THE TOW-PATH BY NIGHT.
It was now the second week in June. The weather had been without a
flaw. From dawn to evening the sun had moved through almost cloudless
skies. It was a splendid time for children to enjoy themselves out of
doors, and every day Freddie was carried from the back door of
Crawford's House by his Aunt Hetty, handed into the arms of Francis
Bramwell, and borne across to Boland's Ait, there to spend his time in
riotous fancy and boisterous play with Frank Bramwell till the dinner
hour.
The two boys got on famously together. Freddie was the taller and
lustier of the two, with plenty of animal spirits and enterprise in
him, full of indulgent good-humour and patronising protection for his
companion. Frank was more sedate and thoughtful. He had a closer and a
keener mind, and as such minds are generally fascinated by the gifts
of physical exuberance and mental intrepidity, he gave in to his gayer
and more adventurous playmate. Each was the complement of the other.
Freddie took after his Aunt Hetty in person and mind, and Frank after
his father in disposition and his mother in appearance.
The fortnight had wrought a marvellous change in Francis Bramwell. In
his youth he had been a dreamer, a poet. When he met Kate Ray he
became a lover of her, at times austere and lofty, at times
tempestuous. When he married he remained the lover still. After the
flight of his wife he plunged headlong into all the fierce excitement
of gambling, and led a completely reckless life. Then all at once he
rushed into the direct opposite, took up his abode on the last rod of
his property, Boland's Ait, and lived there the severe life of an
anchorite, lived face to face with the ruins of the past and possessed
his soul in silence, and mused upon the ways of Providence, and broke
his spirit to the Christian law of patient endurance.
Now, for the first time in his life, he was confronted with material
duties which had to be performed with his own hand. His income he now
considered inadequate, and it could be increased only by his own
labour. He had already planned and partly written a few articles which
he hoped to get accepted by papers or magazines. He had been ashore
twice and made some simple additions to the furniture of the cottage,
and bought toys for Frank and Freddie to play with. He had levelled
and smoothed and swept the old timber-yard for the boys, and put the
play-room in order against a rainy day. For the two years he had dwelt
alone on the Ait he had lived most frugally, and had not used up all
his slender income, so that these little expenses did not come out of
revenue.
It cheers the heart to have anything to do, and it soothes and
sustains the heart when we have the result of our activity always at
hand under our eyes.
Of mornings he had to dress Frank, an operation he at first executed
with clumsiness and in despair. He had to get the boy his breakfast
and watch him while he ate it. After that he had to fetch Freddie, set
the two young people safely in the timber-yard, and, having secured
the gate, go back to his sitting-room and write or meditate his
articles until it was time for Freddie to go home. The boy's dinner
had to be got ready, and then after the departure of Mrs. Treleaven he
shut the outer door, gave Frank the run of the house, and sat down to
his papers once more till tea. This meal he prepared without the aid
of Mrs. Treleaven, and shortly after tea he had to undress little
Frank and put him to bed.
He had been a dreamer, a poet, a lover, a gambler, a recluse. Now he
was becoming a man. His duties were humanising him. When he lay down
at night it was not, as of old, to live over again the hideous past
with its vast calamity; but to dwell on the events of the day with
restful complacency, and to contemplate with gentle satisfaction the
cares and duties of the morrow. In the old days of his isolation his
veins seemed filled with acrid juices, with vinegar and gall. In these
nights, as he lay feeling the balm of slumber coming down upon him
through the bland summer air, the milk of human kindness beat within
his pulses.
In the old days his prayers were for deliverance and for a spirit of
charity. But he prayed for that spirit of charity because charity was
enjoined by the Great Teacher. He did not pray for deliverance in the
form of death now. He prayed that he might be spared to look after his
boy. He had no need to pray for charity now; for was not his child
lying there beside him safe and sound and full of rosy health, and was
not the child's mother forgiven by him and by a Greater, and in
Heaven?
He never thought of Ainsworth. Why should he? Kate was dead, and he
had his child, and what was all the rest of the world to him? Nothing.
To himself he admitted the situation was anomalous, and that he was
ill-qualified to take care of so young a child. Of course it would be
worse than folly to think of his sister in Australia. She had her
husband and her own children, and was prosperous there. It never
occurred to him once to send his boy to her. The idea that she might
come over to take charge of his Frank had only arisen to his mind in
dreams, to be laughed at upon waking. Of course a woman, not a man,
was the natural guardian of a child of little Frank's age. Look at the
care Miss Layard took of Freddie. What a lucky fellow Layard was to
have such a sister to mind his boy!
Then in a dream, just as he had the idea of his sister travelling all
the way from Australia to rear Frank, the idea came to him that it
would be a good thing if Miss Layard would take charge of Frank; this,
too, was only to be laughed at upon waking. Miss Layard was not a
servant whom he could employ, or a sister of whom he could expect such
a service. The thing was an absurdity worthy of midsummer madness, but
what a pity it should be absurd!
He had dreamed the dream only once about his sister. He had dreamed
the dream more than once about Miss Layard. This would be accounted
for, no doubt, by the fact that he saw and spoke to Miss Layard every
day.
The thought of leaving the Ait and taking a lodging ashore had
presented itself to his mind, only to be dismissed after a few
moments' consideration. By this time, after his two years of solitude,
he had become accustomed to attending upon himself, and felt no more
awkwardness in this respect than a sailor. He could cook his food and
light his fire and make his bed as though he had been accustomed to
shift for himself all his life. For two years he had been accustomed
to all these services, and now he had the advantage of Mrs.
Treleaven's daily visit, which relieved him of much of the drudgery. A
lodging such as his present means could command would be unbearable.
All his life, until the beginning of his reckless year, he had been
accustomed to elegance and refinement. And all his life, until his
retirement to the islet, he had lived in comfort, and part of his life
in affluence. He could not endure the thought of contact with vulgar
grasping landladies, and above all, he could not entertain the idea of
exposing this child to the dulling and saddening intercourse with the
unrefined folk to be found in such houses. He should be able to afford
but one room, and how could he pursue literary studies or labours with
little Frank at his very elbow? To let the child consort with those
around them would be worse than all the inconveniences of this place.
No. He must stay where he was until he had mended his fortunes with
his pen. The old timber-yard was a capital playground for Frank and
Freddie in the fine weather, and when it rained there was the room he
had prepared for them in the cottage. Besides----
Besides, if he went to live ashore Frank would no longer have so
suitable a playmate as Freddie. He himself should certainly miss
the cheerful, vivacious little chap who lived at Crawford's House,
and--yes, and the brief meetings morning and afternoon with the gay
and beautiful and sympathetic girl, Miss Layard. Let things be as they
were.
Miss Layard had more than once repeated her brother's invitation to
Bramwell that he should go over for an hour in the evening. He always
pleaded in excuse the reason given for him by Philip Ray on the
occasion of his hastily and unthinkingly accepting the first
invitation. He could not leave the boy. Then she asked him to bring
the boy. This could not be done either. Why? Well, because it would be
giving them too much trouble. Nothing of the kind. They would be only
too delighted to have Frank. Well, then, if that reason would not
serve, it would not be good for the child to keep him up so late; he
was always in bed a little after seven o'clock.
But Philip Ray had gone over often, and brought back word that they
were very nice people, and he liked to talk a great deal about them,
particularly the brother, to Bramwell, and Bramwell thought that when
Philip came back from Crawford's House he was always more cool and
rational, and so he was always glad when his brother-in-law went.
It is one of the curious regulations of the South London Canal that,
while you have to pay toll if you wish to walk along the tow-path by
day, you are free to use it by night for nothing. This rule would seem
to be made out of a benevolent view to suicides. A more dreary and
dangerous and murderous-looking place there is not in all London than
that tow-path by night. To think, merely to think, in the daytime of
walking under one of those low arches in the dark is enough to make
one shudder.
The distance from the base of the arch to the edge of the water is not
more than six feet. If you keep near the wall you have to bend towards
the water; if you keep near the water it seems as though some hideous
and terrifying influence will draw you into the foul, dark, stagnant,
sinister flood. It appears to be waiting for you, passively waiting
there for you, with the full knowledge that you must come, that you
are coming, that you are come. It seems to have a purpose apart from
all other things about it, and that purpose is to draw you. It seems
to say in an unuttered voice, "I am Death and Silence."
If, as you stood under one of those odious arches, you stooped slowly,
slowly until your hand touched the brink, you would have to thrust
your fingers down an inch further to touch the water itself. And then
you would find it was dead--that it had no motion; that by the sense
of touch alone you could not tell which way the canal flows, the
current is so slow--so deadly slow. In the plutonian darkness under
the bridge you could see nothing, and from the dead water a peculiar
and awful silence seems to rise like an exhalation.
You would not utter a word there to save your life. You would feel you
had no life to save, that it already belonged to the water. If, then,
as you stooped you slipped, you would roll into the water without a
splash, for you would be on a level with the surface. You could not
utter a cry, for the terrible, the odious influence of the place would
be upon you. Even if you called out your voice would be of no avail,
for no human being could hear you, and it would only infuriate the
obscene genius of the place. Then, if the terror did not kill you
instantly, the waters would--slowly--surely, for there is nothing to
lay hold of but those flat slippery stones, and you would be in the
stagnant water against a perpendicular wall. The sharp pains of the
most perfect torture-chamber ever designed would not be equal to dying
there alone upright against that wall, holding on by those smooth
slippery flat stones on a level with your chin, and as you were
gradually pulled down, down, down, inch by inch, by the loathsome
genius of these waters.
But the horrors of this place are seldom invaded at night by human
foot. Often from summer dark to summer dawn no tread of man beats upon
that forlorn tow-path. After nightfall the place has an evil
reputation in the neighbourhood. More than a dozen times in the memory
of living people cold and clammy things, once men and women, have been
drawn slowly, laboriously, with dripping clothes, out of these turbid
waters. No man but one sorely pressed by necessity would think of
taking that path at midnight: and even when in dire haste he would
have need of strong nerves to face it, to set out upon it, to plunge
into it. For, unlike the streets and roadways that go by the dwellings
of kindly men, once upon it there is no way from it, no crossroad or
byway until the stretch of half-a-mile or a mile is accomplished. If
any supreme terror or danger menaced the traveller on that path, he
has only one refuge, one means of escape, one sanctuary to seek--the
canal itself.
In the ditch, on the inner side of the path, you cannot know what may
be crouching. Shapes and forms and monsters too hateful for sanity to
endure may be lurking in that ditch, and may spring out on you, on
your unprotected side, at any moment as you walk along. If this should
happen would not it be better for you to seek blindness and extinction
in the waters?
Or may there not lie in wait some shapes in human form more appalling
than gorgon or chimera dire, some human ghouls who have committed
crimes never dreamt of by the soul of affrighted man? May not these
come forth and whisper at your ear as you go by, and tell you what
they have done in tombs and charnel houses until the flesh falls off
your bones with dread, and you take these waters of forgetfulness at
your side to be not a river of Orcus, but of blissful deliverance?
And what a place is this for a woman by night!
She has crept cautiously out of Leeham and struck the canal at Leeham
Bridge. At that time all Leeham is asleep in bed or at work in the
great gasworks. Not a soul is abroad but two or three people moving to
or from the Neptune at the end of the Pine Groves.
The woman creeps cautiously from the road down the approach leading to
the canal. There is not a soul on the tow-path; the place is as still
as a cave. She can hear the beating of her own heart distinctly as she
walks along, keeping in the shadow.
But she will have to come out of the shadow in a moment, or rather she
will have to enter the sphere of light, for on the tow-path to her
left there is a gas-lamp.
She darts quickly through the patch of light and into the cavernous
darkness of the bridge.
In that brief period of illumination all that could be seen was that
she did not exceed the average height of woman, might be a little
below it; that she was poorly clad; that she wore a bonnet and thick
impenetrable veil; that she was covered from neck to heel with a long
dark cloak, and that the ungloved hand which grasped the cloak in
front and held it close was thin and white.
She did not seem conscious of any of the horrors of that dismal arch;
while under it she was more free from the chance of observation than
on the road or approach. She drew herself more upright, and slackened
her pace for a moment. Then with another shudder she walked swiftly
from under the arch and set off for Welford Bridge.
On her right lay a ditch neither wet nor dry; on her left the
voiceless waters of the canal, and beyond the canal a line of mute,
uninhabited, inscrutable wharves which looked like dead parts of a
living city which had drifted away, leaving this rack behind.
She sped on, unheeding her surroundings. She did not look to left or
right. She kept the edge of the canal, as though the water were the
best friend she had there. Now and then with her white ungloved hand
she drew her cloak closer round her, rather as though to preserve her
own resolution within it, to prevent her purpose from escaping, than
to protect her from observation from without.
She came within the shadow of the mighty gas-house, which, too, was
silent, save now and then a startling and alarming clamour of metal,
as though the summons of Titan to witness some overwhelming disaster.
Against the blue sky and pallid stars of early summer the huge
chimneys, and cranes, and pillars, and tanks, and viaducts, and
scaffolding, and shoots, and the enormous and towering masses of the
gasometers, stood up in a piece like some prodigious engine of one
motive, some monstrous machine used in the building of mountains or
hollowing out of seas. Now and then, through apertures low down in
this prodigious engine, small living things, no bigger than insects in
comparison with the mass, came and stood clearly visible, pricked out
in the darkness against the glow within. These were men flying for a
moment from the fiery heat of the huge instrument to cool their bodies
and their lungs in the open air.
The woman took no more note of all this wonderful work of man than to
draw her cloak to her on that side, lest it might distract her from
her purpose.
At length, as she kept on her way undismayed, she approached a black
mass of shadow, stretching across the canal and tow-path, as though to
bar her further progress.
As she drew nearer, an arc of light appeared in the centre of this
dark barrier, and beyond, or rather in the middle of the arc a speck
of brighter light still.
The dark barrier was Welford Bridge; the larger and duller light in
the middle of it was the eye of the bridge; and the central ray, like
the light on the pupil of an eye, was the lamp in the bedroom of
Boland's Ait.
The woman paused when she saw this latter light, and, leaving the
margin of the canal, crossed the tow-path to a low warehouse and
leaned against the wall in the shadow to rest.
From the point at which she now stood resting against the wall she
could see the light in the open window of the cottage.
Presently the spark formed by the lamp waved. The lamp had been
removed from the window-sill. The sash of the window was allowed to
remain up. There was a sudden flicker of light, and then all in the
cottage was dark. The lamp had been extinguished.
The woman withdrew her shoulder from the wall, gathered her cloak
round her, and resumed her way along the edge of the tow-path, going
south. She walked more slowly now, as if in thought or to give time.
She walked as though she must, because of her inclination, make
progress, but must not for some reason make too quick an advance.
Presently she stepped into the profound gloom under Welford Bridge,
and in a few seconds emerged upon the other side. Here she made
another pause.
Not a soul was in sight. She had met no one since taking the tow-path
at Leeham. The night was perfectly still. She looked around at the
bridge, and then moved rapidly along the path, as though wishing to
get beyond the point at which she might attract the attention of any
one looking over the parapet.
When about two hundred yards from the bridge she paused once more.
Here was no building against which she could lean, but instead a
sharply sloping bank surmounted by a wall. Opposite where she stood a
large log of wood reclined against the slope. She crept over and
leaned against the bank beside the log. In this position she would be
perfectly invisible to any one looking over the parapet, or even
passing along the tow-path carelessly. Here the horse-track was more
than twice its ordinary width, and between the trodden part of the
path and the bank spread a space of grass-grown waste of equal width.
Directly opposite to her stood Crawford's House, and a little further
to the left Boland's Ait. She put her hollowed right hand behind her
ear, leaned her head towards the islet, and listened intently. Not a
sound. She closed her eyes and concentrated all her faculties in the
one of hearing. The tranquillity of the cloudless night was unbroken
by any murmur but the dull dead murmur that always hangs over the
city, and is faintly perceptible even here.
Suddenly a soft gentle sound stole upon her ears, but not from the
desired quarter. The voice of a woman singing reached her. She opened
her eyes. A light burned now in the top room of Crawford's House.
The wayfarer on the tow-path could make nothing out, owing to the
distance and to the light being behind the singer, save that a woman
was standing at the open window and humming in a very low voice an old
lullaby song. The light of the lamp came through the hair of the
singer, and the listener saw that the colour of the hair was golden.
The watcher leaned back against the bank, closed her eyes, and put her
hands over her ears. She remained so a considerable time. When she
opened her eyes the light had been extinguished. She took her hands
down from her ears--all was still once more.
She looked up and down the track carefully, and strained her ear to
catch footfalls; but no one was in view, and no noise of feet broke
the frozen monotony of the silence. Gathering her cloak around her,
she left her resting-place, and, having gained the edge of the water,
resumed her way at a rapid rate in a southerly direction until she got
opposite the tail of Boland's Ait.
Here she reduced her pace, and kept on with her eyes fixed eagerly on
the ground at her feet. She bent forward, and as low as she could.
Apparently, she was looking for some mark.
There gleamed the full light of unclouded June night and unsullied
faint blue June stars, but no moon aided her search.
At length she stopped and examined the ground very closely. Then she
stooped lower still and thrust her hand down, passing it outside the
bank until it touched the water.
She seized some object first with one hand, and then with both, and
drew back from the bank softly, cautiously, as though her very life
depended on the care she took. Something stretched from her hands--a
line, a chain. It was fast to the bank, and reached from her hands out
into the water a few feet from where she stood.
She had in her hands the chain by which the floating stage was drawn
from Boland's Ait across the canal when any one wanted to go from the
tow-path to the island. The chain yielded with her a little, and then
would come no more. She drew upon it with all her might, but it simply
rose out of the water at a slightly increased distance from the bank.
She became desperate, and pulled with all her might and main. She dug
her heels into the ground, and threw the whole weight of her body
backward. To no avail.
She tore off her cloak and flung it on the ground that she might have
greater freedom. She dragged at the chain, now pulling it from one
side, now from the other. The stage did not move. Her hands were cut
and bleeding.
She stooped low and got the chain over her shoulder, and flung the
whole weight of her body over and over again into the loop.
The harsh ragged chain tore the skin and flesh of her soft delicate
shoulder until it too bled. But the stage remained motionless.
She sank down on the ground half insensible from despair and pain.
She rose up and put the chain on the uninjured shoulder, and wrenched
and tore and struggled at it, whispering to herself, "I will--I
must--I tell you I must see my child once more before I die. I only
want to see him asleep, through the window, any way, once. Do you hear
me? I _will_ see my child before I die. A mother has a right to see
her child before she dies. Mercy, mercy, mercy! One look, only one
before I go away for ever!"
She sank to the ground again. The chain slipped from her shoulder, and
with a moan she spread out her torn and bleeding hands on the rugged
ground and lay still.
The first faint streaks of dawn were in the sky before she recovered
consciousness. She rose, put on her cloak, and with dejected head and
tattering steps turned her back upon the Ait and walked in the
direction of Leeham.