The Borderland of Life
Again I felt myself striving to grasp at something—nothing tangible now,
but a long series of exhausting, infinitely confused dreams. My brain
strove desperately to retain them, but the more it strove the more they
slipped back into the darkness of the further side of memory; and, with
one mighty effort to hold on to the last of the vanishing train, I
opened my eyes, oppressed with a sense of significant things forgotten.
My eyes opened, I say; and they stared widely at a patch of sky, of an
untellable blue, sparkling gem-like, and set very far off as if seen
through the wrong end of a telescope. As I stared, the sense of
oppression slipped from me. I sat up; but the patch of sky reeled, and I
lay back again, whereupon it recovered its adorable stability. I felt
tired, but content. It was good to lie there, and watch that enchanted
sky, and rest from thought and dreams.
After a while, however, I turned my head, and noted that I was in a
deep, low-vaulted, tunnel-shaped cave—or rather bottle-shaped, for it
was enlarged about the place where I lay. I noted that I lay on furs, on
a low, couch-like ledge; and I noted, too, that there was a wind
outside, for at intervals a branch was bowed across the cave-mouth and
withdrawn. Then I perceived that a little jar of water and a broken cake
of barley meal stood just within reach; and straightway I was aware of a
most interested appetite. I sat up again and began to eat and drink. The
patch of sky reeled, danced, blurred, darkened,—and again grew clear and
steady. I finished the barley bread, finished the little jar of water,
and sat communing lucidly with my right mind.
It was manifest that I had been saved that night of my fall over the
cliff (by Anderson?—I prayed not); that I had been desperately ill—for
the hands and arms upon which I looked down with sarcastic pity were
emaciated; that I had been tenderly cared for—for the couch was soft,
the cave well kept, and a rude screen stood at one side to shield me
when the winds came into the cave-mouth. I raised my hands to my head.
It was bandaged; and at one side my hair had been much cut away. But my
hair—how long the rest of it was! And then came a stroke of wonder—my
once smooth chin was deeply bearded! How long, how long must I have
rested here, to grow so patriarchal an adornment!
Stung to a fierce restlessness, and with a sinking at my heart, I rose,
tottered to the cave-mouth, and looked out.
The world I had last seen was a green world on the threshold of June.
The world I looked on now was a world of fading scarlets, the last fires
of autumn fast dying from the ragged leafage.
Below, beyond trees and a field, was outspread the wide water of Minas,
roughened to a cold and angry indigo under the wind. To the left,
purple-dim and haze-wrapped, sat Blomidon. Grand Pré must be around to
the left. Then the cave was in the face of the Piziquid bluff. So near
to friends, yet hidden in a cave! What had happened the while I lay as
dead? I tottered back to the couch, and fell on my back, and thought. My
apprehensions were like a mountain of lead upon the pit of my stomach,
and I laboured for my breath.
First I thought of Nicole as having saved me—Anderson I knew would have
done his best, but was helpless among an unfriendly people, and well
occupied to keep his own scalp. Yet Nicole would have taken me to Father
Fafard! And surely there were houses in Grand Pré where the son of my
father would have been nursed, and not driven to hide in a hole—till his
beard grew! And surely, after all that had happened, Yvonne would no
longer count me a traitor, Monsieur and Madame would make amends for
this dreadful misjudgment! And surely—but if so, where were all these
friends?
Or what had befallen Grand Pré?
“If evil has befallen them (I did not say Yvonne) I want to die! I will
go out, and fight, and die at once!” I cried, springing to my feet.
But I was still very weak, and my passion had yet further weakened me,
so that I fell to the floor beside the couch; and in falling I knocked
over the little jar and broke it. Even then I was conscious of a regret
for the little jar; I realized that I was thirsty; and though I wanted
to die, I wanted a drink of water first.
This inconsequent mood soon passed, and I crawled back on to the couch,
the conviction well hammered into my brain that I was not yet fit to die
with credit. And now, having found me no comfort in reason, and having
faced the fact that there was nothing I could do but wait, I began to
muse more temperately, and to cast about, as one will when weak, for
omens and auguries. They kill time, and I hold them harmless.
But a truce to cant. Who am I that I should dare to say I laugh at or
deny them? I may laugh at myself for a credulous fool. And I have no
doubt whatever that most omens are sheer rubbish, more vain than a
floating feather. But again there are things of that kindred that have
convinced me, and have blessed me; and I dare not be irreverent to the
mock mysteries, lest I be guilty of blaspheming those which are true. We
know not—that is the most we know.
I will not agree, then, that I was a subject for laughter if, lying
there alone, sick, tormented, loving without hope, fast bound in
ignorance of events most vital to my love, I let my mind recall the
curious prophesyings of old Mother Pêche. Of Yvonne directly I dared not
suffer myself to think, lest my heart should break or stop.
When fate denies occasion to play the hero, it is often well, while
waiting, to play the child. I lay quiet, looked at the patch of sky, and
occupied myself with Mother Pêche’s soothsayings.
_Your heart’s desire is near your death of hope._
At first there was comfort in this, and I took it very seriously, for
the sake of the argument. But oh, these oracles, astute from the days of
Delphi and Dodona! Already I could perceive that my hope was not quite
dead. A thousand chances came hinting about the windows of my thought.
Why might not Yvonne be safe, well,—free? The odds were that things had
gone ill in my absence, but there was still the chance they might have
instead gone well. Here and now, plainly, was not my death of hope,
wherefore my heart’s desire could not be near. I turned aside the saying
in angry contempt, and fell to feeling my ribs, my shrunk chest, my
skinny arms, wondering how long before I could well wield sword again.
In this far from reassuring occupation I came upon the little leather
pouch which Mother Pêche had hung about my neck. With eagerness I drew
out the mystic stone and held it up before my face. The eye waned and
dilated in the dim light, as if a living spirit lurked behind it.
“Le Veilleur,” I said to myself. “The Watcher. Little strange is it if
simple souls ascribe to you sorcery and power.”
Then I remembered the snatch of doggerel which the old dame had muttered
over it as she gave it to me. _While this you wear what most you fear
will never come to pass._
Curious it seemed to me that it should have stuck in my mind, though so
little heeded at the time. _What most you fear._ What was it most I
feared? Surely, that Yvonne should go to another. Then that, at least,
should not befall while I lived, if there were force in witchcraft; for
I would wear the “Watcher” till I died.
But here again my delusive little satisfaction had but a breath long to
live. For indeed what most I feared was something, alas! quite
different. What most I feared was calamity, evil, anguish, for Yvonne.
Then, clearly, if her happiness required her to be the wife of George
Anderson, I could not hinder it. Could not? Nay, “_would_ not!” I cried
aloud; and thereupon, no longer able to drug myself with auguries, and
no longer able to be dumb under the misery of my own soul, I sprang
upright, strained my arms above my head, and prayed a selfish prayer:
“God, give her joy, but through me, through me!” Then I flung myself
down again, and set my teeth, and turned my face to the wall. Thus I lay
as one dead; and so it fell that when the door of the cave was darkened,
and steps came to my bed, I did not look up.