Part 75 (1/2)
Ronsard shook his head.
”You? No, my friend! You will not! You will remain to welcome Gloria--to tell her that I loved her to the last!--that I did my best!”
He seemed to have grown young in an instant,--his eyes flashed with alertness and vigour, and instead of an old decaying man, full of cares and despondencies, he seemed like a bold adventurer, before whom a new land of promise opens. Von Glauben looked at him, and in a moment made up his mind. He turned to the coral-fisher.
”What think you truly of the night, my friend? Is it for life or death we go?”
”Death! Certain death!” answered the man; ”It is madness to set sail in such a storm as this!”
”You are married, no doubt? And little ones eat your earnings? Ach so!
Then you shall not be asked to go with us. Ronsard, I am ready! I can pull an oar and manage a sail, and I am not afraid of death by drowning!
For Gloria's sake, let me go with you!”
”For Gloria's sake, stay here!” cried Ronsard; and with an abrupt movement he escaped Von Glauben's hold, and ran with all the speed of a boy out of the cottage into the garden beyond.
Von Glauben rushed after him, but found himself in the thicket of pines, trapped and hemmed in by the darkness of their stems and branches.
The wind was so fierce and strong, that he could scarcely keep his feet,--every now and again the moon flew out of a great cloud-pinnacle and glared on the scene, but not with sufficient clearness to show him his way. Yet he knew the place well--often had he and Gloria trodden that path down to the sea, and yet to-night it seemed all unfamiliar.
How the sea roared! Like a thousand lions clamouring for prey! Against the rocks the rising billows hissed and screamed, rattling backward among stones and sh.e.l.ls with the grinding noise of artillery wagons being hastily dragged off a lost field of battle.
”Ronsard!” he called as loudly as he could, and again ”Ronsard!” but his voice, big and stentorian though it was, made but the feeblest wail in the loud shriek of the wind. Yet he stumbled on and on, and by slow and difficult degrees found his way down to the foot of the high rocks which formed a pinnacled wall between him and the sea,--the rocks he had so often climbed with Gloria, and of which she had sung in such matchless tones of triumph and tenderness.
Here, by the sea.
My King crown'd me!
Wild ocean sang for my Coronation, With the jubilant voice of a mighty nation!
The memory of this song came back to his ears in a ringing echo, amid the howling of the boisterous wind, which now blew harder and harder, scattering ma.s.ses of blown froth from the waves in his face, with flying sand and light sh.e.l.ls, and torn-up weed. Scarcely able to stand against it, he paused to get his breath, realising that it would be worse than useless to climb the rocks in the teeth of such a gale, or try to reach the old accustomed winding way down to the sh.o.r.e. He endeavoured to collect his scattered wits;--if the ceaseless onslaught of the storm would only have allowed him to think coherently, he fancied he might have found another and easier path to lead him in the direction whither Ronsard, in his mad, but heroic impulse, had gone. But the gale was so terrific, and the booming of the great waves on the other side of the rocky barrier so awful, that it seemed as if the water must be rolling in like a solid wall, bent on breaking down the coast, and grinding it to powder. His heart ached heavily;--tears rose to his eyes.
”What a grain of dust I am in this world of storm!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; ”Here I stand,--a strong man, utterly useless! Powerless to save the life I would die to serve! But maybe the story is not true!--the man can easily have been mistaken! Surely the King would not give up all for the sake of one woman's love!”
But though he said this to himself, he knew that such things have been; indeed, that they are common enough throughout all history. He had not studied humanity to so little purpose as not to be aware that there are certain phases of the pa.s.sion of love which make havoc of a man's wisest and best intentions; and that even as Marc Antony lost all for Cleopatra's smile, and Harry the Eighth upset a Church for a woman's whim, so in modern days the same old story repeats itself; and no matter how great and famous the position of a king or an emperor, he may yet court and obtain his own ruin and disaster, ay, lose his very Throne for love;--deeming it well lost!
Restless, miserable and troubled by the confusion of his thoughts, which seemed to run wild with the wild wind and the thundering sea, the unhappy Professor retraced his steps to the cottage, hoping against hope that Ronsard, physically unable to cope with the storm, would have returned, baffled in his reckless attempt to put forth a boat to sea.
But the little home was silent and deserted. There was the old man's empty chair;--the clock against the wall ticked the minutes away with a comfortable persistence which was aggravating to the nerves; the fire was still bright. Before entering, Von Glauben looked up and down everywhere outside, but there was no sign of any living creature.
Nothing remained for him to do but to resign himself pa.s.sively to whatsoever calamity the Omnipotent Forces above him chose to inflict,--and utterly weary, baffled and helpless, he sank into Ronsard's vacant chair, unconscious that tears were rolling down his face from the excess of his anxiety and exhaustion. The shrieking of the wind, the occasional glare of the moonlight through the rattling lattice windows, and the apparent rocking of the very rafters above him thrilled him into new and ever recurring sensations of fear--yet he was no coward, and had often prided himself on having 'nerves of steel and sinews of iron.' Presently, he began to see quaint faces and figures in the glowing embers of the fire; old sc.r.a.ps of song and legend haunted him; fragments of Heine, mixed up with long-winded philosophical phrases of Schopenhauer, began to make absurd contradictions and glaring contrasts in his mind, while he listened to the awful noises of the storm; and the steady ticking of the clock on the wall worried him to such an almost childish degree, that had he not thought how often he had seen Gloria winding up that clock and setting it to the right hour, he could almost have torn it down and broken it to pieces. By and by, however, tired Nature had her way, and utterly heavy and worn out in mind and body, and weary of the disturbed and incoherent thoughts in his brain, he lay back and closed his eyes. He would rest a little while, he said to himself, and 'wait.' And so he gradually fell asleep, and in his sleep wrote, so he imagined, a whole eloquent chapter of his 'Political History of Hunger' in which he described Sergius Thord as a despot, who, after proving false to the cause of the People, and grinding them down by unlimited taxation such as no Government had ever before inflicted, seized the rightful king of the country, and sent him away to be drowned in company with a woman of the People, whose body was fastened to his by ropes and iron chains, in the fas.h.i.+on of 'Les Noyades' of Nantes. And he thought that the King rejoiced in his doom, and said strange words like those of the poet who sang of a similar story:
”For never a man like me Shall die like me till the whole world dies, I shall drown with her, laughing for love, and she Mix with me, touching me, lips and eyes!”
Meanwhile, Ronsard, true to the instinct within him, had fulfilled his intention and had put out to sea. The fisherman who had brought the tidings which had moved him to this desperate act, was too much of a hero in himself to let the old man venture forth alone,--and so, following him down to the sh.o.r.e, had, despite all commands and entreaties to the contrary, insisted on going with him. The sailing skiff he owned was a strong boat, stoutly built,--and at first it seemed as if their efforts to ride the mountainous billows would be crowned with success. Old Rene had a true genius for the management of a sail; his watchfulness never flagged:--his strenuous exertions would have done credit to a man less than half his age. With delicate precision he guided the ropes, as a jockey might have guided the reins of a racehorse, and the vessel rose and fell lightly over the great waves, with such ease and rapidity, that the man who accompanied him and took the helm, an experienced sailor himself, began to feel confident that after all the voyage might not be altogether futile.
”The sea may be calmer further out from land!” he shouted to Rene, who nodded a quiet aquiescence, while he kept his eyes earnestly fixed on the horizon, which the occasional brightness of the moon showed up like a line of fretted silver. Everywhere he scanned the waves for a glimpse of the fatal vessel bearing Death--and perhaps Life--on board; but over the whole expanse of the undulating hills and valleys of wild water, there was no speck of a boat to be seen save their own. They swept on and on, the wind aiding them with savage violence--when suddenly the man at the helm shouted excitedly:
”Ronsard! See yonder! There she sails!”
With an exclamation of joy, Ronsard sprang up, and looking, saw within what seemed an apparently short distance, the drifting funeral-barque he sought. So far she seemed intact; her sails were bellying out full to the wind, and she was rising and plunging bravely over the great breakers, which rolled on in interminable array, one over the other,--with rugged foam-crests that sprang like fountains to the sky.
A five or ten minutes' run with the wind would surely bring them alongside,--and Ronsard turned with an eager will to his work once more.
Over the heads of the monstrous waves, rising with their hills, sinking in their valleys, he guided the few yielding planks that were between him and destruction, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the straining sail to the ferocious wind, and ever keeping his eyes fixed on the vessel which was the object of his search,--the sole aim and end of his reckless voyage, and which seemed now to recede, and then to almost disappear, the more earnestly he strove to reach it.
”To save the King!” he muttered--”To save--not to kill! For Gloria's sake!--to save the King!”