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 Ido? 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, andsharks 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 touchcould 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.
'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 toan 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 tirelesseffort 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 hisown 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 aheart. 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, wearyof 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 hisdreams 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 'twouldbe 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 arocking 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 tohim 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 housesof 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 anda 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 hisown. 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 nothingcould 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.
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 confidenceshe 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 notdeclare 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 wasonly 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 thatwould 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 conspicuouslypoor 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, suchas 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 thepitiful 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 wasborne 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 toyour 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 herheart 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.'
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 acknowledgmentof 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 hauntsme, andyoureyes 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 strongestdesire 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 withthe 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 onedistinct, 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 thewarmth 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.