Chapter XXI: Acheron of the Waters

The procession passed slowly, for many stragglers followed the priests. The minutes of waiting were as hours to the terrified woman. Often the lantern’s light flashed in her very eyes; she felt the hot breath of the lepers upon her cheeks; she thought their dreadful hands would touch her. Whence they had come, whose ship it was, she did not know. The story of the monks of the Northern seas and of their mission to the outcasts of the islands was unknown to her. She saw rather a visitation of spirits; the dirge was a sound as of the woe of life; the graves had given up their dead to haunt her. While she had the impulse to flee, to seek, if it must be, the refuge of the waves, the ghostly shapes still held her to the rock. Moaning voices of the lagging sick mingled with the melancholy song of the billows. She beheld the fanatical carousals of the desperate, who laughed like imbeciles, or cast themselves foaming upon the grass, or shrieked to heaven for the mercy of death. Far above on the heights the monks were digging a grave for him who had died at sea. Their litanies echoed as sweet interludes to the cacophonous cries below. She repented bitterly that she had not gone down earlier in the day and spoken with the recluse of the well. She remembered that she was a woman, alone with this rabble, upon whom God’s curse seemed to have fallen.

At this time, no memory of the peril of the island troubled her. She thought no more that she might be left alone upon it; nay, she prayed that the sick might return speedily to their ship and leave her to the silence and the night. Hours seemed to pass before the monks came down from the heights again. She watched the lanterns dancing upon the hillside as a mariner watches a beacon of the shore. Often she said to herself, “They are coming now; I hear them.” Then the litanies would begin anew; the garish yellow stars would be still again; the hoarse laughter or the weeping of some leper near to her would crush her hope. Childlike, she fell to counting, and said that when she had numbered a thousand the ship would sail. But of that employment she soon wearied; and, impatiently, she crept out a little way from her place of shelter and stood for a moment that the breeze of the sea might blow upon her heated face. In that instant a leper observed her and sprang up with a loud cry to seize her by the wrist and drag her toward the open of the beach. It was as though the ultimate horror had gripped her, had come out of the darkness to embrace her in a loathly and indescribable embrace.

She dared not to look upon the man’s face, but vaguely, for speech was choked and all her limbs were benumbed, she perceived that he wore a tattered green uniform and carried a knife stuck in a worn girdle. She heard a torrent of words poured into her shrinking ear; but had not Russian enough to interpret them. Once she thought that the man would have crushed her in his lusty arms, and then she knew that he said, “Thou art such as I have lost.” When release of tongue came, she raised her voice again and again in shrieks of uncontrollable fear, and at this other lepers ran up to the place. Soon a rabble surrounded her, and the cry was uttered that she was a spy. From twenty throats she heard the fierce accusation, “The Englishwoman: kill her! into the sea with her!”

Women, ragged and blear-eyed, forced their way to the heart of the throng; young girls laughed hysterically and tried to strike her down; old men raised their sticks to beat her bloodless

face. She was carried on, she knew not whither; countless eyes, shining with the fire of disease, looked into her own; fleshless claws ripped the dress from her shoulders; they would have torn her limb from limb but for the strong arm of the man who first had gripped her. But he, roused to some dream of the days before the curse, never once released his hold of her. He bore her high above the throng; he answered their curses with a madman’s laughter; the blows fell upon his own face; they were as a flagellation of straws to him; women struck him; he forced them back and trampled upon them. On toward the sea he bore her. He had the strength of ten men, the passions of the maniac aroused, the maniac’s purpose. They stood from him at last terrified; the devils of their own superstitions possessed him; the cries ceased, their sticks were lowered; he was alone when he dragged the woman into her boat and thrust it from the shore.

Marian had shut her eyes when the crowd first pressed upon her; she thought that this was the moment of her death; she waited for some blow which would still the life within her and permit her to rise up in spirit above these horrid sights and sounds. Strong as her desire was for insensibility, for a trance of the mind, she did not swoon, nor lose her sense of time and place, and of the peril. She heard distinctly the fervid ravings of the madman who defended her; his hot breath was upon her cheek; his loathly touch was a torture. But still she would not look at him. While the blood surged in her ears, and her brain whirled, and her limbs were paralysed, she had no wish for life or freedom, no hope but that death would be quick to come. When she felt the grip released and sank helpless from the man’s arms, she was conscious still that he was beside her. She opened her eyes at last to discover that the boat was already some way from the shore. She could see the lanterns dancing on the hillside, could hear the voices of the priests above the clamour of the rabble. The man had saved her life, though whither he carried her, or to what Acheron of the night, she dare not think.

The leper was huge in stature and of great strength. He plied the oar with a giant’s arms, so that the yacht’s boat shot out quickly toward the broad of the lagoon. For the time being he appeared to have forgotten the woman at his feet. His words were incoherent and unceasing; he chattered horribly. Presently the island was but a blot upon the sea; the lanterns were twinkling stars. No longer were voices to be heard; the stillness of the night lay like a cloak upon the waters. Marian said that she was being carried out of the world. She shivered with the cold and the spray cast upon her face. Gradually there crept upon her a new dread--dread of him who had saved her. She feared to move, lest, moving, she might remind him of her presence. When he ceased to row she could hear her own heart beating.

For a spell the man stood gazing with wistful eyes to the shore he had left. Then suddenly he turned and uttered a great cry, for he had forgotten the woman; forgotten why he was in a boat at all, and how he had been driven from his companions. But now the impulse which had led him to clasp her in his arms was re-born. He sank upon his knees and whispered wild endearments; he stroked her hands gently as one strokes an animal; he pushed her wet hair from her forehead and held back her head that he might look into her eyes. The name by which he called her was, she imagined, the name of one who had been dear to him long years ago. When she would have drawn back from him shudderingly, the words of love gave place to threats and ravings; he seized her by both wrists, and would have kissed her upon the lips. She screamed with fear, and rolled from his embrace.

Long minutes passed before either moved. The leper had risen again and once more looked out into the night. Marian was sobbing hysterically.

“Paul,” she moaned; “O my God! Paul, come to me!”

Faintly across the sea the answer came. She thought at first that she heard it in her sleep. But the madman listened with ears erect and hand stayed. Once, twice, the cry was raised; the hail of English voices. When the little wanderer understood that it was no dream, but that someone upon the sea had answered her, she seemed to hear the music of heaven itself. Courage came back to her in that supreme moment. She leaped up from the bows of the boat and sprang into the waters. A loud demoniacal laugh followed her as the spuming sea closed over her head. It was the laughter of the leper, who had forgotten her again.

The sea was still as a lake in summer; the moon, new risen, cast a glow of silvery light upon the sleeping lagoon. Marian felt the water cold and sweet upon her face. She had been a swimmer since her childhood; she swam now as one hunted in the seas. Onward toward the cry of English voices! God would not drag her down, she said; she thought already to feel her lover’s embrace. Life might be before her yet--the life with him she had left. To-morrow she might nestle on his shoulder again and tell him that nothing now should carry her from his side. Though her clothes were soaked and weighty, though the gentle waves rolled often over her mouth, she swam on with courage unbroken. “I go to Paul,” she said. “O, God help me--I cannot die here!” The nether world seemed open to receive her; but the stars shone above; the gate of heaven was her lamp in the sky. A future of love and affection was imagined by her awakened brain.

“Paul,” she cried, “come to me--I will not die!”

There was a pathos of an eternity of suffering in the prayer; but the night of her life was at an end, and the God-given day was about to dawn. Even as she cried out, and thought that cold hands were dragging her down to the icy depths below, a boat shot out from the loom of the darkness; strong arms gripped her; she saw her lover bending over her, she saw the star-lit heaven; warm lips kissed her forehead; she was crushed in a close embrace--the embrace of a man who held her to him as though never more in life should she escape his arms again.

“Beloved, it is I--Paul. Oh, God be thanked, she lives, she lives!”

Swiftly he bore her to the _Esmeralda_ and to her cabin. She had no strength to speak to him, but holding both his hands, she fell into a sweet sleep, and the gardens of England were opened for her while she slept.

At dawn of the day the _Esmeralda_ sighted in the far distance one of the warships of the Baltic Fleet. But old John hitched up his breeches at the spectacle, and expressed himself as he was wont to do.

“To hell with that,” said he; “they’re the wrong side of us this time, mates. We’ll be in Stockholm by eight bells.”

Old John spoke a true word.