long sweep of sand I could hear the panting of the sea. It was heaving
and swirling about the reef, but along the shore it rippled in gently
enough. There was no sign of the schooner, nor was there any wreckage
upon the beach, which did not surprise me, as I knew there was a great
undertow in those waters. A couple of broad-winged gulls were hovering
and skimming over the scene of the shipwreck, as though many strange
things were visible to them beneath the waves. At times I could hear
their raucous voices as they spoke to one another of what they saw.
When I came back from my walk the woman was waiting at the door for me.
I began to wish when I saw her that I had never saved her, for here was
an end of my privacy. She was very young--at the most nineteen, with a
pale, somewhat refined face, yellow hair, merry blue eyes, and shining
teeth. Her beauty was of an ethereal type. She looked so white and light
and fragile that she might have been the spirit of that storm-foam from
out of which I plucked her. She had wreathed some of Madge's garments
round her in a way which was quaint and not unbecoming. As I strode
heavily up the pathway she put out her hands with a pretty childlike
gesture, and ran down towards me, meaning, as I surmise, to thank me for
having saved her, but I put her aside with a wave of my hand and passed
her. At this she seemed somewhat hurt, and the tears sprang into her
eyes; but she followed me into the sitting-room and watched me
wistfully. "What country do you come from?" I asked her suddenly.
She smiled when I spoke, but shook her head.
"Francais?" I asked. "Deutsch?" "Espagnol?"--each time she shook her
head, and then she rippled off into a long statement in some tongue of
which I could not understand one word.
After breakfast was over, however, I got a clue to her nationality.
Passing along the beach once more, I saw that in a cleft of the ridge a
piece of wood had been jammed. I rowed out to it in my boat and brought
it ashore. It was part of the sternpost of a boat, and on it, or rather
on the piece of wood attached to it, was the word "Archangel," painted
in strange, quaint lettering. "So," I thought, as I paddled slowly back,
"this pale damsel is a Russian. A fit subject for the White Czar, and a
proper dweller on the shores of the White Sea!" It seemed to me strange
that one of her apparent refinement should perform so long a journey in
so frail a craft. When I came back into the house I pronounced the word
"Archangel" several times in different intonations, but she did not
appear to recognise it.
I shut myself up in the laboratory all the morning, continuing a
research which I was making upon the nature of the allotropic forms of
carbon and of sulphur. When I came out at mid-day for some food, she was
sitting by the table with a needle and thread mending some rents in her
clothes, which were now dry. I resented her continued presence, but I
could not turn her out on the beach to shift for herself. Presently she
presented a new phase of her character. Pointing to herself and then to
the scene of the shipwreck, she held up one finger, by which I
understood her to be asking whether she was the only one saved. I nodded
my head to indicate that she was. On this she sprang out of the chair,
with a cry of great joy, and holding the garment which she was mending
over her head, and swaying it from side to side with the motion of her
body, she danced as lightly as a feather all round the room, and then
out through the open door into the sunshine. As she whirled round she
sang in a plaintive, shrill voice some uncouth, barbarous chant,
expressive of exultation. I called out to her, "Come in, you young
fiend; come in, and be silent!" but she went on with her dance. Then she
suddenly ran towards me, and catching my hand before I could pluck it
away, she kissed it. While we were at dinner she spied one of my
pencils, and taking it up she wrote the two words "Sophie Ramusine" upon
a piece of paper, and then pointed to herself as a sign that that was
her name. She handed the pencil to me, evidently expecting that I would
be equally communicative, but I put it in my pocket as a sign that I
wished to hold no intercourse with her.
Every moment of my life now I regretted the unguarded precipitancy with
which I had saved this woman. What was it to me whether she had lived or
died? I was no young hot-headed youth to do such things. It was bad
enough to be compelled to have Madge in the house, but she was old and
ugly, and could be ignored. This one was young and lively, and so
fashioned as to divert attention from graver things. Where could I send
her, and what could I do with her? If I sent information to Wick it
would mean that officials and others would come to me, and pry, and
peep, and chatter--a hateful thought. It was better to endure her
presence than that.
I soon found that there were fresh troubles in store for me. There is no
place safe from the swarming, restless race of which I am a member. In
the evening, when the sun was dipping down behind the hills, casting
them into dark shadow, but gilding the sands and casting a great glory
over the sea, I went, as is my custom, for a stroll along the beach.
Sometimes on these occasions I took my book with me. I did so on this
night, and stretching myself upon a sand-dune I composed myself to read.
As I lay there I suddenly became aware of a shadow which interposed
itself between the sun and myself. Looking round, I saw, to my great
surprise, a very tall, powerful man, who was standing a few yards off,
and who, instead of looking at me, was ignoring my existence completely,
and was gazing over my head with a stern set face at the bay and the
black line of the Mansie reef. His complexion was dark, with black hair
and short curling beard, a hawk-like nose, and golden earrings in his
ears--the general effect being wild and somewhat noble. He wore a faded
velveteen jacket, a red flannel shirt, and high sea-boots, coming
half-way up his thighs. I recognised him at a glance as being the same
man who had been left on the wreck the night before.
"Hullo!" I said, in an aggrieved voice. "You got ashore all right,
then?"
"Yes," he answered, in good English. "It was no doing of mine. The waves
threw me up. I wish to God I had been allowed to drown!" There was a
slight foreign lisp in his accent which was rather pleasing. "Two good
fishermen, who live round yonder point, pulled me out and cared for
me--yet I could not honestly thank them for it."
"Ho! ho!" thought I, "here is a man of my own kidney. Why do you wish to
be drowned?" I asked.
"Because," he cried, throwing out his long arms with a passionate,
despairing gesture, "there--there in that blue smiling bay lies my soul,
my treasure--everything that I loved and lived for."
"Well, well," I said. "People are ruined every day, but there's no use
making a fuss about it. Let me inform you that this ground on which you
walk is my ground, and that the sooner you take yourself off it the
better pleased I shall be. One of you is quite trouble enough."
"One of us?" he gasped.
"Yes--if you could take her off with you I should be still more
grateful."
He gazed at me for a moment as if hardly able to realise what I said,
and then, with a wild cry, he ran away from me with prodigious speed
and raced along the sands towards my house. Never before or since have I
seen a human being run so fast. I followed as rapidly as I could,
furious at this threatened invasion, but long before I reached the house
he had disappeared through the open door. I heard a great scream from
the inside, and, as I came nearer, the sound of the man's bass voice
speaking rapidly and loudly. When I looked in, the girl Sophie Ramusine
was crouching in a corner, cowering away, with fear and loathing
expressed on her averted face and in every line of her shrinking form.
The other, with his dark eyes flashing, and his outstretched hands
quivering with emotion, was pouring forth a torrent of passionate,
pleading words. He made a step forward to her as I entered, but she
writhed still further away, and uttered a sharp cry like that of a
rabbit when the weazel has him by the throat.
"Here!" I said, pulling him back from her. "This is a pretty to-do! What
do you mean? Do you think this is a wayside inn or place of public
accommodation?"
"Oh, sir," he said, "excuse me. This woman is my wife, and I feared
that she was drowned. You have brought me back to life."
"Who are you?" I asked roughly.
"I am a man from Archangel," he said simply: "a Russian man."
"What is your name?"
"Ourganeff."
"Ourganeff!--and hers is Sophie Ramusine. She is no wife of yours. She
has no ring."
"We are man and wife in the sight of Heaven," he said solemnly, looking
upwards. "We are bound by higher laws than those of earth." As he spoke
the girl slipped behind me and caught me by the other hand, pressing it
as though beseeching my protection. "Give me up my wife, sir," he went
on. "Let me take her away from here."
"Look here, you--whatever your name is," I said sternly, "I don't want
this wench here. I wish I had never seen her. If she died it would be no
grief to me. But as to handing her over to you, when it is clear she
fears and hates you, I won't do it. So now just clear your great body
out of this, and leave me to my books. I hope I may never look upon your
face again."
"You won't give her up to me?" he said hoarsely.
"I'll see you damned first!" I answered.
"Suppose I take her," he cried, his dark face growing darker.
All my tigerish blood flushed up in a moment. I picked up a billet of
wood from beside the fireplace. "Go," I said, in a low voice; "go quick,
or I may do you an injury." He looked at me irresolutely for a moment,
and then he left the house. He came back again in a moment, however, and
stood in the doorway looking in at us.
"Have a heed what you do," he said. "The woman is mine, and I shall have
her. When it comes to blows, a Russian is as good a man as a Scotchman."
"We shall see that," I cried, springing forward, but he was already
gone, and I could see his tall form moving away through the gathering
darkness.
For a month or more after this things went smoothly with us. I never
spoke to the Russian girl, nor did she ever address me. Sometimes when I
was at work at my laboratory she would slip inside the door and sit
silently there watching me with her great eyes. At first this intrusion
annoyed me, but by degrees, finding that she made no attempt to distract
my attention, I suffered her to remain. Encouraged by this concession,
she gradually came to move the stool on which she sat nearer and nearer
to my table, until, after gaining a little every day during some weeks,
she at last worked her way right up to me, and used to perch herself
beside me whenever I worked. In this position she used, still without
ever obtruding her presence in any way, to make herself very useful by
holding my pens, test-tubes, bottles, etc., and handing me whatever I
wanted, with never-failing sagacity. By ignoring the fact of her being a
human being, and looking upon her as a useful automatic machine, I
accustomed myself to her presence so far as to miss her on the few
occasions when she was not at her post. I have a habit of talking aloud
to myself at times when I work, so as to fix my results better in my
mind. The girl must have had a surprising memory for sounds, for she
could always repeat the words which I let fall in this way, without, of
course, understanding in the least what they meant. I have often been
amused at hearing her discharge a volley of chemical equations and
algebraic symbols at old Madge, and then burst into a ringing laugh when
the crone would shake her head, under the impression, no doubt, that she
was being addressed in Russian.
She never went more than a few yards from the house, and indeed never
put her foot over the threshold without looking carefully out of each
window, in order to be sure that there was nobody about. By this I knew
that she suspected that her fellow-countryman was still in the
neighbourhood, and feared that he might attempt to carry her off. She
did something else which was significant. I had an old revolver with
some cartridges, which had been thrown away among the rubbish. She found
this one day, and at once proceeded to clean it and oil it. She hung it
up near the door, with the cartridges in a little bag beside it, and
whenever I went for a walk she would take it down and insist upon my
carrying it with me. In my absence she would always bolt the door. Apart
from her apprehensions she seemed fairly happy, busying herself in
helping Madge when she was not attending upon me. She was wonderfully
nimble-fingered and natty in all domestic duties.
It was not long before I discovered that her suspicions were well
founded, and that this man from Archangel was still lurking in the
vicinity. Being restless one night, I rose and peered out of the window.
The weather was somewhat cloudy, and I could barely make out the line of
the sea and the loom of my boat upon the beach. As I gazed, however, and
my eyes became accustomed to the obscurity, I became aware that there
was some other dark blur upon the sands, and that in front of my very
door, where certainly there had been nothing of the sort the preceding
night. As I stood at my diamond-paned lattice still peering and peeping
to make out what this might be, a great bank of clouds rolled slowly
away from the face of the moon, and a flood of cold, clear light was
poured down upon the silent bay and the long sweep of its desolate
shores. Then I saw what this was which haunted my doorstep. It was he,
the Russian. He squatted there like a gigantic toad, with his legs
doubled under him in strange Mongolian fashion, and his eyes fixed
apparently upon the window of the room in which the young girl and the
housekeeper slept. The light fell upon his upturned face, and I saw once
more the hawk-like grace of his countenance, with the single
deeply-indented line of care upon his brow, and the protruding beard
which marks the passionate nature. My first impulse was to shoot him as
a trespasser, but as I gazed my resentment changed into pity and
contempt. "Poor fool," I said to myself, "is it then possible that you,
whom I have seen looking open-eyed at present death, should have your
whole thoughts and ambition centred upon this wretched slip of a girl--a
girl, too, who flies from you and hates you! Most women would love
you--were it but for that dark face and great handsome body of
yours--and yet you must needs hanker after the one in a thousand who
will have no traffic with you." As I returned to my bed I chuckled much
to myself over this thought. I knew that my bars were strong and my
bolts thick. It mattered little to me whether this strange man spent his
night at my door or a hundred leagues off, so long as he was gone by the
morning. As I expected, when I rose and went out there was no sign of
him, nor had he left any trace of his midnight vigil.
It was not long, however, before I saw him again. I had been out for a
row one morning, for my head was aching, partly from prolonged stooping
and partly from the effects of a noxious drug which I had inhaled the
night before. I pulled along the coast some miles, and then, feeling
thirsty, I landed at a place where I knew that a fresh water stream
trickled down into the sea. This rivulet passed through my land, but the
mouth of it, where I found myself that day, was beyond my boundary line.
I felt somewhat taken aback when, rising from the stream at which I had
slaked my thirst, I found myself face to face with the Russian. I was as
much a trespasser now as he was, and I could see at a glance that he
knew it.
"I wish to speak a few words to you," he said gravely.
"Hurry up, then!" I answered, glancing at my watch. "I have no time to
listen to chatter."
"Chatter!" he repeated angrily. "Ah, but there! You Scotch people are
strange men. Your face is hard and your words rough, but so are those of
the good fishermen with whom I stay, yet I find that beneath it all
there lies kind, honest natures. No doubt you are kind and good too, in
spite of your roughness."
"In the name of the devil," I said, "say your say, and go your way. I am
weary of the sight of you."
"Can I not soften you in any way?" he cried. "Ah, see--see here"--he
produced a small Grecian cross from inside his velvet jacket. "Look at
this. Our religions may differ in form, but at least we have some common
thoughts and feelings when we see this emblem."
"I am not so sure of that," I answered.
He looked at me thoughtfully.
"You are a very strange man," he said at last. "I cannot understand you.
You still stand between me and Sophie. It is a dangerous position to
take, sir. Oh, believe me, before it is too late. If you did but know
what I have done to gain that woman--how I have risked my body, how I
have lost my soul. You are a small obstacle to some which I have
surmounted--you, whom a rip with a knife, or a blow from a stone, would
put out of my way for ever. But God preserve me from that," he cried
wildly. "I am deep--too deep--already. Anything rather than that."
"You would do better to go back to your country," I said, "than to
skulk about these sand-hills and disturb my leisure. When I have proof
that you have gone away, I shall hand this woman over to the protection
of the Russian Consul at Edinburgh. Until then, I shall guard her
myself, and not you, nor any Muscovite that ever breathed, shall take
her from me."
"And what is your object in keeping me from Sophie?" he asked. "Do you
imagine that I would injure her? Why, man, I would give my life freely
to save her from the slightest harm. Why do you do this thing?"
"I do it because it is my good pleasure to act so," I answered. "I give
no man reasons for my conduct."
"Look here!" he cried, suddenly blazing into fury, and advancing towards
me with his shaggy mane bristling and his brown hands clenched. "If I
thought you had one dishonest thought towards this girl--if for a moment
I had reason to believe that you had any base motive for detaining
her--as sure as there is a God in Heaven I should drag the heart out of
your bosom with my hands." The very idea seemed to have put the man in a
frenzy, for his face was all distorted and his hands opened and shut
convulsively. I thought that he was about to spring at my throat.
"Stand off!" I said, putting my hand on my pistol. "If you lay a finger
on me I shall kill you."
He put his hand into his pocket, and for a moment I thought that he was
about to produce a weapon too, but instead of that he whipped out a
cigarette and lit it, breathing the smoke rapidly into his lungs. No
doubt he had found by experience that this was the most effectual way of
curbing his passions.
"I told you," he said in a quieter voice, "that my name is
Ourganeff--Alexis Ourganeff. I am a Finn by birth, but I have spent my
life in every part of the world. I was one who could never be still, nor
settle down to a quiet existence. After I came to own my own ship there
is hardly a port from Archangel to Australia which I have not entered. I
was rough and wild and free, but there was one at home, sir, who was
prim and white-handed and soft-tongued, skilful in little fancies and
conceits which women love. This youth by his wiles and tricks stole from
me the love of the girl whom I had ever marked as my own, and who up to
that time had seemed in some sort inclined to return my passion. I had
been on a voyage to Hammerfest for ivory, and coming back unexpectedly,
I learned that my pride and treasure was to be married to this
soft-skinned boy, and that the party had actually gone to the church. In
such moments, sir, something gives way in my head, and I hardly know
what I do. I landed with a boat's crew--all men who had sailed with me
for years, and who were as true as steel. We went up to the church. They
were standing, she and he, before the priest, but the thing had not been
done. I dashed between them and caught her round the waist. My men beat
back the frightened bridegroom and the lookers-on. We bore her down to
the boat and aboard our vessel, and then getting up anchor, we sailed
away across the White Sea until the spires of Archangel sank down behind
the horizon. She had my cabin, my room, every comfort. I slept among the
men in the forecastle. I hoped that in time her aversion to me would
wear away, and that she would consent to marry me in England or in
France. For days and days we sailed. We saw the North Cape die away
behind us, and we skirted the grey Norwegian coast, but still, in spite
of every attention, she would not forgive me for tearing her from that
pale-faced lover of hers. Then came this cursed storm which shattered
both my ship and my hopes, and has deprived me even of the sight of the
woman for whom I have risked so much. Perhaps she may learn to love me
yet. You, sir," he said wistfully, "look like one who has seen much of
the world. Do you not think that she may come to forget this man and to
love me?" "I am tired of your story," I said, turning away. "For my
part, I think you are a great fool. If you imagine that this love of
yours will pass away, you had best amuse yourself as best you can until
it does. If, on the other hand, it is a fixed thing, you cannot do
better than cut your throat, for that is the shortest way out of it. I
have no more time to waste on the matter." With this I hurried away and
walked down to the boat. I never looked round, but I heard the dull
sound of his feet upon the sands as he followed me.
"I have told you the beginning of my story," he said, "and you shall
know the end some day. You would do well to let the girl go."
I never answered him, but pushed the boat off. When I had rowed some
distance out I looked back and saw his tall figure upon the yellow sand
as he stood gazing thoughtfully after me. When I looked again, some
minutes later, he had disappeared.
For a long time after this my life was as regular and as monotonous as
it had been before the shipwreck. At times I hoped that the man from
Archangel had gone away altogether, but certain footsteps which I saw
upon the sand, and more particularly a little pile of cigarette ash
which I found one day behind a hillock from which a view of the house
might be obtained, warned me that, though invisible, he was still in the
vicinity. My relations with the Russian girl remained the same as
before. Old Madge had been somewhat jealous of her presence at first,
and seemed to fear that what little authority she had would be taken
away from her. By degrees, however, as she came to realise my utter
indifference, she became reconciled to the situation, and, as I have
said before, profited by it, as our visitor performed much of the
domestic work.
And now I am coming near the end of this narrative of mine, which I have
written a great deal more for my own amusement than for that of any one
else. The termination of the strange episode in which these two Russians
had played a part was as wild and as sudden as the commencement. The
events of one single night freed me from all my troubles, and left me
once more alone with my books and my studies, as I had been before their
intrusion. Let me endeavour to describe how this came about.
I had had a long day of heavy and wearying work, so that in the evening
I determined upon taking a long walk. When I emerged from the house my
attention was attracted by the appearance of the sea. It lay like a
sheet of glass, so that never a ripple disturbed its surface. Yet the
air was filled with that indescribable moaning sound which I have
alluded to before--a sound as though the spirits of all those who lay
beneath those treacherous waters were sending a sad warning of coming
troubles to their brethren in the flesh. The fishermen's wives along
that coast know the eerie sound, and look anxiously across the waters
for the brown sails making for the land. When I heard it I stepped back
into the house and looked at the glass. It was down below 29°. Then I
knew that a wild night was coming upon us.
Underneath the hills where I walked that evening it was dull and chill,
but their summits were rosy-red and the sea was brightened by the
sinking sun. There were no clouds of importance in the sky, yet the dull
groaning of the sea grew louder and stronger. I saw, far to the
eastward, a brig beating up for Wick, with a reef in her topsails. It
was evident that her captain had read the signs of nature as I had done.
Behind her a long, lurid haze lay low upon the water, concealing the
horizon. "I had better push on," I thought to myself, "or the wind may
rise before I get back."