A STRANGE FIGURE ON THE SHORE.
The fit of weeping passed when reason had come to her own again, and
Marian sat a long while gazing wistfully over the rippling sheen of
the sunlit sea. Once she thought she heard a gun fired in the
distance; and this spoke to her of a life being lived around her, of
other isles near by, wherein men’s voices were heard and the laughter
of children. She began to argue that she had but to wait for the flood
of the tide to put off her boat and come at some neighbouring shore
which should offer more welcome harbourage. Weary and faint as she
was, with hope dimmed and courage broken, despair was not for such an
hour. She had the idea to go up to the cliff and there to drink at the
spring which she had seen jetting forth from the face of the rock.
Thereafter she would sleep, and night would bring her food and
friends.
While she knew nothing of her situation, of the land upon which she
was cast, or of its environment, she was in reality upon that place
known to the Finns as the island of the Holy Well. In circuit perhaps
the third part of a mile, this speck of land lay five miles from that
other isle which had harboured the _Esmeralda_ from the storm. But it
was a kindlier shore, for the cliff reared its head only on the
westward side, and elsewhere silver sand made a bed, as of the dust of
jewels, for the gentle seas which fell upon it. A few sickly trees
stood sentinels about the spring, and heather-like bushes thrived and
flourished in the path of the water. Marian sought the scanty shade of
these trees so soon as it was plain to her that she must await the
will of the sea. She drank long draughts of the fresh water and bathed
her face and hands in the translucent pool. Now that the sun shone
gloriously upon the island her heart was lighter and her hope
returning. She perceived other isles, distant more than a mile, and
she could distinguish the cottages of the fishermen. Night should find
her sleeping in one of those huts, she argued. She would sleep the
sounder because of the sacrifice, because she had found strength to
give as it had been given unto her.
“I shall live my life with little Dick,” she said. “There is always a
living in England for those who will work. We will face the world
together, the child and I, and God will show us the road. I must
forget that it has ever been otherwise. Paul will marry a Russian
woman, and yesterday will be scored out of the book.”
She was tearing at the grass vindictively when she said this, and the
sheen of the pool glowing radiantly, she beheld her own face in it--a
face white and drawn and pitiful, with curls run wild and eyes shining
from black rings. Ill as the picture pleased her, a little vanity
helped to recall the faces of the Russian women she had known; and
therein she found a great content. It was good to tell herself that
Paul’s wife would have the face of a Japanese; that her figure would
be flat like a board; that her skin would be parched and brown, and
that her dresses would come from Paris and would not fit her. She said
that she hated all Russian women; but the woman who was to be his wife
she hated already with a hatred which, when she reflected upon it a
little while, compelled her to laugh. She was still laughing when she
saw the apparition on the beach.
So intent had she been upon her occupation of gazing into the pool
that for the time being she lost all memory of the island and of the
silent seas about her. When she looked up again and came back to
remembrance, her first thought was of the boat lying down there upon
the silver sand below her. Quickly her eyes sought it out; but she
could scarce trust them when she beheld a strange figure, come, she
knew not whence, to stand by the seashore and watch her vain
employment.
The figure was the figure of a man garbed in a flowing robe of brown
cloth girdled at the waist with a coarse knotted rope. Huge in
stature, the monk, for such he seemed to be, stood motionless as a
pillar of rock. His long waving hair fell upon his shoulders
abundantly and was caught by the gentle breeze, which tossed it over
his haggard face so that his features were hidden. The glowing eyes
shone cadaverously with a light of fasting and of faith. So old were
the leather sandals he wore that they permitted the sharp rock to cut
his feet, the sea to wash them. Strange and forbidding, like some wild
man of the woods, the apparition stood with folded arms to watch the
girl, while she in turn, speechless with fear and dread of the
mystery, crouched upon the grass and found herself unable to utter a
word or stir a step from the place. Never in all her life had she been
so conscious of that ultimate terror of the unseen, which surpasses
the terror of death itself. Sure as she was that no human thing had
moved upon the island when she first trod it, this apparition seemed
to have risen up before her from the very heart of the rock. Her
impulse was to cry out, to flee the place as an abode of dreadful
images, but her limbs did not answer to her will. The cry she would
have uttered froze upon her lips; she shook with the beating of her
heart. For some little while indeed the trance of fear passed to
oblivion. She fell in a swoon, and when consciousness returned to her
the apparition had vanished.
Marian had never known, until she came to Russia, what the meaning of
a nervous system might be. Though her nerves had been shattered by the
terrors of Alexander and by days and nights of dreadful contemplation,
she was still able to recover quickly from panic and to laugh at it.
When she found herself crouching upon the grass, and was conscious of
a great glare of sunlight in her eyes, she did not, upon the instant,
recall why she had swooned. The island about her was as desolate as
when first she set foot upon it. The sea droned its lazy song as
though welcoming the restful spring; the beach showed no sign of human
thing. She watched it dreamily for a little while and then recalled
the terror.
“It was a dream,” she said, though she shuddered again at the memory.
“I must have been asleep. How could there be anyone here? Or if there
is, why should I be afraid of him? What nonsense to think of such
things!”
Consoling herself thus, she sprang up lightly and ran down to the
shore. Her boat was just as she had left it; but when she turned to
examine the sand thereabout she discovered unmistakably the imprint of
a sandalled foot; she could trace the steps to the border of the
grass, but thereafter they were lost. And at this she stood spellbound
again, not fearing because a man was with her upon the island, but
because he hid himself thus from her, and his place of habitation was
not to be discovered by her eyes. She had heard, it is true, of
fanatical hermits who build pillars for themselves upon these lone
rocks of Finland, but the traditions did not help her reasoning. She
thought that she could never rest until she had seen and spoken to the
unknown. The terrible hunger from which she suffered drove her rather
to desire a meeting with him. She must know that he was human. Calling
out with all her strength, she began to run across the island. She
searched the beach and all the little caves and crannies cut out in
the heart of the rock. She stood to listen for the sound of steps, but
the dreadful silence was unbroken. No dwelling place nor other trace
of man, save those footsteps upon the shore, was to be discovered. It
was an awful thought for her, this thought of mystery and concealment;
it was more dreadful to think that night might come and trap her still
on the haven.
The sun had passed the meridian by this time. It was nearly three in
the afternoon. Hunger, relentless and increasing, became an added
punishment of her pilgrimage. She had the strength to walk no more,
yet feared to sleep. She knew not what might happen to her if she lost
consciousness and the apparition should stand over her while she
dreamed. Her place of refuge was a ledge of rock raised ten feet above
the sand, and so narrow that anyone coming up to her must awake her in
the act. Here she was sheltered from the sun; a great boulder of
granite hid her from the view of anyone who might pass on the beach
below. At the very moment when she said that she would not close her
eyes, nature prevailed above her resolution and she fell into a sound
sleep. When she awoke, the sun was dipping into the sea and the chill
of a spring sunset was upon the island.
The West was aflame then with mountains of crimson light merging at
the crown of the arc into orange and purple and the finer shades of
yellow. The monitive stillness of the coming night lay heavy upon the
waters. There were gray shadows everywhere and darkness in the glens
of the rock. Marian sat up, blaming herself that she had slept so
long. Her brain burned and her hands were hot and dry. She had never
known that hunger could be such a cruel foe. It seemed to her then
that she would have given half her years for a drink of milk and a
cake of bread. All the dainties she loved were shaped in fancy before
her eyes; she could have eaten the very grass. Slowly and painfully
she rose, determined to go up again and drink a little water at the
spring, but no sooner was she upon her feet than she cried out with
joy and clasped her hands as a child that hears of a holiday.
While she slept someone had set a rough earthenware dish at her side.
She opened the dish to find that it contained a loaf of coarse brown
bread with a mess of meat and vegetables, and close by there was a
bottle of red wine, rough and sour, but more sweet to the little
wanderer than all the vintages of Champagne.
“A miracle! a miracle!” she cried gladly, while she took the black
bread in her hands and drank a long draught of the wine. “The ghost
has been here while I slept, and I share his dinner. Oh, how good it
is to eat and drink!”
The wine warmed her as a strong cordial. Blood suffused her cheeks;
there was a nervous pulsation in all her limbs. She feared the
apparition no more, for she knew that some wandering priest must be
with her upon the island and that he had set the food at her side. All
her thought then was to get her boat into the water and to set off for
that unknown port which should be to her a port of safety. She would
not delay another hour upon the desolate isle, for the flood was now
surging upon the beach and the heralds of night were winging in the
East.
Strong in the desire to quit the lonely scene, she ate her food
quickly and ran down to the beach; but there she stood once more
irresolute, for a ship lay in the offing, and it was one of the most
curious she had ever seen.