Kitabı oku: «Under St Paul's: A Romance», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XII.
AN IDLE EVENING AND NIGHT

At last they got out of that room into the street, and home to the private hotel. Here they found word awaiting for them that Miss Osborne would not appear until dinner-time, and that Miss Gordon was trying to get a little sleep. Upon hearing this the two men looked blank. There was, however, no appeal; so Osborne went to his room to write letters, and Nevill said he'd go and look up his Indian geography. Osborne was restless, unhappy. He did not know how to describe his condition to himself. There was a conflict in his mind, but he could not analyse it so as to determine what were the contending forces. That girl had sat up all last night, she had something of moment to tell him, she was resting, and he could not see her, and he wanted to see her. He felt cold and wretched and forlorn without her. He should not be able to live a fortnight without seeing her. If she went away now he should follow her, even if she bade him not. He should follow her afar off. He should go to the towns she went to, and walk about the streets all day in the hope of seeing her now and then. He should not intrude upon her, but when he had found out where she stayed, he should walk up and down till well into the night, watching over her. Who could tell but that some great emergency might arise, in which he, armed by love with the strength of ten, might save her! The maddest flames that ever burned could not keep him back from the door behind which she was threatened. Had all these old men left that place yet, and was that bone lying there stark upon that table in that vacant hushed room? Or was some old man, the wood destined to form whose coffin was now seasoned in the timber-yard and ready for making-up, holding an inquest on that relic of the past, and founding on that piece of God's work an indictment against the faith He had revealed to man? It was monstrous. Monstrous! Letters! He could write no letters to-day. He could not keep his mind fixed on any idea for five minutes. He could not sit still at the table. It was impossible for him to concentrate his mind on anything but the matter uppermost in his thoughts. He would allow to no man that his affection for his old Stratford friends had cooled in the smallest degree; but then he was now consumed by a great passion, and he had no leisure for ordinary correspondence. Time wore wearily on, and at last half-past five came, and Osborne descended to the drawing-room. Here he found Nevill alone. He said, 'You must look sharp, Osborne, if you want to catch this post; it's just half-past five.' 'Unfortunately I have nothing for it. I did not write a line.' 'By Jove! Must be something in the atmosphere. Yours is exactly my case. I went to look up Indian geography, and never opened a book.' 'What did you do?' 'Went to sleep.' 'To sleep! I wish I could have gone.' 'Your conscience isn't good enough to allow you, Osborne. You know very well you are afraid to face facts, and that daunts you.' 'I am not afraid to face facts. But I do not care for things which are called facts and which are fictions.' 'All right, my dear fellow; don't get excited over the matter.' 'But I assure you, you do me wrong. I have not only the courage of my opinions, but the courage to hear any other man's opinions.' 'I am not a reading man. But I always carry a few books with me. If you care to go more deeply into the thing, you are welcome to a loan of the few I have. I warn you they are not consolatory.' 'I don't want consolation or the obstinacy of the blind. I am much interested in all you say, and should be very glad to read the books you offer.' 'Mind, I warn you before you start. You must be prepared for anything.' 'No fact can affect what is true, and I am prepared to face truth.' 'Very well, you shall have the books when we come back to-night. Here's Miss Gordon, looking more charming than ever.' At that moment she entered the room, wearing the Giovanni Bellini hat. The look of fatigue had disappeared. Once more her eyes were lighted up with those mysterious fires-once more the rich colour was in her cheeks. Osborne's heart bounded at sight of her; all the gloom and dullness of that day faded out of his mind at the spectacle of her youth and beauty. Who but a fool would bother himself about who had lived nine thousand years ago, when he might rest his eyes on such a form and such a face as this? Who would care for the voice of science or of history, when such a voice as hers was waiting at his ears? 'Miss Osborne will not be down for about twenty minutes. Her watch was stopped, and she did not think it was so late,' she said as she came up the room towards the young men. 'Osborne,' said Nevill ruefully, 'you really ought to get your sister's watch looked after. Most serious consequences often arise from watches being slow.' 'She gave it to me, Mr Osborne,' said the girl, holding out her hand as she spoke, 'to take to you, and get it repaired. She thinks the mainspring must be broken.' 'Allow me to look,' interposed Nevill. 'I'm no end of a swell at watches. A fellow who is always kicking about must know a lot about watches. When you are out West, you don't always care to ask Dog's Tail or Sitting Bull what he thinks of the sanitary condition of your watch. No, it's not the mainspring. The mainspring is all right. Stop, there's a jeweller's just at the end of the Row. I'll run out and let him have a look at it. Perhaps he can put it right before Miss Osborne comes down. I shall be back in twenty minutes or a little less.' As he spoke he left the room. When he found himself in the passage he looked around furtively. No one was in view. He hastily raised the watch to his lips and kissed it, whispering, – 'I wanted that; and there was no good in my staying and spoiling sport.' When he had gone, Miss Gordon moved still closer to where Osborne sat spellbound by admiration. Insensibly he rose and held out his hand. She gave him hers. 'I never saw you looking so lovely before,' he said slowly-he retained her hand, and kept his eyes fixed on her face-'never.' 'I am glad to hear you say so,' she answered gently. She looked up at him for an instant, and blushed and smiled. 'Do you like this hat as well to-day as the first time you saw it?' 'I like the owner a thousand times better.' 'You know what I told you?' 'I have forgotten nothing you have ever told me, child.' 'You recollect I said if I put on that hat I should put on my saucy manner?' 'I recollect all you said, child. What of it?' 'You would be sorry if I put this hat off for ever?' 'It becomes you very well.' 'You would be sorry if I put away my saucy manner for ever?' 'Your sweeter manner becomes you better.' 'This morning, when I was looking at the sky, I saw all at once how foolish I had been, and how wise you are.' 'My child, my child, my precious child! My God, I thank Thee. You will never take away from me your sweeter manner?' 'No.' 'You will never take away from me this sweetest hand?' 'No.' 'Sweet is the kiss that comes alone with willingness. My love, my love, my life, my life, my child, my darling child, my wife! Does that word "wife" affright you, Marie?' 'No.'

* * * * * * * * * *

He knew he could not sleep that night, so did not undress when he went to his room. For awhile he walked up and down in suppressed excitement. This was the most important day of his life. She, whom his heart had set above all other earthly prizes, had consented to be his for ever. Intoxicating thought! For ever! He should now be specially privileged to see her every day. Every day, until she became his finally, and then no power on earth could take her from him for an hour. His own, his darling, his most beautiful and amiable Marie. He should not call her Marie. It had an unfamiliar, foreign sound. But how sweet and dutiful and homely sounded Mary! It was the gentlest and the dearest name borne by woman. His gentlest and his dearest love. What a gift bounteous Providence had bestowed on him that day! All life ought to be one long thanksgiving for this rich boon. When morning came, and she entered the breakfast-room and he went to her-to her, his most dear love-and their eyes met and they looked with a new meaning into the face of one another, what profound, what sober joy! He would not hold her hand unduly, but press it and release it, and thank her again with his eyes. And all through the time, when others were by, they would have secret signals of love confessed, and these signals would be invisible or else unintelligible to anyone but themselves. And when they were alone-when she and he were alone! Oh, priceless privilege to be alone with her, and free to speak to her of love, and sit beside her as a lover might, and draw the dear form close to him, and kiss her lips! Hold her to him and say no word, but feel through all his nature the one supreme emotion welling up continually, each moment seeming richer and richer as it came, and in his mind only one thought, 'It is she! It is she!' Sleep? He could not sleep now. Those who had dull humdrum lives might sleep; but he-he, with all this joy for the present, this anticipation for the future, how could he sleep? No, no. No sleep for him to-night. He had never before regretted he did not smoke. If what smokers said about tobacco was true, it would be delightful to sit here now before the fire, and while looking at her face through the halo lent by a pipe, count the strikings of the clocks, and mark the lessening time that separated her from him. Read? No. He didn't think he could read. Verse was out of the question. His life now was a poem, and he should be able to see beauty in nothing that did not resemble her-that she did not share. Ah, so Nevill had sent him those promised books. They were all new to him, He would look through them. They might make him sleepy. No doubt, if they contained any such absurdities as Nevill had told him, they would amuse him or put him to sleep. He wished he could go to sleep. Half-a-dozen books lay on the dressing-table. He turned them over for a few minutes and then selected one. It was full of diagrams and other drawings. He amused himself for a few minutes looking at these. His eye caught the word 'love.' This was apropos of his condition; and, with a smile of incredulous wonder on his face, he turned to read what the author had to say on the subject. Before he had read half-a-dozen pages he threw the book down with contempt. He took up another. This proved too technical for him. He could not understand what he read. He put that away quietly. Next he found a cheerful-looking book of which he had heard, but never seen. It was in the line of natural history, and yet unlike any natural history hitherto published. He opened it and began to read. It interested him at once. He read rapidly. He flew over the pages. This was the most remarkable book which had ever fallen into his hands. He became wholly absorbed in it. He turned the leaves and turned the leaves as though he were looking for some marked passage, not reading the printed words. This book fascinated him as no book had had power to do before. It was a poem of facts. Here were wonders he had never dreamed of paraded before his eyes, not out of the imagination of a poet, but out of God's great storehouse, Nature. Here were vast truths of Nature brought home to the everyday pathways of men. His face grew pale, and his eyes blazed. He did not hear the clocks strike. He took no heed of time. He rushed through the book at so great a rate, he could not pause to think or to regard himself. It was close to five o'clock when he finished the last chapter of that book. He felt that sleep had drawn further off than ever. Again he paced up and down the room. His love. His Mary. His wife that was to be. Close to five only! Would night never pass until he should see her again? In love hours seemed as long as in childhood. The hour a child is kept in school when the others have gone seems an hour of infinite pleasant possibilities to the unfortunate prisoner. The hour a lover is separated from his newly-won mistress seems more spacious still, for love crowds more joy into a minute than childhood into an hour. No sleep. No rest. Nothing else to read. Yes. Another book. Another book by the same author too! That was fortunate. No doubt it would be more interesting than the last. It dealt with a more interesting subject-Man. For half-an-hour he read here and there. This time, before he had finished the first chapter, his face had flushed, his manner become excited. At last he let the book fall to the ground, and cried, in a suppressed voice, – 'What abomination is this! What monstrous blasphemy! Man the accidental descendant of the ape! Why is not this book burned by the common hangman? How can any printer and publisher be got so base as to lend themselves to this impious affront upon Heaven? Oh God, that men placed by Thee upon this earth of Thine, should defile it and outrage Thee with such heinous thoughts! Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace to men of good-will.' He drew back the curtain of his window, placed a chair to the window, put out the light, and sat down by the window, and looked out upon London in the hour of that greatest darkness, the hour before the dawn. Then he had a vision, and later on a dream.

Part the Second.
DEPOSING SATURN

CHAPTER I.
A VISION

He saw an expanse of wild waters. The waters were grey and turbid from action of the winds. Clouds hung low over the sea in thick folds, through which came a dim yellow light. It was a November afternoon. A heavy gale blew from the north-east. In the plain of the German Ocean exposed to view nothing was visible but cloud and billow. This north-east piercing wind had come across the frozen plains and seas and mountains and forests and fjords of Norway. His eyes explored the north-eastern plain of water. He could see nothing but sea and vapour. Not an island, not a rock, not a ship was in sight. This vision had become familiar to him. He knew its history, its sequence, its goal. For years it had haunted him. He had now no control over it. Once he had read something, which had suggested it. Time after time he indulged his imagination in the spectacle of events following that open space of turbid sea in the Northern Ocean, and now he had no power to dismiss it from his imagination if he had had the will. To-night some unknown fear lurked in his consciousness. He could not tell what this fear was. It was strange, too, this vision now in opening before him had the aspect of a threat. Of old it had boded no evil. It had been nothing but an imaginative way of putting a guess, a theory. To-night, when he had turned his eyes first on that ugly space of wind-tossed waters, his spirits had suddenly sunk, and he had shivered, as if under portentous influence. Around him, beneath him, lay London, hushed in sleep. In no other part of the world was peaceful man so secure as in London. He had but to ring a bell, break a pane of glass, and shout, to summon succour sufficient to overwhelm a hundred assassins. What chilled and terrified Osborne was no dread of violence from without. There was nothing outside this room of which he stood in fear. And yet he trembled and felt cold and tremulously alarmed. No spectre of a wrong done by him rose up before his eyes. All his past showed nothing which could threaten his peace. He did not know clearly what he dreaded. He had a foreboding without a form. What disturbed him so this night of his greatest worldly triumph, of his dearest earthly joy? He could not answer. Might this be a form of compensation, of reaction, to balance the ecstasy of the day? He could not tell. He only knew that vision had begun, and would now go on; and he felt that when it ended he should be face to face with trouble never dreamed of till then. He saw in the eye of the wind, where sea and sky tumbled together away in the north-east, a dark dot. It looked no bigger than a grain of sand upon a drumhead, and it danced and leaped as a grain of sand on a drumhead when the skin is struck. Although this object looked small, and was now only on the verge of the horizon, it lay at no great distance; for gales and lowering clouds and mounting waters curtain off space, and bring the horizon home. Gradually the small object increased in size as it was pressed forward in a south-westerly direction by the wind. It never grew to great size. As it approached he could see dimly it was a long large canoe, made of a tree hollowed out like those used by the Indians. It was open, undecked. It had no sail, and was blown forward by the action of the wind on the hull. As the canoe drew nearer he could discern the figure of a man standing in the stern of the boat, paddle in hand. Now he made a swift stroke of the paddle this way, now that. Anon he swept the blade two or three times in the one direction. In front of where the man stood lay something covered up with skins. Each wave that trembled and pressed past him the man surveyed quietly, calmly, deliberately, using his paddle so as to prevent the mounting water swamping his boat. When the wave had gone by, and immediate danger no longer threatened the canoe, he turned his eyes upon the bundle at his feet. His face was capable of little expression; nevertheless there was a difference between the glance he gave the menacing waves and the look he gave the bundle. In the former dwelt an expression of familiarity, mastery, superiority; in the latter, one of concern and pity. The substantial lineaments of his countenance did not alter; the only thing which changed was the spirit of his eyes. The short winter day died. The wind did not increase, but drew a little more to the eastward. Still the man stood erect. The bundle lay at his feet; and he watched the waves mount and curl round him, and steered his boat. But something of the determined air and resolute touch had left him, and his actions were less decisive and firm. As night closed in, the canoe still drifted before the northeasterly breeze. The bundle at his feet moved. He stooped hastily, and passed a handful of food under the skins; there was a low moan from under the skins. The man threw up his head, and looked desperately around him. Nearly all the light had gone now; but in the dim yellow twilight he detected something which created a profound emotion in him. He bent down and tried to pierce the thickening gloom. Then he drew in his paddle out of the water, and resting it on the bottom of the canoe, stood upon the gunwale, and, balancing himself, looked long into the south-west, the course in which the wind was carrying him. At length a gleam of hope illumined his face. With a wild shout of joy he sprang down from the gunwale, and, bending over the bundle in the bottom of the boat, cried out, – 'Land! Land ahead!' The bundle moved a little once more, and a faint cry, half pleasure half pain, came from it. He took two more handfuls of some dark-coloured food, and thrust it under the furs. That was the last food left in the canoe. Night fell, and still that rude boat drifted on. Hour after hour this solitary figure stood up in the stern, and kept the boat from harm. About midnight the waves grew gradually less and less, and about the third hour the canoe was in comparatively smooth water. The man stooped, shook the bundle at his feet softly, and said, – 'Courage! We are in a fjord or river. We are saved!' Although it was dark at four, he could make out land, low land at both sides of him. For hours he still kept on. Gradually the water had grown smoother, and now he was enabled to direct the course of the boat while crouching in the stern. He was almost exhausted, and kept awake with difficulty. At last, instead of the long even swells, the water grew broken and chopped, and whistled in the breeze. He noticed also the canoe moved more slowly, and that there was more difficulty in steering her. The man stood up, leaned over the side of the canoe, and laid his paddle on the surface of the water. The breeze had power over the boat, but little or none over the floating paddle. He then fixed his eyes on a large object on the shore close to hand, and watched intently. The boat neither advanced nor receded, yet the influence of the wind was as great as it had been hours before. Some force was counteracting the wind. He leaned over and grasped the paddle floating alongside. It had drifted an arm's length astern. Only one inference could be drawn from these facts: the tide had turned. Only one dread was in his mind: he might be dragged out to sea again. He bent low and examined, as well as the light would allow him, the right-hand shore. It was irregular, indented with little creeks and bays. Abreast of him was the highest point of land in view. He could see the other shore and about half-a-mile of the shore he lay under. Seizing the paddle in both hands, he impelled the canoe slowly and cautiously towards the high land on the starboard beam. Gradually as he approached, the ground rose out of the water, and when he had got in shore he could dimly make out a round acclivity sloping gradually upwards five or six canoes' lengths high. He thrust the paddle down in the water as far as it would go. It stuck, and required force to bring it up again. When he got it up he felt the blade. That was all right now-mud. With a few dexterous strokes of his paddle he shot the canoe forward, steered her behind a little promontory, and then drove her head ashore. He walked forward, and with his paddle felt the bottom of the river. Mud, and a hand's breadth of water. He went aft, and thrust down his paddle. Mud and an arm's depth of water. Good! The water would fall away and leave the canoe high and dry. It would be daylight soon. When the sun arose he should look round and see this place. He was tired, worn out. He would lie down and sleep awhile. He bent over the bundle, and said, – 'All is well. We have reached land! Courage! We shall go ashore in the morning. It is near day. I will lie down and sleep till dawn.' A low moan was the only reply. The man threw himself on the bottom of the canoe and drew skins over him. The sun had risen above the horizon when he awoke. Dull clouds hung overhead. The sun was hidden. Gradually the river became illumined. The man sat up and looked around him. In front lay a vast stretch of marshes, with here and there a low hummock rising a few feet above the yellow water. To the west of the land, on which the canoe had taken the ground, appeared an opening. To the east all was morass and dreary swamp and water. Above him rose the gentle hill, clad from the margin of the river to the summit with lofty leafless trees, beneath which brambles and underwood lay bare and ragged, and under all a thin carpet of moss-like grass. The water had now fallen away from the boat, and she lay high and dry upon a bank of soft dark mud. The man felt this mud with his paddle, ascertained it was firm enough to support his weight, stepped out on it, and ascended the slope. When he reached the summit he looked round and found himself on a small island, standing in a swampy plain, with a broad river, the one he had come up the night before, on the southern shore, and a small stream on the western side. He could not see how far the island extended to the east; it could be no great distance, for, above the farthest land, eastward, gleamed water. Upon this island, and upon this only of all in view, grew forest trees. The place was a desert, a waste; no sign of man appeared. By hard Fate this unlucky man had been blown away from his home, from his fellows, and his peers. Day had succeeded day, and he had seen nothing but water and sky, sky and water. Now he saw land, but a strange unknown land; a land never trodden by man before-a land he had never heard of, and he came of a great seafaring race. He had not been overwhelmed by the sea; but, except that fate, this was the worst that could befall him. He was not dead, but he stood in a strange land, a land from which he could never find his way back over unexplored seas, fathomless darkness of night, tumult of waves. But the best must be made of things as they were. Looking at sky and river and shore would not restore him to the land of his birth. The best thing to do was to try what he could make of the place which had come in his way and saved him from a watery grave. He glanced around him to see what facilities the place afforded. The first thing which caught his eyes was a large white stone among the trees at the top of the hill. Three trees stood near this stone. A hut might be constructed with the stone for one side, and trees for corners of the opposing side. It was desirable he should live on the highest point of the island. There was no trace of man here. But people might come up that river upon either design or compulsion, and it was desirable he should be in a position commanding all approaches. Yes, he would build a hut there to shelter them; when that was done, he should explore this strange country at leisure. Now he should go and fetch them. He returned to the boat, and, bending over the bundle, spoke, and raised the skins. The sun had not come out, but the light shone full and strong. In the light of that November day the man lifted and carried ashore his wife and new-born son, and conveyed them up to the place he had selected as their future home. This man, this woman, and this child, on the top of that low hill that November day, who had been blown off the coast of Denmark, were the first human beings that had set foot on this soil, this country. Since that day alterations have taken place in that landscape. Since then great alterations have taken place on that hill. Among many changes, one of the most remarkable is that layer after layer of matter has accumulated on the hill, and it now rises to twice its former height. The stone, against which that half-naked savage reared his rude wattle hut, was not destroyed or carried away. It still occupies the same position as then. It is now covered with layers of deposit. It is on the same level as the day he landed; It stands in the same latitude and longitude. In the same latitude and longitude to-day, three hundred and ninety feet above that stone, blazes in the sun the gilded Cross of the Christian Cathedral of St Paul's! George Osborne's vision ended. He rose, stood by the window, looked out on London of to-day.