for the ensuing evening. Would Adrian’s boy really arrive in so
short a time? And would Adrian himself, like that grotesque bird, so
imperturbable in the midst of its funeral pyre, rise to new life after
all this misery? Let it be her--oh, great heavenly powers!--let it be
her and not Nance, nor Baptiste, nor any other, who should save him and
heal him!
Still looking at the picture on the wall, she repeated to her companion
a favourite verse of Mrs. Renshaw’s which she had learnt as a child.
“Death is now the phoenix’ nest
And the turtle’s loyal breast
To eternity doth rest.
“Leaving no posterity,
’Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.”
The rich dirge-like music of these Shakespearian rhymes--placed so
quaintly under their strange title of “Threnos,” at the end of the
familiar volume--had a soothing influence upon them both at that moment.
It seemed to Philippa as if, by her utterance of them, they both came
to share some sad sweet obsequies over the body of something that
was neither human nor inhuman, something remote, strange, ineffable,
that lay between them, and was of them and yet not of them, like the
spirit-corpse of an unborn child.
They reached the bank of the river. The waters of the Loon were high
and, through the darkness, a murmur as if composed of a hundred vague
whispering voices blending together, rose to their ears from its dark
surface.
They moved down close to the river’s edge. A small barge, with its
long guiding-pole lying across it, lay moored to the bank. Without a
moment’s delay--as if the thing had been prepared in advance to receive
him--Adrian jumped into the barge and seized the pole.
“Come!” he said quietly.
She was too reckless and indifferent to everything now, to care greatly
what they did; so without a word of protest, or any attempt to turn
his purpose, she leapt in after him and settling herself in the stern,
seized the heavy wooden rudder.
The tide was running sea-ward, fast and strong, and the barge, pushed
vigorously by Adrian’s pole away from the bank, swept forward into the
darkness.
Adrian, standing firmly on his feet, continued to hold the pole, his
figure looming out of obscurity, tall and commanding.
The tide soon swept them beyond the last houses of the town and out
into the open fens.
The night was very still and quite free from wind but a thin veil of
mist concealed the stars.
Adrian, letting the pole sink down on the deck of the barge, moved
forward to where she sat holding the rudder, and stretched himself out
at her feet.
“Will they follow us?” he whispered in a dreamy indifferent voice.
“No, no!” the girl answered. “They’ll never think of this. They’ll wait
for us and when we don’t come back, they’ll search the town and the
roads. Let’s go on as we are, dearest. What does it matter? What does
anything matter?”
She lay back and ran her fingers gently and dreamily over his forehead.
Swiftly and silently the barge swept on, and willows, poplars, weirs,
dam-gates, tall reeds and ruined rush-thatched hovels, passed them by,
like figures woven out of unreal shadows.
The water gurgled against the sides of the barge and whispered
mournfully against the banks, and, as they advanced, the mystery of the
night and the brooding silence of the fens received them in a mystic
embrace.
A strange deep happiness gradually surged up in Philippa’s heart.
She was with the man she loved; she was with the darkness she loved,
and the river she loved. The Loon carried them forward, the pitiful
friendly Loon, the Loon which had flowed by the dwelling of her race
for so many ages; the Loon which had given Baltazar the peace he craved.
Just the faintest tremor of doubt troubled her, the thought that it
was towards Nance--towards her rival--that the tide was bearing them;
but let come what might come, that hour at least was hers! Not all
the world could take that hour from her--and the future? What did the
future matter?
As to the brain-sick man himself, who lay at the girl’s feet, it were
long and hard to tell all the strange dim visions that flowed through
his head. He took Philippa’s hand in his own and kissed it tenderly
but, had the girl known, his thoughts were not of her. They were not
even of his son; of the son for whom he had so passionately longed.
They were not of any human being. They circled constantly--these
thoughts--round a strange vague image, an image moulded of white mists
and white vapours and the reflection of white stars in dark waters.
This image, of a shape dim and vast and elemental, seemed to flow
upwards from land and sea, and stretch forth towards infinite space. It
was an image of something beyond human expression, of something beyond
earth-loves and earth-hatreds, beyond life and also beyond death. It
was the image of Nothingness; and yet in this Nothingness there was a
relief, an escape, a refuge, a beyond-hope, which made all the ways of
humanity seem indifferent, all its gods childish, all its dreams vain,
and yet offered a large cool draught of “deep and liquid rest” the
taste of which set the soul completely free.
Many hours passed thus over their heads, as the tide carried them down
towards Rodmoor, round the great sweeping curves made by the Loon,
through the stubble-fields and the marshes.
It was, at last, the striking of the side of the barge against one of
the arches of the New Bridge, which roused the prostrate man from the
trance into which he had fallen.
As soon as they had emerged on the further side of the arch, he leapt
to his feet. Bending forward towards Philippa, he pointed with an
outstretched arm towards the shadowy houses of Rodmoor which, with here
and there a faint light in some high window, could now be discerned
through the darkness.
“I smell the sea!” he cried. “I smell the sea! Drift on, Phil, my
little one, drift on to the harbour! I must leave you now. We shall
meet by the sea, my girl--by the sea in the old way--but I can’t wait
now. I must be alone, alone, alone!”
Waving his hand wildly with a gesture of farewell, he clutched at a
clump of reeds and sprang out upon the bank. Philippa, letting the
barge float on as it pleased, followed him with all the speed she could.
He had secured a considerable start of her, however, and it was all she
could do to keep him in sight in the darkness.
He ran first towards the church, but when he reached the path which
deviated towards the sand-dunes, he turned sharply eastward. He ran
wildly, desperately, with no thought in his whole being but the feeling
that he must reach the sea and be alone.
He felt at that moment as though the whole of humanity--loathsome,
cancerous, suffocating humanity--were pursuing him with outstretched
hands.
Once, as he was mid-way between the church path and the dunes, he
turned his head, and catching sight of Philippa’s figure following him,
he plunged forward in a fury of panic.
As he crossed the dunes, at this savage pace, something seemed to break
in his brain or in his heart. He spat out a mouthful of sweet-tasting
blood, and, falling on his knees, fumbled in the loose sand, as if
searching for some lost object.
Staggering once more to his feet, and seeing that his pursuer was near,
he stumbled wildly down the slope of the dunes and tottered across the
sand to the water’s edge.
He was there at last--safe from everything--safe from love and hatred
and madness and pity--safe from unspeakable imaginations--safe from
himself!
The long dark line of waves broke calmly and indifferently at his feet,
and away--away into the eternal night--stretched the vast expanse of
the sea, dim, vague, full of inexpressible, infinite reassurance.
He raised both his arms into the air. For one brief miraculous
moment his brain became clear and an ecstatic feeling of triumph and
unconquerable joy swept through him.
“Baptiste!” he shouted in a shrill vibrating voice, “Baptiste!”
His cry went reverberating over the water. He turned and tried to
struggle back. A rush of blood once more filled his mouth. His head
grew dizzy.
“Tell Nance that I--that I--” His words died into a choking murmur and
he fell heavily on his face on the sand.
He was dead when she reached him. She lifted him gently till he lay on
his back and then pressing her hand to his heart, she knew that it was
the end.
She sank beside him, bowing her forehead till it touched the ground,
and clinging to his neck. After a minute or two she rose, and taking
his hand in her own she sat staring into the darkness, with wide-open
tearless eyes.
She was “alone with her dead” and nothing mattered any more now.
She remained motionless for several long moments, while over her head
something that resembled eternity seemed to pass by, on beautiful,
terrible, beating wings.
Then she rose up upon her feet.
“She shall never have him!” she murmured. “She shall never have him!”
She tore from her waist a strongly-woven embroidered cord, the long
tassels of which hung down at her side. She dragged the dead man to the
very edge of the water. With an incredible effort, she raised him up
till he leant, limp and heavy, against her own body.
Then, supporting him with difficulty, and with difficulty keeping
herself from sinking under his weight, she twisted the cord round them
both, and tied it in a secure knot. Holding him thus before her, with
his chin resting on her shoulder, she staggered forward into the water.
It was not easy to advance, and her heart seemed on the point of
breaking with the strain. But the savage thought that she was taking
him away from Nance--from Nance and from every one--to possess him
herself forever, gave her a supernatural strength.
It seemed as though the demon of madness, which had passed from Adrian
at the last, and left him free, had entered into her.
If that was indeed the case, it is more than likely that when she fell
at last--fell backwards under his weight beneath the waves--it was
rather with a mad ecstasy of abandonment that she drank the choking
water, than with any hopeless struggle to escape the end she had willed.
Bound tightly together, both by the girl’s clinging arms and by the
cord she had fastened round them, the North Sea as it drew back in the
out-flowing of its tide, carried their bodies forth into the darkness.
Far from land it carried them--under the misty unseeing sky--far from
misery and madness, and when the dawn came trembling at last over the
restless expanse of water, it found only the white sea-horses and the
white sea-birds. Those two had sunk together; out of reach of humanity,
out of reach of Rodmoor.
THE END