Chapter XIX The Borderland of Life

Again I felt myself striving to grasp at something—nothing tangible now, but a long series of exhausting, infinitely confused dreams. My brain strove desperately to retain them, but the more it strove the more they slipped back into the darkness of the further side of memory; and, with one mighty effort to hold on to the last of the vanishing train, I opened my eyes, oppressed with a sense of significant things forgotten.

My eyes opened, I say; and they stared widely at a patch of sky, of an untellable blue, sparkling gem-like, and set very far off as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. As I stared, the sense of oppression slipped from me. I sat up; but the patch of sky reeled, and I lay back again, whereupon it recovered its adorable stability. I felt tired, but content. It was good to lie there, and watch that enchanted sky, and rest from thought and dreams.

After a while, however, I turned my head, and 136noted that I was in a deep, low-vaulted, tunnel-shaped cave—or rather bottle-shaped, for it was enlarged about the place where I lay. I noted that I lay on furs, on a low, couch-like ledge; and I noted, too, that there was a wind outside, for at intervals a branch was bowed across the cave-mouth and withdrawn. Then I perceived that a little jar of water and a broken cake of barley meal stood just within reach; and straightway I was aware of a most interested appetite. I sat up again and began to eat and drink. The patch of sky reeled, danced, blurred, darkened,—and again grew clear and steady. I finished the barley bread, finished the little jar of water, and sat communing lucidly with my right mind.

It was manifest that I had been saved that night of my fall over the cliff (by Anderson?—I prayed not); that I had been desperately ill—for the hands and arms upon which I looked down with sarcastic pity were emaciated; that I had been tenderly cared for—for the couch was soft, the cave well kept, and a rude screen stood at one side to shield me when the winds came into the cave-mouth. I raised my hands to my head. It was bandaged; and at one side my hair had been much cut away. But my hair—how long the rest of it was! And then came a stroke of wonder—my once smooth chin was deeply bearded! How long, how long must I 137have rested here, to grow so patriarchal an adornment!

Stung to a fierce restlessness, and with a sinking at my heart, I rose, tottered to the cave-mouth, and looked out.

The world I had last seen was a green world on the threshold of June. The world I looked on now was a world of fading scarlets, the last fires of autumn fast dying from the ragged leafage.

Below, beyond trees and a field, was outspread the wide water of Minas, roughened to a cold and angry indigo under the wind. To the left, purple-dim and haze-wrapped, sat Blomidon. Grand Pré must be around to the left. Then the cave was in the face of the Piziquid bluff. So near to friends, yet hidden in a cave! What had happened the while I lay as dead? I tottered back to the couch, and fell on my back, and thought. My apprehensions were like a mountain of lead upon the pit of my stomach, and I laboured for my breath.

First I thought of Nicole as having saved me—Anderson I knew would have done his best, but was helpless among an unfriendly people, and well occupied to keep his own scalp. Yet Nicole would have taken me to Father Fafard! And surely there were houses in Grand Pré where the son of my father would have been nursed, and not driven to hide in a hole—till his beard grew! And surely, after all that had happened, Yvonne would 138no longer count me a traitor, Monsieur and Madame would make amends for this dreadful misjudgment! And surely—but if so, where were all these friends?

Or what had befallen Grand Pré?

“If evil has befallen them (I did not say Yvonne) I want to die! I will go out, and fight, and die at once!” I cried, springing to my feet.

But I was still very weak, and my passion had yet further weakened me, so that I fell to the floor beside the couch; and in falling I knocked over the little jar and broke it. Even then I was conscious of a regret for the little jar; I realized that I was thirsty; and though I wanted to die, I wanted a drink of water first.

This inconsequent mood soon passed, and I crawled back on to the couch, the conviction well hammered into my brain that I was not yet fit to die with credit. And now, having found me no comfort in reason, and having faced the fact that there was nothing I could do but wait, I began to muse more temperately, and to cast about, as one will when weak, for omens and auguries. They kill time, and I hold them harmless.

But a truce to cant. Who am I that I should dare to say I laugh at or deny them? I may laugh at myself for a credulous fool. And I have no doubt whatever that most omens are sheer rubbish, more vain than a floating feather. But 139again there are things of that kindred that have convinced me, and have blessed me; and I dare not be irreverent to the mock mysteries, lest I be guilty of blaspheming those which are true. We know not—that is the most we know.

I will not agree, then, that I was a subject for laughter if, lying there alone, sick, tormented, loving without hope, fast bound in ignorance of events most vital to my love, I let my mind recall the curious prophesyings of old Mother Pêche. Of Yvonne directly I dared not suffer myself to think, lest my heart should break or stop.

When fate denies occasion to play the hero, it is often well, while waiting, to play the child. I lay quiet, looked at the patch of sky, and occupied myself with Mother Pêche’s soothsayings.

Your heart’s desire is near your death of hope.

At first there was comfort in this, and I took it very seriously, for the sake of the argument. But oh, these oracles, astute from the days of Delphi and Dodona! Already I could perceive that my hope was not quite dead. A thousand chances came hinting about the windows of my thought. Why might not Yvonne be safe, well,—free? The odds were that things had gone ill in my absence, but there was still the chance they might have instead gone well. Here and now, plainly, was not my death of hope, wherefore my heart’s desire could not be near. I turned aside the 140saying in angry contempt, and fell to feeling my ribs, my shrunk chest, my skinny arms, wondering how long before I could well wield sword again.

In this far from reassuring occupation I came upon the little leather pouch which Mother Pêche had hung about my neck. With eagerness I drew out the mystic stone and held it up before my face. The eye waned and dilated in the dim light, as if a living spirit lurked behind it.

“Le Veilleur,” I said to myself. “The Watcher. Little strange is it if simple souls ascribe to you sorcery and power.”

Then I remembered the snatch of doggerel which the old dame had muttered over it as she gave it to me. While this you wear what most you fear will never come to pass.

Curious it seemed to me that it should have stuck in my mind, though so little heeded at the time. What most you fear. What was it most I feared? Surely, that Yvonne should go to another. Then that, at least, should not befall while I lived, if there were force in witchcraft; for I would wear the “Watcher” till I died.

But here again my delusive little satisfaction had but a breath long to live. For indeed what most I feared was something, alas! quite different. What most I feared was calamity, evil, anguish, for Yvonne. Then, clearly, if her happiness 141required her to be the wife of George Anderson, I could not hinder it. Could not? Nay, “would not!” I cried aloud; and thereupon, no longer able to drug myself with auguries, and no longer able to be dumb under the misery of my own soul, I sprang upright, strained my arms above my head, and prayed a selfish prayer:

“God, give her joy, but through me, through me!” Then I flung myself down again, and set my teeth, and turned my face to the wall. Thus I lay as one dead; and so it fell that when the door of the cave was darkened, and steps came to my bed, I did not look up.