Some four days after Rhoda heard what more befell before that night was
out. The chief monitress told her.
'We were watching all,' she said, 'and praying according to that promise
I had made for a nameless soul in sore need, whose name, Diadyomene, you
have restored to us. The dull roar of the sea came in swells of sound,
filled as often with an illusion of voices; angry voices they sounded
then. This I say that you may understand how a cry like a human creature
in distress could pass unregarded at first. Again and again it came more
distinctly, till we were startled into suspicion that a feeble knocking
was close by at the lych door of our chapel. One went at my bidding to
look out. Back she fled, with terror white as death: "God and His saints
guard," she said, "that without is not of flesh and blood!"
'I and another took her light and went to the door, and before unclosing
I asked in the name of God who was there. No answer came but a sound of
bitter sobbing. Then I looked out, and verily doubted also if what I
looked on were indeed flesh and blood. Upon the threshold crouched a
slender woman-shape, naked. I flung wide the door and touched her: she
was cold as marble, colder, I dreaded, than any creature of life could
be. Then did she raise her head to show the fairest and saddest face I
have ever beheld. Her eyes were full of tears fast falling, and oh! the
wild, hunted, despairing look they had. "Christian, Christian!" she
wailed. None knew of any such name.
'We lifted her up and led her in and covered her hastily. Her dark hair
was all drenched; recent wet had not dried from her skin. A few flakes of
snow had been drifting down; I noticed some that lay on her shoulders:
they did not melt there. Cold as a marble statue she was, and as white,
and of as beautiful a form as any that man has fashioned, and but for her
sobbing and that one cry of "Christian," one could think as dumb.
'I would have led her to comfort and warmth and food, but she would not:
from touch and question she shrank bewildered and scared; as though the
cloak we had wrapped about her were irksome, she slipped it off once and
again, unashamed of nakedness. Still her tears fell like rain, and heavy
sobs shook her. But as the great bells struck overhead, she caught in
sudden breath and held it while the air throbbed, and thereafter broke
out with her cry: "Christian, Christian!"
'I bade all kneel and pray, that if this were indeed one of God's
creatures, wisdom might be given us to deal with her for her welfare. In
great perplexity I prayed, and some fear. I think it was that utter
coldness of a living body that appalled me most.
'One spoke from her knees. "The name of Christ is in her utterance; no
creature outcast from salvation could frame any such word." Then I said:
"I will take upon me to offer her instant baptism. That may be her need
that she cannot perfectly utter." She did not seem to hear one word when
I spoke to her; I could see her mind was all too unknit for
comprehension; she only cried out as before. But when I turned towards
the altar and took her by the hand, she followed me unresisting.
'So, right before the altar we brought her, and made her kneel among us
all. All our font was a stoup of holy water held at hand. Then I prayed
aloud as God gave me the grace. She ceased to weep; she caught my hand in
hers; I know she heard. In the name of the blessed Trinity I baptized
her, but signed no cross; too suddenly she rose upright; she flung up her
arms with one deep sigh. I caught a dead body from falling.
'God knows what she was.'
The speaker fell to prayer. Presently Rhoda said: 'How did you name her?'
'I named her Margaret.'
Rhoda whispered: 'She was Diadyomene.'
Then she covered her face with her hands, lest the grave eyes should read
over deep.
'What else?' she said, 'tell all.'
'When the grace of God had prevailed over our doubt and dismay, we did
not dread to consider the dead countenance. It was fairer even than in
life; serene as any sleeping child; death looked then like a singular
favour.
'We closed her eyes and folded her hands, and laid her out before the
altar, and resumed prayer for the one nameless and another Margaret.
'And no more we knew of whence she came than this: that by daybreak a
powder of drying brine frosted her dark hair, and the hollows of her ears
were white with salt.'
'So,' said Rhoda, 'might come one cast ashore from a wreck.'
'We took measures, indeed, to know if that could be; but out of all the
search we sent about not a sign nor a clue came. If she were indeed that
one Diadyomene, we may only look to know more when the young man
Christian shall come again.'
Rhoda turned her face to the wall when she answered very low: 'He will
not come again. Well I know he will never come again.'
Then her breathing shortened convulsively, and past restraint her grief
broke out into terrible weeping.
The dark-robed monitress knelt in prayer beside her. That pious heart was
wise and loving, and saw that no human aid could comfort this lorn girl
fallen upon her care. When Rhoda was spent and still, she spoke:
'My child, if, indeed, we can no more pray God to keep that brave young
life from sin and death, yet may we pray that his soul may win to peace
and rest under the mercy of heaven. Nay, there is no need that you too
should rise for kneeling. Lie down, lie down, for your body is over
spent. Kneel before God in spirit.'
There was long silence, and both prayed, till Rhoda faltered to the
betrayal of her unregenerate heart: 'Was she so very fair indeed? Where
is she laid? Take me--oh, let me once look upon her face.'
'It may not be. She lies a day buried, there without among our own
dead--although--God only knows what she was.'
Rhoda again would rise.
'Yet take me there. Night-time? Ah yes, night, night that will never
pass.'
At daybreak she stood, alone at her desire, beside a new-made grave, and
knew that the body of Diadyomene lay beneath, and knew hardly less
surely, that somewhere beneath the sea she overlooked the body of
Christian lay. Nearest the sea was the grave on the windblown, barren
cliff. No flower could bloom there ever, only close dun turf grew. Below
stretched the broken, unquiet sea, fretted with rock and surf, deep
chanting of the wind and moon. One white sea-bird was wheeling and
pitching restlessly to and fro.
She turned her eyes to the land far east for the thought of Lois. Over
there a winter dawn flushes into rose, kindles bright and brighter, and a
ruddy burnish takes the edges of flat cloud. Lo! the sun, and the grey
sea has flecks of red gold and the sea-bird gleams. She cannot face it.
Rhoda knelt down by the grave to pray. Presently she was lying face
downward along the turf, and she whispered to the one lying face upward
below.
'Ah! Diadyomene, ah! Margaret. God help me truly to forgive you for what
you have done.
'I have tried. Because he asked it, I have torn out my heart praying for
you.
'You fair thing! you were fairer than I, but you did not love him so well
as I.
'Ah! ah! would it were I who lay down there under the quiet shelter of
the turf; would it were you who lived, able to set up his honour and make
his name fair before all men!
'Ah! ah! a dark rebuke the mystery of your life has brought; and the
mystery of your death eats it in.
'Can you bear to be so silent, so silent, nor deliver a little word?
'When you rise, Diadyomene, when the dead from the sea rise, speak loud,
speak very loud, for all to hear.
'He loved you! He loved you!'
The sod above the face of Diadyomene was steeped with the piercing tears
of Rhoda. 'He loved you!' came many times as she sobbed.
Blind with tears, she rose, she turned from the grave; blind with tears,
she stood overlooking the sea; sun and shine made all a glimmering haze
to her. She turned from those desirable spaces for burial to stumble her
blind way back to the needs of the living.
It was late, after sunset, that Rhoda, faint and weary, dragged into
sight of the light of home. In the darkness a voice named her, struck her
still. 'Philip's voice!'
Groping for her in the dark, he touched her arm. Energy she had to strike
off his hand and start away, but it failed when she stumbled and fell
heavily; for then Philip without repulse helped her to her feet, and as
she staggered a little, stunned, would have her rest a moment, and found
the bank, and stripped off his coat for her seating. She said, 'No, no,'
but she yielded.
'You thought me dead?' he asked.
She sat dumb and stupid, worn out in body and mind.
'Do you hold _me_ to blame?'
Still she did not speak.
'Rhoda, O Rhoda, I cannot bear this! Has that devil Christian taught
you?'
Rhoda rose up with an indignant cry. Then she steadied her voice and
spoke.
'The name of Christian I love, honour, reverence, above all names on
earth. You are not worthy even to utter it. Betake you, with your lies,
your slanders, your suspicions, to others ready to suspect and slander
and lie--not to me, who till I die can trust him utterly.'
She turned and went. Philip stood.
'Is he dead?' he said to himself. 'He is dead. He must be dead.'
Awe and compassion alone possessed him. To his credit be it said, not one
selfish consideration had a place then. Quick wits told him that Rhoda
had inadvertently implied more than she would. He overtook her hastily.
'Hear me! I will not offend. I will not utter a word against him.'
He spoke very gently, very humbly, because of his great compassion; and
truly, Christian dead, it were not so hard to forgo rancour. But Rhoda
went on.
'You must hear what I come to tell you before you reach home. Do you
think I have been watching and praying for your return these hours, only
to gird at Christian? For his mother's sake I came, and to warn you----'
She stopped. 'What is it? What is it? Say quick.'
'Nothing that you fear--nothing I can name. Hear me out!
'Last night I came back, and told, in part, what had befallen me; and
heard, in part, what had befallen Christian. To-day, one thrust in upon
his mother, open-mouthed, with ugly hints. She came to me straight and
asked for the whole truth. Rhoda, I swear I said nothing but bare truth,
mere plain, unvarnished fact, without one extravagant word; but her face
went grey and stony as she heard--oh! grey and stony it went; and when I
asked her to forgive me--I did, Rhoda, though what wrong had I done?--she
answered with her speech gone suddenly imperfect.'
Rhoda pressed forward, then stopped again--
'What did you tell her? I must know that.'
Philip hesitated: 'Then against Christian I must speak in substance,
however I choose my words.'
'Go on--go on!'
So Philip told, as justly and truly as he could, all he might.
'Was this,' put in Rhoda, 'off the Isle Sinister?'
'Yes.'
She heard all the tale: of Christian's sullen mood; of the dark something
attending below, that he knew, that he watched; of his unfinished attempt
at murder.
'That we knew,' she said.
Told in the dark by one who had lived through them, nearly died through
them, whose voice yet acknowledged the terror of them,--circumstances
were these of no vague indication to Rhoda. The reality of that dark
implication stirred her hair, chilled her blood, loosened her joints; yet
her faith in Christian did not fall.
But no word had she to say to refute the dreadful accusation; no word for
Philip; no word for an adverse world. And what word for his mother? Her
heart died within her.
The most signal evidence sufficient for her own white trust was a kiss, a
close embrace, hard upon the naming of Diadyomene. She had no shame to
withhold it; but too likely, under his mother's eye, discount would offer
were maiden blood quick to her face when she urged her tale.
She knew that an ominous hum was against Christian, because he had
struck, and swum, and escaped as no other man could; she guessed how the
roar went now because of Philip's evidence. How inconsiderable the wrong
of it all was, outdone if one injurious doubt his mother's heart
entertain.
To hatred and to love an equal disregard death opposed. No menace could
disturb, no need could disturb the absolute repose Christian had entered.
She envied his heart its quiet in an unknown grave.
'Be a little kind, Rhoda; be only just; say I was not to blame.'
She could not heed.
'Why do you hate me so? For your sake I freely forgive Christian all he
has done; for your sake I would have been his friend, his brother, in
spite of all. O Rhoda, what can I do?'
'Let be,' she said, 'for you can undo nothing now. If I saw you
kneeling--no, not before me--but contrite, praying: "God be merciful to
me, for by thought and word and deed I have sinned against the noblest,
the worthiest," then, then only, far from hate, I think I could almost
love.'
No indignation was aflame with the words; the weary voice was so sad and
so hopeless as to assure Philip she spoke of one dead.
'All I can do now is to pray God to keep me from cursing you and the
world for your working of a cruel wrong that can never be ended.' Her
voice pitched up on a strain. 'Oh, leave me, leave me, lest I have not
grace enough to bear with you!'
Philip, daring no more, stood and heard the hasty, uneven steps further
and die. His eyes were full of tears; his heart ached with love and pity
for Rhoda in her sorrow and desolation, that he could do nothing to
relieve--nothing, because her infatuation so extravagantly required.
Rhoda braced her heart for its work, reached to the latch, and stood face
to face with Lois. The trial began with the meeting of their eyes; Rhoda
stood it bravely, yielding no ground.
'Is he dead?' muttered Lois.
'None can tell us.' She faltered, and began to tremble, for the eyes of
Lois were dreadful to bear; dreadful too was her voice, hoarse and
imperfect.
'Is he worse than dead?'
'No! Never--never think it.'
Lois forbore awhile with wonderful stoicism. She set Rhoda in her own
chair; the turf-covered embers she broke into a blaze to be prodigal of
warmth; there was skilly waiting hot; there was water. She drew off
Rhoda's shoes, and bathed her feet, swollen and sore; she enforced food.
Though she would not yet ask further, the sight of her face, grey and
stony indeed, the touch of her hands, trembling over much, were
imperative to Rhoda's heart, demanding what final truth she could give.
'Child, if you need sleep, I can bear to wait.'
'I could not,' said Rhoda. 'No.'
She looked up into the tearless, sleepless eyes; she clasped the poor
shaking hands; and her heart rose in worship of the virtues of that
stern, patient soul.
As the tale began they were face to face; but before long Rhoda had
slipped from her seat, to speak with her head against his mother's knees.
'I will tell you all now. I must, for I think I am no longer bound to
silence, and, indeed, I could not bear it longer--I alone.'
'And you promised, if I would let you go unquestioned away.'
'I did, thinking I went to fathom a mystery. Ah, no! so deep and dark I
find it to be, the wit of man, I think, will never sound it. But your
faith and love can wing above it. Mine have--and yours, oh!--can, will,
must.'
'Ah, Christian! Child, where is my Christian? His face would tell me
briefly all I most would know.'
'You have listened to an ugly tale. I know--I know--I have seen Philip.
You must not consider it yet, till you have heard all. I own it not out
of accord with the rest, that reason just shudders and fails at; but
through all the dark of this unfathomable mystery my eyes can discern the
passing of our Christian white and blameless.'
'Your eyes!' moaned Lois.
Rhoda understood. She hid her face and could not speak. In her heart she
cried out against this punishment as more than she deserved, and more
than she could bear. No word that she could utter, no protest, no
remorse, could cover a wrongful thing she had said for Lois to recall. So
small the sin had looked then; so great now. She had spoken fairly of
deadly sin just once, and now Lois could not rely on her for any right
estimate, nor abide by her ways of regard.
'Ah, Christ!' she whispered in Christian's words, 'is there no
forgiveness of sins?'
Lois heard that, and it struck her to the heart.
Rhoda took up her burden again.
'Christian loved one Diadyomene. What she was I dare not think: she was
shaped like a woman, very beautiful. Dead she is now; I have seen her new
grave. God have mercy on her soul, if any soul she have.
'I have known this for long, for some months.'
'He told--you!'
'No--yes. I heard her name from him only in the ravings of fever. He
never thought I knew, till the very last: then I named her once; then he
kissed me; then he went.'
She turned back to the earliest evidence, telling in detail of
Christian's mad course with her; then of his ravings that remained in her
memory painfully distinct; she kept back nothing. Later she came to
faltering for a moment till Lois urged:
'And he asked you to be his wife?'
'Yes.'
'And because of this knowledge you refused him?'
'Yes. And he kissed me for joy of that nay-saying. On the very morrow he
went--do you remember? It was to her, I knew it.'
'O Rhoda, you might have saved him, and you did not!'
Rhoda raised her head and looked her wonder, for Christian's sake, with
resentment.
'God smote one,' she said, 'whose hand presumed to steady His ark.'
'O child, have you nothing to show to clear him?'
'Wait, wait! There is much yet to tell.'
Then she sped on the last day with its load for record, and, scrupulously
exact, gave words, tones, looks: his first going and return; the coming
of Philip's kinsmen; that strange vagary of the rowan berries that he had
won her to a bet. Lois had come upon a garbled version of Christian's
escape; Rhoda gave her his own, brief and direct.
'Was it Christian--man alive!--that came to you?'
'It was. It was. He ate and drank.'
Of their last meeting and parting she told, without reserve, unashamed,
even to her kissing the Cross on his breast.
Was ever maiden heart so candid of its passion for a man, and he alive?
Too single-hearted was Rhoda to know how much of the truth exhaled from
her words. Without real perception Lois drew it in; she grew very still;
even her hands were still. Verily it had got to this: that to hear her
dearest were dead, merely dead, could be the only better tale to come.
'Then,' said Rhoda, 'the morrow came and closed, and I would not believe
he could have kept his promise to be dead; and a day and a day followed;
and I dared tell you nothing, seeing I might not tell you all. Then I
thought that in such extremity for your sake I did right to discover all
I could of his secret; at least I would know if she, Diadyomene, were one
vowed as I guessed in the House Monitory.
'Now I know, though I would not own it then, that deep in my heart was a
terrible dread that if my guess were good, no death, but a guilty
transaction had taken our Christian from us. Ah! how could I? after, for
his asking, I had prayed for her.
'Now, though the truth lies still remote, beyond any guess of mine;
though I heard of a thing--God only knows how she came by her life or her
death--lacking evidence, ay, or against evidence, we yet owe him trust in
the dark, never to doubt of his living worthily--if--he be not--dead
worthily. Ah, ah! which I cannot tell you.
'I went to the House Monitory and knocked. So stupid and weak I was, for
longer and harder than I looked for had the way been, and my dread had
grown so very great, that when the wicket opened I had no word to say,
and just stared at the face that showed, looking to read an answer there
without ever a question. I got no more sense than to say: "Of your
charity pray for one Diadyomene."
'I saw startled recognition of the name. Like a coward, a fool, in sudden
terror of further knowledge, I loosed the sill and turned to run in
escape from it. I fell into blackness. Afterwards I was told I had
fainted.
'They had me in before I came to myself. Ah! kind souls they were. A
monitress knelt at either side, and one held my head. When memory came
back, I looked from one to the other, and dared not ask for what must
come. There was whispering apart that scared me. Then one came to me. "My
child," she said, "we will pray without question if you will; yet if you
may, tell us who is this Diadyomene?" I thought my senses had not come
back to me. They would have let me be, but I would not have it then. "Who
is she?" I said; "I do not know, I came to you to ask." "We do not know."
Bewildered, I turned to the one who had opened to me. "But you know; I
saw it in your face when I named her." "The name I knew, nothing more;
and that I had heard but once, and my memory had let it escape." "Where
had you heard it? Who knows?" I said. "On Christmas Eve a man came, a
young man, fair-haired." "Christian," I said, "that was Christian." At
that three faces started into an eager cluster. "Christian!" they said,
"was his name Christian?" Then they told me that after night-fall he had
come and named Diadyomene, and that before daybreak a woman, naked and
very beautiful, had come wailing an only word, "Christian." But because
of the hour of his coming I said no, it could not be he, for I had seen
him too shortly before. And indeed it seemed to me past belief that any
man could have come that way by night so speedily. So they gave detail:
his hair was fair; his eyes grey; he was of great stature; he was
unclothed, bleeding freshly, and, yes, they thought, gashed along the
shoulder. "But here is a sure token," and with that they showed me that
cross he had worn. "This," they said, "he unloosed from his neck."'
Never a word more Lois heard of that tale, though for near a minute
Rhoda carried it forward. Then looking up, she saw a face like a mask,
with features strained and eyes fixed, and sprang up in terror, vainly to
strive at winning from the stricken senses token of the life they locked.
Was she guilty of this?
Never did she know. For the few days that sad life held on till it
reached its term never a word came: not one fiducial word through the
naming of Christian to exonerate Rhoda.
So Lois, too, had the comfort of death, and Rhoda only was left, through
long life to go unenlightened, and still to go dauntless of the dark.
EPILOGUE
Tell us how an altered estimate grew after the passing of Christian, to
end his reproach.
But his name came to be a byword of disgrace, his story a dark, grotesque
legend among records of infamy.
Tell us how Rhoda lived to be happy.
But the pain and shame of his stigma her heart could never lay aside,
though long years gave to patience and fortitude a likeness to serenity
and strength. Where Christian had lived would she still abide all her
days; and the poor reward of her constancy was in a tribute of silence
concerning him that came to respect her presence.
Tell us how Philip ripened to iniquity and was cut off.
But a tiny germ of compunction, lurking somewhere in that barren
conscience, quickened and grew under Rhoda's shadow, till, spite of the
evidence of his own senses, spite of reason, spite of public judgment, he
entertained a strange doubt, and to his world and its ridicule
acknowledged it. Long years wore out Rhoda's suspicion of his sincerity;
long years raised him in her esteem in exact proportion as he sank in his
own.
Tell us how Rhoda never stooped to mate with one less worthy than her
first love.
But a day came when the House Monitory gave her way to a grave with a
little son against her breast; and she stood there to look out over the
sea that hid the bones of Christian, and thanked her God for appointing
her in His world a place as helpmeet for a weak soul, who by paths of
humility sought after right worship. Then she wept.
Tell us in some figure of words how the soul of Christian entered for
reward into the light of God's countenance.
At rest his body lay, and over it flowed the tides.
Tell us in some figure of words how the soul of Diadyomene, wan and
shivering, found an unaltered love, with full comprehension and great
compassion, her shelter in the light of God's countenance.
At rest her body lay, and over it sang the winds.
Tell us in some figure of words how Lois beheld these two hand in hand,
and recognised the wonderful ways of God and His mercy in the light of
His countenance.
At rest her body lay, and over it grasses grew.
We need no words to tell us that God did wipe away all tears from their
eyes.
Surely, surely; for quietly in the grave the elements resumed their
atoms.
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh
University Press
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes: On equal number occurrences of same word with and
without hyphens (seagull:sea-gull; piecemeal:piece-meal;
wellnigh:well-nigh) opted to leave both as printed.