THE TIDAL WAVE
There was only one man to speak to, and it being the nature of the
beast--so he harshly put it to himself--to be absolutely impelled to
speech at such times, Mount Dunstan laid bare his breast to him, tearing
aside all the coverings pride would have folded about him. The man was,
of course, Penzance, and the laying bare was done the evening after the
story of Red Godwyn had been told in the laurel walk.
They had driven home together in a profound silence, the elder man as
deep in thought as the younger one. Penzance was thinking that there
was a calmness in having reached sixty and in knowing that the pain and
hunger of earlier years would not tear one again. And yet, he himself
was not untorn by that which shook the man for whom his affection had
grown year by year. It was evidently very bad--very bad, indeed. He
wondered if he would speak of it, and wished he would, not because he
himself had much to say in answer, but because he knew that speech would
be better than hard silence.
“Stay with me to-night,” Mount Dunstan said, as they drove through the
avenue to the house. “I want you to dine with me and sit and talk late.
I am not sleeping well.”
They often dined together, and the vicar not infrequently slept at the
Mount for mere companionship's sake. Sometimes they read, sometimes went
over accounts, planned economies, and balanced expenditures. A chamber
still called the Chaplain's room was always kept in readiness. It had
been used in long past days, when a household chaplain had sat below
the salt and left his patron's table before the sweets were served.
They dined together this night almost as silently as they had driven
homeward, and after the meal they went and sat alone in the library.
The huge room was never more than dimly lighted, and the far-off corners
seemed more darkling than usual in the insufficient illumination of the
far from brilliant lamps. Mount Dunstan, after standing upon the hearth
for a few minutes smoking a pipe, which would have compared ill with old
Doby's Sunday splendour, left his coffee cup upon the mantel and began
to tramp up and down--out of the dim light into the shadows, back out of
the shadows into the poor light.
“You know,” he said, “what I think about most things--you know what I
feel.”
“I think I do.”
“You know what I feel about Englishmen who brand themselves as half men
and marked merchandise by selling themselves and their houses and their
blood to foreign women who can buy them. You know how savage I have been
at the mere thought of it. And how I have sworn----”
“Yes, I know what you have sworn,” said Mr. Penzance.
It struck him that Mount Dunstan shook and tossed his head rather like a
bull about to charge an enemy.
“You know how I have felt myself perfectly within my rights when I
blackguarded such men and sneered at such women--taking it for granted
that each was merchandise of his or her kind and beneath contempt. I am
not a foul-mouthed man, but I have used gross words and rough ones to
describe them.”
“I have heard you.”
Mount Dunstan threw back his head with a big, harsh laugh. He came out
of the shadow and stood still.
“Well,” he said, “I am in love--as much in love as any lunatic ever
was--with the daughter of Reuben S. Vanderpoel. There you are--and there
_I_ am!”
“It has seemed to me,” Penzance answered, “that it was almost
inevitable.”
“My condition is such that it seems to ME that it would be inevitable in
the case of any man. When I see another man look at her my blood races
through my veins with an awful fear and a wicked heat. That will show
you the point I have reached.” He walked over to the mantelpiece and
laid his pipe down with a hand Penzance saw was unsteady. “In turning
over the pages of the volume of Life,” he said, “I have come upon the
Book of Revelations.”
“That is true,” Penzance said.
“Until one has come upon it one is an inchoate fool,” Mount Dunstan went
on. “And afterwards one is--for a time at least--a sort of madman raving
to one's self, either in or out of a straitjacket--as the case may be. I
am wearing the jacket--worse luck! Do you know anything of the state of
a man who cannot utter the most ordinary words to a woman without being
conscious that he is making mad love to her? This afternoon I found
myself telling Miss Vanderpoel the story of Red Godwyn and Alys of the
Sea-Blue Eyes. I did not make a single statement having any connection
with myself, but throughout I was calling on her to think of herself and
of me as of those two. I saw her in my own arms, with the tears of Alys
on her lashes. I was making mad love, though she was unconscious of my
doing it.”
“How do you know she was unconscious?” remarked Mr. Penzance. “You are a
very strong man.”
Mount Dunstan's short laugh was even a little awful, because it meant so
much. He let his forehead drop a moment on to his arms as they rested on
the mantelpiece.
“Oh, my God!” he said. But the next instant his head lifted itself. “It
is the mystery of the world--this thing. A tidal wave gathering itself
mountain high and crashing down upon one's helplessness might be as
easily defied. It is supposed to disperse, I believe. That has been said
so often that there must be truth in it. In twenty or thirty or forty
years one is told one will have got over it. But one must live through
the years--one must LIVE through them--and the chief feature of one's
madness is that one is convinced that they will last forever.”
“Go on,” said Mr. Penzance, because he had paused and stood biting his
lip. “Say all that you feel inclined to say. It is the best thing you
can do. I have never gone through this myself, but I have seen and known
the amazingness of it for many years. I have seen it come and go.”
“Can you imagine,” Mount Dunstan said, “that the most damnable thought
of all--when a man is passing through it--is the possibility of its
GOING? Anything else rather than the knowledge that years could change
or death could end it! Eternity seems only to offer space for it. One
knows--but one does not believe. It does something to one's brain.”
“No scientist, howsoever profound, has ever discovered what,” the vicar
mused aloud.
“The Book of Revelations has shown to me how--how MAGNIFICENT life might
be!” Mount Dunstan clenched and unclenched his hands, his eyes flashing.
“Magnificent--that is the word. To go to her on equal ground to take her
hands and speak one's passion as one would--as her eyes answered. Oh,
one would know! To bring her home to this place--having made it as it
once was--to live with her here--to be WITH her as the sun rose and set
and the seasons changed--with the joy of life filling each of them. SHE
is the joy of Life--the very heart of it. You see where I am--you see!”
“Yes,” Penzance answered. He saw, and bowed his head, and Mount Dunstan
knew he wished him to continue.
“Sometimes--of late--it has been too much for me and I have given free
rein to my fancy--knowing that there could never be more than fancy.
I was doing it this afternoon as I watched her move about among the
people. And Mary Lithcom began to talk about her.” He smiled a grim
smile. “Perhaps it was an intervention of the gods to drag me down from
my impious heights. She was quite unconscious that she was driving
home facts like nails--the facts that every man who wanted money wanted
Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter--and that the young lady, not being
dull, was not unaware of the obvious truth! And that men with prizes
to offer were ready to offer them in a proper manner. Also that she was
only a brilliant bird of passage, who, in a few months, would be caught
in the dazzling net of the great world. And that even Lord Westholt
and Dunholm Castle were not quite what she might expect. Lady Mary was
sincerely interested. She drove it home in her ardour. She told me to
LOOK at her--to LOOK at her mouth and chin and eyelashes--and to make
note of what she stood for in a crowd of ordinary people. I could have
laughed aloud with rage and self-mockery.”
Mr. Penzance was resting his forehead on his hand, his elbow on his
chair's arm.
“This is profound unhappiness,” he said. “It is profound unhappiness.”
Mount Dunstan answered by a brusque gesture.
“But it will pass away,” went on Penzance, “and not as you fear it
must,” in answer to another gesture, fiercely impatient. “Not that way.
Some day--or night--you will stand here together, and you will tell her
all you have told me. I KNOW it will be so.”
“What!” Mount Dunstan cried out. But the words had been spoken with such
absolute conviction that he felt himself become pale.
It was with the same conviction that Penzance went on.
“I have spent my quiet life in thinking of the forces for which we find
no explanation--of the causes of which we only see the effects. Long ago
in looking at you in one of my pondering moments I said to myself that
YOU were of the Primeval Force which cannot lose its way--which sweeps
a clear pathway for itself as it moves--and which cannot be held back.
I said to you just now that because you are a strong man you cannot be
sure that a woman you are--even in spite of yourself--making mad love
to, is unconscious that you are doing it. You do not know what your
strength lies in. I do not, the woman does not, but we must all feel
it, whether we comprehend it or no. You said of this fine creature, some
time since, that she was Life, and you have just said again something of
the same kind. It is quite true. She is Life, and the joy of it. You are
two strong forces, and you are drawing together.”
He rose from his chair, and going to Mount Dunstan put his hand on his
shoulder, his fine old face singularly rapt and glowing.
“She is drawing you and you are drawing her, and each is too strong to
release the other. I believe that to be true. Both bodies and souls do
it. They are not separate things. They move on their way as the stars
do--they move on their way.”
As he spoke, Mount Dunstan's eyes looked into his fixedly. Then they
turned aside and looked down upon the mantel against which he was
leaning. He aimlessly picked up his pipe and laid it down again. He was
paler than before, but he said no single word.
“You think your reasons for holding aloof from her are the reasons of a
man.” Mr. Penzance's voice sounded to him remote. “They are the reasons
of a man's pride--but that is not the strongest thing in the world. It
only imagines it is. You think that you cannot go to her as a luckier
man could. You think nothing shall force you to speak. Ask yourself
why. It is because you believe that to show your heart would be to place
yourself in the humiliating position of a man who might seem to her and
to the world to be a base fellow.”
“An impudent, pushing, base fellow,” thrust in Mount Dunstan fiercely.
“One of a vulgar lot. A thing fancying even its beggary worth buying.
What has a man--whose very name is hung with tattered ugliness--to
offer?”
Penzance's hand was still on his shoulder and his look at him was long.
“His very pride,” he said at last, “his very obstinacy and haughty,
stubborn determination. Those broken because the other feeling is the
stronger and overcomes him utterly.”
A flush leaped to Mount Dunstan's forehead. He set both elbows on the
mantel and let his forehead fall on his clenched fists. And the savage
Briton rose in him.
“No!” he said passionately. “By God, no!”
“You say that,” said the older man, “because you have not yet reached
the end of your tether. Unhappy as you are, you are not unhappy
enough. Of the two, you love yourself the more--your pride and your
stubbornness.”
“Yes,” between his teeth. “I suppose I retain yet a sort of respect--and
affection--for my pride. May God leave it to me!”
Penzance felt himself curiously exalted; he knew himself unreasoningly
passing through an oddly unpractical, uplifted moment, in whose
impelling he singularly believed.
“You are drawing her and she is drawing you,” he said. “Perhaps you drew
each other across seas. You will stand here together and you will tell
her of this--on this very spot.”
Mount Dunstan changed his position and laughed roughly, as if to rouse
himself. He threw out his arm in a big, uneasy gesture, taking in the
room.
“Oh, come,” he said. “You talk like a seer. Look about you. Look! I am
to bring her here!”
“If it is the primeval thing she will not care. Why should she?”
“She! Bring a life like hers to this! Or perhaps you mean that her own
wealth might make her surroundings becoming--that a man would endure
that?”
“If it is the primeval thing, YOU would not care. You would have
forgotten that you two had ever lived an hour apart.”
He spoke with a deep, moved gravity--almost as if he were speaking of
the first Titan building of the earth. Mount Dunstan staring at his
delicate, insistent, elderly face, tried to laugh again--and failed
because the effort seemed actually irreverent. It was a singular
hypnotic moment, indeed. He himself was hypnotised. A flashlight of
new vision blazed before him and left him dumb. He took up his pipe
hurriedly, and with still unsteady fingers began to refill it. When it
was filled he lighted it, and then without a word of answer left the
hearth and began to tramp up and down the room again--out of the dim
light into the shadows, back out of the shadows and into the dim light
again, his brow working and his teeth holding hard his amber mouthpiece.
The morning awakening of a normal healthy human creature should be a
joyous thing. After the soul's long hours of release from the burden of
the body, its long hours spent--one can only say in awe at the mystery
of it, “away, away”--in flight, perhaps, on broad, tireless wings,
beating softly in fair, far skies, breathing pure life, to be brought
back to renew the strength of each dawning day; after these hours of
quiescence of limb and nerve and brain, the morning life returning
should unseal for the body clear eyes of peace at least. In time to
come this will be so, when the soul's wings are stronger, the body more
attuned to infinite law and the race a greater power--but as yet it
often seems as though the winged thing came back a lagging and reluctant
rebel against its fate and the chain which draws it back a prisoner to
its toil.
It had seemed so often to Mount Dunstan--oftener than not. Youth
should not know such awakening, he was well aware; but he had known it
sometimes even when he had been a child, and since his return from his
ill-starred struggle in America, the dull and reluctant facing of the
day had become a habit. Yet on the morning after his talk with his
friend--the curious, uplifted, unpractical talk which had seemed to
hypnotise him--he knew when he opened his eyes to the light that he had
awakened as a man should awake--with an unreasoning sense of pleasure
in the life and health of his own body, as he stretched mighty limbs,
strong after the night's rest, and feeling that there was work to be
done. It was all unreasoning--there was no more to be done than on those
other days which he had wakened to with bitterness, because they seemed
useless and empty of any worth--but this morning the mere light of the
sun was of use, the rustle of the small breeze in the leaves, the
soft floating past of the white clouds, the mere fact that the great
blind-faced, stately house was his own, that he could tramp far over
lands which were his heritage, unfed though they might be, and that the
very rustics who would pass him in the lanes were, so to speak, his own
people: that he had name, life, even the common thing of hunger for his
morning food--it was all of use.
An alluring picture--of a certain deep, clear bathing pool in the park
rose before him. It had not called to him for many a day, and now he saw
its dark blueness gleam between flags and green rushes in its encircling
thickness of shrubs and trees.
He sprang from his bed, and in a few minutes was striding across the
grass of the park, his towels over his arm, his head thrown back as he
drank in the freshness of the morning-scented air. It was scented with
dew and grass and the breath of waking trees and growing things; early
twitters and thrills were to be heard here and there, insisting on
morning joyfulness; rabbits frisked about among the fine-grassed
hummocks of their warren and, as he passed, scuttled back into their
holes, with a whisking of short white tails, at which he laughed with
friendly amusement. Cropping stags lifted their antlered heads, and
fawns with dappled sides and immense lustrous eyes gazed at him without
actual fear, even while they sidled closer to their mothers. A skylark
springing suddenly from the grass a few yards from his feet made him
stop short once and stand looking upward and listening. Who could pass
by a skylark at five o'clock on a summer's morning--the little, heavenly
light-heart circling and wheeling, showering down diamonds, showering
down pearls, from its tiny pulsating, trilling throat?
“Do you know why they sing like that? It is because all but the joy of
things has been kept hidden from them. They knew nothing but life and
flight and mating, and the gold of the sun. So they sing.” That she had
once said.
He listened until the jewelled rain seemed to have fallen into his soul.
Then he went on his way smiling as he knew he had never smiled in his
life before. He knew it because he realised that he had never before
felt the same vigorous, light normality of spirit, the same sense of
being as other men. It was as though something had swept a great clear
space about him, and having room for air he breathed deep and was glad
of the commonest gifts of being.
The bathing pool had been the greatest pleasure of his uncared-for
boyhood. No one knew which long passed away Mount Dunstan had made it.
The oldest villager had told him that it had “allus ben there,” even in
his father's time. Since he himself had known it he had seen that it was
kept at its best.
Its dark blue depths reflected in their pellucid clearness the water
plants growing at its edge and the enclosing shrubs and trees. The turf
bordering it was velvet-thick and green, and a few flag-steps led down
to the water. Birds came there to drink and bathe and preen and dress
their feathers. He knew there were often nests in the bushes--sometimes
the nests of nightingales who filled the soft darkness or moonlight of
early June with the wonderfulness of nesting song. Sometimes a straying
fawn poked in a tender nose, and after drinking delicately stole away,
as if it knew itself a trespasser.
To undress and plunge headlong into the dark sapphire water was a
rapturous thing. He swam swiftly and slowly by turns, he floated,
looking upward at heaven's blue, listening to birds' song and inhaling
all the fragrance of the early day. Strength grew in him and life pulsed
as the water lapped his limbs. He found himself thinking with pleasure
of a long walk he intended to take to see a farmer he must talk to about
his hop gardens; he found himself thinking with pleasure of other things
as simple and common to everyday life--such things as he ordinarily
faced merely because he must, since he could not afford an experienced
bailiff. He was his own bailiff, his own steward, merely, he had often
thought, an unsuccessful farmer of half-starved lands. But this morning
neither he nor they seemed so starved, and--for no reason--there was a
future of some sort.
He emerged from his pool glowing, the turf feeling like velvet beneath
his feet, a fine light in his eyes.
“Yes,” he said, throwing out his arms in a lordly stretch of physical
well-being, “it might be a magnificent thing--mere strong living. THIS
is magnificent.”