so near the tide again, if I were you. You had better get back to the
machine as soon as you can and go home. You are about done up." So
saying, he ran away to the place where he had left his coat, and went up
into the town, thinking intently as he went. Very earnestly he thought;
so earnestly that he saw nothing of Perran, and nothing of his
neighbours, who wondered at his dripping trousers; thinking very
earnestly, not upon his own brave deed, nor even upon his strange attack
of weakness, and equally strange recovery, but upon Miss Shipton as she
stood by his side at the rock very earnestly picturing to himself her
white arms, her white neck, her long hair falling to her waist, and her
beautiful white feet, seen on the sand through the clear sun-sparkling
water.
Robert Trevanion, although brought up in the same school of philosophy as
his father, belonged to another generation. The time of my history is
the beginning of the latter half of the present century, and Michael was
already considered somewhat of a fossil. Robert was inconsistent, as the
old doctrine when it is decaying, or the new at its advent always is; but
the main difference between Michael and Robert was not any distinct
divergence, but that truths believed by Michael, and admitted by Robert,
failed to impress Robert with that depth and sharpness of cut with which
they were wrought into his father. Mere assent is nothing; the question
of importance is whether the figuration of the creed is dull or vivid--as
vivid as the shadows of a June sun on a white house. Brilliance of
impression, is not altogether dependent on mere processes of proof, and a
faultless logical demonstration of something which is of eternal import
may lie utterly uninfluential and never disturb us.
Robert walked out the next morning to the house he went to visit the day
before. Nobody save Miss Shipton and himself knew anything about his
adventure. He had made some excuse for his wet clothes. The beach of
the little village in the early part of the day was almost always
deserted, and the man who attended to the machine had been lying on his
back on the shingle smoking his pipe during the few minutes occupied in
Miss Shipton's rescue. It was settled weather. The sky was cloudless,
and the blue seemed on fire. What little wind there was, was from the
south-south-east, and every outline quivered in the heat. The water
inshore was absolutely still, and of such an azure as nobody whose sea is
that of the Eastern Coast or the Channel can imagine. A boat lay here
and there idle, with its shadow its perfect double in unwavering detail
and blackness. Just beyond this cerulean lake the river ebb, as
yesterday, rippled swiftly round Deadman's Nose; the buoys, with their
heads all eastward, breaking the stream as it impatiently hurried past
them on its mysterious errand. Beyond and beyond lay the ocean,
unruffled, melting into the white haze which united it with the sky on
the horizon. Robert loved the summer, and especially a burning summer.
The sun, of which other persons complained, some perhaps sincerely, but
for the most part hypocritically--can anybody really hate the
sun?--rejoiced him. He loved to be out in it when the light on the
unsheltered Cornish rocks and in the whitewashed street was so "glaring,"
as silly people called it, that they put up parasols and umbrellas, and
the warmth which made him withdraw his hand smartly from the old anchor
that lay on the grass just above high-water-mark, exhilarated him like
wine. He was not a poet, he knew nothing of Greek mythology; and yet on
summer days like these, the landscape and seascape were all changed for
him. To say that they were a dream would be untrue--they were the
reality; the hideous winter, with its damp fogs and rain, were the dream;
and yet upon seascape and landscape rested such a miraculous charm that
they seemed visionary rather than actual. As he walked along, he
naturally thought of yesterday, and the light, the heat, and the colour
naturally also renewed in him the picture which he had been continually
repainting for himself since yesterday morning. He went to the house,
saw the stonework was going on all right, and as he returned, whom should
he meet but Miss Shipton, who, undeterred by the fright of the day
before, had just had another bathe, and was taking a turn along the cliff
to dry her hair, which was hanging over her shoulders. She was not by
any means what is called "fast," but she knew how to dress herself. She
had a straw hat with a very large brim, a plain brown holland dress, a
brown holland parasol, and pretty white shoes; for nothing would ever
induce Miss Shipton to put her feet into the yellow abominations which
most persons wore at Perran in the summer.
Robert took off his cap.
"Oh, Mr. Trevanion, I am so glad to see you. You must have thought me
such a queer creature. I have not half thanked you. But what could I
do? I couldn't write, and I couldn't call, and I thought you would not
like a noise being made about it. Yet you saved me from being drowned."
"It was nothing, Miss Shipton," said Robert, smiling. "You were in the
ebb there, and I pulled you out of it--just twenty yards, that was all.
I hope you haven't told anybody."
"No; as I have said, I thought you wouldn't like it; but nevertheless,
although it is all very well for you to talk in that way, I owe you my
life."
"Are you going any farther?"
"Just a few steps till my hair is dry."
He turned and walked by her side.
"You see that the buoys are beyond where the channel really begins. I
once tried to swim round two of them, but it was as much as ever I could
do to get back. If I were you, I would give them a wide berth again; but
if you should be caught, go on and do what we did yesterday--try to turn
off into the back-stream just inside the point."
"You may be sure I shall never go near them any more."
"Unless you happen to see me," said Robert, his face flushed with his
happy thought, "and then you will give me the pleasure of coming after
you."
She looked at him, shifted her parasol, and laughed a little.
"Pleasure! really, Mr. Trevanion, were you not very much frightened?"
"Not for myself, except just for an instant."
"Oh, I was awfully frightened! I thought I must give up. I never, never
shall forget that moment when you laid hold of me."
"But you have been in the water again this morning."
"Oh, yes! I do enjoy it so, and of course I did not go far. That stupid
bathing-man, by the way, ought to have looked out yesterday. He might
have come in the boat and have saved you a wetting. I believe he was
asleep."
"He is old, and I am very, very glad he did not see you. Aren't you
tired? Would you not like to sit down a moment before we go back?"
They sat down on one of the rocks near the edge of the water.
"You are a very good swimmer, Mr. Trevanion."
"No, not very; and yesterday I was particularly bad, for a kind of
faintness came over me just before I reached you, and I thought I was
done for."
"Dear me! how dreadful! How did you conquer it?"
"Merely by saying to myself I would not give in, and I struggled with it
for a minute and then it disappeared."
"How strong you must be! I am sure I could not do that."
"Ah! there was something else, Miss Shipton. You see, I had you ahead of
me, and I thought I could be of some service to you."
Miss Shipton made no direct reply, but threw some pebbles in the water.
Robert felt himself gradually overcome, or nearly overcome, by what to
him was quite new. He could not keep his voice steady, and although what
he said was poor and of no importance, it was charged with expressionless
heat. For example, Miss Shipton's parasol dropped and she stooped to
pick it up. "Let me pick it up," he said, and his lips quivered, and the
let me pick it up--a poor, little, thin wire of words--was traversed by
an electric current raising them to white-hot glow, and as powerful as
that which flows through many mightier and more imposing conductors.
What are words? "Good-bye," for example, is said every morning by
thousands of creatures in the London suburbs as they run to catch their
train, and the present writer has heard it said by a mother to her
beloved boy as she stepped on board the tug which was about to leave the
big steamer, and she knew she would never see him again. Robert handed
her the parasol, and unconsciously, by that curious sympathy by which we
are all affected, without any obvious channel of communication, she felt
the condition in which his nerves were. She was a little uncomfortable,
and, rising, said she thought it was time she was at home. They rose and
walked back slowly till their paths parted.
The next day Robert renewed his walk, but there was no Miss Shipton. The
summer heat had passed into thunderstorms, and these were succeeded by
miserable grey days with mist, confusing sea, land, and sky, and
obliterating every trace of colour. As he went backwards and forwards to
the house over the hill, he watched every corner and turned round a
hundred times, although his reason would have told him that to expect
Miss Shipton in the rain was ridiculously absurd.
Michael Trevanion loved his son with a father's love, but with a mother's
too. He rejoiced to talk with him as his father and friend, but there
was in him also that wild, ferocious passion for his child which
generally belongs to the woman, a passion which in its intense vitality
forecasts, apprehends, and truly discerns danger where, to the mere
intellect, there is nothing. Michael wondered a little at Robert's
unusually frequent visits to his work over the hill, and as he was in the
town one morning, he determined to cross the hill himself and see how the
house was going on. The mist, which had hung about for a week, had
gradually rolled itself into masses as the sun rose higher. It was no
longer without form and void, but was detaching itself into huge
fragments, which let in the sun and were gradually sucked up by him.
Rapidly everything became transformed, and lo! as if by enchantment, the
whole sky resumed once more its deepest blue, the perfect semicircle of
the horizon sharply revealed itself, and vessels five miles off were
visible to their spars. Michael reached the end of his journey and
waited, looking out from one of the upper stories. He saw nothing of the
splendour of the scene before him. He was restless, he did not quite
know why. He could not tell exactly why he was there, but nevertheless
he determined to remain. He generally carried a Bible in his pocket, and
he turned where he had turned so often before, to the fifteenth chapter
of Luke, and read the parable of the prodigal son. He had affixed his
own interpretation to that story, and he always held that the point of it
was not the love of the father, but the magnificent repentance of the boy
who could simply say, "_I have sinned against Heaven and before thee, and
am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired
servants_." No wonder the fatted calf was killed for him. No excuses; a
noble confession and a trust in his father's affection for him! His own
Robert would never go wrong, but if he did, it would cost nothing to
forgive him. Then, as he often did, he fell on his knees, and, in front
of the space where the window was to come, which would open on a little
southern balcony looking over the sea, there, amid the lumps of plaster
and shavings, he besought his Maker to preserve the child. Michael was
sincere in his prayers, nakedly sincere, and yet there were some things
he kept to himself even when he was with his God. He never mentioned his
disappointment with his wife, never a word; but he assumed a right to the
perfect enjoyment of Robert by way of compensation. Calvinist as he was
to the marrow, he would almost have impeached the Divine justice if
Robert had been removed from him.
Robert, walking leisurely, turning to look behind him for the hundredth
time, had spied Miss Shipton on her road to the town from her accustomed
plunge. He intercepted her by going round a meadow to the left at a
great rate, and found himself face to face with her as she was about to
pass the corner. The third side of the meadow round which he had raced
was an unfinished road, and was a way, though not the usual way, back to
Perran.
"Good morning, Miss Shipton. Are you going home?"
"Yes! I suppose you are going to your house."
"Yes," and Robert walked slowly back along the way he had come, Miss
Shipton accompanying him, for it was the way home. When they came to the
corner, however, they both, without noticing it, went eastward, and not
to the town.
"Should you like to be a sailor, Mr. Trevanion?" said Miss Shipton,
catching sight of the fishing vessels over the low sea-beaten hedge.
"No, I think not. At least it would depend----"
"Depend on what?"
"I should not like to be away for weeks during the North Sea fishing,
if----"
"If it were very cold?"
"Oh, no; that is not what I meant--if I had a wife at home who cared for
me and watched for me!"
"Really, Mr. Trevanion, if you were a fisherman you would not take things
so seriously. It would all come as a matter of course. Yon would be
busy with your nets, and have no time to think of her."
"But she might think of me."
"Oh, well, perhaps she might now and then; but she would have her house
to look after, and all her friends would be near her."
"On stormy nights," said Robert, musingly.
"How very serious you are! Such a lovely day, too--a nice time to be
talking about stormy nights! Of course there are stormy nights, but the
boats can run into harbour, and if they cannot, the men are not always
drowned."
"Certainly not; how foolish, and to think of coming home after five or
six weeks on the Doggerbank--oh me! But here is the very rock where we
sat the other morning. I am sure you are tired, let us sit down again;
your hair is not dry yet."
They sat down.
"It is quite wet still," and Robert ventured to touch it, putting his
hand underneath it.
"An awful plague it is! Horrid sandy-coloured stuff, and such a nuisance
in the water! I think I shall have it cut short."
"I am sure you won't. Sandy-coloured! it is beautiful."
Miss Shipton tossed her parasol about, shaking her hair loose from his
fingers.
"When it is spread out in the sunshine," said Robert, as he separated a
little piece of it between his fingers, "the sun shows its varying
shades. How lovely they are!" His hand went a little higher, till it
touched the back of her neck.
"On stormy nights.--on stormy nights," he almost whispered, "I should
think of you if you did not think of me."
The hand went a little farther under the hair, his head inclined to it,
and he was intoxicated with its own rich scent mingled with, that of the
sweet sea-water. He trembled with emotion from head to foot. What is
there in life like this? Old as creation, ever new; and under the almost
tropical sun, fronting the ocean, in the full heat of youth, he drew her
head to his. She yielded, and in a moment his eyes and mouth were buried
in her loose-clustering tresses. Before, however, he could say another
word he was interrupted. A sheep, feeding above them, alarmed by a
stranger's approach, rushed down past them; and hastily recovering
himself, Robert looked up. There was nobody, but he saw that they were
near his house, and that his father, who had just come to the window, was
looking down straight upon them. Miss Shipton immediately said that it
was late, rose, and walked homewards; and Robert alone went up the cliff.
Michael had seen the girl walk away and had recognised her, but he had
not seen what had preceded her departure. Instantly, however, he
penetrated the secret, and his first words when Robert presented himself
were--
"Why, Robert, that was Miss Shipton."
"Yes, father."
"What were she and you doing here?"
"We happened to meet."
There was something in the tone in which Robert replied which showed the
father at once that his son's confidence in him was not illimitable, as
he had believed it to be hitherto. It is a heart-breaking time for
father and mother when they first become aware that the deepest secrets
in their children are intrusted not to them, but to others. Michael felt
repelled and was silent; but after a while, as they both were leaning
over the garden-wall and gazing upon the water, he said--
"Mere worldlings, those Shiptons, Robert!"
"I do not know much about them, but they seem an honest, good sort of
people."
"Ah! yes, my son; they may be all that. But what is it? They are not
the Lord's."
Robert made no reply, and presently father and son left the house and
went back to Perran to their work, uncommunicative.
It was a peculiar misfortune for a man of Michael's temperament that he
had nobody save his son who could assist him in the shaping of his
resolves or in the correction of his conclusions. Brought up in a narrow
sect, self-centred, moody, he needed continually that wholesome twist to
another point of the compass which intercourse with equals gives. He was
continually prone to subjection under the rigorous domination of a single
thought, from which he deduced inference after inference, ending in
absurdity, which would have been dissipated in an instant by discussion.
We complain of people because they are not original, but we do not ask
what their originality, if they had any, would be worth. Better a
thousand times than the originality of most of us is the average
common-sense which is not our own exclusively, but shared with millions
of our fellow-beings, and is not due to any one of them. Michael ought
to have talked over the events of the morning with his wife; but alas!
his wife's counsel was never sought, and not worth having. He did seek
counsel at the throne of heavenly grace that night, but the answer given
by the oracle was framed by himself. He was in sore straits. Something
seemed to have interposed itself between him and Robert, and when,
instead of the old unveiled frankness, Robert was reticent and even
suspicious, Michael's heart almost broke, and he went up to his room, and
shutting the door, wept bitter tears. His sorrow clothed itself, even at
its uttermost, with no words of his own, but always in those of the Book.
"O my son Absalom!" he cried, "my son, my son, Absalom! Would God I had
died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"
He remembered also what his own married life had been; he always trusted
that Robert would have a wife who would be a help to him, and he felt
sure that this girl Shipton, with her pretty rosy face and blue eyes, had
no brains. To think that his boy should repeat the same inexplicable
blunder, that she was _silly_, that he would never hear from her lips a
serious word! What will she be if trouble comes on him? What will she
be when a twelvemonth has passed? What will _he_ be when he sits by his
fireside in long winter evenings, alone with her, and finds she cannot
interest him for a moment?
Worse still, she was not a child of God. He did not know that she ever
sought the Lord. She went to church once a day and read her prayers, and
that was all. She was not one of the chosen, and she might corrupt him,
and he might fall away, and so commit the sin against the Holy Ghost "O
Lord, O Lord!" he prayed one evening, in rebellion rather than as a
suppliant, "what has Thy servant done that Thou shouldst visit him thus?"
He almost mutinied, but he was afraid, and his religion came to his
rescue, and he broke down into "And yet not my will, the will of the
meanest of sinners, but Thine be done." He made up his mind once or
twice that he would solemnly remonstrate with his son, but his aspect was
such whenever the subject was approached, even from a distance, that he
dared not. Hitherto the boy had joyfully submitted to be counselled, and
had sought his father's direction, but now, if the conversation turned in
a certain direction, a kind of savage reserve was visible, at which
Michael was frightened. He was a man of exceedingly slow conception.
For days and days he would often debate within himself, and at the end
the fog was as thick as ever. He complained once to David Trevenna of
this failing, and David gave him a useful piece of practical advice.
"Leave it alone, master. The more you thinks, the more you muddle
yourself. Leave it alone, and when it comes into your head, try to get
rid of it. In a week or so the thing will do more for itself than you'll
do for it. It will settle, like new beer, and come clear enough. That's
what my missus has often said to me, and I know she's right."
But, do what he might, Michael could not in this instance leave it alone.
He cast about incessantly for some device by which he could break his son
loose from the girl. It was all in vain. She might be frivolous, but
there was nothing against her character, and he saw evident signs that if
he attempted any exercise of authority he would lose Robert altogether in
open revolt. For Robert, it must be remembered, had never scattered his
strength in loose love. He had grown up to manhood in perfect innocence,
and all his stored-up passion spent itself in idealising the object which
by chance had provoked it.
Michael one night--it was a Sunday night--he was always worse on Sundays
when he had not been at work--was unable to sleep, and rose and read the
Book. He turned to the Epistle to the Romans, a favourite epistle with
him, and deservedly so, for there we come face to face with the divine
apostle, with a reality unobscured by miracle or myth. And such a
reality! Christianity becomes no longer a marvel, for a man with that
force and depth of experience is sufficient to impose a religion on the
whole human race, no matter what the form of the creed may be. Michael
read in the ninth chapter, "_I could wish that myself were accursed from
Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh_." What did
Paul mean? Accursed from Christ! What _could_ he mean save that he was
willing to be damned to save those whom he loved. Why not? Why should
not a man be willing to be damned for others? The damnation of a single
soul is shut up in itself, and may be the means of saving not only
others, but their children and a whole race. Damnation! It is awful,
horrible; millions of years, with no relief, with no light from the Most
High, and in subjection to His Enemy. "And yet, if it is to save--if it
is to save Robert," thought Michael, "God give me strength--I could
endure it. Did not the Son Himself venture to risk the wrath of the
Father that He might redeem man? What am I? what is my poor self?" And
Michael determined that night that neither his life in this world nor in
the next, if he could rescue his child, should be of any account.
How sublime a thing is this dust or dirt we call man! We grovel in view
of the vast distances of the fixed stars and their magnitudes, but these
distances and these dimensions are a delusion. There is nothing grander
in Sirius than in a pebble, nor anything more worthy of admiration and
astonishment in his remoteness than in the length of Oxford Street. The
true sublime is in the self-negation of the martyr, and it became doubly
magnificent in the case of Michael, who was willing not merely to give up
a finite existence for something other than himself--to be shot and so
end, or to be burnt with a hope of following glory--but to submit for
ever to separation and torment, if only he might shield his child from
God's displeasure. It may be objected that such a resolution is
impossible. Doubtless it is now altogether incredible; but it is so
because we no longer know what religion means, or what is the effect
produced upon the mind by the constant study of one book and a perfectly
unconditional belief in it. Furthermore, as before said, Michael never
corrected himself or preserved his sanity by constant intercourse with
his fellows. He incessantly brooded, and the offspring of a soul like
his, begotten on itself, is monstrous and grotesque. He questioned
himself and his oracle further. What could Paul mean exactly? God could
not curse him if he did no wrong. He could only mean that he was willing
to sin and be punished provided Israel might live. It was lawful then to
tell a lie or perpetrate any evil deed in order to protect his child.
Something suddenly crossed his mind; what it was we shall see later on.
And yet the thought was too awful. He could not endure to sin, not only
against his Creator, but against his boy. Perhaps God might pardon him
after centuries of suffering; and yet He could not. The gates of hell
having once closed upon him, there could be no escape. He struggled in
agony, until at last he determined that, first of all, he would speak to
Robert, although he knew it would be useless. He would conquer the
strange dread he had of remonstrance, and then, if that failed, he
would--do anything.