V.
A STORM ON THE BACKS; AND A STORY OF THREE.
I HAVE often considered it as one of my misfortunes that I simply do not know what fear is. As a boy I was so brave and bright that every one loved me; in my manhood my courage appals me. I feel that one day it will carry me too far.
As I climbed hand-over-hand up the side of the Zeitgeist at the Silver Street Docks, an old, old sailor stepped up to me. “Young stranger,” he said, “you will not attempt to make King’s Bridge on such a day as this? It would be madness. The boldest of us dare not.”
“Avaunt!” I cried; “where honour calls I follow. England expects. Per ardua ad astra.”
He turned away to hide his emotion. I gave him my hand, which he wrung and knocked twice. There was no answer.
With one wild, exultant leap the vessel burst from its moorings, churning the iron-bound waves to sheer desperation, foaming at the mouth, and sobbing piteously. Through the driving rain, the blinding fog, the dazzling lightning, the impenetrable mist, and the other atmospheric phenomena which Mr. Clark Russell had lent for the occasion, loomed a hideous dark object. I consulted the chart, the compass, the telescope, the ship’s biscuits, everything I could lay my hands on; but it was too late. Nearer and nearer it loomed. I could see that it was Silver Street Bridge, and that it was coming my way. Oh, the horror of it!
I shrieked to it to save itself and go away. But my voice was drowned in the fury of the elements. It loomed nearer—it never stopped looming once—and I knew that I should be unable to avoid it, that I should destroy it.
Bump! From the top of the bridge there came the voice of a small boy, asking if I was insured. He seemed hysterical, and fear had probably sapped his reason. I was swept on by the fury of the elements. No, I’ve just had that—swept on by the elemental fury—well, that’s much the same.
At any rate, I was swept on. The wind whistled in the rigging, until it got sick of being conventional. Then it went and whistled in the taffrail. At last it got so nastily original that it sang “Since first I saw your Face” in the binnacle. A hasty glance backward showed me that Silver Street Bridge was yet standing. My resolution was also unshaken.
The fierce old Berserker spirit fired my blood. Chanting aloud the grand old Latin hymn of the Crusaders—
I dashed forward. My speed may be guessed from the fact that by this time I was under Queen’s Bridge. Before me, or close behind me, or at any rate on one side or the other, lowered in thick banks of cloud an angry sun, red as the blood of an orange that the thunder had pealed! The waves were mountain high.
The light of the unbroken Viking was in my eyes. I could not see them, but I knew that it must be so. The waves were mounting higher now.
Suddenly the wind shifted. It became semicircular, with a pendulum action. It swung my boat round to the left, then swung it round to the right. It kept on doing this. A horrible thought flashed across me that I should never make King’s Bridge at this rate. I said “Excelsior” to the boat to encourage it, but it only went on wagging. I smote it on the bows with the flat of my paddle, and that had no effect. Lastly, I raised myself about four inches, and sat down again with the energy and directness of the wild Norsemen. The jerk started it on again. We went so fast that a sparrow seemed to be literally flying past me. I believe that was what it actually was doing. By this time the waves were quite extraordinary.
We were now but a few yards from home. There was another change in the weather. The sun was like a crystal chalice brimming with crimson wine, borne by an unseen Ganymede to his lord across the sapphire pavement of cloud. (Poetry is cheap to-day.) Had his white feet slipped on the wondrous far-off way? For of a sudden the crimson flood suffused the sapphire floor, and the gasp of the dying wind was as of one who cried, “Come away in my ’and, sir, and it was cracked before, and you didn’t ought to have left it there, and I never touched it, and ’ow was I to know yer didn’t want it broke?” Then the wind sank. My boat was motionless. I was becalmed within sight of my goal.
So I waited in the middle of the river. The storm was passed, and the waves were perfectly calm and collected, like a bad halfpenny in an offertory bag. There was not a breath of wind, and consequently the first two matches which I lit were blown out at once. The third match did what was expected of it, and then I attempted to blow it out. Finding this impossible, I threw it in the water. It floated on the top, and burnt with a clear steady flame for ten consecutive minutes. While I was watching it I let my pipe out, and had to strike a fourth match. The head came off it, and nestled lovingly in the palm of my hand. Then it walked away, and burned two holes in my blazer. How such little incidents as this make one wish that the nature of things was otherwise!
I may own that I never did make King’s Bridge that afternoon. My canoe did not seem to care about going there of its own accord, and I did not like to paddle it there because I hate unnecessary fuss; so I just stopped where I was and read a little.
What was I reading?
Well, I had his book, you know, after his death. Some of it interests me; but this is chiefly because I knew the man. He wrote it as a remedy, and he died as a remedy; but I have a notion that he is not quite cured yet. I take the book here to read sometimes. You may see a page or two of it. I am not pretending that it has any literary value But try to think you knew the man who wrote it.
She shivered a little as she sat there in her nightdress. In the small hours of the morning in early summer it is always cold. She would have been much warmer in bed; she really ought to have been in bed; but the bed had not been slept in. It stood there in one corner of the room, looking white and restful. It seemed to be calling her, “Come to me; sleep and forget it—sleep and forget it.” On the little table at the foot of the bed was the pile of books and newspapers that had slowly accumulated. She had always been interested in the world and in the things others did and thought.
A little impulse that came to her from nowhere made her pick up the newspaper that lay on the top of the pile. It would do to fill her mind and to keep her thoughts steady until the morning came. Her eyes ached, and the candles flickered on the dressing-table. Her brain seemed to her as a pool into which some thoughtless child that did what he liked had flung a stone, starting circle after circle, circles that grew and grew, spreading to the farther edge, and sobbing away into nothing because they could go no farther. Yet she read, and knew nothing of what she read, till one sentence seemed to shine brighter than the rest.
“The body had probably been in the water for several days.”
She stood up quickly, with a little gasp, and let the newspaper fall to the ground. For her brain, burning with torture and want of sleep, had suddenly flashed out a merciless, truthful, coloured illustration to that sentence. She steadied herself in a moment. Then she held up her hands and looked at them. “Will they turn like that?” she was asking herself. She shivered, and the muscles of her face contracted a little.
She was bending now over the mantelpiece. Her arms and her burning forehead rested upon it, and her thoughts went stealing away through the passages and rooms of the quiet old house. In the room next to hers slept stolid respectability. She loved him and her, as the accident of parentage makes love. But she must leave them. How she hated to hurt those two, those kind, misunderstanding parents, with their old ideas, and their love for her ever fresh! No, she could not leave them, she could not leave them. “You will leave them at dawn,” said the thing that was stronger than herself.
And her thoughts stood mutely listening outside the door of the room where Claud lay. “Are you asleep?” she whispered. Or was he lying awake and thinking, as she thought, of the night before? It all came back to her so easily,—the wistful refrain that lingered softly on the strings, the brilliant lights and the brilliant crowd, and suddenly the dim garden outside the ball-room. She could see him standing there; she could hear him speaking. No, she could never, never leave him. “You will leave him at dawn,” said the thing that was stronger than herself.
And the dawn had come now.
She drew up the blind, and opened the window softly. The sky was one dull grey but for the beauty in the east. A fresh, cool wind had awakened; and she could hear the chirrup, chirrup of waking birds. And she looked down the valley and saw the hurrying, winding river, with the grey mists hovering upon it. “River,” she said in a whisper, “take me to the sea. Take me to a sea that has no shores, that will flow for ever, bearing me farther and farther away from this.”
She crept down the stairs, bare-footed, and into the drawing-room. She drew back the heavy curtains from the windows that opened down to the ground. Outside was the terraced garden that sloped down to the edge of the river. Her hand was on the bolt of the window.
Suddenly she heard quick footsteps coming down the passage. In a moment she had hidden herself behind the screen that stood against the door. She knew those footsteps. Involuntarily her hands linked tightly together, and her breath came quickly.
He was not so careful as she had been; he came boldly into the room, opened the window noisily, and went out into the garden. As he went out she caught one glimpse of his face, and she knew what he would do. She sprang from behind the screen. “Claud, Claud!” she called. He stopped with a sudden start, and came towards her. “What are you doing here?” he asked, in a voice that was not like his voice.
“I,” she panted—“I came to save you, Claud. Oh, go back again!”
He would have taken her hands, but she shrank away from him. They only stayed there for a few minutes. She talked to him and pleaded with him. There was little need for such pleading, for he had yielded to her from the first. He gave her the only promise that she would let him make, and then he went back to his room.
She quietly closed the windows, and drew the curtains again. She seemed to herself both sad and happy now, and very tired.
And Fate had an approving smile upon her bitter face. “They are two obedient children,” she said. “They were going to take matters into their own hands, and they resisted the temptation. Very well, they shall be rewarded.”
So Fate sent the girl a present of a beautiful brain-fever with pictures in it. And when it was over she fell asleep, and dreamed that she was floating on a sea that had no shores and flowed for ever, bearing her farther and farther away from this. And she woke no more.
And Fate thought that she should then do something for Claud. So she killed another woman, and killed her with thirty other people in a railway accident, thereby escaping any charge of impartial justice. They both had loved him, and they were both dead, and he got much happier. In the unprepared passages of this life a glimpse at the context would be useful.
Poor stuff—isn’t it?