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 againmightily, 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, sounmistakably 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 movingglimmer 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 towilder: '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 youcame 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! Youreyes 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 thisnight'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 defyme, 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 thatmoonlit, 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 bettersight 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 sparsHeld and hid, while the wet sand-barsFailed of the sunlight and filled with stars.Sea-mists rose for a dream, but whenMists wore faint in the sunlight, thenLo, 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.'
'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 sparsHeld and hid, while the wet sand-barsFailed of the sunlight and filled with stars.
Sea-mists rose for a dream, but whenMists wore faint in the sunlight, thenLo, 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, helusted 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 herown 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 weresomewhat 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!'
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 sharein 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 hadgone 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 herwith 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 lengthenedshadows 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 longextinct, 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 inevitablehate. 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 attractionof 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 gentlyto 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 truerepresentative; 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!
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 thename 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 wrappedabout 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 hasflecks 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 wassteeped 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 holdmeto 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? Forhis 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-coveredembers 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, thewit 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—doyou 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 thetruth 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, Iturned 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.