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The Shuttle Chapter 35 - The Tidal Wave · The Frances Hodgson Burnett Library

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  Speaker 1: CHAPTER XXXV. THE TIDAL WAVE There was only one man
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  Speaker 1: to speak to, and it being the nature of the beast,
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  Speaker 1: so he harshly put it to himself, to be absolutely
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  Speaker 1: impelled to speech at such times, Mount Dunstan laid bare
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  Speaker 1: his breast to him, tearing aside all the coverings pride
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  Speaker 1: would have folded about him. The man was, of course, Penzance,
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  Speaker 1: and the laying bare was done the evening after the
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  Speaker 1: story of Red Godwin had been told in the Laurel Walk.
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  Speaker 1: They had driven home together in a profound silence, the
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  Speaker 1: elder man as deep in thought as the younger one.
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  Speaker 1: Penzance was thinking that there was a calmness in having
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  Speaker 1: reached sixty, and in knowing that the pain and hunger
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  Speaker 1: of earlier years would not tear one again. And yet
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  Speaker 1: he himself was not untorn by that which shook the
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  Speaker 1: man for whom his affection had grown year by year.
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  Speaker 1: It was evidently very bad, very bad indeed. He wondered
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  Speaker 1: if he would speak of it, and wished he would,
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  Speaker 1: not because he himself had much to say in answer,
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  Speaker 1: but because he knew that speech would be better than
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  Speaker 1: hard silence.' Stay with me to-night,' Mount Dunstan said, as
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  Speaker 1: they drove through the avenue to the house.' I want
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  Speaker 1: you to dine with me, and sit and talk late.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not sleeping well.' They often dined together, and the
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  Speaker 1: vicar not infrequently slept at the mount for mere companionship's sake.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes they read, sometimes went over accounts, planned economies, and
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  Speaker 1: balanced expenditures. A chamber, still called the chaplain's room, was
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  Speaker 1: always kept in readiness. It had been used in long
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  Speaker 1: past days when a household chaplain had sat below the
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  Speaker 1: salt and left his patron's table before the sweets were served.
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  Speaker 1: They dined together this night almost as silently as they
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  Speaker 1: had driven homeward, and after the meal they went and
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  Speaker 1: sat alone in the library. The huge room was never
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  Speaker 1: more than dimly lighted, and the far-off corners seen more
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  Speaker 1: darkly than usual in the insufficient illumination of the far-from-brilliant lamps.
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  Speaker 1: Mount Dunstan, after standing upon the hearth for a few
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  Speaker 1: minutes smoking a pipe, which would have compared ill with
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  Speaker 1: old Dobie's Sunday splendour, left his coffee-cup upon the mantel
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  Speaker 1: and began to tramp up and down, out of the
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  Speaker 1: dim light into the shadows, back out of the shadows
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  Speaker 1: into the poor light.' You know,' he said,' what I
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  Speaker 1: think about most things, you know what I feel.'' I
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  Speaker 1: think I do.' You know what I feel about Englishmen
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  Speaker 1: who brand themselves as half-men and marked merchandise by selling
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  Speaker 1: themselves and their houses and their blood to foreign women
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  Speaker 1: who can buy them. You know how savage I've been
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  Speaker 1: at the mere thought of it, and how I've sworn—'' Yes,
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  Speaker 1: I know what you've sworn,' said Mr. Penzance. It struck
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  Speaker 1: him that Mount Dunstan shook and tossed his head rather
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  Speaker 1: like a bull about to charge an enemy.' You know
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  Speaker 1: how I have felt myself perfectly within my rights when
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  Speaker 1: I blaggered at such men and sneered at such women,
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  Speaker 1: taking it for granted that each was merchandise of his
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  Speaker 1: or her kind and beneath contempt. I am not a
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  Speaker 1: foul-mouthed man, but I have used grossed words and rough
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  Speaker 1: ones to describe them. I have heard you. Mount Dunstan
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  Speaker 1: threw back his head with a big harsh laugh. He
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  Speaker 1: came out of the shadow and stood still.' Well,' he said,'
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  Speaker 1: I' m in love, as much in love as any lunatic
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  Speaker 1: ever was,' with the daughter of Ruben S. Vanderpool.' There
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  Speaker 1: you are, and there I am.'' It has seemed to me,'
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  Speaker 1: Penzance answered,' that it was almost inevitable.' My condition is
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  Speaker 1: such that it seems to me' that it would be
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  Speaker 1: inevitable in the case of any man.' When I see
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  Speaker 1: another man look at her, 'my blood races through my
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  Speaker 1: veins with an awful fear and a wicked heat.' That
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  Speaker 1: will show you the point I have reached.' He walked
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  Speaker 1: over to the mantelpiece and laid his pipe down with
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  Speaker 1: a hand Penzance saw was unsteady. In turning over the
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  Speaker 1: pages of the volume of life, he said, I have
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  Speaker 1: come upon the book of revelations. That is true, Penzance said.
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  Speaker 1: Until one has come upon it, one is an inchoate fool,
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  Speaker 1: Mount Dunstan went on, and afterwards one is, for the
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  Speaker 1: time at least, a sort of madman raving to oneself,
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  Speaker 1: either in or out of a straitjacket as the case
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  Speaker 1: may be, I am wearing the jacket, worse luck. Do
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  Speaker 1: you know anything of the state of a man who
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  Speaker 1: cannot utter the most ordinary words to a woman without
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  Speaker 1: being conscious that he is making mad love to her?
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  Speaker 1: This afternoon I found myself telling Miss Vanderpool the story
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  Speaker 1: of Red Godwin and Alice of the Sea-Blue Eyes. I
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  Speaker 1: did not make a single statement having any connection with myself,
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  Speaker 1: but throughout I was calling on her to think of
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  Speaker 1: herself and of me as those two. I saw her
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  Speaker 1: in my own arms with the tears of Alice on
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  Speaker 1: her lashes. I was making mad love, though she was
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  Speaker 1: unconscious of my doing it.'' How do you know she
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  Speaker 1: was unconscious?' remarked Mr. Penzance.' You are a very strong man.'
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  Speaker 1: Mount Dunstan's short laugh was even a little awful, because
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  Speaker 1: it meant so much. He let his forehead drop a
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  Speaker 1: moment onto his arms as they rested on the mantelpiece.' Oh,
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  Speaker 1: my God!' he said. But the next instant his head
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  Speaker 1: lifted itself.' It is the mystery of the world, this thing!'
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  Speaker 1: A tidal wave gathering itself mountain-high and crashing down upon
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  Speaker 1: one's helplessness might be as easily defied. It is supposed
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  Speaker 1: to disperse, I believe. That has been said so often
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  Speaker 1: that there must be truth in it. In twenty or
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  Speaker 1: thirty or forty years one is told one will have
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  Speaker 1: got over it. But one must live through the years,
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  Speaker 1: one must live through them, and the chief feature of
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  Speaker 1: one's madness is that one is convinced they will last
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  Speaker 1: for ever.' Go on,' said Mr. Penzance, because he had
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  Speaker 1: paused and stood biting his lip Say all that you
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  Speaker 1: feel inclined to say. It's the best thing you can do.
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  Speaker 1: I have never gone through this myself, but I have
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  Speaker 1: seen and known the amazingness of it for many years.
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  Speaker 1: I have seen it come and go. Can you imagine,
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  Speaker 1: Mount Dunstan said, that the most damnable thought of all,
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  Speaker 1: when a man is passing through it, is the possibility
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  Speaker 1: of its going? Anything else rather than the knowledge that
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  Speaker 1: years could change or death could end it? Eternity seems
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  Speaker 1: only to offer space for it. One knows, but one
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  Speaker 1: does not believe. It does something to one's brain.'' No scientist,
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  Speaker 1: however profound, has ever discovered what,' the vicar mused aloud.'
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  Speaker 1: The Book of Revelations has shown to me how— how magnificent
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  Speaker 1: life might be.' Mount Dunstan clenched and unclenched his hands,
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  Speaker 1: his eyes flashing.' Magnificent, that's the word. To go to
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  Speaker 1: her on equal ground, to take her hands and speak
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  Speaker 1: one's passion as one would,' as her eyes answered.' Oh,
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  Speaker 1: one would know. To bring her home to this place,
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  Speaker 1: having made it as it once was, to live with
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  Speaker 1: her here, to be with her as the sun rose
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  Speaker 1: and set and the seasons changed, with the joy of
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  Speaker 1: life filling each of them. She is the joy of life,
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  Speaker 1: the very heart of it. You see where I am,
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  Speaker 1: you see. Yes, Penzance answered. He saw and bowed his head,
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  Speaker 1: and Mount Dunstan knew he wished him to continue. Sometimes
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  Speaker 1: of late it has been too much for me, and
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  Speaker 1: I have given free rein to my fancy, knowing that
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  Speaker 1: there could never be more than fancy. I was doing
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  Speaker 1: it this afternoon as I watched her move about among
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  Speaker 1: the people, and Mary Lithcombe began to talk about her.
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  Speaker 1: He smiled a grim smile. Perhaps it was an intervention
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  Speaker 1: of the gods to drag me down from my impious heights.
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  Speaker 1: She was quite unconscious that she was driving home facts
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  Speaker 1: like nails— the facts that every man who wanted money wanted
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  Speaker 1: Ruben S. Vanderpool's daughter— and that the young lady, not
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  Speaker 1: being dull, was not unaware of the obvious truth, and
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  Speaker 1: that men with prizes to offer were ready to offer
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  Speaker 1: them in a proper manner, also that she was only
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  Speaker 1: a brilliant bird of passage who in a few months
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  Speaker 1: would be caught in the dazzling net of the great world,
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  Speaker 1: and that even Lord Westhalton Dunham Castle were not quite
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  Speaker 1: what she might expect. Lady Mary was sincerely interested. She
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  Speaker 1: drove it home in her ardour. She told me to
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  Speaker 1: look at her, to look at her mouth and chin
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  Speaker 1: and eyelashes, and to make note of what she stood
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  Speaker 1: for in a crowd of ordinary people. I could have
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  Speaker 1: laughed aloud with rage and self-mockery. Mr. Penzance was resting
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  Speaker 1: his forehead on his hand, his elbow on his chair's arm.'
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  Speaker 1: This is profound unhappiness,' he said.' It is profound unhappiness.'
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  Speaker 1: Mount Dunstan answered by a brusque gesture.' But it will
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  Speaker 1: pass away,' went on Penzance,' and not as you fear
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  Speaker 1: it must.' in answer to another gesture, fiercely impatient,' Not
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  Speaker 1: that way. Some day or night you will stand here together,
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  Speaker 1: and you will tell her all that you have told me.
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  Speaker 1: I know it will be so.'' What?' Mount Dunstan cried out,
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  Speaker 1: but the words had been spoken with such absolute conviction
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  Speaker 1: that he felt himself become pale. It was with the
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  Speaker 1: same conviction that Penzance went on.' I have spent my
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  Speaker 1: quiet life in thinking of the forces for which we
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  Speaker 1: find no explanation,' of the causes of which we only
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  Speaker 1: see the effects. Long ago, in looking at you in
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  Speaker 1: one of my pondering moments, I said to myself that
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  Speaker 1: you were of the primeval force which cannot lose its way,
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  Speaker 1: which sweeps a clear pathway for itself as it moves,
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  Speaker 1: and which cannot be held back. I said to you
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  Speaker 1: just now that because you are a strong man you
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  Speaker 1: cannot be sure that a woman you are, even in
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  Speaker 1: spite of yourself, making mad love to, is unconscious that
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  Speaker 1: you are doing it. You do not know what your
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  Speaker 1: strength lies in. I do not, the woman does not,
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  Speaker 1: but we must all feel it, whether we comprehend it
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  Speaker 1: or know. You said of this fine creature, some time since,
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  Speaker 1: that she was life, and you have just said again
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  Speaker 1: something of the same kind. It's quite true, she is life,
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  Speaker 1: and the joy of it. You are two strong forces,
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  Speaker 1: and you are drawing together. He rose from his chair,
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  Speaker 1: and going to Mount Dunstan, put his hand on his shoulder,
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  Speaker 1: his fine old face singularly wrapped and glowing.' She is
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  Speaker 1: drawing you, and you are drawing her, and each is
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  Speaker 1: too strong to release the other. I believe that to
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  Speaker 1: be true. Both bodies and souls do it. They're not
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  Speaker 1: separate things. They move on their way as the stars do.
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  Speaker 1: They move on their way.' As he spoke, Mount Dunstan's
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  Speaker 1: eyes looked into his fixedly. Then they turned aside and
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  Speaker 1: looked down upon the mantle against which he was leaning.
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  Speaker 1: He aimlessly picked up his pipe and laid it down again.
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  Speaker 1: He was paler than before, but he said no single word.'
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  Speaker 1: You think your reasons for holding aloof from her are
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  Speaker 1: the reasons of a man?' Mr. Penzance's voice sounded to
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  Speaker 1: him remote.' They are the reasons of a man's pride,
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  Speaker 1: but that is not the strongest thing in the world.
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  Speaker 1: It only imagines it is. You think that you cannot
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  Speaker 1: go to her as a luckier man could. You think
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  Speaker 1: nothing shall force you to speak. Ask yourself why. It
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  Speaker 1: is because you believe that to show your heart would
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  Speaker 1: be to place yourself in the humiliating position of a
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  Speaker 1: man who might seem to her and to the world
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  Speaker 1: to be a base fellow.'' An impudent, pushing base fellow,'
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  Speaker 1: thrust in Mount Dunstan fiercely,' one of a vulgar lot,
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  Speaker 1: a thing fancying even its beggary worth buying. What has
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  Speaker 1: a man whose very name is hung with tattered ugliness
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  Speaker 1: to offer?' Penzance's hand was still on his shoulder, and
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  Speaker 1: his look at him was long.' His very pride,' he
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  Speaker 1: said at last,' his very obstinacy and haughty, stubborn determination,'
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  Speaker 1: those broken because the other feeling is the stronger and
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  Speaker 1: overcomes him utterly.' A flush leapt to Mount Dunstan's forehead.
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  Speaker 1: He set both elbows on the mantle and let his
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  Speaker 1: forehead fall on his clenched fists, and the savage Britain
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  Speaker 1: rose in him.' No,' he said passionately,' by God, no!''
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  Speaker 1: You say that,' said the older man,' because you have
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  Speaker 1: not yet reached the end of your tether. Unhappy as
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  Speaker 1: you are, you are not unhappy enough. Of the two
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  Speaker 1: you love yourself the more, your pride and your stubbornness.'' Yes,'
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  Speaker 1: between his teeth,' I suppose I retain yet a sort
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  Speaker 1: of respect and affection for my pride. May God leave
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  Speaker 1: it to me!' Penzance felt himself curiously exulted. He knew
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  Speaker 1: himself unreasoningly passing through an oddly unpractical uplifted moment in
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  Speaker 1: whose impelling he singularly believed.' You are drawing her, and
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  Speaker 1: she is drawing you,' he said.' Perhaps you drew each
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  Speaker 1: other across these. You will stand here together, and you
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  Speaker 1: will tell her of this on this very spot.' Mount
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  Speaker 1: Dunstan changed his position and laughed roughly as if to
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  Speaker 1: rouse himself. He threw out his arm in a big
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  Speaker 1: uneasy gesture, taking in the room.' Oh, come,' he said,'
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  Speaker 1: you talk like a seer. Look about you, look. I
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  Speaker 1: am to bring her here.'' If it is the primeval thing,
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  Speaker 1: she will not care. Why should she?'' She? Bring a
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  Speaker 1: life like hers to this? Or perhaps you mean that
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  Speaker 1: her own wealth might make her surroundings becoming, that a
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  Speaker 1: man would endure that?'' If it is the primeval thing,
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  Speaker 1: you would not care. You would have forgotten that you
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  Speaker 1: two had ever lived an hour apart.' He spoke with
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  Speaker 1: a deep-moved gravity, almost as if he were speaking of
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  Speaker 1: the first Titan building of the earth. Mount Dunstan, staring
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  Speaker 1: at his delicate, insistent elderly face, tried to laugh again,
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  Speaker 1: and failed because the effort seemed actually irreverent. It was
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  Speaker 1: a singular hypnotic moment indeed. He himself was hypnotised. A
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  Speaker 1: flashlight of new vision blazed before him and left him dumb.
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  Speaker 1: He took up his pipe hurriedly, and with still unsteady
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  Speaker 1: fingers began to refill it. When it was filled he
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  Speaker 1: lighted it, and then without a word of answer left
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  Speaker 1: the hearth and began to tramp up and down the
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  Speaker 1: room again, out of the dim light into the shadows,
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  Speaker 1: back out of the shadows and into the dim light again,
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  Speaker 1: his brow working and his teeth holding hard his amber mouthpiece.
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  Speaker 1: The morning awakening of a normal healthy human creature should
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  Speaker 1: be a joyous thing. After the soul's long hours of
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  Speaker 1: release from the burden of the body, its long hours spent,
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  Speaker 1: one can only say in awe at the mystery of it, away, away,
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  Speaker 1: in flight perhaps, on broad tireless wings, beating softly in fair,
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  Speaker 1: far skies, breathing pure life, to be brought back to
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  Speaker 1: renew the strength of each dawning day, after these hours
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  Speaker 1: of quiescence of limb and nerve and brain, the morning
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  Speaker 1: life returning should unseal for the body clear eyes of
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  Speaker 1: peace at least. In time to come this will be so,
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  Speaker 1: when the soul's wings are stronger, the body more attuned
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  Speaker 1: to infinite law, and the race a greater power. but
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  Speaker 1: as yet it often seems as though the winged thing
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  Speaker 1: came back a lagging and reluctant rebel against its fate,
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  Speaker 1: and the chain which draws it back a prisoner to
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  Speaker 1: its toil. It had seemed so often to Mount Dunstan,
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  Speaker 1: oftener than not. Youth should not know such awakening, he
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  Speaker 1: was well aware, but he had known it sometimes even
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  Speaker 1: when he had been a child, and since his return
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  Speaker 1: from his ill-starred struggle in America, the dull and reluctant
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  Speaker 1: facing of the day had become a habit. Yet on
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  Speaker 1: the morning after his talk with his friend, the curious, uplifted,
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  Speaker 1: unpractical talk which had seemed to hypnotise him. He knew
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  Speaker 1: when he opened his eyes to the light that he
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: had awakened as a man should awake, with an unreasoning
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  Speaker 1: sense of pleasure in the life and health of his
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  Speaker 1: own body, as he stretched mighty limbs strong after the
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  Speaker 1: night's rest, and feeling that there was work to be done.
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  Speaker 1: It was all unreasoning. There was no more to be
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  Speaker 1: done than on those other days which he had wakened
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  Speaker 1: to with bitterness, because they seemed useless and empty of
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  Speaker 1: any worth. but this morning the mere light of the
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  Speaker 1: sun was of use, the rustle of the small breeze
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  Speaker 1: in the leaves, the soft floating past of the white clouds,
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  Speaker 1: the mere fact that the great blind-faced stately house was
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  Speaker 1: his own, that he could tramp far over lands which
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  Speaker 1: were his heritage, unfed though they might be, and that
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  Speaker 1: the very rustics who would pass him in the lanes were,
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  Speaker 1: so to speak, his own people, that he had name, life,
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  Speaker 1: even the common thing of hunger for his morning food,
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  Speaker 1: it was all of use. an alluring picture of a
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: certain deep clear bathing pool in the park rose before him.
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  Speaker 1: It had not called to him for many a day,
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  Speaker 1: and now he saw its dark blueness gleam between flags
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  Speaker 1: and green rushes in its encircling thickness of shrubs and trees.
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  Speaker 1: He sprang from his bed, and in a few minutes
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  Speaker 1: was striding across the grass of the park, his towels
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  Speaker 1: over his arm, his head thrown back as he drank
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  Speaker 1: in the freshness of the morning-scented air. It was scented
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  Speaker 1: with dew and grass and the breath of waking trees
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  Speaker 1: and growing things, Early twitters and thrills were to be
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  Speaker 1: heard here and there, insisting on morning joyfulness. Rabbits frisked
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  Speaker 1: about among the fine-grasped hummocks of their warren, and as
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  Speaker 1: he passed scuttled back into their holes with a whisking
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  Speaker 1: of short white tails, at which he laughed with friendly amusement.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Cropping stags lifted their antlered heads, and fawns with dappled
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  Speaker 1: sides and immense lustrous eyes gazed at him without actual fear,
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  Speaker 1: even while they sidled closer to their mother's. A skylark,
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  Speaker 1: springing suddenly from the grass a few yards from his feet,
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  Speaker 1: made him stop short once and stand looking upward and listening.
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  Speaker 1: Who could pass by a skylark at five o'clock on
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  Speaker 1: a summer's morning, the little heavenly light-heart circling and wheeling,
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  Speaker 1: showering down diamonds, showering down pearls from its tiny, pulsating,
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  Speaker 1: trilling throat? Do you know why they sing like that?
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  Speaker 1: It is because all but the joy of things has
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  Speaker 1: been kept hidden from them. They know nothing but life
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  Speaker 1: and flight and mating and the gold of the sun.
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  Speaker 1: So they sing. That she had once said. He listened
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  Speaker 1: until the jewelled rain seemed to have fallen into his soul.
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  Speaker 1: Then he went on his way smiling as he knew
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  Speaker 1: he had never smiled in his life before. He knew
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: it because he realised that he had never before felt
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the same vigorous light normality of spirit, the same sense
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: of being as other men. It was as though something
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: had swept a great clear space about him, and having
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: room for air, he breathed deep and was glad of
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: the commonest gifts of being. The bathing-pool had been the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: greatest pleasure of his uncared-for boyhood. No one knew which
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: long-past-away Mount Dunstan had made it. The oldest villager had
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: told him that it had always been there, even in
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: his father's time. Since he himself had known it, he
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: had seen that it was kept at its best. Its
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: dark blue depths reflected in their pellucid clearness the water-plants
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: growing at its edge, and the enclosing shrubs and trees.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: The turf bordering it was velvet-thick and green, and a
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: few flag-steps led down to the water. Birds came there
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: to drink and bathe and preen and dress their feathers.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: He knew there were often nests in the bushes, sometimes
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: the nests of nightingales, who filled the soft darkness or
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: moonlight of early June with the wonderfulness of nesting-song. Sometimes
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: a straying fawn poked in a tender nose, and after
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: drinking delicately stole away, as if it knew itself a trespasser.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: To undress and plunge headlong into the dark sapphire water
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: was a rapturous thing. He swam swiftly and slowly by turns.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: He floated, looking upward at heaven's blue, listening to birdsong
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: and inhaling all the fragrance of the early day. Strength
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: grew in him, and life pulsed as the water lapped
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: his limbs. He found himself thinking with pleasure of a
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: long walk he intended to take to see a farmer
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: he must talk to about his hop-gardens. He found himself
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: thinking with pleasure of other things as simple and common
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: to everyday life, such things as he ordinarily faced merely
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: because he must, since he could not afford an experienced bailiff.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: He was his own bailiff, his own steward, merely, he
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: had often thought, an unsuccessful farmer of half-starved lands. but
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: this morning neither he nor they seemed so starved, and
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: for no reason there was a future of some sort.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: He emerged from his pool glowing, the turf feeling like
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: velvet beneath his feet. a fine light in his eyes.' Yes,'
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: he said, throwing out his arms in a lordly stretch
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: of physical well-being,' it might be a magnificent thing, mere
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: strong living. This is magnificent.' End of Chapter 35