The Eye of Dread
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“It doesn’t make any difference what you do, you are always beautiful.”
“Ah, Mr. ’Arry, you must say those compliments only in the French. It is no language, the English, for those fine eloquences.”
“No, I don’t seem to be able to say anything I mean, in French. It’s always a sort of make-believe talk with me. Our whole life here seems a sort of dream,–as if we were living in some wonderful bubble that will suddenly burst one day, and leave us floating alone in space, with nothing anywhere to rest on.”
“No, no, you are mistake. Here is this floor, very real, and dirt on it to be washed away,–from your boots, also very real, is not? Go away, Mr. ’Arry, but come to-night in your fine clothing, for we have our fête. Mamma has finish her beautiful new dress, and we will be gay. Is good to be sometimes joyful, is not? We have here no care, only to make happy together, and if we cannot do that, all is somber.”
And that evening indeed, Amalia had her “fête.” Larry told his best stories, and Harry was persuaded to tell them a little of his life as a soldier, and to sing a camp song. More than this he would not do, but he brought out something he had been reserving with pride, a few little nuggets of gold. During the weeks he had worked he had found little, until the last few days, but happening to strike a vein of ore, richer than any Larry had ever found, the two men were greatly elated, and had determined to interest the women by melting some of it out of the quartz in which it was bedded, and turning out for each a golden bullet in Larry’s mold.
They heaped hard wood in the fireplace and the cabin was lighted most gloriously. While they waited for the red coals to melt the gold, Amalia took her violin and played and sang. It was nearly time for the rigor of the winter to abate, but still a high wind was blowing, and the fine snow was piling and drifting about the cabin, and even sifting through the chinks around the window and door, but the storm only made the brightness and warmth within more delightful.
When Larry drew his crucible from the coals and poured the tiny glowing stream into his molds, Amalia cried out with joy. “How that is beautiful! How wonderful to dig such beauty from the dark ground down in the black earth! Ah, mamma, look!”
Then Larry pounded each one flat like a coin, and drilled through a small hole, making thus, for each, a souvenir of the shining metal. “This is from Harry’s first mining,” he said, “and it represents good, hard labor. He’s picked out a lot of worthless dirt and stone to find this.”
Amalia held the little disk in her hand and smiled upon it. “I love so this little precious thing. Now, Mr. ’Arry, what shall I play for you? It is yours to ask–for me, to play; it is all I have.”
“That sonnet you played me yesterday. The last line is, ‘“Quelle est donc cette femme?” et ne comprenda pas.’”
“The music of that is not my father’s best–but you ask it, yes.” Then she began, first playing after her own heart little dancing airs, gay and fantastic, and at last slid into a plaintive strain, and recited the accompaniment of rhythmic words.
“Mon âme a son secret, ma vie a son mystère:Un amour eternel en un moment concu.Le mal est sans espoir, aussi j’ai du le taireEt celle qui l’a fait n’en a jamais rien su.”One minor note came and went and came again, through the melody, until the last tones fell on that note and were held suspended in a tremulous plaint.
“Elle dira, lisant ces vers tout remplis d’elle:‘Quelle est donc cette femme?’ et ne comprendra pas.”Without pause she passed into a quick staccato and then descended to long-drawn tones, deep and full. “This is better, but I have never played it for you because that it is Polish, and to make it in English and so sing it is hard. You have heard of our great and good general Kosciuszko, yes? My father loved well to speak of him and also of one very high officer under him,–I speak his name for you, Julian Niemcewicz. This high officer, I do not know how to say in English his rank, but that is no matter. He was writer, and poet, and soldier–all. At last he was exiled and sorrowful, like my father,–sorrowful most of all because he might no more serve his country. It is to this poet’s own words which he wrote for his grave that my father have put in music the cry of his sorrow. In Polish is it more beautiful, but I sing it for you in English for your comprehending.”
“O, ye exiles, who so long wander over the world,Where will ye find a resting place for your weary steps?The wild dove has its nest, and the worm a clod of earth,Each man a country, but the Pole a grave!”It was indeed a cry of sorrow, the wail of a dying nation, and as Amalia played and sang she became oblivious of all else a being inspired by lofty emotion, while the two men sat in silence, wondering and fascinated. The mother’s eyes glowed upon her out of the obscurity of her corner, and her voice alone broke the silence.
“I have heard my Paul in the night of the desert where he made that music, I have heard him so play and sing it, that it would seem the stars must fall down out of the heavens with sorrow for it.”
Amalia smiled and caught up her violin again. “We will have no more of this sad music this night. I will sing the wild song of the Ukraine, most beautiful of all our country, alas, ours no more–Like that other, the music is my father’s, but the poem is written by a son of the Ukraine–Zaliski.”
A melody clear and sweet dominated, mounting to a note of triumph. Slender and tall she stood in the middle of the room. The firelight played on the folds of her gown, bringing out its color in brilliant flashes. She seemed to Harry, with her rich complexion and glowing eyes, absorbed thus in her music, a type of human splendor, vigorous, vivid, adorable. Mostly in Polish, but sometimes in English, she again half sang, half chanted, now playing with the voice, and again dropping to accompaniment only, while they listened, the mother in the shadows, Larry gazing in the fire, and Harry upon her.
“Me also has my mother, the Ukraine,Me her sonCradled on her bosom,The enchantress.”She ceased, and with a sigh dropped at her mother’s feet and rested her head on her mother’s knee.
“Tell us now, mamma, a poem. It is time we finish now our fête with one good, long poem from you.”
“You will understand me?” Madam Manovska turned to Harry. “You do well understand what once you have heard–” She always spoke slowly and with difficulty when she undertook English, and now she continued speaking rapidly to Amalia in her own tongue, and her daughter explained.
“Mamma says she will tell you a poem composed by a great poet, French, who is now, for patriotism to his country, in exile. His name is Victor Hugo. You have surely heard of him? Yes. She says she will repeat this which she have by head, and because that it is not familiar to you she asks will I tell it in English–if you so desire?”
Again Madam Manovska addressed her daughter, and Amalia said: “She thinks this high mountain and the plain below, and that we are exile from our own land, makes her think of this; only that the conscience has never for her brought terror, like for Cain, but only to those who have so long persecuted my father with imprisonment, and drive him so far to terrible places. She thinks they must always, with never stopping, see the ‘Eye’ that regards forever. This also must Victor Hugo know well, since for his country he also is driven in exile–and can see the terrible ‘Eye’ go to punish his enemies.”
Then Madam Manovska began repeating in her strong, deep tones the lines:–
“Lorsque avec ses enfants vetus de peaux de bêtes,Echevele, livide au milieu des tempètes,Cain se fut enfui de devant Jehovah,“Comme le soir tombait, l’homme sombre arrivaAu bas d’une montagne en une grande plaine;Sa femme fatiguée et ses fils hors d’haleine;Lui dire: ‘Couchons-nous sur la terre et dormons.’”“Oh, mamma, that is so sad, that poem,–but continue–I will make it in English so well as I can, and for the mistakes–errors–of my telling you will forgive?
“This is the story of the terrible man, Cain, how he go with his children all in the skins of animals dressed. His hairs so wild, his face pale,–he runs in the midst of the storms to hide himself from God,–and, at last, in the night to the foot of a mountain on a great plain he arrive, and his wife and sons, with no breath and very tired, say to him, let us here on the earth lie down and sleep.” Thus, as Madam Manovska recited, Amalia told the story in her own words, and Harry King listened rapt and tense to the very end, while the fire burned low and the shadows closed around them.
“But Cain did not sleep, lying there by the mountain, for he saw always in the far shadows the fearful Eye of the condemning power fixed with great sorrow upon him. Then he cried, ‘I am too near!’ and with trembling he awoke his children and his wife, and began to run furiously into space. So for thirty days and thirty nights he walked, always pale and silent, trembling, and never to see behind him, without rest or sleeping, until they came to the shore of a far country, named Assur.
“‘Now rest we here, for we are come to the end of the world and are safe,’ but, as he seated himself and looked, there in the same place on the far horizon he saw, in the sorrowful heavens, the Eye. Then Cain called on the darkness to hide him, and Jabal, his son, parent of those who live in tents, extended about him on that side the cloth of his tent, and Tsilla, the little daughter of his son, asked him, ‘You see now nothing?’ and Cain replied, ‘I see the Eye, encore!’
“Then Jubal, his son, father of those who live in towns and blow upon clarions and strike upon tambours, cried, ‘I will make one barrier, I will make one wall of bronze and put Cain behind it.’ But even still, Cain said, ‘The Eye regards me always!’
“Then Henoch said: ‘I will make a place of towers so terrible that no one dare approach to him. Build we a city of citadels. Build we a city and there fasten–shut–close.’
“Then Tubal Cain, father of men who make of iron, constructed one city–enormous–superhuman; and while that he labored, his brothers in the plain drove far away the sons of Enos and the children of Seth, and put out the eyes of all who passed that way, and the night came when the walls of covering of tents were not, and in their place were walls of granite, every block immense, fastened with great nails of iron, and the city seemed a city of iron, and the shadow of its towers made night upon the plain, and about the city were walls more high than mountains, and when all was done, they graved upon the door, ‘Defense a Dieu d’entrer,’ and they put the old father Cain in a tower of stone in the midst of this city, and he sat there somber and haggard.
“‘Oh, my father, the Eye has now disappeared?’ asked the child, Tsilla, and Cain replied: ‘No, it is always there! I will go and live under the earth, as in his sepulcher, a man alone. There nothing can see me more, and I no more can see anything.’
“Then made they for him one–cavern. And Cain said, ‘This is well,’ and he descended alone under this somber vault and sat upon a seat in the shadows, and when they had shut down the door of the cave, the Eye was there in the tombs regarding him.”
Thus, seated at her mother’s feet, Amalia rendered the poem as her mother recited, while the firelight played over her face and flashed in the silken folds of her dress. When she had finished, the fire was low and the cabin almost in darkness. No one spoke. Larry still gazed in the dying embers, and Harry still sat with his eyes fixed on Amalia’s face.
“Victor Hugo, he is a very great man, as my ’usband have say,” said the mother at last.
“Ah, mamma. For Cain,–maybe,–yes, the Eye never closed, but now have man hope or why was the Christ and the Holy Virgin? It is the forgiving of God they bring–for–for love of the poor human,–and who is sorrowful for his wrong–he is forgive with peace in his heart, is not?”
CHAPTER XXV
HARRY KING LEAVES THE MOUNTAIN
When the two men bade Amalia and her mother good night and took their way to the fodder shed, the snow was whirling and drifting around the cabin, and the pathway was obliterated.
“This’ll be the last storm of the year, I’m thinking,” said Larry. But the younger man strode on without making a reply. He bent forward, leaning against the wind, and in silence trod a path for his friend through the drifted heaps. At the door of the shed he stood back to let Larry pass.
“I’ll not go in yet. I’ll tramp about in the snow a bit until–Don’t sit up for me–” He turned swiftly away into the night, but Larry caught him by the arm and brought him back.
“Come in with me, lad; I’m lonely. We’ll smoke together, then we’ll sleep well enough.”
Then Harry went in and built up the fire, throwing on logs until the shed was flooded with light and the bare rock wall seemed to leap forward in the brilliance, but he did not smoke; he paced restlessly about and at last crept into his bunk and lay with his face to the wall. Larry sat long before the fire. “It’s the music that’s got in my blood,” he said. “Katherine could sing and lilt the Scotch airs like a bird. She had a touch for the instrument, too.”
But Harry could not respond to his friend’s attempted confidence in the rare mention of his wife’s name. He lay staring at the rough stone wall close to his face, and it seemed to him that his future was bounded by a barrier as implacable and terrible as that. All through the night he heard the deep tones of Madam Manovska’s voice, and the visions of the poem passed through his mind. He saw the strange old man, the murderer, Cain, seated in the tomb, bowed and remorseful, and in the darkness still the Eye. But side by side with this somber vision he saw the interior of the cabin, and Amalia, glowing and warm and splendid in her rich gown, with the red firelight playing over her, leaning toward him, her wonderful eyes fixed on his with a regard at once inscrutable and sympathetic. It was as if she were looking into his heart, but did not wish him to know that she saw so deeply.
Towards morning the snow clouds were swept from the sky, and a late moon shone out clear and cold upon a world carved crisply out of molten silver. Unable longer to bear that waking torture, Harry King rose and went out into the night, leaving his friend quietly sleeping. He stood a moment listening to Larry’s long, calm breathing; then buttoning his coat warmly across his chest, he closed the shed door softly behind him and floundered off into the drifts, without heeding the direction he was taking, until he found himself on the brink of the chasm where the river, sliding smoothly over the rocks high above his head, was forever tumbling.
There he stood, trembling, but not with cold, nor with cowardice, nor with fatigue. Sanity had come upon him. He would do no untoward act to hurt the three people who would grieve for him. He would bear the hurt of forever loving in silence, and continue to wait for the open road that would lead him to prison and disgrace, or maybe a death of shame. He considered, as often before, all the arguments that continually fretted him and tore his spirit; and, as before, he knew the only course to follow was the hard one which took him back to Amalia, until spring and the melting of the snows released him–to live near her, to see her and hear her voice, even touch her hand, and feel his body grow tense and hard, suffering restraint. If only for one moment he might let himself go! If but once again he might touch her lips with his! Ah, God! If he might say one word of love–only once before leaving her forever!
Standing there looking out upon the world beneath him and above him bathed in the immaculate whiteness of the snow, and the moonlight over all, he perceived how small an atom in the universe is one lone man, yet how overwhelmingly great in his power to love. It seemed to him that his love overtopped the hills and swept to the very throne of God. He was exalted by it, and in this exaltation it was that he trembled. Would it lift him up to triumph over remorse and death?
He turned and plodded back the inevitable way. It was still night–cold and silver-white. He was filled with energy born of great renunciation and despair, and could only calm himself by work. If he could only work until he dropped, or fight with the elements, it would help him. He began clearing the snow from the ground around the cabin and cut the path through to the shed; then he quietly entered and found Larry still calmly sleeping as if but a moment had passed. Finally, he secured one of the torches and made his way through the tunnel to the place where Larry and he had found the quartz which they had smelted in the evening.
There he fastened the torch securely in a crevice, and began to swing his pick and batter recklessly at the overhanging ledge. Never had he worked so furiously, and the earth and stone lay all about him and heaped at his feet. Deeper and deeper he fought and cut into the solid wall, until, grimed with sweat and dirt, he sank exhausted upon the pile of quartz he had loosened. Then he shoveled it to one side and began again dealing erratic blows with his spent strength, until the ledge hung dangerously over him. As it was, he reeled and swayed and struck again, and staggered back to gather strength for another blow, leaning on his pick, and this saved him from death; for, during the instant’s pause, the whole mass fell crashing in front of him, and he went down with it, stunned and bleeding, but not crushed.
Larry Kildene breakfasted and worked about the cabin and the shed half the day before he began to wonder at the young man’s absence. He fell to grumbling that Harry had not fed and groomed his horse, and did the work himself. Noon came, and Amalia looked in his face anxiously as he entered and Harry not with him.
“How is it that Mr. ’Arry have not arrive all this day?”
“Oh, he’s mooning somewhere. Off on a tramp I suppose.”
“Has he then his gun? No?”
“No, but he’s been about. He cleared away all the snow, and I saw he had been over to the fall.” Amalia turned pale as the shrewd old man’s eyes rested on her. “He came back early, though, for I saw footprints both ways.”
“I hope he comes soon, for we have the good soup to-day, of the kind Mr. ’Arry so well likes.”
But he did not come soon, and it was with much misgiving that Larry set out to search for him. Finding no trails leading anywhere except the twice trodden one to the fall, he naturally turned into the mine and followed along the path, torch in hand, hallooing jovially as he went, but his voice only returned to him, reverberating hollowly. Then, remembering the ledge where they had last worked, and how he had meant to put in props before cutting away any more, he ran forward, certain of calamity, and found his young friend lying where he had fallen, the blood still oozing from a cut above the temple, where it had clotted.
For a moment Larry stood aghast, thinking him dead, but quickly seeing the fresh blood, he lifted the limp body and bound up the wound, and then Harry opened his eyes and smiled in Larry’s face. The big man in his joy could do nothing but storm and scold.
“Didn’t I tell ye to do no more here until we’d the props in? I’m thinking you’re a fool, and that’s what you are. If I didn’t tell ye we needed them here, you could have seen it for yourself–and here you’ve cut away all underneath. What did you do it for? I say!” Tenderly he gathered Harry in his arms and lifted him from the débris and loosened rock. “Now! Are you hurt anywhere else? Don’t try to stand. Bear on me. I say, bear on me.”
“Oh, put me down and let me walk. I’m not hurt. Just a cut. How long have you been here?”
“Walk! I say! Yes, walk! Put your arm here, across my shoulder, so. You can walk as well as a week-old baby. You’ve lost blood enough to kill a man.” So Larry carried him in spite of himself, and laid him in his bunk. There he stood, panting, and looking down on him. “You’re heavier by a few pounds than when I toted you down that trail last fall.”
“This is all foolishness. I could have made it myself–on foot,” said Harry, ungratefully, but he smiled up in the older man’s face a compensating smile.
“Oh, yes. You can lie there and grin now. And you’ll continue to lie there until I let you up. It’s no more lessons with Amalia and no more violin and poetry for you, for one while, young man.”
“Thank God. It will help me over the time until the trail is open.” Larry stood staring foolishly on the drawn face and quivering, sensitive lips.
“You’re hungry, that’s what you are,” he said conclusively.
“Guess I am. I’m wretchedly sorry to make you all this trouble, but–she mustn’t come in here–you’ll bring me a bite to eat–yes, I’m hungry. That’s what ails me.” He drew a grimy hand across his eyes and felt the bandage. “Why–you’ve done me up! I must have had quite a cut.”
“I’ll wash your face and get your coat off, and your boots, and make you fit to look at, and then–”
“I don’t want to see her–or her mother–either. I’m just–I’m a bit faint–I’ll eat if–you’ll fetch me a bite.”
Quickly Larry removed his outer clothing and mended the fire and then left him carefully wrapped in blankets and settled in his bunk. When he returned, he found him light-headed and moaning and talking incoherently. Only a few words could he understand, and these remained in his memory.
“When I’m dead–when I’m dead, I say.” And then, “Not yet. I can’t tell him yet.–I can’t tell him the truth. It’s too cruel.” And again the refrain: “When I’m dead–when I’m dead.” But when Larry bent over him and spoke, Harry looked sanely in his eyes and smiled again.
“Ah, that’s good,” he said, sipping the soup. “I’ll be myself again to-morrow, and save you all this trouble. You know I must have accomplished a good deal, to break off that ledge, and the gold fairly leaped out on me as I worked.”
“Did you see it?”
“No, but I knew it–I felt it. Shake my clothes and see if they aren’t full of it.”
“Was that what put you in such a frenzy and made a fool of you?”
“Yes–no–no. It–it–wasn’t that.”
“You know you were a fool, don’t you?”
“If telling me of it makes me know it–yes.”
“Eat a little more. Here are beans and venison. You must eat to make up the loss. Why, man, I found you in a pool of blood.”
“Oh, I’ll make it up. I’ll make it up all too soon. I’m not to die so easily.”
“You’ll not make it up as soon as you think, young man. You may lose a quart of blood in a minute, but it takes weeks to get it again,” and Harry King found his friend was right.
That was the last snow of winter, as Larry had predicted, and when Harry crawled out in the sun, the earth smelled of spring, and the waterfall thundered in its downward plunge, augmented by the melting snows of the still higher mountains. The noise of it was ever in their ears, and the sound seemed fraught with a buoyant impulse and inspiration–the whirl and rush of a tremendous force, giving a sense of superhuman power. Even after he was really able to walk about and help himself, Harry would not allow himself to see Amalia. He forbade Larry to tell them how much he was improved, and still taxed his friend to bring him up his meals, and sit by him, telling him the tales of his life.
“I’ll wait on you here no longer, boy,” said Larry, at last. “What in life are you hiding in this shed for? The women think it strange of you–the mother does, anyway,–you may never quite know what her daughter thinks unless she wishes you to know, but I’m sure she thinks strange of you. She ought to.”
“I know. I’m perfectly well and strong. The trail’s open now, and I’ll go–I’ll go back–where I came from. You’ve been good to me–I can’t say any more–now.”
“Smoke a pipe, lad, smoke a pipe.”
Harry took a pipe and laughed. “You’re better than any pipe, but I’ll smoke it, and I’ll go down, yes, I must, and bid them good-by.”
“And will you have nothing to tell me, lad, before you go?”
“Not yet. After I’ve made my peace with the world–with the law–I’ll have a letter sent you–telling all I know. You’ll forgive me. You see, when I look back–I wish to see your face–as I see it now–not–not changed towards me.”
“My face is not one to change toward you–you who have repented whatever you’ve done that’s wrong.”
That evening Harry King went down to the cabin and sat with his three friends and ate with them, and told them he was to depart on the morrow. They chatted and laughed and put restraint away from them, and all walked together to watch the sunset from a crag above the cabin. As they returned Madam Manovska walked at Harry’s side, and as she bade him good night she said in her broken English:–