Moonfleet, John Meade Falkner [intellectual books to read txt] 📗

“No,” I struck in, “my head is clear enough; I am speaking of Elzevir Block. I pray you tell me where he is. Is he well again?” They got up and stared at one another and at me, when I named Elzevir Block, and then I knew the one that spoke for Master Ratsey only greyer than he was.

“Who are you?” he cried, “who talk of Elzevir Block.”

“Do you not know me, Master Ratsey?” and I looked full in his face. “I am John Trenchard, who left you so long ago. I pray you tell me where is Master Block?”

Master Ratsey looked as if he had seen a ghost, and was struck dumb at first: but then ran up and shook me by the hand so warmly that I fell back again on my pillow, while he poured out questions in a flood. How had I fared, where had I been, whence had I come? until I stopped him, saying: “Softly, kind friend, and I will answer; only tell me first, where is Master Elzevir?”

“Nay, that I cannot say,” he answered, “for never a soul has set eyes on Elzevir since that summer morning we put thee and him ashore at Newport.”

“Oh, fool me not!” I cried out, chafing at his excuses; “I am not wandering now. ’Twas Elzevir that saved me in the surf last night. ’Twas he that landed with me.”

There was a look of sad amaze that came on Ratsey’s face when I said that; a look that woke in me an awful surmise. “What!” cried he, “was that Master Elzevir that dragged thee through the surf?”

“Ay, ’twas he landed with me, ’twas he landed with me,” I said; trying, as it were, to make true by repeating that which I feared was not the truth. There was a minute’s silence, and then Ratsey spoke very softly: “there was none landed with you; there was no soul saved from that ship alive save you.”

His words fell, one by one, upon my ear as if they were drops of molten lead. “It is not true,” I cried; “he pulled me up the beach himself, and it was he that pushed me forward to the rope.”

“Ay, he saved thee, and then the undertow got hold of him and swept him down under the curl. I could not see his face, but might have known there never was a man, save Elzevir, could fight the surf on Moonfleet beach like that. Yet had we known ’twas he, we could have done no more, for many risked their lives last night to save you both. We could have done no more.” Then I gave a great groan for utter anguish, to think that he had given up the safety he had won for himself, and laid down his life, there on the beach, for me; to think that he had died on the threshold of his home; that I should never get a kind look from him again, nor ever hear his kindly voice.

It is wearisome to others to talk of deep grief, and beside that no words, even of the wisest man, can ever set it forth, nor even if we were able could our memory bear to tell it. So I shall not speak more of that terrible blow, only to say that sorrow, so far from casting my body down, as one might have expected, gave it strength, and I rose up from the mattress where I had been lying. They tried to stop me, and even to hold me back, but for all I was so weak, I pushed them aside and must needs fling a blanket round me and away back to the beach.

The morning was breaking as I left the Why Not?, for ’twas in no other place but that I lay, and the wind, though still high, had abated. There were light clouds crossing the heaven very swiftly, and between them patches of clear sky where the stars were growing paler before the dawn. The stars were growing paler; but there was another star, that shone out from the Manor Woods above the village, although I could not see the house, and told me Grace, like the wise virgins, kept her lamp alight all night. Yet even that light shone without lustre for me then, for my heart was too full to think of anything but of him who had laid down his life for mine, and of the strong kind heart that was stilled forever.

’Twas well I knew the way, so sure of old, from Why Not? to beach; for I took no heed to path or feet, but plunged along in the morning dusk, blind with sorrow and weariness of spirit. There was a fire of driftwood burning at the back of the beach, and round it crouched a group of men in reefing jackets and sou’westers waiting for morning to save what they might from the wreck; but I gave them a wide berth and so passed in the darkness without a word, and came to the top of the beach. There was light enough to make out what was doing. The sea was running very high, but with the falling wind the waves came in more leisurely and with less of broken water, curling over in a tawny sweep and regular thunderous beat all along the bay for miles. There was no sign left of the hull of the Aurungzebe, but the beach was strewn with so much wreckage as one would have thought could never come from so small a ship. There were barrels and kegs, gratings and hatch-covers, booms and pieces of masts and trucks; and beside all that, the heaving water inshore was covered with a floating mask of broken matchwood, and the waves, as they curled over, carried up and dashed down on the pebble planks and beams beyond number. There were a dozen or more of men