The Moving Finger Part 49

"Go back to Naudheim," she whispered. "Start life from the very bottom rung, if he will have it so. Don't be afraid of failure. Keep your hands tight upon the ladder, and your eyes turned toward Heaven. Oh!

You can climb if you will, Bertrand. You can climb, I am sure. Don't look down. Don't pause. Be satisfied with nothing less than the great things. For my sake, Bertrand! My thoughts will follow you. My heart will be with you. Promise!"

"I promise," he murmured.

His head sank back. He was half unconscious.

"We will stay with him for a moment," Rochester whispered. "As soon as he comes to, I will carry him down to the car."

In a moment or two he opened his eyes. His lips moved, but he was half delirious.

"Anything but failure!" he muttered to himself, with a little groan.

"Death, if you will--a touch of the finger, a stroke too far to seaward. Oh! death is easy enough! Death is easy, and failure is hard!"

Her lips touched his forehead.

"Don't believe it, dear," she whispered. "There is no real failure if only the spirit is brave. The dead things are there to help you climb.

They are rungs in the ladder, boulders for your feet."

He leaned a little forward. It seemed as though he recognised something familiar amongst the treetops, or down in the mist-clad valleys.

"Naudheim!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely. "I shall go to Naudheim!"

EPILOGUE

THE MAN

About half-way up, where the sleighs stopped, Lady Mary gave in.

Pauline and Rochester went forward on foot, and with a guide in front.

Below them was a wonderful unseen world, unseen except when the snow for a moment ceased to fall, and they caught vague, awe-inspiring glimpses of ravines and precipices, tree-clad gorges, reaching down a dizzy height to the valley below. Above them was a plateau, black with pine trees. Higher still, the invisible mountain tops.

"It is only a few hundred yards further," Rochester said, holding his companion by the arm. "What a country, though! I wonder if it ever stops snowing."

"It is wonderful!" she murmured. "Wonderful!"

And then, as though in some strange relation to his words, the storm of whirling snow-flakes suddenly ceased. The thin veil pa.s.sed away from overhead like gossamer. They saw a clear sky. They saw, even, the gleam of reflected suns.h.i.+ne, and as the mist lifted, the country above and beyond unrolled itself in one grand and splendid transformation scene: woods above woods; snow-clad peaks, all glittering with their burden of icicles and snow; and above, a white chaos, where the mountain-peak struck the clouds.

They paused for a moment, breathless.

"It is like Naudheim himself," she declared. "This is the land he spoke of. This is the place to which he climbed. It is wonderful!"

"Come," Rochester said. "We must be up before the darkness."

Slowly they made their way along the mountain road, which their guide in front was doing all he could to make smooth for them. And then at the corner they found a log hut, to which their guide pointed triumphantly.

"It is there!" he exclaimed--"there where they live, the two madmen.

Beyond, you see, is the village of the woodhewers."

Rochester nodded. They struggled a few steps upwards, and then paused to look with wonder at the scene below. The one log cabin before which they were now standing, had been built alone. Barely a hundred yards away, across the ravine, were twenty or thirty similar ones, from the roofs of which the smoke went curling upwards. It seemed for a moment as though they had climbed above the world of noises--climbed into the land of eternal silence. Before they had had time, however, to frame the thought, they heard the cras.h.i.+ng of timber across the ravine, and a great tree fell inwards. A sound like distant thunder rose and swelled at every moment.

"It is the machinery," their guide told them. "The trees fall and are stripped of their boughs. Then they go down the ravine there, and along the slide all the way to the river. See them all the way, like a great worm. Day and night, month by month--there is never a minute when a tree does not fall."

Again they heard the cras.h.i.+ng, and another tree fell. They heard the rumble of the slide in the forest. The peculiar scent of fresh sap seemed like a perfume in the air. Then suddenly the snow began to fall again. They could not see across the ravine.

The guide knocked at the door and opened it. Rochester and Pauline pa.s.sed in....

There was something almost familiar about the little scene. It was, in many respects, so entirely as she had always imagined it. Naudheim, coatless, collarless, with open waistcoat, twisted braces, and unkempt hair, was striding up and down the room, banging his hands against his side, dictating to the younger man who sat before the rude pine table.

"So we arrive," they heard his harsh, eager tones, "so we arrive at the evolution of that consciousness which may justly be termed eternal--the consciousness which has become subject to these primary and irresistible laws, the understanding of which has baffled for so many ages the students of every country. So we come----"

Naudheim broke off in the middle of his sentence. A rush of cold air had swept into the room. He thrust forward an angry, inquiring countenance toward the visitors. The young man sprang to his feet.

"Pauline!" he exclaimed.

He recognised Rochester, and stepped back with a momentary touch of his old pa.s.sionate repugnance, not unmixed with fear. He recovered himself, however, almost immediately, Rochester gazed at him in amazement. It would have been hard, indeed, to have recognised the Bertrand Saton of the old days, in the robust and bearded man who stood there now with his eyes fixed upon Pauline. His cheeks were weather-beaten but brown with health. He wore a short, unkempt beard, a flannel s.h.i.+rt with collar but no tie, tweed clothes, which might indeed have come, at one time or another, from Saville Row, but were now spent with age, and worn out of all shape.

Pauline's heart leaped with joy. Her eyes were wet. It had been worth while, then. He had found salvation.

"We hadn't the least right to come, of course," she began, recognising that speech alone could dissolve that strange silence and discomposure which seemed to have fallen upon all of them. "Mr. Rochester and Lady Mary and I are going to St. Moritz, and I persuaded them to stay over here and see whether we couldn't rout you out. What a wonderful place!" she exclaimed.

"It is a wonderful place, madam!" Naudheim exclaimed glowering at them with darkening face. "It is wonderful because we are many thousands of feet up from that rotten, stinking little life, that cauldron of souls, into which my young friend here had very nearly pitched his own little offering."

"It was we who sent him to you," Pauline said gently.

"So long as you have not come to fetch him away," Naudheim muttered.

Pauline shook her head.

"We have come," she said, "because we care for him, because we were anxious to know whether he had come to his own. We will go away the moment you send us."

"You will have some tea," Naudheim growled, a little more graciously.

"Saton, man, be hospitable. It is goat's milk, and none too sweet at that, and I won't answer for the b.u.t.ter."

Saton spoke little. Pauline was content to watch him. They drank tea out of thick china cups, but over their conversation there was always a certain reserve. Naudheim listened and watched, like a mother jealous of strangers who might rob her of her young. After tea, however, he disappeared from the room for a few moments, and Rochester walked toward the window.

"It is very good of you to come, Pauline," Saton said. "I shall work all the better for this little glimpse of you."

"Will the work," she asked softly, "never be done?"

He shook his head.

"Why should it? One pa.s.ses from field to field, and our lives are not long enough, nor our brains great enough, to reach the place where we may call halt."

"Do you mean," she asked, "that you will live here all your days?"