Kitabı oku: «Dorrien of Cranston», sayfa 17
Chapter Thirty Two.
In the Valley of the Shadow
“Olive, it is I who have brought you to your death!”
His face was ghastly with the horror of his self-reproach and desperation. The two were standing now, locked in each other’s embrace, beneath the cliff, watching the narrow strip of beach rapidly disappear as the fierce tide came pouring in. Nothing could be seen immediately above, for the rock beetled overhead as though about to topple upon them, but running out on each side of the bay rose a crescent of frowning wall. And from thence no succour need be expected, for its summit was lost in the gathering mist. The winter twilight was fast descending, the chill blast howled and shrieked over the heaving, storm-lashed main, and a chaos of driving, leaping billows, whose great leaden backs and white rearing crests rose hideous and spectral in the gloaming as they dashed the one upon the other in their tumultuous rush, flinging themselves high against the adamantine walls and falling back with a roar and a hiss. The grim coastline was enveloped in wreathe of white spray, and the surf-lashed base of the heights rang again as it repelled the onset of each watery monster, while in showers of milky foam the sea ran from the black, slippery rocks. A scene of wild grandeur, unparalleled in its tremendous loneliness – a terrible scene, even when viewed from a point of safety. What must it then have been to the two who stood there awaiting an inevitable death!
“It is I who have brought you to this!” She looked up at him and nestled more closely in his embrace. In the midst of her bodily fear – the natural fear of a weak woman suddenly brought face to face with a horrible death – she was able to smile. And it was a smile of unselfish reassurance.
“No, dearest. It is not your doing,” she said. “If it had not been for finding me here, you would have gone your way in safety. Roland – it is I who have destroyed you.”
“By heaven – no!” he broke in passionately. “I would sooner die with you than live without you. But nothing can get rid of the fact that it is owing to me that you are here at all. You, for whom I would have given five hundred lives – would have lost the salvation of a thousand souls to see in safety now. Oh, my darling – my heart’s sweet love – will not your God again take me at my word and work a miracle to save only you!” he added with a despairing, bitter cry, as he sank upon his knees at her feet, still clasping her with both his arms.
She bent her face down till it rested against his, and her soft, caressing hands were round his neck.
“Hush – my own!” she said. “Do not talk in that desperate way. A very little while, and we shall be united to part no more. We – you especially – have been terribly tried; now we are about to pass through the waters of death, but our sweet Saviour is very merciful. He will not part us again.”
Her calm courage and the solemn conviction of her tender tones seemed to breathe a halo of peace amid that jarring scene of storm and chaos. Their faces were wet with the showers of salt spray, and the girl’s soft hair, partially unfastened, was tossed rudely about by the cutting wind. The thunder of the surf upon the shore and the shrieking of the fierce gale drowned all other sound, yet in an interval in the turmoil, her voice could be heard fervently praying. She pleaded that if it was agreeable to the Divine Will they might be rescued from their imminent peril, but if not, and it was appointed to them now to pass through the awful waters of death, that grace might be given them both patiently to undergo whatever period of penance might be necessary to their purification, so that they might at last be united, never again to part, safe in the Heavenly Country. Then, with her head upon her lover’s shoulder, his arms around her, and her hands in his, it seemed to Olive Ingelow that the world was very far away, and she could await with perfect resignation the short but terrible struggle which should set them both free.
Rolling in, huge and awful in the dim gloaming, the mighty billows roared nearer and nearer, hurling great masses of milky foam at their very feet. They could hardly see each other’s face in the weird, sepulchral light.
“Roland, we are close to Smugglers’ Ladder, are we not?”
He started at the sound of her voice, in which there was a ring of hope.
“Quite close. Why?”
“Is there no chance of escape that way?”
He shook his head sadly.
“None whatever. I had thought of that, but it seemed better to – to face the worst here in the open than to be drowned like rats in a hole. Why, the tide runs up it like a mill-race.”
He had thought of it, and now her suggestion revived the ghastliness of the idea. What a terrible revenge of Fate! Come what might there could be no hope. Had the awful Shape been seen upon The Skegs again? Would not men be discussing the apparition with bated breath the next morning as the chill dawn revealed to the eyes of the devoted searchers two drowned corpses? Could this legion of leaping, hungry billows be the same blue, smiling, peaceful sea, on whose shore they two had sat together, when from Olive’s lips he first heard about the drear tale of violence and revenge which overshadowed the spot as with a curse. If he were to meet his end in that place of all others? Then another idea struck him. They might by singular good luck find some ledge that would place them above the reach of the waters. He himself had no such hope, but it was just barely possible.
“It is our only chance,” he continued, “and the very poorest of poor ones. But come; we will try it.”
On they sped, straining every nerve to reach the great jagged rent in the cliff, which they could see not far ahead. Farther than they thought, though, for as they stood within its dismal portals, the advance-guard of the tide already swirled knee-deep around them.
Gloomy and terrible in the extreme was the aspect of the chasm. The last faint light from without, straggling through, here and there fell upon the black, slippery rock, and the bellowing of the surf as it came dashing in, white and seething, was echoed in hollow clamour up the sides of the abyss. No light was visible above, and the atmosphere within this hideous cave hung cold and dank as the breaths of the grave. And upon the man who knew the grisly secret which these slimy walls had witnessed and had kept so well, the horrors of the place weighed an hundredfold. The outer darkness; the roaring and hissing of the great surges; the shriek of the gale and the flapping of the long wisps of seaweed against the face of the rock; all were as accusing voices – the exultant gibbering of demons come to claim their just due – and it seemed to his overtaxed brain that ghostly hands were stretched forth to drag him to his everlasting woe. A cold sweat was on his brow and his knees trembled under him. Were it not that a most precious life depended on his exertions, he would have yielded up the struggle then and there, and have plunged headlong into the boiling surf.
It was of no avail. They had immured themselves in their living tomb. A dozen great seas came sweeping in one after the other, and the chasm was a mass of white, churning water dashing backwards and forwards with resistless velocity. They had retreated as far as they could go, and now stood up to the waist in water. The very next wave would carry them off their feet – and then —
It came – crashing high against the cliff overhead, and whirling back with lightning speed. Then another and another, and Roland Dorrien was struggling in the surge – alone.
Oh, the agony of that moment! Even while battling wildly for a minute more of dear life, the awful, aching void of separation was the only consciousness he retained – that he was not to be allowed even to die with her hand clasped in his. We know that a man can dream the events of hours in as many seconds. In this fleeting moment this man endured an eternity of everlasting woe. He was separated from her in death – he would be separated from her in the future life – and his lot would be among the lost for ever.
Then his senses began to fail. He was hurled to and fro, there was a roaring in his ears; he was sinking – down, down, down – then up again into black space. Then he struck against hard rock – his footing was firm. Instinctively he threw out his hands and grasped something long and trailing; the waters fell back, and with a mighty effort he resisted their suction. He was on a ledge.
But Olive? Had the Eternal Vengeance spared him and taken her life? Was she drowned and dead in that hell-cave while he wae doomed to live? No – a thousand times no!
And then a cry, so awful and blood-curdling in its unspeakable agony, rang out above the thundrous turmoil in that grisly cave, as surely was never emitted from human breast before. It rose above the bellowing of the mighty surges, it rang upward through the black sides of the chasm, with many a weird echo – upward into the outer air – upward, till assuredly it must have mounted to the very throne of high Heaven.
“Great God! Great God! Spare her and take me!” But a grim spectre stood at his side – only a voice from the pit of the grave answered in his ear:
“Life for life. Blood for blood. Live on, accursed one, but her thou shalt never behold again in this world or in that which is to come. Never – never!”
The survivor stood for a moment on the edge of the black, slippery rock, straining his haggard eyes as he strove to pierce the gloom through which the white, seething foam was dimly rushing.
“Never – never!” he shouted, with a maniacal laugh, and poising himself he leaped headlong into the surf.
What was that? As he rose, something came in contact with him. It was a human body, limp, lifeless. A thrill of the most exquisite relief shot through his heart. He had found her. And now he felt that he had the strength of a hundred men. Half-a-dozen powerful, yet judicious strokes – for to be dashed against the rock would be fatal – and he was again grasping the ledge. A wave swept up, lifting them high in the air, but he clung to his hold with the tenacity of despair, and then, before he knew how it was done, he was crouching on the ledge, holding the girl’s insensible form in his arms.
Was she dead? Ah, no. He could hear her faint, regular breathing as he pressed his lips to hers. Wave after wave swept their precarious refuge, but now he was filled with a new hope. They had been spared for a purpose. Even if they were to die they would die together, and this reflection was sufficient to fill him with the keenest bliss after the awful agony of that moment of separation.
With one foot planted firmly against a projection in the rock, and grasping with both hands the slender and precarious hold which the seaweed and rock afforded above, Roland Dorrien crouched there for two long hours in the pitchy darkness, supporting the girl’s unconscious form. Waves surged over them, and more than once it was all he could do to avoid being swept from the slanting ledge, and his muscles cracked as he strained every nerve to resist the potent suction of the receding seas. For two long hours he dared not move a finger or alter his position by a hair’s breadth, and his laboured breathing was loud and stertorous in the intervals between the howling of the waves in the cavernous gloom and the hollow, metallic echoes, like the booming toll of a great bell, which thundered from the overhanging rocks. At length, when his exhausted strength threatened to bear no more, he suddenly realised that the onslaughts of the waves were becoming less frequent, and their force when they did come was weaker. Surely the tide had turned.
Chapter Thirty Three.
Cain
“Are you here, Roland?”
The tone was the faintest of whispers, but the voice was as if the silvern echoes of heavenly harps had suddenly been wafted to the listener’s anxious ear. He could hardly murmur a reply.
“Where are we? How dark it is!” continued she, in an awed whisper.
“We are safe.”
“Safe? – Oh, I remember.”
“Don’t talk yet, my darling. Lie still and let yourself be perfectly at rest, as much so as you can, that is, in this uncomfortable attitude. We shall have to hold on here for some time longer.”
“But you?”
“Never mind me. Wait. That’s better now,” shifting his position. And, indeed, it was a real relief – so great had been the strain upon his powers.
“Now try to sleep,” he continued. “We shall have to stay here for some time; in fact, it will be difficult to get down in the dark. We were literally washed up here – and here we had better stay.”
Though the seas no longer reached their place of refuge they still surged angrily through the chasm. Olive shivered.
“How cold it is!” she said faintly.
“Yes. Take a ‘nip’ of this. It is absolutely necessary!” he said, unscrewing the top of a small brandy flask.
She obeyed, for she felt very faint and exhausted. The potent cordial restored her a little and sent the blood coursing through her veins with renewed life.
“There! Fortunate I had it with me,” he went on. “And now, darling, you must sleep if you can. You will be perfectly safe until they find us, for they will be sure to send out a strong search party.”
“Poor dear father will be so horribly frightened. Roland, how soon can we go to him?” she asked faintly.
He made no reply at first. The question had called back his thoughts to the hard world again, to such as he more pitiless than the billows from which they had miraculously escaped, colder than the chill wind which whistled through the great dark vault. The exile’s soul was bitter within him again. They two had gone down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death together, and had emerged thence, only to be parted once more.
“It will not be safe to go from here – until they find us,” he replied. “But only think of the relief your father will experience when he finds you are safe! Why, it’ll be worth while going through the suspense he is in at the present moment. While I – ”
He checked himself. No words could depict the awful desperation which lay upon this man’s soul at that dark hour. All his hopes in this life were dead – his very life itself was forfeited, could be claimed at any moment – and in the next he had little, if any, belief – certainly no hope. Why had the sea spared him, why had it not taken them both together, or, at any rate, him? Why was he not lying at rest for ever far beneath the tossing billows – beyond the reach of the storms and whirlwinds of this wretched life? Was he spared to eke out an accursed existence? Could there be any truth in the old story of Cain? He remembered it as one of the sacred teachings which had been instilled into his infantile mind with all the accompaniments of rod and task-room and unbending severity, and which he had since scouted, in common with other like stories, as a mere childish legend. “A wanderer on the face of the earth.” Ah, but then his sentence had begun before he had earned it. The curse of Cain had been upon him before he had committed Cain’s crime. And why had the temptation and opportunity been so thrust upon him? He had gone out that fatal night perfectly devoid of harmful intent – not so much as a thought of it, indeed, had entered his head. He had returned a murderer.
Then a horrid thought came over him. What if the purpose for which he had been brought to this spot was not, after all, accomplished? What might not the terrible sea yield up? That face with its look of awful despair, upon which he had so pitilessly gazed in the wan moonlight, as it sank into the black abyss – how could he bear its unearthly look now, should it suddenly appear before him with glassy, upbraiding eyes, and features hideous from the effects of its long immersion? Even as this thought struck him he descried something floating in the water – something long and dark, like a human form. Great God – it was terrible! A cold perspiration broke out all over him as, with a dilated stare, he watched the awful object. What could it be, swaying helplessly backwards and forwards on the ebbing surge? Then it disappeared.
The midnight gloom deepened, and the chill breaths of the mist-laden blast swept through the great fissure, playing about his face like the cold touch of shadowy, spectral hands. Every sound was re-echoed with a hollow clang from the chasm’s overhanging walls, and in the noise of falling water as it ran in torrents from the rocks with each receding swell, and in the many-tongued raving of the imprisoned surges, he seemed to hear the voice of a brother’s blood crying from the deep, and to feel the flap of demon wings in his ears. Had he been alone in this ghastly solitude his very reason might have given way.
But now a blessed ray of light and hope beamed in upon the outer darkness. If he had destroyed life, had he not also saved it? This horrible abyss which had been the scene of his crime had also witnessed his act of reparation – or what might well stand as such – for now he could not help realising that had he not appeared on the beach when he did, his companion would never have retraced her steps in time – even apart from the delay of which he had been the cause. And she would have perished miserably, for her own unaided exertions would never have availed her to reach this place of refuge, or to take advantage of it when there, had she reached it.
The soft, regular breathing of the sleeping girl betokened that her slumbers were peaceful. Her head rested on his shoulder as she reclined against him, a beautiful picture of the most perfect dependence and trust. This pure, sweet, innocent life which he had saved should be his own ark of refuge now. Passionately he kissed the slightly-parted lips.
“My beautiful – my pure guardian angel! I can defy all the demons of the nethermost shades while you are with me!”
She stirred in her sleep and murmured slightly. Then her hands tightened yet more clingingly upon his, and nestling closer to him she slumbered again. No supernatural terrors could appal him now, no fearful imaginings begotten of cold and darkness. Morbid temperament and crime-laden conscience counted for naught as he sat there in the heart of the wild cliffs at midnight, and the pure, lovely life of her who slumbered so peacefully and confidingly in his arms, was dependent on him for its preservation. Whatever grisly secret those grim waters held, they might keep or divulge; it was powerless to scare him while her presence was with him. And so the dark hours wore on, one by one, over the sleeper and over the watcher.
“This way, sir, and mind ’ow you walk. Better let me go fust – if you’ll wait ’ere!” said a rough seafaring voice, and then, in a lower tone, as if addressing another person, it went on, “Better keep him ’ere, sir. If we do find the poor young lady in ’ere – well you know, sir, there ain’t a ghost of a chance of her being alive.”
Lights began to flash in the chasm, feeble and glimmering in contrast with the gigantic ruggedness of its massive walls. Then Roland Dorrien started as if he had been shot. Their time of emancipation had come. She was about to be taken from him, and he must wander forth again. Rapidly he resumed his tinted glasses, which in the uncertain light would suffice to guard against recognition.
“This way?” he called out in a harsh, quavering voice which needed no disguise. “The young lady is perfectly safe, and you will find her here.”
Twice that night did these stern cliffs echo a great cry. First, the awful outpouring of a human soul in its last depths of anguish, now a shout of unparalleled joy and thankfulness. The searching party rushed in the direction of the sound, stumbling and nearly falling in their eagerness.
“Here we are. Now, careful,” cried Roland. And Olive’s half-fainting form was lowered from the ledge which had proved such an ark in the time of need, and placed in her father’s arms. The rough fishermen turned away their heads, and honest Jem Pollock’s manful attempts to clear his throat resulted in a series of dismal barks, which echoed hideously from the overhanging heights.
“Well, I’m darned!” he said, looking up at the ledge. “Who’d ha’ thought such a blessed bit o’ good luck? Well, I’m darned – ahum! – beg pardon, Muster Turner,” he interjected apologetically, becoming aware of the young curate’s presence, right at his elbow.
The first joy of success over, they began to eye the stranger with some curiosity. He stepped forward.
“I fancy the young lady will soon come round,” he said in his assumed voice, which grated with an anxious harshness upon the ears of the listeners. “She has been rather frightened, I fear, and is very wet. The sooner you get her between warm blankets the better.”
“You have earned for yourself the gratitude and blessing not only of a father but of an entire community, sir,” said Turner, extending his hand to him.
“Indeed! How?”
“Why, by saving this young lady’s life,” went on Turner in surprise. “Anyone can see with half an eye that she could never have reached that place of refuge but for you.”
The other smiled sadly.
“I fancy the young lady saved both our lives, since it was she who suggested falling back on this place at all,” he replied. “There was no other chance for us, and so I acted on the idea – happily, as it transpired. And now, if I might suggest – she should be taken home as soon as possible.”
Leaving reluctantly his recovered child, Dr Ingelow hurried up.
“God bless you, sir, whoever you may be!” he cried, seizing both the strangers hands. “Pray do me the favour of making my house your resting-place – you must be wet through and thoroughly tired out – and of allowing me to become further acquainted with one who has rescued my darling child from a terrible death.”
The exile’s heart thoroughly knew its own bitterness, as he heard once more the true, kindly tones. But it could not be. He would accompany them until they reached the high road, when he would make some excuse, and hasten to fly from the temptation to which he dared not yield. So he consented.
The waves were breaking with a hoarse, sullen boom, as though disappointed of their prey, as the party returned along the beach in the pitchy darkness of the small hours of the winter’s morning, and the light of the lanterns shone with a weird gleam upon the receding surf. Olive had been placed in an improvised litter of shawls and wraps slung on to two stout poles which they had brought with them, and was borne by two sturdy fishermen. Exhaustion and the terrors she had gone through had reduced her to a state of semi-unconsciousness, in which her mind was hardly sensible of what went on around her. Her father, still terribly anxious, walked at her side, and the stranger, who evinced no disposition to talk, had taken up his position on the other side – an arrangement not exactly to Turner’s taste, who, however, took comfort from the thought that the man was fifty or sixty at least, even though he was well-made and free of step still, and undeniably a gentleman. At last a stray light betokened the vicinity of Wandsborough.
“Now, let me see,” mused the stranger. “This is the Battisford road, I believe. Do not think me very rude, Mr – Ingelow – but on turning things over I find I must unavoidably be back in London to-day. I should have gone up by the night train but for this unfortunate – this fortunate, rather should I call it – walk of mine. On some future occasion, perhaps, I may have the great pleasure of renewing our acquaintance.”
“My dear sir, we really cannot allow such a thing,” cried the rector, aghast. “You will surely reconsider this. At any rate, put off your flight for a few hours. It is a long way to Battisford, and we are just home now. You shall be driven over later if you wish it. Now do oblige me – ”
All who witnessed it thought they had never seen such a curious look before, as that which came into the other’s face. A sharp struggle was going on within him.
“Go back with them – tell them who you are,” said the lonely heart of the exile. “You will have friends – a way will be found out of your difficulties somehow, and then what love and peace and happiness will be yours!”
“You – a beggar, penniless, ruined, destitute?” whispered Pride. “You, whose memory is under a cloud, and who are without the barest means of existence – will you go back to accept the charity of those with whom you moved as equal? Only reveal your identity and see how their grateful overtures will cool!”
Said Conscience, “Leave her – assassin. Can red blood-guiltiness and pure white innocence ever mate? Leave her, ere she comes to abhor your name.” And Pride and Conscience triumphed over Heart. “I greatly fear I must excuse myself for being unable to accept your kind hospitality,” he said at last. “But if you will do me one favour, I shall feel thankful to you.”
“Certainly. What is it?” said the rector. “If you will drop me a line to this address once or twice, and let me know how the young lady gets on, it would be a satisfaction to me. I cannot but feel greatly interested in my companion in adversity,” replied the stranger, rapidly scribbling on a card, which he handed to Dr Ingelow.
“Why, most certainly,” said the rector, hardly glancing at it. “Most certainly. But – ”
He stopped short, gazing blankly into the darkness. The stranger had disappeared.
Roland Dorrien returned to Battisford in the grey winter’s morning, and having put together his few possessions at “The Silver Fleece,” he left that ancient hostelry for the railway station, to the unfeigned regret of the garrulous waiter, whom even a liberal honorarium could hardly console for the loss of so congenial a recipient of local gossip. Yet, up to the last moment, he found himself inconsistently cherishing a wild hope that, his identity being cleared up, the rector might come over in post haste to insist upon his return to Wandsborough. But no such summons came, and when he took his seat in a hard, cushionless third-class carriage, down whose rattling windows the pelting rain streamed in torrents, his case was about as hopeless and desperate as the lot of mortal man could well be.
