The Unknown Sea Part 3

CHAPTER IV

Though day was high, Lois, the mother adoptive of Christian the Alien, sat in shadow, for her small lattice was nearly blinded by the spread of vivid fig-leaves jealous for the sun. Flawless order reigned in the simple habitation. No sign of want was there, but comforts were few, and of touch or tint for mere pleasure there was none. Over an opened Bible bent a face worn more by care than time. Never a page was turned; the hands held the edges, quiet, but a little tense. For an hour deliberate calm held.

Then the soft, quick pat of bare feet running caused a slight grip and quiver. The door swung wide, not ungently, before Christian flushed and breathless, and a flash of broad day framed with him. He peered within with eager, anxious eyes, yet a diffident conscience made him falter.

'What have I done? Oh, mother!'

So frail she seemed to his large embrace. In his hand hers he felt ever so slightly tremble. He knelt beside her, love and reverence big in his heart.

'Why should you trouble so?' he said.

She laid her hands on his head for pardon. 'Christian,' she said, 'were you in peril last night?'

'Yes.'

She waited for more to follow, vainly.

'What was it? Where have you been? What have you done?'

'Mother, you were praying for me!'

'Answer, Christian.'

'I gave a promise. I thought I owed it--yes, I think so,' he said, perturbed, and looked in her eyes for exoneration. There he read intelligence on a wrong tack that his honesty would not suffer.

'No, mother, it was not on a venture--I have come back empty-handed. I mean not such a venture as you think,' he corrected, for among the fishers the word had a special significance, as will show hereafter.

'Say at least,' said Lois, 'you have done nothing amiss--nothing you would be ashamed to tell me.'

'But I have,' he confessed, reddening, 'done amiss--without being greatly ashamed--before.'

His heart sank through a pause, and still lower at his mother's question, spoken very low.

'Then I am to know that though I should question, you would refuse an answer to me?'

He could not bear to utter the word till she insisted.

Her face twitched painfully; she put him back, rose, and went pacing to and fro. Helplessly he stood and watched her strange distress, till she turned to him again.

'My boy--no--you can be a boy no more; this day I must see you are a man.

Listen, Christian: I knew this day must come--though it seems oversoon to me--and I was resolved that so soon as you should refuse any confession to me, I--I--must make confession to you.'

She silenced his pained protest, and went on.

'When my child was born, eighteen years ago come Christmas Eve, our priest was no worthy man as now; little good was known of him, and there was bad guessed at. But there was this that none here guessed--I only.

And you must know--it is part of my confession.'

She spoke painfully, sentence by sentence. After eighteen years her voice yet vibrated with hot, live pa.s.sion.

'My sister--my young sister--came to make her home with us; she would, and then she would not, for no cause--and went away. She died--she died on the night my child was born--and hers. Then I vowed that neither I nor my child should receive sacrament of G.o.d from that man's hands. He dared no word when I pa.s.sed by with my unbaptized child in my arms; he met my eyes once--never after. We were two living rebukes, that he but no other could read plain enough. 'Twas in those days that my man Giles went seafaring, so the blame was the more all mine. He indeed, knowing all from me, would have had the child away to be baptized of other hands. But in those days the nearest were far, and I put him off with this plea and that; and come a day, and gone in a day, and months away, was the way with him then. For this thwart course, begun out of fierce resentment, so long as that did not abate, I found I had no will to leave. Yet all along I never meant to hold it over a week more, or a week more, or at most a month more. So two years went, and a third drew on, and that wolf of the fold was dead.

'On the day he was laid underground G.o.d took my child from me.

'I knew--the first word of missing--I knew what I had done. Conscience struck away all hope. From the print of children's feet we traced how the smallest went straying, how little hands sh.e.l.l filled went grasping for more. I gleaned and keep. They said it was hours before, at the ebb.

Then the tide stopped us, and that was all.

'In my bitter grief I said at the first that G.o.d was just but not merciful; since He took the dear body from me and hid it in the sea that I, who had not wrapped it for christening, should never wrap it meetly for the grave. Most just, most merciful! afterwards He sent you to me by the very sea. I knew and claimed you as you lay on the sh.o.r.e, a living child, among twoscore dead men, and none withstood me.

'In ignorant haste, eager to atone, I was loath to believe what the cross at your neck told, with its three crosses inscribed, and your sole name "Christian," and on the reverse a date. Like a rebuff to me then it was, not realising that I was to work out an atonement more full and complete.

I have tried. O Christian, it will not be in vain!

'All these years your conscience has been in my keeping; you have freely rendered to me account of thoughts and deeds, good and ill; you have shared no secret, no promise apart from me. To-day you tell me that your conduct, your conscience, you will have in your own sole charge.

'My boy, you do no wrong; this is no reproach, though I cannot but grieve and fear. But know you must now, that in you I present to G.o.d my great contrition; in you I dare look for His favourable grace made manifest; a human soul seeks in you to see on earth salvation.'

Christian shrank before the pa.s.sionate claim. His sense of raw, faulty youth was a painful shame, confronted by the bared remorse of this austere woman, whom his heart held as mother and saint. 'O G.o.d, help us,'

he said, and his eyes were full of tears.

'Ay, Christian,' she said, 'so I prayed last night.'

'Mother,' he said, awed, 'what did you know? how did you know?'

'Nothing, nothing, only great fear for you, and that sprung of a dream.

Often the wind and the waves have crept into my sleep and stolen you from me. Last night I dreamed you lay dead, and not alone; by you lay my little one, a small, white, naked shape crouched dead at your side. I woke in great fear for you; it would not pa.s.s, though the night was still; it grew rather, for it was a fear of worse than death for you.

Yes, I prayed.'

Through his brain swept a vision, moonlighted, of the fair witch's haunt, and her nude shape dominant as she condemned him. The omniscience of G.o.d had been faint sustenance then compared with this feeble finite shadow of the same that shot thrilling through the spirit of the boy. So are we made.

Outside a heavy step sounded, and a voice hailed Christian. 'Here, boy, lend a hand.'

He swung out into the clear world. There Giles, empty-handed, made for the rear linhay, and faced round with a puckered brow.

'What the devil have you been up to?'

'Trying her paces,' said Christian.

'Who's to blame then--you or she?'

'Oh, not she!' said Christian hastily, jealous for the credit of his new possession.

'Well, well, that ever such a duffer should be bred up by me,' grumbled Giles. 'Out with it all, boy. How came it?'

Christian shut his mouth and shook his head.

'What's this? Don't play the fool. As it is, you've set the quay buzzing more than enough.'

'Who cares?'