THE LOWEST DEEPS.
The miserable, delapidated hut at the entrance of Engelberg, with no
light save that which entered by the doorway, had been Jean Merle's
home since he had fixed his abode in the valley, drawn thither
irresistibly by the grave which bore Roland Sefton's name. There was
less provision for comfort in this dark hovel than in a monk's cell. A
log of rough, unbarked timber from the forest was the only seat, and a
rude framework of wood filled with straw or dry ferns was his bed. The
floor was bare, except near the door, the upper half of which usually
stood open, and here it was covered with fine chips of box and oak-wood,
and the dust which fell from his busy graver, the tool which was never
out of his fingers while the light served him. There was no more
decoration then there was comfort; except that on the smoke-stained
walls the mildew had pencilled out some strange and grotesque lines, as
if some mural painting had mouldered into ruin there. Two or three
English books alone, of the cheap continental editions, lay at one end
of a clumsy shelf; with the few cooking utensils which were absolutely
necessary, piled together on the other. There was a small stove in one
corner of the hovel, where a handful of embers could be seen at times,
like the eye of some wild creature lurking in the deep gloom.
Jean Merle, though still two or three years under fifty, was looked upon
by his neighbors as being a man of great, though unknown age. Yet,
though he stooped in the shoulders a little, and walked with his head
bent down, he was not infirm, nor had he the appearance of infirmity.
His long mountain expeditions kept his muscles in full force and
activity. But his grey face was marked with many lines, so fine as to be
seen only at close quarters; yet on the whole forming a wrinkled and
aged mask as of one far advanced in life. In addition to this
singularity of aspect there was the extraordinary seclusion and sordid
miserliness of his mode of existence, more in harmony with the
passiveness of extreme old age, than with the energy of a man still in
the prime of his days. The village mothers frightened their children
with tales about Jean Merle's gigantic strength, which made him an
object of terror to them. He sought acquaintanceship with none of his
neighbors; and they avoided him as a heretic and a stranger.
The rugged, simple, narrow life of his Swiss forefathers gathered around
him, and hedged him in. They had been peasant-farmers, with the
exception of the mountain-pastor his grandfather, and he still
well-remembered Felix Merle, after whom his boy had been called. All of
them had been men toiling with their own hands, with a never-ceasing
bodily activity, which had left them but little time or faculty for any
mental pursuit. This half of his nature fitted him well for the life
that now lay before him. As his Swiss ancestors had been for many
generations toil-worn and weather-beaten men, whose faces were sunburnt
and sun-blistered, whose backs were bent with labor, and whose weary
feet dragged heavily along the rough paths, so he became. The social
refinement of the prosperous Englishman, skin deep as it is, vanished in
the coarse and narrow life to which he had partly doomed himself, had
partly been doomed, by the dull, despondent apathy which had possessed
his soul, when he first left the hospital in Lucerne.
His mode of living was as monotonous as it was solitary. His work only
gave him some passing interest, for in the bitterness of his spirit he
kept himself quite apart from all relation with his fellow-men. As far
as in him lay he shut out the memory of the irrevocable past, and
forbade his heart to wander back to the years that were gone. He strove
to concentrate himself upon his daily toil, and the few daily wants of
his body; and after a while a small degree of calm and composure had
been won by him. Roland Sefton was dead; let him lie motionless, as a
corpse should do, in the silence of his grave. But Jean Merle was
living, and might continue to live another twenty years or more, thus
solitarily and monotonously.
But there was one project which he formed early in his new state of
existence, which linked him by a living link to the old. As soon as he
found he could earn handsome wages for his skilled and delicate work,
wages which he could in no way spend, and yet continue the penance which
he pronounced upon himself, the thought came to him of restoring the
money which had been intrusted to him by old Marlowe, and the other poor
men who had placed their savings in his care. To repay the larger amount
to which he was indebted to Mr. Clifford would be impossible; but to
earn the other sums, though it might be the work of years, was still
practicable, especially if from time to time he could make safe and
prudent speculations, such as his knowledge of the money-market might
enable him to do, so as to insure more rapid returns. At the village inn
he could see the newspapers, with their lists of the various continental
funds, and the share and stock markets; and without entering at all into
the world he could direct the buying in and selling out of his stock
through some bankers in Lucerne.
Even this restitution must be made in secret, and be so wrapped up in
darkness and stealth that no one could suspect the hand from which it
came. For he knew that the net he had woven about himself was too strong
and intricate to be broken through without deadly injury to others, and
above all to Felicita. The grave yonder, and the stone cross above it,
barred the way to any return by the path he had come. But would it be
utterly impossible for him to venture back, changed as he was by these
many years, to England? It would be only Jean Merle who would travel
thither, there could be no resurrection for Roland Sefton. But could not
Jean Merle see from afar off the old home; or Phebe Marlowe's cottage on
the hill-side; or possibly his mother, or his children; nay, Felicita
herself? Only afar off; as some banished, repentant soul, drawing a
little nearer to the walls of the eternal city, might be favored with a
glimpse of the golden streets, and the white-robed citizens therein, the
memory of which would dwell within him for evermore.
As he drew nearer the end he grew more eager to reach it. The dull
apathy of the past thirteen years was transformed into a feverish
anticipation of his secret journey to England with the accumulated
proceeds of his work and his speculations; which in some way or other
must find their way into the hands of the men who had trusted him in
time past. But at this juncture the bankers at Lucerne failed him, as
he had failed others. It was not simply that his speculations turned
out badly; but the men to whom he had intrusted the conduct of them,
from his solitary mountain-home, had defrauded him; and the bank broke.
The measure he had meted out to others had been measured to him again.
Whatsoever he had done unto men they had done unto him.
For three days Jean Merle wandered about the eternal frosts of the
ice-bound peaks and snow-fields of the mountains around him, living he
did not himself know how. It was not money he had lost. Like old Marlowe
he realized how poor a symbol money was of the long years of ceaseless
toil, the days of self-denial, the hours of anxious thoughts it
represented. And besides this darker side, it stood also for the hopes
he had cherished, vaguely, almost unconsciously, but still with strong
earnestness. He had fled from the penalty the just laws of his country
demanded from him, taking refuge in a second and more terrible fraud,
and now God suffered him not to make this small reparation for his sin,
or to taste the single drop of satisfaction that he hoped for in
realizing the object he had set before him. There was no place of
repentance for him; not a foot-hold in all the wide wilderness of his
banishment on which he could stand, and repair one jot a little of the
injury he had inflicted upon his fellow-men.
What passed through his soul those three days, amidst the ice-solitudes
where no life was, and where the only sounds that spoke to him were the
wild awful tones of nature in her dreariest haunts, he could never tell;
he could hardly recall it to his own memory. He felt as utterly alone as
if no other human being existed on the face of the earth; yet as if he
alone had to bear the burden of all the falsehood, and dishonesty and
dishonor of the countless generations of false and dishonorable men
which this earth has seen.
All hope was dead now. There was nothing more to work for, or to look
forward to. Nothing lay before him but his solitary blank life in the
miserable hut below. There was no interest in the world for him but
Roland Sefton's grave.
He descended the mountain-side at last. For the first time since he had
left the valley he noticed that the sun was shining, and that the whole
landscape below him was bathed in light. The village was all astir, and
travellers were coming and going. It was not in the sight of all the
world that he could drag his weary feet to the cemetery, where Roland
Sefton's grave was; and he turned aside into his own hut to wait till
the evening was come.
At last the sun went down upon his misery, and the cool shades of the
long twilight crept on. He made a circuit round the village to reach the
spot he longed to visit. His downcast eyes saw nothing but the rough
ground he trod, and the narrow path his footsteps had made to the
solitary grave, until he was close to it; and then, looking up to read
the name upon the cross, he discerned the figure of a girl kneeling
before it, and carefully planting a little slip of ivy into the soil
beneath it.