A FATEFUL ACCIDENT.
We loitered on the river till the short day was threatening dusk, and
then we were still no further on our homeward way than a half-mile
short of Kingston. A little cold wind, moreover, was beginning to
whine and scratch over the surface of the water, and Dolly pulled her
tippet closer about her bosom, feeling chilled and inclined to
silence.
“Come,” said Duke, “we must put our shoulders to it or we shan’t get
into the lock before dark.”
“Oh!” cried the girl, with a half-whimper, “I had forgotten that
horrible lock with its hideous weedy doors. Must we go through it?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Duke; “but,” he added cheerily, “don’t you be
nervous. We’ll run you down and through before you have time to count
a hundred--if you count slowly.”
She sunk back in her seat with a frightened look and grasped the
rudder lines, as if by them only could she hold on to safety. The dusk
dropped about us as we pulled on, strain as we might, and presently we
both started upon hearing a strangled sob break from the girl.
“Oh,” said Duke, pausing for a moment, “this will never do, Dolly.
Why, you can’t be afraid with two such knights to protect you?”
“I can’t help it,” said the poor child, fairly crying now. “You don’t
know anything about the river, either of you; and--and mayn’t I get
out and walk?”
“Very well. One of us will go with you, while the other pulls the boat
down. Only we must get across first. Steady, now, Renny; and cheer up,
Doll, and put her nose to the shore opposite.”
We had drifted some little distance since we first easy’d, and a dull
booming, that was in our ears at the time, had increased to a
considerable roar.
“Give way!” cried Duke; “turn her, Dolly!”
The girl tugged at the right line, gave a gasp, dropped everything,
scrambled to her feet, and screamed in a dreadful voice: “We are going
over the weir!”
“Sit down!” shouted Duke. “Pull, Renny, like a madman!”
He shipped his oar, forced the girl into a sitting posture and
clutched the inner line all in a moment. His promptitude saved us. I
fought at the water with my teeth set; the boat’s nose plunged into
the bank with a shock that sent us two sprawling, and the boat’s stern
swung round dizzily. But before she could cast adrift again I was on
my knees and had seized at a projecting root with a grasp like
Quasimodo’s.
“Hold on!” cried Duke, “till I come to you. It’s all right, Dolly;
you’re quite safe now.”
He crawled to me and grasped the root in his more powerful hands.
“Now,” he said, “you take the painter and get out and drag us higher,
out of the pull of the water. I’ll help you the best I can.”
I complied, and presently the boat was drawn to a point so far above
as to leave a wide margin for safety.
We took our seats to pull across, with a look at one another of
conscious guilt. Dolly sat quite silent and pale, though she shivered
a little.
“We didn’t know the river, and that’s a fact,” whispered Duke to me.
“Of course we ought to have remembered the lock’s the other side.”
We pulled straight across; then Duke said:
“Here’s the shore, Dolly. Now, you and Trender get out, and I’ll take
the boat on.”
“By yourself? No, I won’t. I feel safe with you.”
“Very well,” he answered, gently. “We’ll all go on together. There’s
really no danger now we know what we’re about.”
She cried, “No, Duke,” in a poor little quaking voice.
We pulled into the lock cutting without further mishap, though the
girl shrunk and blenched as we slid past, at a safe distance, the
oblique comb of the weir.
It was some minutes before the lock-keeper answered to our ringing
calls, and then the sluices had to be raised and the lock filled from
our side. The clash and thunder of the hidden water as it fell into
the pit below sounded dismal enough in the darkness, and must, I knew,
be dinning fresh terror into the heart of our already stricken naiad.
But the hollow noise died off in due course, the creaking gate
lumbered open and we floated with a sigh of relief into the weltering
pool beyond.
The sluices rattled down behind us, the keeper walked round to the
further gate, and his figure appeared standing out against the sky,
toiling with bent back at the levers. Suddenly I, who had been pulling
bow, felt myself tilting over in a curious manner.
“Hullo!” I cried. “What’s up with the boat?”
In one moment I heard a loud shout come from the man at the gates, and
saw Dolly, despite her warning, stand hurriedly up and Duke make a
wild clutch at her; the next, the skiff reeled under me and I was
spun, kicking and struggling, into the water.
An accident, common enough and bad enough to those who know little of
Thames craft, had befallen us. We had got the boat’s stern jammed upon
a side beam of the lock, so that her nose only dropped with the
sinking water.
I rose at once in a black swirl. The skiff, jerked free by our
unceremonious exit, floated unharmed in the lock, but she floated
empty. Risen to the surface, however, almost with me, Duke’s dark head
emerged close by her, so that with one frantic leap upward he was able
to reach her thwarts, to which he clung.
“Dolly!” he gasped--“Dolly!”
I had seen her before he could cry out again, had seized and was
struggling with her.
“Don’t hold me!” I cried; “let me go, Dolly, and I’ll save you.”
She was quite beyond reason, deaf to anything but the despairing call
of life. In another instant, I knew, we should both go under and be
dragged into the rush of the sluices. Seeing the uselessness of trying
to unclasp her hands, I fought to throw myself and her toward the side
of the lock nearest. The water was bubbling in my mouth, when I felt a
great iron hook whipped into the collar of my coat and we were both
hauled to the side.
“Hold on there, mate!” cried the lock-keeper, “while I get your boat
under.”
I had caught at a dangling loop of chain; but even so the weight of my
almost senseless burden threatened to drag me down.
“Be quick!” I gasped, “I’m pretty near spent.”
With the same grapnel he caught and towed the boat, Duke still hanging
to it, to where I clung, and leaped down himself into it.
“Now,” he said, “get a leg over and you’re right.”
It was a struggle even then, for Dolly would not let me out of her
agonized clutch--not till we could lay her, white as a storm-beaten
lily, on the bottom boards. Then we turned and seized Duke over the
thwarts and he tumbled in and lay in a heap, quite exhausted.
His mind relieved, our preserver took off his cap, scratched his
forehead and spat into the water.
“I’ve known a many wanting your luck,” he said, gruffly. “What made
you do it, now?”
Judging our ignorance to be by no means common property, I said, “Ah,
what?” in the tone that suggests acquiescence, or wonder, and asked
him if he had a fire handy.
“There’s a bright one burning inside,” he said. “You’re welcome to
it.”
He punted the boat to a shallow flight of steps, oozy with slime, that
led to the bank above, where his cottage was.
“We’ll carry the gal to it,” said he. “See if she can move herself.”
I bent down over the prostrate figure. It looked curiously youthful
and slender in its soaked and clinging garments.
“Dolly,” I whispered, “there’s a fire above. Will you let me carry you
to it?”
I thought my voice might not penetrate to her dulled senses, but to my
wonder she put her arms round my neck immediately.
“Yes,” she moaned, “I’m so cold. Take me to the warmth or I shall
die.”
We lifted her out between us and carried her into the house kitchen.
There a goodly blaze went coiling up the chimney, and the sight was
reviving in itself.
“Shall we leave you here alone a bit?” said I, “to rest and recover?
There’s to be no more of the river for us. We’ll walk the distance
that remains.”
She gave me a quick glance, full of a pathetic gratitude, and
whispered, “Yes; I’d better be alone.”
“And if you take my advice,” said our host, “you’ll strip off them
drownded petticuts and wrap yourself in a blanket I’ll bring you while
they’re a-drying; wait, while I fetch it.”
As he went out Dolly beckoned me quickly to her.
“I heard you tell me to leave go,” she said, hurriedly, in a low
voice; “but I couldn’t--Renny, I couldn’t; and you saved my life.”
Her lips were trembling and her eyes full of tears. She clasped her
hands and held them entreatingly toward me.
A gust of some strange feeling--some yearning sense of protection
toward this pretty, lovable child--flooded my heart.
“You poor little thing,” I whispered, in a pitying voice, and taking
her two hands in one of mine I passed my other arm around her.
Then she lifted her face eagerly and I bent and softly dropped a kiss
on her warm, wet lips.
The moment I had done it I felt the shame of my action.
“There, dear, forgive me,” I said. “Like you, Dolly, I couldn’t let go
at once,” and our friend returning just then with the blanket, we left
the girl to herself and stepped outside.
A queer exultant feeling was on me--a sense as of the lightening of
some overburdening oppression. “A life for a life.” Why should the
words ring stilly, triumphantly in my brain? I might earn for my
breast a cuirass of medals such as Dolly had desired, and what would
their weight be as set in the scale against the one existence I had
terminated?
Perhaps it was not that. Perhaps it was that I felt myself for the
first time in close touch with a yearning human sympathy; that its
tender neighborhood taught me at a breath to respect and stand by what
was noble in myself. The shadow that must, of course, remain with me
always, I would not have away, but would only that it ceased to
dominate my soul’s birthright of independence.
There was in my heart no love for Dolly--no passion of that affinity
that draws atom to atom in the destiny that is human. There was only
the pitying protective sense that came to man through the angels, and,
in its sensual surrender, marked their fall from divinity. For to the
end, without one thought of wavering, Zyp must shine the mirage of my
barren waste of love.
Suddenly I remembered, with a remorseful pang, that all this time I
had forgotten Duke. I hurried down to the steps, calling him. He was
sitting in the boat, his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his
hands.
“Duke!” I cried, “come out and let’s see what we can do for a dry.
You’ll get the frost in your lungs sitting there.”
He rose at once, staggering a little. I had to run down the steps to
help him ashore, where he stood shaken all through with violent
shiverings.
“Whisky,” said our host, laconically, watchful of the poor fellow,
“and enough of it to make your hair curl.”
Between us we got him into the house, where he was made to swallow at
a gulp three finger-breadths in a tumbler of the raw spirit. Then
after a time the color came back to his cheeks, the restored nerves to
his limbs.
At that our kindly host made us strip, and providing us with what
coverings he could produce, set us and our soaked belongings before a
second fire in his little parlor, and only left us when summoned
outside to his business. As the door closed behind him Duke turned to
me. A sort of patient sorrow was on his face--an expression as of
renunciation of some favored child of his fancy--I cannot express it
better.
“You carried her in?” he said, quietly.
“Dolly? Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“Baking before the kitchen fire. She’ll be ready before we are.”
“Well--I had no right. What a chapter of mishaps.” Then he turned upon
me with a sudden clap of fierceness. “Why did you ever propose this
trip? I tried to dissuade you, and you might have known I was an idiot
on the water.”
“My good Duke,” I answered, with a coolness that covered a fine glow
of heat, “that don’t sound very gracious. I meant it for a pleasure
party, of course. Accidents aren’t matters under human control, you
know.”
He struck his knee savagely.
“No,” he muttered, “or I shouldn’t have these.”
Then in a moment the sweetness came back to his face, and he cried
with a smile, half-humorous and all pathetic:
“Here’s the value of my philosophy. I’m no more consistent than a
Ripley pamphlet and not a quarter so amusing. But--oh, if I had only
learned to swim!”