She struck a match, kindled the little crackling tube, and threw the
light out into the shrubbery. It traced a tiny arc of flame and vanished.
The sky was full of the mewing of lost kittens, it seemed. The sound came
from innumerable peewits, that fled and circled above the slopes of the
darkening meadows below.
"What an uncomfortable seer you are!" she said, "to people this dear
human night with your fancies. No doubt, now, you will read between
the lines of that bird speech down there?" (She looked at me curiously,
but with none of the mournful speculativeness of a soul struggling
against the dimness of its own vision.) "To me it is articulate
happiness--nothing more abstruse. Yes, I have seen a mastodon; and I was
as glad to happen on the beast as a naturalist is glad to find a missing
link in a chain of evidence. From the moment, I knew myself quite clearly
to be the recovered heir to this abused planet."
She paused a moment, and contracted her brows, as if regretfully and in
anger. "If I had only seen it sooner!" she cried, low; "before I had, in
my pride of strength, tested the poison that has bewildered the brains of
my sisters!"
Her general reserve was her self-armour against the bolts of the
Philistines. What worldling would not have read mania in much that was
spoken by this sane woman? Yet, indeed, if we were all to find the power
to give expression to our inmost thoughts, madness and sanity would have
to change places in the order of affairs.
"Once," said Dinah--"and it was when I was a young woman--a man in whom I
was interested shipped as passenger on a whaling vessel. This friend was
what is called a degenerate. Physically and morally he had yielded his
claim to any share in that province of the sun, that his race had
conquered and annexed only to find it antipathetic to its needs.
Combative effort was grown impossible to him, as in time it will grow to
you all. You drop from the world like dead flies from a wall. He could
not physic his soul with woods, and groves, and waters. To his
perceptions, life was become an abnormality--a disease of which he
sickened, as you all must when the last of the fever of aggression has
been diluted out of your veins. You die of your triumph, as the bee dies
of his own weapon of offence; and you can find no antidote to the poison
in the nature you have inoculated with your own virus.
"This man contemplated self-destruction as the only escape. He had sought
distraction of his moral torments in travel long and varied. Many of the
most beautiful, of the historically interesting places of the world, he
had visited and sojourned in--without avail. His haunting feeling, he
said, was that he did not belong to himself. Pursued by this Nemesis, he
came home to end it all. He still proclaimed his spiritual independence;
but it was immeshed, and he must tear the strands. This was wonderfully
perplexing to me, and, out of my curiosity, I must persuade him to make
one more attempt. His late efforts, I assured him, were nothing but an
endeavour to cure nausea with sweet syrups. He would not get his change
out of nature by such pitiful wooing. Let him, rather, emulate, if he
could not feel, the spirit of his remote forbears, and rally his nerves
to an expedition into the harsh and awful places of the earth. I would
accompany him, and watch with and for him, and supply that of the fibre
he lacked.
"He consented, and, after some difficulty (for there is an economy of
room in whalers), we obtained passage in a vessel and sailed into the
unknown. Our life and our food were simple and rugged; but the keen air,
the relief from luxury, the novelty and the wonder, wrought upon my
companion and renewed him, so that presently I was amused to note in him
signs of a moral preening--some smug resumption of that arrogant air of
superiority that is a tradition with your race."
Miss Groom here puckered her lips, and breathed a little destructive
laugh upon her cigarette ash.
"It did not last long," she said. "We encountered very bad weather, and
his nerves again went by the board. That was in the 60th longitude, I
think (where whales were still to be found in those years), and seven
hundred miles or so to the east of Spitzbergen. On the day--it was in
August--that the storm first overtook us, the boats were out in pursuit
of a 'right' whale, as, I believe, the men called it--a great bull
creature, and piebald like a horse; and I saw the spouting of his breath
as if a water main had burst in a London fog. The wind came in a sudden
charge from the northwest, and the whale dived with a harpoon in its
back; and in the confusion a reel fouled, and one of the boats was whipt
under in a moment--half a mile down, perhaps--and its crew drawn with
it, and their lungs, full of air, burst like bubbles. We had no time to
think of them. We got the other boat-load on board, and then the gale
sent us crashing down the slopes of the sea. I have no knowledge of how
long we were curst of the tempest and the sport of its ravings. I only
know that when it released us at last, we had been hurled a thousand
miles eastwards. The long interval was all a hellish jangle in which time
seemed obliterated. Sometimes we saw the sun--a furious red globe; and we
seemed to stand still while it raced down the sky and ricocheted over the
furthermost waves like a red-hot cannon ball. Sometimes in pitch darkness
the wild sense of flight and expectation was an ecstasy. But through all
my friend lay in a half-delirious stupor.
"At length a morning broke, full of icy scud, but the sea panting and
exhausted of its rage. As a child catches its breath after a storm of
tears, so it would heave up suddenly, and vibrate, and sink; and we
rocked upon it, a ruined hulk. We were off a flat, vacant shore--if shore
you could call it--whose margin, for miles inland, it seemed, undulated
with the lifting of the swell. It was treeless desolation manifest; and
on our sea side, as far as the eye could reach, the water bobbed and
winked with countless spars of ice.
"I will tell you at once, my friend,--we were brought to opposite an
inhuman swamp on the coast of Siberia, fifty miles or more to the west
of North-east Cape; and there what remained of the crew made shift to
cast anchor; and for a day and night the ragged ship curtsied to the
land, like a blind beggar to an empty street, and we only dozed in our
corners and wondered at the silence.
"By-and-by the men made a raft, and that took us all ashore. There was
something like a definite coast-line, then; but for long before we
touched it the undersides of the planks were scraping and hissing over
vegetation. This was the winter fur of the land--thick, coarse tundra
moss; and on that we pitched a camp, and on that we remained for long
weeks while the ship was mending. It was a weird, lonely time. Once
or twice strange, wandering creatures came our way--little, belted men,
with hairless faces, who rode up on strong horses, and liked to exhibit
their skilful management of them. They talked to us in their chirpy
jargon (Toongus, I think it was called); but jargon it must needs remain
to us.
"Well, we made a patch of the hulk, and we shipped in her again. We were
fortunate to be able to do that, for, with every stiffish wind blowing
inshore, we had feared she would drag her moorings and ground immovably
on the swamps. The land, indeed, was so flat and low that, whenever the
sea rose at all, it threshed the very plains and crackled in the moss;
and we were glad, despite the risk, to leave so lifeless a place."
Dinah paused to light another cigarette, and to inhale the ecstasy of the
first puff or so before she continued. Up through the still evening, from
a curve of the main road that crooked an elbow to her front garden, came
what sounded like the purring of a great cat--the wind in the telegraph
wires.
"And I am now to tell you," she said, "about the mastodon?"
"As you please," I answered.
"I do please; for why should I keep it to myself? It makes no difference;
only I warn you, if you quote me, you will be writ down a fool or a
maniac. This relation lacks witnesses, for the whaler--that I
subsequently quitted for another homing vessel--was never heard of in
port any more."
She looked at me with some serious scrutiny before she went on.
"For these regions, it had been an extraordinarily hot
summer--phenomenally hot, I understand; and to this--to the melting and
breaking away of the ice from hitherto century-locked fastnesses, the
captain attributed the wonderful experience that befell us. The sea was
strewn with blocks and bergs, all hurrying onwards in the strong
currents, as if in haste to escape the pursuing demon of frost that
should re-fetter them; and their multitude kept the steersman's arms
spinning till the man would fall half-fainting over the spoke-handles.
"Now, one morning early in September, a dense bright fog dropped suddenly
upon the waters. We were making what sail we could--with our crippled
spars and stunted trees of masts--and this it were useless to shorten,
and so invite a rearward bombardment from the chasing hummocks. So we
kept our course by the compass, and trailed on through a blind mist while
fear drummed in our throats. The demoralization of my friend was by this
time complete. For myself, I seldom had a thought but that Nature would
sheathe her claws when she played with me.
"'This cannot last long!' said the captain.
"The words were on his lips when we struck with a noise like the
splintering of glass. We were all thrown down, and my companion screamed
like a mad thing. The captain rose and ran to the bows; and in a moment
he came back and his beard was shaking.
"'God save us!' he cried, 'and fetch aft the rum!'
"There you have man in his invincible moods. They drank till they were in
a condition to face death; and then they found that our situation was
rather improved than otherwise by the collision. For--so it appeared--we
had run full tilt for a perpendicular fissure in a huge block, and
into that our bows were firmly wedged, the nature of the impact
distributing the shock, and the berg itself carrying us along with it and
protecting us.
"Now the dipping motion of the vessel was exchanged for a heavy regular
wash along its stern quarters; for the bows were so much raised as that I
felt a little strain on my knees as I went forward to satisfy my
curiosity with a view of the icy mass into which we were penetrated. I
waited, indeed, until the crew were come aft again from looking, and my
friend crept timidly at my shoulder; but when we reached the stem, there
was one of the hands, a little soberer than his fellows, sprawled over
the bulwarks, and staring with all his eyes into the green lift of the
wall against him.
"'Is it a mermaid you see, Killigrew?' I asked.
"The man shifted his gaze to me slowly and solemnly.
"'Nowt, nowt,' said he; 'but a turble monster, like a pram stuck in
jelly.'
"I laughed, and went to his side. The fog, as I have said, was dense and
bright, and one could see into it a little way, as into a milky white
agate. But now and again a film of it would pull thin, and then sunlight
came through and made a dim radiance of the ice.
"'I can make out nothing,' I said.
"He cocked an eye and leered up at me. 'Look steady and sober,' he said,
'and you'll make en owut like as in a glass darkly.'
"I gave a little gasp and my friend a cry before the words were issued
from the man's mouth. Drawn by some current of air, the fog at the
moment blew out of the cleft, like smoke from a chimney; and there,
before our gaze, was a great curved tusk coming up through the ice and
inside it.
"Now I clapped my hands in an agony, lest the fog should close in again,
and the vision fade before my eyes; for, following the sweep of the tusk,
I was aware of the phantom presentment of some monster creature lying
imbedded within the ice, its mighty carcase prostrate as it had fallen;
the conformation of its enormous forehead presented directly to our
gaze. Its little toffee-ball eyes--little proportionately, that is to
say--squinted at us, it seemed, through half-closed lids, and a huge,
hairy trunk lay curled, like the proboscis of a dead moth, between its
tree-like fore-legs. Away beyond, the great red-brown drum of its hide
bellied upward on ribs as thick as a Dutch galliot's, and sprouting from
its shoulders was the hump I have mentioned, but here, from its position,
sprawled abroad and lying over in a shapeless mass.
"There was something else--horribly nauseating but for its strangeness.
The brute had been partly disembowelled, as there was ample evidence to
show, for the ice had preserved all.
"Suddenly my companion gave a high nervous shriek.
"'Look!' he cried--'the hand! the hand sticking out of the side!'
"I saw in a moment; turned, and called excitedly to the captain. He--all
the crew--came tumbling forward up the slippery deck. I seized him by the
shoulder.
"'Do you see?' I screamed--'the human hand beckoning to us from that
great body!'
"He gazed stupidly, swaying where he stood.
"'One o' them bloomin' pre-hadymite cows!' he muttered; 'caught in the
cold nip, by thunder! and some unfortnit crept into her for warmth.'
"I believed the creature's rude intuition had flown true.
"'Cannot you get at it?' I gasped.
"He stared at me. All in an instant a little paltry demon of avarice
blinked out of his eye-holes.
"'Why,' he said slowly, 'who knows but it mayn't be a gal a-jingling from
top to toe with gold curtain rings!'
"He was a furious dare-devil immediately, and quick, and savage, and
peremptory. His spirit entered into his men. They went over the side
with pikes and axes, and, scrambling for any foothold, set to work on the
ice like maniacs. In the lust of cupidity they did not even think how
they wrought against their own safety and that of the ship.
"The point of the uppermost tusk came to within a foot of the
ice-surface. This they soon reached, and, prising frantically with
crowbars, flaked off and rolled away half-ton blocks of the
superincumbent mass. I need not detail the fierce process. In half an
hour they had laid bare a great segment of that part of the trunk whence
the hand protruded, and then they paused, and at a word flung down their
tools.
"I was leaning over the bulwarks watching them. I could contain my
excitement no longer.
"'Come,' I said to my friend, 'help me down, for I must go.'
"He climbed over, trembling, and assisted me to a standing on the ice. We
scrambled along the track of _débris_ left by the crew. At the moment
half a dozen of the latter were rolling back a broad flap of the hide, in
which they had found a long L-shaped rent revealed. Then a hoarse cry
broke from them, and I stumbled forward and looked down, and saw.
"They lay beneath the mighty ribs as in a cage, of which the intercostal
spaces were a foot in width, and the bars of a strength to maintain the
enormous pressure of that which had surrounded and entombed them; they
lay in one close group, their naked limbs smeared with the stain of their
prison--a man, a woman, and a tiny child. From their faces, and their
unfallen flesh, they might have been sleeping; but they were not; they
were come down to us, a transfixture of death--prehistoric people in a
prehistoric brute, and their eyes--their eyes!"
Dinah's voice trailed off into silence. Some expression that I could not
interpret was on her face. There was regret in it, but nothing of pathos
or mysticism. Suddenly she breathed out a great sigh and resumed her
narrative.
"You will want to know how they looked, these lifeless survivors of a
remote race from a remote time? I will try to tell you. The men hacked
away the ribs with their axes, and laid bare the group lying in the
hollow scooped out of the fallen beast. They were little people, and the
man, according to your modern canons of taste, was by far the most
beautiful of the three. He sat erect, with one uplifted arm projected
through the ribs; as if, surprised by the frost-stroke, he had started to
escape, and had been petrified in the act. His face, wondering and
delicate as a baby's, was hairless; and his head only a pretty infantile
down covered--a curling floss as radiant as spun glass. His wide-open
eyes glinted yet with a hyacinth blue, and it was difficult to realize
that they were dead and vacant.
"The woman was of coarser mould, ruddy, vigorous, brown-haired and eyed.
She looked the very hamadryad of some blossoming tree, a sweet capricious
daughter of the blameless earth. Everything luxuriated in her--colour,
hair, and lusty flesh; and the child she held to her bosom with a manner
that indescribably commingled contempt, and resentment, and a passion of
proprietorship.
"This baby--joining the prominent characteristics of the two--was the
oddest little mortal I have ever seen. What did its expression convey to
me? 'I am fairly caught, and must brazen out the situation!' There! that
was what it was; I cannot put it more lucidly. Only the thing's wee face
was animal conscious for the first time of itself, and inclined to
rejoice in that primitive energy of knowledge.
"Now, my friend, I must tell you how the sight operated upon me and upon
my companion. For myself, I can only say that, looking upon that fine,
independent fore-mother of my race, I felt the sun in my veins and the
winy fragrance of antique woods and pastures. I laughed; I clapped my
hands; I danced on the ice-rubbish, so that they thought me mad. But, for
the other--the man--he was in a different plight. He was transfigured;
his nervousness was gone in a flash. He cast himself down upon his knees,
and gazed and gazed, his hands clasped, upon that sleek, mild progenitor
of his, that pure image of gentle self-containment, whose very meekness
suggested an indomitable will.
"Suddenly he, my friend, cried out: 'This is one caught in the process of
materialization! It is not flesh; my God, no!'
"It seemed, indeed, as if it were as he said. I stopped in my capering
and looked down. The tarry hinds standing by grinned and jeered.
"On the instant there came a splintering snap, and the floe rocked and
curtsied.
"'Back!' yelled the captain. 'She's breaking through by the head!'
"He shrieked of the ship. She was clearing herself, had already shaken
her prow free of the ice.
"There was a wild scamper for safety. I was carried with the throng. It
was not until I was hauled on board once more that I thought of my
friend. He still knelt where we had fled from him, a wrapt, strange
expression on his face.
"'Come back!' I screamed. 'You will be lost!'
"Now at that he turned his head and looked at me; but he never moved, and
his voice came to me quiet and exultant.
"'Lost!' he said, 'ay, for forty-three years: and here, here I find
myself!'
"We dipped, and the wash of the water came about our bows. The block of
ice swerved, made a sluggish half-pirouette and dropped astern.
"'Come!' I shrieked again faintly.
"With the echo of my cry he was a phantom, a blot, had vanished in the
rearward fog; and thereout a little joyous laugh came to me.
"And that was a queer good-bye for ever, wasn't it?"