THE MISTS OF EDEN
The station lights flared pale in the coming dawn. Behind the barred
window of the ticket-office, which contained, as its bright lamp
showed, a tumbled cot bed and a dilapidated arm-chair, a tousled young
man sat playing Patience in his nightshirt on the telegraph table. We
battered on his window, and to our amazement he nodded casually and
entirely without surprise at us, reached into a corner of his littered
room, grasped a pair of oars, and, pushing up the window, poked them
out at us between the bars.
"Mr. Jerrolds, I guess," he remarked. "Mr. Bradley's left the boat for
you at the foot of the dock, little ways across the track there. It's
kind of a blue boat. You just sight the two reefs and the bell buoy
and when you're just opposite of the buoy, turn about and make for the
shore. There's a white pole where you land."
"Have you been sitting up--" I began, but he cut me short impatiently.
"No, I have insomnia--it's something dreadful the way I have it," he
explained. "I'm always sitting up."
I accepted the oars mechanically.
"And where is Mr. Bradley stopping?" I asked.
"Why, over to Miss Prynne's. He met the afternoon train yest'day and
the deaf an' dumb feller rowed over to-day, and when you didn't turn
up he left the oars. I tell you, he knows more'n you might think, to
look at him."
"Was--is Mr. Bradley well?" I asked.
"He looked to be well enough yest'day," said the insomniac
indifferently, "big feller, ain't he?"
I shouldered the oars, and followed by my sensible parson with the
bag, made for the untidy wharf through the silent village. The blue
boat was not hard to discover in the pale, ghostly light; the bay was
hardly rippled; it was to be another hot, sticky day. My companion
begged the privilege of the oars.
"My old game, you know," he added apologetically, and swept us out on
the black, mysterious water with beautiful, clean strokes. He had soon
marked down the buoy and was regretting that it would be only a matter
of twenty minutes before we must land.
"Do you know," he added with a boyish sort of smile, "all this is a
real adventure to me, Jerrolds, and I can't help enjoying it. It can't
be serious, you see--Roger's well. Perhaps"--and he shot a curious
glance at me--"perhaps he's going to be married!"
I laughed a little stiffly. It was difficult to explain to this
sensible parson that Bradleys did not marry in this fashion; it wasn't
quite complimentary to him. Moreover I didn't know whether he would be
sensible enough to understand what two or three of Roger's friends
knew very well--that he was unlikely to marry so long as Sue Paynter
remained above ground. It had been simple enough, that affair: Sue and
Roger had been engaged ten years before the time of which I am
writing, they were within a few months of the wedding, and Frederick
Paynter, her cousin, had come back from Germany, playing Chopin like a
demi-god, and had whirled her off her feet in a fortnight. She broke
off the engagement in a rather cruel way, it seemed to me--by
telephone--and Roger hung up the receiver (I myself heard him answer
slowly, "Very well, dear. I see. Good-bye.") and went to Algiers with
me. When we came back they were married and he was having a great
success, playing before Royalty and all that sort of thing.
I think it took Sue about a month to find out what any of her men
friends could have told her in six seconds, and after that she kept
him in Europe as much as she could. She kept up pretty well for three
or four years, but at last she came back with her two delicate babies
and satisfied everybody's sense of propriety by nursing Frederick
while he stayed in America and dining out with him twice a season
before he returned to Europe. It was all very regrettable and Sarah
would discuss it in her tactful way from time to time till, if I had
been Roger, I should have choked her. Sue would not listen to a
separation, even, and insisted that Frederick sent her plenty of
money, which Roger invested for her, and old Madam Bradley had her
often with them in Boston. Roger never discussed it; he didn't need
to. But I never knew him to be out of Boston or New York if the
Paynters were there together, and I remarked that he invariably left
word where he could be reached, day or night, when Frederick was
playing a series of concerts.
All this ran through my mind as we cut through the water and the sky
grew paler by degrees and the stars faded out. We were opposite the
buoy now, dark amongst the dark waves, and we turned at right angles
and made for the shore. The tide was high and we glided over the inner
reef easily. Soon we could see the eaves of the cottage dimly, a cock
crowed sleepily, the white pole pointed out some rough steps cut in
the rocks ahead.
That sudden sense of excitement grew in me again, a nervous longing to
get hold of Roger, to get away from my oarsman, for I was worried out
of all reason. He, to my satisfaction, at this moment proposed a
separation.
"I haven't had half enough of this," he said suddenly, "why don't you
land, Jerrolds, if you feel you ought to--though I don't see how we
can descend on Miss Prynne or anybody else at this unearthly hour--and
I'll pull about for a while? I don't doubt you'd rather see Roger
alone, anyhow, at first. When you want me, just give me a hail--I
won't be far. And tell him to have plenty of breakfast, will you?"
I agreed warmly to this and clambered up the slippery steps, still
possessed by the same muffled excitement. The beach was hard as a
floor under me and I almost ran along it toward the sanded cottage.
The merest glance at it showed that no one watched there; the windows
were dark. I skirted the rocky wall that protected its back and sides;
no one was stirring in stable or outhouse. On the shore side a
straggling grass stretch ran down to a sheltered, inland bay; a fair
sized vegetable garden, glistening with dew, and a few fruit trees
gave a domestic air to the place, utterly unguessed from the
forbidding sea front. I wandered toward this little bay and sat in a
delightful natural chair of rock to wait for the sunrise.
I must have lost myself for a few minutes, for when I opened my eyes
everything before them was changed, as completely as the scene
shifters change a stage picture. The little bay was crowded with
rolling seas of white, thick mist, like an Alpine lake. Billow on
billow it rolled in, faintly luminous here and there, breaking as
smoke breaks, on the beach. As I stared, lost in the beauty of it, two
great gold arrows from the sun behind me cut into the thickest of it
and tore it like a curtain, and in the rent appeared two human
figures, walking as it might be on clouds to earth. More than mortal
tall they loomed in the mist, and no marbles I have ever seen--not
even that Wonder of Melos--is so immortally lovely as they were. The
woman wore a veil of crimson vine-leaves that wound about her hips and
dropped on one side nearly to her knee, around the man's neck a great
lock of her long hair lay loose and on his head a rough wreath of the
red leaves shone in the arrow of sunlight. Beside them a monstrous
hound appeared suddenly: a trailing vine dripped like blood from his
great jowl.
I could not have told what she looked like to save my life: she was
what the world means when it says woman--beautiful, certainly, but no
one person. One arm was on his shoulder, the other hand lay on the
animal's head; the mist covered their feet and they appeared as
aerial, as unreal as figures in some Assumption. But they were not
through with earth, not they: they were humanity triumphant--the very
crown and flower of creation. They came up from the sea with the
grave, contented smile of the old gods on their faces. Nature, working
patiently at her Saurians, had had this in her mind from the
beginning, and I believed in that moment that God had indeed allowed
her to perfect her last work in His image! For perhaps three
heart-beats I saw them there, framed in the luminous mist, and then it
rolled over them, swiftly, silently, and wiped them out, and I
stumbled from the rock-seat and ran back across the beach, a great
lump stiffening my throat and a hard, frightened jealousy nearly
stifling me, to my shame and surprise.
For I had known Roger twenty-five years and yet I had never had the
least idea of the man!
PART THREE
IN WHICH THE STREAM JOINS WITH OTHERS
AND PLUNGES DOWN A CLIFF
He's left his flocks, his fields, his kine,
He's left his folk and friends and all,
He's off to watch the cold sea shine,
To brew for aye the salt sea brine,
The mermaid hath Sir Hugh in thrall.
_Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._