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Roy Glashan's Library
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'DO you know anything about stigmata?' said my vis-à-vis. It was a very unexpected question to have shot at one under the circumstances. I had been unable to evade an invitation to spend the evening with an old fellow-student who since the war had held the uninspiring post of medical officer at a poor law institution, a post for which I should say he was admirably fitted, and I now found myself facing him across a not very elegant supper table in his quarters in a great fortress of dingy red brick which looked out for miles over the grey wastes of sordidness which are South London.
I was so taken by surprise that he had to repeat his question before I answered it.
'Do you know anything about stigmata? Hysterical stigmata?' he said again.
'I have seen simulated tumours,' I said, 'they are fairly common, but I have never seen actual flesh wounds, such as the saints were supposed to have had.'
'What do you attribute them to?' asked my companion.
'Auto-suggestion,' I replied. 'Imagination so vivid that it actually affects the tissues of the body.'
'I have got a case in one of my wards that I should like to show you,' he said. 'A most curious case. I think it is hysterical stigmata, I cannot account for it any other way. A girl was brought in here a couple of days ago suffering from a gunshot wound in the shoulder. She came here to have the bullet removed, but would give no account as to how she came by the injury. We admitted her, but couldn't see any bullet, which was rather puzzling. She was in a condition of semi-stupor, which we naturally attributed to loss of blood, and so we kept her here. Of course there is nothing odd in all that, save our failure to locate the bullet, but then such things happen even with the best apparatus, and ours is a long way from being that. But here is the queer part of the case. I was sitting quietly up here last night between 11 and 12 when I heard a shriek, of course there is nothing odd about that either, in this district. But in a minute or two they rang up on the house telephone to say that I was wanted in the wards, and I went down to find this girl with another bullet wound. No one had heard a shot fired, all the windows were intact, there was a nurse not 10 feet from her. When we X-rayed her we again failed to find the bullet, yet there was a clean hole drilled in her shoulder, and, oddest of all, it never bled a drop. What do you make of it?'
'If you are certain there is no external agency at work, then the only hypothesis is an internal one. Is she an hysterical type?'
'Distinctly. Looks as if she came out of one of Burne-Jones's pictures. Moreover, she has been in a sort of stupor each night for an hour or more at a time. It was while in this state that she developed the second wound. Would you care to come down and have a look at her? I should like to have your opinion. I know you have gone in for psychoanalysis and all sorts of things that are beyond my ken.'
I accompanied him to the wards, and there we found in one of the rough infirmary beds a girl who, lying on the coarse pillow, with closed eyes and parted lips, looked exactly like the Beata Beatrix of Rossetti's vision, save that honey-coloured hair flowed over the pillow like sea-weed. When she opened her eyes at our presence, they were green as sea-water seen from a rock.
All was quiet in the ward, for infirmary patients are settled for the night at an early hour, and my friend signed to the nurse to put screens round the bed that we might examine our case without disturbing them. It was as he had said, two obvious bullet wounds, one more recent than the other, and from their position and proximity, I judged that they have been inflicted with intention to disable, but not to kill. In fact she had been very neatly 'winged' by an expert marksman. It was only the circumstances of the second shot that gave the case any interest except a criminal one.
I sat down on a chair at the bedside, and began to talk to her, seeking to win her confidence. She gazed back at me dreamily with her strange sea-green eyes and answered my questions readily enough. She seemed curiously detached, curiously indifferent to our opinion of her; as if she lived in a far-away world of her own, about which she was quite willing to talk to any one who was interested.
'Do you dream much?' I said, making the usual opening.
This seemed to touch a subject of interest.
'Oh, yes,' she replied, 'I dream a tremendous lot. I always have dreamt, ever since I can remember. I think my dreams are the realest part of my life—and the best part,' she added with a smile, 'so why shouldn't I?'
'Your dreams seem to have led you into danger recently,' I answered, drawing a bow at a venture.
She looked at me sharply, as if to see how much I knew, and then said thoughtfully:
'Yes, I mustn't go there again. But I expect I shall, all the same,' she added with an elfish smile.
'Can you go where you choose in your dreams?' I asked.
'Sometimes,' she replied, and was about to say more, when she caught sight of my companion's bewildered face and the words died on her lips. I saw that she was what Taverner would have called 'One of Us,' and my interest was roused. I pitied the refined, artistic-looking girl in these sordid surroundings, her great shining eyes looking out like those of a caged creature behind bars; and I said:
'What is your work?'
'Shop girl,' she replied; a smile curling the corners of her lips. 'Drapery, to be precise.' Her words and manner were so at variance with her description of herself, that I was still further intrigued.
'Where are you going when you come out of here?' I enquired. She looked wearily out into the distance, the little smile still hovering about her mouth.
'Back into my dreams, I expect,' she replied. 'I don't suppose I shall find anywhere else to go.'
I knew well Taverner's generosity with necessitous cases, especially if they were of 'his own kind,' and I felt sure that he would be interested both in the personality of the girl and in her peculiar injuries, and I said:
'How would you like to go down to a convalescent home at Hindhead when you leave here?'
She gazed at me in silence for a moment with her strange gleaming eyes.
'Hindhead?' she asked. 'What sort of a place is that?'
'It is moorland,' I replied. 'Heather and pine, you know, very bracing.'
'Oh, if it could only be the sea!' she exclaimed wistfully. 'A rocky coast, miles from anywhere, where the Atlantic rollers come in and the seabirds are flying and calling. If it could only be the sea I should get right! The moors are not my place, it is the sea I need, it is life to me.'
She paused abruptly, as if she feared to have said too much, and then she added: 'Please don't think that I am ungrateful, a rest and change would be a great help. Yes, I should be very thankful for a letter for the nursing home—' Her voice trailed into silence and her eyes, looking more like deep-sea water than ever, gazed unseeing into a distance where I have no doubt the gulls were flying and calling and the Atlantic rollers coming in from the West.
'She has gone off again,' said my host. 'It is apparently her regular time for going into a state of coma.'
As we watched her, she took a deep inspiration, and then all breathing ceased. It ceased for so long, although the pulse continued vigorously, that I was just on the point of suggesting artificial respiration, when with a profound exhalation, the lungs took up their work with deep rhythmical gasps. Now if you observe a person's respiration closely, you will invariably find that you yourself begin to breathe with the same rhythm. It was a very peculiar rhythm which I found myself assuming, and yet it was not unfamiliar. I had breathed with that rhythm before, and I searched my subconscious mind for the due. Suddenly I found it. It was the respiration of breathing in rough water. No doubt the cessation of breathing represented the dive. The girl was dreaming of her sea.
So absorbed was I in the problem that I would have sat up all night in the hope of finding some evidence of the mysterious assailant, but my host touched my sleeve.
'We had better be moving,' he said. 'Matron, you know.' And I followed him out of the darkened ward.
'What do you make of it?' he enquired eagerly as soon as we were out in the corridor.
'I think as you do,' I answered; 'that we are dealing with a case of stigmata, but it will require more plumbing than I could give it this evening, and I should like to keep in touch with her if you are willing.'
He was only too willing; seeing himself in print in the Lancet and possessed of that dubious type of glory which comes to the owners of curios. It was a blessed break in the monotony of his routine, and he naturally welcomed it.
NOW that which is to follow will doubtless be set down as the
grossest kind of coincidence, and as several such coincidences
have been reported in these chronicles, I do not suppose I have
much reputation for veracity anyway. But Taverner always held
that some coincidences, especially those which might be conceived
to serve the purpose of an intelligent Providence, were not as
fortuitous as they appeared to be, but were due to causes which
operated invisibly upon the subtler planes of existence, and
whose effects alone were seen in our material world; and that
those of us who are in touch with the unseen, as he was, and as
I, to a lesser degree on account of my association with him in
his work, had also come to be, might get ourselves into the
hidden currents of that realm, and thereby be brought in touch
with those engaged in similar pursuits. I had too often watched
Taverner picking up people apparently at random and arriving at
the psychological moment apparently by chance, to doubt the
operation of some such laws as he described, though I neither
understand their workings nor recognize them at the time; it is
only in perspective that one sees the Unseen Hand.
Therefore it was that when, on my return to Hindhead, Taverner requested me to undertake a certain task, I concluded that my plans with regard to the study of the stigmata case must be set aside, and banished the matter from my mind.
'Rhodes,' he said, 'I want you to undertake a piece of work for me. I would go myself, but it is extremely difficult for me to get away, and you know enough of my methods by now, combined with your native common sense (in which I have much more faith than in many people's psychism) to be able to report the matter, and possibly deal with it under my instruction.'
He handed me a letter. It was inscribed, 'Care G.H. Frater,' and began without any further preamble: 'That of which you warned me has occurred. I have indeed got in out of my depth, and unless you can pull me out I shall be a drowned man, literally as well as metaphorically. I cannot get away from here and come to you; can you possibly come to me?' And a quotation from Virgil, which seemed to have little bearing on the subject, closed the appeal.
Scenting adventure, I readily acceded to Taverner's request. It was a long journey I had to undertake, and when the train came to rest at its terminus in the grey twilight of a winter afternoon, I could smell the keen salt tang of the wind that drove straight in from the West. To me there is always something thrilling in arriving at a seaside place and getting the first glimpse of the sea, and my mind reverted to that other solitary soul who had loved blue water, the girl with the Rossetti face, who lay in the rough infirmary bed in the dreary desert of South London.
She was vividly present to my mind as I entered the musty four-wheeler, which was all that the station could produce in the off-season, and drove through deserted and wind-swept streets on to the sea-front. The line of breakers showed grey through the gathering darkness as we left the asphalt and boarding houses behind us and followed the coast road out into the alluvial flats beyond the town. Presently the road began to wind upwards towards the cliffs, and I could hear the horse wheezing with the ascent, till a hail from the darkness put a stop to our progress; a figure clad in an Inverness cape appeared in the light of the carriage lamps, and a voice, which had that indefinable something which Oxford always gives a man, greeted me by name and invited me to alight.
Although I could see no sign of a habitation, I did as I was bidden, and the cabman, manoeuvring his vehicle, departed into the windy darkness and left me alone with my invisible host. He possessed himself of my bag, and we set off straight for the edge of the cliff, so far as I could make out, leaning up against the force of the gale. An invisible surf crashed and roared below us, and it seemed to me that drowning was the order of the day for both of us.
Presently, however, I felt a path under my feet.
'Keep close to the rock,' shouted my guide. (Next day I knew why.) And we dipped over the edge of the cliff and began to descend its face. We continued in this way for what seemed to me an immense distance, I learnt later it was about a quarter of a mile, and then, to my amazement, I heard the click of a latch. It was too dark to see anything, but warm air smote my face, and I knew that I was under cover. I heard my host fumbling with a box of matches, and as the light flared, I saw that I was in a good-sized room, apparently hewn out of the cliff face, and a most comfortable apartment. Book-lined, warmly curtained, Persian rugs on the smooth stone of the floor, and a fire of driftwood burning on the open hearth, which the toe of my companion's boot soon stirred to a blaze. The amazing contrast to my gloomy and perilous arrival took my breath away.
My host smiled. 'I am afraid,' he said, 'that you were making up your mind to be murdered. I ought to have explained to you the nature of my habitation. I am so used to it myself, that it does not seem to me that it may appear strange to others. It is an old smuggler's lair that I have adapted to my use, and being made of the living rock, it has peculiar advantages for the work on which I am engaged.'
WE sat down to the meal that was already upon the table, and I
had an opportunity to study the appearance of my host. Whether he
was an elderly man who had preserved his youth, or a young man
prematurely aged, I could not tell, but the maturity of his mind
was such that I inclined to the former hypothesis, for a wide
experience of men and things must have gone to the ripening of
such a nature as his.
His face had something of the lawyer about it, but his hands were those of an artist. It was a combination I had often seen before in Taverner's friends, for the intellectual who has a touch of the mystic generally ends in occultism. His hair was nearly white, in strange contrast to his wind-tanned face and dark sparkling eyes. His figure was spare and athletic, and well above middle height, but his movements had not the ease of youth, but rather the measured dignity of a man who is accustomed to public appearances. It was an interesting and impressive personality, but he showed none of the signs of distress that his letter had led me to expect.
After-dinner pipes soon led to confidences, and after sitting for a while in the warm fire-lit silence, my host seemed to gather his resolution together, and after crossing and uncrossing his legs several times uneasily, finally said:
'Well, doctor, this visit is on business, not pleasure, so we may as well "Cut the cackle and come to the 'osses." I suppose I appear to you to be sane enough at the present moment?'
I bowed my assent.
'At 11 o'clock you will have the pleasure of seeing me go off my head.'
'Will you tell me what you are experiencing?' I said.
'You are not one of us,' he replied (I had probably failed to acknowledge some sign) 'but you must be in Taverner's confidence or he would not have sent you. I am going to speak freely to you. You are willing to admit, I presume, that there is more in heaven and earth than you are taught in the medical schools?'
'No one can look life honestly in the face without admitting that,' I replied. 'I have respect for the unseen, though I don't pretend to understand it.'
'Good man' was the reply. 'You will be more use to me than a brother occultist who might encourage me in my delusions. I want facts, not fantasies. Once I am certain that I am deluded, I can pull myself together; it is the uncertainty that is baffling me.'
He looked at his watch; paused, and then with an effort plunged in medias res.
'I have been studying the elemental forces: I suppose you know what that means? The semi-intelligent entities behind the potencies of nature. We divide them into four classes—earth, air, fire and water. Now I am of the earth, earthy.'
I raised my eyebrows in query, for his appearance belied the description he gave of himself.
He smiled. 'I did not say of the flesh, fleshly. That is quite a different matter. But in my horoscope I have five planets in earth signs, and consequently my nature is bound up with the formal side of things. Now in order to counteract this state of affairs I set myself to get in touch with the fluidic side of nature, elemental water. I have succeeded in doing so.' He paused and packed the tobacco in his pipe with a nervous gesture. 'But not only have I got in touch with the water elementals, but they have got in touch with me. One in particular.' The pipe again required attention.
'It was a most extraordinary, exhilarating experience. Everything I lacked seemed to be added to me. I was complete, vital, in circuit with the cosmic forces. In fact, I got everything I had sought in marriage and failed to find. But, and here's the rub, the creature that called me was in the water, and it was in the water that I had to meet her. Round this headland the tides run like fury, no swimmer could hold his own against them, even in calm weather; but by night, and in a storm, which is the time she generally comes, it would be certain death; but she calls me, and she wills me to go to her, and one of these nights I shall do so. That is my trouble.'
He stopped, but I could see by the working of his face that there was more to come so I kept silence.
He bent down and took from the side of the hearth an object which he handed to me. It was a small crucible, and had evidently been used to melt down silver.
'You will laugh when I tell you what I used that for. To make silver bullets—silver bullets to shoot with.' He hid his face in his hands. 'Oh, my God, I tried to murder her!' The flood-gates of emotion were open, and I could see his shoulders heave to the tide of it.
'I could see her as she swam in the moonlight, and as her shoulder rose to the stroke, I shot her in the round white curve of it, white as foam against the black water. And she vanished. Then I thought I had killed the thing I loved. I would have given heaven and earth to bring her back and to swim out there to her in the tide-race and drown with her. I was like a madman, I wandered on the shore for days, I could neither eat nor sleep. And then she came again, and I knew that it was my life or hers, and I, being of the earth, clung to the life of form, and I shot her again. And now I am in torment. I love her, I long for her, I call to her in the unseen, and when she comes to me, I wait for her with a rifle.'
He came to an abrupt stop and remained rigid, gazing into the heart of the dying fire, his empty pipe in his hand. I glanced surreptitiously at my watch, and saw that the hands were pointing to 11. His hour was upon him.
He rose, and crossing the room, drew back the draperies at the far end and revealed a casement window. Flinging it open, he seated himself on the sill and gazed fixedly into the darkness without. Moving softly I took my place behind him, where I could see what was happening outside, and be ready to seize hold of him if necessary.
For a while we waited; the clouds hurried over the moon sometimes letting its radiance pour out in a silver flood, but more often hiding its face and leaving us in the roaring, crashing darkness of that surf-beaten coast.
It was indeed a 'magic casement opening on the foam of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.' I shall never forget that vigil. Nothing but heaving waters as far as eye could see, all flecked with foam in the moonlight where the reefs were hidden by the flood tide, which swirled below us like a mill-race. My companion's fine-cut features had the boldness and immobility of the statue of a Roman emperor, silhouetted against the silver background of the water.
He never stirred, he might have been carven in stone, till I saw a quiver run through him and knew that he had found that for which he waited. I strained my eyes to see what it was that had caught his attention, and sure enough, right out in the track of the moonlight, something was swimming. Coming steadily towards us through the reefs, the white shoulder lifting to the stroke just as he had described it, nearer, nearer, where no living soul could have swum in that wild tide-race, till, not 30 yards from the base of the cliffs, I could descry a woman's form with the hair streaming out like seaweed.
The man at the window leant right out stretching forth his arms to the swimmer, and I, fearing that he would overbalance, put mine gently round him and drew him back into the room. He seemed oblivious of my presence, and yielded to the pressure as if asleep, and I lowered him gently to the floor where he lay motionless in a trance. I stooped to feel his pulse, and as I counted the slow beats, I heard a sound that made me hold my breath and listen. It seemed as if the sea had risen and filled the room, and yet not the material sea, but its ghost; shadowy impalpable sea-water flowed in waves to the very ceiling, and the sea-creatures looked in from without.
Then I saw the form of a woman at the window. Shining with its own luminosity, it was clearly visible in the green gloom that was like the bottom of the sea. The hair floated out like seaweed, the shoulders gleamed like marble, the face was that of a Beata Beatrix awakened from her dream, and the eyes were like sea-water seen from a rock, and there, sure enough, were the marks where the silver bullets had wounded her.
We looked into each other's eyes, and I am convinced she saw me as clearly as I saw her, and that she knew me, for the same faint smile that I had seen before hovered on her lips. I spoke as one addressing a sentient creature.
'Do not try to take him in this way,' I said, 'or you will kill him. Trust me, I will make things right. I will explain everything.'
She looked at me with those strange sea-green eyes of hers, as if piercing my very soul; apparently satisfied, she withdrew, and the shadowy seawater flowed after till the room was emptied.
I came to myself to find the quizzical eyes of my host fixed on me as he sat in his chair smoking his pipe.
'Physician, heal thyself!' he said.
I rose stiffly from my seat and subsided into a chair, lighting a cigarette with numbed fingers. A few whiffs of the soothing smoke steadied my nerves and enabled me to think.
'Well, doctor,' came the voice of my host in gentle raillery, 'what is your diagnosis?'
I paused, for I realized the critical nature of that which I was about to do.
'If I were to tell you that last night I was at the bedside of that girl we saw swimming out there, and that she had two bullet-wounds in her shoulder, what would you say?'
He leant forward, his lips parted, but no sound came from them. 'If I told you that the bullet-wounds arose spontaneously without any external agency, and that the doctor considered them to be hysterical stigmata, how would you explain it?'
'By Jove,' he exclaimed, 'it sounds like a case of repercussion! I came across several instances of it when I was studying the Scottish State Papers relating to the witch trials in the sixteenth century. It was a thing often related of the witches, that they could project the astral double out of the physical body and so appear at a distance. I had something of that kind at the back of my mind when I made the silver bullets. Old country-folk believe that it is only with silver bullets that you can shoot a witch. Lead has no effect on them. But you mean to tell me that you have actually seen—seen in the flesh—the woman whose astral body it was we saw out there in the water? Good Lord, doctor, I am indeed out of my depth! I don't believe I ever thought in my heart that the things I was studying were real, I thought they were just states of consciousness.'
'But aren't states of consciousness real?'
'Yes, of course they are, on their own plane, that is the whole teaching of occult science. But I always thought they were entirely subjective, experiences of the imagination. It never occurred to me that anyone else could share them.'
'You—we both—seem to have shared in this girl's dreams, for she escapes from her dreary reality by imagining herself swimming in the sea.'
'Tell me about her—What is she like? Where did you meet her?'
'Before I answer that question, will you first tell me your motive for asking it? Do you want to be rid of her? Because if so, I can probably persuade her to leave you alone.'
'I want to make her acquaintance,' came the reluctant reply. 'I was pretty badly bitten once, and haven't spoken to a woman for years, but this—seems to be different. Yes, I would like to make her acquaintance. Tell me, who is she? what is she? what is her name? what are her people like?'
'She is, as you have seen, of very unusual appearance. Many people would not consider her beautiful, others would rave about her. She is somewhere in the twenties. Intelligent, refined, her voice is that of an educated woman. Her name I do not know, for she was lying in an infirmary bed, and was therefore just a number. Nor do I know what her people are. I don't fancy she has any, for I gathered she was entirely destitute. She is a shop girl by trade—drapery, to be precise.'
DURING this recital my host's face had changed in an
indefinable way. The cheeks had fallen in, the eyes had lost
their brilliancy and become sunken, and a network of lines sprang
up all over the skin. He had suddenly become worn and old, the
burnt-out cinder of a man. I was at a loss to account for this
appalling change till his words gave me the clue.
'I think,' he said in a voice that had lost all resonance, 'that I had better let the matter drop. A shop girl, you say? No, it would be most unsuitable, most unwise. It never does to marry outside one's own class. I—Dr—No, we will say no more about the matter. I must pull myself together. Now that I understand the condition I am sure I have the willpower to return to the normal. In fact I feel that you have cured me already. I am sure that I shall never have a return of my dream, its power over me is broken. If you will give me your companionship for just a few more days till I feel that my health is quite re-established I shall be all right. But we will not refer to the matter again; I beg of you, doctor, not to refer to it, for I wish to banish the whole experience from my mind.'
Looking at him as he crouched in his chair, the broken, devitalized wreck of the man whose fine presence I had admired, it seemed to me that the remedy was worse than the disease. He had, by an effort of his trained will, broken the subtle magnetic rapport that bound him to the girl, and with the breaking of it, the source of his vitality had gone.
'But look here,' I protested, 'are you sure that you are doing the right thing? The girl may be quite all right in herself, even if she has to work for a living. If she means all this to you, surely you are throwing away something big.'
For answer he rose, and going silently out of the room, closed the door behind him, and I knew that argument was useless. He was bound within his limitations and unable to escape out of them into the freedom which is life. Of the earth, earthy.
I WROTE a full account of these transactions to Taverner, and
then settled down to await his instructions as to future
procedure. The situation was somewhat strained. My host looked
like a man whose life had fallen about his ears. Day by day,
almost hour by hour, he seemed to age. He sat in his rock-hewn
room, refusing to move, and it was with the greatest difficulty
that I succeeded in coaxing him out daily for a walk on the
smooth hard sands that stretched for miles when the tide receded.
When the water was up he would not go near it; he seemed to have
a horror of the sea.
Two days passed in this way, with no word from Taverner, till on our return from our morning walk, we found that a slip of paper had been pushed under the door of our cavern. It was the ordinary post office intimation to say that a telegram had been brought in our absence, and now awaited me at the post office. Not sorry for a break in our routine, though a little uneasy about my patient, I immediately set off on the three mile walk to the town to get my telegram. I went up the perilous path cut out of the face of the rock, and then along the cliff road, for though it was possible to walk into town on the sands, the tide was coming in, and it was doubtful if I would be able to round the headland before the under-cliff was awash, at any rate my host thought it was too risky for a stranger to attempt it.
As I went up over the turf of the headland, a thrill ran through me like wine to a starving man. The air was full of dancing golden motes; the turf, the rock, the sea, were alive with a vast life and I could feel their slow breathing. And I thought of the man I had left in the dwelling in the cliff face, the man who had come so far in his quest of the larger life, but who dared not take the final step.
At the post office of that desolate and forsaken watering-place I duly received my telegram.
AM SENDING STIGMATA CASE. SHE ARRIVES 4.15. ARRANGE LODGINGS AND MEET HER. TAVERNER.
I gave a whistle that brought the postmaster and his entire staff to the front counter, and taking counsel with them, I obtained certain addresses whither I repaired, and finally succeeded in arranging suitable accommodation. What the upshot would be I could not imagine, but at any rate it was out of my hands now.
AT the appointed time I presented myself at the station and
soon picked out my protégée from the scanty handful of
arrivals. She looked very tired with the journey; frail, forlorn,
and shabby. What with the fume of the engine and the frowst of
the cab, there was no smell of the sea to revive her, and I could
hardly get a word out of her during the drive to the lodgings,
but as she disembarked from the crazy vehicle, a rush of salt-
laden wind struck her in the face, and below us, in the dusk, we
heard the crash-rush of the waves on the pebbles. The effect was
magical. The girl flung up her head like a startled horse, and
vitality seemed to flow into her, and when I presented her to her
landlady, there was little to indicate the convalescent I had
represented her to be.
When I returned to the rock-hewn eyrie of my host, his courtesy forbade him to question me as to the cause of my long absence, and indeed, I doubt if he felt any interest, for he seemed to have sunk into himself so completely that his grip on life was gone. I could hardly rouse him sufficiently to make him take the evening paper I had brought from the town; it lay on his knee unread while he gazed into the driftwood fire with unseeing eyes.
THE following day the tide had not receded sufficiently for a
morning walk, so it was not till the afternoon that we went for
our constitutional. We had left it rather late, and on our way
back in the early winter twilight we had to ford several
gathering pools. We swung along over the sand barefoot, boots
slung over our shoulders and trousers rolled to the knee, for it
was one of those mild days that often come in January—when
out on the edge of the incoming surf we saw a figure.
'Good Lord!' said my companion. 'Who in the world is the fool out there? He will be cut off by the tide and won't be able to get out of the bay by now. He will have to come up by the cliff path. I had better warn him.' And he let out a halloo.
But the wind was blowing towards us, and the figure, out there in the noise of the surf, did not hear. My companion went striding over the sand towards the solitary wader, but I, who had somewhat better eyes than he had, did not elect to accompany him, for I had seen long hair blown out like seaweed and the flying folds of a skirt.
I saw him walk into the ankle-deep water that creamed over the flat sands, forerunner of the advancing line of breakers. He called again to the wader, who turned but did not come towards him, but instead held out her hand with a strange welcoming gesture. Slowly, as if fascinated by that summoning hand, he advanced into the water, till he was within touch of her. The first of the advancing waves smote her knees and ran past her in yeasty foam. The next smote her hip; the tide was rising fast with the wind behind it. A shower of over-carried spray hit him in the face. Still the girl would not move, and the waves were mounting up perilously behind her. It was not until he caught the outstretched hand that she yielded and let him draw her ashore.
They came towards me over the sand, still hand in hand, for they had forgotten to loosen their fingers, and I saw that the life had come back to his face and that his eyes sparkled with the brilliancy of fire. I drew back into the shadow of a rock, and oblivious of me, they passed up the steep path to the cliff dwelling. A glow of firelight shone out as he opened the door to admit her, and I saw her wet hair streaming over her shoulders like seaweed and his profile was like the rock-cut statue of a Roman emperor.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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