort at atonement was not rejected of Heaven. He would
not give it; no, he could not. Yet he dreaded that her strenuous
supplication must win response, in his great ignorance half believing
that some power from above would, against his will, force him to
concession.
He looked again at the dear grey head abased in his unworthy presence out
of endless remorse for one error. Her God did not answer. Himself was
weary of her importunity, weary of the pain of her hands: and he loved
her so! And her God did not answer: and he loved her so!
Silently he laid his hand upon hers. His eyes were full of tears, as he
said, 'Kiss me, mother.' She had conquered: he promised.
'Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God!' she said; and he repeated,
'Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God.'
'Mother, mother, pray that I may die!' and then he broke down utterly and
wept like a child, and was not even ashamed.
Ah, poor mother! Soon she came to know that when her son gave up his will
to her he shut up his heart the faster. His misery never spoke, but
silent tears would flow unchecked and unconcealed, and she could give him
no comfort.
Helpless need like his is a shadow of the Almighty by which men believe;
but he could not with a right heart pray because, though he had renounced
vengeance, forgiveness was a thing apart and impossible.
How to bear the world and its eyes was the prospect that filled his sky.
All his waking hours his heart gazed and gazed thereat, and stayed
unacquainted, still, and appalled.
Now that in sleep blood was out of his dreams a vision cruelly sweet
came in place, and he was in the presence of Diadyomene, following her,
reaching to her, close to her, yet never quite winning the perfect
pressure of her lips, nor her gracious surrender to the worship of his
hand; and waking was to unrighteous regret that he had turned from that
splendid offer and lost it.
Too swift and few ran the suns, and the inevitable time was at hand for
bearing the world and its eyes under the hard bond of his promise. The
youth and vigour of his body set him on his feet oversoon, while all the
soundness his spirit had gained was trembling for its weakness, fear for
its cowardice, shame for its shame.
'Where shall he go?'
'Christian,' said Lois, 'where will you go?'
He wondered what she said. Open talk had passed over him unregarded; he
had lost the knack of understanding except he tried hard.
Giles sighed. 'Far, indeed, far; for where is our boy not known, the best
fisher for his years, the best at sail and oar, the strongest proved in
the pick of the coast. Far, indeed, for him not to be known.'
That Christian understood, for he broke silence hoarsely.
'Say out: far indeed for him not to be known as beaten for a thief,
drowned like a dog.'
Rhoda's hand slipped to his, unseen; she drew it softly against her lips.
He did not heed.
'My boy,' said Lois, 'what will you do?'
'Mother, do you bid me go?'
His hot brain knew of a grand enclosure where satisfying coolness and
peace and splendid shade reigned, for no man's solace and award.
'You bid me go?'
'Dare you stay?' she said, 'dare I bid you?'
His voice shook. 'What sort--of killing?' he asked, daunted now.
Giles swore softly after the manner of his kind, under danger of tears.
'Where are your senses, lad? Great storms can't last. This is over, his
Reverence will tell you that. Not twice in a lifetime, I guess, can the
devil brew the like.'
'You bid me go?'
'Not now, not yet,' said Lois tremulously; 'but sin and shame were to
keep you to a trial beyond your strength.'
He said quite brokenly: 'You are looking for a broken promise.'
'Not that. Only--only, we know that 'twould be easier for you to face
stranger folk, and hard though it be to let you go, far harder were it
for you to stay, and we cannot ask it.'
Christian's head sank: they all knew that he had not strength nor courage
to stand upright under a disgraced life; he need but acquiesce for the
last spark of self-respect to be extinct.
It was long before he lifted his head; Rhoda only was there. He asked
after Lois. She had gone with his Reverence up towards the church. He
asked after Giles. He had gone down to the quay to his work of refitting
the old boat.
Tears stung his brain for the wicked destruction of his own boat, that
like a living creature he had loved, and had not saved, and could not
avenge.
Rhoda left him but for a moment; passing out to the linhay, the door she
left ajar.
Christian stood up, touched his brow once or twice with uncertain
fingers, drew sharp breath, crossed himself, and stept out into the
world.
He reeled in the sunlight. Its enmity struck at him, and he put up his
hands against an unknown trouble, for in through his eyes into his brain
flew strange little white birds and nested there and were not still.
He alone stood upright in the midst of a rocking world; under his feet
walked the path, the road, the street, bringing up an ambush of eyes, and
grey birds and fire.
In the street his coming started a scare. Only yesterday said he was long
a-dying, so that now women fell back afraid of a ghost, for with every
trace of sunburn gone his face was of a whiteness astonishing in the
south. But some harder men cursed at the stubborn devil in the boy, that
kept him alive out of all reckoning, and unsubdued. Face to face none met
him till the corner where the street beached and the quay branched. There
stood an idle group that suddenly gave before a reeling, haggard
embodiment of hatred.
These very eyes he knew again, and the one memory within them legible;
hot, red-hot, they burned him. Red birds and black flew in and sounded
shrill, and beak and claw tore at a little nook where a promise lay
shrunk and small. Again he crossed himself, and passed on, till none
stood between him and the sea.
Hot, smooth sand stretched curving round the bay with the hard, grey quay
lying callous upon it; tall masts peered, windows gleamed and glared, and
behind him lay a lifetime of steep street. But strong salt gusts spoke
to him from the blessed, lonely sea. The tide was leaping in fast and
white; short waves crested and glittered over the expanse of moving blue.
Rhoda caught his sleeve and stood beside him panting and trembling,
amazed at his strength and temerity.
Just set afloat by the tide, the old boat rocked against the quay; but
Giles was pottering afar, and did not see, and could not hear. The weak
pair made forward with one consent, till at the boat Christian halted and
stept down.
Along the quay came lounging hateful curiosity; Philip was there, with
half a score more. Rhoda faced round bravely; her fear was overborne by
intense indignation; she was half a child still, loyal, reckless, and
wild to parade before one and all her high regard for the victim of their
brutal outrage: her esteem, her honour, her love. From the quay above she
called to Christian, knelt, reached across, took him by the neck, and
kissed him there for all the world to see. Afterwards she knew that all
the child in her died on the kiss and left her full woman.
She kissed him first, and then she saw into his eyes: Christian was mad.
In terror she sprang up, looking for help vainly and too late. Giles was
far off, slow of hearing, slow of foot; and the madman was casting off,
and the boat began to rock away. In desperation she leapt across the
widening interspace, and fell headlong and bruised beside him. The boat
slanted off and went rollicking over the tumbled waves. All his mad mind
and his gathered strength were given to hoist the sail.
Far back had the quay floated when the desperate girl rose. Giles was
discernable making vehement gestures of recall. She stood up and answered
with imploring hands, and with useless cries too. Christian never heeded.
Then she even tried her strength against him, but at that the mad eyes
turned so fierce and dangerous that she shrank away as though he had
struck her.
None of the coral fleet was out on the rising wind and sea, and stray
sails were standing in; yet Christian, frantically blind, was making for
his old station on the fishing shoals. The old boat went eagerly over the
waves under a large allowance of sail; the swift furrow of her keel
vanished under charging crests. Low sank the shore, the dark verdure of
it faded, the white houses of it dimmed. The strong, terrible sea was
feeling his strength as a god when his pulses stir him to play.
Overhead a sea-gull dipped and sailed; it swooped low with a wild note.
Christian looked up and laughed aloud. In an instant the boat lay for the
west, and leaped and quivered with new speed.
Scudding for harbourage, under a corner of sail, two stout luggers
passed; and the men, watching their mad course, waved to warn, and
shouted unheard. Then Rhoda stood up and signalled and screamed for help.
She thought that the wind carried her cry, for both boats put about and
headed towards them. Hope rose: two well-manned boats were in pursuit.
Terror rose: in an instant Christian, to a perilous measure of sail added
more, and the boat, like a maddened, desperate thing, went hurling,
bucking, smashing, over the waves, against the waves, through the waves.
Rhoda shut her eyes and tried to pray, that when the quivering, groaning
planks should part or sink, and drop her out of life, her soul should
stand at its seemliest in her Maker's sight. But the horrible lurches
abating, again she looked. Pursuit was abandoned, soon proved vain to men
who had lives of value and a cargo of weight: they had fallen back and
were standing away.
The sun blazed on his downward stoop, with a muster of clouds rolling to
overtake him before he could touch the edge of the world. In due time
full storm would come as surely as would the night.
Christian over the gunwale stared down. He muttered to himself; whenever
a white sea-bird swooped near he looked up and laughed again. Wild and
eager, his glance turned ever to the westward sea, and never looked he to
the sky above with its threat of storm, and naught cared he for the peril
of death sweeping up with every wave.
A dark coast-line came forward, that Rhoda knew for the ominous place
that had overshadowed Christian's life. The Isle Sinister rose up, a blot
in the midst of lines of steady black and leaping white.
Over to the low sun the clouds reached, and half the sky grew splendid
with ranges of burnished copper, and under it the waves leaped into
furious gold. Rhoda's courage broke for the going down of her last sun;
she wept and prayed in miserable despair for the life, fresh and young,
and good to live, that Christian was wantonly casting away with his own.
No hope dare live with night and storm joining hands, and madness driving
on the cruelest coast known.
On they drove abreast of the Isle Sinister.
He clung swaying to the tiller, with groaning breath, gaping with a wide
smile and ravenous looks fixed intently. A terror of worse than death
swept upon Rhoda. She fell on her knees and prayed, shrieking: 'Good Lord
deliver us!'
Christian looked at her; for the only time with definite regard, he
turned a strange dazed look to her.
A violent shock flung her forward; the dash of a wave took her breath;
the boat lurched aslant, belaboured by wave on wave, too suddenly headed
for the open sea. The tiller broke from his nerveless hands, and like a
log he fell.
Rhoda's memory held after no record of what her body did then, till she
had Christian's head on her knee. Had she mastered the great peril of the
sail? had she fastened the rudder for drifting, and baled? she whose
knowledge and strength were so scanty? Her hands assured her of what her
mind could not: they were chafed by their frantic hurry over cordage.
She felt that Christian lived; yet nothing could she do for him, but
hold him in her arms, giving her body for a pillow, till so they should
presently go down together, and both be safely dead.
The buoy-bells jangled to windward, to leeward. Then spoke the blessed
voices of the three Saints, and a light showed, a single murky star in a
great cave of blackness, that leaned across the zenith to close round the
pallid west. Ah, not here, not here in the evil place! She had rather
they drown in the open.
The weak, desolate girl was yet clinging desperately to the barest chance
of life. She laid her burden down; with awkward, aching hands she
ventured to get out a corner of sail; and she tried to steer, but it was
only by mercy of a flaw of wind that she held off and went blindly
reeling away from the fatal surf. As night came on fully the light and
the voice of the House Monitory passed away, and the buoy-bells, and the
roar of breakers, and the heavy black of the coast. Past the Land's End
in the free currents of open sea, she let the boat drive.
Crouching down again, she took up the dear weight to give what shelter
she could, and to gain for herself some, for great blasts drove hard,
and furious gusts of rain came scourging. Through the great loneliness of
the dark they went, helpless, driving on to the heart of the night, the
strength of the waves still mounting, and the fierceness of the wind; the
long gathering storm, still half restrained, to outleap in full hurricane
about the time of midnight.
CHAPTER IX
All night Lois and Giles were praying in anguish of grief for their
children of adoption, even when hope was beaten out by the heavy-handed
storm. For three days and nights the seas were sailless, though the hulks
of two wrecks were spied drifting; and after, still they ran so high,
that a fifth day dawned before a lugger beat in aside her course on a
kindly errand. Then up the street leapt news to the desolate pair: how
Rhoda and Christian lived; how their boat had been run down in the night,
and themselves snatched gallantly from death; how they had been put
ashore at the first port a mastless ship could win, and there received by
the pity of strangers; and how all the while Christian lay raving and
dying, and by now must be dead.
But to hope reborn this last was unbelievable. Lois said she should find
him alive and to live, since Heaven had twice willed him to escape the
jaws of death. And her heart of confidence she kept for more than two
weary days of difficulty and delay. But when she reached his bed her hope
wavered; she saw a shorn head, and a face blanched and bloodless like
bone, fallen out of a shape she knew into strange hollows, with eyes
showing but a glassy strip, and grey, breathless lips. 'To-night,' said
Rhoda.
Breathless also through the night they watched till came the first shiver
of dawn. Then his eyelids rose; he looked with recognition at Lois, and
moved a hand towards hers; and with a quiet sigh his eyes closed, not for
death, but for blessed, feverless, breathing sleep.
The one who wept then was Lois, and Rhoda clasped her in a passionate
embrace of comfort, and herself shed no tear.
The child had deserted Rhoda for ever, as the boy Christian. She knew it:
she had kissed her childhood dead on his lips, and now past any recall it
had been buried, and lay deep under such a weight of sorrow as fate can
hew only for a woman full. No tear she shed, no word she said, and she
ordered her face to be serene.
She had a word for Lois not at first to be understood. 'God has been good
to heal,' she would say; but the whole truth did not declare till Lois,
regarding the future again, had sighed: 'Where shall he go?' 'Home,' said
Rhoda. Lois shook her head sadly: 'He could not bear it.' The girl, with
arms round her neck and a hid face, whispered again: 'God has been good
to heal--I think so--do you not know it yet?'
So a day came when a wasted shadow of the old Christian was borne along
the quay and up the street, while men and women stept out to observe.
Their eyes he met with placid recognition, clear of any disquiet.
The devil had gone out of the fellow at last, they said, when he could
not lift a hand for injury, nor gloom a resentful look. And so hard
doings were justified; and none intolerant could begrudge him the life he
had brought away, even before a guess began that he had not brought away
his full wits.
Out in the porch he would come to bask in the sun for hours with animal
content. Out to the gate he would come, going weakly to and fro as he was
bid. But Giles was surly to men, and to women Lois was iron cold, and
Rhoda had deft ways of insult to repulse unwelcome intrusion; and so for
a little while those three guarded him and kept close the secret of his
ruin.
Then one at an unguarded moment won in, and spied, and carried her report
of his mild, his brute-mild gaze, and his slow labour of speech: it was
the mother of Philip. Rhoda found a token of her left beside Christian, a
well-intended, small peace-offering, in a cheese of her sole make.
'Who brought this?' she asked; and he told.
'She offered it--to you?'
'To us,' he returned quietly.
'And you took it--thanked her and took it?'
He looked up and studied her face for enlightenment.
'The mother was not here.'
Rhoda's passion surged over. 'How dared she, how dared she!' she stormed,
and seized on the poor gift, cast it down, stamped it into the sandy
path, and spurned it over the sweet herbs into the sluggy kail beyond.
Like a child, chidden for some uncomprehended fault, he looked at her,
distressed at her condemnation, anxious to atone, wondering if his senses
told him true. Her anger failing under an agony of pity and remorse, from
the unendurable pain of his look she fled to hide her passionate weeping.
When Lois came out to Christian he was deeply asleep.
Soon he carried into the street his brute-mild gaze, and his slow labour
of speech. And no thumb turned against him. For all who chose to peer in
on his blank mind found how shame and rancour could take no root in a
void of memory. He met every face with an even countenance, showing no
recall of a debt to any.
In a very literal sense it was now said that the devil had gone out of
him. Willing belief held that he had been actually possessed, and
delivered only when a right instinct of severity had spoiled him for
habitation. Some compunction showed over the mooted point whether the
pitiful lasting flaw had not rather come of the last spite of an evicted
devil, than of the drastic measures of exasperated men.
In nowise did Christian's reason now work amiss, though it was slow and
heavy; nor had his memory lost all its store, nor quite its power to
store. Of earlier days his remembrance was clear and complete though a
little unready, but of passing hours some only did not float clean out of
mind to be forgotten. This was a deficiency that mended by degrees, and
in time bid fair to pass. Where the break began, none who loved him
ventured to discover. Once when, as shall be told, Giles incautiously
touched, Christian turned a dazed, painful face, and grew white and
whiter, and presently laid his head down on his arms and slept deeply. In
those days frequent slumbers fell, and for the most part memory was
blurred behind them.
Lois in her heart sometimes had a secret doubt that oblivion had not
entirely satisfied him. His reason seemed too serviceable to lie down
without an effort; and it was hard to imagine how it could account for
certain scars that his body would carry to the grave; or account for the
loss of two boats--the old drudge and his own murdered Beloved. Yet when
in his presence they held anxious debate on the means to a new boat, he
listened and made no comment.
The poor wronged household was hardly set. Restitution was unlooked for,
and not to be enforced, for woe betide any who against the tyranny of the
fishers' law invoked higher powers and another code. Though now the alien
was tolerated under a milder estimate, an outcast he remained, and none
were so hardy as to offer fellowship with him and his. The cost of a boat
was more than Giles could contrive on his own poor securities, and none
could he find to share for profit or risk in any concern that Christian
would be handling. It was only on his Reverence offering surety for
instalments that the dread of ruin and exile for one and all passed them
by, and means to a livelihood were obtained.
Together, as in the long past days when Christian was yet a child, and
Giles was still hale, the old man and the young returned to daily toil on
the coral shoals. Giles was the better man of the two at the first, for
necessity had admitted of no delay; but as the younger gained in strength
the elder lost; by the month's end his feeble stock of strength,
overdrawn, failed suddenly, not enough remaining for him to potter about
the quay as before. In months succeeding, his goings came to be
straitened, first to the garden, then to the house, then to one seat, one
bed. Before the year's end it was to be to the straitest lodging of
all--green turfed.
Alone, quite alone again, with sea and sky whispering together round him,
and no sail near, well might those who loved Christian pray for him
hourly.
His first return was so late that terrors beset all three. The two women
were on the quay when his boat glided in under dusk, and up he stept with
a load. The hearts of both were beating thick for dread of a rich load
that would blast him afresh, for thus in old days had he glided in at
dusk.
But what he bore was only his nets, which he dropped before them. He
stood silent and downcast. They saw that one of the cross-beams was
broken; they saw that the meshes were torn incredibly.
They saw that he was waiting in dumb distress to be told by them if he
were to blame. Ah, dear aching hearts! not a word, not a look was there
to weigh on him in his disappointment. Rhoda stripped off the netting and
carried it home, with a gay boast of proving her proficiency, for she had
learned net-making from Christian in his idle days of weakness. Half the
next day she sat mending, and was proud of her finished task, expecting
some reward of praise. But it never came. The fresh netting he had taken
he brought back torn hideously, so that dismay fell.
Christian and Giles together had met only poor luck, but here came a
stroke of so deliberate an aim that the word misfortune seemed
indifferent to describe it.
And this was but the beginning of a long course; again and again
Christian returned with spoiled nets; and, even on better days, few there
were when his takings were not conspicuously poor in amount and quality.
Such loss was the graver since an instalment was due at the season's
close, and except the dawning autumn brought fair success, sore straits
would come with the winter.
Rhoda proved good for bread-winning. Before, she had practised
lace-making, taught her at the convent school, and now she turned to it
with all her energy. Early and late found her bending over her pillow. No
more net-mending for her: for the sake of unroughened hands she had to
leave that to Christian and the elders. Yet her work was but poorly paid,
and the sale uncertain.
As autumn came in, Christian still gained in physical strength up to near
his old level; but Giles declined slowly, Lois grew thin and worn, and
Rhoda was losing something of her bloom.
The heart of the old man yearned over the girl, and he knew that his time
was but brief. For hours he would sit and watch, fondly and sadly, her
dear bent head and her hands playing over her pillow in a patch of light
under the pinned-back blind. At last he told Christian his heart, even
Christian.
'Take care of my little maid, lad.'
He answered 'Ay,' stupidly.
'For I reckon I may not be here long to care for her myself.'
That was all he said at first, but that he would say often for some days,
till he was sure that Christian had taken the sense in full, and had
failed to quite disbelieve his foreboding.
'Before I lie down in the dark, I would like main to hear you take oath
on it, lad.'
'I take oaths never,' said Christian mechanically.
'Right, right! save in this wise: before God's altar with ring and
blessing.'
Christian examined his face long to be sure of understanding; then he
said, 'No.'
Giles was disappointed, but spite of the absolute tone he would not take
a negative.
'When I am gone to lie yonder east and west, and when some day the wife
shall come too to bed with me, how will you take care of my little maid?
her and her good name?'
'Oh, God help us!'
'Look you to it, for I doubt she, dear heart, cares for you--now--more
than for her mere good name.'
'How can she!' he muttered.
Said Giles hazardously: 'Once I knew of a girl such as Rhoda; as shy and
proud and upright; and a lad she liked,--a lad, say, such as you,
Christian, that she liked in her heart more than he guessed. Until he got
shamefully mistook, miscalled, mishandled, when she up and kissed him at
open noon in the face of all. And then, I mind, at need she followed him
over seas, and nought did her good heart think on ill tongues. There is
Rhoda all over.'
He watched askance to see what the flawed wits could do, and repented of
his venture; for it was then Christian so paled and presently so slept.
But Giles tried again.
'Do you mind you of the day of Rhoda's coming? Well, what think you had I
at heart then? You never had a guess? You guess now.'
Christian said, 'I will not.'
'Ah! lad, you do. And to me it looked so right and fit and just. That the
wife might gainsay, I allowed; but not you. No; and you will not when I
tell you all.
'Christian, I do not feel that I have left in me another spring, so while
I have the voice I must speak out, and I may not let you be.
'You know of Rhoda's birth: born she was on the same night as our child.
As for me, I could not look upon the one innocent but thought on the
other would rise, and on the pitiful difference there was. Somehow, the
wife regarded it as the child of its father only, I think always, till
Rhoda stood before her, the very image of her mother. And with me 'twas
just the other way about; and I was main fond of the poor young mother; a
sweet, gentle creature she was--a quiet dove, not a brave hawk like
little Rhoda. I wished the little thing could have shared with ours heart
and home; but that the wife could not have abided, the man being amongst
us too. But I went and managed so that none can cast up on Rhoda as a
pauper foundling.
'Lad, as I would like you to think well of me when I am gone, God knows I
can ill afford to have more than is due stand against me; so look you,
lad, I was not such a wastrel as you had cause for thinking. I don't deny
what may have been in old days before, but for a good seventeen year when
I have gone off for a fling now and then, Rhoda has been the better for
it, not I the worse. It has been hard on the wife, and I own I have done
a deal of cheating by her and by you too, and have stinted you unfairly.
There, there, hold your tongue, and let me start fair again.
'After our child was taken from us, and the poor wife took on so for our
blame, it was borne in on me that the rightest amending was not far to
seek; and I put it to her at last. But I spoke too soon, when her hurts
were quick and raw, and she could not bear it. She was crazy-like then,
and I put my notion by for a bit. You see, it was like this: I reckoned
the fatal misdoing was unchristian rancour against the father, and care
for his deserted child should best express contrition. But the wife
couldn't look that way--and she got from the Book awful things to say
against the wicked man and his children; and all she repented on was her
wrong ways, in neglect of right worship to affront the man; and I think
in her heart she cursed him more bitter than ever. A penance it would
have been to her to do violence to her griefs and indignations by taking
up the child; but it would have righted her as nothing else could, and
that I knew, and I looked to bring her to it yet. For me, well, I was on
other ground before then, and more than once Rhoda's baby hand had closed
upon my finger, ay, upon my heart, though then she was not like my own.
And that in a way made me slack to drive against the grain, when with me
the point ran smooth and sweet.
'Now, Christian, what came next?'
The old man had been very slow with his tale, watching his listener
intently all the while to be sure he heeded and understood. Christian
shook his head, but there was very sensible apprehension on his face as
he looked to Giles.
'You came, Christian.
'You took the place in heart and home that might have come to be little
Rhoda's, as I hoped.
'You came from the sea that had taken our own, and so the wife said it
was the hand of God. I thought the hand of God pointed otherwise.
Christian, what say you?'
He could answer nothing: Giles waited, but he could not.
'You will take care of my little maid as I want?'
'I cannot! ah, I cannot!'
'All these years Rhoda has wanted a home as I think because of you; and
because of you I could not hope for the wife's heart to open to her.'
'She should hate me! you should!' said Christian. His face was scared.
'You can make ample amends--oh! ample; and Rhoda will count the wants of
her youth blessed that shall lay the rest of her days to your keeping.
She will--Christian, are you so blind?--she will.
'Ah, dear lad! I got so well contented that the wife had had her way and
had taken you, when I saw what the just outcome should be; and saw her
shaping in the dark towards the happy lot of the sweet little slip she
ignored. Long back it began, when you were but a little chap. Years
before you set eyes on her, Rhoda had heard of you.
'In the end I could fit out no plan for you to light on her; and a grubby
suitor was bargaining for her, so I had to make a risky cast. She was to
enter as a passing stranger I had asked to rest. The wife fell on her
neck, before a word. Well, well, what poor fools we had both been!
'Christian, why do you say No?'
'I wish her better.'
'But she loves you! I swear she loves you! And I, O good Lord! I have
done my best to set her affections on you. How shall I lie still in the
grave while her dear heart is moaning for its hurt, and 'tis I that have
wrought it.'
To a scrupulous nature the words of Giles brought cruel distress.
Christian's eyes took to following Rhoda, though never a word of wooing
went to her. In the end he spoke.
'Dear Rhoda,' he said, and stopped; but instantly she looked up startled.
His eyes were on the ground.
'Rhoda, I love you dearly. Will you be my wife?'
She grew white as death, and stayed stone-still, breathless. Then he
looked at her, stood up, and repeated resolutely: 'Rhoda, dearest, will
you be my wife?'
She rose to confront him, and brought out her answer:
'No.'
He stared at her a moment in stupid bewilderment.
'You will not be my wife?' he said.
She put out all her strength to make the word clear and absolute, and
repeated: 'No.'
His face grew radiant; he caught her in his arms suddenly and kissed her,
once, twice.
'O my sister!' he cried, 'my dear sister!'
She did not blush under his kisses: she shut her eyes and held her breath
when his eager embrace caught her out of resistance. But when it
slackened she thrust him back with all her might, broke free, and with a
low cry fled away to find solitude, where she might sob and sob, and
wrestle out her agony, and tear her heart with a name--that strange
name, that woman's name, 'Diadyomene.'
She had his secret, she only, though it was nought but a name and some
love titles and passionate entreaties that his ravings had given into her
safe keeping.
On the morrow Christian's boat lay idle by the quay. Before dawn moved he
had gone.
'I think--I think you need not fear for him,' said Rhoda, when the day
closed without him. 'I think he may be back to-morrow.'
'You know what he is about--where he has gone, child?'
First she said 'Yes,' and then she said 'No.'
In the dusk she crept up to Giles. Against his breast she broke into
pitiful weeping.
'Forgive me! forgive me! I said "No" to him.'
CHAPTER X
With its splendour and peace unalterable, the great sanctuary enclosed
them.
Face to face they stood, shattered life and lost soul. Diadyomene tried
to smile, but her lips trembled; she tried to greet him with the old name
Diadyomenos, but it fell imperfect. And his grey eyes addressed her too
forcibly to be named. What was in them and his face to make her afraid?
eyes and face of a lover foredoing speech.
The eager, happy trouble of the boy she had beguiled flushed out no more;
nay, but he paled; earnest, sad, indomitable, the man demanded of her
answering integrity. Uncomprehended, the mystery of pain in embodied
power stood confronting the magic of the sea, and she quailed.
'Agonistes, Agonistes!' she panted, 'now I find your name: it is
Agonistes!'
But while he did not answer, her old light came to her for reading the
tense inquiry of his eyes. Did they demand acknowledgment of her defeat
and his supremacy? No, she would not own that; he should not know.
'And have you feared to keep what you got of the sea? And have you flung
it away, as I counselled when last you beheld me?'
The strong, haggard face never altered for contest. He asked slowly:
'Was it a vision of Diadyomene that rose up to the waves through the
shadow of a fisher's boat?'
With an effort she set her eyes at his defiantly.
'It was not I. I? For what cause?'
'He called you.'
'I come for no man's call.'
Against her will her eyes fell.
'Look at me, Diadyomene; for an evil dream haunts me, and your eyes have
got it hid.'
'An evil dream!'
She laughed, but her breath came quick as again their looks encountered.
What she met in the steadfast grey eyes brought terror gathering to her
own. She shuddered and covered her face.
'An evil dream haunts _me_, and _your_ eyes have got it hid.'
He watched, dazed, and muttered: 'You--you.'
'What is it?--what is it?' she cried. 'Why have you brought it with you
out of season? It is like an air that I cannot breathe. Take it away!'
Never before had she shown so human a weakness, nor had she ever shown so
womanly fair. Her clear eyes dilated, her whole face quivered, and for an
instant a shadow of vague wistfulness crossed her fear. Her lover's heart
beat free of dreams, for a passion of tenderness responded to her need.
'Ah, Diadyomene, no! Can you so dream it, when, to keep all evil from
you, I would, God willing, enter hell?'
'May be,' she whispered, 'it is what you call hell I enter, every year
once, when my dream comes.'
Appalled he heard. 'You shall not, Diadyomene, you shall not! Come to me,
call me, and what heart of man can brave, by my soul I will, and keep you
safe.'
She found his eyes again, within them only love, and she rallied.
'It is only a dream,' she said. 'And yet to escape it I would give up
many choice moments of glorious sea life.'
She eyed him hard, and clenched her hands. 'I would give up,' she said,
'the strongest desire my heart now holds; ay, in the dear moment of its
fulfilment, I would give up even that, if so a certain night of the year
might pass ever dreamless and untroubled.'
'So would not I! though I think my dream cannot be less terrible than
yours; though I know my desire cannot be less dear. Diadyomene, what is
the desire of your heart?'
She would not say; and she meant with her downcast, shy eyes to mislead
him. But in vain: too humble was he to presume.
'Diadyomene, what is your dream?'
'I cannot tell,' she said, 'for it passes so that my brain holds but an
echo of it, and my heart dread. And what remains of it cannot be told,
for words are too poor and feeble to express it.'
He saw her thinking, sighing, and shuddering.
'How near is its coming?' he asked, and but half heeding she told,
counting by the terms of the moon.
'Agonistes, how I know not, my deep, strong love of the sea grows
somewhat faint when the hour draws near to dream; and the land, the poor,
hard, unsatisfying land, grows some degrees dearer. Ah! but I loathe it
after, when my life again beats strong and true with the pulse of the
deep. Keep you far from me then, lest I hate you--yes, even you--hate you
to death.'
'Rather bid me here, to watch out the night with you.'
'I forbid it!' she said, suddenly fierce and wary. 'Take heed! Wilful,
deliberate trespass against my express will shall find no pity, no
pardon.'
Quick she saw that, intemperate, she had startled her prey; therefore she
amended, smiling sadly.
'See you how those diverse tides sway me even now. Agonistes, were you
not of the land--did you share the sea--then may be--ah, ah----
'I will try to tell you. An awful sense of desolation falls, for I feel
dry earth underfoot, and thin air, and I hear the sea moaning for me, but
turn where I will I cannot see nor reach it: it lies beyond a lost path,
and the glories, blisses, and strengths it gives me wither and die. And
then horrors of the land close round me.
'What are they? I know not; they whirl past me so that their speed
conceals them; yet, as streaks, are they hideous and ghastly. And I hear
fearful sounds of speech, but not one distinct, articulate word. And in
my dream I know that if any one stays, stands, confronts me, to be seen
fully in the eyes and heard out clear from the din, all my joy of the sea
would lie dead for ever, and the very way back would vanish.'
Christian had his own incomparable vision of the magic of the sea to
oppose and ponder.
'Ah! you cannot comprehend, for I tell of it by way of the senses, and
they are without, but this is within: in my veins, my breath, my fibres
of life. It is I--me.'
'I can, ah! I can.'
'Yet the dear heart of the sea holds me fast through all; with imperious
kindness it seizes my will when my love grows slackest, and draws me out
of the shallows; and down, and down I drift, like weed.'
'Diadyomene, have you never defied your fear, and kept from sleep, and
kept from the sea?'
Her voice sank. 'If I did--my dream might--come true.
'Agonistes, what I saw in your eyes was--I doubted--my dream--coming
true.
'No; I will not look again.'
Christian's voice was as low and shaken as hers. 'What was there?' he
said.
Again and again she gathered her breath for speech, yet at last was
scarce audible.
'A horror--a living human body--tortured with fire and scourge--flayed.'
She lifted one glance and took the imprint of a strange tranced face,
bloodless as death, void of speculation. Prone she sank to the edge of
the altar rock, for such passions leapt up and grappled in desperate
conflict as dissolved her strength under exquisite throes.
She never raised her head, till, after long wrestle, malice--strong,
full-grown malice--recovered and stood up triumphant over all. And not
one word all that while had come from her lover.
There lay he, his bright head low within reach of her hand. His tranquil
ease, his quiet breath, flouted her before she saw that his eyes were
closed in real sleep. His eyes were closed.
She sprang up, stung, willing to kill; her wicked heart laughed,
gratified then with the doings of men.
How grand the creature lay!
She stood to feast her eyes on the doomed body. The placid composure of
the sleeper, of serene countenance, of slack limbs, touched her as
excellent comedy. But it exasperated her also to the verge of a shrieking
finish.
She ached with a savage thirst in all her members; feet and hands and
lips parched in imperious desires to trample, to smite, to bite her
resentful hatred into the piece of flesh that mocked her control. The
quiet sway of life within his ribs provoked her, with each slow breath he
drew, to rend it from him.
She turned away hastily from temptation to so meagre a revenge; for his
spirit must first be crushed and broken and rent, justly to compensate
for insolent offence. 'He cannot escape, for his heart is in my hand
already,' she said.
Ripples of jasper and beryl closed over her swift descent and shimmered
to smooth. Lone in these splendid fittings for sepulture lay recumbent a
make of earth meet to accomplish its void destiny.
Ripples of jasper and beryl broke from her slow ascent as a reflex
current swept her back.
The mask of sleep lay over his face; though she peered intent, it would
yield nothing, nothing. A want and a dread that struggled together for
birth troubled the cold sea nature. Strong they thrust towards the light,
as her mind recalled the intolerable speech of his eyes and his altered
face. So near she bent that the warmth of his breath reached her lips.
She shrank back, quivering, and crouched, rocked with passionate sighs.
'But I hate, I hate!' she moaned; for a contrary impulse bade her lay
upon his breast her hand, and on his lips hers, and dare all her asking
from his eyes. A disloyal hand went out and hovered over his heart. She
plucked it back, aware of a desperate peril, vague, awful, alluring to
destruction, like a precipice yawning under night.
His hair was yellow-brown, matching the mellow sands of the under-sea; it
ran into crisp waves, and over the brow curved up to crest like a breaker
that stayed unbroken. No such hair did the sea grow--no hair, no head,
that often her hand had so wanted to handle; ay, graciously--at first--to
hold the crispness, to break the crest; and ever because she dared not
did fierceness for tearing arise. So slight an inclination, ungratified,
extended to vast dimensions, and possessed her entire. And she called it
hate. How long, how long, she complained, shall I bear with this thirst?
Yet if long, as long shall the quenching be. He shall but abandon his
soul, and no doubt shall restrain me from touching as I will.
She covered her face from the light of day, for she contemplated an
amazement to nature: deadly hate enfolded in the arms of strong love.
When the tide brimmed up and kissed him awake, Diadyomene was away.
Another manner of Diadyomene vexed her lover's next coming: she was
mockery incarnate, and unkind; for she would not condescend to his
limitations, nor forsake a golden spongy nest two fathoms and more below
breath. Yet her laughter and her eyes summoned him down, and he, poor
fool, displayed before her derision his deficiency, slow to learn that
untiring submission to humiliation would win no gracious reward at last.
And the young witch was as slow to learn that no exasperation she could
contrive would sting him into amorous close for mastery.
Christian was no tempered saint. Diadyomene gained a barren, bitter
victory, for he fled.
At sundown a monitress, mounting the night tower, by a loophole of the
stair looking down on the great rock saints, spied a figure kneeling
devoutly. When the moon rose late the same kept vigil still. In the wan
of dawn the same, overtaken by sleep, lay low against the feet of St.
Margaret.
Though Christian slept, he heard the deep bell voices of the three.
Articulate they grew, and entered the human soul with reproof and
exhortation and promise. He woke, and intrepid rose to face the unruly
clamours of nature, for the sake of the cast soul of that most beautiful
body, Diadyomene.
Vain was the encounter and the passionate spiritual wooing. Diadyomene
would not hear, at heart fiercely jealous because no such ardent entreaty
had all her beauty and charms ever evoked. She was angered when he would
not take dismissal.
'Never, never,' she said, 'has any creature of the sea thwarted me so and
lived; and you, you dare! Hear now. There, and there, and there, stand
yet your silly inscriptions. Cancel them, for earnest that never again
shall mention of those monstrous impossible three trouble my ear.'
'No.'
'Hear yet. Cancel them, and here, perpetual and irrevocable, shall right
of freedom be yours, and welcome. Leave them intact, and I swear you
shall not get hence scatheless.'
'Can you mean this, Diadyomene?'
'Ah, so! because I relented once, you presume. See, and if those three
can deliver you whole, them will I worship with you.'
And it came to pass that Christian carried home the best member that he
possessed broken, for fulfilment of Diadyomene's promise.
He doubted she had divined a profane desire, and covertly rewarded it.
CHAPTER XI
One there was who watched Christian with curious intentness, who, when
the plight of the Alien staled on general interest, was singular by
persistent advances: his old rival, Philip. Elder by two years, the
tyrant of Christian's early day had he been; between them drawn battle
raged while the one had yet advantage by a head, soon to alter when the
other came stepping up from the ranks of boyhood to match with men, and
to win final supremacy at every point. Latent challenge had not worn out
of meeting glances even before Rhoda's coming accentuated an antagonism
based primarily on temperament and type. When the world turned upon
Christian, Philip's forwardness was accountable enough; when the world
veered, his position might fairly have been backward.
And truly slowest he was to get conviction of the perfect cure that had
befallen the alien. Though for proof he drew near, venturous to tempt a
sparkle out of the quenched firebrand, his closest approach could
discover none; nay, all lively mislike and jealousy seemed gone with the
missing core; old remembered heats kept but indifferent life, and every
trace of arrogance had vanished quite. To such an one Philip could be
generous at no great cost were it not for Rhoda's preference.
In a character of but poor stuff some strands of good quality ran hid,
and a love-liking for the shy, fierce, young girl was strengthening into
better worth under reverses. That Christian stood first in her regard he
knew well, for she made it abundantly clear, with a courage and frankness
that brought comment. 'Not maidenly!' retorted Philip to his mother,
'then is maidendom the sorrier.' He came to respect even the innocent
vice in her that woke ever to affront him. That his passion could survive
rages of vanity, often and deep wounded, proved its vitality and worth.
Slowly also and fitfully Philip came to think that Christian was no rival
lover; that he never did, that now he never would, regard Rhoda as more
than a sister. For his own gain he might be generous; yet among meaner
motives stood an honest endeavour to deserve well of the girl who loved
Christian, overbearing old antipathies; nor should it be to his demerit
that he was unconstrained by any touch of compunction: an amended version
of Christian, harmless, luckless, well-disposed, forbade any such
disrespect to past measures.
While many wondered that he should be so considerate of the alien, Rhoda
hardened her heart. Even greater than unquenchable resentment was her
distress of grief and shame because Christian was tamed. Unwittingly,
Philip himself afforded demonstration. No wonder his aim miscarried, and
he had ground to complain bitterly of signal injustice.
Once, at twilight, as Rhoda turned towards the quay, looking for
Christian and his rent nets, Philip stayed her, refusing rebuff, and
sought to turn her home again with an awkward lie. She caught him out and
stared. Then sudden terror started her past him, and winged her along the
shore towards men clustering thick. But Philip was speedy, overtook her,
and in desperation held her by main force.
'Rhoda,' he entreated, 'you must not go. It is not Christian, I say. It
is not Christian.'
She was struggling with all her might, beating at him, biting at his
hands.
'I will go, I will! Christian, Christian! Let me go! Ah, coward!'
'It is not Christian,' and he named another to pacify her. 'Not
Christian.'
She did not believe him; as he had caught her she had heard a cry that
maddened her so that her brain could take hold of no reason. She was sure
that Christian was being done to death after some horrible fashion.
No; thank God, no. She saw him suddenly safe and free; and she fell to
sobbing and trembling pitifully, so that Philip without offence for a
moment held her in his arms. She saw him coming, one high, fair head
conspicuous above the rest; she saw him looking aside, turning aside,
when instinctively she knew that what he beheld was a thief bound and
beaten according to the custom and law of the fishers. As he halted,
overlooking the circle, she read by nods exchange of question and answer.
And then on he came again. One or two turned and looked after him: that
she noted.
She was moaning and rocking for pain, though she did not know it; she was
white and cold, for fear so held her heart's blood that not even the
agony of shame she felt for Christian could urge any to her face. She
tried to go forward, but only got free from Philip to find she could
barely stand, and must hold by the sea-wall. So Christian's face came
near to be read, and lo! it was utterly blank: no anger, no pain, no
shame, altered it by a line; but the lips were grey, and as he set eyes
on Philip quickly he crossed himself. Then he saw Rhoda, and oh! the
comfort to her of his strong, quiet grasp, and his eyes, and his voice.
Throbbing yet from Rhoda's warm weight, struck with vivid misdoubt and
fear of the alien, Philip forgot control, and the natural man looked out
for one moment with glance of hot challenge at his born rival. He met no
response: Christian regarded him with resolute mild eyes, without
jealousy, or resentment, or any perplexity, till he grew confounded and a
little ashamed.
'Take me home,' entreated Rhoda; and Christian, without a question or a
comment, took her hand to lead. For one dreadful moment, breathless to
Rhoda, he looked back and stood. Against his palm hers lay listening: it
was mute, to her nerved apprehension telling nothing. Then home.
What could the loon mean with his signing? thought Philip, shaken by a
doubt. Nothing, nothing--blank madness. Nevertheless, his sudden,
shameful fear of the Alien did not soon lie down to sleep again.
A further proving awaited Christian and Philip. To Giles came Rhoda.
'He says--Philip,' she began, choking, 'that except he--he--shall excel
in the contests to-day, Christian will be wanted for saving to our fleet
its lead on the coast. Oh, he must not!--he shall not! And he said, with
his hateful airs, that he would do his best--to spare Christian. And he
said, if he failed at that, he could yet promise that none should offend
Christian with impunity while he stood by--he--he.' There a wretched
laugh sobbed and strangled her.
'I said our Christian would not--no--not for love, nor fear, nor profit,
for he hinted that. I said: with what face dare such asking approach?
what part has he with the fleet? Never goes he aboard any boat, and never
a soul comes aboard his, neither do any dredge alongside him and his
ill-luck. The Alien they call him ever. Him--him their best, their very
best, having used worse than the lowest outcast, they desire as their
champion at need. Are devils so vile and shameless? Oh! he must not.
Forbid it you, and he will not disobey.'
The old man shook his head.
'He is no child--even now. He will look at me with those eyes of his,
and ask why--and then am I done.'
Later, Rhoda ventured down to Christian, mending his dredge on the quay,
and persuaded him away. In vain; for some waylaid him, and there in her
hearing got his promise, in swimming and rowing to do his best for the
credit of the fleet. Rhoda dared only press his hand and look entreaty
while his answer hung. A dazed look came and passed. Afterwards, his face
of mild inquiry daunted remonstrance, as Giles foretold.
Philip fetched him away eventually, but had not even the favour of a look
from Rhoda. She kept down her head, biting back tears and words of rage
and grief.
'I think he means well--does Philip,' sighed Giles unhappily.
Lois said bitterly: 'Like Samson blind, he goes to make sport for the
Philistines.'
Rhoda broke into passionate weeping.
'Ah, ah!' she cried, 'it is unbearable. At every turn strangers I
saw--who have come and heard--who will see, and our Christian will
hear--alone, all alone. Oh, would that I were a brother to stand by him!
Philip mean well! He prides himself on it, he parades it as a virtue, and
to himself pretends that he does not hate. But once, he forgot, and
looked--and I saw--hate--hate and fear. And I know, though he do
contrary, that his blood will dance for joy at any affront to Christian.
I know--and he takes Christian out to show!'
Giles got on his feet.
'If I am ever to tread the old quay, it may well be to-day.'
The remonstrance of Lois lacked vigour. He took help of Rhoda's shoulder
the length of the downward street, and then shambled off alone to
Christian's protection.
One, two, three hours passed, and twilight. Then back they came,
Christian's ample strength charged with the old man's weight. Giles swore
within his beard in his way that the women knew.
'He takes his way for no asking or need of mine,' he declared gruffly;
'and he might use his strength to better purpose.'
'Christian outdone!'
'No,' Christian said, 'I think not. No, none say so.'
He stretched wearily, sighed, and, laying his head down on his arms,
slept profoundly. They exchanged woful looks.
'Poor lad, poor lad!' said the old man brokenly.
'Ah, yes; he bested the lot: in rowing hardly, in swimming easily. Oh,
don't ask! it was pretty bad. Bad! Oh, good Lord, but it makes one man
sweat again to look back on it.
'Oh! God damn their greedy eyes! Yet some few of our lot turned fair
ashamed of their own handiwork; and when one brute of the Islands
said--no matter what, but his own fellows muttered shame--and Philip
would have struck him, yonder poor fool knocked up his arm quick.
'Yes, Philip, girl! and I tell you I saw no hate: and he looked long and
close too.'
Stirless in sleep, Christian offered remonstrance to nerves that quivered
under the halting tale.
'The worst? no, the worst was after the young fools in their cups got
heady. And in the end--well, the end of all was that Philip floored his
man. And that should have been Christian's business, and he would not
stir, though I nudged him to be up and at such foul jests. "I have heard
nothing unfit," he says. And I wished I were underground. I never want to
foot the quay again. Poor lad! ay, and poor spirit! the very man of him
has got flawed.'
'No,' said Lois painfully, 'however it came he did worthily, up to his
name.'
Giles closed his mouth, but shook his head mournfully, and Rhoda drew to
him.
This fell when late gales were closing the season to the coral fishers.
Little more than a week after, Christian came back with his broken arm.
Then want came looming straight ahead. Every due was paid, but none knew
by what hard stinting, for resolute pride uttered no plea, and hid every
sign. That the waning life of Giles should suffer from no lack, the
others fared the harder. A haggard Christian, befitting a chastened lot,
drew no comment; and if Rhoda grew a little pale, and Lois shrunk and
grey, known cares they had for allowance, barring any guess at scant
bread.
The hardest of trials to a willing, strong man met Christian when,
re-knit and sound, he offered for work and found that no man would hire
him. His strange ill-luck cut him off from fellowship, so strong was the
suspicion that a malignant influence had marked him down jealously. The
only one to withstand the general verdict, to link him in, to persuade
some favour to his hands, was the unrewarded Philip, whose best endeavour
but won for him few, and brief, and ill-paid spells of labour. A many
there were who would not take his services at a gift, and he knew it.
Refuse, stranded out of touch of the human tide, he hung idle on the
quay, through shortening days from morn to night, resolutely patient of
the leaden hours and of the degradation on his famous strength.
Lois foresaw that bitter need might drive him away at last, but as yet
she could not bid him go, for Giles was slowly dying.
CHAPTER XII
Philip sought out Christian secretly, to hint that on a venture three
gold pieces might be his. Christian understood him well enough. In the
veiled language of the coast, a venture signified honourable service for
brave men, though the law of the land held otherwise, and rewarded it as
felony. A well-knit League carried on far and near a contraband trade in
the lives of proscribed men, and even the scrupulous honesty of Christian
brought no reluctance to engage.
'When, and with whom?' he asked.
'To-morrow, you and I,' said Philip, and watched him anxiously.
'Then are you of the League?' said Christian indifferently, nettling the
other, still in the young pride of a desired association. The Alien at
his best, he knew, would never have been reckoned fit; for though he
excelled in strength, he lacked head.
'You and I together,' he said, 'are fairly equal to any other three, and
so can our gains be the larger.'
Yet Christian would not readily close on the rich relief. He fixed on the
other a thoughtful eye, pondering a question of fairness that might not
be imparted. Philip flushed a little.
'I am answerable to the League,' he said nervously; 'and though from
outsiders we exact oaths, I will take it upon me to accept as sufficient
your bare word for good faith and secrecy.'
This was no more than Christian's credit had established; for from
boyhood, under the strict schooling of Lois, he had kept to his word as
sacredly as others to their oaths, and from pride and a scruple had ever
refused to be sworn.
Long seemed the pause and the trying scrutiny before Christian sighed and
said, 'So be it.'
'And secrecy?'
'I promise secrecy.'
'And you will not refuse a strict promise to obey orders--mine?'
A vague foreboding warned Christian to stay, but reason could not
sufficiently uphold it against his dire need of the gold. He promised.
'I take it,' said Philip carelessly, 'that your boat would be the easier
to handle. Mine is over heavy for two.'
'I cannot risk what is not wholly mine.'
'The League makes good all loss. And remember,' he looked away, and his
voice had a strange note, 'if we do not come back--for long--or ever--the
League sees to it that our folk do not want.'
Christian looked at him hard.
'Agreed,' he said first; and then, 'You think that likely?'
'A venture is a venture; and, well, I may say that two ventures have
miscarried, so many and brisk are the chasers; and I know of some who
have fought shy of this one. I volunteered,' he said with pride.
So they went their ways, Philip bidding his conscience lie still and
mute, Christian questioning his.
Save Giles, never had any man put out in that boat with the Alien. As the
two slid out under early night, Philip looked at him, wondering if his
wits were sound enough to tell him this, himself misliking the instance
overmuch now. The sea was black and sullen, and the wind chill;
Christian, silent and indifferent, was no heartening mate; and the shadow
of night brought out a lurid streak in the venture that viewed under
daylight had been but dull and faint.
The stealthy boat crept on till midnight; now and then from the cusp of a
bay floated out the faint cry of a quail. Then thrice it sounded, when
the boat swooped in, touched, and with a third aboard, sprang away swift
as a fishing gull.
About to the west, then, Christian steered as Philip gave word; still
west and west. He did not scan the stranger with natural interest, nor
had he yet asked one question on their goings, though they were
stretching for a coast known to him by fatal influence. When the very
roar of evil waters sounded, and through it the first expostulation of a
buoy bell, Philip's scrutiny could still detect no reluctance.
Oh! fain now would he see a touch of human infirmity for fellowship;
night had entered his blood, and shocks of horrid fear coursed; too stark
and dreadfully mute was the figure at the helm for him to be void of
apprehension. And the terrors of the sinister place, that his venture was
to set at nought, according to a daylight mind, came beating in against
unstable defences, entered, and took possession.
Christian stooped over the gunwale, peering into the dark water. At
that, Philip's hand went searching hurriedly about the bow, and that he
sought was missing. He braced himself and approached the Alien.
'Christian, has she never a twig of rowan at her bows?'
The face that turned he could not see to read. 'No,' was the curt answer,
and shaken through, he drew off with doubled thumbs.
Too late now he doubted Christian to be no tool for handling with
impunity. And worse he dreaded, out of a dark teeming with possibilities,
dreadful to human flesh and human spirit. His hair rose, and he flung
prayers to the hierarchy of heaven, but chiefly to those three--St. Mary,
St. Margaret, and St. Faith. Comfort it was to draw to the side of one
who abode, as he himself, within the limits of the five human senses. The
quiet voice of the Adventurer rallied him.
'What goes wrong?'
'We bear no rowan, nor leaf, nor berry.'
'Rowan! for protection against evil spirits?'
'Ah! name them not. Not here and now. Rather turn your thumbs against
them, and watch him.'
'Him! your chosen mate?'
'God forgive me, and help us--yes. Sir, I tell you, laughter here is
more than folly--it is wickedness. No, I will not be questioned how and
why. There--look there!'
He grasped the sceptic's arm and pointed; Christian again had suddenly
leaned down to peer over the boat's side.
'What does he see?'
Philip's teeth chattered. 'God knows, I dare not think.'
He crowded sail recklessly, and the boat leapt along, quivering like a
thing in fear. At speed they fled on further west, till the Sinister
buoys were all passed by, and the Land's End drew up and turned behind
them. Then Philip, with a heart lighter by some degrees, hove to, close
furled, to wait and watch through the chill, long hours, till nearing
dawn turned them back to the safe desolation of the evil place.
Daylight better than dark speech declared the three to each other. The
Adventurer considered well the men charged with his life and fortunes. Of
a splendid make they were, both above the common in stature and strength,
and well favoured in singular contrast. A practised student of his kind
could read lines of weakness, and some feminine virtues also, in the
dark, oval face with luminous, fine eyes, and a mouth too fully perfect
for a man, and could read on the face from the resolute north a square
threat of obstinacy showing from the bones out, and daring and truth in
the grey eyes, deep set, and from brow to chin every imprint of
integrity. Both faces were set and haggard, and their eyes encountered
with a sombre disaffection that augured but ill for success. Strife was
latent.
Christian's glance rested on the Adventurer, unhooded to the morning
light, and he guessed him, and knew him by silver mane and black brows an
old lion-lord of a famous herd. The ray of recognition was caught and
weighed. 'He has not been trusted, yet his looks are fit,' ran the old
man's thoughts. He weighed Philip, whose features twitched, whose hands
were nervous, who eyed his fellow with an uncertain glance, wavering at a
return impassive as stone. Without hesitation he questioned for
clearance.
'Is all well--so far?'
'Ay--so far?'
'At your discretion I would hear how our chances lie, and on what side
peril. To a landsman we carry on in an aimless fashion.'
Philip looked at him straight enough, then furtively towards Christian.
The stranger dropped his voice.
'Is danger yonder?'
Philip did not answer him, and strengthened in misdoubt, he spoke with a
note of authority.
'I would know your plans.'
'You shall,' said Philip, but still he looked at Christian, and found it
hard to begin. He took heart of wine.
'Hearken--you also, Christian.
'Sir, my undertaking is to put you aboard a foreigner, due to pass with
her consorts off the Land's End, may be this day, or to-morrow at latest,
whose part is but to contrive so that darkness may cover this bit of
contraband trade.
'Your flight discovered will for sure have brought an embargo on all the
coast. Not a sail will be out, but chasers on the watch. Ashore now, not
a chance were possible; but we took wing betimes; and here may we bide
under daylight, and at night make again for the Land's End to watch our
chance.'
'Go on. This contrivance is too incredibly bald to suffice. How, then,
when presently a patrol sails round yonder head?'
'May Heaven forfend!'
'Heaven! are you mad? Is all our security to be the grant by Heaven of a
miracle?'
'First, sir, I will tell you that we are like enough to be unharried;
for it cannot be in mortal reckoning that we should dare here, since this
place is a death-trap to be given wide berth in winter gales.'
'The very place to seek men fugitive and desperate.'
'By your leave, sir, I came into this venture as a volunteer, and not
from desperation.
'The special danger of these coasts you do not know. Our winter storms,
sudden and fierce, strike here at their hardest. Learned men say that
high ranges leagues off over sea make a funnel to set them here. We
fishers have another way of thinking--no matter what. But 'tis wide known
that there is no record of any boat caught in a winter burst within sound
of these breakers living to boast of it.'
'Is, then, the favour of Heaven also to be engaged to preserve from storm
as from chase?'
Philip, tongue and throat, was dry, and he drank again deeply.
'You tell me of risks that I cannot bring myself to believe a volunteer
would engage; not though, as I hear, he doubled his price.'
Wine and resentment mounted a flush.
'You do ill, sir, to fleer at a man who for your service risks freedom,
life--ay, more than life--but that you would not believe; for you
laughed, under night even, you laughed!'
'By heavens! every look of a death-trap comes out on your own showing;
and except you show me the key to unlock it, I myself will hazard the
forcing; I and your mate yonder, who well I see is not in your
confidence, whose face tells that he has no liking for you and your
doings.'
Christian turned away and made no response.
'For God's sake, sir,' whispered Philip then, 'have patience, or you ruin
all!'
'Let be that wine and speak out.'
'Drink you, Christian.'
He refused. Philip fetched breath for a plunge.
'Bear me out, Christian, when I say that one there is who can do what
none other living can--and will.'
Christian waited with a face of stone.
'Who can carry us safe through the reefs. Christian--this--you
promised--you must undertake this.
'Look you, we may never be driven to it; a far ship could not easily make
us out against this broken background.
'Christian, not another soul knows or shall know. Sir, you can tell him
that the League had not even a guess. I stood out for that.
'You asked nothing. Had you but cared to ask, I would have told you
earlier. You may have guessed; you cannot deny you are able. Sir, he is;
and when I asked his services, he promised--without reserve he promised.
'Christian, you never have failed of your word; all your life that has
been your pride, and so have I relied on it--a man's life relies on it.'
Christian kept an averted face, and stared down into the water.
'You can--I know you can!'
'I can.'
'And you will--to your promise I trusted.'
'I promised, and I will.'
Philip grasped his hand in cordial gratitude; Christian suffered it, but
his face was sullen. The Adventurer saw sweat standing on the brow of
each, so that he wondered at what were behind.
Philip turned with a brightened eye.
'Now, sir, you may see that our chances are not so desperate, since, from
storm or chase, we can put to safe haven beyond the reefs, to wait or
dodge; or at worst, to get ashore and take to the hills--a put back, but
to you a good exchange for four walls. Only I have a thing to ask of you,
sir, come good or ill: that you will never breathe to a soul of this way
of escape.'
The Adventurer eyed him with something of distrust still, while he
fingered his beard thoughtfully and smiled, half sneering.
'I understand--you would preserve a monopoly, and continue a good trade.
But it looks to me that you have done some cheating by your mate, that
might make him decline partnership and seek his own market.'
'By heavens! you are over ready with your imputations!' said Philip,
angry. 'The Alien there is welcome to make what profit he can for me.
Never with my goodwill shall I be here again. For why I undertook it, I
had my own good reasons, which concern you not at all. But I will tell
you that I know not of another man who would dare partnership with the
Alien--ay, ask him, and he will not deny it; or who would put body and
soul in jeopardy in this place.'
The Adventurer turned to Christian, smiling, courting friendly
intelligence.
'You, it appears, have put body and soul in jeopardy, and know the place;
and body and soul are none the worse.'
Without any answer, Christian looked at him, and colour ebbed from his
face. Philip touched for warning, and with lifted finger indicated the
want, half guessed already by that fixed, blank gaze.
'Answer only at your pleasure, but for my soul's salvation I do desire to
know what threats it here.'
For the moment Philip did not suspect derision. Discreetly he told of the
fatal tradition, that the settled conviction of generations had brought
men fatally to uphold and abet. So much of reason he had discovered for
himself, and he desired that Christian should hear.
The work was taken out of his hands by a skilled master. The reverend
superstition was subjected to all the disintegrating forces that human
scepticism can range; and with cold reason, logic, and analogy, went such
charm of courteous tolerance, and wit, and wise and simple exposition, as
tempered the mordant touch of lurking ridicule. He was but for pastime,
trying his practised touch upon two young fools. Half scared, half
fascinated and admiring, Philip responded; Christian stayed sullen and
silent.
CHAPTER XIII
At its nearest lay the Isle Sinister under noon. The Adventurer sighed
for the land as, cold and uneasy, he couched for needful sleep. Philip
lay stretched beside him, Christian, according to his own preference,
taking the first watch. Out of new bravado, Philip passed on to Christian
a muttered question: Could he now carry them in and land them on the very
Isle?
Like a bolt came Christian's answer: 'Drowned and damned both shall you
be before I will.'
Philip rose up, startled by the answer and the unexpected intimacy it
acknowledged. But the voice had been of level quiet, and the Alien's face
showed no anger. The Adventurer watched with a sardonic smile; and
Philip, forcing a show of unconcern that he did not feel, muttered a word
of madness and dropped back. For a while resurgent terrors thwarted
sleep; but the quiet breathing of his neighbour, the quiet outlook of
the Alien, told on his shaken nerves, and slumber overtook him. Christian
stayed waking alone.
Ah! the relief. He stood up to take free, deep breath, and stretched his
great limbs. Long, intently, with shaded eyes, he stared towards the Isle
Sinister. Ah! nothing, and well nothing. Could she trust that he
meditated no trespass? that he would allow none? Could she deem that he
offered no insane resentment against her severity? A sea-gull flapped
close past his head, but was mute.
He turned and looked down on the sleepers, and his face, illegible for
many a day, showed bitter resentment and scorn. Shamefully had he been
beguiled, trapped, bound by a promise; and wanton goading had not lacked,
all but intolerable. Fools! their lives were in his hand; and he was
awake. Awake, as for months he had not been; his pulses were leaping to
full heart-beats, there was stir in his brain; and therewith, dislike and
contempt exciting, the keen human passion of hate lay torpid no longer;
it moved, it threatened to run riot.
Who dare claim loyal service from him? Philip! One boat had been familiar
with these reefs: somewhere in the past murder rested unavenged. Philip!
In the deep water that the boat shadowed a darkness slid, catching his
eye. He peered, but it was gone. Before, and not once only, had an
impression seized him, by deliberate sight not verified, that a sinister
attendance lurked below. Now unconstrained he could watch.
Great dread possessed him. Storm and chase were light perils, not to be
compared with her displeasure, her mere displeasure, irrespective of how
she might exert it. With heavy grief had he borne late estrangement, and
her severe chastisement of offence. Were his limbs but for his own
service, lightly, so soon as they were able, had he risked them again to
worship his love and seek grace. Alas! she could not know that loyal, and
strong, and tender his devotion held; she would but see an insolent and
base return, meriting final condemnation. Helpless rages of grief urged
him to break from all bonds, and plunge headlong to engage her wrath or
her mercy. He cast on the sleepers then a thought, with ugly mirth,
mocking the control of his old enemy in his heart.
How would she take the forfeit! With her rocks and waves she had broken
him once, and the surrender of all his bones to them in despair he had
firmly contemplated; but human flesh and spirit shrank from horrors
unknown, that she might summon for vengeance. Could he but see what
lurked below.
Spite of the ripe mutiny in him he minded his watch, and swept the
horizon momently with due attention. The day altered as the slow hours
dragged: a thin film travelled up the clear sky; the sun took a faint
double halo, while the sea darkened to a heavy purple. He knew the signs:
small chance was there now of a stormless night. Not two hours of full
daylight were left when below the sun rose a sail. His hopes and fears
took little hold on it, for as yet it was but a speck; and he knew that
before it could close darkness would be upon them, and belike storm also.
With a desperate remedy before his eyes a devil's word was in his ears:
the League makes good all loss. Foul play? Nay, but had not the League by
Philip played him foul first, with injury not to be made good. And those
for whose sake he had owed regard for his wretched life would be bettered
by his loss.
When Philip rose up from sleep a blackness stood upon the distant sea,
threatening the sun; the chill wind had dropped, but a heavy, sullen
swell insisted of a far-off tyranny advancing. To him no sail showed, but
Christian flung him word of it, and his sinking heart caught at high
hope.
Then, since their vigil was soon to pass, Philip dared greatly; for he
bade Christian sleep, set hand himself to sail and tiller, glided in past
the buoys, and rocked at trespass.
'It is safer so, should the haze part,' he said, but his voice shook.
The Alien said never a word; each looked the other hard in the eyes,
paling.
'The League makes good all loss,' said Philip, low. 'And if so be that
only some forgery of a loss can cover a fair claim, you may count on
my--what you will--as you please.'
Christian refused hearing. Flung down for unattainable sleep he lay
stretched, covering his head to inspect by the light of darkness his
wrongs, and Philip's treason, that left to him nothing but a choice of
transgression.
The blackness stood higher and crept on. The sun was captured, shorn,
disgraced, and sent bald on his way; a narrow streak of red bleeding
upon the waters died slowly; all else was slate-black. Above the gloom of
the cliffs the sky showed blanched, clear and pale. Ghostly white the
sea-birds rose and fell. The tide was rising, deepening the note of the
surf; between the warders white columns leapt up with great gasps.
It was Rhoda's name that Philip whispered over, to strengthen his heart
at the perilous outlook. The make of his love had a certain pride in
overbearing such weak scruples as a tough conscience permitted. Half he
feared that the Alien's poor wits had yet not recognised the only path
left open by a skilful provision; for there he lay motionless, with the
slow breath of untroubled sleep. He would not fear him; with Rhoda's
name, with hope on the unseen sail, he fortified his heart.
In the deep water unshadowed by the boat a darkness slid, catching his
eye. He peered, but it was gone. His heart stood in his throat; a palsy
of terror shook him. Oh speak, speak, St. Mary, St. Margaret, St. Faith,
help a poor body--a poor soul!
When he could stir he headed about, and slunk away for the open, out of
the accursed region. A draught of wine steadied him somewhat, and softly
overstepping Christian he roused the Adventurer, to get comfort of human
speech. He told of the coming storm, he told of the coming sail, but of
that other thing he said nothing. Yet presently the Adventurer asked why
he shook. 'It is for cold,' and he drank again. And presently asked, what
did he look for over the side? 'A shark's fin,' he said, 'that I thought
I saw,' and he drank again.
At their feet Christian lay motionless, heeding nothing outside his
darkness. Yet presently the Adventurer said further: 'He sleeps. From
what disquiet should you eye him so?'
'If you list you shall know of his past,' muttered Philip. His speech was
a little thick.
From the coming from the sea of the alien child he started, and rambled
on, with fact and fiction very inextricably mingled; but the hearer could
make out the main truth of the blasting of a proud young life, and
pitied, and was minded now to make large allowance for any misdemeanour.
From their feet Christian rose, and without a look removed to the bows.
They were stricken to silence.
Suddenly Philip clutched the other, staring down. Both saw and blanched,
though what they glimpsed gave to them no shape for a name. It was gone.
'What is it?'
'No rowan! not a leaf.'
At that the old man mastered his nerves and laughed scorn in his beard.
Philip cast a scared look towards Christian.
'Last night,' he whispered, 'he looked over the side. I saw
him--twice--it was for this.'
'What is it?'
'You saw. That was his familiar.'
'Now look you,' returned the other with grave sarcasm, 'that is a
creature I have seen never, and would gladly. You, if you be skilled as a
fisher, catch me that familiar, and I will pay you in gold; or in broad
silver if you win me but a fair sight.'
Philip, ashy white, crossed himself. 'Heaven keep us! The one bait were a
human soul.'
Not with all his art and wisdom could the Adventurer now reinstate the
earlier hardihood of his companion. Against a supplement by wine he
protested.
'Sir,' said Philip, sullen, 'I have braved enough for you and my
conscience, and more. Longer here I will not bide; no, not for any
price. We go to meet our fortune yonder of friend or foe.'
The Adventurer looked at him and smiled. 'You miscount. Should I and he
yonder, the Alien, be of another mind, your course may be ordered
otherwise.'
Taken in his own toils, Philip glared in wrath and fear, sundered from a
common cause, an adversary.
From the shrouded sea grew a roar; Christian sprang up; the darkness
swayed forward, broke, and flew shredded; a line of racing waves leapt
upon them as with icy stroke the squall passed. Through the broken
vapours a rim of sun showed on the horizon; and there full west beat a
tall three-master; a second was standing nearer; of a third a sway of
mist withheld certainty. Here rose hope wellnigh clear of doubt.
But the mists spread down again with twilight adding. The House Monitory
woke and spoke far behind as they went to windward. Now Christian
steered.
Again was he aware of a stealthy threat moving below, and again looking
he could nothing define. He was seen of both: the Adventurer came boldly
to his side, and Philip dare not bide aloof. They peered, and he would
not.
For an intolerable moment he forbore them, gripping the tiller hard.
'There is it!' said the old man. 'What say you is the creature? Your mate
has named it--your familiar,' and he laughed.
Even then Christian forbore still, though the stress of long hours of
repressed passion culminated in a weight of frantic anger and loathing,
cruel to bear.
Then Philip lied, denying his words, and Christian knew that he lied; his
crafty wits disturbed by wine, reverse, and fear, he blundered,
protesting overmuch.
Said the Adventurer grimly: 'Now my offer holds good for silver or gold;
be you man enough to back your words, you who would give me the lie?'
Without tackle men take fish by flamelight, spearing; and thus fell the
wording of Philip's menace, as, reeling between fear and resentment on
either hand, he cried wildly:
'I care not--though, by heavens! a famous take may come of it. We have
but to try fire.'
Christian gripped him, very death in his face and in his strength; swayed
him from his feet; gripped the harder for his struggles, till the ribs
of the poor wretch gave, and cracked within his arms; with a great heave
had him shoulder high; with another could have flung him overboard. And
did not.
On the finest verge of overpoise he held, swung round with a slackening
hold, and dropped him like a cast bale to the bottom of the boat. Then he
caught the tiller and clung to it with the strength of a drowning man.
Philip lay groaning, broken and wrung in body and mind. He realised a
dreadful truth: for one brief second he had seen in Christian's eyes
fierce, eager hatred; clear, reasonable, for informed by most
comprehensive memory; mad he was, but out of no deficiency; mad, with
never a blank of mind to disallow vengeance; as cunning and as strong he
was as ever madness could make a man; unmasked, a human devil.
The Adventurer lifted him and felt his bones, himself half stunned and
bleeding, for he had been flung heavily from unpractised balance, as
suddenly the boat lurched and careened in the wallop of the sea.
The menace of an extreme peril closed their difference, compelling
fellowship. They counselled and agreed together with a grasp and a nod
and few words. Philip fumbled for his knife, unclasped, and showed it.
'Our lives or his. Have you?' 'Better,' returned the other, and had out a
long dagger-knife sheathed, that he loosened to lie free for instant use.
'It has done service before. Can you stand? are you able?' It was
darkening so that sight could inform them but little concerning the
Alien.
Christian was regarding them not at all. From head to foot he was
trembling, so that he had ado to stand upright and keep the boat
straight. Not from restraint his lips were bitten and his breath laboured
hard: quick revulsion had cast him down, so passion-spent,
conscience-stricken, and ashamed, that scarcely had he virtue left for
the face of a man.
Their advance strung him, for he saw the significant reserve of each
right hand. That his misdeed justified any extreme he knew, not conscious
in his sore compunction of any right to resist even for his life. He
waited without protest, but neither offered to strike.
Reason bade for quick despatch--very little would have provoked it; but
not Philip at his worst could conduct a brutal butchery, when conviction
dawned that a human creature stood at their mercy by his own mere
resolute submission. With names of coward and devil he struck him first,
but they did not stir him to affording warrant. The Adventurer took up
the word.
'Brutal coward, or madman, which you be, answer for your deed; confess
you are a traitor paid and approved.'
He shook his head.
'Why else have you now half murdered your fellow? Verily are you an alien
through and through, for no man born on these shores would so basely
betray a trust.'
'Nor I,' he got out, and rather wished they would strike with their
hands.
'You lie!' said his accuser; 'or robbery, or murder, or treachery you
intend--or all. Own your worst; try it; this time openly, fairly: your
brute strength upon two who are not your match: on your mate damaged from
your foul handling: on an old man, whose gold you have taken, the trust
of whose life you have accepted.'
He could not attempt a protest, though his heart was like to break
enforced to silence. The other advanced in temerity with an order.
'You have a knife. Give it up.'
He obeyed without a word. Then the two made no reserve, but with a show
of bare steel proved his temper. He did not lift a hand.
Lois might come to hear of his transgression: she would never know how
hard it was to atone, because they dawdled so cruelly, because he knew
they would bungle so cruelly: he did not think either had force to drive
a blade home at a stroke.
The Adventurer paused. Here without madness was a guilty wretch cowed at
detection, abject as a wolf in a pit!
'We would not your blood on our hands, yet to no oath of yours may our
lives trust.'
'I would not offer it.'
'Only as the wild beast you showed yourself, look to be kept bound.'
Such putting to shame was simply just, but oh! hard.
'I may not withstand you,' he said, hardly, steadily, 'but ah, sir! ah,
Philip, suffer me! If this night I am to go to my account, I do greatly
require that, through my default, the lives of two men may not drop in
the loaded scale.'
To them the plea rang strained and false.
'We choose our risk; against treachery of the skies will we rather
provide.'
He surrendered his hands to the Adventurer. Philip took the helm, but
the miserable culprit winced to hear how the strain brought from him a
sob of distress. The old man did his best under direction for shortening
sail; but while yet this was doing, again the ominous roar sounded and
grew, and a squall caught them unready.
The light boat quivered in every plank as she reared against the heavy
charge; sheets of water flew over, blinding. Christian heard from the
helm a shriek of pain and despair, and at that, frantic, such an access
of strength swelled in him, that suddenly his bonds parted like thread,
and he caught the restive tiller out of Philip's incompetent hold. There
could be no further question of him whom by a miracle Heaven had thus
graced in strength for their service. And for their lives they needed to
bale. Christian blessed the cruel, fierce elements.
Far ahead heaved lights, revealed on the blown seas: far, so far. Right
in their teeth drove the promised gale, with intermittent bursts of sleet
and hail. Upon bodies brine-wet the icy wind cut like a knife. Twin
lights sprang, low down, giving the wanted signal; bore down, then stood
away: the appointed ship followed after her consorts, not daring, with a
gale behind, to near the cruelest coast known.
Struggling on under a mere stitch of canvas, the wind resenting even
that, clutching it, threatening to tear out the mast, they went reeling
and shuddering on to their desperate fortune. For hours the long
endeavour lasted, with gain on the double lights by such slow degrees as
mocked at final achievement.
Except that his hands were like to freeze out of use Christian cared
marvellously little for outer miseries. To him all too short was the span
of life left for retrieving one guilty minute; no future could he look
for to live it down, so certain had he become that this night death was
hard after him.
Two stars reeling, kind, bright stars, shone life for others though not
for him. Perhaps for him, he wanted to believe; some coward drop in his
blood tried to cheat reason and conscience. Why not for him? Could his
doom be so heavy as to sink that great bulk with its scores of souls? And
though now he should freely release others of his peril, who would ever
count it to him for righteousness, to soften the reproach that would lie
against his name so long as ever it were remembered?
The cold touched his brain. Surely he had died before, long ago, out of
all this pain and distress. Waves heaved gigantically; spray dashed hard
in his face; he shrank humanly, knowing he was not fit to die; she was
coming through the sea bringing life. No, ah! not now. She was lurking in
the sea holding death.
'Madness and treason are not in him.'
'He is a devil,' said Philip, 'a very devil. See! Go you now, and feign
to persuade for abandoning the boat, and shipping together.'
'That will I in all good faith,' and he went and came again.
'First he refused outright; then he said, when the moment came we should
know as well as he.'
'I knew it, I knew it,' chattered Philip, 'oh, a devil he is! Sir, you
will see me out of his hands. I know what he intends: on the instant you
quit the boat he casts off and has me at his mercy, he and that thing
below. I am no coward, and it ill becomes you to hint it; and I fear
death no more than any sinner must, no clean, straight death.
'Sir, his putting out of life was long and bloody: I saw it; death by
inches. And he looked at me with infernal hatred then; the very same I
saw in his eyes but now. Why should he check at sudden murder, but for a
fouler revenge. You cannot judge as I. You have not seen him day after
day. Treacherously he accepts friendship; he feigns to be witless; and
all the while this hell-fire is hidden out of sight. You do not know how
he has been denied opportunity, till rashly I offered it.
'O sir, quit of him this once, I am quit of him for ever! No, I mean no
villainy against him, but--but--it happens--there is every inducement for
him to choose that he and his boat never be seen of us again. Drown? no,
he never was born to drown. The devil sees to his own.
'It is true--true. You saw the Thing yourself. Also, did he not refuse an
oath? So has he all his life. Now know I: there are certain words he for
his contract may not utter.'
When tall masts rocked above, and voices hailed, and a rope shot across,
again the Adventurer pressed Christian hard with precious human kindness.
Men big and fair-haired were shouting, knocking at his heart strangely.
Most foolish and absurd came a longing just once before he died to be
warm and dry again, just once. He shook his head.
Philip kept off, nor by word or sign offered the forgiveness he ached
after, but hasted to pass first. Then the other followed; he loosed the
rope; it leapt away. The last face he saw gleaming above him was
Philip's, with its enmity and a ghastly drawn smile of relief: never to
be seen of him again.
How long would her vengeance delay? The vast anger of the sea leaped and
roared round him, snatching, striking. An hour passed, and he was still
afloat, though the mast was gone; and near another, and he was still
afloat, but by clinging to an upward keel. In cruel extremity, then, he
cried the name of Diadyomene, with a prayer for merciful despatch, and
again her name, and again.
Diadyomene heard. The waves ran ridged with light that flickered and
leaped like dim white flame. Phosphor fires edged the keel; a trailing
rope was revealed as a luminous streak. He got it round his body, and his
hands were eased.
Up from below surged a dark, snaky coil, streaming with pale flakes of
fire; it looped him horribly; a second length and a third flung over him;
a fourth overhung, feeling in air. A loathsome knot worked upon the
planks, spread, and rooted there. He plucked an arm free, and his neck
was circled instead. His knife he had not: barehanded he fought,
frenzied by loathing of the foul monster, the foulest the sea breeds.
Before his eyes rose the sea's fairest, towered above him on the rush of
a wave, sank to his level. Terrible was her face of anger, and cruel, for
she smiled. She flung out a gesture of condemnation and scorn, that
flashed flakes of light off shoulder and hair. She called him 'traitor,'
and bade him die; and he, frantic, tore away the throttled coil at his
throat, and got out, 'Forgive.'
Like challenge and defiance she hurled then her offer of mercy: 'Stretch,
then, your hand to me--on my lips and my breast swear, give up your soul:
then I forgive.'
She heard the death agony of a man cried then. Ceasing to struggle, his
throat was enwound again; both arms were fast: he cried to his God to
resume his soul, and to take it straight out of his body and out of hell.
Away she turned with teeth clenched and furious eyes; then, writhing, she
returned, reached out, with one finger touched, and the foul creature
shrank, relaxed, drew coil by coil away, dropped, and was gone.
Diadyomene flashed away.
When the night and the trouble of the storm were past, not a ship afloat
was scatheless. From one that crawled disabled, a boat was spied,
drifting keel upward, with the body of a man hanging across it, whose
bright hair shone in the early sun, making a swarter race wonder. Against
all conjecture life proved to be in him yet. And what unimaginable death
had been at him? What garland was this on his throat: blossoms of blood
under the skin? When he was recovered to speech he would not say. Good
christian men, what could they think? His boat was righted, and with
scant charity he was hustled back into it; none of these, suddenly eager
to be quit of him, wishing him God-speed.
Under cover of night he crawled up to his home, dreading in his guilt to
face the dear, stern eyes of his mother. Ah! no, he entered to no
questioning and little heed: the two women sat stricken with sorrow; not
for him: in the room beyond Giles lay dead.
So Christian's three gold pieces buried Giles with such decent honour as
Lois could desire.
CHAPTER XIV
Christian's misdoing was not to pass unregarded.
A woman turned upon Rhoda passing with a mutter so like a curse that the
girl's surprise struck her to a pause. It was Philip's mother who faced
her, glowering hate.
'What have you done with my boy?'
'I?' said Rhoda, with widening eyes, though she blushed.
'You--smooth-faced chit--yes, you! Oh, keep those fine eyes and that
colour to take in men, for me they will not! I can see through you! I
know you, and the games you are playing!'
'What then?' flashed Rhoda. 'You accuse me? Of what? and by what right?'
'Right! The right of a mother whose son you have driven away.'
'He is nothing to me--never will be--never--nothing!'
'I know it. I know it well, and I told him so: nothing! 'Tis only your
vanity to have at your heels the properest lad and the bravest of the
place.'
'He!' cried Rhoda, in disdain.
'Ay, I know how your fancy has run, against natural liking for the
dark-haired and dark-eyed of your own race; your vagary goes after fair
hair and grey eyes. Well, see for all your sly offers that great blond
dolt gapes and gapes over your bait, never closing to it. That northern
blood is half brine.'
Rhoda stood speechless; her anger, shame, and pain transcended blushes,
and she changed to dead white.
'And you pick out one who can love like a man, who fires at a word or a
look, and him you delight to stab and torment with your cruel tongue,
while you use him for your ends. Shameless! You have dropped yourself
into his arms even, so to heat the Alien from his fishes' blood. May I
live to see you put to shame of some man!'
'He said--oh, vile--of me! Cur, cur!'
''Tis I that can read between the lines, not he, poor blind fool! Miscall
him! ay, you have got the trick. You may bring up faults against
him--some do; but I tell you no man will do greatly amiss who still goes
to his old mother and opens his heart to her.'
Rhoda's breath caught like a sob at that, for there unknowingly went a
stroke at Christian. She gathered herself together for bitter onslaught,
for outraged pride and indignation drove out compunction, drove out any
mercy. Out it all shrivelled at a blasting thought that stopped her very
heart. Mute she stood, white, shuddering, staring. Then she got out a
whisper.
'When did he go--tell me? Since--my uncle died--or--before?'
'Well enough you know 'twas before----'
Rhoda turned and fled homeward, fleet as terror, though her knees went
slack and her brain reeled. She drew bolts before her dreadful incoherent
whispers welled out to Lois.
'Where he went she did not know, did not guess, never thought it was on a
planned venture. None would think of that, or think that two alone would
suffice, or dream of Christian--I had thought that strange--you too. And
we know Christian went on a venture, by the three gold pieces we know:
and that could not have been alone, and he is not of the League. And I
thought it had been with Philip; and I thought Philip meant
kindness--perhaps for my sake, which vexed me. Oh, perhaps it was for my
sake, and I was vexed! Yet see, none others guess it nor do conceive that
any, in any cause, would go hand in hand with our Christian. And none
would greatly mark his goings and comings--Christian's--for unreason has
so chartered his ways. Then, though both were away that same day, not
even his mother had noted it. And oh! think of Christian in these days!
Has sorrow only been heavy at his heart? And a hurt on his throat he
would not show. And oh!' she said, 'and oh!' she said, and failed and
tried again, 'oh! his knife--_he has not his knife_.'
The love and faith of Lois sprang up against belief.
'Child, child! what do you dare to say--to think? Would you hint that
Christian--my boy Christian--has done murder?
'No, no, never! No, never, never! I would stake my life--my soul--that it
was fair fight!'
Lois looked at her and said a cruel thing: 'You are no helpmeet for him.
Thank God! you are not his wife!'
Rhoda quivered at that, and found it a saying hard to forgive. Her heart
swelled to refute it, and might not for maidenhood. Long ago she would
have had Christian rise up to avenge himself terribly; her pride had
suffered from the poor temper she saw in his. Now, though he had
exceeded the measure of her vague desire, he stood fair and high in her
estimation, illuminated, not blackened by the crime she imputed. Against
all the world, against his mother, she was at one with him. Was there any
other who desired and deserved the nearest and dearest claim, that she
had renounced.
A wedge of silence drove between them. The character of the mother's
stern virtue dawned upon Rhoda, appalling her: for the salvation of her
son's soul she might bid him accept the full penalty of his crime--even
that. A horror of such monstrous righteousness took the girl. She stole
to unbolt the door and away to warn Christian, when a whisper stayed her.
'I failed him. I thought then only of my man, and I had no prayers for my
boy. Ah, Christian, Christian!'
Doubt had entered. Lois knelt and prayed.
Rhoda wavered. Her estimate or the world's, the partial or the
vindictive, shrank to their due proportions, as Lois thus set Christian's
crime before the eye of Heaven. She wavered, turned, and fell kneeling,
clinging and weeping, convicted of the vain presumption that would keep
Christian from the hands of his God.
She was bidden away when Lois caught a sound of Christian.
His mother held him by the window for the first word.
'Christian, where is Philip?'
His startled eyes were a stab to her soul; the tide that crimsoned his
very brow checked hers at her heart. He failed of answering, and guilt
weighed down his head. She rallied on an inspiration that greatest crimes
blanch, never redden, and 'You have not killed him?' was a question of
little doubt.
'No, thank God! no!' he said, and she saw that he shook.
Then he tried to out with the whole worst truth, but he needed to labour
for breath before he could say with a catch: 'I meant to--for one
moment.'
To see a dear face stricken so! Do the damned fare worse? More dreadful
than any reproach was her turning away with wrung hands. She returned to
question.
'Then where is he?'
'I cannot tell. He left me. He would not--he was afraid.'
'What had you done? You had harmed him?'
'Yes,' he said, and told how.
'What had he done to anger you? Had he struck first?'
'No.'
'You had quarrelled?'
'No.'
'Had you no excuse?' she said.
He hesitated. Could she know and understand all, there might be some pity
with her condemnation, there would be some tempering of her distress.
'I can make none,' he had to answer.
When next she spoke: 'Then it was old hate,' she said, and after a minute
he answered 'Yes' to that.
So she had to realise that for months, according to her gospel, he had
been a murderer at heart; and her assurance of a merciful blank of mind
and memory tottered, threatening a downfall that would prove the dear son
of her hope of a rotten build. She tested his memory.
'I asked a promise of you once, and you gave it.'
'Yes,' he said, and, do what he would, 'I have broken it' got mangled
wretchedly in his throat.
'Your promise! Is it believable? You could--you!'
'O mother! If God forgot me!'
Her heart smote her because her prayers had deserted him then.
'Oh, peace!' she said, 'and do not add blasphemy, nor seek to juggle with
God.'
She did not spare him, and deeply she searched his conscience.
Self-convicted already he was, yet his guilt looked freshly hideous
worded by her, as look wounds, known to the senses of night, discovered
by the eye of day.
For a whole dreadful hour Rhoda listened to the murmur of voices. Then
they ceased, and Lois came. 'Thank God, child!' was all she needed to
say.
'Heaven forgive me! Can you? can he? Let me go to him--I must. Ah
me!--can he forgive me?'
Lois held the door and turned her. 'He has nothing to forgive,' she said,
and her face frightened questions.
From among some poor hoards Lois drew out a tiny cross of gold. It was
Christian's, sole relic left of his young unknown life. As a little lad
he had played with it and lost it, and Lois finding it had taken it into
keeping. Now she took it to him.
'I will ask no renewal of a broken promise--no. I want no hard thing of
you, only this: when temptation to deadly sin is overbearing, before you
yield, unfasten this and fling it from you into the sea. You will?
Christian, answer--say, "I will."'
'What worth has any word of mine?' he said in his despair; but her arms
were round his neck fixing the knot, and stayed to clasp, but her rare
terrible sobs rose as she cried, 'Oh, God help you, my son!' and 'I will,
I will!' flew strong to assure her that that word would never have to be
fulfilled.
Near was the time that would put him to the test, and he knew it. A day
passed and a day passed, out of eternity into eternity, and the moon
filled up to Diadyomene's account.
'Rhoda,' he said, 'do you know what day this is?'
'Christmas Eve.'
'Yes--but to my mother--her child was born----'
'Yes,' said Rhoda hurriedly, and bent her head: she for the first time
knew her own birthday.
'Listen, Rhoda! She has aged and weakened so; the day and night of prayer
and fasting she has now begun I fear may outdo her strength. Will you
keep ever at hand to listen and be careful of her?'
'And you?' asked Rhoda.
'I may not stay. I cannot.'
She flashed a look of amazed indignation, for instinctively she knew that
he would be leaving his mother to seek the strange-named woman, and such
filial misconduct in him was hardly credible. No kind word or look would
Rhoda grant him. He never felt the lack: his mother's blessing he did
greatly desire, but he dared not intrude on the day of her mourning to
ask it.
Short was the day and long the way, but over soon by some hours was he
footing it. The singular incidence of the day encouraged belief that a
special mercy of Heaven was ordering his goings for the comforting of a
long sorrow. Ah! God grant her a soul from the sea, and ah! God grant it
by me for a token. All his steps were taken to prayer, and the least
thing he asked of his God was that, though his sins were so heavy, he
might not die till he had seen that salvation. His head and his heart
told him that if he failed in his high endeavour he must surely perish.
Over the wold came a harsh call, and again till he answered and stayed.
He was making for waste stretches, gashed athwart by long gullies
preventing any fair paths. Already, though but half a league forward,
tracks had grown rough and uncertain. The voice came from a mudded
hollow, where a loaded cart stuck fast, an old horse and an old man
striving with it in vain. Though loath to be hindered, Christian turned
aside to give help.
He was not graciously welcomed. The old man scowled, and swore under his
breath. 'The Alien, deuce take it, he will not serve!'
But he stared, and words failed when Christian promptly laid hand on the
load, saying, 'Here's bad balancing, Gaffer; we had best uncord first and
set it right.'
'Ay, it shifted. Have it that way, if so you can and will. My two boys
did the cording, and two fools they be.'
He sidled away, muttering wonderful oaths as curiously he watched the
Alien's tackling. The load was a tree brought down by the recent gale;
protruding roots clawed the mud behind; piled branches nodded to the
fore, orange-red berries bright as coral dangling there. Christian's
great strength made light of the work, and soon the cart went crawling
out of the mire. He snapped off a twig to scrape the mud from his shins,
and the gaffer's mutter then caught his ear.
'He's done it--sure! Be danged if I reckoned he could. Well, well, some
be liars!'
'In your best days, Gaffer, you might have done as much.'
The old face wrinkled with a sour grin.
''Twas said you couldn't abide the rowan.'
'Why?'
'Well, I never asked. May be they lie who swear that never a twig of the
rowan goes in your boat. Some have taken to say so.'
'None, true enough. What then?' said Christian, and he noticed that the
man had thrust a bunch of berries into his belt.
'Well, there, 'tis not I that can give the reason.'
'Can you think mine the only boat that goes without that garnish?'
'I swear the only one.'
Christian did not know how on his very account a prevalent custom had
gained ground. He brought out a string of names.
'Why, most of those from this very tree have had takings. 'Tis an ill
wind that blows nowhere; for I reckon now to get a good price off this
timber--ay, to the last scrap, and 'tis you I owe some thanks for that.
So, look you, I have a mind, after I have made my profit, to open out of
your doing here with me and take the laugh. Hey? Ah! it seems to me that
some of your wits are left, so may be all I heard tell of was lies, when
'twas said you had had games with the Evil One, and had lost to him both
wits and soul.'
Christian said slowly, 'You thought I had no soul?'
'Never thought at all; why should I? Let fools think; I see. You, I see,
but now handle the rowan freely, and pass it to and fro, as never could
you have done had your soul known unholy tampering.'
Christian stood stock-still, with an unseeing stare, till the old man
called back to him, 'Come on, just to lend a hand up this pitch.' Then he
ran after, and so eagerly bore, that one spoke he broke.
On the level he said, strangely breathless, 'Now I want payment.'
'What! A great hulking fellow can't go two steps out of his way and lift
a hand for one with old age in his bones but he asks payment!'
'Yes,' said Christian, 'and for the love of God, give me the payment I
shall ask.'
'No promise, but what's your asking?'
'Give me berries of the rowan.'
With his sour grin the old fellow muttered, 'Well, well, no wits after
all!' as he plucked some bunches and chucked them across.
'More! more! and oh! quick; I lose time. See, fill up my cap.'
'All you can't have. My brats have been promised their handfuls, and want
you may.'
When all that entreaty could get he had, Christian parted at a run, and
the way he took was home.
Rhoda wondered, seeing him pass the window. Presently, laying aside
resentment, she went out to seek him in the linhay. The door resisted her
hand.
'Christian,' she called, and after his answer, 'Come in. What are you
about? Bring in your work; there is fire still.'
He said 'No' so forcibly, that she went away aggrieved, and a little
curious.
All was very quiet; of Lois she heard and saw nothing, and Christian made
no noise at all. She wondered if he too were engaged in prayer; she
wondered if she ought also to be so devoted.
From the window she saw two figures on the road, and watched them idly.
They neared, and from the opposite approach came two others. All four
were known to her by sight, though hailing from some distance; they were
kin to Philip; two were father and son, two were brothers. At the gate
they stood, and turned in.
Rhoda's heart dropped as she guessed their errand. To her a word from
Christian were enough; but what solemnest oath, what evidence short of
Philip's self, would convince these?
They were knocking, while still her countenance was out of command; and
when they asked for Christian, her wits were so troubled, that she said
lamely, 'It is Christmas Eve; can you want him now?
'Wait then--I will go--wait here, and he will come.'
When she passed out and turned the wall, she knew by the sound of feet
that two had started to go about the contrary way to make against any
escape. At the linhay door she knocked, again getting an impatient
answer.
'Christian, come out, or let me in. You must.'
He came out and closed the door, keeping his hand upon it while she told.
'I cannot come. Go, say I cannot come; I will not!' and desperately
impatient his hand beat upon the door.
'You must,' she said, and her white face and shaking voice went far to
convince him. 'I think you must. O Christian, don't you know why they
come?'
He looked at her blankly.
'To ask after Philip.'
His face burned red, and he stood dumfoundered.
'You know? From my mother?'
'Yes,' she said. 'No,' she said. 'I thought that first, and told her. Oh!
why did she not tell you all when she would not let me confess? Yes, I
thought that, and O wretch that I was! I thought no blame either. Now
hate me, and never forgive me.'
He also said, 'I have nothing to forgive'; and half audibly he groaned,
'Ah, Christ! is there no forgiveness of sins?'
Footsteps made them turn to see two rounding the linhay; and again,
footsteps behind brought two after Rhoda, impatient of delay. None of the
four from that moment judged Christian to be innocent, nor Rhoda wholly
ignorant: their looks so bespoke guilt and apprehension.
Some touch of resentment at the intolerant intrusion set Christian's head
high, and his eyes were not to be daunted as he measured each for
strength of will and strength of body. He knew them for the pick of
Philip's kin; all were of the League.
'Say why you come,' said Christian.
'Bid me stay,' whispered Rhoda, though she saw that her presence hindered
a ready answer; but Christian bade her go, and reluctantly she withdrew.
Out of earshot she went, but no further than to the gate. There she
leaned, and tried to keep her face averted, but against resolution now
and then her head would turn to better her heart. Uncloaked, in the cold
she shivered, and from apprehension.
'Concerning our kinsman Philip,' began the eldest.
His colour went and came for witness against him.
'Speak low,' he said, glancing at a near window, 'lest my mother hear,'
and at that a second score went down against his innocence.
'You put to sea with him; you came back alone. Where is he?'
In his haste Christian answered to more than was asked.
'Alive he was when I saw him last. Where he now is I know little as you.'
The youngest put in a word. 'Alive! But was any plank under him? Will you
take your oath that he was alive and safe, and unhurt by you?'
At that red guilt flew over his face, for he could not.
Another turn of words might give him a chance, but he had no skill to
play for it. The imposition of an oath he might not resent with his old
high claim: a promise had been broken, though they knew not, and his head
sank for shame. That, with his brief pause, sealed conviction.
One muttered, 'Now I would not believe him though he swore'; but the
other three frowned silence upon him, the spokesman saying, 'We do
require an oath before we ask further.'
No protest did he offer to hinder a quick despatch. He uttered the form
prescribed, though conscience and pride alike took deep wounds of it.
Afterwards it was told against him how his countenance worked, as for the
first time an oath had been forced upon him.
'Now be speedy,' said Christian, 'for I have little leisure or list to
bide.'
At that crass speech something of grim smiling hardly kept to
concealment.
'Is Philip alive?'
'Yes,' he said, 'if he be not dead,' an answer that angered them. 'God
knows'; then he said, 'I have no cause to think him dead.'
'You saw him last alive and like to live?'
'More like to live than I.'
'Where, then, did you leave him?'
'I may not say. I am pledged to silence.'
'How pledged? To whom?'
'To Philip.'
'Ay, we know; but we all are of the League.'
'None were excepted; "not to a soul," he said.'
'He, speaking for the League, meant to not a soul beside.'
'I mean to the League no less. So I think did he.'
A poor satisfaction was in standing to his word against those who
compelled him to an oath.
'Crack-brained devil----'
'Lower!' Christian said, glancing anxiously up at the window.
'This is no case for foolery or brag. Out of you we must have the whole
truth, lief or loath.'
His stubborn face said no. To no man on earth could he tell the whole
truth, nor, were that possible, would it be believed; less than the
whole doomsday truth could scarce make his own outrageous act
comprehensible.
'Philip may tell you, but not I,' he said witlessly. And as he spoke and
looked at these four, it came upon him that he might not long outlive
Philip's telling of the tale, if only by reason of that lurking thing
uncertainly seen. He clapped his hand upon the hidden cross, as a
perilous flash told how less cause had set down a record that might not
bear the light. So close was he ever to the mouth of hell.
Live temper faded from his face, and it settled to the old blank mildness
that had been lifting somewhat of late days.
'Is he so mad?'
'No, he shams.'
'Leave fooling, and speak straight in a matter of life and death.'
'Oh! more--more than life and death. For the love of God, make an end,
and take a final answer. I will tell no more; nor would the most I know
further you to Philip.'
The comment of a vigorous curse checked him there.
'Hear me out. If you need but to know how a venture went, I can tell you:
well. If you have other need of him that does not brook delay, I can but
offer to serve you to my best, for following and bringing him again;
whatever be the risk, I owe that to him and you. Only this day I must
have to myself. I must, though I pay for it with the rest of my life.'
That preposterous offer took away breath. Then an oath yelping high with
derision above anger brought Christian to entreat for his mother's quiet.
'Let us in here, then,' said one, and reached to the latch behind him.
Christian struck up his arm. 'No!' he said, and barred the way.
Instantly, moved by a prompt suspicion, the four sprang out ready steel
and swung one way, ringing him in. At that, Christian realised his
desperate case. He blanched, and sweat started. 'For life and death!' he
said hoarsely. 'O my God, my God!'
Rhoda shot in between, and, voiceless from fear and speed, clung to
Christian, presuming her weakness to turn offence.
'Cowards!' she panted, 'four against one, and he empty-handed. What--why?
Christian?'
'You would do well to counsel your madman to give way and let us pass, if
he care greatly for the quiet of any there within.'
Christian yielded. He lifted the latch and thrust the door open, standing
aside that they might pass him by; but two linked arm with him, walked
him in, and held him a prisoner. He did not offer to resist. Rhoda
pressed after him close; the last to enter closed and bolted the door.
Puzzled silence fell. Not a corner of the bare place could harbour
suspicion. Some tools were ranged against the walls; twine and canvas and
common oddments lay there, a small enough show of garden store, and of
fuel a pile pitifully low. A stool overthrown told of Christian's last
hasty rising; on a bench lay his cap, half filled with scarlet berries,
and strung berries were spread beside. Four blank countenances were
turned upon him, whose looks were sullen and guilty like a criminal's
taken in the act. Rhoda, bewildered, owned to her sinking heart that here
showed such vagary of his wits as passed her reckoning.
'You were best away, Rhoda.'
'I will not go,' she said, 'except I be thrust out.'
None urged for that rough kindness now, having gone so far; her presence
might even turn to account, for it must lie with the Alien to spare her
distress.
The prisoner took up question.
'The League has charged you to be judges?'
'Yes.'
'To give sentence?'
'Yes.'
'To execute it?'
'Yes.'
Christian grew as white as a coward; he went on steadily nevertheless.
'You are charged to do murder.'
'To do justice.'
'Without any proof that Philip is dead.'
'Lack of proof that he is alive comes to the same as the case stands.'
No lie would now avail of Philip lost overboard. In the stress of clear
thinking for his life he felt relief that he could not be so tempted to
damn his fair cause before Heaven.
'He will return,' he muttered, 'but too late, for me too late.'
'Christian, they dare not,' gasped Rhoda; 'no, you dare not, for Philip
will return to confound you. Should he return--too late--then may God
have no mercy on your souls.'
Christian said 'Amen' to that.
The spokesman turned to Rhoda.
'You speak positively: can you bear witness in his favour?'
'I know nothing--nothing.'
'Yet have you shown singular quickness of apprehension.'
She looked piteously at Christian, galled by remorse.
'Oh me! Must I say?'
'Why not? None here will blame you. I cannot.'
So Rhoda faltered out how she too had entertained a wicked suspicion.
'What evidence then routed it?'
'His.'
'His evidence?'
'His denial.'
Her sincerity was beyond question; her simplicity commanded respect; no
ingenuity could have spoken better to his credit. Yet all was vain.
'Bare denial may not suffice for us, when furthermore without valid cause
he has refused any clear statement to satisfy a reasonable demand, and
quibbled and defied.'
'Give me a moment's grace,' pleaded Christian, 'to make sure if I can go
no further.'
He might take his time; but little he needed to gain conviction for
despair; for he saw how inevitably answer would beget question point by
point, till, again at bay, having traversed ground bristling with hostile
indications, he must stand at yet worse disadvantage.
Before his eyes, one, fingering in mere impatience, took hold of the
strung berries; at a rough twitch some scattered. Christian, exasperated,
plucked for a free hand, and a tightened grip set him struggling for one
instant with the natural indignation of young blood at rude constraint.
So well dreaded was his strength, that on a misconstruction of his aim,
every tool that might serve as a weapon was caught up and thrust hastily
from the window, while more of the rowan danced down. Balked the Alien
seemed, resisting no longer, and sweating, shaking, choking, with eyes
miserably wet with rage. But Rhoda, who had watched his face, turned, and
gathering all the berries loose and strung, laid them safe from handling.
'God bless you, dear!' he said; and so she knew that she had guessed
right, and so she could not doubt but his wits had fallen again to their
old infirmity.
He had ended patience and grace when a gleam of hope came.
'It must be within your knowledge,' he said, 'who last saw him with me.'
'Yes.'
'Then this I may say--he and Philip went together when we parted
company.'
'That too we had thought to be possible.'
Christian recognised an ominous note, and the hostile faces he saw more
dark and grim.
'Speak out!' he cried; 'what is it you think?' Yet half he knew; yet
quite he knew. 'Speak out! Do you dare think I have betrayed them?'
'We have little doubt. Traitor, thrice over traitor, the League's account
with you is overdue.'
He laughed out savagely.
'Now, devils that you are you show, that bring a false accusation, since
well you know that once only have I been on a venture.'
'Well we know how two ventures before failed--well-planned ventures. Now
we know how you have played the fool and the spy together. Two times have
you been gone, no man knew where; over a day gone, and not at sea. Will
you say now where you went?'
He despaired, and did not answer, while Rhoda's glance wavered
consciously. At last he said:
'Though I myself can make no defence, in due time I cannot fail to be
cleared--of murder and treason. I cannot wait. This day I want; I must be
free on any terms. No terms? But hear! I claim judgment instantly, this
hour. Men, you dare not give it. Then I claim the judgment of God. I will
fight it out. Choose your place and pick your man,--nay, any two. What?
Cowards! three, all four together, but forgo your knives or lend me one.'
'Fight you may, but the place shall be here, and the odds against you, as
you see.'
The door was fast, and the six within stood close in the limited space;
he was held at disadvantage, and weaponless, against choice men prepared.
Also he cared for two women.
'Oh!' he cried, shaken and white with fury, 'I must, I must have one day.
With what but my life may I purchase? Is it cheap, think you? As you hope
for heaven by mercy, deal with me. Only one day! By this hour to-morrow,
if I breathe, I surrender. I will swear to it by any form you will. Make
harder conditions, and I take them. All my life-days after would I engage
to set this day free. What more can a man offer than his life for lending
or ending?'
His face and voice were so dreadful to Rhoda's heart, that she could not
brook the limits of reason.
'Mine! Christian, you have mine. You will not refuse; you will let him
go, for I will be his surety.'
'This is folly.'
'It is not. Is it not enough? I--life--honour, in pledge for him. O
Christian, you cannot gainsay, else you dishonour your own purpose.'
'We are plain men who are dealing for justice. An innocent girl cannot be
substitute for a traitor all but proved, whom, moreover, the League needs
for a better information.'
Still Rhoda tried protests.
'Girl, are you out of your senses too? dishonest too? Can you state any
circumstance to justify this urgency for a day's grace? Failing that,
well we can guess what he would do with it. It is somewhat barefaced.'
Christian checked her answering, and owned defeat.
'Give over now,' he said. 'An hour have I wasted fighting over losing
ground. You have gained all along, and I know it. In every way you have
the advantage. Say now, what will you do with it?'
'You surrender?'
'No. By your force, not by my will, shall liberty go. Quit words and be
doing. No: what then?'
'Consider that the odds are against your taking boat alive were a hint
out of your foul dealing with the League. Yet if you promise resistance
we have no choice but to hale you an open prisoner. Have you a mind to
face stones?'
Rhoda's scared looks drew one to assure her, that were Christian free
from guilt, his cause could not miscarry at their hands, unless by his
own intemperance; therefore should she persuade him to voluntary
submission. He groaned in miserable despair.
'I yield, but only till these stringent conditions be passed. Dispose
with me as you will, and I submit--yes, absolutely--yes; but for a time
only. A limited term; for one half-hour? More I will not, and look you
after. I cannot surrender my will to be free this day.'
Likely enough it was out of pity for the girl that his offer was taken.
Against suspicion of some reservation he was constrained to swear faith
under dictation; also the order of his going was ruled minutely, with
warning that the lifting of a hand unallowed would be instantly fatal.
'Be doing--be doing quickly,' he said, and the bolt was drawn.
Christian turned to stay Rhoda, who came following, and the four men,
with fine consideration, passed out first, letting the door swing to on
the unhappy pair. Their eyes met, poor souls, with miserable
consciousness that a barrier of reserve thwarted solace.
'Keep heart, dear,' he said; and bravely tearless she echoed him.
'But, oh!' she said, 'be patient, and not rash, for the sake of those who
love you.'
'O Rhoda, Rhoda! you do not know. I have a work this night. I think--I
know it was meant for me. By Heaven, I think. My own sins have risen up
against me now. They thwart. Hell itself striving against me has
advantage by them. There must be some way. But I cannot see it. There
must be! Oh! I cannot be condemned through turning back on an amended
hope. So Heaven-sent I blessed it. No way--no way!'
Muttering, he reached over to the rowan and absently fingered it, while
Rhoda urged on him what she knew of reason. He turned on her a musing
look.
'Rhoda, will you help me?'
'Oh, tell me to: never ask.'
'Take the rowan, and finish what I was about.'
She broke down at last, and turned away in such a passion of sobbing as
owned desertion of hope.
'Rhoda! You desert me, Rhoda!' in so broken a voice he said, that against
all sense she cried: 'But I will! Yes, yes; trust me, I will!' and could
not after retract when she saw his face.
'I am not mad,' he said; 'look at me: I am not.' And with that she knew
not how to reconcile evidence.
'Be speedy against my return.'
'Is it possible? How?' she whispered.
'As God wills, I cannot know; but some way will show, must show.'
Again she entreated against temerity, and for answer he taught her of a
lonely spot, asking her to carry the threaded rowan there, and to wait
his coming. 'If I do not come,' he said, 'I shall be----'
'Not dead!' she breathed.
'Oh, damned and dead,' he said.
'It cannot be. No. Yet, O Christian, should any harm befall you, avenged
you shall be. Yes. No law can serve us here efficient against the
tyranny of the League; but if in all the land high places of justice be,
there will I go, and there denounce the practice of such outrage and
wrong. Those four, they shall not escape from account. For that I will
live--ay, even hazard living--I know.'
'You will not,' ordered Christian; 'for I myself freely have served the
League, and have taken payment. And these four mean to deal justly; and I
have no right to complain.'
A hint of impatience sounded against the door, and Christian, with a last
word enjoining secrecy, turned and lifted the latch. A forlorn sob
complained. He caught both her hands in his.
'Dear heart, dear hands, a farewell were misdoubt,' he said, and on brow
and hands he crossed her. 'A human soul shall bless your faithful doing.'
He loosed and left her. She saw the door's blank exchange for him; she
heard the brisk departure of feet; away fled the spurious confidence she
had caught in his presence, and desolate and despairing, blind and choked
with grief, she cursed her own folly and bewailed his.
When she took up her lunatic task the red berries like told beads
registered one by one prayer too like imprecation, for sure she was that
the strange-named woman stirred at the heart of this coil. In heats of
exasperation she longed to scatter and crush the rowan; yet the thread
crept on steadily through her hands, inch by inch, till that misery was
over.
Then it pleased her grief to bring out her own best scarf for enfolding.
'So I further him to her,' she said; 'so I fashion some love-token
between them.' As soft-foot she went for it, outside a fastened door she
stood to listen. She heard the low mutter of petition, and jealous
resentment sprang up against a monopoly by the dead of the benefit of
prayer, so wanted by the living.
As she stood, a patch of calm sea shone into her eyes through a narrow
light; and from the frame, small as a beetle, moved a boat rowing across.
Five men she counted, and she made out that the second rower was the
biggest. So had he entirely surrendered. All hopeless she turned away to
fulfil her promise.
At that moment Christian was speaking.
'I take it, the time is now up.'
By a mile of engirding sea the prospect of escape looked so vain that one
joined assent with a fleer. Placid as the sea's calm was the Alien's
countenance, and he pulled on steadily. The leader from the helm leaned
forward to regard him fixedly, finding his tranquillity consonant only
with imperfect wits.
'You think better of resistance, nevertheless?'
'Truly I do,' he answered. 'I think better of resistance now,' and in his
eyes was no reading of resentment or anxiety.
His glance turned with his thoughts to distinguish the roof that covered
his mother and Rhoda. Dear heart, cried his, do your part and I will
mine.
Rhoda by then was doing after her own thought and liking. Though fasting
herself, poor child, that on the morrow the board might be the better
spread, for Christian she was lavish. Wine she took that Giles had not
lived to drink; of griddle cakes the best she chose, and also of figs
from those she summer-time ago had gathered and dried. Then she wound the
silly rowan in brown moss, knotted it up in her scarf, and cloaked
herself, and went out on her fool's errand.
Some miles to the west, on the edge of waste, stood a landmark of three
trees, and near by, off the path, a furze-stack. Thither by devious ways
of caution came Rhoda on the first wane of daylight, and having done all,
faced the drear without heart, crouching into shelter of the furze.
Poorly clad for such a vigil, thin from days of want, fasting, exhausted
by excitement and grief, she had no strength left to bear bravely any
further trial. Though Christian's desperate emphasis stood out to bar
despair, she told herself his coming was impossible, and her spirit
quailed in utter cowardice as she realised her own outlook. She was
afraid of the night, and her engagement had taken no limit of time.
Should the dreaded ice-wind of the season rise, there were peril to life;
but her heart died under a worse terror, that increased as waste and tree
bulked large and shapeless under drawing dark. For was it not the Eve of
Christmas, when the strict limitations of nature were so relaxed that
things inanimate could quit station, and very beasts speak like men, and
naked spirits be clothed with form. Her mortal senses were averse. With
desperate desire for relief she scanned the large through the longest
hour of her life.
Night was in the valleys, but on the uplands twilight still, when against
the sky a runner came. He, dear saviour.
But his footsteps made no sound; but he showed too white. Doubt of agony
that this was not he in human flesh froze her, till he came and stood,
and not seeing her close crouched, uttered his heart in a sound dreadful
to hear.
'Here, here!' cried Rhoda, and had her hands on him before her eyes had
fairly realised him. He was mostly naked.
Coatless, shirtless, unshod, his breeks and his hair clung damp, showing
by what way he had come free. She held him, and laughed and sobbed.
'You have it?' he said. 'Give it here--give it.'
'This also--this first. Drink--eat.'
'No; I cannot stay.'
'You shall--you must,' she urged. 'Do you owe me nothing? What, never a
word?'
He declined impatience to her better counsel; and when he had got the
rowan and belted it safe, to the praise of her providence he drank
eagerly and ate.
Rhoda spied a dark streak on his shoulder. 'You are hurt--oh!'
'Only skin-deep. Salt water stanched it.'
'And what of them? Christian, what have you done?' she asked with
apprehension.
'Yes; I have a charge for you. Oh, their skins are whole all. Can you
step on with me a pace? You will not be afraid?'
She looked at the wan south-west, and the sable heath, and the stark
trees; but she could answer now: 'No,' stoutly and truly, and shiver for
fear only. He withheld his pace for her, she stretched to a stride for
him.
'Well done, I know,' she said, 'but tell me how.'
He gave a meagre tale, but many a detail she heard later to fill it out.
It was easy doing according to Christian, when time and place suited, to
beat out a rib of the boat, to stand his ground for a moment while the
sea accomplished for him, then to drop overboard when blades struck too
quick and close. The boat went down, he said, near three miles from
shore.
'O Christian! are any drowned?'
'No, no. I had done my best by them. You know how the Tortoises lie. We
were well within a furlong of them. I got there first, and was doffed and
ready when they came, waiting to offer them fair. Rhoda, you will carry
word of this that some fellows may go to take them off.'
'Not I,' she said vindictively; 'let them wear the night there for due
quittance.'
'No. They might be perished. And 'twas I counselled them not to attempt
the shore, and said I could send word of their plight; and I meant it
honestly, though the fools grew so mad at that, that they took to
stoning.'
When, later, Rhoda heard the tale more fully, it showed elements of
incongruous comedy; later still, she heard it grown into monstrous
proportions, when the name of the Tortoises was put aside, and the place
was known as the Devil's Rocks thenceforward. The Alien's feats that day,
his mighty stroke staving the boat, his swimming of marvellous speed, his
confidence and temerity, were not passed on to his credit: adverse was
the interpretation, and he never lived it down.
'Tell me, Christian, where you will be, and how we are to get news of you
till you dare return.'
'Dare return! If I be not dead, that will I to-morrow.'
She cried out against such insanity.
'You must not. It is wicked with a foolhardy parade to torment us--your
mother.'
'Have no fear, dear. If I come again, it will be with joy, bearing my
sheaves.'
She could put an interpretation on his words that loaded her heart.
'Rhoda, dear sister, I owe you much this day, and now I will ask for one
thing more.'
She said 'Yes,' though foreboding ordeal. It was a minute before he
spoke.
'Will you pray for us?'
Poor heart, how could she? Anything but that.
'What worth are the prayers of such an one as I? Desire rather your
mother's prayers.'
'She for another cause will be praying the night through. Will you do as
much for us?'
He stopped her, for she did not speak, and held her by the shoulders,
trying to see her face to get answered.
'O Rhoda, will you not pray for us?'
She made her answer singular. 'I will pray for thee'; but his greater
want overcame her into ending: 'and--for Diadyomene.'
He stood stock-still and gripped her hard when that name came, but he
asked nothing. 'I will, I will,' she whispered; and then he kissed her
brow and said: 'God bless you.' She flung her arms round his neck without
reserve; her cheek lay against his bare breast, and because she felt a
cross there she dared to turn her lips and kiss. He gathered her to close
embrace, so that swept from her feet she lay in his arms rapt for one
precious instant from all the world.
When he had set her on her feet, when he had blessed her many times, she
clung to him still, heaving great sobs, till he had to pluck away her
hands.
'Yes, go,' she said. 'I will pray for you both,' and down she knelt
straightway.
'God be with you.'
'God be with you.'
He passed from her into the darkness, away from sorrows she knew to some
unknown. Rhoda, flung prostrate, wept bitterly, rending her heart for the
getting of very prayer for that unknown woman, her bane.
Too little thought Christian, though he loved her well, of her who so
faithfully went on his bidding, trudging wearily on to make good his
word, kneeling afterwards through the long hours in prayer that was
martyrdom. If the value of prayer lie in the cost, hers that night
greatly should avail.
CHAPTER XV
Late knocking came importunate to the House Monitory. One went to the
wicket and looked out. Her light, convulsed, for an instant abetted a
delusion that he who stood knocking outside was Christ Himself with the
signs of His Passion: unclothed was the man she saw, bloodstained, both
head and hands. Then she noted fair hair, and had to believe that this
haggard man was one with the brave-faced boy of earliest summer. He clung
to the ledge for support; so spent was he that a word was hard to
compass.
'For the love of God,' he said, 'you who are watchers to-night pray for a
human soul in sore need.'
She would vouch for that; she would summon one with authority to vouch
for more.
When she carried word within: ''Tis the same,' said one, 'who twice has
left fish at the gate, who slept once at the feet of St. Margaret.'
To the wicket went the head monitress, and, moved to compassion by the
sight of his great distress, she gave him good assurance that not the
five watchers only, but one and all, should watch and pray for him that
night, and she asked his name for the ordering of prayer.
'Not mine!' he said. 'I ask your prayers for another whose need is mine.
Pray for her by the name Diadyomene.'
He unfastened the cross from his neck and gave it.
'This is a pledge,' he said, 'I would lay out of my weak keeping for St.
Mary, St. Margaret, and St. Faith to hold for me, lest to-night I should
desire I had it, to be rid of it finally according to promise.'
He had not made himself intelligible; clearer utterance was beyond him.
'No matter!' he said. 'Take it--keep it--till I come again.'
He knotted the empty string again to his neck, and, commended to God,
went his way.
Now when these two, little later, asked of each other, 'What was the
strange name he gave?' neither could remember it. But they said 'God
knows,' and prayed for that nameless soul.
Somehow Christian got down the cliffs to the shore, as somehow he had
come all the way. Little wonder head and hands showed bloody: every
member was bruised and torn, for he had stumbled and gone headlong a
score of times in his desperate speed over craggy tracks, where daylight
goings needed to be wary. Scarcely could hoofed creatures have come
whole-foot, and he, though of hardy unshod practice, brought from that
way not an inch sound under tread. An uncertain moon had favoured him at
worst passes, else had he fallen to certain destruction.
He stood at the sea's edge and paused to get breath and courage. To his
shame, he was deficient in fortitude: the salt of the wet shingle bit his
feet so cruelly, that he shrank at the prospect of intensified pain
through all the innumerable wounds he bore. He saw exposed a pitiful,
unstable wretch, with a body drained of strength and nerve, and a spirit
servile to base instances. In desperate spite he plunged and swam.
He had ever waited for an outgoing tide; he had ever taken a daylight
tide; now for his sins he had night and the flood against him. But still
the moon blessed him. Delusions beset him that pains of his body came
from the very teeth of sea-creatures, too fierce and many for him to
cope with, crowding, dragging, gnawing hard at his life. For ease a
passive moment and a little painful, airless sobbing would suffice:
soonest, best. And had the pale moon darkened, he had gone under as at a
supreme command, to such depravity and destitution were come his vital
instincts. But, her light holding him alive, by hard degrees he won his
way, till, for the last time, he stood upon the Isle Sinister.
But when he had made his way through the narrow gorge, and trod sand, the
moon was dark, and night fell upon his heart. He dared not call, and
neither sight nor sound granted him assurance of Diadyomene's presence.
Wanting her footprints to tell she had passed in, he feared lest he
should be barring her very entrance. He fell down and prayed, being
without resource.
And Lois was praying, and Rhoda with bitter tears, and the House Monitory
with the ring of its bells. Very faint was the moan of the sea in their
ears.
Slowly, slowly, the blessed moon stepped out, and lifted him up and
delivered to his sight the track of light feet set from seaward--one
track only. In haste, by the wavering light of the moon, he laid out the
threaded rowan and weighted one end against the rock. The whole length
extended came short of the further wall by about two feet.
He rallied from the momentary shock, resolving that he himself could
stand in the gap to bar passage.
No form nor motion could he discern within his range as in slow scrutiny
his eyes sought her from side to side. He lighted on despair; the
entrance to the cavern had escaped his providence.
In the dark he went to the low arch, and felt about the sand inch by inch
for the dint of her feet. Naught could he find. Yet what did it profit
him that she had not yet passed? To drop prone on the sand was his poor
conclusion, abandoned to despair.
He was but cast back on the morning's portion, then of fair sufficiency,
but now oh! meagre, meagre, compared to the ripe hope that had come of
nourishment strange and opportune as manna from heaven. Then had he
incurred to no purpose expense of blood and sweat and anguish of body and
mind, nay, brought to the crucial hour such an appalling deficiency.
To contest a human soul with powers of darkness required perfect
steadfastness of will and faith; lost, lost, with mere self-control lost
in a useless barter that left him now a clod of effete manhood, with just
life enough for groaning pain. Before conflict was he vanquished.
Diadyomene need but come with a word of anger or derision to break him
into childish sobbings.
Yet driven to last extremity, such man's strength as remained to him
might prevail in sanctified violence for the winning of a soul. He would
hold her by the feet; his hands were bloody, but he would hold her by the
feet; should he have to cling round her, he would not hurt; meek and
gentle could he be, though fury should set her to such savage handling as
a woman's strength may compass.
To win a human soul? O wretched piece of clay, not that! The mere thought
of contact with Diadyomene, close contact with her, cool, soft, naked
there in the cold dark, swept the bright delirium of sea-magic over him
again, stung his blood to a burning fever, set him writhing as pain had
never. At the fiery blast, in this nadir hour the place of pure love was
assaulted and taken by base lust; his desire was most strong, not for
the winning of a human soul, but for the wicked winning of a human body,
ay, maugre her will--any way.
Yet, oh for the fair way of her favour! Had she not allowed him very
gracious hints?--'lay your hand upon my breast, set your lips to mine.'
Thrice she had said it--once when a touch on her hand had brought magical
vision, once at her kindest, once at her cruelest. Though her command was
against him, though her anger might not be overpast, a hope kindled that
dread of the dark hour of her fate might urge her to his arms, there to
find such gladness and consolation as might leave no place for horror to
come into possession.
'And give up your soul.' Thrice too had that been said. He was loath to
give it remembrance, but it entered, whenever faint bells tolled on his
ear it entered.
Very strangely, while good and evil fought equal-handed for his will, he
perceived that his body had risen to hands and knees, and was going
forward very fitly like a beast. All round the cold dark began to burn. A
boulder lay athwart his course, and then very strangely he was aware that
his arms had fastened round it with convulsive strength, and brow and
breast were wounded against it. He could not take possession to end this
disgraceful treason; all that was left to him was to rescue integrity at
least by undoing the knot at his neck.
Then prevailed the blessed guile of Lois. The trivial exaction brought
her son face to face with her, with her sorrows, with her prayers, and
the mere communion of love set him praying frantically, and so brought
him to himself again.
We beseech, we beseech, we beseech: Lord God for my unbaptized! Dear
Christ for Christian's Diadyomene! Blessed Trinity and all Saints for a
nameless soul in sore need!
Vile, vile indeed, were he to desert a holy alliance.
There where the token had lain on his breast cross-edges of the boulder
were wounding, and strange human nature turning ravenous to any gross
substitution of fires, seized with wild energy on the ecstasy of pain,
till the rock cut to the bone, while the whole boulder seemed to stir. In
nowise might the cross be cast aside: it was kept against his will in
holy ward; it was printed indelibly in his flesh.
The very boulder had stirred. Then hope rose up as a tyrant, for he had
fallen spent again. Spirit was weak and flesh was weak, and it were task
hard out of measure to heave that boulder from its bed and set it up to
block the low entrance; and useless, when at a sight or a sound
Diadyomene were away fleet foot to the sea.
And yet he felt about, set feet and shoulder for an arch of strength, and
strained with great hefts; and again the mass seemed to stir. He dropped
down, trenched painfully round, and tried again till his sinews cracked.
Nor in vain: with a reluctant sob its bed of sand gave up the stubborn
rock, and as it rolled endlong a devil that had urged excuse went from
Christian. Foot after foot he fought that dreadful weight along the sand,
right up to the cleft, right across the cleft he forced it. Not yet had
he done enough; for he could feel that as the boulder lay, there was
space for a slim body to press across and win the cavern. To better the
barrier by a few poor inches, this way and that he wrung his wearied body
and broke flesh; and to no purpose. 'Except my bones break, I will.' He
grappled strenuously; a little give responded. He set his feet closer in,
and lifted again mightily, and the boulder shifted, poised onward to
settle.
Who struck? Death.
Nerveless, he swayed with the rock, on a motion its own weight
consummated, agape, transfixed by the wonder of living still.
Fresh, horrible pain seized him by foot and ankle, casting him down to
tear up the sand, to bite the sand, lest in agony he should go shrieking
like a woman.
He writhed round to strike in the dark at the senseless mass, in the
madness of terror and pain deeming the boulder itself had moved with
malignant intelligence, not merely according to the preponderate laws
that lift the world. To him the presence of infernal powers was manifest
in this agent. In foul warfare they held him fast by the heel, and mocked
the impotent spirit within the bonds of flesh. The dark grew pregnant
with evil beings as he struggled to swooning.
Pray for us, faithful hearts, pray! In the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, for her service! Then he prevailed, and out of the
teeth of hell he wrenched his heel.
Broken, crippled, strengthless, Christian crawled over the sand to the
spot where he would die. Indistinguishable in the dark was the furrow he
left stained till the tide should come: long before daylight broke the
tide would come up to smooth and whiten it. He knew he was dying, and,
touching the ended rowan, rendered thanks that it was to be there. All
was nearly over, pain and a foolish, arrogant hope on which he had staked
his life: presently, when he was dead, Diadyomene would come, to overstep
his body, eluding there the toils. He misliked the thought that her feet
might go red from treading him, and he stretched about weakly for briny
hollows along the rock to cleanse the hot, slow oozing that chilled and
stiffened into long stripes.
Why should he be gasping still, as breathless as after his hardest race,
as after his mightiest heft? He required breath to help endurance of
thirst and exorbitant pain; air could he gasp in, deep and free, and yet
he wanted for more.
Why he should be dying, and how, Christian did not know. Life's centre
had been stricken mortally quicker than a lightning-flash, too subtly for
the brain to register any pain, so unmistakably he wondered only he was
yet alive. From breath to breath he awaited another touch and a final,
yet nothing lacked for vital order save air, air, more air. At short,
merciful intervals he drifted out of the range of any pain.
On this his third death he did not so very greatly shrink from passing
out of the body to stand before the face of his Maker. He could not take
up any meaning for prayer. He was discarded from service; perfect justice
had tried him, judged him, and condemned him as unfit. It was bitter for
him; but review of his finishing span of life, its sin, failure,
impotence, brought him to acquiescence. 'Thine is the kingdom, and the
power, and the glory' was all he had of prayer.
The apprehension of each human principle was straitened, by darkness
about him, by pain in strong possession, by recognition of death closing
in. As visitants to his heart from some far-distant sphere came Rhoda,
Lois, Diadyomene; they vanished away; he could not keep them close--not
even Diadyomene. 'Dear love, my love!'
Through the dark she came.
He rose to his knees, aware of a moving glimmer of grey, nearing, near.
At her swift, beautiful pace she made for the sea. Suddenly she stood. He
heard the catch of her breath; swiftly the dim oval of her face was
turned to him; then away. She swayed back a step; she swayed forward;
hung a moment at poise upright; reeled aside, and fled back into the
dark.
Then Christian found he had yet strong faculty for life. He had retained
small certainty that she had not long passed him by; speculation had
fallen faint. Lo! she was here, controlled, and he not dead. He could
pray, for her and for a little life, passionately.
A low, bitter cry quivered through the dark to his heart. Diadyomene had
fled for a way of escape, and found it barred. Soft rapids were her feet;
she came speeding full to leap past. In vain; with a cry she flung up her
arms, revulsed irresistibly, swerved, and stood stone-still. She moaned
out long, agonised sighs; she seemed to turn away in pride, ignoring him;
she seemed to face him again, not defiant. He saw her hands outstretched
in appeal. 'What have you done?' she said; 'what have you done?' and then
the woful complaint was changed to wilder: 'What have I done? what have
I done?'
He did not dare to speak, nor had he the breath. He was weeping for her.
But she, not seeing, was stirred to wrath and fear by a silence so cruel.
To her height she rose above the gasping, crouched shape, and her voice
rang hard and clear.
'Stand away. Once you trespassed, and I forgave you fully; twice, and I
spared you; this third time--get you gone quickly, and find yourself some
easy death before it be out of reach.'
Still he did not answer. Her fear outdid her anger, and she stooped her
pride.
'Only be kind and true, and let me go,' she implored, and knelt low as
he. 'I let you take my secret, and you turn it against me treacherously.
You plan a shameful snare, you, you, whom I counted true as the sun. To
you, a bold, graceless stranger, I granted life at the first; to you I
gave the liberty of my dearest haunt. Be just, and leave me free in my
own. Have pity, and let me go. Woe and horror are coming upon me to take
me, awake and astray from the comfort of the sea.' She moaned and sighed
piteously.
His tears fell like rain for grief of his doings, for bitter grief that
he might not comfort her.
Because of a base alloy that had altered sacred love he had to fear. He
turned away his head, panting and shaking, for pain and thirst made
almost unendurable a temptation to stretch out his hand to hers, by the
magic of her touch to lose himself till death in a blissful swoon.
Her wail had in it the note of a deserted child and of a desolate woman.
'I am crying to you for pity and help, and you turn away; I, who in the
sea am regnant. But late you cried to me when no mercy and pardon were
due, and I let you live. And if then I judged you unheard and wrongly,
and if I condemned a breach of faith over harshly, here kneeling I pray
you to forgive--I, who never bid vainly, never ask vainly, of any living
creature but of you.'
Christian only was weeping; Diadyomene shed no tear, though her voice
quivered piteously.
'Ah, my sea, my sea! Hark how it moans to me, and cannot reach me! My
birds fail me, nestling afar--that you considered when you came by
night. Undo, undo your cruel work, and I will reproach you never.'
His silence appalled her. 'Why should you do this?' she cried. 'What
would you have of me? A ransom? Name it. The wealth of the sea is mine to
give; the magic of the sea is mine. To all seas, to all sea-creatures,
you shall bear a charmed life henceforward, only let me go.'
He sobbed, 'But I die, I die!' but so brokenly that the words failed at
her ears.
'Hear me,' she said; 'I make no reservation. Ask what you will, and
nothing, nothing I can grant will I refuse--only quickly let me go.'
She was crouched before him, with her face downward and hidden, as she
moaned, and moaned surrender. Presently she half lifted, and her voice
was at a lovely break between grief and gladness.
'Fool, dear ignorant fool, Diadyomenos, are you blind? You have come to
me often; have I ever looked unglad? Have I wearied of you soon? Have I
failed you? Could you read into that no favour from me, Diadyomene, who
have the sea to range? Can you wrong so my grace to you in the past as to
plan an extortion? Ah, foolish, needless, empty wrong! Your eyes have
been fair to me when they said what your tongue would not. Speak now fair
words, since I cannot read your eyes. Dear hands, reach out for mine,
take them and draw me out of the snare, and with gladness and shame own
it needless, as with gladness and pride will I.'
So vile a wretch she took him to be! and the bitterness was that he might
not disclaim. For a moment he had fallen to that baseness; it might be
that only because life was going out of him so fast was he past such
purpose now. A stupid 'No, no,' was all he could bring out.
She sprang up at a bound, driven to fury. She longed to strike with mere
woman strength, yet she dared not a contact, lest hers be the
disadvantage. With a shriek she fled back into the dark, and he heard the
dreadful wailing cries wheeling away. Desperately he prayed for himself
and for her; for his pain and an agony of pity were almost more than he
could bear.
Suddenly she came upon him and stood close. Her tone was changed.
'At last,' she said, 'miserable creature, you shall know the truth. You
love me. I know it well; I have known it long. And with all my
strength--I--hate you. Not for this night's treachery and insolence
only; from the first I hated you; and hatred has grown since more
bitter-strong, till your one life and body seemed all too little to stay
it. Ah! the love I read in your eyes has been sweet sustenance. So I
waited and waited only for this: for love of me to take deep hold of your
heart, to be dearer than life, before I plucked it up by the roots; and
to laugh in your face as I did it, knowing it worse than any death. Oh!
it should have been by daylight. I would like to see your face and your
eyes now, and watch your great body writhe--I think it does! Why, laugh I
must.
'Can you fathom my hate by its doings? You stood here first, glad, proud,
strong in your youth; but a few short weeks, and I had turned all to
ruin. Yes, I--I--only was your bane, though I but watched, and laughed,
and whispered beneath my waters, and let you be for the handling of your
fellows. Truly my hate has worked subtly and well, and even beyond
device; it has reached beyond you: an old man treads the quay no more,
and a girl comes down to it grown pale and heavy-eyed, and a woman ageing
and greyer every time. Think and know! You never shall see them again;
for a brief moment you check and defy me, but the entrance of the tide
shall bring you your death.
'Now, I the while will plan the worst death I may. You think you have
faced that once already? Fool! from to-morrow's dawn till sunset I will
teach you better. The foulest creature of the deep shall take you again
and hold you helpless--but that is nothing: for swarms shall come up from
the sea, and from twilight to twilight they shall eat you alive. They
shall gnaw the flesh from your limbs; they shall pierce to the bone; they
shall drill you through and rummage your entrails. And with them shall
enter the brine to drench you with anguish. And I, beside you, with my
fingers in your hair, will watch all day, and have a care to lift your
head above the tide; and I will flick off the sea-lice and the crays from
your face and your eyes, to leave them whole and clear and legible to my
hate at the last. And at the very last I will lay my face down against
yours, and out of very pure hate will kiss you once--will kiss you more
than once, and will not tire because you will so quicken with loathing.
Even in the death agony I mean you to know my fingers in your hair. Ha!
Agonistes.
'And now you wish you had died on that moonlit, warm night long ago: and
me it gladdens to think I did not then cut you off from the life to
follow after, more bitter than many quick deaths. And you wish I had
finished you outright in the late storm, that so you might have died
blissfully ignorant of the whole truth: and I spared you only that you
should not escape a better torture that I had contrived.
'Ah! it has been a long delight to fool you, to play my game with
flawless skill. As I choose a wear of pearls, so chose I graces of love
for adornment. Am I not perfect now? What have I said of hatred and love?
No, no, all that is false. Because you scorn the sea-life so dear to me,
I try to keep hatred; but it may not abide when you stand before me and I
look in your eyes--oh! slay it, slay it quite with the touch of your
lips. My love!' her voice fell softly: 'My love, my love, my love, my
love!' She was chasing the word along all the ranges of derision.
She stood no more than a pace from him, a flexile figure that poised and
swung, to provoke the wild beast in him to spring. Christian never
stirred nor spoke.
'Would the moon but shine! I mean to watch you when you die, but I think
a better sight your face would be now than then. How well it pleases me
your eyes are grey! Can grey eyes serve as well to show hate as love? Ay,
I shall laugh at that: to see in them hate, hate like my own; but
impotent hate, not like mine. It hardly has dawned yet, I guess, but it
will; and presently be so strong that the dearest joy left would be to
have your hand on my throat to finish my life. Do you think I fear? I
dare you, defy you! Ha! Agonistes.'
He did not come hurling upon her; he did not by word or sign acknowledge
her taunts.
'Why, the night of my dread goes blithely as never before. There is no
bane left in it. I have found an antidote.'
She forced a laugh, but it went wild, strangled, and fell broken. Again
she fled back into the dark, and, like a prisoned bird, circled frantic
for the sea that she could not reach. Far from Christian, she halted and
panted low: 'Not yet have I failed, dear sea. Though love may not
prevail, nor hate, yet shall my song.'
Though the incoming tide sounded near, echo still carried the tolling of
the bells. For the knell of that passing soul fittest names they bore out
of all the Communion of Saints. St. Mary! bitter dregs had his life to
drain; St. Margaret! his pearl of the sea was lost in deep waters; St.
Faith! utter darkness was about, and desperate striving could find no
light of Heaven; his life, his love, his God forsook, rejected, disowned
him.
Loss or fear could not touch him any more, for not one hope, one joy
remained. From the cruel havoc, calm, passionless wonder distilled, and
new proportions rose as his past came before him to be measured anew: so
tolerable looked the worst of inflictions, a passing wrong, forgivable,
forgettable; so sorry looked the best endurance, a wretched contortion,
defacing, deforming. Against Diadyomene not one throb of passion stirred:
she had broken his heart outright, so that it had not true faculty of
life for any new growth. Strangely, to his wonder, under this her doing,
the old derangement passed away, and the way of loving-kindness to all
men showed clear. Too late! Never in this life could he meet his fellows
with good, quiet blood, and frank eyes, and wholesome laughter, unafraid,
simply acknowledging all records, free, candid, scrutable.
He began even before death to resolve to impersonality; he surveyed the
perverse obstinacy of vitality that would not quit its old habitation,
though fierce pain was in possession; and he could wonder at the
wretched body heaving, tortured by a double thirst for air, for water,
when so short a time would render it mere quiet earth, soon to unshape.
Out of the darkness rang her voice, noting beauty wordless, and sunlit
seas glanced through the nights: the magic of the sea was upon him.
Brief sweetness! the bright sound faltered, broke. O blackness and pain!
The far, slow knell struck in.
Again, up welled the buoyant voice, poised and floated exquisitely,
mounted and shrilled frantically sweet, caught up the failing senses from
the death sweats, and launched them on a magic flood of emotion, through
racing sprays, and winds vivid and strong of the brine.
Gone, ah! gone; for a wailing cry came, and then thwart silence suddenly,
and flung him back to the dominion of black anguish.
And again and again, high-noted, above the tramp of the nearing tide,
that perfect voice flew to delicious melody; and promise of words
strengthened the enchantment; and yet, and yet, a cry and a silence
stabbed and bled the spell she would fashion.
Perfect achievement came. Up rose a measure transcending in rapture all
forgone, and flawless, unfaltering, consummate, leaped on and on, rhythm
by rhythm, clear-syllabled for conquest.
'Where silver shallows hold back the sea, Under the bend of the great
land's knee, And the gleaming gulls go nestled and free.
Where the tide runs down in the round of the bay, There in the rings
where the mermen play, On ribs and shallows their footprints lay.
In liquid speech they laughed and sung, Under the rocks, till the rout
outswung, Called from the echoing cave its tongue.
They were away with the glimmering seas: Off with the twilight, off with
the breeze, Wave-weeds fell from their glancing knees;
Robes laid by, which the hollowed spars Held and hid, while the wet
sand-bars Failed of the sunlight and filled with stars.
Sea-mists rose for a dream, but when Mists wore faint in the sunlight,
then Lo, the sea with its dancing men.
Spume and swirl spun under their feet; Sparkle and flash, for the runners
were fleet; Over them climbed the day to its heat.
And the day drew a draught of the tide-winds strong, As a singer the
breath to be rendered song, As a child the life that will last so long.'
Christian had fallen prone.
While she sang, so potent was the magic, he lusted to live. Sentient
only to the desires she kindled, out of account lay the dead heart, and
the broken strength, and the body so shattered within and without, that
wonder was it yet could hold a man's life. Pain was excluded by a great
sensual joy of living.
Her song manned the mirage of her delight, and straightway he was
passionate for life. Never before had she acknowledged the sea-fellowship
to occasion the ravenous ache of jealousy. She sang of the mermen, and
they rose before him visionary at the spell, with vigorous hair and
frolic eyes, very men, lithe and sinewy for the chase and capture of
their feminine fairest in amorous play. Life was one fire burning for the
hot war of nature's males, as through the riot, whirling with the song,
he eyed challenge and promise of a splendid wrestle with strong, hard
limbs; and the liquid, exquisite voice was a call to him to speed in and
win, nor suffer the wanton sea-brood to prevail.
It was then that his body fell, face forward, never to rise again.
On sang Diadyomene, not knowing that a power stronger than her magic,
stronger than his will, kept him from her feet. On she sang, herself
possessed, uttering not with her own will more than magic. What alien
element underlay the spell she would deliver? what lurking revelation to
be dreaded, to be desired, hid beneath? Her voice was caught back again,
and yet again, to repeat the finish:
'As a singer the breath to be rendered song, As a child the life that
will last so long-- As a child----'
Then bell notes fell in a chime. She lifted her head; they rang, she
hearkened, motionless, wordless.
It was midnight, and joy for the birth of Christ thrilled the world. No
spell could hold. Christian must resume the throes of death.
The cold and the tide were merciful to shorten. His limbs were stone-cold
and dead already, past motion, past pain. Against his side the foremost
lap of the tide told. It licked and bit along his body, flanks, breast,
throat, touched his cheek. Astray against his face he felt the thread of
rowan. It kissed along cheek, along brow, and swung wide and away.
'Christ, Christ, ah! Christ.'
He turned his head and drank of the brine, and drank and drank to slake
the rage of thirst. The drawing of breath made hindrance: not for long.
The last draughts he took were somewhat sharp and painful, but they
quenched his thirst. He was entirely satisfied.
'We beseech, we beseech, we beseech: Lord God for my unbaptized! Dear
Christ for Christian's Diadyomene! Blessed Trinity and all Saints for a
nameless soul in sore need!'
CHAPTER XVI
Through all creation went the divine breath of renunciation. Joy for the
birth of Christ rang on; and motionless, wordless, Diadyomene hearkened,
released from the magic of the sea.
Dawned a vision remote, but strangely distinct, of a small life
comprehending two dear figures--one most dear; and thereto a small,
beautiful pain responded. A tale flashed across and across, gaining
coherence, giving it: the tale of a loved and lost child, long years ago
lost to the sea; loved still. Perfect grew the interweaving; the
substance of the two became one.
Joy for the birth of Christ was abroad, thrilling all planes of existence
with the divine breath of renunciation. In the soul of Diadyomene, waked
from its long trance, love was alive; a finite, individual love, chief
centred on one dearest to remembrance. The beautiful pain grew large, and
the cold heart that the sea-life had filled and satisfied was yearning
for share in another life long forgone. A small divine instinct,
following ignorantly in the wake of that great celestial love that
hundreds of years ago stooped to the sorrow of life, urged her to
renounce the ample strengths and joys of the sea, and to satisfy a
piteous want, were it by repression of energies, by eschewing full
flavours of sense, by the draining of her young life. The soul of true
womanhood in this child for the cherishing of her mother's waxed mature.
Motionless, wordless, she hearkened while separate bells cadenced; when
again they fell to their wonted unison, the sea-bred woman knew that a
soul was hers, and that it claimed dominion.
'We beseech, we beseech, we beseech: Lord God for my unbaptized! Dear
Christ for Christian's Diadyomene! Blessed Trinity and all Saints for a
nameless soul in sore need!'
Diadyomene flung out vacant arms, and moaned a dear name, for years
unuttered. Across the long interval of sea-life her spirit leaned to own
the filial heart of childhood. Clear to her as yesterday came back that
broken fragment of earlier life,--bright, partial, inadequate, quaintly
minute, as impression had gone into a happy, foolish infant. Not a
memory had traversed the ground since to blur a detail, though now the
adult faculties could apprehend distortion, the beautiful vagarious
distortion that can live in a brain over toddling feet.
Recent song caught colour; reflected it.
'As a woman the breath to be rendered song, As a child the life that will
last so long.'
From deep roots under dense forgetfulness, the song had drawn up truth to
blossom in perfect form. Before the eager wonder of the child, the sea
had revealed its secret of men shapes, who had beckoned, and laughed, and
tempted her with promise and play, till she stretched out her arms to
their glee, till she ran in their circles, till, breathless, she thirsted
and drank of their offering, and so passed.
So tempered was her cold sea body that no ice-wind ever started a shiver.
Now one came, for the mother might not recognise her child, for the child
might be grown unworthy of her mother's love.
There was one to succour: Christian. What had she done? There was one to
blast her, too foul for any love: Christian.
Her hideous doings rushed back upon her with conviction of guilt; an old
sense revived; she shrank and cowered, bowed to the ground by an agony of
shame.
Lo! the moon bared her face and looked.
Diadyomene rose to her knees; with a steady will she rose to her feet and
went to suffer her full penalties.
Her portion of shame was dreadful to bear; her bold avowal of love for
Christian, her atrocious wording of hate intervolved to double disgrace.
Then neither passion had been entirely feigned; now she knew that love
swayed her alone, turning her to a worship of the man. No bitterer
penance could she conceive than with confession to him to strip heart and
soul naked as her body; this only could extend it: should his large
generosity keep under his loathing and contempt, and order him to deal
gently for her help according to pity. No way could he remit her dues.
As she went to meet his face, she lifted her gaze up the slant moonbeams,
looking piteous, despairing appeal for darkness to come back and cover
her. Wisps of cloud made only a poor pretence. She met the tide
unhindered, and stood; she looked, no man was there; she wailed
'Christian, Christian,' and no voice answered. With relief for the
lengthened shadows below the rocks, she made for the very spot where he
had knelt; it was far overpassed by the tide. Ankle deep she trod: knee
deep. She sets her foot upon a man's hand, leaps, stumbles on his body to
a fall: Christian dead lies under her embrace.
Supreme justice had measured her due.
The placid clay had returned to an old allegiance, and weltered with the
tide according to the joint ordering of earth and moon. The living
creature would not acknowledge that right dominion, most desperately
would withstand it. She stooped her shoulder beneath the low head, and
heaved it up above the tide: the air did but insist that it lay
dead-still. With all her slender feminine strength put out for speed, she
girthed, she held, she upbore the inert weight afloat for moonlighted
shallows. There her knee up-staying, her frantic hands prevailing over
the prone figure, the dead face fell revealed. No hope could appeal
against that witness.
A strange grey had replaced the ruddy tan of life, darker than the usual
pallor of the dead. That, and the slack jaw, and the fixed, half-shut
eyes, a new and terrible aspect gave to the head, dear and sacred above
all on earth to the stricken creature beholding.
For a long moment appalled she gazed, knowing yet but one fathom of her
misery: just her loss, her mere great loss past repair. Then moaning
feebly, her arms went round again to draw it close. Her smooth palms
gliding over the body told of flawed surfaces, bidding her eyes leave the
face to read new scores: on the breast a deep rent, on the shoulder
another, and further more and more wherever a hand went. Along one arm
she stretched hers, and lifted it up to the light of the moon. Beside the
tense, slender limb, gleaming white, that other showed massive, inert,
grey-hued, with darker breaks. The hand hanging heavy was a dark horror
to see.
Shadows invaded, for the moon was foundering on the rocks.
Across her shoulders she drew the heavy burden, strove to rise upright to
bear it, tottered, fell, and then dragged on with elbows and knees as the
waves resigned to her the full load. Heavy knees furrowed the sand beside
hers, heavy arms trailed; the awful, cold face drooped and swayed from
her shoulder as she moved; now and again it touched her cheek.
Withdrawn from the fatal sea, what gain had she? The last spark of life
was long extinct, and she knew it; yet a folly very human set her
seeking Christian's self in the shell that was left, scanning it,
handling it, calling upon deaf ears, drawing the wet head against her
breast. Cold, cold was her breast; the sea-magic had bred out all heat
from her heart.
She pressed the dripping hair; she stooped and kissed her dead lover on
the lips. It was then her iniquity struck home with merciless rigour
complete. 'I will lay my face down against yours, and out of very pure
hate will kiss you once. Even in the death-agony I mean you to know my
fingers in your hair.'
The wretched soul writhed as the hideous words rose up against her to
damn. They were alive with every tone and laugh; they would live stinging
and eating out her heart until she died.
And after death?
'Christian! Christian!'
The agonised cry now was no effort to waken deaf ears; it called after
Christian himself, gone past reach of her remorse into unknown night.
Gone deliberately, to be finally quit of so abhorred a creature? In mute
witness the quiet body lay to vindicate Christian: too broken it was, too
darkly grey for any death self-willed.
Then she could look upon the blank face no more, for the moon passed
quite away. Then the stretching tide came lapping and fawning, soon to
sway the dead weight she held. She was not worthy to look upon clay so
sacred, she was not worthy to touch it, she who in wanton moods had
inclined to a splendid male, nor recognised in him a nobler version of
love. No spark of profane passion could remain after she had kissed the
cold, dead face.
The dreadful cry of a soul's despair broke the vacant air with the name
of Christian. Many times his name, and no other word. The desolation of
great agony was hers: no creature of the sea could bring her any comfort
now; no creature under heaven; for the one on earth to whom her child's
heart yearned was the one on earth she least dared face with her awful
load of guilt.
Nothing could atone for what she had done: life could never give scope,
nor death. Were this that she held Christian himself, able to see and
hear, her passionate remorse could conceive no dearer impossibility than
at his feet to fall, with supplication, with absolute confession
delivering the love and worship of her heart before him: to be spurned by
his inevitable hate. The inexorable indifference of the dead was a
juster, a more terrible, recompense.
Yet a more terrible conception woke from a growing discernment of
Christian's utter abstraction from the mortal shape, that so long had
represented him to her, and so well. This his body had ceased from
suffering and endurance, yet the very self of Christian might bear with
him unassuaged the wounds and aches her malice had compassed. Hate would
heal, would sear, at least; but oh! if he had not quit him of a tyrannous
love, then bruised and bleeding he carried with him still a living pain
of her infliction. She dared not confidently reckon her vileness against
the capacity of his extravagant love. She dared not. Her full punishment
reached home to her at last.
Her ignorant mortal senses strained to pierce the impenetrable mystery
that had wrapt Christian to an infinite remoteness. For his relief, not
for her own, would she present to him her agonies of love and remorse:
him stanched, averse: him bleeding, tender; to gratify, to satisfy, to
plenish any want.
Tempests of despair raged through that undisciplined soul. Every hope was
cut off, every joy was extinct. The sweet attraction of loving service,
the pride and glory of despotic rule, were not for her, an exile from the
one, and from the other abdicating. In all the world there was no place
for her but this, between sea and land, with a hold on a dead illusion of
Christian, with vain, frantic crying after his reality.
She did not know, whelmed in gulfs of sin and grief and despair, she did
not know how divine a dawn brooded over the waste. From the long-lost
past clear echoes swept of childish prayers, to blend as an undercurrent
with that message her lover had so tried to deliver, that she had
repelled as hideous and grotesque. She used no conscious memory, nor
followed any coherent thought, but, consonant with the first instinct of
her fresh awakened soul, that longing for her mother's sake to make
renunciation, consonant with Christian's finished achievement--his
striving, suffering, enduring even death for her unworthy sake--was this
incoherent impression of a divinity vastly, vaguely suffering in
exemplary extreme out of great compassion and love to mankind, thence
accrediting suffering as the divinest force that can move the world. Her
also it had vanquished.
The tide had turned; it pressed her gently to resume her old way to the
deeps. The drift of another tide took her.
Out of her futile striving for direct communion with Christian grew a
sense that the sole possibility left to her was to yield body and soul to
his will in strict possession, and to follow that guidance. In her great
misery and helpless desolation a how and a whither with quailing beset
her going. Lo! the first step was sure, because it entailed a
heartrending renunciation.
Ah! desperately dear was this, Christian's body, to her mortal
apprehension of him. She held it very closely with an access of love and
worship such as appertains to vacant shrines. O woe to part from it, to
lay it aside and leave it to final obliteration!
Suddenly she wept. This near, definite distress, so humanly common, broke
up the fountain of her tears so many a year sealed. To a creature long of
the cold sea breeding tears were scalding to the heart.
Moaning, weeping, yet a little while she failed to forgo that embrace of
pure worship and untainted love. Worthy of reverence that piece of clay
was, for its loyal alliance with a high soul; wonderful as a noble and
true representative; very sacred from the record of devotion scored
deep, so fatally deep.
She wept, she wept as though weeping could cease from her never. Could
the deep draught of sea-magic in tears be distilled, void of it should
she be long before daybreak come.
The shallowing run of the tide drove her to resign the dead weight that
exceeded her strength to uphold. Weeping, heartwrung, she bent her to
replace her own will by Christian's! So first she gave away the dead body
to final peace, and laid it down for ever in its destined sepulchre, and
thereafter went alone into unfamiliar darkness to grope blind among
strange worlds for the ways of Christian's countenance.
We beseech, we beseech, we beseech: Lord God for my unbaptized! Dear
Christ for Christian's Diadyomene! Blessed Trinity and all Saints for a
nameless soul in sore need!
CHAPTER XVII
Some four days after Rhoda heard what more befell before that night was
out. The chief monitress told her.
'We were watching all,' she said, 'and praying according to that promise
I had made for a nameless soul in sore need, whose name, Diadyomene, you
have restored to us. The dull roar of the sea came in swells of sound,
filled as often with an illusion of voices; angry voices they sounded
then. This I say that you may understand how a cry like a human creature
in distress could pass unregarded at first. Again and again it came more
distinctly, till we were startled into suspicion that a feeble knocking
was close by at the lych door of our chapel. One went at my bidding to
look out. Back she fled, with terror white as death: "God and His saints
guard," she said, "that without is not of flesh and blood!"
'I and another took her light and went to the door, and before unclosing
I asked in the name of God who was there. No answer came but a sound of
bitter sobbing. Then I looked out, and verily doubted also if what I
looked on were indeed flesh and blood. Upon the threshold crouched a
slender woman-shape, naked. I flung wide the door and touched her: she
was cold as marble, colder, I dreaded, than any creature of life could
be. Then did she raise her head to show the fairest and saddest face I
have ever beheld. Her eyes were full of tears fast falling, and oh! the
wild, hunted, despairing look they had. "Christian, Christian!" she
wailed. None knew of any such name.
'We lifted her up and led her in and covered her hastily. Her dark hair
was all drenched; recent wet had not dried from her skin. A few flakes of
snow had been drifting down; I noticed some that lay on her shoulders:
they did not melt there. Cold as a marble statue she was, and as white,
and of as beautiful a form as any that man has fashioned, and but for her
sobbing and that one cry of "Christian," one could think as dumb.
'I would have led her to comfort and warmth and food, but she would not:
from touch and question she shrank bewildered and scared; as though the
cloak we had wrapped about her were irksome, she slipped it off once and
again, unashamed of nakedness. Still her tears fell like rain, and heavy
sobs shook her. But as the great bells struck overhead, she caught in
sudden breath and held it while the air throbbed, and thereafter broke
out with her cry: "Christian, Christian!"
'I bade all kneel and pray, that if this were indeed one of God's
creatures, wisdom might be given us to deal with her for her welfare. In
great perplexity I prayed, and some fear. I think it was that utter
coldness of a living body that appalled me most.
'One spoke from her knees. "The name of Christ is in her utterance; no
creature outcast from salvation could frame any such word." Then I said:
"I will take upon me to offer her instant baptism. That may be her need
that she cannot perfectly utter." She did not seem to hear one word when
I spoke to her; I could see her mind was all too unknit for
comprehension; she only cried out as before. But when I turned towards
the altar and took her by the hand, she followed me unresisting.
'So, right before the altar we brought her, and made her kneel among us
all. All our font was a stoup of holy water held at hand. Then I prayed
aloud as God gave me the grace. She ceased to weep; she caught my hand in
hers; I know she heard. In the name of the blessed Trinity I baptized
her, but signed no cross; too suddenly she rose upright; she flung up her
arms with one deep sigh. I caught a dead body from falling.
'God knows what she was.'
The speaker fell to prayer. Presently Rhoda said: 'How did you name her?'
'I named her Margaret.'
Rhoda whispered: 'She was Diadyomene.'
Then she covered her face with her hands, lest the grave eyes should read
over deep.
'What else?' she said, 'tell all.'
'When the grace of God had prevailed over our doubt and dismay, we did
not dread to consider the dead countenance. It was fairer even than in
life; serene as any sleeping child; death looked then like a singular
favour.
'We closed her eyes and folded her hands, and laid her out before the
altar, and resumed prayer for the one nameless and another Margaret.
'And no more we knew of whence she came than this: that by daybreak a
powder of drying brine frosted her dark hair, and the hollows of her ears
were white with salt.'
'So,' said Rhoda, 'might come one cast ashore from a wreck.'
'We took measures, indeed, to know if that could be; but out of all the
search we sent about not a sign nor a clue came. If she were indeed that
one Diadyomene, we may only look to know more when the young man
Christian shall come again.'
Rhoda turned her face to the wall when she answered very low: 'He will
not come again. Well I know he will never come again.'
Then her breathing shortened convulsively, and past restraint her grief
broke out into terrible weeping.
The dark-robed monitress knelt in prayer beside her. That pious heart was
wise and loving, and saw that no human aid could comfort this lorn girl
fallen upon her care. When Rhoda was spent and still, she spoke:
'My child, if, indeed, we can no more pray God to keep that brave young
life from sin and death, yet may we pray that his soul may win to peace
and rest under the mercy of heaven. Nay, there is no need that you too
should rise for kneeling. Lie down, lie down, for your body is over
spent. Kneel before God in spirit.'
There was long silence, and both prayed, till Rhoda faltered to the
betrayal of her unregenerate heart: 'Was she so very fair indeed? Where
is she laid? Take me--oh, let me once look upon her face.'
'It may not be. She lies a day buried, there without among our own
dead--although--God only knows what she was.'
Rhoda again would rise.
'Yet take me there. Night-time? Ah yes, night, night that will never
pass.'
At daybreak she stood, alone at her desire, beside a new-made grave, and
knew that the body of Diadyomene lay beneath, and knew hardly less
surely, that somewhere beneath the sea she overlooked the body of
Christian lay. Nearest the sea was the grave on the windblown, barren
cliff. No flower could bloom there ever, only close dun turf grew. Below
stretched the broken, unquiet sea, fretted with rock and surf, deep
chanting of the wind and moon. One white sea-bird was wheeling and
pitching restlessly to and fro.
She turned her eyes to the land far east for the thought of Lois. Over
there a winter dawn flushes into rose, kindles bright and brighter, and a
ruddy burnish takes the edges of flat cloud. Lo! the sun, and the grey
sea has flecks of red gold and the sea-bird gleams. She cannot face it.
Rhoda knelt down by the grave to pray. Presently she was lying face
downward along the turf, and she whispered to the one lying face upward
below.
'Ah! Diadyomene, ah! Margaret. God help me truly to forgive you for what
you have done.
'I have tried. Because he asked it, I have torn out my heart praying for
you.
'You fair thing! you were fairer than I, but you did not love him so well
as I.
'Ah! ah! would it were I who lay down there under the quiet shelter of
the turf; would it were you who lived, able to set up his honour and make
his name fair before all men!
'Ah! ah! a dark rebuke the mystery of your life has brought; and the
mystery of your death eats it in.
'Can you bear to be so silent, so silent, nor deliver a little word?
'When you rise, Diadyomene, when the dead from the sea rise, speak loud,
speak very loud, for all to hear.
'He loved you! He loved you!'
The sod above the face of Diadyomene was steeped with the piercing tears
of Rhoda. 'He loved you!' came many times as she sobbed.
Blind with tears, she rose, she turned from the grave; blind with tears,
she stood overlooking the sea; sun and shine made all a glimmering haze
to her. She turned from those desirable spaces for burial to stumble her
blind way back to the needs of the living.
It was late, after sunset, that Rhoda, faint and weary, dragged into
sight of the light of home. In the darkness a voice named her, struck her
still. 'Philip's voice!'
Groping for her in the dark, he touched her arm. Energy she had to strike
off his hand and start away, but it failed when she stumbled and fell
heavily; for then Philip without repulse helped her to her feet, and as
she staggered a little, stunned, would have her rest a moment, and found
the bank, and stripped off his coat for her seating. She said, 'No, no,'
but she yielded.
'You thought me dead?' he asked.
She sat dumb and stupid, worn out in body and mind.
'Do you hold _me_ to blame?'
Still she did not speak.
'Rhoda, O Rhoda, I cannot bear this! Has that devil Christian taught
you?'
Rhoda rose up with an indignant cry. Then she steadied her voice and
spoke.
'The name of Christian I love, honour, reverence, above all names on
earth. You are not worthy even to utter it. Betake you, with your lies,
your slanders, your suspicions, to others ready to suspect and slander
and lie--not to me, who till I die can trust him utterly.'
She turned and went. Philip stood.
'Is he dead?' he said to himself. 'He is dead. He must be dead.'
Awe and compassion alone possessed him. To his credit be it said, not one
selfish consideration had a place then. Quick wits told him that Rhoda
had inadvertently implied more than she would. He overtook her hastily.
'Hear me! I will not offend. I will not utter a word against him.'
He spoke very gently, very humbly, because of his great compassion; and
truly, Christian dead, it were not so hard to forgo rancour. But Rhoda
went on.
'You must hear what I come to tell you before you reach home. Do you
think I have been watching and praying for your return these hours, only
to gird at Christian? For his mother's sake I came, and to warn you----'
She stopped. 'What is it? What is it? Say quick.'
'Nothing that you fear--nothing I can name. Hear me out!
'Last night I came back, and told, in part, what had befallen me; and
heard, in part, what had befallen Christian. To-day, one thrust in upon
his mother, open-mouthed, with ugly hints. She came to me straight and
asked for the whole truth. Rhoda, I swear I said nothing but bare truth,
mere plain, unvarnished fact, without one extravagant word; but her face
went grey and stony as she heard--oh! grey and stony it went; and when I
asked her to forgive me--I did, Rhoda, though what wrong had I done?--she
answered with her speech gone suddenly imperfect.'
Rhoda pressed forward, then stopped again--
'What did you tell her? I must know that.'
Philip hesitated: 'Then against Christian I must speak in substance,
however I choose my words.'
'Go on--go on!'
So Philip told, as justly and truly as he could, all he might.
'Was this,' put in Rhoda, 'off the Isle Sinister?'
'Yes.'
She heard all the tale: of Christian's sullen mood; of the dark something
attending below, that he knew, that he watched; of his unfinished attempt
at murder.
'That we knew,' she said.
Told in the dark by one who had lived through them, nearly died through
them, whose voice yet acknowledged the terror of them,--circumstances
were these of no vague indication to Rhoda. The reality of that dark
implication stirred her hair, chilled her blood, loosened her joints; yet
her faith in Christian did not fall.
But no word had she to say to refute the dreadful accusation; no word for
Philip; no word for an adverse world. And what word for his mother? Her
heart died within her.
The most signal evidence sufficient for her own white trust was a kiss, a
close embrace, hard upon the naming of Diadyomene. She had no shame to
withhold it; but too likely, under his mother's eye, discount would offer
were maiden blood quick to her face when she urged her tale.
She knew that an ominous hum was against Christian, because he had
struck, and swum, and escaped as no other man could; she guessed how the
roar went now because of Philip's evidence. How inconsiderable the wrong
of it all was, outdone if one injurious doubt his mother's heart
entertain.
To hatred and to love an equal disregard death opposed. No menace could
disturb, no need could disturb the absolute repose Christian had entered.
She envied his heart its quiet in an unknown grave.
'Be a little kind, Rhoda; be only just; say I was not to blame.'
She could not heed.
'Why do you hate me so? For your sake I freely forgive Christian all he
has done; for your sake I would have been his friend, his brother, in
spite of all. O Rhoda, what can I do?'
'Let be,' she said, 'for you can undo nothing now. If I saw you
kneeling--no, not before me--but contrite, praying: "God be merciful to
me, for by thought and word and deed I have sinned against the noblest,
the worthiest," then, then only, far from hate, I think I could almost
love.'
No indignation was aflame with the words; the weary voice was so sad and
so hopeless as to assure Philip she spoke of one dead.
'All I can do now is to pray God to keep me from cursing you and the
world for your working of a cruel wrong that can never be ended.' Her
voice pitched up on a strain. 'Oh, leave me, leave me, lest I have not
grace enough to bear with you!'
Philip, daring no more, stood and heard the hasty, uneven steps further
and die. His eyes were full of tears; his heart ached with love and pity
for Rhoda in her sorrow and desolation, that he could do nothing to
relieve--nothing, because her infatuation so extravagantly required.
Rhoda braced her heart for its work, reached to the latch, and stood face
to face with Lois. The trial began with the meeting of their eyes; Rhoda
stood it bravely, yielding no ground.
'Is he dead?' muttered Lois.
'None can tell us.' She faltered, and began to tremble, for the eyes of
Lois were dreadful to bear; dreadful too was her voice, hoarse and
imperfect.
'Is he worse than dead?'
'No! Never--never think it.'
Lois forbore awhile with wonderful stoicism. She set Rhoda in her own
chair; the turf-covered embers she broke into a blaze to be prodigal of
warmth; there was skilly waiting hot; there was water. She drew off
Rhoda's shoes, and bathed her feet, swollen and sore; she enforced food.
Though she would not yet ask further, the sight of her face, grey and
stony indeed, the touch of her hands, trembling over much, were
imperative to Rhoda's heart, demanding what final truth she could give.
'Child, if you need sleep, I can bear to wait.'
'I could not,' said Rhoda. 'No.'
She looked up into the tearless, sleepless eyes; she clasped the poor
shaking hands; and her heart rose in worship of the virtues of that
stern, patient soul.
As the tale began they were face to face; but before long Rhoda had
slipped from her seat, to speak with her head against his mother's knees.
'I will tell you all now. I must, for I think I am no longer bound to
silence, and, indeed, I could not bear it longer--I alone.'
'And you promised, if I would let you go unquestioned away.'
'I did, thinking I went to fathom a mystery. Ah, no! so deep and dark I
find it to be, the wit of man, I think, will never sound it. But your
faith and love can wing above it. Mine have--and yours, oh!--can, will,
must.'
'Ah, Christian! Child, where is my Christian? His face would tell me
briefly all I most would know.'
'You have listened to an ugly tale. I know--I know--I have seen Philip.
You must not consider it yet, till you have heard all. I own it not out
of accord with the rest, that reason just shudders and fails at; but
through all the dark of this unfathomable mystery my eyes can discern the
passing of our Christian white and blameless.'
'Your eyes!' moaned Lois.
Rhoda understood. She hid her face and could not speak. In her heart she
cried out against this punishment as more than she deserved, and more
than she could bear. No word that she could utter, no protest, no
remorse, could cover a wrongful thing she had said for Lois to recall. So
small the sin had looked then; so great now. She had spoken fairly of
deadly sin just once, and now Lois could not rely on her for any right
estimate, nor abide by her ways of regard.
'Ah, Christ!' she whispered in Christian's words, 'is there no
forgiveness of sins?'
Lois heard that, and it struck her to the heart.
Rhoda took up her burden again.
'Christian loved one Diadyomene. What she was I dare not think: she was
shaped like a woman, very beautiful. Dead she is now; I have seen her new
grave. God have mercy on her soul, if any soul she have.
'I have known this for long, for some months.'
'He told--you!'
'No--yes. I heard her name from him only in the ravings of fever. He
never thought I knew, till the very last: then I named her once; then he
kissed me; then he went.'
She turned back to the earliest evidence, telling in detail of
Christian's mad course with her; then of his ravings that remained in her
memory painfully distinct; she kept back nothing. Later she came to
faltering for a moment till Lois urged:
'And he asked you to be his wife?'
'Yes.'
'And because of this knowledge you refused him?'
'Yes. And he kissed me for joy of that nay-saying. On the very morrow he
went--do you remember? It was to her, I knew it.'
'O Rhoda, you might have saved him, and you did not!'
Rhoda raised her head and looked her wonder, for Christian's sake, with
resentment.
'God smote one,' she said, 'whose hand presumed to steady His ark.'
'O child, have you nothing to show to clear him?'
'Wait, wait! There is much yet to tell.'
Then she sped on the last day with its load for record, and, scrupulously
exact, gave words, tones, looks: his first going and return; the coming
of Philip's kinsmen; that strange vagary of the rowan berries that he had
won her to a bet. Lois had come upon a garbled version of Christian's
escape; Rhoda gave her his own, brief and direct.
'Was it Christian--man alive!--that came to you?'
'It was. It was. He ate and drank.'
Of their last meeting and parting she told, without reserve, unashamed,
even to her kissing the Cross on his breast.
Was ever maiden heart so candid of its passion for a man, and he alive?
Too single-hearted was Rhoda to know how much of the truth exhaled from
her words. Without real perception Lois drew it in; she grew very still;
even her hands were still. Verily it had got to this: that to hear her
dearest were dead, merely dead, could be the only better tale to come.
'Then,' said Rhoda, 'the morrow came and closed, and I would not believe
he could have kept his promise to be dead; and a day and a day followed;
and I dared tell you nothing, seeing I might not tell you all. Then I
thought that in such extremity for your sake I did right to discover all
I could of his secret; at least I would know if she, Diadyomene, were one
vowed as I guessed in the House Monitory.
'Now I know, though I would not own it then, that deep in my heart was a
terrible dread that if my guess were good, no death, but a guilty
transaction had taken our Christian from us. Ah! how could I? after, for
his asking, I had prayed for her.
'Now, though the truth lies still remote, beyond any guess of mine;
though I heard of a thing--God only knows how she came by her life or her
death--lacking evidence, ay, or against evidence, we yet owe him trust in
the dark, never to doubt of his living worthily--if--he be not--dead
worthily. Ah, ah! which I cannot tell you.
'I went to the House Monitory and knocked. So stupid and weak I was, for
longer and harder than I looked for had the way been, and my dread had
grown so very great, that when the wicket opened I had no word to say,
and just stared at the face that showed, looking to read an answer there
without ever a question. I got no more sense than to say: "Of your
charity pray for one Diadyomene."
'I saw startled recognition of the name. Like a coward, a fool, in sudden
terror of further knowledge, I loosed the sill and turned to run in
escape from it. I fell into blackness. Afterwards I was told I had
fainted.
'They had me in before I came to myself. Ah! kind souls they were. A
monitress knelt at either side, and one held my head. When memory came
back, I looked from one to the other, and dared not ask for what must
come. There was whispering apart that scared me. Then one came to me. "My
child," she said, "we will pray without question if you will; yet if you
may, tell us who is this Diadyomene?" I thought my senses had not come
back to me. They would have let me be, but I would not have it then. "Who
is she?" I said; "I do not know, I came to you to ask." "We do not know."
Bewildered, I turned to the one who had opened to me. "But you know; I
saw it in your face when I named her." "The name I knew, nothing more;
and that I had heard but once, and my memory had let it escape." "Where
had you heard it? Who knows?" I said. "On Christmas Eve a man came, a
young man, fair-haired." "Christian," I said, "that was Christian." At
that three faces started into an eager cluster. "Christian!" they said,
"was his name Christian?" Then they told me that after night-fall he had
come and named Diadyomene, and that before daybreak a woman, naked and
very beautiful, had come wailing an only word, "Christian." But because
of the hour of his coming I said no, it could not be he, for I had seen
him too shortly before. And indeed it seemed to me past belief that any
man could have come that way by night so speedily. So they gave detail:
his hair was fair; his eyes grey; he was of great stature; he was
unclothed, bleeding freshly, and, yes, they thought, gashed along the
shoulder. "But here is a sure token," and with that they showed me that
cross he had worn. "This," they said, "he unloosed from his neck."'
Never a word more Lois heard of that tale, though for near a minute
Rhoda carried it forward. Then looking up, she saw a face like a mask,
with features strained and eyes fixed, and sprang up in terror, vainly to
strive at winning from the stricken senses token of the life they locked.
Was she guilty of this?
Never did she know. For the few days that sad life held on till it
reached its term never a word came: not one fiducial word through the
naming of Christian to exonerate Rhoda.
So Lois, too, had the comfort of death, and Rhoda only was left, through
long life to go unenlightened, and still to go dauntless of the dark.
EPILOGUE
Tell us how an altered estimate grew after the passing of Christian, to
end his reproach.
But his name came to be a byword of disgrace, his story a dark, grotesque
legend among records of infamy.
Tell us how Rhoda lived to be happy.
But the pain and shame of his stigma her heart could never lay aside,
though long years gave to patience and fortitude a likeness to serenity
and strength. Where Christian had lived would she still abide all her
days; and the poor reward of her constancy was in a tribute of silence
concerning him that came to respect her presence.
Tell us how Philip ripened to iniquity and was cut off.
But a tiny germ of compunction, lurking somewhere in that barren
conscience, quickened and grew under Rhoda's shadow, till, spite of the
evidence of his own senses, spite of reason, spite of public judgment, he
entertained a strange doubt, and to his world and its ridicule
acknowledged it. Long years wore out Rhoda's suspicion of his sincerity;
long years raised him in her esteem in exact proportion as he sank in his
own.
Tell us how Rhoda never stooped to mate with one less worthy than her
first love.
But a day came when the House Monitory gave her way to a grave with a
little son against her breast; and she stood there to look out over the
sea that hid the bones of Christian, and thanked her God for appointing
her in His world a place as helpmeet for a weak soul, who by paths of
humility sought after right worship. Then she wept.
Tell us in some figure of words how the soul of Christian entered for
reward into the light of God's countenance.
At rest his body lay, and over it flowed the tides.
Tell us in some figure of words how the soul of Diadyomene, wan and
shivering, found an unaltered love, with full comprehension and great
compassion, her shelter in the light of God's countenance.
At rest her body lay, and over it sang the winds.
Tell us in some figure of words how Lois beheld these two hand in hand,
and recognised the wonderful ways of God and His mercy in the light of
His countenance.
At rest her body lay, and over it grasses grew.
We need no words to tell us that God did wipe away all tears from their
eyes.
Surely, surely; for quietly in the grave the elements resumed their
atoms.
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh
University Press
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes: On equal number occurrences of same word with and
without hyphens (seagull:sea-gull; piecemeal:piece-meal;
wellnigh:well-nigh) opted to leave both as printed.
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