The Unknown Sea Part 28

Again she entreated against temerity, and for answer he taught her of a lonely spot, asking her to carry the threaded rowan there, and to wait his coming. 'If I do not come,' he said, 'I shall be----'

'Not dead!' she breathed.

'Oh, d.a.m.ned and dead,' he said.

'It cannot be. No. Yet, O Christian, should any harm befall you, avenged you shall be. Yes. No law can serve us here efficient against the tyranny of the League; but if in all the land high places of justice be, there will I go, and there denounce the practice of such outrage and wrong. Those four, they shall not escape from account. For that I will live--ay, even hazard living--I know.'

'You will not,' ordered Christian; 'for I myself freely have served the League, and have taken payment. And these four mean to deal justly; and I have no right to complain.'

A hint of impatience sounded against the door, and Christian, with a last word enjoining secrecy, turned and lifted the latch. A forlorn sob complained. He caught both her hands in his.

'Dear heart, dear hands, a farewell were mis...o...b..,' he said, and on brow and hands he crossed her. 'A human soul shall bless your faithful doing.'

He loosed and left her. She saw the door's blank exchange for him; she heard the brisk departure of feet; away fled the spurious confidence she had caught in his presence, and desolate and despairing, blind and choked with grief, she cursed her own folly and bewailed his.

When she took up her lunatic task the red berries like told beads registered one by one prayer too like imprecation, for sure she was that the strange-named woman stirred at the heart of this coil. In heats of exasperation she longed to scatter and crush the rowan; yet the thread crept on steadily through her hands, inch by inch, till that misery was over.

Then it pleased her grief to bring out her own best scarf for enfolding.

'So I further him to her,' she said; 'so I fas.h.i.+on some love-token between them.' As soft-foot she went for it, outside a fastened door she stood to listen. She heard the low mutter of pet.i.tion, and jealous resentment sprang up against a monopoly by the dead of the benefit of prayer, so wanted by the living.

As she stood, a patch of calm sea shone into her eyes through a narrow light; and from the frame, small as a beetle, moved a boat rowing across.

Five men she counted, and she made out that the second rower was the biggest. So had he entirely surrendered. All hopeless she turned away to fulfil her promise.

At that moment Christian was speaking.

'I take it, the time is now up.'

By a mile of engirding sea the prospect of escape looked so vain that one joined a.s.sent with a fleer. Placid as the sea's calm was the Alien's countenance, and he pulled on steadily. The leader from the helm leaned forward to regard him fixedly, finding his tranquillity consonant only with imperfect wits.

'You think better of resistance, nevertheless?'

'Truly I do,' he answered. 'I think better of resistance now,' and in his eyes was no reading of resentment or anxiety.

His glance turned with his thoughts to distinguish the roof that covered his mother and Rhoda. Dear heart, cried his, do your part and I will mine.

Rhoda by then was doing after her own thought and liking. Though fasting herself, poor child, that on the morrow the board might be the better spread, for Christian she was lavish. Wine she took that Giles had not lived to drink; of griddle cakes the best she chose, and also of figs from those she summer-time ago had gathered and dried. Then she wound the silly rowan in brown moss, knotted it up in her scarf, and cloaked herself, and went out on her fool's errand.

Some miles to the west, on the edge of waste, stood a landmark of three trees, and near by, off the path, a furze-stack. Thither by devious ways of caution came Rhoda on the first wane of daylight, and having done all, faced the drear without heart, crouching into shelter of the furze.

Poorly clad for such a vigil, thin from days of want, fasting, exhausted by excitement and grief, she had no strength left to bear bravely any further trial. Though Christian's desperate emphasis stood out to bar despair, she told herself his coming was impossible, and her spirit quailed in utter cowardice as she realised her own outlook. She was afraid of the night, and her engagement had taken no limit of time.

Should the dreaded ice-wind of the season rise, there were peril to life; but her heart died under a worse terror, that increased as waste and tree bulked large and shapeless under drawing dark. For was it not the Eve of Christmas, when the strict limitations of nature were so relaxed that things inanimate could quit station, and very beasts speak like men, and naked spirits be clothed with form. Her mortal senses were averse. With desperate desire for relief she scanned the large through the longest hour of her life.

Night was in the valleys, but on the uplands twilight still, when against the sky a runner came. He, dear saviour.

But his footsteps made no sound; but he showed too white. Doubt of agony that this was not he in human flesh froze her, till he came and stood, and not seeing her close crouched, uttered his heart in a sound dreadful to hear.

'Here, here!' cried Rhoda, and had her hands on him before her eyes had fairly realised him. He was mostly naked.

Coatless, s.h.i.+rtless, unshod, his breeks and his hair clung damp, showing by what way he had come free. She held him, and laughed and sobbed.

'You have it?' he said. 'Give it here--give it.'

'This also--this first. Drink--eat.'

'No; I cannot stay.'

'You shall--you must,' she urged. 'Do you owe me nothing? What, never a word?'

He declined impatience to her better counsel; and when he had got the rowan and belted it safe, to the praise of her providence he drank eagerly and ate.

Rhoda spied a dark streak on his shoulder. 'You are hurt--oh!'

'Only skin-deep. Salt water stanched it.'

'And what of them? Christian, what have you done?' she asked with apprehension.

'Yes; I have a charge for you. Oh, their skins are whole all. Can you step on with me a pace? You will not be afraid?'

She looked at the wan south-west, and the sable heath, and the stark trees; but she could answer now: 'No,' stoutly and truly, and s.h.i.+ver for fear only. He withheld his pace for her, she stretched to a stride for him.

'Well done, I know,' she said, 'but tell me how.'

He gave a meagre tale, but many a detail she heard later to fill it out.

It was easy doing according to Christian, when time and place suited, to beat out a rib of the boat, to stand his ground for a moment while the sea accomplished for him, then to drop overboard when blades struck too quick and close. The boat went down, he said, near three miles from sh.o.r.e.

'O Christian! are any drowned?'

'No, no. I had done my best by them. You know how the Tortoises lie. We were well within a furlong of them. I got there first, and was doffed and ready when they came, waiting to offer them fair. Rhoda, you will carry word of this that some fellows may go to take them off.'

'Not I,' she said vindictively; 'let them wear the night there for due quittance.'

'No. They might be perished. And 'twas I counselled them not to attempt the sh.o.r.e, and said I could send word of their plight; and I meant it honestly, though the fools grew so mad at that, that they took to stoning.'

When, later, Rhoda heard the tale more fully, it showed elements of incongruous comedy; later still, she heard it grown into monstrous proportions, when the name of the Tortoises was put aside, and the place was known as the Devil's Rocks thenceforward. The Alien's feats that day, his mighty stroke staving the boat, his swimming of marvellous speed, his confidence and temerity, were not pa.s.sed on to his credit: adverse was the interpretation, and he never lived it down.

'Tell me, Christian, where you will be, and how we are to get news of you till you dare return.'

'Dare return! If I be not dead, that will I to-morrow.'

She cried out against such insanity.

'You must not. It is wicked with a foolhardy parade to torment us--your mother.'

'Have no fear, dear. If I come again, it will be with joy, bearing my sheaves.'

She could put an interpretation on his words that loaded her heart.

'Rhoda, dear sister, I owe you much this day, and now I will ask for one thing more.'