'Good morning! Are you there?'
'Good morning! No: I am there,' says she.
'Well, that was what I asked--"are you there"?'
'But I not here, I am there,' says she.
'I know very well that you are not "here,"' said I, 'for I do not see
you: but I asked if you were there, and you say "No," and then "Yes."'
'It is the paladox of the heart,' says she.
'The what?'
'The paladox,' says she.
'But still I do not understand: how can you be both there and not
there?'
'If my ear is here, and I elsewhere?' says she.
'An operation?'
'Yes!' says she.
'What doctor?'
'A specialist!' says she.
'An ear-specialist?'
'A heart!' says she.
'And you let a heart-specialist operate on your ear?'
'On myself he operlated, and left the ear behind!' says she.
'Well, and how are you after it?'
'Fairly well. Are you?' says she.
'Quite well. Did you sleep well?'
'Except when you lang me up at midnight. I have had such a dleam ...'
'What?'
'I dleamed that I saw two little boys of the same age--only I could not
see their faces, I never can see anybody's face, only yours and mine,
mine and yours always--of the same age--playing in a wood....'
'Ah, I hope that one of them was not called Cain, my poor girl.'
'Not at all! neither of them! Suppose I tell a stoly, and say that one
was called Caius and the other Tibelius, or one John and the other
Jesus?'
'Ah. Well, tell me the _dleam_....'
'Now you do not deserve.'
'Well, what will you do to-day?'
'I? It is a lovely day ... have you nice weather in England?'
'Very.'
'Well, between eleven and twelve I will go out and gather Spling-flowers
in the park, and cover the salon deep, deep. Wouldn't you like to be
here?'
'Not I.'
'You would!'
'Why should I? I prefer England.'
'But Flance is nice too: and Flance wants to be fliends with England,
and is waiting, oh waiting, for England to come over, and be fliends.
Couldn't some _lapplochement_ be negotiated?'
'Good-bye. This talking spoils my morning smoke....'
So we speak together across the sea, my God.
* * * * *
On the morning of the 8th April, when I had been separated thirteen
weeks from her, I boarded several ships in the Inner Port, a lunacy in
my heart, and selected what looked like a very swift boat, one of the
smaller Atlantic air-steamers called the _Stettin_, which seemed to
require the least labour in oiling, &c., in order to fit her for the
sea: for the boat in which I had come to England was a mere tub, though
sound, and I pined for the wings of a dove, that I might fly away to
her, and be at rest.
I toiled with fluttering hands that day, and I believe that I was of the
colour of ashes to my very lips. By half-past two o'clock I was
finished, and by three was coasting down Southampton Water by Netley
Hospital and the Hamble-mouth, having said not one word about anything
at the telephone, or even to my own guilty heart not a word. But in the
silent depths of my being I felt this fact: that this must be a 35-knot
boat, and that, if driven hard, hard, in spite of the heavy garment of
seaweed which she trailed, she would do 30; also that Havre was 120
miles away, and at 7 P.M. I should be on its quay.
And when I was away, and out on the bright and breezy sea, I called to
her, crying out: '_I am coming!_' And I knew that she heard me, and that
her heart leapt to meet me, for mine leapt, too, and felt her answering.
The sun went down: it set. I was tired of the day's work, and of
standing at the high-set wheel; and I could not yet see the coast of
France. And a thought smote me, and after another ten minutes I turned
the ship's head back, my face screwed with pain, God knows, like a man
whose thumbs are ground between the screws, and his body drawn out and
out on the rack to tenuous length, and his flesh massacred with pincers:
and I fell upon the floor of the bridge contorted with anguish: for I
could not go to her. But after a time that paroxysm passed, and I rose
up sullen and resentful, and resumed my place at the wheel, steering
back for England: for a fixed resolve was in my breast, and I said: 'Oh
no, no more. If I could bear it, I would, I would ... but if it is
impossible, how can I? To-morrow night as the sun sets--without fail--so
help me God--I will kill myself.'
* * * * *
So it is finished, my good God.
On the early morning of the next day, the 9th, I having come back to
Portsmouth about eleven the previous night, when I bid her 'Good
morning' through the telephone, she said 'Good morning,' and not another
word. I said:
'I got my hookah-bowl broken last night, and shall be trying to mend it
to-day.'
No answer.
'Are you there?' said I.
'Yes,' says she.
'Then why don't you answer?' said I.
'Where were you all yesterday?' says she.
'I went for a little cruise in the basin,' said I.
Silence for three minutes: then she says:
'What is the matter?'
'Matter?' said I, 'nothing!'
'_Tell me!_' she says--with such an intensity and rage, as to make me
shudder.
'There is nothing to tell, Leda!'
'Oh, but how can you be so _cluel_ to me?' she cries, and ah, there was
anguish in that voice! 'There is something to tell--there _is!_ Don't I
know it vely well by your voice?'
Ah, the thought took me then, how, on the morrow, she would ring, and
have no answer; and she would ring again, and have no answer; and she
would ring all day, and ring, and ring; and for ever she would ring,
with white-flowing hair and the staring eye-balls of frenzy, battering
reproaches at the doors of God, and the Universe would cry back to her
howls and ravings only one eternal answer of Silence, of Silence. And as
I thought of that--for very pity, for very pity, my God--I could not
help sobbing aloud:
'May God pity you, woman!'
I do not know if she heard it: she _must_, I think, have heard: but no
reply came; and there I, shivering like the sheeted dead, stood waiting
for her next word, waiting long, dreading, hoping for, her voice,
thinking that if she spoke and sobbed but once, I should drop dead,
dead, where I stood, or bite my tongue through, or shriek the high laugh
of distraction. But when at last, after quite thirty or forty minutes
she spoke, her voice was perfectly firm and calm. She said:
'Are you there?'
'Yes,' said I, 'yes, Leda.'
'What was the color,' says she, 'of the poison-cloud which destroyed the
world?'
'Purple, Leda,' said I.
'And it had a smell like almonds or peach blossoms, did it not?' says
she.
'Yes,' said I, 'yes.'
'Then,' says she, 'there is _another_ eruption. Every now and again I
seem to scent strange whiffs like that ... and there is a purple vapour
in the East which glows and glows ... just see if you can see it....'
I flew across the room to an east window, threw up the grimy sash, and
looked. But the view was barred by the plain brick back of a tall
warehouse. I rushed back, gasped to her to wait, rushed down the two
stairs, and out upon the Hard. For a minute I ran dodging wildly about,
seeking a purview to the East, and finally ran up the dockyard, behind
the storehouses to the Semaphore, and reached the top, panting for life.
I looked abroad. The morning sky, but for a bank of cloud to the
north-west, was cloudless, the sun blazing in a region of clear azure
pallor. And back again I flew.
'I cannot see it...!' I cried.
'Then it has not tlavelled far enough to the north-west yet,' she said
with decision.
'My wife!' I cried: 'you are my wife now!'
'Am I?' says she: 'at last? Are you glad?... But shall I not soon die?'
'No! You can escape! My home! My heart! If only for an hour or two, then
death--just think, together--on the same couch, for ever, heart to
heart--how sweet!'
'Yes! how sweet! But how escape?'
'It travelled slowly before. Get quick--will you?--into one of the
smaller boats by the quay--there is one just under the crane that is an
air-boat--you have seen me turn on the air, haven't you?--that handle on
the right as you descend the steps under the dial-thing--get first a
bucket of oil from the shop next to the clock-tower in the quay-street,
and throw it over everything that you see rusted. Only, spend no
time--for me, my heaven! You can steer by the tiller and compass: well,
the wheel is quite the same, only just the opposite. First unmoor, then
to the handle, then to the wheel. The course is directly North-East by
North. I will meet you on the sea--go now--'
I was wild with bliss. I thought that I should take her between my arms,
and have the little freckles against my face, and taste her short
firm-fleshed upper-lip, and moan upon her, and whimper upon her, and
mutter upon her, and say 'My wife.' And even when I knew that she was
gone from the telephone, I still stood there, hoarsely calling after
her: 'My wife! My wife!'
* * * * *
I flew down to where the steamer lay moored that had borne me the
previous day. Her joint speed with the speed of Leda's boat would be
forty knots: in three hours we must meet. I had not the least fear of
her dying before I saw her: for, apart from the deliberate movement of
the vapour that first time, I fore-tasted and trusted my love, that she
would surely come, and not fail: as dying saints fore-tasted and trusted
Eternal Life.
I was no sooner on board the _Stettin_ than her engines were straining
under what was equivalent to forced draught. On the previous day it
would have little surprised me at any moment, while I drove her, to be
carried to the clouds in an explosion from her deep-rusted steel tanks:
but this day such a fear never crossed my mind: for I knew very well
that I was immortal till I saw her.
The sea was not only perfectly smooth, but placid, as on the previous
day: only it seemed far placider, and the sun brighter, and there was a
levity in the breezes that frilled the sea in fugitive dark patches,
like _frissons_ of tickling; and I thought that the morning was a true
marriage-morning, and remembered that it was a Sabbath; and sweet odours
our wedding would not lack of peach and almond, though, looking
eastward, I could see no faintest sign of any purple cloud, but only
rags of chiffon under the sun; and it would be an eternal wedding, for
one day in our sight would be as a thousand years, and our thousand
years of bliss would be but one day, and in the evening of all that
eternity death would come and sweetly lay its finger upon our languid
lids, and we should die of weary bliss; and all manner of dancings and
singings--fandango and light galliard, corantoes and the solemn
gavotte--were a-tune in my heart that happy day; and running by the
chart-house to the wheel, I saw under the table a great roll of old
flags, and presently they were flying in a long curve of gala from the
main; and the sea rumpled in a long tract of tumbling milk behind me;
and I hasted homeward, to meet my heart.
* * * * *
No purple cloud could I see as, on and on, for two hours, I tore
southward: but at hot noon, on the weather beam I spied through the
glass across the water something else which moved, and it was you who
came to me, Oh Leda, my spirit's breath!
I bore down upon her, waving: and soon I saw her stand like an ancient
mariner, but in white muslins that fluttered, at her wheel on the
bridge--it was one of those little old Havre-Antwerp craft very high in
the bows--and she waved a little white thing. And we came nearer, till I
could spy her face, her smile, and I shouted her to stop, and in a
minute stopped myself, and by happy steering came with slowing headway
to a slight crash by her side, and ran down the trellised steps to her,
and led her up; and on the deck, without saying a word, I fell to my
knees before her, and I bowed my brow to the floor, with obeisance, and
I worshipped her there as Heaven.
And we were wedded: for she, too, bowed the knee with me under the
jovial blue sky; and under her eyes were the little moist semicircles of
dreamy pensive fatigue, so dear and wifish: and God was there, and saw
her kneel: for He loves the girl.
And I got the two ships apart, and they rested there some yards divided
all the day, and we were in the main-deck cabin, where I had locked a
door, so that no one might come in to be with my love and me.
* * * * *