A TERROR IN THE SNOW
Well, they stayed the month nearly out, and then Roger took a fancy to
see the Island in winter, and I, hugging to my breast the
consciousness of that furnace, was easily persuaded to go with them:
it is January, February and March that punish me so fearfully in the
North, and really only the last two of those. I had thought Margarita
a little _distraite_ and cold to us all, toward the last, and feared
she was resenting her exile: she took a short trip to New York,
accompanied, of course, by the faithful Jencks, and I had visions of
American contracts, but Roger never mentioned the subject--didn't even
ask her why she went, I believe, she hated to be questioned so.
We found everything in first-rate order (I had written ahead to light
the furnace) and you should have seen Roger's face when he noticed the
registers in the big room! Like a boy's when some good-natured trick
has been played upon him. Suppose we had not had them nor the coal--it
makes me cold now to think of it.
I find I can't write about it very fully, after all, and I must be
forgiven if I cut it short. It's a little too near, yet, after all the
years. I know I never want to see snow again--it is the most cruel
blue-white in the world.
We stopped the night, of course, and in the morning Roger and
Margarita went for a walk on the crust, for it had snowed all night
and the evening before--the great, fat, grey clouds were full of
it--and we thought we were in for another blizzard like last year's.
It had "let up" for a little, as they say about there, but Roger was
afraid to risk going away till it had definitely ended, so they went
for their walk, and I chatted with Miss Jencks by the fire. They had
been gone about an hour when we heard a great scratching and whining
at the door (I thought for a moment it was Kitch) and Rosy bounded in,
snapping his teeth and glaring fearfully. We both jumped up and he
flew at me and caught my sleeve in his teeth--for a moment, I confess,
I felt a little queer, for I had seen him throw Caliban and hold
him--then, as I drew back, he uttered the most heartrending howl I
have ever heard, and spun wildly around, and at that moment I felt
suddenly that something was up and that I was wanted. Miss Jencks felt
it at exactly that moment, too, and ran for my great-coat before I
asked her.
She says that I said,
"Where are they, old fellow? Go seek!" but I don't remember it. I know
that she said in a low voice,
"I shall be of no use--I can't run--but I will have everything ready,"
though she says I must have imagined it.
Rosy flew through the door and I after him--she had the sense to bring
me my heavy arctic overshoes, or I should have slipped in a
minute--and I ran for about fifty yards.
Then something stopped me. Where it came from, _what_ did it, I don't
know and can never know, but I swear I heard a low, distinct voice
close to me (not a cry, mind you, but a quiet, hoarse voice) saying,
"Get a rope. Get a rope."
I checked like a scared horse and nearly fell.
"Get a rope," I heard again, "_get a rope_."
Then, cursing at myself for a crazy fool, I actually turned, with Rosy
showing his teeth at me, and dashed back (all those precious yards!)
and grabbed a pile of rope Caliban had brought out to bind some big
logs for hauling and abandoned under the eaves when we arrived on the
island. Rosy was far ahead now, but he had gone through the crust at
intervals and I tracked him by that.
[Illustration: I LEANED OVER THE BANK AND CRIED THAT I WAS THERE, BUT
SHE NEVER STOPPED--IT WAS TERRIBLE]
Suddenly the wind--it was blowing a steady gale behind me--shifted,
and I heard a succession of terrible cries, great hoarse, high
shrieks, like nothing human and yet unlike any animal. Wordless,
throat-tearing screams they were, and I shouted back, against the
head-on wind,
"Coming! Coming! Hold on! I'm coming!" till I coughed and strangled
and had to stop.
How I ran! I never did it before and certainly never can again. Rosy's
tracks curved and twisted, and I felt I was losing time, but dared not
risk missing them, for I was coming nearer to that awful voice
steadily, though it echoed so I should have been helpless without any
other guide.
Well, I found them. Roger up to his shoulders in icy water, his head
dropped back, white, on her arm, and she up to her waist on a slippery
ledge under the highest point of the bank--the bank that I blasted
out! She was caught, I could see, on a jagged point by her heavy,
woollen skirt (it was made in London, bless it!) and must have wedged
her foot, besides, in some way, for she had his whole weight; her lips
were blue. She wore a blood-red cape, all merry and Christmas-like
against the white ledges, and her hair streamed in the wind. Her head
was thrown back like a hound's and those blood-curdling screams poured
out of it; her eyes were shut. Now and then Rosy bayed beside her,
scratching at the snow, and where the water was not frozen in the
protected pools it swirled like a mill-race around the nasty, pointed
rocks.
I leaned over the bank and cried that I was there, but she never
stopped--it was terrible. Finally I made a slip-noose and actually
managed to fling it over his head--Roger had taught me to do that at
school, twenty years ago--and that stopped her, hitting against her
cheek, and she opened her eyes.
"Put it under his arms, can you?" I cried, and after several efforts,
for she was nearly frozen stiff, the brave, clever creature did, and
I got it around a tree on the edge. Then I stopped, panting, for I
realised that I could do no more. The run had taken all the strength
out of me--I couldn't have dragged a cat--and she was little more than
a foot below me!
I can't write about it. My arms ache now, just as my infernal
shoulders ached with that paralysing, numb ache then.
"Listen!" I cried, for she had begun to scream again, "listen,
Margarita, or I will beat you! Is he unconscious?"
She nodded.
"Can you hold on five minutes, with his weight gone?"
She blinked in a sort of stupid assent.
"Could you for ten? Are you braced solid?"
Again she blinked, and with an inspiration I plunged my shaking hand
into my great-coat pocket and pulled out a brandy-flask. Miss Jencks
had taken it from the sideboard.
I tied it into my handkerchief, opened, and swung it down to her, and
she got her lips around it and coughed it down. It acted instantly and
she could move a little, and while I encouraged her, and after several
heartrending failures, which nearly spilled all the brandy, she got it
into his mouth between his teeth, as his big body swung in the noose.
It ran over his chin and down his neck, but a little got in, and his
eyelids quivered. Soon he coughed, and I dared not wait another
second.
"I am going for Caliban," I said very distinctly, "we will pull you
out in a few minutes. Let him alone and hang on, do you hear? Don't
scream any more--you are safe. Pour all the brandy into him--tell him
he is tied fast. Don't try to move--you may slip, and tear your skirt.
Hold on!"
Then I turned my back on them and ran, or rather stumbled off. I
leaned over and kissed her forehead, first.
I remember muttering, "I never asked before--if You or Anybody is
there, save them! Take me and save them!" and then I stumbled on and
on....
It was not too long. Caliban was coming with his big wood-sled and
more rope and blankets, and as I caught sight of him the most
extraordinary thought flew into my mind, which worked with a dreadful
clearness, for I saw them stiffen and sink and slip away every second.
Rosy bayed just then, and as my heart sank, for I thought they were
gone, it suddenly occurred to me what Rosy's name must have been!
"It's _Rosencrantz_!" I muttered, "and the one Margarita insists was
called 'Gildy' was _Guildenstern_, and they were _Hamlet's_
friends--poor Prynne!" Perhaps that wasn't idiotic--I laughed as I
stumbled along!
Well, they were there, and Roger was enough himself to strike out with
his feet a little and avoid hindering us, if he couldn't help much. I
made another noose for her, and she hung in it while Caliban dragged
him up--the fellow had the strength of an ox and showed wonderful
dexterity--and later crawled down the rocks and cut her skirt through
with his big clasp-knife. She was the hardest to move, for her foot
was caught--all that saved her. I thought we should break her ankle
before we could get her.
We laid them on the sledge, wrapped in blankets, poured in more
brandy, and Caliban attached Rosy to it by his collar--an old trick of
his, it seems--and they dragged us all home, for my worthless legs
gave out completely.
Miss Jencks and Agnes rubbed them and mustard-bathed them and I wrote
telegrams for Caliban to take in the launch--wrote them as well as I
could in the clutches of a violent chill, with my teeth like castanets
and my hands palsied--and even as I wrote, it came to me that
Margarita had repeated monotonously, all the way home, in a hoarse,
painful voice (but, mercifully, a low one) "get a rope, get a rope,
get a rope."
It was the voice I had heard, that turned me back!
She was all right, but very weak and sore and with a little fever--not
much. She was perfectly conscious of everything within an hour, and
told us about it: how she had slipped and Roger had hit his head and
strained himself in going after her. She thinks she held him under the
arms ten minutes, screaming all the time! She sent Rosy back, finally,
though at first he refused to go.
Roger was delirious for five days and very dangerously ill for three
weeks--it was double pneumonia. Miss Jencks had seen it before and it
was her prompt measures before we could get the doctor or Harriet that
saved him, they think. It was a bad age for pneumonia; Harriet said
she would rather have pulled Margarita through it. She brought a
deaconess from the little dispensary with her and one or the other was
watching him like a cat every second, for three weeks. It was a
nurse's case, the doctor said, though he stopped the first week.
When Margarita came to herself after an hour or so, she asked for me,
and as I knelt by her bed and she turned her great eyes on me I caught
my breath, for I was looking at a new woman. I can't describe it
better than by saying that she had a soul! There had always been
something missing, you see, though I would never have admitted it, if
she hadn't got it then. But it was there.
It was very pathetic, those first days when Roger was delirious: she
was nearly so herself. And yet it was not wholly grief--there was a
definite reason for it, which we all felt, somehow, but she would not
give it.
"Will he not know me for a minute, a little minute, Harriet?" she
would beg, so piteously, and Harriet would soothe her and try to give
her hope. The fifth day he was very low and the doctor told us to make
up our minds for anything: he hadn't slept all night. I took Harriet
by the shoulders and asked her if she could not possibly make him
conscious--before. I don't know why I asked her and not the doctor,
but I did. She promised me she would try (I think she had nearly
given up hope, herself) and at three the next morning she called me
and said that I might have a chance--that he might know us for a
moment. Margarita was by the bed: her face was enough to break your
heart.
"Only a minute, Harriet--only a little minute!" she pleaded like a
baby. I don't know what insane vow I didn't offer ... He opened his
eyes and they fell on her. She put her hand on his forehead and said
very plainly.
"Listen, Roger, you must listen. It is I--Margarita, _Cherie_, you
know. Do you hear?"
His eyes looked a little conscious, and Harriet held his pulse and
slipped something into his mouth. In a moment we all knew that he knew
us.
"Now say one thing, Mrs. Bradley--quickly!" Harriet whispered.
Margarita bent like a flash and whispered in his ear very swiftly: her
whole body was tense. You should have seen his eyes--he was old Roger
again! I could see his hand press hers and she kissed him just as the
flash went by, and he took to muttering again.
Harriet pushed her away and put her hand on his forehead, then nodded
at the deaconess.
"Call the doctor!" she said sharply, and I thought it was all over....
But it was the turn, and after that by hair's breadths and hair's
breadths they pulled him over.
"Now he knows, Jerry," Margarita said to me, and went to bed herself.
It was a good week after that, when the doctor had gone and we were
all breathing naturally again, that Harriet asked me abruptly if I had
noticed Mrs. Bradley's voice. I said yes, that it was still decidedly
husky. She looked at me so sadly, so strangely, that my nerves fairly
jumped--we had all been on edge for a month--and I commanded her
rather sharply to say what she meant and be done with it.
"Is her voice injured?"
"I am afraid so, yes," she said gently.
"But surely time and rest and proper treatment," I began, but she
shook her head.
"The doctor examined her throat before he left," she said. "Of course
he had no laryngoscope with him, but he didn't need one, really. The
vocal cords are all stretched--he said the specialists might help her
and take away a great deal of the hoarseness, but that in his opinion
she can never stand the strain of public singing again: he thinks
excitement alone would paralyse the cords."
"Who's to tell her?" I said quietly.
You see, we'd all been stretched so taut that we couldn't use any more
energy in exclamations or regrets.
"I thought you might," she said, but I shook my head.
"Miss Jencks--" I began, but it appeared that Miss Jencks felt unequal
to it. So Harriet told her, of course, on the principle that when one
has a heavy load he may as well carry a little more, I suppose.
And after all it wasn't so bad; for Margarita came down to me a little
later, and told me she had known it all the time!
"But, of course, dear child," I said hopefully, "Doctor ---- is not a
throat specialist, you know, and we can but try some of those famous
fellows, a little later. Perhaps in a year or two----"
"You are very good to me, Jerry," she said, "but it is no use. I know.
I shall never sing again. I am sorry, because----"
"Sorry?" I cried, "why, of course you are sorry! What do you mean?"
"Because," she continued placidly, "it will not be so much to give
Roger."
"Give Roger?" I echoed stupidly, "how 'give Roger'?"
"I was not going to sing any more, anyway," she said.
For a moment I was dazed and then the simplicity of it all flashed
over me.
"Why, Margarita!" I cried--and that is all the comment I ever made.
"That was what I wanted to tell him when he did not know me," she
explained. "I--I was going to tell him the night--the night it
happened."
"And does he know it now?"
"Of course. That is why he got well," she said promptly.
And do you know, I'm not sure she was wrong? That life was killing
him--I mean it ran across his instincts and feeling and beliefs, every
way.
There was no doubt she meant it. She never referred to the subject
again.
He wanted her to see somebody else about her throat, but she
absolutely refused to leave the Island till he was out of bed--Sarah
came on with the baby two weeks later--and they sat by him all day
nearly, the two of them, and he hardly let go her hand. He had changed
a great deal in one way--his hair was quite silvered. But it was very
becoming.
I didn't leave till I saw him in a dressing-gown in a long chair by
the fire. Harriet went back to her hospital, and when Roger was up to
it they went South for a bit before he began to work again.
The day before I left he did an odd thing--one of the two or three
impractical, sentimental things I ever knew him to do in his life. He
asked me to bring him his history of Napoleon--it had been packed into
their luggage by mistake--and deliberately laid it on the heart of the
fire! I cried out and leaned forward to snatch it--to think of the
labour it represented!--but he put his hand on my arm.
"Don't, Jerry--I hate every page of it!" he said.
Well, I have been wondering these twenty years if perhaps they'll talk
about it--the whole thing--some day. At the time, we all acted as if
it were the most natural thing in the world for Margarita to settle
down as a _haus frau_--perhaps when _Nora_ got done with her studies
of life (for I read Sue's Ibsen, you see) that is what she did, after
all!
At any rate, I frankly hope so. For if all the wisdom and experience
and training that the wonderful sex is to gain by its exodus from the
home does not get back into it ultimately, I can't (in my masculine
stupidity) quite see how it's going to get back into the race at all!
And then what good has it done? I hope Mr. Ibsen knows!