The Unknown Sea Part 6

For an instant her face fell, troubled, and she moved restlessly.

'And who are They? Who is the Father?'

'G.o.d the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.'

'He did not make me.'

'But He did.'

'Say that He made you if so you please: I speak for myself. Pa.s.s on now.

Who is the Son?'

'Jesus Christ His Son, our Lord, who suffered and died to save us from our sins.'

'Suffered and died!' she exclaimed, and then added, 'I have no sins.'

'Ah, you have!' said Christian, aghast.

'You may have, may be, but not I. Pa.s.s on. Who is the other one?'

'The Holy Ghost the Comforter.'

'Whose comforter? Theirs? yours? not mine--I need no comfort.'

When he said, 'O poor, lost soul, G.o.d have mercy!' she rose to pa.s.sion.

'You shall not say so; I will not endure it. And why should you look at me so? and why should you speak it low? Am I to be pitied--and pitied of you, who but for my pity would by now be a shredded and decayed patch sunk deep?'

'My body.'

Diadyomene recovered herself instantly, recalled to the larger conquest she designed.

'Yet pa.s.s on again: there is more--"At your service!" Whose?'

'Yours.'

'Mine! That is not possible,' she said coldly; 'nor of the whole can I make sense.'

'It means that I offered to serve her whose footprints I had seen--yours,--and pledged myself by the sacred names that she should have no fears.'

'Fears!'

Christian flushed painfully. It was not possible to intimate to her how he had considered that a woman unclothed would surely shrink from a man's presence.

'You make for a simple end by strange means!'

'How is it,' she resumed, 'that since quite freely you pledged yourself so sacredly to my service, you came most unwillingly when you thought I had need of you?'

Before her penetrating gaze shame entered.

'For your need I would have come gladly; yes--I think so--in spite of incurring worse; but for your pleasure----'

'Not, for instance, had I wished to see the colour of your eyes?'

It was but poor sport to put him out of countenance. Quite kindly she asked, 'What now have you incurred that worse should be to dread?'

He began of the name 'Sinister,' and of all it implied. She laughed, asking him why he should expound that. He went on to the definite ills that had beset him, because the injury to his boat betrayed him to inquisition.

'But how?' she asked; 'you admitted nothing, else you failed in your promise to me.'

'No, but challenged, I could not deny I had dared here.'

'Why not?'

'It would not have been true,' he said, puzzled.

Diadyomene opened her eyes wide and laughed.

'And do you use your powers of speech only to say what is true?'

'Yes,' he said, indignant. 'How else?'

'Now I,' she said, 'use speech to disguise truth, with foul or with fair, or sometimes to slay and bury it out of sight.'

'Then, when you declared you had not summoned me, was that untrue?'

'If I now answered "Yes" or "No," you could be no nearer satisfaction; for you have not the wit to weigh my word with mood, disposition, circ.u.mstance, to strike a balance for truth.'

Christian pondered, perplexed and amazed at that perverse argument.

'I would another were here to unreeve this tangle you are in. There is one, wise, tender, a saint.'

Diadyomene levelled her brows.

'A woman! And you love her!' she said, and astonished the inexperienced boy.

'Above all! She is mother to me.'

He said timidly: 'Of all evils incurred by my presumption here, the worst is that between her and me your secret stands a bar to perfect confidence. I did not guess it would gall her so. I may not tell you how.'

'Yes, tell me.'

'I cannot.'

'A secret.'

'Not strictly; some day I might, but not now.'