XIX

“No rope!” cried Martial; “then get a chain.”

“Gawd!” said the miller’s man. “A chain. To be zure.”

As if the substitution of a chain for a rope was indeed a wonderful idea. He started again for a chain⁠—this time more quickly; Martial had begun to animate him. These slow and stolid minds, while under the immediate influence of a stronger intelligence, can be forced into activity; but once let that stronger intelligence go far enough away for them to escape its personal influence and they sink back into immovability.

The marvellous intellect of the great Julius Caesar exercised the most extraordinary power over the men with whom he was surrounded, insomuch that nothing was too much for them, no danger too great, no fatigue too prolonged, no rapidity of movement too trying. But when once the sea divided him from part of his forces, those very men fell by degrees into stolid immovability, so that neither orders, threats, nor persuasions could for months induce them to sail to his assistance, though they well understood his danger. It is recorded of him that he had his eyes turned day and night towards the sea; still they delayed to send, so dense already had their stolidity become. So, too, when a great genius who has stirred the world and wakened its dull heart ceases to address it, it speedily falls back into stolidity.

The miller’s man started quickly for the chain; but, out of sight of Martial, his feet resumed their accustomed slowness of motion.

“Wood⁠—throw something of wood⁠—timber!” cried Martial again to the miller, whose red head projected over the fence.

“When was you and she going to be married?” said the miller.

“Wood⁠—rails⁠—posts!” reiterated Martial. “Chain,” said the miller’s man, appearing with a set of chain-traces such as are used on wagons. He let the end of the chain down, Martial grasped it. The miller took hold above behind his man, and they began to haul; but Martial was obliged to let the chain slip through his fingers⁠—his wrist was not strong enough. When he and Mary began to rise out of the water their combined weight was too much for his sinews. In endeavouring to get out of the water, as for instance into a boat, the weight of the body seems suddenly increased.

Martial was not Herculean in proportions or strength; he was sinewy and able to bear fatigue, but not powerful in the manner of a dray-horse. There was nothing gigantic in his muscles.

Already wearied and chilled by the icy well-water, he could not endure so great a strain. They ceased hauling; he held the chain, and it was so far an advantage to him that it supported him; he had not to tread water or paddle.

Once more with some failing at heart, he tried to think. What could he do if in their place? Endeavouring to reverse the actual condition of things, he said to himself, “I am trying to get out: suppose I was trying to get in safely, what should I do? I should put down a ladder.”

“A ladder!” he shouted. “Fetch a ladder!”

“Gawd!” cried the miller’s man, opening his mouth, overcome with amazement that anyone should have so many ideas. “Come, master; takes two with a long ladder.”

The miller turned to go with his man.

“Fasten the chain first,” said Martial.

But their minds were occupied with the new notion of a ladder, and they forgot the chain. It slipped from the fence and immediately sank; had they fastened it Martial could have clung to it. He was obliged to recommence treading water; then, weary of that, he began to swim slowly in a circle.

Chilled so as to have lost feeling in his extremities, his arms were growing stiff, and he felt that his chest did not inflate itself fully, so that he lost the sense of buoyancy proper to a swimmer. The store of force inherent in his frame was slipping from him; the limbs were there and the muscles remained, but the invisible power which moves them oozed away. Round the dark pool he partly dragged, partly supported his burden; it was better to swim on than to try and keep in one spot.

Would they never come with the ladder? Perhaps they would not find one in time. Someone might have called at the mill, and they were stopping to load his cart with sacks of flour before they returned to assist him.

The pool was in deep shadow, being under a hill. Blackness everywhere about him; no gleam or glisten on the surface; the shadow was heavy on the pool.

Would they never come with the ladder? The mill-clack was audible in the well-like cavity of the pool; it beat time⁠—time that was ebbing fast. How slow they were!

The shadow had been idle on the dial in the hour of love; now it shot forward, racing to the edge, slipping from which it would disappear and end with the ending of life.

Suddenly a glow of lovely light poured down into the darksome pit, a delicate rosy brilliance gleaming on the ripples of his progress, tinting the white chalk walls. He looked up and saw overhead a cloud, which by some magic had been filled with the hues of the sunset, and reflected them like a mirror down upon him. Mary’s pale inanimate face, washed by the cold water, seemed to take upon itself the colours of happy childhood⁠—the roseate tint of laughing joyfulness. The sunset was thrown from the sky into the depth of the pit.

His heart awoke again at the sight of it; the old, old love of the beautiful⁠—the strength of the hills filled with the light of the sun⁠—all the strong desire of life and colour and loveliness filled him again with fresh effort.

Felise appeared to his mind in the glow of the rosy cloud. Till that moment, absorbed in the struggle, he had not thought of her. She came to him with the light. A low sound escaped from his lips. He should lose her⁠—if he sank he should lose her; she would not be his.

The greatest gift, the most wonderful and precious given to man; the deep love, the ideal beauty⁠—he should lose it. He had himself purposely kept away from her. Oh, the folly of his scrupulous fancy! His freedom; his poverty; his paltry excuses to himself⁠—the folly, the exceeding folly of it! Felise!⁠—he spoke the name on his lips, yet the word did not issue as sound. If only those moments would return again, but it was too late.

It was unfortunate for him that he had thought of Felise; It weakened him; it affected his heart. His head seemed to become a blank⁠—the pit, the chalk walls, the rosy cloud disappeared; all was blank, as it felt to him, for an illimitable length of time, really the one-hundredth of a second; for that fragmentary moment he had fainted. But his heart beat again, and he saw a ladder descending, as it were, from the rosy glow above.

Felise! he tried to say, as he grasped it; he clung to it; he got his foot on it, and paused and breathed⁠—breathed fully. He began to go up carrying poor Mary; he paused again and breathed. Up again; they hauled him over the fence, and he fell on the grass exhausted.

“Hur’s dead,” said the miller’s man, pushing Mary as she lay, having dropped from Martial’s arms, with his foot. His heavy shoe partly rolled her over; as he withdrew it she rolled back again.

“All auver with hur,” he said.

At this Martial stood up, collecting his energies, and insisted upon one of them going for assistance. Then on the spot he began at once to follow the instructions for resuscitation, which he fortunately remembered. She soon showed signs of life⁠—animation had not been really suspended at all, and they carried her down to the mill.

Naturally what followed was confused; women came, and Mary was put to bed with blankets and brandy, A group stood about the mill-door. Martial, as soon as he was certain Mary was safe, was going, when the women above called for a doctor. A horse was found, and Martial rode in his wet clothes over to Maasbury for medical help. Thence he went home as quick as he could in a hired conveyance, but his dress had dried almost by the time he reached the Manor House.

Towards the morning Mary gave birth to a female child, which appeared healthy and strong, despite its untimely arrival. Mary never saw it. She had been conscious at intervals, and told the doctor and the women something which agitated them; but after the birth she sank, and died in about two hours.