The Unknown Sea Part 30

We beseech, we beseech, we beseech: Lord G.o.d 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 subst.i.tution 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 ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce for a slim body to press across and win the cavern. To better the barrier by a few poor inches, this way and that he wrung his wearied body and broke flesh; and to no purpose. 'Except my bones break, I will.' He grappled strenuously; a little give responded. He set his feet closer in, and lifted again mightily, and the boulder shifted, poised onward to settle.

Who struck? Death.

Nerveless, he swayed with the rock, on a motion its own weight consummated, agape, transfixed by the wonder of living still.

Fresh, horrible pain seized him by foot and ankle, casting him down to tear up the sand, to bite the sand, lest in agony he should go shrieking like a woman.

He writhed round to strike in the dark at the senseless ma.s.s, 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 h.e.l.l he wrenched his heel.

Broken, crippled, strengthless, Christian crawled over the sand to the spot where he would die. Indistinguishable in the dark was the furrow he left stained till the tide should come: long before daylight broke the tide would come up to smooth and whiten it. He knew he was dying, and, touching the ended rowan, rendered thanks that it was to be there. All was nearly over, pain and a foolish, arrogant hope on which he had staked his life: presently, when he was dead, Diadyomene would come, to overstep his body, eluding there the toils. He misliked the thought that her feet might go red from treading him, and he stretched about weakly for briny hollows along the rock to cleanse the hot, slow oozing that chilled and stiffened into long stripes.

Why should he be gasping still, as breathless as after his hardest race, as after his mightiest heft? He required breath to help endurance of thirst and exorbitant pain; air could he gasp in, deep and free, and yet he wanted for more.

Why he should be dying, and how, Christian did not know. Life's centre had been stricken mortally quicker than a lightning-flash, too subtly for the brain to register any pain, so unmistakably he wondered only he was yet alive. From breath to breath he awaited another touch and a final, yet nothing lacked for vital order save air, air, more air. At short, merciful intervals he drifted out of the range of any pain.

On this his third death he did not so very greatly shrink from pa.s.sing out of the body to stand before the face of his Maker. He could not take up any meaning for prayer. He was discarded from service; perfect justice had tried him, judged him, and condemned him as unfit. It was bitter for him; but review of his finishing span of life, its sin, failure, impotence, brought him to acquiescence. 'Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory' was all he had of prayer.

The apprehension of each human principle was straitened, by darkness about him, by pain in strong possession, by recognition of death closing in. As visitants to his heart from some far-distant sphere came Rhoda, Lois, Diadyomene; they vanished away; he could not keep them close--not even Diadyomene. 'Dear love, my love!'

Through the dark she came.

He rose to his knees, aware of a moving glimmer of grey, nearing, near.

At her swift, beautiful pace she made for the sea. Suddenly she stood. He heard the catch of her breath; swiftly the dim oval of her face was turned to him; then away. She swayed back a step; she swayed forward; hung a moment at poise upright; reeled aside, and fled back into the dark.

Then Christian found he had yet strong faculty for life. He had retained small certainty that she had not long pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sionately.

A low, bitter cry quivered through the dark to his heart. Diadyomene had fled for a way of escape, and found it barred. Soft rapids were her feet; she came speeding full to leap past. In vain; with a cry she flung up her arms, revulsed irresistibly, swerved, and stood stone-still. She moaned out long, agonised sighs; she seemed to turn away in pride, ignoring him; she seemed to face him again, not defiant. He saw her hands outstretched in appeal. 'What have you done?' she said; 'what have you done?' and then the woful complaint was changed to wilder: 'What have I done? what have I done?'

He did not dare to speak, nor had he the breath. He was weeping for her.

But she, not seeing, was stirred to wrath and fear by a silence so cruel.

To her height she rose above the gasping, crouched shape, and her voice rang hard and clear.

'Stand away. Once you trespa.s.sed, and I forgave you fully; twice, and I spared you; this third time--get you gone quickly, and find yourself some easy death before it be out of reach.'

Still he did not answer. Her fear outdid her anger, and she stooped her pride.

'Only be kind and true, and let me go,' she implored, and knelt low as he. 'I let you take my secret, and you turn it against me treacherously.

You plan a shameful snare, you, you, whom I counted true as the sun. To you, a bold, graceless stranger, I granted life at the first; to you I gave the liberty of my dearest haunt. Be just, and leave me free in my own. Have pity, and let me go. Woe and horror are coming upon me to take me, awake and astray from the comfort of the sea.' She moaned and sighed piteously.

His tears fell like rain for grief of his doings, for bitter grief that he might not comfort her.

Because of a base alloy that had altered sacred love he had to fear. He turned away his head, panting and shaking, for pain and thirst made almost unendurable a temptation to stretch out his hand to hers, by the magic of her touch to lose himself till death in a blissful swoon.

Her wail had in it the note of a deserted child and of a desolate woman.

'I am crying to you for pity and help, and you turn away; I, who in the sea am regnant. But late you cried to me when no mercy and pardon were due, and I let you live. And if then I judged you unheard and wrongly, and if I condemned a breach of faith over harshly, here kneeling I pray you to forgive--I, who never bid vainly, never ask vainly, of any living creature but of you.'

Christian only was weeping; Diadyomene shed no tear, though her voice quivered piteously.

'Ah, my sea, my sea! Hark how it moans to me, and cannot reach me! My birds fail me, nestling afar--that you considered when you came by night. Undo, undo your cruel work, and I will reproach you never.'

His silence appalled her. 'Why should you do this?' she cried. 'What would you have of me? A ransom? Name it. The wealth of the sea is mine to give; the magic of the sea is mine. To all seas, to all sea-creatures, you shall bear a charmed life henceforward, only let me go.'

He sobbed, 'But I die, I die!' but so brokenly that the words failed at her ears.

'Hear me,' she said; 'I make no reservation. Ask what you will, and nothing, nothing I can grant will I refuse--only quickly let me go.'

She was crouched before him, with her face downward and hidden, as she moaned, and moaned surrender. Presently she half lifted, and her voice was at a lovely break between grief and gladness.

'Fool, dear ignorant fool, Diadyomenos, are you blind? You have come to me often; have I ever looked unglad? Have I wearied of you soon? Have I failed you? Could you read into that no favour from me, Diadyomene, who have the sea to range? Can you wrong so my grace to you in the past as to plan an extortion? Ah, foolish, needless, empty wrong! Your eyes have been fair to me when they said what your tongue would not. Speak now fair words, since I cannot read your eyes. Dear hands, reach out for mine, take them and draw me out of the snare, and with gladness and shame own it needless, as with gladness and pride will I.'

So vile a wretch she took him to be! and the bitterness was that he might not disclaim. For a moment he had fallen to that baseness; it might be that only because life was going out of him so fast was he past such purpose now. A stupid 'No, no,' was all he could bring out.

She sprang up at a bound, driven to fury. She longed to strike with mere woman strength, yet she dared not a contact, lest hers be the disadvantage. With a shriek she fled back into the dark, and he heard the dreadful wailing cries wheeling away. Desperately he prayed for himself and for her; for his pain and an agony of pity were almost more than he could bear.

Suddenly she came upon him and stood close. Her tone was changed.

'At last,' she said, 'miserable creature, you shall know the truth. You love me. I know it well; I have known it long. And with all my strength--I--hate you. Not for this night's treachery and insolence only; from the first I hated you; and hatred has grown since more bitter-strong, till your one life and body seemed all too little to stay it. Ah! the love I read in your eyes has been sweet sustenance. So I waited and waited only for this: for love of me to take deep hold of your heart, to be dearer than life, before I plucked it up by the roots; and to laugh in your face as I did it, knowing it worse than any death. Oh!

it should have been by daylight. I would like to see your face and your eyes now, and watch your great body writhe--I think it does! Why, laugh I must.

'Can you fathom my hate by its doings? You stood here first, glad, proud, strong in your youth; but a few short weeks, and I had turned all to ruin. Yes, I--I--only was your bane, though I but watched, and laughed, and whispered beneath my waters, and let you be for the handling of your fellows. Truly my hate has worked subtly and well, and even beyond device; it has reached beyond you: an old man treads the quay no more, and a girl comes down to it grown pale and heavy-eyed, and a woman ageing and greyer every time. Think and know! You never shall see them again; for a brief moment you check and defy me, but the entrance of the tide shall bring you your death.

'Now, I the while will plan the worst death I may. You think you have faced that once already? Fool! from to-morrow's dawn till sunset I will teach you better. The foulest creature of the deep shall take you again and hold you helpless--but that is nothing: for swarms shall come up from the sea, and from twilight to twilight they shall eat you alive. They shall gnaw the flesh from your limbs; they shall pierce to the bone; they shall drill you through and rummage your entrails. And with them shall enter the brine to drench you with anguish. And I, beside you, with my fingers in your hair, will watch all day, and have a care to lift your head above the tide; and I will flick off the sea-lice and the crays from your face and your eyes, to leave them whole and clear and legible to my hate at the last. And at the very last I will lay my face down against yours, and out of very pure hate will kiss you once--will kiss you more than once, and will not tire because you will so quicken with loathing.

Even in the death agony I mean you to know my fingers in your hair. Ha!

Agonistes.

'And now you wish you had died on that moonlit, warm night long ago: and me it gladdens to think I did not then cut you off from the life to follow after, more bitter than many quick deaths. And you wish I had finished you outright in the late storm, that so you might have died blissfully ignorant of the whole truth: and I spared you only that you should not escape a better torture that I had contrived.

'Ah! it has been a long delight to fool you, to play my game with flawless skill. As I choose a wear of pearls, so chose I graces of love for adornment. Am I not perfect now? What have I said of hatred and love?

No, no, all that is false. Because you scorn the sea-life so dear to me, I try to keep hatred; but it may not abide when you stand before me and I look in your eyes--oh! slay it, slay it quite with the touch of your lips. My love!' her voice fell softly: 'My love, my love, my love, my love!' She was chasing the word along all the ranges of derision.

She stood no more than a pace from him, a flexile figure that poised and swung, to provoke the wild beast in him to spring. Christian never stirred nor spoke.

'Would the moon but shine! I mean to watch you when you die, but I think a better sight your face would be now than then. How well it pleases me your eyes are grey! Can grey eyes serve as well to show hate as love? Ay, I shall laugh at that: to see in them hate, hate like my own; but impotent hate, not like mine. It hardly has dawned yet, I guess, but it will; and presently be so strong that the dearest joy left would be to have your hand on my throat to finish my life. Do you think I fear? I dare you, defy you! Ha! Agonistes.'

He did not come hurling upon her; he did not by word or sign acknowledge her taunts.

'Why, the night of my dread goes blithely as never before. There is no bane left in it. I have found an antidote.'