OF CONRAD VEREKER'S REVISION OF PARADISE, AND OF FENWICK'S HIGH FEVER.
OF AN ENGLISH OFFICER WHO WAVERED AT BOMBAY, AND OF FENWICK'S
SURPRISE-BATH IN THE BRITISH CHANNEL. WHY HE DID NOT SINK. THE
ELLEN JANE OF ST. SENNANS. ONLY SALLY IS IN THE WATER STILL. MORE
BOATS. FOUND!
Fenwick, haunted by the phantoms of his own past--always, as his fever
grew, assuming more and more the force of realities--but convinced of
their ephemeral nature, and that the crisis of this fever would pass
and leave him free, had walked quickly along the sea front towards the
cliff pathway. Had Dr. Conrad seen him as he passed below his window
and looked up at it, he would probably have suspected something and
followed him. And then the events of this story would have travelled
a different road. But Vereker, possessed by quite another sort of
delirium, had risen even earlier--almost with the dawn--and, taking
Sally's inaccessibility at that unearthly hour for granted, had gone
for a long walk over what was now to him a land of enchantment--the
same ground he and Sally had passed over on the previous evening. He
and his mother would be on their way to London in a few hours, and he
would like to see the landmarks that were to be a precious memory for
all time yet once more while he had the chance. Who could say that
he would ever visit St. Sennans again?
If Fenwick, in choosing this direction first, had a half-formed
idea of attracting the doctor's attention, the appearance of Mrs.
Iggulden's shuttered parlour-window would have discouraged him. It
told a tale of a household still asleep, and quite truly as far as she
herself was concerned. For Dr. Conrad, as might have been expected,
was very late in coming home the night before; and his mother's
peculiarity of not being able to sleep if kept up till eleven,
combined with the need of a statement of her position, a declaration
of policy, and almost a budget, if not quite, on the subject of her
son's future housekeeping, having resulted in what threatened to
become an all-night sitting, the good woman's dozes and repentances,
with jerks, on the stairs overnight, had produced their consequences
in the morning. Fenwick passed the house, and walked on as far as
where the path rose to the cliffs; then turned back, and, pausing
a moment, as we have seen, under Sally's window, failed in his dreamy
state to see her as she looked over the cross-bar at him, and then
went on towards the old town. It may be she was not very visible; the
double glasses of an open sash-window are almost equal to opacity. But
even with that, the extreme aberration of Fenwick's mind at the moment
is the only way to account for his not seeing her.
In fact, his mental perturbation came and went by gusts, as his memory
caught at or relinquished agitating points of reminiscence, always
dwelling on that parting from Rosalind at Umballa. His brain and
nervous system were in a state that involved a climax and reaction;
and, unhappily, this climax, during which his identification of his
present self with his memory of its past was intensified to the point
of absolute hallucination, came at an inopportune moment. If he could
only have kept the phantoms of his imagination at bay until he met
Sally! But, really, speculation on so strange a frame of mind is
useless; we can only accept the facts as they stand.
He had no recollection afterwards of what followed when he passed the
house and failed to see Sally or hear her call out to him. For the
time being he was back again in his life of twenty years ago. Those
who find this hard to believe may see no way of accounting for what
came about but by ascribing to Fenwick an intention of suicide. For
our part we believe him to have been absolutely incapable of such an
act from a selfish impulse; and, moreover, it is absurd to impute to
him such a motive, at this time, however strongly he might have been
impelled towards it by discovering the injustice and cruelty of his
own unforgiveness towards his young wife at some previous time--as,
for instance, in America--when she herself was beyond his reach, and
a recantation of his error impossible. Unless we accept his conduct
as the result of a momentary dementia, produced by overstrain, it
must remain inexplicable.
It appeared to him, so far as he was afterwards able to define or
record it, that he was no longer walking on the familiar track between
the few lodging-houses that made up the old St. Sennans, and the still
older fishing-quarter near the jetty, but that he was again on his way
from Lahore to Kurachi, from which he was to embark for a new land
where his broken heart might do its best to heal; for if ever a man
was utterly broken-hearted it was he when he came away from Lahore,
after his futile attempt to procure a divorce. He no longer saw the
cold northern sea under its great blue cloud-curtain that had shrouded
the coming day; nor the line of fishing-smacks, beached high and dry,
and their owners' dwellings near at hand, a little town of tar and
timber in behind the stowage-huts of nets and tackle, nor the white
escarpment of the cliffs beyond, that the sea had worked so many
centuries to plunder from the rounded pastures of the sheep above. He
no longer heard the music of the waves on the shingle, nor the cry of
the sea-bird that swept over them, nor the tinkle of the sheep-bell
the wind knows how to carry so far in the stillness of the morning,
nor the voices of the fisher-children playing in the boats that one
day may bear them to their death. His mind was far away in the Indian
heat, parching and suffocated on the long railway journey from Lahore
to Kurachi, scarcely better when he had reached his first boat that
was to take him to Bombay, to embark again a day or two later for
Australia. How little he had forgotten of the short but tedious delay
in that chaotic emporium of all things European and Asiatic, that
many-coloured meeting-ground of a thousand nationalities! How little,
that the whole should come back to him now, and fill his brain with
its reality, till the living present grew dim and vanished; reviving
now and again, as fiction, read in early years, revives with a
suggested doubt--is it true or false?
He sat again on the Esplanade at Bombay, as the sun vanished in a
flood of rosy gold, and released the world from his heat. He felt
again the relief of the evening wind; heard again the chat of a group
of English officers who sipped sherry-cobblers at a table a few paces
off. "I always change my mind," said one of them, "backwards and
forwards till the last minute; then I make it the last one." He quite
understood this man's speech, and thought how like himself! For from
the time he left Lahore he, too, had gone backwards and forwards, now
resolving to return, come what might, now telling himself firmly
there was no remedy but in distance apart, and all there might be of
oblivion. Was there not yet time? He could still go back, even now.
But no; the old obduracy was on him. Rosey had deceived him!
Then he seemed to have come again to _his_ last minute. Once he was
fairly on the ship that was even now coaling for her voyage, once the
screw was on the move and the shore-lights vanishing, the die would be
cast. The stars that he and Rosey had seen in that cool English garden
that night he met her first would vanish, too, and a world would be
between them. Still, the hour had not come; it was not too late yet.
But still the inveterate thought came back--she _had_ deceived him.
So his delirium ended as its prototype of over twenty years ago had
ended. He hardened his heart, thrust aside all thought of forgiveness
and repentance, and went resolutely down to the quay, as he thought,
to embark on the little boat for the ship, and so practically put
all thought of hesitation and return out of his mind. This moment was
probably what would have been the crisis of his fever, and it was an
evil hour for him in which the builder of the pier at St. Sennans made
it so like the platform of that experience of long ago. But the boat
that he saw before him as he stepped unhesitatingly over its edge
was only the image of a distempered brain, and in an instant he
was struggling with the cold, dark water. A sudden shock of chill,
an intolerable choking agony of breath involuntarily held, an
instantaneous dissipation of his dream, the natural result of the
shock, and Fenwick knew himself for what he was, and fought the cruel
water in his despair. Even so a drowning man fights who in old
failures to learn swimming has just mastered its barest rudiments.
A vivid pageant rushed across his mind of all the consequences of what
seemed to him now his inevitable death, clearest of all a sad vision
of Sally and Rosalind returning to their home alone--the black dresses
and the silence. He found voice for one long cry for help, without
a hope that it could be heard or that help could be at hand.
But he was neither unseen nor unheard, as you will know if we have
not failed in showing the succession of events. Sally never hesitated
an instant as she caught sight of the delirious man's involuntary
plunge into the green waves that had no terrors for _her_. She threw
off as she ran, fast, fast down the wooden stairway, the only clothes
she could get rid of--her hat and light summer cloak--and went
straight, with a well-calculated dive, to follow him and catch him
as he rose. If only she did not miss him! Let her once pinion his
arms from behind, and she would get him ashore even if no help came.
Why, there was no sea to speak of!
* * * * *
The man Jacob Tracy, the father of Benjamin, saw something to quicken
his speed as he walked along the pier to help in the discovery of the
life-belt. Why did the swimming young lady from Lobjoit's want to be
rid of her wrap-up at that rate as she turned so sharp round to run
down the ladder? He increased a brisk walk to a run as the lad, who
had followed the young lady down the steps, came running up again;
for there was hysterical terror in his voice--he was a mere boy--as he
shouted something that became, as distance lessened, "In t' wa-ater!
in t' wa-ater! in t' wa-ater! in t' wa-ater!" And he was waving
something in his hand--a lady's hat surely; for with an instinct of
swift presence of mind--a quality that is the breath of life to all
that go down to the sea in ships, mariners or fisher-folk--he had seen
that the headgear Sally threw away would tell its tale quicker than
any words he could rely on finding.
"Roon smart, yoong Benjamin--roon for the bo'ats and call out 'oars'!
Roon, boy--you've no time to lose!" And as the father dashes down the
steps he spoke of as "the ladder" the son runs for all he is worth to
carry the alarm to the shore. He shouts, "Oars, oars, oars!" as he was
told. But it is not needed, for his thought of bringing up the hat has
done his work already for him. The coastguard, though the pier itself
hid the two immersions from him, is quick of apprehension and ready
with his glass, and has seen the boy's return from below; and at the
same time heard, not his words, but the terror in them, and by some
mysterious agency has sent a flying word along the beach that has
brought a population out to help.
A bad time of the tide to get a boat off sharp, and a long shelving
run of sandy shingle before we reach the sea; for all the boats are
on the upper strand of the beach, above the last high-water mark, and
the flow of the tide is scarcely an hour old. There is a short squat
cobble, flat-bottomed and of intolerable weight, down near the waters,
and its owner makes for it. Another man drives him out seawards,
against the constant lift of breaking waves, large enough to be
troublesome, small enough to be numerous. They give no chance to the
second man to leap into the boat, so deep has he to go, pushing on
until the pads are out and the boat controlled; but he has barely time
to feel the underdraw of the recoiling wave when the straight scour
of a keel comes down along the sand and pebbles--the Ellen Jane,
St. Sennans--half-pushed, half-borne by a crew three minutes have
extemporised. You two in the bows, and you two astarn, and the
spontaneous natural leader--the man the emergency makes--at the
tiller-ropes, and Ellen Jane is off, well drenched at the outset. An
oar swings round high in the air, not to knock one of you two astarn
into the water, and then, "Give way!" and then the short, quick rhythm
of the stroke, and four men at their utmost stress, each knowing life
and death may hang upon the greatness of his effort.
The cobble is soon outshot, but its owner will not give in. He bears
away from the course of the boat that has passed him, to seek their
common object where the tide-drift may have swept it, beyond some
light craft at their moorings which would have hidden it for a while.
He has the right of it this time, for as he passes, straining at his
sculls, under the stern of a pleasure-yacht at anchor, his eye is
caught by a black spot rising on a wave, and he makes for it. Not too
fast at the last, though, but cautiously, so as to grasp the man with
the life-belt and hold him firm till help shall come to get him on
board. He might easily have overshot him; but he has him now, and the
four-oar sights him as she swings round between the last-moored boat
and the pier; and comes apace, the quicker for the tide.
"What is it ye say, master? What do ye make it out the gentleman says,
Peter?" For Fenwick, hauled on board the cobble with the help of a man
from the other boat, who returns to his oar, is alive and conscious,
but not much more. A brandy-flask comes from somewhere in the
steerage, where a mop and a tin pot and a boathook live, and its
effect is good. The half-drowned man becomes articulate enough to
justify the report. "It's his daughter he's asking for--overboard,
too!" and then the man who spoke first says: "You be easy in your
mind, master; we'll find her. Bear away a bit, and lie to, Tom." Tom
is the man in the cobble, and he does as he is bidden. He ships his
sculls and drifts, watching round on all sides for what may be just
afloat near the surface. The four-oar remains, and the eyes of her
crew are straining hard to catch a sight of anything that is not mere
lift and ripple of a wave.
Then more boats one after another, and more, and the gathering crowd
that lines the shore sees them scatter and lie to, some way apart, to
watch the greater space of water. All drift, because they know that
what they seek is drifting, too, and that if they move they lose their
only chance; for the thing they have to find is so small, so small,
and that great waste of pitiless sea is so large. It is their only
chance.
The crowd, always growing, moves along the beach as the flotilla of
drifting boats move slowly with the tide. They can hear the shouting
from boat to boat, but catch but little of the words. They follow
on, with little speech among themselves, and hope dying slowly out
of their hearts. Gradually towards the jetty, where the girl they are
seeking sat, only a few days since, beside the man whose heart the
memory of yesterday is still rejoicing; the only trouble of whose
unconscious soul is the thought that he and she must soon be parted,
however short the term of their separation may be. He will know more
soon.
Suddenly the shouting increases in the boats, and excited voices break
the silence on the shore. It won't do to hope too much, but surely all
the boats are thickening to one spot.... No, it's nothing!... Yes, it
_is_--it _is_ something--one knows what--sighted abaft the Ellen Jane,
whose steersman catches it with a boathook as the oars we on the beach
saw suddenly drop back water--slowly, cautiously--and only wait for
him to drag the light weight athwart the gunwale to row for the dear
life towards the town. The scattered crowd turns and comes back,
trampling the shingle, to meet the boat as she lands, and follow what
she brings to the nearest haven.