the 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 toward 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.
“Français?” 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 clew 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 recognize 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 toward 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 recognized 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 realize what I
said, and then, with a wild cry, he ran away from me with prodigious
speed and raced along the sands toward 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 weasel 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 upward. “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
neighborhood, 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 forever. 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 sandhills 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 toward
me with his shaggy mane bristling and his brown hands clenched. “If I
thought you had one dishonest thought toward 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
gray 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 realize 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
anyone 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 endeavor 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.”