All night Lois and Giles were praying in anguish of grief for their
children of adoption, even when hope was beaten out by the heavy-handed
storm. For three days and nights the seas were sailless, though the hulks
of two wrecks were spied drifting; and after, still they ran so high,
that a fifth day dawned before a lugger beat in aside her course on a
kindly errand. Then up the street leapt news to the desolate pair: how
Rhoda and Christian lived; how their boat had been run down in the night,
and themselves snatched gallantly from death; how they had been put
ashore at the first port a mastless ship could win, and there received by
the pity of strangers; and how all the while Christian lay raving and
dying, and by now must be dead.
But to hope reborn this last was unbelievable. Lois said she should find
him alive and to live, since Heaven had twice willed him to escape the
jaws of death. And her heart of confidence she kept for more than two
weary days of difficulty and delay. But when she reached his bed her hope
wavered; she saw a shorn head, and a face blanched and bloodless like
bone, fallen out of a shape she knew into strange hollows, with eyes
showing but a glassy strip, and grey, breathless lips. 'To-night,' said
Rhoda.
Breathless also through the night they watched till came the first shiver
of dawn. Then his eyelids rose; he looked with recognition at Lois, and
moved a hand towards hers; and with a quiet sigh his eyes closed, not for
death, but for blessed, feverless, breathing sleep.
The one who wept then was Lois, and Rhoda clasped her in a passionate
embrace of comfort, and herself shed no tear.
The child had deserted Rhoda for ever, as the boy Christian. She knew it:
she had kissed her childhood dead on his lips, and now past any recall it
had been buried, and lay deep under such a weight of sorrow as fate can
hew only for a woman full. No tear she shed, no word she said, and she
ordered her face to be serene.
She had a word for Lois not at first to be understood. 'God has been good
to heal,' she would say; but the whole truth did not declare till Lois,
regarding the future again, had sighed: 'Where shall he go?' 'Home,' said
Rhoda. Lois shook her head sadly: 'He could not bear it.' The girl, with
arms round her neck and a hid face, whispered again: 'God has been good
to heal--I think so--do you not know it yet?'
So a day came when a wasted shadow of the old Christian was borne along
the quay and up the street, while men and women stept out to observe.
Their eyes he met with placid recognition, clear of any disquiet.
The devil had gone out of the fellow at last, they said, when he could
not lift a hand for injury, nor gloom a resentful look. And so hard
doings were justified; and none intolerant could begrudge him the life he
had brought away, even before a guess began that he had not brought away
his full wits.
Out in the porch he would come to bask in the sun for hours with animal
content. Out to the gate he would come, going weakly to and fro as he was
bid. But Giles was surly to men, and to women Lois was iron cold, and
Rhoda had deft ways of insult to repulse unwelcome intrusion; and so for
a little while those three guarded him and kept close the secret of his
ruin.
Then one at an unguarded moment won in, and spied, and carried her report
of his mild, his brute-mild gaze, and his slow labour of speech: it was
the mother of Philip. Rhoda found a token of her left beside Christian, a
well-intended, small peace-offering, in a cheese of her sole make.
'Who brought this?' she asked; and he told.
'She offered it--to you?'
'To us,' he returned quietly.
'And you took it--thanked her and took it?'
He looked up and studied her face for enlightenment.
'The mother was not here.'
Rhoda's passion surged over. 'How dared she, how dared she!' she stormed,
and seized on the poor gift, cast it down, stamped it into the sandy
path, and spurned it over the sweet herbs into the sluggy kail beyond.
Like a child, chidden for some uncomprehended fault, he looked at her,
distressed at her condemnation, anxious to atone, wondering if his senses
told him true. Her anger failing under an agony of pity and remorse, from
the unendurable pain of his look she fled to hide her passionate weeping.
When Lois came out to Christian he was deeply asleep.
Soon he carried into the street his brute-mild gaze, and his slow labour
of speech. And no thumb turned against him. For all who chose to peer in
on his blank mind found how shame and rancour could take no root in a
void of memory. He met every face with an even countenance, showing no
recall of a debt to any.
In a very literal sense it was now said that the devil had gone out of
him. Willing belief held that he had been actually possessed, and
delivered only when a right instinct of severity had spoiled him for
habitation. Some compunction showed over the mooted point whether the
pitiful lasting flaw had not rather come of the last spite of an evicted
devil, than of the drastic measures of exasperated men.
In nowise did Christian's reason now work amiss, though it was slow and
heavy; nor had his memory lost all its store, nor quite its power to
store. Of earlier days his remembrance was clear and complete though a
little unready, but of passing hours some only did not float clean out of
mind to be forgotten. This was a deficiency that mended by degrees, and
in time bid fair to pass. Where the break began, none who loved him
ventured to discover. Once when, as shall be told, Giles incautiously
touched, Christian turned a dazed, painful face, and grew white and
whiter, and presently laid his head down on his arms and slept deeply. In
those days frequent slumbers fell, and for the most part memory was
blurred behind them.
Lois in her heart sometimes had a secret doubt that oblivion had not
entirely satisfied him. His reason seemed too serviceable to lie down
without an effort; and it was hard to imagine how it could account for
certain scars that his body would carry to the grave; or account for the
loss of two boats--the old drudge and his own murdered Beloved. Yet when
in his presence they held anxious debate on the means to a new boat, he
listened and made no comment.
The poor wronged household was hardly set. Restitution was unlooked for,
and not to be enforced, for woe betide any who against the tyranny of the
fishers' law invoked higher powers and another code. Though now the alien
was tolerated under a milder estimate, an outcast he remained, and none
were so hardy as to offer fellowship with him and his. The cost of a boat
was more than Giles could contrive on his own poor securities, and none
could he find to share for profit or risk in any concern that Christian
would be handling. It was only on his Reverence offering surety for
instalments that the dread of ruin and exile for one and all passed them
by, and means to a livelihood were obtained.
Together, as in the long past days when Christian was yet a child, and
Giles was still hale, the old man and the young returned to daily toil on
the coral shoals. Giles was the better man of the two at the first, for
necessity had admitted of no delay; but as the younger gained in strength
the elder lost; by the month's end his feeble stock of strength,
overdrawn, failed suddenly, not enough remaining for him to potter about
the quay as before. In months succeeding, his goings came to be
straitened, first to the garden, then to the house, then to one seat, one
bed. Before the year's end it was to be to the straitest lodging of
all--green turfed.
Alone, quite alone again, with sea and sky whispering together round him,
and no sail near, well might those who loved Christian pray for him
hourly.
His first return was so late that terrors beset all three. The two women
were on the quay when his boat glided in under dusk, and up he stept with
a load. The hearts of both were beating thick for dread of a rich load
that would blast him afresh, for thus in old days had he glided in at
dusk.
But what he bore was only his nets, which he dropped before them. He
stood silent and downcast. They saw that one of the cross-beams was
broken; they saw that the meshes were torn incredibly.
They saw that he was waiting in dumb distress to be told by them if he
were to blame. Ah, dear aching hearts! not a word, not a look was there
to weigh on him in his disappointment. Rhoda stripped off the netting and
carried it home, with a gay boast of proving her proficiency, for she had
learned net-making from Christian in his idle days of weakness. Half the
next day she sat mending, and was proud of her finished task, expecting
some reward of praise. But it never came. The fresh netting he had taken
he brought back torn hideously, so that dismay fell.
Christian and Giles together had met only poor luck, but here came a
stroke of so deliberate an aim that the word misfortune seemed
indifferent to describe it.
And this was but the beginning of a long course; again and again
Christian returned with spoiled nets; and, even on better days, few there
were when his takings were not conspicuously poor in amount and quality.
Such loss was the graver since an instalment was due at the season's
close, and except the dawning autumn brought fair success, sore straits
would come with the winter.
Rhoda proved good for bread-winning. Before, she had practised
lace-making, taught her at the convent school, and now she turned to it
with all her energy. Early and late found her bending over her pillow. No
more net-mending for her: for the sake of unroughened hands she had to
leave that to Christian and the elders. Yet her work was but poorly paid,
and the sale uncertain.
As autumn came in, Christian still gained in physical strength up to near
his old level; but Giles declined slowly, Lois grew thin and worn, and
Rhoda was losing something of her bloom.
The heart of the old man yearned over the girl, and he knew that his time
was but brief. For hours he would sit and watch, fondly and sadly, her
dear bent head and her hands playing over her pillow in a patch of light
under the pinned-back blind. At last he told Christian his heart, even
Christian.
'Take care of my little maid, lad.'
He answered 'Ay,' stupidly.
'For I reckon I may not be here long to care for her myself.'
That was all he said at first, but that he would say often for some days,
till he was sure that Christian had taken the sense in full, and had
failed to quite disbelieve his foreboding.
'Before I lie down in the dark, I would like main to hear you take oath
on it, lad.'
'I take oaths never,' said Christian mechanically.
'Right, right! save in this wise: before God's altar with ring and
blessing.'
Christian examined his face long to be sure of understanding; then he
said, 'No.'
Giles was disappointed, but spite of the absolute tone he would not take
a negative.
'When I am gone to lie yonder east and west, and when some day the wife
shall come too to bed with me, how will you take care of my little maid?
her and her good name?'
'Oh, God help us!'
'Look you to it, for I doubt she, dear heart, cares for you--now--more
than for her mere good name.'
'How can she!' he muttered.
Said Giles hazardously: 'Once I knew of a girl such as Rhoda; as shy and
proud and upright; and a lad she liked,--a lad, say, such as you,
Christian, that she liked in her heart more than he guessed. Until he got
shamefully mistook, miscalled, mishandled, when she up and kissed him at
open noon in the face of all. And then, I mind, at need she followed him
over seas, and nought did her good heart think on ill tongues. There is
Rhoda all over.'
He watched askance to see what the flawed wits could do, and repented of
his venture; for it was then Christian so paled and presently so slept.
But Giles tried again.
'Do you mind you of the day of Rhoda's coming? Well, what think you had I
at heart then? You never had a guess? You guess now.'
Christian said, 'I will not.'
'Ah! lad, you do. And to me it looked so right and fit and just. That the
wife might gainsay, I allowed; but not you. No; and you will not when I
tell you all.
'Christian, I do not feel that I have left in me another spring, so while
I have the voice I must speak out, and I may not let you be.
'You know of Rhoda's birth: born she was on the same night as our child.
As for me, I could not look upon the one innocent but thought on the
other would rise, and on the pitiful difference there was. Somehow, the
wife regarded it as the child of its father only, I think always, till
Rhoda stood before her, the very image of her mother. And with me 'twas
just the other way about; and I was main fond of the poor young mother; a
sweet, gentle creature she was--a quiet dove, not a brave hawk like
little Rhoda. I wished the little thing could have shared with ours heart
and home; but that the wife could not have abided, the man being amongst
us too. But I went and managed so that none can cast up on Rhoda as a
pauper foundling.
'Lad, as I would like you to think well of me when I am gone, God knows I
can ill afford to have more than is due stand against me; so look you,
lad, I was not such a wastrel as you had cause for thinking. I don't deny
what may have been in old days before, but for a good seventeen year when
I have gone off for a fling now and then, Rhoda has been the better for
it, not I the worse. It has been hard on the wife, and I own I have done
a deal of cheating by her and by you too, and have stinted you unfairly.
There, there, hold your tongue, and let me start fair again.
'After our child was taken from us, and the poor wife took on so for our
blame, it was borne in on me that the rightest amending was not far to
seek; and I put it to her at last. But I spoke too soon, when her hurts
were quick and raw, and she could not bear it. She was crazy-like then,
and I put my notion by for a bit. You see, it was like this: I reckoned
the fatal misdoing was unchristian rancour against the father, and care
for his deserted child should best express contrition. But the wife
couldn't look that way--and she got from the Book awful things to say
against the wicked man and his children; and all she repented on was her
wrong ways, in neglect of right worship to affront the man; and I think
in her heart she cursed him more bitter than ever. A penance it would
have been to her to do violence to her griefs and indignations by taking
up the child; but it would have righted her as nothing else could, and
that I knew, and I looked to bring her to it yet. For me, well, I was on
other ground before then, and more than once Rhoda's baby hand had closed
upon my finger, ay, upon my heart, though then she was not like my own.
And that in a way made me slack to drive against the grain, when with me
the point ran smooth and sweet.
'Now, Christian, what came next?'
The old man had been very slow with his tale, watching his listener
intently all the while to be sure he heeded and understood. Christian
shook his head, but there was very sensible apprehension on his face as
he looked to Giles.
'You came, Christian.
'You took the place in heart and home that might have come to be little
Rhoda's, as I hoped.
'You came from the sea that had taken our own, and so the wife said it
was the hand of God. I thought the hand of God pointed otherwise.
Christian, what say you?'
He could answer nothing: Giles waited, but he could not.
'You will take care of my little maid as I want?'
'I cannot! ah, I cannot!'
'All these years Rhoda has wanted a home as I think because of you; and
because of you I could not hope for the wife's heart to open to her.'
'She should hate me! you should!' said Christian. His face was scared.
'You can make ample amends--oh! ample; and Rhoda will count the wants of
her youth blessed that shall lay the rest of her days to your keeping.
She will--Christian, are you so blind?--she will.
'Ah, dear lad! I got so well contented that the wife had had her way and
had taken you, when I saw what the just outcome should be; and saw her
shaping in the dark towards the happy lot of the sweet little slip she
ignored. Long back it began, when you were but a little chap. Years
before you set eyes on her, Rhoda had heard of you.
'In the end I could fit out no plan for you to light on her; and a grubby
suitor was bargaining for her, so I had to make a risky cast. She was to
enter as a passing stranger I had asked to rest. The wife fell on her
neck, before a word. Well, well, what poor fools we had both been!
'Christian, why do you say No?'
'I wish her better.'
'But she loves you! I swear she loves you! And I, O good Lord! I have
done my best to set her affections on you. How shall I lie still in the
grave while her dear heart is moaning for its hurt, and 'tis I that have
wrought it.'
To a scrupulous nature the words of Giles brought cruel distress.
Christian's eyes took to following Rhoda, though never a word of wooing
went to her. In the end he spoke.
'Dear Rhoda,' he said, and stopped; but instantly she looked up startled.
His eyes were on the ground.
'Rhoda, I love you dearly. Will you be my wife?'
She grew white as death, and stayed stone-still, breathless. Then he
looked at her, stood up, and repeated resolutely: 'Rhoda, dearest, will
you be my wife?'
She rose to confront him, and brought out her answer:
'No.'
He stared at her a moment in stupid bewilderment.
'You will not be my wife?' he said.
She put out all her strength to make the word clear and absolute, and
repeated: 'No.'
His face grew radiant; he caught her in his arms suddenly and kissed her,
once, twice.
'O my sister!' he cried, 'my dear sister!'
She did not blush under his kisses: she shut her eyes and held her breath
when his eager embrace caught her out of resistance. But when it
slackened she thrust him back with all her might, broke free, and with a
low cry fled away to find solitude, where she might sob and sob, and
wrestle out her agony, and tear her heart with a name--that strange
name, that woman's name, 'Diadyomene.'
She had his secret, she only, though it was nought but a name and some
love titles and passionate entreaties that his ravings had given into her
safe keeping.
On the morrow Christian's boat lay idle by the quay. Before dawn moved he
had gone.
'I think--I think you need not fear for him,' said Rhoda, when the day
closed without him. 'I think he may be back to-morrow.'
'You know what he is about--where he has gone, child?'
First she said 'Yes,' and then she said 'No.'
In the dusk she crept up to Giles. Against his breast she broke into
pitiful weeping.
'Forgive me! forgive me! I said "No" to him.'