The white stone, unfractured, ranks as most precious;
The blue lily, unblemished, emits the finest fragrance;
The heart, when it is harassed, finds no place of rest;
The mind, in the midst of bitterness, thinks only of grief.
_The Sorrows of Han, a Chinese Tragedy_.
After these days Kenrick returned to Saint Winifred's, as he supposed,
for the last time. His guardian, a stiff, unsympathising man, had
informed him, that as his mother's annuity ceased with her life, there
was very little left to support him. The sale, however, of the house at
Fuzby, and the scholarship which he had just won, would serve to
maintain him for a few years, and meanwhile his guardian would endeavour
to secure for him a place in some merchant's office, where gradually he
would be able to earn a livelihood.
It was a very different life from that which this fine, clever
high-spirited boy had imagined for himself, and he looked forward to the
prospect with settled despair. But he seemed now to regard himself as a
victim of destiny, regretting nothing, and opposing nothing, and caring
for nothing. He told Walter with bitter exaggeration "that he must
_indeed_ thank him for giving up the scholarship, as he supposed that it
had saved him from starvation. His guardian, who had a family of his
own, didn't seem to care a straw for him; and he had no friend in the
world besides."
And as, for days and weeks, he brooded over these gloomy thoughts and
sad memories, he fell into a weary, broken, aimless kind of life. Many
tried to comfort him, but they could not reach his sorrow; in their
several ways his school friends did all they could to cheer him up, but
they all failed. He grew moody, solitary, silent. Walter often sought
him out, and talked in his lively, cheerful, happy strain; but even
_his_ society Kenrick seemed to shun. He was in that morbid, unhealthy
state when to meet others inspires a positive shrinking of mind. He
seemed to have no pleasure except in shutting himself up in his study,
and in taking long lonely walks. He performed his house duties
mechanically, and by routine; when he read the lessons in chapel, his
voice sounded as though it came from afar, like the voice of one who
dreamed; he sat with his books before him for long hours, and made no
progress, hardly knowing the page on which he was employed. In school,
he sat listlessly playing with his pen, taking no notes, seeming as
though he heard nothing, and was scarcely aware of what was going on.
His friends could not guess what would come of it, but they grew afraid
for him when they saw him mope thus inconsolably, and pine away without
respite, till his eyes grew heavy, and his face pale and thin. He had
changed all his ways; he seemed to have altered his very nature; he
played no games, took no interest in anything, and dropped all his old
pursuits. His work was quite spiritless, and he grew so absent that he
forgot the commonest occupations of every day--living as in a waking
sleep.
Power and Walter, in talking of him, often wondered whether it was the
uncertainty of his future prospects which had thus affected him; and in
the full belief that this must have something to do with his morbid
melancholy, Power mentioned the matter to Dr Lane as soon as he had the
opportunity.
Dr Lane had observed, with much pity, the depression which had fastened
on Kenrick like a disease. He was not surprised to see him come back
deeply affected; but if "the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,"
its sorrows are usually short and transient, and he looked upon it as
unnatural that Kenrick's grief should seem thus incurable, and that a
young boy like him should thus refuse to be comforted. It was not long
before he introduced the subject, while talking to Power after looking
over his composition.
"Kenrick has just been here, Power," he said; "it pains me to see him so
sadly altered. I can hardly get him to speak a word; all things seem
equally indifferent to him, and his eyes look to me as though they were
always ready to overflow with tears. What can we manage to do for him?
Would not a little cheerful society brighten him up? We had him here
the other day, but he did not speak once the whole evening. Can't even
Henderson get him to smile somehow?"
"I'm afraid not, sir," said Power. "Henderson and Evson and I have all
tried, but he seems to avoid seeing any one. It makes him ill at ease
apparently. I am afraid, for one thing, that he is vexing himself about
not being allowed to return, and about being sent into a merchant's
office, which he detests."
"If that is all, there can be no difficulty about it," said the Doctor;
"we have often kept deserving boys here, when funds failed, and I can
easily assure his guardian, without his knowing of it, that the expense
need not for a moment stand in the way of his return."
These generous acts are common at Saint Winifred's, for she is indeed an
_alma mater_ to all her children; and since Kenrick had confided this
particular sorrow to _Walter_, Walter undertook to remove it by telling
him that Dr Lane would persuade his guardian to let him return.
Kenrick appeared glad of the news, as though it brought him a little
relief, but it made no long change in his present ways.
Nor even did a still further piece of good fortune, when his guardian
wrote and told him that, _on condition of his being sent to the
University_, an unknown and anonymous friend had placed at his disposal
100 pounds a year, to be continued until such time as he was able to
maintain himself; and that this generous gift would of course permit of
his receiving the advantage of an Oxford training, and obviate the
necessity of his entering an office, by clearing for him the way to one
of the learned professions. This news stirred him up a little, and for
a time--but not for long. He looked upon it all as destiny: he could
not guess, he hardly tried to surmise, who the unknown friend could be.
Nor did he know till years afterwards that the aid was given by the good
and wealthy Sir Lawrence Power, at his son's earnest and generous
request. For Power did this kind deed by stealth, and mentioned it to
no one, not even to Walter; and Kenrick little thought when he told the
good news to Power, and received his kind congratulations, that Power
had known of it before he did himself. But still, in spite of all,
Kenrick seemed sick at heart, and his life crept on in a sluggish
course, like a river that loses its bright stream in the desert, and all
whose silver runnels are choked up with dust and sand.
The fact was, that the blows of punishment had fallen on him so fast and
so heavily that he felt crushed to the very earth. The expulsion of the
reprobates with whom he had consorted, his degradation and censure,
Wilton's theft and removal, the violent tension and revulsion of feeling
caused by his awakened conscience, his confession, and the gnawing sense
of shame, the failure of his ambition, and then his mother's death
coming as the awful climax of the calamities he had undergone, and
followed by the cold unfeeling harshness of his guardian, and the
damping of his hopes--all these things had broken the boy's spirit
utterly. Disgrace, and sorrow, and bereavement, and the stings of
remorse, and the suffering of punishment--the forfeiture of a guilty
past, and the gloom of a lonely future--these things unmanned him, bowed
him down, poisoned his tranquillity of mind, unhinged every energy of
his soul, seemed to dry up the very springs of life. The hand of man
could not rouse him from the stupor caused by the chastisements of God.
But the rousing came at last, and in due time; and it all came from a
very little matter--so slight a matter as a little puff of seaward air.
A trivial accident, you will say; yes, one of those very trivial
accidents that so often affect the destinies of a lifetime, and:
"Shape our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."
Kenrick, as usual, was walking along the top of the cliffs alone--
restless, aimless, and miserable--"mooning," as the boys would have
called it--unable even to analyse his own thoughts, conscious only that
it was folly in him to nurse this long-continued and hopeless
melancholy, yet quite incapable of making the one strong effort which
would have enabled him to throw it off. And in this mood he sat down
near the cliff, thinking of nothing, but watching, with idle guesses as
to their destination and history, the few vessels that passed by on the
horizon. The evening was drawing-in, cold and windy; and suddenly
remembering that he must be back by tea-time, he rose up to return. The
motion displaced his straw hat, and the next moment the breeze had
carried it a little way over the edge of the cliff, where it was caught
in a low bush of tamarisk. It rested but a few feet below him, and the
chalky front of the cliff was sufficiently rough to admit of his
descent. He climbed to it, and had just succeeded in disengaging it
with his foot, when before he had time to seize it, it again fell, and
rolled down some thirty feet. Kenrick, finding that he had been able to
get down with tolerable ease, determined to continue his descent in
order to secure it. It never occurred to him that the hat was of no
great importance, and that it would have been infinitely less trouble to
walk home without it, and buy a new one, than to run the risk and
encounter the trouble of his climb. However, he _did_ manage to reach
it, and put it on with some satisfaction, when, as he was beginning to
remount, a considerable mass of chalk crumbled away under his feet, and
made him cling on with both hands to avoid being precipitated. He had
been able to get down well enough, because, if the chalk slipped, he
glided on safely with it, but in climbing up he was obliged to press his
feet strongly downwards in order to gain his spring; and every time he
did this, he found that the chalk kept giving way, exhausting him with
futile efforts, filling his shoes with dust and pebbles, slipping into
his clothes, and blinding his eyes. Every person who has climbed at
all, whether in the Alps or elsewhere, knows that it is easy enough to
get down places which it is almost impossible to mount again; and
Kenrick, after many attempts, found that he had been most imprudent, and
becoming seriously alarmed, was forced, when he had quite tired himself
with fruitless exertions and had once or twice nearly fallen, to give up
the attempt altogether, and do his best to secure another way of escape.
This was to climb down quite to the bottom of the cliff, and make his
way, as best he could, over rocks and shingle round the bluff which shut
in one side of the little bay on which he stood, and along the narrow
line of beach, to Saint Winifred's head. This was possible sometimes,
and he fancied that the tide was sufficiently far out to enable him to
do it now. At any rate herein lay, so far as he saw, his only chance of
safety.
Down the cliff then he climbed once more, and though it was some ninety
feet high he found no difficulty in doing this, with care, till he came
to a place where its surface was precipitous for a height of some ten
feet, worn smooth by the beating of the waves. Holding with his hands
to the edge, he let himself fall down this height, and found himself
standing, a little shaken though unhurt, in a small pebbly bay or
indentation of the shore formed by a curve in the line of cliffs, with a
series of headlands and precipices trending away on one side far to his
right, and with the Ness of Saint Winifred's reaching out to his left.
Once round that headland he would be safe, and indeed if he once got
beyond the little pebbly inlet where he stood, he hoped to find some
place where he might scale the rocks, and so cross the promontory and
get home.
There was no time to be lost, and he ran with all his speed over the
loose stones towards the bluff, letting the unlucky straw hat drop on
the shore, as it had no string, and it impeded him to be obliged to hold
it on with one hand. Reaching the end of the shingle, he stumbled with
difficulty over some scattered rocks slimy with ooze and seagrass,
hoping with intense hope that when he rounded the projection of cliff,
he would see a line of beach, narrow indeed, but still wide enough to
allow of his running along it before the tide had come in, and reaching
some part of Saint Winifred's Head which he might be able to scale by
means of a sheep-path, or with the help of hands and knees. Very
quickly he reached the corner, and hardly dared to look; but when he
_did_ look, a glance showed him that but slender hope was left. At one
spot the tide had already reached the foot of the cliffs; but if he
could get to that spot while the water was yet sufficiently shallow to
allow him to run through it, he trusted that he might yet be saved. The
place was far-off, but he ran and ran; and ever as he ran the place
seemed to get farther and farther, and his knees failed him for fatigue,
as he sank at every step in the noisy and yielding mixture of sand and
pebbles.
Reader, have you ever run a race with the sea? If not, accept the
testimony of one who has had to do it more than once, that it is a very
painful and exciting race. I ran it once successfully with one who,
though we then escaped, has since been overtaken and swallowed up by the
great dark waves of that other sea, whose tides are ever advancing upon
us, and must sooner or later absorb us all--the great dark waves of
Death. But to take your life in your hand, and run and to know that the
sea is gaining upon you, and that, however great the speed with which
fear wings your feet, your subtle hundred-handed enemy is intercepting
you with its many deep inlets, and does not bate an instant's speed, or
withhold itself a hair's-breadth for all your danger--is an awful thing
to feel. And then to see that it _has_ intercepted you is worst of all;
it is a moment not to be forgotten. And all this was what Kenrick had
to undergo. He ran until he panted for breath, and stumbled for very
weariness--but he was too late. A broad sheet of water now bathed the
bases of the cliff, and the waves, as though angry with the opposing
breeze, were leaping up with a frantic hiss, and deluging the rocks with
sheets of spray and foam.
Experience had taught him with what speed and fury on that dangerous
coast the treacherous tide came in. There was not a moment to spare,
and as he flew back to the small shelter of the pebbly cove, the water
was already gliding close to him, and stretching its arms like a hungry
medusa round the seaweed-matted lumps of scattered rock over which he
strode.
His face wetted with the salt dew, his brown hair scattered on the
rising wind, he flew rather than ran once more to the place where he had
descended, to renew the wild attempt to scale the cliff which seemed to
afford him the only shadow of a hope. Yet a mere glance might have been
enough to show him that this hope was vain. Both at that spot, and as
far as he could see, the sheer base of the cliff offered him no place
where it was possible to rest a foot, no place where he could mount
three feet above the shingle. But his scrutiny brought home to him
another appalling fact--namely, that the sea-mark, where the highest
tide fringed its barriers with a triumphal wreath of hanging seaweed,
and below which no foliage grew, was high up upon the cliff, far above
his head.
It was too late to curse his rashness and folly, nor would he even try
to face his frightful situation till he had thought of every conceivable
means by which to escape. A friend of mine had, and I suppose still
has, a pen-and-ink sketch which made one shudder to look at it. All
that you see is a long sea-wall, apparently the side of some stone pier,
so drawn as to give the impression of great height, and the top of it
not visible in the picture; by the side of this ripples and plashes a
long dark reach of sea water, lazily waving the weeds which it has
planted in the crevices of stone, and extending, like the wall itself,
farther than you can guess. The only living thing in the picture is a
single spent, shaggy dog, its paws rested for a moment on a sort of
hollow in the wall, and half its dripping body emergent from the dark
water. It is staring up with a look of despondent exhaustion, yet mute
appeal. The sketch powerfully recalls and typifies the exact position
in which poor Kenrick: now found himself placed--before him the hungry,
angry darkening sea, behind him the inaccessible bastions of forbidding
cliff. It is a horrible predicament, and those can most thrillingly
appreciate it who, like the author, have been in it themselves.
There was yet one thing, and one thing only, to be tried, and it was
truly the refuge of desperation. Kenrick was an excellent swimmer; many
a time in bathing at Saint Winifred's, even when he was a little boy, he
had struck out boldly far into the bay, even as far as the huge tumbling
red buoy, that spent its restless life in "ever climbing with the
climbing wave." If he could swim for pleasure, could he not swim for
life? It was true that the swim before him was, beyond all comparison,
farther and more hazardous than he had ever dreamt of. But swimming is
an art which inspires extraordinary confidence; it makes us fancy that
drowning is impossible to us, because we cannot imagine ourselves so
fatigued as to fail in keeping above water. Kenrick knew that the
attempt was only one to be undertaken at dire extremity; but that
extremity had now arrived, and it was literally the last chance that lay
between him and--what he would not think of yet.
So, in the wintry air, with the strong wind blowing keenly and the red
gleam of sunset already beginning to fail, he flung off his clothes on
the damp beach, and as one who rushes on a forlorn hope in the teeth of
an enemy, he ran down the rough uneven shore, hardly noticing how much
it hurt his feet, and plunged boldly into the hideous yeast of seething
waves. The cold made him shiver and shiver in every limb; his teeth
chattered; he was afraid of cramp; the slimy seaweeds that his feet
touched, the tangled and rotting string of sea-twine that waved about
his legs, sent a strong shudder through him; and there was a sick clammy
feeling about the frothy spume through which he had to plunge. But when
he had once ploughed his way through all this, and was fairly out of his
depth, the exercise warmed him, and he rose with a swimmer's triumphant
motion over the yielding waves. On and on he swam, thinking only of
that, not looking before him; but when he began to feel quite tired, and
_did_ look, he saw that he was not nearly halfway to the headland. He
saw, too, how the breakers were lashing and fighting with the iron shore
which he was madly striving to reach. Even if he could swim so far--and
he now _felt_ that he could not--how could he ever land at such a spot?
Would not one of those billows toss him up in its playful spray, and
dash him as it dashed its own unpitied offspring, dead upon the rocks?
And as this conviction dawned on him, withering all his energy of heart,
the wind wailed over him, the water bubbled in his ears, and the
sea-mew, napping as it flew past him, uttered above his head its
plaintive scream. His heart sank within him. With a quick motion he
turned in the water, and with arms wearied-out he swam back again, as
for dear life, towards the little landing-place which alone divided him
from instant death; struggling on heavily, with limbs so weary that he
could barely move them through the waves, whose increasing swell often
broke around his head. Already the tide had reached the spot where he
had let his straw hat drop on the beach; the sea was scornfully playing
with it, tossing it up and down, whirling it round and round like a
feather; the wind blew it to the sea, and the sea, receiving no gifts
from an enemy, flung it back again; but the wind carried the day, and
while Kenrick was wringing the brine out of his dripping hair, and
huddling his clothes again over his wet, benumbed, and aching limbs, he
saw the straw hat fairly launched, and floating away over the waves.
And then it was that, as the vision of sudden death glared out before
his eyes, and the horror of it leapt upon him, that a scream--a loud,
wild, echoing scream, which sounded strange in that lonely place, and
rose above the rude song that the wind was now singing,--broke from his
blanched lips. And another, and another, and then silence; for Kenrick
was now crouching at the cliff's foot furthest off from the swelling
flood, with his eyes fixed motionless in a wild stare on its advancing
line of foam. He was conjuring up before his imagination the time when
those waves should have reached him; should have swept him away from the
shelter of the shore, or risen above his lips; should have forced him
again to struggle and swim, until his strength, already impaired by
hunger, and thirst, and cold, and fatigue, should have failed him
altogether, and he would sink, and the water gurgle wildly in his ears,
and stop his breath--and all would be still. And when he had pictured
this scene to himself with a vividness which made him experience all its
agony, for a time his mind flew back through all the faultful past up to
that very day; memory lighted her lantern, and threw its blaze on every
dark corner, on every hidden recess, every forgotten nook--left no spot
unsearched, unilluminated with sudden flash; all his past sins were
before him, words, looks, thoughts, everything. As when a man descends
with a light in his diving-bell into the heaving sea, the strange
monsters of the deep, attracted by the unknown glimmer, throng and
wallow terribly around him, so did uncouth thoughts and forgotten sins
welter in fearful multitudes round this light of memory in the deep sea
of that poor human soul. And finally, as though in demon voices, came
this message whispered to him, touted to him tauntingly, rising and
falling with maddening alternation on the rising and falling of the
wind--"You have been wasting your life, moodily abandoning yourself to
idle misery, neglecting your duties, letting your talents rust--_God
will take from you the life you know not how to use_." And then, as
though in answer to this, another voice, low, soft, sweet, that his
heart knew well--another voice filling the interspaces of the others
with unseen music, whispered to him soothingly--"It shall be given you
again, use it better; awake, use it better, _it shall be given you
again_."
Those three wild shrieks of his had been heard; he did not know it, but
they had been heard. The whole coast was in general so lonely that you
could usually pace it for miles without meeting a single human being,
and it never even occurred to him that some one might pass that way.
But it so happened that the boisterous weather of the last few days had
cast away a schooner at a place some five miles from Saint Winifred's,
and Walter Evson had walked with Charlie to see the wreck, and was
returning along the cliff. As they passed the spot where Kenrick was,
they had been first startled and then horrified by those shrieks, and
while they stood listening another came to their ears, more piercing,
more heart-rending than the rest.
"Good heavens! there _must_ be some one down there!" exclaimed Walter.
"Why, how could any one have got there?" asked Charlie.
"Well, but didn't you hear some one scream?"
"Yes, several times. O Walter, do look here!" Charlie pointed to the
traces on the cliff showing that some one had descended there.
"Who could have wanted to get down _there_, I wonder; and for what
possible purpose?"
"Do you see any one, Walter?"
"No, I don't; there's nothing but the sea"--for Kenrick, crouching under
the cliff, was hidden from sight, and now the tide had come up so far
that, from the summit, none of the shingle was visible--"but what's
that?"
"Why, Walter, _it's a straw hat_; it must be one of our fellows down
there; I see the ribbon distinctly, dark blue and white, twisted
together."
"_Dark blue and white_! why, then, it must be some one in the football
eleven: Charlie, it must be Kenrick! Heavens, what can have happened?"
"Kenrick!" they both shouted at the top of their voices.
But the cliff was high, and the wind, momently rising to a blast, swept
away their shouts, and although Kenrick might have heard them distinctly
under ordinary circumstances, they now only mingled with, and gave new
form and body to, the wild madness which terror was beginning to kindle
in his brain. So they shouted, and no answer came.
"No answer comes, Charlie; but there's someone down there as sure as we
are here," said Walter. Charlie had already begun to try and descend
the face of the cliff. "Stop, stop, Charlie," said Walter, seizing him
and dragging him up again, "you mustn't try that--nay, Charlie, you
really _must not_. If it's possible _I_ will." He tried, but three
minutes showed him that, however practicable a descent might be, an
ascent afterwards would be wholly beyond his power. Besides, if he did
descend, what could he do? Clearly nothing; and with another plan in
view, he with difficulty reached his former position.
"Nothing to be done that way, Charlie." At that moment another cry
came, for Kenrick, in a momentary lull of the wind, had fancied that he
had heard sounds and voices other than those of his perturbed and
agitated fancy. "Ha! you heard that?" said Walter, and he shouted
again, but no sound was returned.
"We must fly to Saint Winifred's, Charlie; there's a boy down on the
shore beyond a doubt. You stay behind, if you like, for you can't run
as fast as me. I'm afraid, though, it's not the least good. Saint
Winifred's is three miles from here, and long before I've got help and
come three miles back, it's clear that no one can be alive down there;
still we must try," and he was starting when Charlie seized his arm.
"Don't you remember, Walter, the hut at Bryce's cove? There's an old
boat there, and it's a mile and a half nearer than Saint Win's."
"_Capital_ boy, Charlie," said Walter; "how good of you to think of it;
it's the very thing. Come."
They flew along at full speed, Walter taking Charlie's hand, and saying,
"Never mind stretching your legs for once, even if you _are_ tired. How
well you run! we shall be there in no time."
They gained the cove, flew down the steep narrow path, and reached the
hut door. Their summons was answered only by the furious barking of a
dog. No one was in.
"Never mind: there's the boat; we must take French leave;" and Walter,
springing down, hastily unmoored it.
"Wah! what a horrid old tub, and it wants baling, Walter."
"We can't stay for that, Charlie boy; it's a good thing that Semlyn Lake
has taught us both to row, isn't it?"
"O yes; don't you wish we had the little _Pearl_ here now, Walter?
Wouldn't we make it fly, instead of this cranky old wretch."
"Well, we must fancy that this is the _Pearl_ and this Semlyn Lake,"
said Walter, wading up to the knees to launch the boat, and springing in
when he had given it the final shove.
They were excellent rowers, but Charlie had never tried his skill in a
sea like that, and was timid, for which there was every excuse.
"How very rough it is, Walter," he said, as the boat tossed up and down
like an egg-shell on the high waves.
"Keep up your heart, Charlie, and row steadily; don't be afraid."
"No, Walter, I won't, as you're with me; but--Walter?"
"Well?"
"It'll be dark in half an hour."
"Not quite, and we shall be there by that time; we needn't go far out,
and the tide's with us." So the two brave brothers rowed steadily on,
with only one more remark from Charlie, ushered in by the word--
"Walter?"
"Anything more to frighten me with, Charlie?" he answered cheerily; "you
shan't succeed."
"Well, Walter," he answered, with a little touch of shame, "I was only
going to say that, if you look, you'll see that your oar's been broken,
and is only spliced together."
"I've seen it all along, Charlie, and will use the oar gingerly; and
now, Charlie, I see you're a little frightened, my boy. I'm going to
brace you up. Rest on your oar a minute."