“Smooth down her fur,Rub sleep over her eyes,Sweet, never stir.Kiss down the coat of herThere, where she liesOn the bluebells.”
“Smooth down her fur,Rub sleep over her eyes,Sweet, never stir.Kiss down the coat of herThere, where she liesOn the bluebells.”
“Smooth down her fur,
Rub sleep over her eyes,
Sweet, never stir.
Kiss down the coat of her
There, where she lies
On the bluebells.”
She sung, and whether it was the music or the strangeness of the interruption, I shall never know; only the wonderful fact remains that, with the sound of her voice, the great passion seemed to die out of the two foes and to give place to a pleasant conceit, comical in its way, that they had only been rollicking together.
“Well,” said my father, without closer allusion to his brutality, “the liquor was choice Schiedam, and it’s gone.”
He sat down, called for another glass, helped himself to a noggin and pushed the bottle roughly across to Dr. Crackenthorpe, who had already reseated himself opposite.
“Sing again, girl,” said my father, but Zyp shook her head.
“I never do anything to order,” she said, “but the fairies move me to dance.”
She blew out the lamp as she spoke and glided to a patch of light that fell from the high May moon through the window on to the rough boards of the room. Into this light she dipped her hands and then passed them over her hair and face as though she were washing herself in the mystic fountain of the night; and all the time her murmuring voice accompanied the action in little trills of laughter and words not understandable. Presently she fell to dancing, slowly at first and dividing her presence between glow and gloom; but gradually the supple motion of her body increased, step by step, until she was footing it as wildly as a young hamadryad to her own leaping shadow on the floor.
Suddenly she sprung from the moonlit square, danced over to Dr. Crackenthorpe and, whispering awfully in his ear, “Beware the demon that sits in the bottle,” ran from the room.
My father burst into a fit of laughter, but I think from that day the doctor fully hated her.
Zyp had been with us a month, and surely never did changeling happen into a more congenial household.
Jason she still held at arm’s length, which, despite my admiration of my brother, I secretly congratulated my heart on, for—let me get over it at the outset—from first to last, I have never wavered in my passion of love for this wild, beautiful creature. The unexpectedness of her coming alone was a romance, the delight of which has never palled upon me with the deadening years. Therefore it was that I early made acquaintance with the demon of jealousy, than whom none, in truth, is more irresistible in his unclean strength and hideousness.
Zyp and I were one day wandering under the shadow of the mighty old cathedral of Winton.
“I don’t like it, Renny,” she said, pressing up close to me. “It’s awful and it’s grand, but there are always faces at the windows when I look up at them.”
“Whose?” I said, with a laugh.
“I don’t know,” she said; “but think of the thousands of old monks and things whose home it was once and whose ghosts are shut up among the stones. There!” she cried, pointing.
I looked at the old leaded window she indicated, but could see nothing.
“His face is like stone and he’s beckoning,” she whispered. “Oh, come along, Renny”—and she dragged me out of the grassy yard and never stopped hurrying me on till we reached the meadows. Here her gayety returned to her, and she felt at home among the flowers at once.
Presently we wandered into a grassy covert against a hedge on the further side of which a road ran, and threw ourselves among the “sauce alone” and wild parsley that grew there. Zyp was in one of her softest moods and my young heart fluttered within me. She leaned over me as I sat and talked to me in a low voice, with her fair young brow gone into wrinkles of thoughtfulness.
“Renny, what’s love that they talk about?”
I laughed and no doubt blushed.
“I mean,” she said, “is it blue eyes and golden hair or brown eyes and brown hair? Don’t be silly, little boy, till you know what I mean.”
“Well, what do you mean, Zyp?”
“I want to know, that’s all. Renny, do you remember my asking to kiss and be friends that day we first met, and your refusing?”
“Yes, Zyp,” I stammered.
“You may kiss me now, if you like,” and she let herself drop into my arms, as I sat there, and turned up her pretty cheek to my mouth.
My blood surged in my ears. I was half-frightened, but all with a delicious guilt upon me. I bent hastily and touched the soft pink curve with my trembling lips.
She lay quite still a moment, then sat up and gently drew away from me.
“No,” she said, “that isn’t it. Shall I ever know, I wonder?”
“Know what, Zyp?”
“Never mind, for I shan’t tell you. There, I didn’t mean to be rude,” and she stroked the sleeve of my jacket caressingly.
By and by she said: “I wonder if you will suffer, Renny, poor boy? I would save you all if I could, for you’re the best of them, I believe.”
Her very words were so inexplicable to me that I could only sit and stare at her. I have construed them since, with a knife through my heart for every letter.
As we were sitting silent a little space, steps sounded down the road and voices with them. They were of two men, who stopped suddenly, as they came over against us, hidden behind the hedge, as if to clinch some argument, but we had already recognized the contrary tones of my father and Dr. Crackenthorpe.
“Now, harkee!” the doctor was saying; “that’s well and good, but I’m not to be baffled forever and a day, Mr. Ralph Trender. What does it all amount to? You’ve got something hidden up your sleeve and I want to know what it is.”
“Is that all?” My father spoke in a set, deep manner.
“That’s all, and enough.”
“Then, look up my sleeve, Dr. Crackenthorpe—if you can.”
“I don’t propose to look. I suggest that you just shake it, when no doubt the you-know-whats will come tumbling out.”
“And if I refuse?”
“There are laws, my friend, laws—iniquitous, if you like; but, for what they are, they don’t recognize the purse on the highway as the property of him that picks it up.”
“And how are you going to set these laws in motion?”
“We’ll insert the end of the wedge first—say in some public print, now. How would this look? We have it on good authority that Mr. Trender, our esteemed fellow-townsman, is the lucky discoverer of——”
“Be silent, you!” My father spoke fiercely; then added in a low tone: “D’ye wish all the world to know?”
“Not by any means,” said the other, quietly, “and they shan’t if you fall in with my mood.”
“If I only once had your head in the mill wheel,” groaned my father, with a curse. “Now, harken! I don’t put much value on your threat; but this I’ll allow that I court no interference with my manner of life. Take the concession for what it is worth. Come to me by and by and you shall have another.”
“A couple,” said the doctor.
“Very well—no more, though I rot for it—and take my blessing with them.”
“When shall I come?” said the doctor, ignoring the very equivocal benediction.
“Come to-night—no, to-morrow,” said my father, and turning on his heel strode heavily off toward the town.
I heard the doctor chuckling softly with a malignant triumph in his note.
I clenched my teeth and fists and would have risen had not Zyp noiselessly prevented me. It was wormwood to me; the revelation that, for some secret cause, my father, the strong, irresistible and independent, was under the thumb of an alien. But the doctor walked off and I fell silent.
On our homeward way we came across Jason lying on his back under a tree, but he took no notice of us nor answered my call, and Zyp stamped her foot when I offered to delay and speak to him. Nevertheless I noticed that more than once she looked back, as long as he was in view, to see if he was moved to any curiosity as to our movements, which he never appeared to be in the least.
Great clouds had been gathering all the afternoon, and now the first swollen drops of an advancing thunderstorm spattered in the dust outside the yard. Inside it was as dark as pitch, and I had almost to grope my way along the familiar passages. Zyp ran away to her own den.
Suddenly, with a leap of the blood, I saw that some faintly pallid object stood against the door of the room of silence as I neared it. It was only with an effort I could proceed, and then the thing detached itself and was resolved into the white face of my brother Modred.
“Is that you, Renny?” he said, in a loud, tremulous voice.
“Yes,” I answered, very shakily myself. “What in the name of mystery are you doing there?”
“I feel queer,” he said. “Let’s get to the light somewhere.”
We made our way to the back, opened the door leading on to the little platform and stood looking at the stringed rain. Modred’s face was ghastly and his eyes were awakened to an expression that I had never thought them capable of.
“You’ve been in there?” I said.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“More fool you. If you like to tempt the devil you should have the brass to outface him. Why, you’ve got it!” I cried, for he suddenly let fall from his trembling hand a little round glittering object, whose nature I could not determine in the stormy twilight.
He had it in his clutch again in a moment, though I pounced for it, and then he backed through the open doorway.
“It’s naught that concerns you,” he said; “keep off, you beast!”
“What is it?” I cried.
“Water-parings,” said he, and clapped to the door in my face as I rushed at him, and I heard him scuttle upstairs. The latch caught me in the chest and knocked my breath out for a bit, so that I was unable to follow, and probably he ran and bolted himself into his bedroom. In any case, I had no mind for pursuit, my heart being busy with other affairs; and there I remained and thought them out. Presently, being well braced to the ordeal, I went indoors and upstairs to the living room, where I was persuaded I should find my father. And there he sat, pretty hot with drink and with a comfortless, glowering devil in his eyes.
“Well!” he thundered, “what do you want?”
I managed to get out, with some firmness, “A word with you, dad,” though his eyes disquieted me.
“Make it one, then, and a quick one!”
“Zyp and I were sitting behind a hedge this afternoon when you and Dr. Crackenthorpe were at words on the other side.”
His eyes shriveled me, but the motion of his lips seemed to signify to me that I was to go on.
“Dad, if he has any hold over you, let me share the bother and help if I can.”
He had sat with his right hand on the neck of the bottle from which he had been drinking, and he now flung the latter at me, with a snarl like that of a mad dog. Fortunately for me, in the very act some flash of impulse unnerved him, so that the bottle spun up to the ceiling and crashed down again to the floor, from which the scattered liquor sent up a pungent, sickening odor. Then he leaped to his feet and yelled at me. I could make nothing of his words, save that they clashed into one another in a torrent of furious invective. But in the midst his voice stopped, with a vibrating snap; he put his hand to his forehead, which, I saw with horror, was suddenly streaked with purple, and down he sunk to the floor in a heap.
I was terribly frightened, and, running to him, endeavored in a frantic manner to pull him into a sitting posture. I had half succeeded, when, lying propped up against the leg of the table, he gave a groan and bade me in a weak voice to let him be; and presently to my joy I saw the natural color come back to his face by slow degrees. By and by he was able to slide into the chair he had left, where he lay panting and exhausted, but recovering.
“Renalt, my lad,” he said, in a dragging voice, “what was that you said just now? Let’s have it again.”
I hesitated, but he smiled at me and bade me not to fear. Thus encouraged, I repeated my statement.
“Ah,” he said; “and the girl—did she hear?”
“She couldn’t help it, dad. But she can’t have noticed much, for she never even referred to it afterward.”
“Which looks bad, and so much for your profound knowledge of the sex.”
He looked at me keenly for some moments from under his matted eyebrows; then muttered as if to himself:
“Here’s a growing lad, and loyal, I believe. What if I took him a yard into my confidence?”
“Oh, yes, dad,” I said, eagerly. “You can trust me, indeed you can. I only want to be of some use.”
He slightly shook his head, then seemed to wake up all of a sudden.
“There,” he said; “be off, like a good boy, and don’t worry me a second time. You meant well, and I’m not offended.”
“Yes, dad,” I said a little sadly, and was turning to go, when he spoke to me again:
“And if the girl should mention this matter—you know what—to you, say what I tell you now—that Dr. Crackenthorpe thinks your father can tell him where more coins are to be found like the one I gave him that night; but that your father can’t and is under no obligation to Dr. Crackenthorpe—none whatever.”
So I left him, puzzled, a little depressed, but proud to be the recipient of even this crumb of confidence on the part of so reserved and terrible a man.
Still I could not but feel that there was something inconsistent in his words to me and those I had heard him address to the doctor. Without a doubt his utterances on the road had pointed to a certain recognition of the necessity of bribing the other to silence.
Full of dissatisfaction I wandered into the shed and loitered aimlessly about. As I stood there Jason came clattering homeward, his coat collar turned up and his curly head bowed to the deluge.
“So you got home before me?” he said, shaking himself and squeezing his cap out as he spoke.
“Yes; we came straight.”
“It was lovely in the meads, wasn’t it?” said he, with an odd glance at me.
“It’s been lovely all this May,” said I.
“And that means a fat churchyard. Old Rottengoose says: ‘A cold May and windy makes a full barn and findy.’ A queer one, old Peg is. She’d die if she cast a woolen before the first of June. I wonder what she’d think of sitting under a hedge in a northeaster?”
I started a little and shot a look askance at my brother. Could he have seen us? But his next words reassured me.
“Or of falling asleep in the shade, as I did, till the rain on my face woke me up.”
“Then you didn’t see us pass——” I began and stopped.
“See what? I saw nothing but my eyelids and the sky through ’em.”
I gave a sigh of relief. My feelings toward Zyp were boyish and bashful and innocent enough, heaven knows; but in the shadow of my rough past they were beginning to glimmer out so strange and sweet that the merest suspicion of their incurring publicity filled me with a shame-faced terror of ridicule that was agony.
Freed from this dread, I fell into an extreme of garrulity that landed me in a quagmire of discomfiture.
After I had thus talked for a while, rather disconnectedly, he interrupted me.
“Renny,” he said, “you’re pretty fond of the girl, aren’t you?”
I heard him with a little shock of surprise.
“Not that I care,” he went on, airily, “except for your sake, old boy.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“We’re up to a thing or two, aren’t we?” said he, “but she’s fifty tricks to our one.”
“She has her good points, Jason.”
“Oh, yes; lots of them. So many that it hardly seems worth while noticing her setting you up against me.”
“She’s never done anything of the sort!” I cried, hotly.
“Hasn’t she? Well, that’s all right, and we can be chums again. I only wanted to warn you against putting faith in a chit that can wear a new face easier than her dress, to you, or Modred, or—or any one.”
“Modred!” I cried, in astonishment.
“Oh, don’t suppose,” he said, “that you’re sole lord of her heart.”
“I never did suppose it,” I answered, thickly. “Why should I? She’s free to fancy whom she likes”—but my heart sunk within me.
“Yes; that’s the way to look at it,” he said. “You wouldn’t think she could find much to admire in that fatty, now, would you?”
“How do you know she does?”
“I do know—that’s enough.”
“Well, isn’t he a sort of brother to her?” I said—with a courageous effort—“as we all are.”
“Of course. That’s it.”
“And I don’t know what you mean by ‘any one’ else.”
“Don’t you?” He laughed and flung away a stone he had been idly playing with. “Well, I meant Modred, or—or any one else.”
“Who else?”
“Dad, say—or Dr. Crackenthorpe.”
“Oh, you’re an idiot!” I cried; “I won’t talk to you”—and I left him and ran indoors.
But he had driven the sting home and the poison already worked furiously in me. How can I explain why? It was true, what he had said, every word of it. She had set me against him, Jason—not in words, but by a tacit conviction of him as one who had of his own act bared his soul momentarily, and revealed a sinister brand across it hitherto unguessed at.
Well, this was the first waking from the boyish dream, and should I ever dream it again? I had said we were all in a manner her brothers, and that she was free to smile on whom she chose. What a pitiful handful of dust for all eyes but my own! I felt the passion of longing for her single love surge in me as I spoke. I had never till that moment dreamed of combating another for possession of it. She had seemed mine by right of fortune’s gift from the first, nor had she by her behavior appeared to question the right. We had confidences, discussions, little secrets together, which none but we might share in. We walked and talked and leaned toward one another, with a sense of mutual understanding that was pathetic, I am sure—at least as to my share in it—in God’s eyes.
And now to find that all the time she was on like secret terms with Modred—with Jason, too, perhaps, judging by his sidelong innuendoes, though it made my heart sick to think that she could play so double faced a game between me and one whom she professed to hate and despise.
What a drama of dolls it was! And how soon the drama was to turn into a tragedy!
I went indoors and upstairs to the room which Jason and I shared and flung myself on the bed. Then I was properly shocked and horrified to find that my cheeks were suddenly wet with tears—a humiliating discovery for a tough-sinewed young barbarian to make. What an admirable sight, indeed! Renalt Trender, sniffing and snuffling for a girl’s favor!
Pride, however, is everywhere indigenous, and this came to my assistance. If the minx played sham with me I would meet her with her own tactics and affect indifference. What a triumphant picture this:
Zyp—“Why have you been different to me of late, Renny? Aren’t you fond of me now?”
Renny—“My good little Zyp, the fact is I have tired a bit of the novelty. It has been my first experience of the society of a girl, you know, and very pleasant while it lasted; but I confess to a little longing for a resumption of the old independence and freedom. Perhaps some day again we will walk and converse together as of old.”
Atop of this imaginary question and answer rose a smugly anguishing picture of Zyp flushed and in tears (my imagination insisted on these in bucketsful, to out-flood my own temporary weakness); of Zyp hurt and sorrowing, but always striving by every means in her power to win back my lost favor.
Alas, poor little clown! I fear it is just those who have the fancy to conjure up such pictures who suffer most cruelly from the non-realization of the hopes of youth. Braced to the test, however, and not knowing myself in weak armor, I came down to supper that evening prickling all through with resolve.
Jason was in the room alone, as I entered, and was walking feverishly up and down.
“Hist!” he said, softly, seizing me by the arm; “come here and look for yourself.”
He dragged me to the little square window, which was open. It looked out at the back, and beneath was the railed platform before mentioned.
I knew that I was urged to act the spy, and yet—so demoralizing is jealousy—like a dog I went. Softly we craned our necks through the opening and looked down. Trees all about here bordered the river banks, so as to make the rear of our mill quite secret and secluded.
She, Zyp, was standing on the platform with her arm round Modred’s neck. She seemed trying to coax something from him which he was reluctant to part with. As he evaded her efforts I saw what it was—the little round yellow object I had noticed in his hand earlier in the afternoon.
“Darling,” she said, in a subdued voice, “do let me have it.”
He laughed and looked at her loutishly.
“You know the condition, Zyp.”
“I have let you kiss me over and over again.”
“But you haven’t kissed me yet.”
She stamped her foot. “Nor ever shall!” she cried.
“Then here goes,” he said, and slipped it into his pocket.
At that she rushed at him and wound her arms about him like a young panther.
“Shall I tear you with my teeth?” she said, but instead she smoothed his face with one hand disengaged and murmured to him:
“Modred, dear, you got it for me, you know; you said so.”
“And precious frightened I was, Zyp.”
“Well, it is mine, isn’t it?”
“If you give me the kiss.”
My father’s step on the stairs brought our heads in with a clatter. We heard them scuttle into the house, and a moment later they appeared in the room. Modred’s face was flushed and bore a heavy, embarrassed expression, but Zyp looked quite cool and self-possessed.
I took no notice of her during the meal, but talked, daring in my misery, to my father, who condescended to answer me now and again, and I could see that she wondered at me.
Supper over, I hurried to my room, and shutting myself in, went and sat by the window and gave my tormented soul to the night. Had I never met Zyp, I doubt if I should ever in my manhood have realized what the grown-up, I think, seldom do, the amount of torture and wrong the young heart may endure without bursting—with no hope of sympathy, moreover, except that half-amused tolerant form of it which the old think it sufficient to extend to youth’s elastic grievances.
By and by Jason stole in. For some little time he sat upon his bed, silent; then he said in a soft voice:
“Let’s cry quits, Renny. I think I’ve paid you out for that little accident of the meads.”
“I hate you!” I said, quietly, and indeed it seemed to me that his cruelty deserved no better a reward.
He laughed, and was silent again, and presently began to undress for bed, whistling softly all the time.
I took no notice of him; but long after when he was breathing peacefully asleep, I laid my own aching head, tired with misery, on the pillow, and tried to follow his example. I was not to succeed until faint daylight came through the casement and the birds were twittering outside—was never, indeed, to know sleep in its innocence again.
Morning brought a pitcher of comfort with it on its gossamer wings. Who, at 17, can wake from restoring sleep to find the June sun on his face and elect to breakfast on bitter wormwood, with the appetizing fry of good country bacon caressing his nostrils through every chink of the boards? Indeed, I was not born to hate, or to any decided vice or virtue, but was of those who, taking a middle course, are kicked to the wall or into the gutter as the Fates have a fancy.
I was friendly with myself, with Jason—almost with Zyp, who had so bedeviled me. After all, I thought, the measure of her regard for me might be more in a winning friendliness than in embraces such as she had bestowed upon Modred.
Therefore I dressed in good heart, chatting amiably with Jason, who, I could not help noticing, was at some pains to study me curiously.
Such reactionary spirits are the heritage of youth. They decline with the day. My particular relapse happened, maybe, ungenerously early, for it was at breakfast I noticed the first tremulous vibrations of Zyp’s war trumpet. Clearly she had guessed the reason of the change in my manner toward her yesterday evening and was bent upon disabusing my mind of the presumptuous supposition that I held any monopoly whatsoever of her better regard. To this end she showered exaggerated attentions upon Modred and my father—even Jason coming in for his share. She had little digs at my silence and boorishness that hugely delighted the others. She slipped a corner of fat bacon into my tea and spilled salt over my bread and jam, and all the time I had to bear my suffering with a stoic heart and echo the merriment, which I did in such sardonic fashion as to call down fresh banter for my confusion. At our worst, it must be confessed, we were not a circle with a refined sense of humor. But when we rose, and Zyp brushed rudely by me with a pert toss of her head, I felt indeed as if life no longer held anything worth the striving after.
I walked out into the yard to be alone, but Jason followed me. Some tenderness for old comradeship sake stirred in him momentarily, I think, for his blue eyes were good as they met mine.
“What an ass you are, Renny,” he said; “to make such a to-do about the rubbish!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, in miserable resentment. “I’m making no to-do about anything.”
My chest felt like a stone, and I could have struck him or any one.
“Oh, I can see,” said he.
“See what you like,” I replied, furiously, “but don’t bother me with it. I’ve nothing to do with your fancies.”
“Oh, very well,” he said, coolly; “I don’t want to interfere, I’m sure.”
I bounced past him and strode out of the yard. My blood was humming in my veins; the sunny street looked all glazed with a shining gray. I walked on and on, scarcely knowing whither I went. Presently I climbed St. Catherine’s hill and flung myself down on the summit. Below me, a quarter of a mile away, the old city lay in the hollow cup of its down. Who, of all its 17,000 souls, could ever stir my pulses as the little stranger from the distant shadowy forest could? We had no forests round Winton. Perhaps if we had the spirit of the trees would have colored my life, too, so that I might have scorned “the blind bow-god’s butt shaft.”
No doubt I was young to make such capital out of a little boyish disappointment. Do you think so? Then to you I must not appeal. Oh, my friend! We are not all jack-o’-lanterns at 17, and the fire of unrequited affection may burn fiercer in the pure air of youth than in the vitiated atmosphere of manhood. Anyhow believe me that to me my misery was very real and dreadful. Think only, you who have plucked the fruit and found it bitter—you whose disenchantment of life did not begin till life itself was waning—what it must be to feel hopeless at that tender age.
All day long I lay on the hill or wandered about the neighboring downs, and it was not till the shadows of the trees were stretching that I made up my mind to return and face out the inevitable.
I was parched and feverish, and the prospect of a plunge in the river on my way home came to me with a little lonely thrill as of solace to my unhappiness.
There was a deep pool at a bend of the stream, not far from where Zyp and I had sat yesterday afternoon (was it only yesterday?) which we three were much in the habit of frequenting on warm evenings; and thither I bent my steps. This part of the water lay very private and solitary, and was only to be reached by trespassing from the road through a pretty thick-set blackthorn hedge—a necessity to its enjoyment which, I need not say, was an attraction to us.
As I wriggled through our individual “run” in the hedge and, emerging on the other side, raised my face, I saw that a naked figure was already seated by the side of the running pool, which I was not long in identifying as Modred’s.
I hesitated. What reason had I for hobnobbing with mine enemy, as, in the bitterness of my heart, I called him? I could not as yet speak to him naturally, I felt, or meet him without resentment. Where was the object in complicating matters? I turned, on the thought, to go, and again hesitated. Should he see me before I had made my escape, would he not attribute it to embarrassment on my part and crow triumphant over my discomfiture? Ah, why did I not act on my first impulse? Why, why? The deeps of perdition must resound with that forlorn little word.
When a second time the good resolve came to me, it was too late. He rose and saw me and, under his shading hand, even at that distance, I could mark the silent grin of mockery on his face. I walked deliberately toward him, my hands in my pockets, my cap shading my eyes.
“Aren’t you coming to bathe?” he said, when I drew near. “It’ll cool your temper.”
I could have struck him, but I answered nothing and only began to undress.
“Where have you been all day? We were wondering, Zyp and I, as we lay in the meadow out there.”
Still I answered nothing, but I knew that my hands trembled as I pulled off my coat and waistcoat.
He stood watching me a little while in silence, then said: “You seem to have lost your tongue, old Renny. Has it followed your heart because Zyp talks for two?”
I sprung up, but he eluded me and, with a hateful laugh, leaped on the moment into the deep center of the pool. A horrible tightness came round my throat. Half-undressed as I was I plunged after him all mad with passion. He rose near me, and seeing the fury of my face, dived again, and I followed. It took but an instant, and my life was wrecked. We met among the weeds at the bottom, and he jumped from me. As he rose I clutched him by one foot, and swiftly passed a great sinew of weed three or four times around his ankle. It held like a grapnel and would hold; for, though he was a fair swimmer, he was always frighted and nervous in the face of little difficulties. Then swerving away, I rose again, with laboring lungs, to the surface.
Barely had my drenched eyes found the daylight again, when the hideous enormity of my crime broke into my brain like the toll of a death bell. The water near me was heaving slightly and some welling bubbles swayed to the surface. They were the drowning gasps of my brother—my own brother, whom I was murdering.
I gave a thin, wretched scream and sunk again into the deep hole beneath me. He was jerking convulsively, and his hands clutched vainly at his feet and slipped away in a dying manner. I tore at the weed to unwind it—only to twist it into new fetters. I pulled frantically at its roots. I felt that I should go mad if it did not yield. In a moment it came away in my hands and I shot upward, struggling. But the other poor body followed me sluggishly, and I seized it by the hair, with all my heart gone crazy, and towed it ashore.
His face, I thought, looked fallen away already and was no longer loutish or malicious. It seemed just a white, pathetic thing freed from suffering—and I would have given my life—ay, and my love—ten times over to see the same expression come back to it it had worn as it turned to me before he dived.
I fell on my knees beside him and broke into a passion of tears. I kissed, with no shame but a murderer’s, the wet forehead, and beat and pressed, in a futile agony too terrible for words, the limp unresisting hand against my breast. It seemed that he must wake if I implored him so frantically. But he lay quiet, with closed eyes, and the water ran from his white skin in trickling jerks and pauses.
In the midst of my useless anguish some words of Jason’s recurred to me, and, seizing my coat for a pillow to his forehead, I turned him, with a shuddering horror of his limpness, upon his face. A great gush of water came with a rumble from his mouth, but he did not stir; and there I stood looking down upon him, my hand to my forehead, my mad eyes staring as Cain’s must have stared when he wrought the deed of terror.
And I was Cain—I who yesterday was a boy of loving impulses, I think; whose blackest crime might be some petty rebellion against the lesser proprieties; who had even hugged himself upon living on a loftier plane than this poor silenced victim of his brutality.
As the deadly earnest of my deed came home to my stunned mind, I had no thought of escape. I would face it out, confess and die. My father’s agony—for he loved us in his way, I believe; Jason’s condemnation; Zyp’s hatred; my own shame and torture—I put them all on one side to get full view of that black crossbeam and rope that I felt to be the only medicine for my sick and haunted soul.
As I stood, the sound of wheels on the road beyond woke me to some necessity of action. Stumbling, as in a nightmare; not feeling my feet, but only the mechanical spring of motion, I hurried to the hedge side and looked over.
A carter with a tilt wagon was urging his tired team homeward.
“Help!” I cried. “Oh, come and help me!” And my voice seemed to me to issue from under the tilt of the wagon.
He “woa’d” up his horses, raised his hat from his forehead, wrinkled with hot weariness, and came toward me, his whip over his shoulder.
“What’s toward?” said he.
“My brother!” I gasped. “We were bathing together and he’s drowned.”
The man’s boorish face lighted up like a farthing rushlight. Here was something horribly sordid enough for all the excitement he was worth. It would sweeten many a pot of swipes for the week to come.
“Wheer be the body?” said he, eagerly.
“Over yonder, on the grass. Oh, won’t you help me to carry it home?”
He looked at the hedge critically.
“Go, you,” he said, “and drag ’en hither. We’ll gat ’en over hedge together.”
I ran back to where it lay. It had collapsed a little to one side, and for an instant my breath caught in a wild thrill of hope that he had moved of himself. But the waxen hue of the face in the gathering dusk killed my emotion on its very issuing.
A strange loathing of the thing, lying so unresponsive, had in my race backward and forward sprung upon me, but before it could gain the mastery I had seized it under the arm-pits and was half-dragging, half-carrying it toward the road.
I was at the hedge before I knew it, and the red face of the carter was peering curiously down at the white heap beneath.
“Harned ’en up,” he said. “My, but it’s cold. Easy, now. Take the toes of ’en. Thart’s it—woa!” and he had it in his strong arms and shuffling heavily to the rear of his wagon, jerked back the flap of the tilt with his elbow and slid the body like a package into the interior.
“Get your coat, man,” he cried, “and coom away.”
I had forgotten in the terror of it all my own half-dressed state, for I had stripped only to my underclothes, and my boots were still on my feet. Mechanically I returned to the riverside, and hastily donning my coat and trousers, snatched up the other’s tumbled garments and ran back to the road.
The carter was holding the curtain back and critically apostrophizing the thing within.
“Ay, he be sound enough. Reckon nought but the last trump’ll waken yon. Now, youngster, where may you live?”
I told him.
“Sure,” he said, “the old crazed mill?” Then I thought he muttered: “Well, ’tis one vermin the less,” but I was not sure and nothing mattered—nothing.
He asked me if I would like to ride with it inside. The mere suggestion was terror to me, and I stammered out that I would rather walk, for I had tried my best already and had given up hope.
So we set off slowly through the dumb, haunted twilight. Thoughts would not come to me in any definite form. I imagined the cathedral bells were ringing, till I found it was only a jangling in my brain, discordant and unearthly. People came toward us who on nearing were resolved into distorted rags of mist; voices croaked with laughter, and they were only the swung branches of trees.
Suddenly I heard an exclamation—real enough this time—and saw the carter run to the head of his team and stop them.
“Woa, then!” he cried, in a frightened voice; and then with terrified impatience: “Coom hither, marn; I tell ’ee. Don’t ’ee stand theer gawking at the air. Dang it, the ghost walks!” He stamped his heavy foot, seeing me motionless; then cried again: “Take thee foul burden out o’ the wain and dang me for a fool ever to have meddled wi’t!”
A gush of wondrous hope flooded my breast. I tore to the rear of the wagon, dashed back the curtain—and there was Modred sitting up and swaying feebly from side to side.
I leaped; I caught him in my arms; my breath came in laughter and sobs. “Oh, Modred, Modred!” I cried. “I didn’t mean it—it wasn’t me—I’m not like that!” and then I broke down and wept long and convulsively, though I would never let him out of my clutch.
“Where am I?” he said, faintly; “oh, it hurts so. Every vein in my body is bursting with pain.”
At this I beat under my hysterical outburst and set to rubbing him all over in frantic eagerness. It seemed to ease him a little and I blessed him that he lay passively against me and did not offer to push me away. Poor fellow, he was far too weak as yet for any resistance.
Presently I heard the carter bawl in tremulous tones: “Art gone, the two of ’ee?”
“Come here,” I called back, with a tearful laugh. “He’s better; he’s recovered!”
The fellow came round gingerly and stood a little distance off.
“Eh?” he said, dubiously.
“See for yourself!” I cried. “He wasn’t drowned after all. He’s come round!”
The man spat viciously in the road and came sullenly forward. He was defrauded of an excitement and he felt the injury grievously.
“You young varmint!” he growled. “Them’s your tricks for to get a free lift.”
“Nonsense!” I said, buoyantly; “you yourself thought him dead. Carry us on to the mill and I’ll promise you a proper skinful of liquor.”
He was crabbed and undecided, but presently he went forward and whipped up his horses with a surly oath. As the wagon pitched, Modred opened his eyes, which he had shut, and looked up at me.
“Are you feeling better, old boy?” I said, tenderly.
“The pain isn’t so bad, but I’m tired to death,” said he.
“Rest, and don’t talk. You’ll be stronger in a bit.”
He closed his eyes again and I tried to shield him as much as I could from the jolting. I had already wrapped him up warm in some old sacks that were heaped in a corner of the wagon. So all the way home I held him, counting his every breath, loving him as I had never done before.
It was dark when we reached the mill and I laid him gently back and leaped down.
“Dad! Dad!” I shouted, running down the yard and into the house; but he was already standing at the head of the stairs, with a candle in his hand.
“Modred’s had an accident!” I cried, in a subdued voice—I could not keep the lie back. It seemed so dreadful at the outset to confess and stand aside condemned—while others helped. Jason and Zyp came out on the landing and my father ran down the stairs hurriedly.
“What’s that?” he said—“Modred!”
“He got caught in the weeds and was nearly drowned, but he’s getting better.”
“Where is he?” He seized me by the arm as he spoke, and dragged me to the mill door. I could feel the pulses in his finger tips through my coat.
“He’s in a wain outside, and I promised the man a long drink for bringing us home.”
“There’s a full bottle in the cupboard—bring it down,” shouted my father to Jason. Then he hurried to the wagon and lifted out the breathing figure and looked into its face. After all, it was his youngest.
“Not much harm, perhaps,” said he. “Run and tell them to heat some water and the blankets.”
While I was finding old Peg and explaining and giving the order, they carried him upstairs. I did not dare follow them, but, the reaction over, leaned, feeling sick and faint, in the passage outside the little kitchen. Perhaps even now he was telling them, and I dreaded more than I can describe the sentence which a first look at any one of their faces might confirm.
Presently old Peg came out to me with a can of boiling water and flung an armful of warm blankets over my shoulder.
“There’s for you, Renalt,” she cried in her thin, rusty voice; then muttered, clawing her hips like a monkey: “’Tis flying in the Lord’s face o’ Providence, to me a old woman; like as restoring a froze snake on the hearth.”
I had no heart for retort, but sped from the sinister old witch with my burden. I saw Zyp and Jason in the living-room as I passed, but, though they called to me, I ran on and upstairs to the door of Modred’s room, which was next ours.
My father came out to my knock and took the things from me.
“Now,” said he, “I want nobody here but myself and Dr. Crackenthorpe. Go you and fetch him, if he’s to be found.”
Happy to be employed in any useful service, I hurried away on my errand. The door of the sitting-room was shut, at which I was glad. Very little respite gave me fresh lease of hope.
The doctor’s home was close by, in a straggling street of old buildings that ran off our end of the High street, and the doctor himself was, I was told, within.
I found him seated in a musty little parlor, with some ugly casts of murderers’ heads facing him from the top of a varnished bookcase.
“Ah, my friend!” he screeched, cracking his knuckles; “those interest you, eh? Well, perhaps I shall have the pleasure of adding your picture to them some day.”
An irrepressible shudder took me and he laughed, not knowing the reason of it.
“Now, what’s your business?” said he.
I told him.
“Eh,” he said, and bent forward and looked at me narrowly. “Near drowned, eh? Why, what were you doing, you young limb?”
“I went after him,” I answered, faintly, “but I couldn’t get the weeds loose.”
“Dressed, too?” he said, for the sop of my underclothes had come through the upper, and nothing escaped his hawk’s eye; “why, you’re a hero, upon my word.”
He bade me begone after that and he would follow immediately. And I returned to the mill, and, softly climbing the stairs, shut myself into my room and sat upon the edge of the bed listening—listening for every breath and sound in the old eerie house. I heard the doctor come up the stairs and enter the room next door. I heard the low murmur of voices and strained my ears to gather what was said, but could not make out a word. And the darkness grew into my soul and shut out all the old light of happy reason. Should I ever feel innocent again? And would Modred, satisfied with his knowledge of the dreadful heritage of remorse I had laid up for myself, forego his right to denounce me and to forever make me an outcast and alone? I hardly dared to hope it, yet clung with a strenuous longing to thought of his mercy.
It may have been hours I sat there. I do not know. I had heard footsteps go up and down the stairs many times. And then a silence fell. What was the meaning of it? Was it possible that life had only rallied in him momentarily, like the flame of a dying candle and had suddenly sunk for good and all into endless darkness? Had he told? Why did no one come near me? I could stand it no longer.
As I sprung to my feet I heard a footstep again on the stairs and Jason walked into the room and shut the door. He took no notice of me, but began to undress.
“Jason!” I cried, and the agony in my voice I could not repress. “How is he? Has he spoken? Oh, don’t keep me in this torture.”
“What torture?” said my brother, looking at me with a cold, unresponsive eye. “Why should you be upset more than the rest of us? He’s asleep all right, and not to be bothered with any questions.”
Thank God! Oh, thank God! I took no notice of his looks or tone, for I was absorbed in great gratitude to heaven that my worst fears were idle ones.
“Where’s dad?” I said.
“Drinking downstairs with the doctor. They’ll make high revel of it, I expect.”
He was already in bed; but I sat on and on in the darkness. I had only one thought—one longing to wait till Jason was fast in slumber, and then to creep to Modred’s side and implore his forgiveness.
Presently the deep, regular breathing of my brother announced to me the termination of my vigil. With my heart beating in a suffocating manner, I stole to the door, opened it and stood outside that of Modred’s room. I listened a moment. A humming noise of garrulous voices below was the only sound that broke the silence of the house. Softly I turned the handle and softly crept into the room. There was light in it, for on the wash-hand stand a rush candle burned dimly in an old lanthorn.
He gave a start, for he was lying awake in his bed, then half-rose on his elbow and looked at me with frightened eyes.
“Don’t come near,” he whispered. “What do you want? You aren’t going to try to kill me again?”
I gave a little strangled, agonized cry, and, dropping on my knees where I stood, stretched out my arms to him imploringly.
“Oh, Modred, don’t! Don’t! You can’t think I meant it! It was only a horrible impulse. I was mad, and I nearly drowned myself directly afterward in saving you.”
The fright went from his face and something like its familiar look returned to it.
“Are you sorry?” he said.
“Sorry? Oh, I will do anything you like if you will only believe me.”
“Come here, Renny,” he said, “and stand by me. I want to see you better.”
I obeyed humbly—lovingly.
“You want me to forgive you?”
“If you could, Modred—if you only could.”
“And not to peach?”
I hung my head in shame and the tears were in my eyes again.
“Well, I’ll agree, on one condition.”
“Make any you like, Modred. I’ll swear to keep it; I’ll never forget it.”
“Zyp’s it,” he said, looking away from me.
“Yes,” I said, gently, with a prescience of what was coming.
“You’ll have to give her up for good and all—keep out of her way; let her know somehow you’re sick of her. And keep Jason out of the way. You and he were chums enough before she came.”
“I swear for myself, and to do what I can with Jason,” I said, dully. What did it matter? One way or another the buoyant light of existence was shut to me for good and all.
“It’s the only way,” said Modred, and he gave me a look that I dare not call crafty. “After all, it isn’t much,” he said, “considering what you did to me, and she seems to be getting tired of you—now, doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said in a low voice.
“Then, that’s settled. And now let me be, for I feel as if I can sleep. Hand me my breeches first, though. There’s something in the pocket I want.”
“Shall I get it out for you, old boy?”
“No, no!” he answered, hurriedly. “Give them to me, can’t you?”
I did as he wanted and crept from the room. What did it matter? Zyp had already cast me off, but for the evil deed I was respited. A moment ago the girl had seemed as nothing, set in the scale against my brother’s forgiveness. Could it be the true, loving spirit of forgiveness that could make such a condition? Hush! I must not think that thought. What did it matter?
I did not go back to my room, but sat on a stair at the head of the downward flight, with a strange, stunned feeling. Below the voices went on spasmodically—now a long murmur—now a snatch of song—now an angry phrase. By and by, I think, I must have fallen into a sort of stupor, for I seemed to wake all at once to a thunderous uproar.
I started to my feet. Magnified as all sounds are in the moment of recovered consciousness, there was yet noise enough below to convince me that a violent quarrel between the two men was toward. I heard my father’s voice in bitter denunciation.
“You’ve been hawking over my quarry this long while. I’ll tear the truth out of your long throat! Give me back my cameo—where is it?”
“A fig for your cameo!” cried the other in a shrill voice, “and I tell you this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“You’ve been watching me, you fiend, you! Dogging me—haunting me! I’ll have no more o’t! I’m not to be bribed or threatened or coaxed any more; least of all thieved from. Where is it?”
“You aren’t, aren’t you?” screeched the doctor. “You leave me here and I fall asleep. You’re away and you come storming back that I’ve robbed you. It’s a trap, by thunder, but you won’t catch me in it!”
“I believe you’re lying!” cried my father. His voice seemed strained with passion. But the other answered him now much more coolly.
“Believe what you like, my friend. It’s beneath my dignity to contradict you again; but take this for certain—if you slander me in public, I’ll ruin you!”
Then silence fell and I waited to hear no more. I stole to my room and crept to bed. I had never changed my drenched clothes and the deadly chill of my limbs was beginning to overcome the frost in my heart.
It seemed hours before the horrible coldness relaxed, and then straightway a parching fever scorched me as if I lay against a furnace. I heard sounds and dull footsteps and the ghostly creaking of stairs, but did not know if they were real or only incidents in my half-delirium.
At last as day was breaking I fell into a heavy, exhausted sleep. It merged into a dream of my younger brother. We walked together as we had done as little children, my arm around his neck. “Zenny,” he said, like a baby paraphrasing Zyp’s words, “what’s ’ove dat ’ey talk about?” I could have told him in the gushing of my heart, but in a moment he ran from me and faded.
I gave a cry and woke, and Jason was standing over me, with a white, scared face.
“Get up!” he whispered; “Modred’s dead!”
Often the first shock of some unexpected mental blow shakes from the soul, not its corresponding emotion, but that emotion’s exact antithesis. Thus, when Jason spoke I laughed. I could not on the moment believe that such hideous retribution was demanded of my already writhed and repentant conscience, and it seemed to me that he must be jesting in very ugly fashion.
Perhaps he looked astonished; anyhow he said:
“You needn’t make a joke of it. Are you awake? Modred’s dead, I tell you.”
I sprung from the bed; I clutched him and pulled him to and fro.
“Tell me you lie—you lie—you lie!” I cried.
He did not. I could see it in his face. There and then the drought of Tophet withered and constricted my life. I was branded and doomed forevermore; a thing to shudder at and avoid.
“I will dress and come!” I said, relaxing from my hold on him, and turned away and began to hurry on my clothes. I had not felt so set in quietness since the morning of two days past. I could even think calmly and balance the pros and cons of my future behavior.
Each man must be his own judge, his own plaintiff, his own defendant—an atom of self-contained equity. By his own ruling in matters of right and wrong he must abide, suffer his own punishments, enjoy his own rewards. He is a lonely organism, in whom only himself took an interest, and as such he must be content to endure with calmness the misinterpretations of aliens.
Modred had forgiven me. Whatever was the condition, whatever the deed, it was too late now to convince me that no justification existed for my rebellion against fate.
My elder, my only brother now, watched me in silence as I dressed.
“Where is he?” I said, when I had finished.
“In bed as he was left,” said Jason. “I went in this morning, while you were asleep, and found him—ah, he looks horrible,” he cried, and broke off with a shudder.
I did not shrink; I felt braced up to any ordeal.
They were all in the room when we entered it. My father, Dr. Crackenthorpe, Zyp—even old Peggy, who was busying herself, with the vulture relish of her kind, over the little artificial decencies of dress and posture that seem such an outrage on the solemn unresistance of the dead.
Directly we came in Zyp ran to Jason and clung to him sobbing. I noticed it with a sort of dull resignation, and that was all; for Peggy, who had drawn a sheet over the lifeless face, pulled it down that I might look.
Then, for all my stoicism, I gave a cry.
I had left my brother the night before tired, needing rest, but, save for the extra pallor of his complexion that never boasted a great deal of color, much like his usual self. Now the dead face lying back on the pillows was awful to look upon. Spots and bars of livid purple disfigured its waxen whiteness—on the cheeks, the ears, the throat, where a deep patch was. It was greatly swollen, too, and the mouth so rigidly open that it had defied all effort to bind it close. A couple of pennies, like a hideous pair of glasses, lay, one over each eye, where they could only be kept in position by means of a filament drawn tightly round the head. The hands, stiffly crossed, with the fingers crooked like talons, lay over the breast, fastened into position with a ligature.
I turned away, feeling sick and faint. I think I reeled, for presently I found that Dr. Crackenthorpe was supporting me against his arm.
“Oh, why is he like that?” I whispered.
“’Tis a common afterclap in deaths by drowning,” said he, speaking in a loud, insistent voice, as if not for the first time. “A stoppage—a relapse. During the weak small hours, when the patient’s strength is at its lowest, the overwrought lungs refuse to work—collapse, and he dies of suffocation.”
He looked at my father as he spoke, but elicited no response. It was palpable that the heavy potations of the night had so deadened the latter’s faculties as to make him incapable for the moment of realizing the full enormity of the sight before him.
“Mark me,” said the doctor; “it’s a plain case, I say, nothing out of the way; no complications. The wretched boy to all intents and purposes has been drowned.”
“Who drowned him?” said my father. He spoke thickly, stupidly; but I started, with a dreadful feeling that the locked jaws must relax and denounce me before them all.
Seeing his hopeless state, the doctor took my father’s arm and led him from the room. Zyp still clung to my brother.
“Cover it up,” whispered Jason. “He isn’t a pretty sight!”
“He wasn’t a pretty boy,” muttered Peggy, reluctantly hiding the dreadful face; “To a old woman’s view it speaks of more than his deserts. Nobody’ll come to look at me, I expect.”
“You heard what the doctor said?” asked Jason, looking across at me.
“Yes.”
“Drowned—you understand? Drowned, Renny?”
“Drowned,” I repeated, mechanically.
“Come, Zyp,” he said; “this isn’t the place for you any longer.”
They passed out of the room, she still clinging to him, so that her face was hidden.
I did not measure his words at that time. I had no thought for nice discriminations of tone; what did I care for anything any longer?
Presently I heard old Peg muttering again. She thought the room was emptied of us and she softly removed the face cloth once more.
“Ay, there ye lies, Modred—safe never to spy on poor old Rottengoose again! Ye were a bad lot, ye were; but Peg’s been more’n enough for you, she has, my lad.”
Suddenly she saw me out of the tail of her eye, and turned upon me, livid with fury.
“What are ye listening to, Renalt? A black curse on spies, Renalt, I say!”
Then her manner changed and she came fawning at me fulsomely.
“What a good lad to stay wi’ his brother! But Peg’ll do the tending, Renalt. She be a crass old body and apt to reviling in her speech, but she don’t mean it, bless you; it’s the tic doldrums in her head.”
I repelled the horrible old creature and fled from the room. What she meant I neither knew nor cared, for we had always looked upon her as a feckless body, with a big worm in her brain.
All the long morning I wandered about the house, scarcely knowing what I did or whither I went. Once I found myself in the room of silence, not remembering when I had come there or for what reason. The fact, merely, was impressed upon me by a gradual change in the nature of my sensations. Something seemed to be asking a question of me which I was striving and striving to answer. It didn’t distress me at first, for a nearer misery overwhelmed everything, but by and by its insistence pierced a passage through all dull obstacles, and the something took up its abode in me and reigned and grew. I felt myself yielding, yielding; and strove now to beat off the inevitable horror of the answer that was rising in me. I did not know what it was, or the question to which it was a response—only I saw that if I yielded to it and spoke it, I should die then and there of the black terror of its revelation.
I sprung to my feet with a cry, and saw, or thought I saw, Modred standing by the water wheel and beckoning to me. If I had strength to escape, it was enough for that and no more, for everything seemed to go from me till I found myself sitting at the foot of the stairs, with Jason looking oddly down upon me.
“I needn’t get up,” I said. “Modred isn’t dead, after all.”
I think I heard him shout out. Anyhow, I felt myself lifted up and carried somewhere and put down. If they had thought to restrain me, however, they should have managed things better; for I was up in a moment and out at the window. I had often thought one wanted only the will to forget gravity and float through the air, and here I was doing it. What a glorious sensation it was! I laughed to think how long I had remained like a reptile, bound to the plodding miserable earth, when all the time I had power to escape from myself and float on and on far away from all those heart-breaking troubles. If I only went very swiftly at first I should soon be too distant for them to track me, and then I should be free. I felt a little anxious, for there was a faint noise behind me. I strove to put on pace; if my limbs had responded to my efforts no bird could have outstripped me. But I saw with agony that the harder I fought the less way I made. I struggled and sobbed and clutched myself blindly onward, and all the time the noise behind grew deeper. If I pushed myself off with a foot to the ground I only floated a very little way now. Then I saw a railing and pulled myself along with it toilsomely, but some great pressure was in front of me and my feet slipped into holes at every step. Panting, straining, slipping, as if on blood—why! It was blood! I had to yield at last.
My passion of hope was done with. I lay in a white set horror, not daring to move or look. How deadly quiet the room was, but not for long, for a little stealthy rustle of the sheet beside me prickled through my whole being with its ghastly stirring. Then I knew it had secretly risen on its elbow and was leaning over and looking down upon me. If I could only perspire, I thought, my bonds would loosen and I could escape from it. But it was cunning and knew that, too, and it sealed all the surface of my skin with its acrid exhalations. Suddenly it clutched me in its crooked arms and bore me down, down to the room of silence. There was a sickening odor there and the covering of the wheel was open. Then, with a shudder, as of death, I thought I found the answer; for now it was plain that the great wheel was driven by blood, not water. As I looked aghast, straining over, it gave me a stealthy push and, with a shriek, I splashed among the paddles and was whirled down. For ages I was spun and beaten round and round, mashed, mangled, gasping for breath and choked with the horrible crimson broth that fed the insane and furious grinding of the wheel. At the end, glutted with torture, it flung me forth into a parching desert of sand, and, spinning from me, became far away a revolving disk of red that made the low-down sun of that waste corner of the world.
I was alone, now—always alone. No footsteps had ever trod that trackless level, nor would, I knew, till time was ended. I had no hope; no green memory for oasis; no power of speech even. Then I knew I was dead; had been dead so long that my body had crackled and fallen to decay, leaving my soul only, like the stone of a fruit, quick with wretched impulse to shoot upward but dreadfully imprisoned from doing so.
Sometimes in the world the massive columns of the cathedral had suggested to me a like sensation; a moral impress of weight and stoniness that had driven me to bow my head and creep, sweating away from their inexorable stolidity. Now I was built into such a body—more, was an integral part of it. Yet could my pinioned nerves never assimilate its passionless obduracy, but jerked and struggled in agony to be free. Oh, how divine is the instinct that paints heaven all light and airiness, and innocent forevermore of the sense of weight!
Suddenly I heard Zyp’s voice, singing outside in the world, and in a moment tears, most blessed, blessed tears, sprung from my eyes and I was free. The stone cracked and fell asunder, and I leaped out madly shrieking at my release.
She was sitting under a tree in a beautiful meadow and her young voice rose sweetly as she prinked her hat with daisies and yellow king-cups. She called me to her and gave me tender names and smoothed away the pain from my forehead with kisses and the cunning of her elfish brown hand.
“Come, drink,” she said, “and you will be better.”
I woke to life and looked up. She was standing by my bed, holding a cup toward my lips, and at the foot Jason leaned, looking on.
“Have I been ill?” I said, in a voice so odd to me that I almost laughed.
“Yes, yes—a little; but you have come out of the black pit now into the forest.”