He found her curved in a nest of sleep full in the sun. Her breath was
gentle as childhood's, and as guileless her face. Her head was regal, for
the hair dried crowned it in a dark coil wound and bound with wisps of
splendid pearls.
The young lover's passion resolved itself into prayer. As never before in
his life, with concentration and fervour he importuned his God for the
redemption of her lost soul. The shadow of his crest edged her shoulder;
a movement brought to the line of her cheek the shadow of his. At that,
prayer failed for an amorous instant; eclipse dipped across her brow;
sleep parted; she was looking at him.
'Ah, Grey Eyes!' she said, and smiled.
'Be gracious by one little word, Diadyomene. Why never yet will you call
me by my name?'
'Your name? No, 'tis an ill-made name. Put it away and bear another that
I will choose.'
'I could not. Yet what would you choose?'
'Diadyomenos, may be!' she said softly, smiling.
The honour of the consort name caught his breath.
'But I could not; not even for that could I lay aside the name I had in
baptism.'
'Baptism ever!' she frowned. 'Inadvertently did I utter Diadyomenos.
Asleep, I had dreamed--of you--enfranchised.'
From scorn to regret she modulated, and his blood sang to the dominant
close.
She strained to dislocate sleep, on her back-thrown head planting both
hands. Her fingers, with careless grip, encountered the pearls; they
sprang scattering, and her dark hair drifted down. With languid
indifference she loosened and fingered the length of soft splendours;
another lustrous morsel flew and skipped to the boy's feet. Covetous
longing fastened upon it, not for its rare beauty, its immense value. A
thing that had passed through her hands and lain in her hair was to him
beyond price; and yet he forbore sternly to seek after possession,
because an honest scruple would not allow that an orient pearl could
come to his hands but by magic purveyance.
'If a name were to seek for me?' she was pleased to inquire, on the watch
for colour which sprang when her words were gracious.
'I know,' he said, 'what most fitly would express you--oh! too well, for
it is over a defect that secretions of the sea have constructed a shape
of perfect beauty; the name of a pearl only--Margaret. If you--when you
shall come to be baptized----'
'You dare!' she said, and froze him with her look.
'It has come into my mind that you may be a traitor.'
'No!'
'Hear now! Look me in the eyes and deny it if you can. It is for the sake
of another that you seek after me; that persuading, beguiling, if you can
coercing me--me--who spared you, tolerated you, inclined to you, you
would extract from the sea an equivalent for her loss, and proclaim that
her reproach is taken away.'
There was such venom in look and tone, that his face grew strained and
lost colour.
'For your sake first and foremost.'
'By no means for your own?'
'Diadyomene, I would lay down my life for you!' he breathed passionately.
'But not give up your soul--for me?'
Ever so gently she said this. The boy quivered and panted against
suspecting the words of their full worth. She directed her eyes away, to
leave him to his own interpretation. The sunlight turned them to gems of
emerald; the wind swept her hair about her clear throat; one hand clasped
the curve of her knee. Never yet had he touched her, never felt so much
as a thread of blown hair against his skin. One hand lay so near,
straitly down-pressed on the rough rock, fragile, perfect; shell-pink
were the finger-tips. He said 'No' painfully, while forth went his hand,
broad, sunburnt, massive, and in silent entreaty gently he laid it over
hers.
Cold, cold, cold, vivid, not numbing, thrills every nerve with intense
vitality, possesses the brain like the fumes of wine. The magic of the
sea is upon him.
Rocks, level sands, sky, sun, fade away; a misty whirl of the sea
embraces him, shot with the jewelled lightnings of swift living
creatures, with trains of resplendent shapes imperfectly glimpsed, with
rampant bulks veiled in the foam of their strength. A roar is in his
ears, in all his veins; acclaim and a great welcome of his presence
swells from the deep, all life there promising to him dominion.
Intangible and inarticulate the vision spins; and through it all he
knows, he feels, that beneath his palm lies the cold white hand of the
fairest of the sea-brood; he perceives dimly a motionless figure seated,
and the hand not in his clasps her knee, and the eyes look away, and the
hair drifts wide. Then to his ears through the great murmurs comes her
voice, soft and low and very clear, but as though it has come from a
great way off: 'Lay your hand upon my breast--set your lips to mine--give
up your soul.'
'Christ! Christ! ah, Lord Christ!'
Diadyomene's hand lay free. Christian stared at his palm to find that it
had not come away bleeding. His lips were grey as ashes; he shook like a
reed. With haggard eyes he regarded the serene visage where a smile
dreamed, where absent eyes did not acknowledge that she had verily
spoken. Virtue was so gone from him that he was afraid, of her, of the
sun. He dropped to his knees for escape.
When he lifted his head, it was to solitude and long shadows. Her feet
bruised his heart as he tracked the signs of her going; for they had
approached him, and then retired; they had gone toward the sea, and
half-way altered back by two paces; they had finished their course to the
gorge and again turned; there they had worked the sand. A little folly!
Enacted it was a large frenzy.
Yet he took not a single pearl away.
Heavily drove the night, heavily drove the day over Christian,
comfortless, downcast, blank. Was her going with anger and scorn divided
by pity? or with stately diffidence? adorable, rendering him most
condemnable.
The dredge rose and swung in to great sighs of labour. Black coral!
In choice branches hard from the core, all rarity was there; delicate
pink and cream, scarce green, and the incomparable black. Precious--oh!
too precious for the mart--this draught was no luck, he knew, but a gift
direct from Diadyomene; a goodwill token of her generous excuse sent for
his solace. Fair shone love in the sky, and the taste of the day grew
sweet. No scruple could hold out against this happy fortune.
When the black coral was sighted by Giles from the quay, he raised such a
shout as gathered an eager knot. In a moment one flung up a hand, palm
outwards, to display the doubled thumb. Every hand copied. Christian saw
and went hot with anger, too plainly expressed in his dangerous eyes. Yet
would he have little liked to see his treasures go from hand to hand.
'Not for present trade, I reckon?' asked Giles.
'No,' said Christian, 'my price can bide,' and he carried his prize away
with him home.
Not even Rhoda could admire and handle that coral void of offence; Lois
and Giles only. One little branch, shell-pink, took the girl's fancy; she
turned it over, frankly covetous. Christian saw by her shy eyes and
pretty, conscious smile she made sure he would presently say, 'Keep it,
cousin.' He could not. A gift, fresh from the cold white hands of the
sea-maid he loved, he could not give straightway into the ardent hold of
one who offered, he feared, to him her young love.
So sweet and dear had Rhoda grown as cousin, as sister, he hated the
suspicion that she could care for him more than he desired or deserved;
he hated himself when, loving her most, for her sake he was cold and
ungracious. Rhoda, wounded, resented the change with a touch of malice;
she allowed the advance of the handsome idler Philip, no friend of
Christian's liking, she knew, though to her his faults were not patent.
That gift withheld, on the morrow began Philip's benefit. Giles and Lois
looked on, and neither wholly condemned the girl's feminine practice.
Then what could Christian do, harassed and miserable, but return to
brotherly guardianship to keep a dear heart safe from the tampering of an
arrant trifler.
Too fatally easy was it to win her away, to keep her away. She came like
a bird to the lure, with her quick, warm response, making Christian
wretched; he gladdened a little only when he encountered Philip's scowl.
Compared with this sore trouble, but a little evil to him seemed the
sharp return of the public ban for comment on Diadyomene's gift. He was
ready to flout it as before, not heeding more ominous warnings plain in
bent thumbs, in black looks, in silences that greeted him, and in
mutterings that followed. A day came when hootings startled him out of
his obstinate indifference, when from ambush stones flew, one with bloody
effect; a later day, when a second time he had brought in too invidious
a taking.
'I sent no gift!' had declared Diadyomene, with wide, steady eyes, but
that time Christian did not believe her, though hardly with blame of the
untruth. On the morrow her second gift rose. When the boy sought her
again she disclaimed once more; and curious of his perplexity and of his
gashed face, drew from him something of his plight. Her eyes were
threatening when she said, 'Fling away, then, what you fear to take.' To
her face then he laughed for pride and joy that she should prove him.
When that same hour came round, he drew up her third gift.
He cared too little that in the interim a mischance had fallen against
him; he had at last been descried fairly within the Sinister buoys, and
chased by an unknown sail far west, escaping only under dark to circle
for home beneath midnight stars.
'O damnation!' was Giles's exclamation on the third prize. 'This won't
do--'tis too like devil's luck. Ah, lad!' He faltered, caught at
Christian, and peered in his face: 'You have not--you have not--got
fee-penny of them below!'
Christian reeled. 'Dad, O dad!' he gasped.
'Steady, lad, steady! Here come spies as usual. There's no stowing a
scrap unseen. Ah, they gape! Here, clear off home with this confounded
stuff. I'll see to the nets.'
Rhoda's eyes shone like stars, her cheeks were like angry dawn. She
hovered about Christian with open devotion, at once tender and fierce,
playing the child for some cover to that bold demonstration. Christian's
heart shrank, for he could not understand her nor appreciate her. But
Giles had a tale to unfold that brought light. Rhoda had come in flaming
from a stormy passage with Philip. He had gained her ear to hint a
warning against Christian, justifying it against her passion with a
definite charge and instance that he had the evil eye. She, loyal in
defence, carried away into attack, had rashly invaded with exasperating
strokes.
'She's made bad blood, I doubt--the little hawk!' said Giles. 'He's
mortal savage now, and there's mischief enough brewing without.'
'What do you know?'
'A sight more than I like, now I've gone to pry it out. It looks as if
not a beast has gone and died by nature or mischance, not a bone gets out
or broken, but there's a try to fix it on you with your evil eye. We've
been in the dark overlong--though an inkling I must own to.'
'I too, by token of doubled thumbs.'
'Christian,' said the old man with authority, 'never again bring in the
black or the green or any rarity; you can't afford it again.'
Christian's head rose defiantly.
'Drop your airs, you young fool! Why, your inches are enough against you
as it is. If you weren't so uppish at times, there would now be less of a
set against you.'
'On my word,' protested Christian, 'I have borne much and been silent. I
know the young cur I owe for this scar, and have I laid a finger on him?
To turn the other cheek is beyond me, I own,' he added, with some honest
regret.
It so fell out that on the very morrow that same toleration witnessed
against him fatally. From the snap of a rabid dog a child died, under
circumstances of horror that excited a frenzy against Christian, who had
been seen handling the beast after the night of stoning, when the
victim's brother it was who had marked him for life. So his iniquities
crowned the brim, to seethe over with a final ingredient when mooting
came along the coast of a trespasser off the Isle Sinister, by timing,
incontestably, the alien.
When the fleet lay spread dredging, Christian, obedient to direction from
Giles, stationed his boat in the midst; but one by one his neighbours
edged away, till he lay isolated deliberately. This manifestation of
mislike was not unexpected, but it galled that weary day when the burdens
of his life were weighing heavy.
Exceeding the gross of more solid apprehensions, Rhoda's face haunted him
to disquiet. By an unjust transfer, shame possessed him, even as when
Diadyomene had advanced naked and unabashed before his diffident eyes.
Indefinite reproach clamoured all day at his conscience, What have I
done? what have I done? And a further unanswerable question, What can I
do? beset him to no purpose.
Before his mind hung a vision of prompt, delicious escape, which he did
not banish, only because he did not think it could seriously attempt his
will. But the hours told so on the aching boy, that for once he abandoned
his own strict standard of fortitude, and his distress cried aloud to
solitude, 'Diadyomene! O my love, Diadyomene, Diadyomene!'
First, a silver shoal close beneath his eye leapt into air and slid
again; then his stare discerned a trail of weed upfloating tranquilly:
no weed, two dim hands part it to the showing of a moony countenance
graciously inquisitive, and pearly shoulders brightening as they rose,
till glistening white to the air Diadyomene lay afloat cradled by happy
waves.
'Diadyomenos!' she said softly, and her eyes invented dreams.
For an instant, so mad was Christian rendered by this consummate favour,
that he clutched the gunwale on an impulse to over-leap it finally. Like
hounds straining on the leash, natural passions tried the control of the
human soul. He dared not speak.
Diadyomene drifted gently lower with never a word more, and lower yet
imperceptibly, till her upturned face began to dim. She poised. Ah,
beautiful reluctance! Unaffronted? O heart that aches, that breaks to
give worthy response! He saw her lips moving; he knew what speech they
framed as certainly as though he could hear: your hand upon my
breast--your lips to mine--demanded of him.
Christian fell back, and crouched, and lay sobbing dry-eyed until
twilight drew.
Home he came. By the way none greeted him of all he met, and a many they
were for the hour; and none hooted after him, but shrilling whistles at
his back made him turn to wonder what was afoot. Quick figures dodged
past him and sped.
Apprehension dawned when he crossed the threshold to find two scared
women, and Giles ghastly and bandaged.
'Who did this?'
'An accident, an accident,' muttered the old man, seeing the boy ablaze
with wrath and pity before ever he heard a word.
Out came a tale of outrage: while the house was empty, Lois and Rhoda
away bleaching, the linhay had been forced, and the coral laid there,
Christian's store of precious, sacred coral, looted entire. Giles, coming
on the scene, had been tripped up and left for stunned by one unaware how
an unhappy blade had gashed his fall.
'And who did it?' said Christian, hoarse with his passion.
'Don't say!' ordered Giles, and the women were mute.
'I will know,' he cried, stamped out ungovernable, and beat away.
The three looked at each other, pale and fearful. Then Giles staggered to
his feet. 'Help me after him, wife.'
'Rhoda,' said Lois, 'go quick for his Reverence--if he be abroad, follow
him quick.'
Seething with just indignation, Christian sped reckless after vengeance.
Alarm of his coming sprang up and flew before him along the shore. Thence
struck the ring of axes, thence shone the flare of torches, showing a
black, busy swarm. Like a wounded beast he yelled out once: the Beloved,
his boat, lay there under torture and dismemberment. Then he hurled upon
the throng, raging to kill.
Two went down instantly, damaged for life under his bare hands, but the
rest by sheer weight of numbers overbore him. Axes rose imminent, but
there was no room for a sure stroke in the close, desperate wrestle.
Thrice Christian gained his feet again; then had he no need to strike any
man but once; those he gripped in the downfall had broken bones of him.
Cries and curses thickened, he only fought mute. Foul strokes on him were
fair enough: they struck him together, they struck from behind, they
caught him by the knees and toppled him down, they fell on him prostrate,
they trampled and kicked. He was on his feet again, breathed and fain,
when one from behind got in a stroke at his head with a spar; then he
flung up his hands and dropped among them.
When Christian came to himself he was made fast hand and foot. Torches
and dark figures flashed and swayed before his giddy sight; all round
they hemmed him in. He wanted sense, remembrance, and settled vision.
What meant this savage, cruel hate looking out of every face? these
yells, curses, and accusations dinning at his ears? He was bound upright
in the midst--where? no, where! One came and wrenched off remnants of his
shirt; another stood by making ready. The wretched boy understood, and
strained and struggled desperately for freedom.
Such a scene was not unprecedented among the fishers. According to a
rough, unwritten law, the punishment of thieves they took into their own
hands, and enforced confession and restitution. Scrupulous to a fault,
honourable, proud, Christian maddened at the intolerable degradation
threatening. A thief's portion dealt out to him! the shame of it he could
not bear.
The circle of pitiless, excited eyes watched the swell of splendid
strength expended to exhaustion against stock and cord. He could not
escape from bonds; he could not escape from life; with bleeding wrists,
panting, trembling, sane, impotence confronted him with his inevitable
award.
The shame of it he had to bear. And he could not even effectually hide
his face.
He heard the common formula when confession was demanded concerning
unlawful takings. Truly his eyes looked wicked then, and his teeth showed
in a vicious grin. He heard more, charges so monstrous, that he deemed
them sprung of mere insolent mockery, or else of delirium. Dead silence
fell, that he might answer. He would not. Oh, frenzy was returning,
revolting him against meet despair.
The pain that he had to bear broke upon his body.
Of all the watching throng, none pitied him, none questioned the just
rigour of any penal extreme upon him. To the long distrust and the later
developed abhorrence, the day had brought forth a new fierce lust after
vengeance, exasperated now the might of his hands, superhuman, had done
such terrible work. None but with pulse of satisfaction must keep time to
the stroke of the subjugated boy's long torture; none but would reckon
long fortitude to his last discredit.
How long? How long? As, motionless and bleeding, he gave no sign of
failing endurance, resentment kindled against his indomitable obstinacy,
and silence for his benefit no longer held. A mutter ran: 'The devil has
cared for his own--he cannot feel.' And to make sure that he had not
passed from consciousness, a torch was shifted to show his face. It was
pale as death, and beaded with great sweat; but his eyes were wide and
steady, so they cursed and went on.
The long-suffering northern spirit, the hardy carcass that did not give
out, excelling the make of the south, outstayed the patience of
animosity. High upon a clamour swelling anew one cried, 'Try fire!'
snatched a torch, and tested the substance of an arm. It was Philip. When
Christian's eyes struck at his he defied them with his thumb.
Yelled a confused chorus: 'There, see there! proof enough. Make an end of
the creature! Send him back to the devil by the way he came!' The note of
death was recognised of the victim; he blessed it, for his agony was
great.
But a little way on was the stretch of sand where, fourteen years before,
the sea had cast up a bright alien child. Thither was drawn the
half-killed boy; and there, made fast to a mooring-post, with his face
set to the sea, knee-deep in the tide, he was left to die. Along the
shore pickets were formed to preclude a miscarriage to justice; and
there, while the sea trod forward, the flame of mob violence died down to
its underglow of settled vengeance, and torches were douted and silence
fell as the eyes of men began to shirk their fellows', and their ears to
prickle at a word.
Christian lifted his head to comprehend immense clear spaces of sea and
night, and a black triumph. Not death was before him now, but a new life.
Hopeless patience departed before passions during long torture
suppressed, and infernal laughter rolled in his heart at the prospect of
a consummate vengeance when the powers of the sea should work with his
will. He knew she would come. Undoubting the extent of her knowledge, her
power, her gracious surveillance, he knew she would come, to offer a
splendid exchange for death. O excellent compensation! The touch of her
hand, the touch of her lips, the opening world of vast delight, and
therewith power to satiate all his hates.
With every breath torment heaved over him still; raging thirst was there
for fierce affliction, the cruel sting of brine touched his wrists,
appalling in its promise of intolerable exasperation to raw wounds. Would
she come, as before, with sweet despatch if he could call 'Diadyomene'?
But he would not; because of other ears he would not utter her name; nor
ever because of other eyes entreat her from the cover of the wave. Ah
God, he prayed, give me heart to endure!
His sight was unsteady, so that the whirling of the stars and the
exaggerated swell of the slow waves vexed his failing brain. But he dared
not close his eyes, lest, ignoring her advent, he should lose her and
die.
The disworship of an earlier hour, the comfortless void days, the bitter,
hard reserves, drew form from delirium; they stood in rank, hateful
presences, deriding the outcast: but to pass, he knew, as a sleeper can
know of a dream--to pass when the magic of the sea should flow through
his veins. My past washed out and my soul drowned.
Ah God, he prayed, grant that I remember! Ah God, he prayed, grant
that I forget! Strong hate and strong affection rose dominant in
turn. Stronger rose affection: through waves of delirium the dear
home faces came and looked at him; the reproach of their eyes
pierced deep. What have I done--what can I do? he challenged. God
keep you all, dears! Oh, shut your eyes, there is no other way. And
still they looked--Lois--Giles--Rhoda--sorrow of condemnation,
sorrow of pity, sorrow of amazement; till before their regard he
shrank and shuddered, for they delivered to his conscience a hard
sentence--his God, their God, willed that he should die.
The tide was up to his belt before ever the human soul staggered up to
wrestle. Too swiftly now it rose; too short was the span of life left. He
was not fit to die: evil impulses, passions black as murder, were so live
and strong in him. He could not die--he could not. To be enforced from
mere life were bitter; to choose noble death were bitter; but to choose
such a death as this, pitiful, obscure, infamous, to eschew such a life
as that, glorious, superlative,--too hard, too cruel a trial was this for
human endurance--he could not do it.
Yet he prayed voiceless: Diadyomene, Diadyomene, haste to deliver me; for
the will of God roars against me, and will devour.
For pity, dear faces, keep off, or she may not come. She would quit me of
this anguish--who could will to bear this gnawing fire? They, too, shall
have torment, and die with horrors. The waves shall batter and break,
and sharks shall tear their live limbs piece-meal, and down in the ooze
coils of serpents shall crush them out. Ah God! ah God! I love her so.
Would hell be undesirable if you were there, or heaven perfect if you
were not? O poor soul, poor soul! who will have mercy? Kiss her, mother,
dear; upon her breast lay your hand when she comes. O poor mother, who
had not a little dead body to kiss! Go, go--I cannot bear your eyes. I
want----Ah, ah, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
He surrendered, and the tide was breast high.
Solitude drifted back, and cleared vision without and within. The
despotism of torture succeeded on the exclusion of throes more virulent.
He prayed for swift death, yet shrank humanly as promise swung hard at
his face. He prayed against Diadyomene, and yet strove with wide eyes to
prevent the darkness, quailing, pulsing at gleam of wave and sweep of
weed. He would give up his soul if it were possible, not for carnal
exchange, but that hers might revive.
Would she of the cold sea nature care greatly for his death? Would she
remember where the outcast body lay, and fulfil her word uttered in scorn
to lay sea-blossoms about the skull? Dead, void of pain, unresponsive to
her touch could he be! O fair, calm life of the sea! O fair, calm
sea-queen! No, no, not for him--death, only death, for him. God's
merciful death.
The enfeebled brain fails again; sense and will flicker out into misty
delirium; from helpless memory a reek distils, and the magic of the sea
is upon him.
Through waves heaving gigantically to isolate him from the world, the
flash and spin of eager life beckoned the blood left in him; great
strengths loomed, his on the loosening of knots of anguish; a roar ran in
his veins, noise and tremor beating through him, fluid to it but for his
bones. Came trampling and singing and clapping, promising welcome to
ineffable glories, ravishing the heart in its anguish to conceive of a
regnant presence in the midst. Coming, coming, with ready hands and lips.
Came a drench, bitter-sweet, enabling speech: like a moan it broke weak,
though at his full expense, 'Diadyomene.' Came she.
Delirium flashes away. Face to face they hang, shattered life and lost
soul. He shudders hard. 'Deliver us from evil,' he mutters, and bows his
head for a fatal breath and escape.