A BOAT UPON THE WATER.
Ich stand gelehnet an den Mast,
Und zaehlte jede Welle.
Ade mein schoenes Vaterland,
Mein Schiff, das segelt schnelle!
Ich kam schon Liebchen's Haus vorbei,
Die Fensterscheiben blinken;
Ich guck' mir fast die Augen aus,
Doch will mir Niemand winken.
Ihr Thraenen bleibt mir aus dem Aug,
Dass ich nicht dunkel sehe.
Mein krankes Herz, brich mir nicht
Vor allzugrossem Wehe!
--Heine.
George was shivering and sick at heart; the avenue led to a door that
opened into the bar of the hotel, and George went in and called for some
brandy. The spirits seemed to do him good; no one seeing a clumsy young
fellow in a boating dress tossing off one glassful of brandy after
another would have guessed at all the grief and passion that were
tearing at his poor foolish heart. Rhoda had sent him away. Had he
deserved this? Could not she read the truth? Poor timid faithless little
thing. Why had he been so fierce to her, why had he told her he was
jealous? George had a curious quickness of divination about others,
although he was blind about his own concerns. He had reproached Rhoda
because she had been talking to Frank, but he knew well enough that
Frank did not care for Rhoda. Poor child, did she know how it hurt him
when she shrank from him and seemed afraid? Ah! she would not have been
so cruel if she had known all. Thinking of it all he felt as if he had
had some little bird in his rough grasp, frightened it, and hurt its
wings. Then he suddenly said to himself that he would go back and find
his poor frightened bird and stroke it and soothe it, ask it to forgive
him. And then he left the place, and as hastily as he had entered; there
was a last glass of brandy untasted on the counter, and he hurried back
towards the terrace. He passed the window of the room where Mrs. Palmer
was ordering tea from the sofa. Dolly, who had just come in, saw him
pass by; she did not like his looks, and ran out after him, although
both Robert and her mother called her back. George did not see her this
time; he flew past the family groups sitting out in the warm twilight;
he came to the terrace where he had been a few minutes before, and where
the two were still standing--Raban, of whom he had said he was jealous,
Rhoda, whom he loved--the two were slowly advancing, Frank's square
shoulders dark against the light and Rhoda's slight figure bending
forward; she was talking to Raban as she had so often talked to George
himself, with that language of earnest eyes, tremulous tones, shrinking
movements--how well he knew it all. What was she saying? Was she
appealing to Frank to protect her from his love and despair, from the
grief that she had done her best to bring about? Rhoda laid her hand
upon Raban's arm in her agitation.
It maddened George beyond bearing, and he stamped his heavy foot upon
the gravel. Some people passing up from the boats stared at him, but
went on their way; and Frank, looking up, saw George coming up swinging
his angry arms; his eyes were fierce, his hat was pushed aside. He put
Rhoda aside very gently, and took a step forward between her and George,
who stood for a minute looking from one to another, as if he did not
understand, and then he suddenly burst out, with a fierce oath: 'Who
told you to put yourself in my way?' And, as he spoke, he struck a heavy
blow straight at Raban, who had barely time to parry it with his arm.
It was an instant's anger--one of those fatal minutes that undo days and
months and years that have gone before; and that blow of George's struck
Rhoda's feeble little fancy for him dead on the spot, as she gave a
shrill cry of 'For shame!' and sprang forward, and would have clung to
Raban's arm. That blow ached for many and many a day in poor Dorothea's
heart, for she saw it all from a turn of the path. As for Frank, he
recovered himself in an instant.
'Go back, George,' he said; 'I will speak to you presently.'
He did not speak angrily. His voice and the steady look of his resolute
eyes seemed to sober the poor reprobate. Not so Rhoda's cry of, 'Go, yes
go, for shame!'
'Go! What is it to you if I go or stay? Am I in your way?' shouts
George. 'Have you promised to marry him too? Have you tortured him too,
and driven him half mad, and then--and then----Oh, Rhoda, do you really
wish me gone?' he cried, breaking down.
There was a tone in his voice that touched Raban, for whom the cry was
not intended. Nothing would have melted Rhoda just then. She was angry
beyond all power of expression. She wanted him gone, she wanted him
silent; she felt as if she hated him.
'You are not yourself; you are not speaking the truth,' said the girl,
in a hard voice, drawing herself up. Then, as she spoke, all the brandy
and all the fury seemed to mount once more into George's head.
'I am myself, and that is why I leave you,' he shouts, 'you are
heartless: you have neither love nor charity in you, and now I leave
you. Do you hear me?' he cried, getting louder and louder.
Any one could hear. Dolly could hear as she came hurrying up from the
end of the terrace to the spot where her poor boy stood shouting out his
heart's secret to unwilling ears. More than one person had stopped to
listen to the angry voice. The placid stillness of the evening seemed to
carry its echo along the dusky garden bowers, out upon the water flowing
down below. Some boatmen had stopped to listen; one or two people were
coming up through the twilight.
'He is not sober,' said Rhoda to Dolly. She spoke with a sort of cold
disgust.
Dolly hardly heard her at the time. All she saw then was her poor
George, with his red angry face--Frank trying to pacify him. Should she
ever forget the miserable scene? For long years after it used to rise
before her; she used to dream of it at night--of the garden, the river,
the figures advancing in the dark.
Dolly ran up to her brother, and instinctively put out her arms as if to
shield him from every one.
'Come, dear; come with me,' she said flurriedly; 'don't let them see you
like this.'
'It would shock their elegant susceptibilities,' cries the irrepressible
George; 'it don't shock them to see a woman playing fast-and-loose with
a poor wretch who would have given his life for her--yes, his life, and
his love, and his heart's blood!'
Dolly had got her arms tight round George by this time. She had a
shrinking dread of Henley seeing him so--he might be coming, she
thought.
'Robert might see you. Oh, George, please come,' she whispered, still
clinging to him; and suddenly, to Dolly's surprise, George collapsed,
with a sigh. His furious fit was over, and he let his sister lead him
where she would.
'Go down by the river-side,' said Raban, coming after them; 'there are
too many people the other way.' He spoke in a grave, anxious tone, and
as the brother and sister went their way, he looked after them for a
moment. Dolly had got her arm fast linked in George's. The young man was
walking listlessly by her side. They neither of them looked back; they
went down the steps and disappeared.
The place was all deserted by this time; the disturbance being over, the
boatmen had gone on their way. George and Dolly went and sat down upon a
log which had been left lying near the water-side; they were silent;
they could see each other's faces, but little more. He sat crouching
over with his chin resting on his hands. Dolly was full of compassion,
and longing to comfort; but how could she comfort? Such pain as his was
not to be eased by words spoken by another person. When George began to
speak at last, his voice sounded so sad and so jarred from its usual
sweetness that Dorothea was frightened, as if she could hear in it the
echo of a coming trouble.
'I wanted that woman to love me,' he said. 'Dolly, you don't know how I
loved her.' He was staring at the stream with his starting eyes, and
biting his nails. 'We have no luck, either of us,' he said; 'I don't
deserve any, but you do. Tell Frank I'm sorry I struck him; she had made
me half mad; she looks at me with those great eyes of hers, and says,
"Go!" and she makes me mad: she does it to them all.... But now I have
left her! left her! left her!' repeated ugly George, with a sort of sob.
'What does she care?' and he got up and shook himself, as a big dog
might have done, and went out a step into the twilight, and then came
back.
'Thank you, old Dolly, for your goodness,' he said, standing before her.
'I can't face them all again, and Robert with his confounded
supercilious airs. I beg your pardon, Dolly; don't look angry. I see how
good you are, and I see,' he said, staring her full in the face, 'that
we have been both running our heads against a wall.'
He walked on a little way, and Dolly followed. She could not answer him
just then. She felt with a pang that George and Robert would never be
friends; that she must love them apart; even in heart she must keep them
asunder.
They had come to the place where not an hour ago she had jumped ashore.
The boat was still there, as they had left it--tied to the stake. The
boatmen were at supper, and had not yet taken it in. 'What are you
doing?' said Dolly, as George stopped, and began to untie the rope;
'George, be careful.'
'The fresh air will do me good,' he said; 'don't be afraid; I'll take
care, if you wish it;' then he nodded, and got into the boat, where the
sculls were lying, and he began to shove off with a rattle of the keel
upon the shore. 'I will leave the boat at Teddington,' he said, 'and
walk home. Good-night! good-by!' he said. A boatman hearing the voices,
came out of the boat-house close by, and while Dolly was explaining, the
boat started off with a dull plash of oars falling upon dark waters.
George was rowing very slowly, his head was turned towards the garden of
the inn. There were lights in the windows, and figures coming and going;
the water swirled against the wall of the terrace; the scent of the
autumnal flowers seemed to fill the air and to stifle him as he passed;
a bird chirped from the darkness of some overhanging bushes. He could
hear his mother's voice: 'Robert! it is getting late; why don't they
come in to tea? I must say it is nasty stuff, and not to compare to that
delicious Rangoon flavour.' He paused for a moment; her voice died away,
and then all was silent. The evening was growing chill; some mists were
rising. George felt the cool damp wind against his hot brow as he rowed
doggedly on--past the lights of the windows of the inn, past the town,
under the darkness of the bridge.
He left them all behind, and his life and his love, he thought, and his
mad passion; and himself, and Dolly, and Rhoda, and all the hopeless
love he longed for and that was never to be his. There were other things
in life. So he rowed away into the darkness with mixed anger and peace
in his heart. What would Rhoda say when she heard he was gone? Nothing
much! He knew her well enough to know that Dolly would understand, but
her new ties would part them more entirely than absence or silence.
There is a song of Schubert's I once heard a great singer sing. As she
sang, the dull grey river flowed through the room, the bright lamp-lit
walls opened out, the mists of a closing darkness surrounded us, the
monotonous beat of the rowlocks kept time to the music, and the man
rowed away, and silence fell upon the waters.
So Dolly stood watching the boat as it disappeared along the dark wall;
for a time she thought she heard the plash of the oars out upon the
water, and a dark shade gliding away past the wharves, and the houses
that crowd down to the shore.
She was saying her prayers for her poor boy as she walked back slowly to
join the others. Robert met her with a little remonstrance for having
hidden away so long. She took his arm and clung to it for a minute,
trembling, with her heart beating. 'Oh! Robert; you won't let things
come between us?' said the girl greatly moved; 'my poor George is so
unhappy. He is to blame, but Rhoda has been hard upon him. Have you
guessed it all?' 'My dear Dolly,' said Robert, gravely, 'Rhoda has told
us everything. She is most justly annoyed. She is quite overcome. She
has just gone home with her uncle, and I must say....'
'Don't, don't say anything,' said Dolly, passionately bursting into
tears, and her heart went out after her poor George rowing away along
the dark river.