He told her: sometimes in one moon, sometimes in the darkness between the old moon and the new one, sometimes as often as between a sun and the next sun. She had a shiver, and then she pointed abruptly to the boat.
‘That,’ she said.
But she felt his head shake obstinately under her arm. He would not have it that it was the boat.
‘That,’ she said again. ‘His.’ And she pointed to the sea, now a sheet of undimmed silver, with a cloudlet of birds about the island-rock in the middle of it. ‘How much time, that?’ Her eyes indicated the boat.
‘Two, three suns. Then plenty of fish. Enough.’
And he sprang lightly to his feet.
But this time it was she who seized him, clasping him by the knees. Her face was piteously upturned.
‘No – no – ’ she implored him, her hands about his ankles.
Her arms, her eyes, every particle of her, told him how well he was with her, how little need there was to go elsewhere; but his eyes shone as he put her hands away and lifted her to her feet. By the smoking boat he enfolded her, the Comfort-thing, the Thing-to-which-he-Turned, but that he would leave in order to see what lay behind the island.
That was several ages ago; and for suns and for moons, and for warm weathers a-many, first a young woman with three children, then a woman not young with three tall sons, and then an old woman without sons, who lived between two white boulders of the talus because she could no longer climb the ladder where the sea-birds quarrelled and screamed, looked out over the sea, her eyes seeking a speck that never appeared.
2
A few centuries ago a young man stood against a diamond-paned window, poring over a map. One window-bay looked back upon the flagged terrace of the house, but the rest of it was turned to where the park-land dropped, gentle stage by gentle stage, first to meadow, then to pasture, then to sandhills grey with sea-lavender and thyme, and so to the wrinkled silken cloth of the sea. The closet in which the young man stood was his private apartment, and a homely litter filled it, of boots, old hawk-jesses, farm-books, powder-horns and bullet-moulds, and, on the oak table, the lady’s light crossbow he had been repairing. Over the stone mantelpiece hung his father’s sword and morion, and on the shelf below it was a small mariner’s compass.
He was a tallish young man, with close-cropped dark hair and a beard so slight that it would hardly have been a beard at all but for the razor’s careful shaping of it. His head was in dark outline against the window, except for the flat of his brow, which, catching the light as far as the temple, gave his nose an appearance of prominence which properly it had not. His walk through the orchards and coppices had left a few spring-time sheddings on the shoulders of his every-day velvet doublet, and there were traces of garden-mould on his hose.
Across the lawn outside, under a clustered yew, sat the lady for whom he had been mending the crossbow. She was his neighbour, and they were betrothed. Her land, which she would hold in her own right when her mother died, more than doubled his, with holt, chase, mansion, and fifty farms to boot. And she was more than desirable had she not had fifty pence. Half a score of goodly young men were her humble suitors, and would have been glad to see the back of this young man’s cropped head and lissom shoulders. She sat at her broidery-frame, and he would have been a backward man at his verse who had not written somewhat in praise of her hands, that passed the needle in and out.
The map that the young man studied he had ridden expressly to Bristol to procure. Riding home again with his treasure in his wallet, he had mused upon the things told him by the old pilot from whom he had procured it. Men had arrived at the East by going West! By the Azores and the old Atlantis of Plato, they had reached the New Found Land, whence to Cipangu and the Chinese Ocean, according to the map, was but a step. The old pilot had spoken of firedrakes and sirens, and had himself seen the dolphins and whales and the fishes that flew.
The young man left the window, fetched the small mariner’s compass from the mantelpiece, and placed it over the star-like compass delineated on the map. It seemed to give the map a different meaning to place his own compass there. Then, north of the trembling needle, he read, ‘Here men say the mariner’s compass faileth.’ West of that was written, ‘Land Unknown’, and south of that again, ‘Land Unknown’, and the magic rest itself must be all but unknown, so few had ventured there.
But what fame to be even the fourth or fifth to venture! What service even to follow! And what rich profit for himself, did he need it, lay through that gateway of the Azores!
All that day he had spent among his orchards and gardens, giving directions. The day before had been passed among his horses and hawks. The day before that he had ridden after the deer – it was then that the accident had happened to the crossbow. And in the intervals he had sat at his mistress’s feet, or talked with her mother. This was his life, and he showed diligence in it. He knew that his men said of him that not even his father had been so good a master as he.
Perhaps not; but – the young man glanced at his father’s sword and morion again. Elsewhere in the house were other swords and harness, handed down by his line, that reached back older than the yew-tree, back into the unrecorded mists. Doubtless these forbears of his had not always had the praise of their hinds; but had they no other praise? Had they lived in vain because there were gaps in their fences and blight on their fruit-walls? Were these things all? Must a man go on year after year, planting, farming, keeping accounts, and rubbing his hands as his rent-roll grew? Were men to say to him, when he was old, no more than that he had been a careful husbandman?
Questions such as these had troubled him ever since that visit to Bristol. Ah, those ships, those disturbing ships! They had lain there by the quay as it were asleep, breathing lightly to the tides that lifted them; but what must they be awake – lifeless things, yet living by every pulse and sense of a hundred men, undying things, since when one hundred passed another hundred took their places? Ah, the queenliness of them! He had descended into their dark depths, he had ascended into their tops; and at night, in his bed in the inn, he had dreamed of them.
And he had not ceased to dream of them since. Once a month, once a week, or oftener, a certain dream had come back to him, always the same, yet each time slightly different. He had dreamed he stood on a ship’s ladder of tarred rope, looking aloft. And at first he had stood just above the chains, no more than a drop to the deck; and then he had stood higher, a dangerous drop; and then he had mounted higher still, beyond all thought of dropping. That was all he remembered of his dream – that slender, narrowing ladder he was for ever mounting, with the manhole through the topcastle floor above his head, that sooner or later he knew he must enter.
Suddenly, seeing that the tambour-frame beneath the yew stood deserted, the young man folded his map. He had something on his mind that caused him to walk slowly, and he walked more slowly still as he left the closet, passed along the sunny-shafted corridor, and sought the terrace.
She was approaching, with her mastiff by her side. She had a small and imperious face, the hand beneath the ivy-green sleeve had dimples where its knuckles should have been; and her white ruff enclosed her proud neck as if it had been the corolla of an arum-lily
He took her by one of the dimpled hands, and without speaking led her to the terrace-end, where a stone seat stood, not far from the window of his own cabinet. Her ivy-green gown seemed a continuation of the ivy of the wall, which as richly enhanced her young face as if it had been one of the dark backgrounds of the portraits in the house. She sat down, and the mastiff dropped heavily and lazily at her feet.
He had resolved to tell her of his determination without further delay. He loved her; he knew that she did not go a-begging; and if she would not wait, so much the worse. He must entreat her to wait. As for her begging him to stay, that small face was not that of a beggar of anything.
As if she had known without telling why he had brought her there, she was the first to speak.
‘So do you go, or do you stay, Edmund?’ she asked him.
He answered less promptly. ‘If I go I shall come back.’
‘Nay, but plain speaking. If I am to wait I must know for how long. I cannot be endlessly plagued with suitors.’
In spite of his anxiety, he smiled. ‘That you will be, if they are of my mind about you.’
‘And what is your mind, if a maid may ask?’ she rejoined. ‘At Christmas you would marry. Half way to Easter you would marry, not a woman, but a ship. At Easter, blessed be Ovid! the ship had turned into a woman again. And now it is, “If I go I shall come back.” This is some chameleon of a mind!’
It was true; but that was before his dream had taken possession of him. It was the dream, that hitherto he had concealed, that he had resolved to tell her now.
He began to do so.
As he talked he held her dimpled hand. This was well, for her face, proud as a star, would be the last of her sweet assembly to betray her. What her face did not do the fingers that rested in his did. He felt their quick tremor, that told him truer of her thoughts than the voice in which she presently interrupted him.
‘Between the ship and the lady one hardly knows where to have you,’ she said lightly. ‘Do you take your ship by the hand, or have I shrouds – shrouds, marry! – the tarry kind, I would say, not the kind it’s early enough to think of yet!’
He shook his head. Her tongue might jest, but the hand in his did not.
‘Then if you are climbing your mistress thus, what kisses has she for you in the topcastle?’ she rallied him again. ‘In truth I should like to see your ship, tarry bower and all!’
Again he shook his head, kissing her hand.
‘Oh, but my mastiff will tell me as much as this hand-licking will do! Come, I will be your soothsayer. You stood first at the hem of her petticoat, her deck I should say. Then, God help us! you had her by the waist-ribbon. When has she promised the other favour?’
At his reply her face almost followed the example of her hands.
‘When I have had the dream once more,’ he said in a low voice.
Suddenly she put her laughing all away. ‘Nay, but Edmund, this is foolishness,’ she said falteringly. ‘Let us walk. A dream is but a dream.’
But he drew her back by the soft hand. It had rested upon his knee, where the garden-stains were, but, remembering certain verses he had written to that hand, he removed it from the soilure and placed it against his breast. It seemed to clutch softly at his heart.
He had not thought to feel her tremble thus. Could it be that she would stoop – beg him to stay?
‘And so,’ he said, ‘I can plant trees and grow old watching them, or I can do this other. But if I stay I might not live, and to go is not to die, sweetheart.’
This it was that brought her starry pride down like a meteor – the secret thought that he might plant, not trees, but children, and grow old with them growing about him to continue his line. A catch came in the throat with the white ruff. She turned to him eyes in which tears trembled. They broke down her cheeks.
‘Ah, Edmund, if you must go, then go; but think of me here! I love only you, but the days will pass, and I shall not forget, but only to remember, always only to remember, is bootless. I shall remember your face, but other faces will be nearer. I shall remember your voice, but other voices will be at my ear, perhaps saying words that you have said. My mother will die and I shall be alone. Then they will come, the others, with their gifts and their suits, and who knows, but I shall yield? . . . And as for that,’ she raised her eyes with hatred to the sea, ‘what trees will you plant there, or what crops sow, or what fruits gather, or horses ride, or music hear, or lips kiss? – Edmund, Edmund! Go if you must – but stay – stay with me – stay! –’
Her fingers, snatching at the points of his doublet, wove a net of points and fingers, as if to hold him. And his virgin beard moved about her hair. But his eyes were on the silky, seductive sea. Far away, appearing from behind a near thorn, a moth-like shape could be seen. It did not seem to move when he watched for its moving, but slowly, slowly it crept away from the hawthorntwig. It was a ship – westward bound.
And so another young man, as the saying is, sold a farm and went to sea; and another young woman remained alone to manage her estate, and to promise her clustering suitors that she would choose among them when her tapestry was finished, and to pick her work out again at night, and to lose her mother, and to grow old herself, but never too old to read, though with failing eyes, the verses he had left her –
Ah, hadde I but an Indies gained –
You but an Orient given –
Againste your breste I hadde remained
Nor dreamed another heaven!
But in such huge excess you give
When you youre selfe bestowe
That, sweetlie-gorged, the more I have
The hungrier I doe growe.
Turne o’er those flowers youre fingers thridde;
Their silken rootes appeare
Alle thrummes and knottes, the whiche are hidde
Beneath, for meaner care.
The Vaunte of Honour’s yours alone,
Not worthienesse nor debte,
But skyewarde trumpets vainlie blowne,
A crested burgonet,
That askes the arrowe, claims the stroke,
And hides the wounde awaye,
As you the thrummes and endes doe cloke
Beneathe youre tambour-traye,
And bringes you nothinge back againe,
Nothinge againe but this –
A dint that iron broke in twaine,
But softe as is youre kisse.
3
A few years ago, in the marble court of the Ralli Hotel, a young man and a young woman were having tea. They sat in a corner a little apart, but had a clear view of the avenue between the tables, where couples hesitated and one-stepped and jazzed to the cacophony of an Ethiopian band. The court was cool as an aquarium; its lighting, too, partly masked behind sconces and cornices and partly ‘borrowed’ by means of cunningly-contrived glass, suggested some luxurious and artificial tank into which neither white daylight nor electric glitter penetrated; and its jazzing fishes and the water-flora seated at its tables were London’s loveliest women.
The head-waiter himself had brought them tea, for Riccardo seldom left Reggie Asshe to underlings. For ‘doing him’ as well as even the Ralli can do a wealthy young man, Riccardo received gifts in due season of pheasants, trout, hothouse fruit, and, more than all, an occasional whisper, not to be spread about for fear of spoiling the market. As a result of these whispers Riccardo backed, or refrained from backing, one of Reggie’s horses. And as Reggie knew about horses as well as owning them, Riccardo was well on the way to managing an hotel of his own.
Reggie Asshe was six-and-twenty. St James’s Street booted and spatted him, Sackville Street made his coats and Savile Row his trousers, Piccadilly provided his hats, and the parting of his dark hair had been fixed by his club barber with as much care as if it had been Ordnance-datum. His hat, cane and gloves were in the cloakroom, his Rolls-Royce outside in Pall Mall. The car could take him to his aeroplane-hangar in thirty-five minutes. He had done it, at night, when the roads were empty, in twenty-and-a-half.
The girl by his side was pouting under her coral-coloured bucket hat with the tiny threaded flowers about it. She seemed, as she would have expressed it, ‘fed’. The toe of one pink jujube of a shoe fretted against the table leg, and her ice was untouched before her. His eyes were quick and humorous as he rallied her, but there was more of purpose than of humour about his mouth, which, when he spoke, hardly seemed to open sufficiently to let the words out.
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‘But the prize, dear kid – look at the per-rize!’ he was saying, as if he had not most of the prizes the world could offer without lifting a finger. ‘Ten thousand isn’t to be sneezed at these days, believe me!’ He pronounced the last word as if it had been French. ‘A Bradbury’s gone before you can say goodbye to it, and here’s you turning up your nose at three-and-sixpenny ices! Now don’t go upsetting the works,’ he continued, as the pink jujube made another movement that slightly shook the table. ‘Looks bad in the afternoon – Riccardo’ll be telling you to take more soda with it. Cigarette?’
But the girl was not to be put off so. She was stretching her gloves into a hard narrow strip between her fingers. One of the fingers wore an engagement ring.
‘You know the money’s nothing at all to do with it,’ she broke out. ‘You’ll soon have spent nearly as much as that on the beastly thing. How much did the machine cost you for a start?’
‘Dunno,’ he replied indifferently. ‘Haven’t got the bill in yet. I hate flying other people’s busses.’
‘You flew them all right – before,’ she answered in a failing voice.
‘Not across the Atlantic, dear child,’ he replied with a sudden com-pression of his mouth.
She was thinking of that ‘before’ of which she had spoken, when he had flown aeroplanes not his own. She was only two-and-twenty, but many a two-and-twenty knew, a year or two ago, what she knew – knew what it was to stand, suddenly white, gazing at the unopened telegram, which, when opened, was merely from a boot or dressmaker, and not the thing so sickeningly feared. Events had taught England’s women to keep their hearts and expressions well in hand. Tenderness was a dangerous thing when there were only a few hours or a few days for a theatre or two, a lunch or two, a dance, a Medical Board, and back to the inferno again. No good ‘asking for it’. Orders were orders, and England’s women, a few years ago, did not make them any harder than they were.
But nobody had given him orders about this, his latest adventure. He was doing it to please himself. Even the reasons he did condescend to give were camouflage. He didn’t want the prize. He didn’t want a comfortable billet with a commercial company. He didn’t want to write a book or to lecture about it, and as for the services to science and civilisation they made all the chat about, he wouldn’t have missed a dinner or a theatre for either. He just wanted to do it because he jolly well wanted to do it.
The Dead of Night Page 16