Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0062/00624.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 18KB | 347 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00624}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Message From The Sea
Chapter III - Part VI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{brother
captain
christien
room
battisto
night
signor
upon
minutes
young}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Message From The Sea
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter III - Part VI

     Thus the hours went by, and at eleven o'clock he heard the doors closing
below, and the household retiring to rest.  He determined to yield no longer
to this dreaming apathy.  He threw on fresh logs, trimmed the lamp, and took
several turns about the room.  Then he opened the casement, and suffered the
rain to beat against his face, and the wind to ruffle his hair as it ruffled
the acacia leaves in the garden below.  Some minutes passed thus, and when, at
length, he closed the window and came back into the room, his face and hair
and all the front of his shirt were thoroughly saturated.  To unstrap his
knapsack and take out a dry shirt was, of course, his first impulse, - to drop
the garment, listen eagerly, and start to his feet, breathless and bewildered,
was the next.

     For, borne fitfully upon the outer breeze, now sweeping past the window,
now dying in the distance, he heard a well-remembered strain of melody, subtle
and silvery as the "sweet airs" of Prospero's isle, and proceeding
unmistakably from the musical-box which had, the day before, accompanied the
lunch under the fir-trees of the Wengern Alp!

     Had Christien come back, and was it thus that he announced his return?
If so, where was he?  Under the window?  Outside in the corridor? Sheltering
in the porch, and waiting for admittance?  My brother threw open the casement
again, and called him by his name.

     "Christien!  Is that you?"

     All without was intensely silent.  He could hear the last gust of wind
and rain moaning farther and farther away upon its wild course down the
valley, and the pine-trees shivering like living things.

     "Christien!" he said again, and his own voice seemed to echo strangely on
his ear.  "Speak!  Is it you?"

     Still no one answered.  He leaned out into the dark night, but could see
nothing, - not even the outline on the porch below.  He began to think that
his imagination had deceived him, when suddenly the strain burst forth again:
this time apparently in his own chamber.

     As he turned, expecting to find Christien at his elbow, the sounds broke
off abruptly, and a sensation of intensest cold seized him in every limb, -
not the mere chill of nervous terror, not the mere physical result of exposure
to wind and rain, but a deadly freezing of every vein, a paralysis of every
nerve, an appalling consciousness that in a few moments more the lungs must
cease to play, and the heart to beat!  Powerless to speak or stir, he closed
his eyes, and believed that he was dying.

     This strange faintness lasted but a few seconds.  Gradually the vital
warmth returned, and, with it, strength to close the window, and stagger to a
chair.  As he did so, he found the breast of his shirt all stiff and frozen,
and the rain clinging in solid icicles upon his hair.

     He looked at his watch.  It had stopped at twenty minutes before twelve.
He took his thermometer from the chimney-piece, and found the mercury at
sixty-eight.  Heavenly powers!  How were these things possible in a
temperature of sixty-eight degrees, and with a large fire blazing on the
hearth.

     He poured out half a tumbler of cognac, and drank it at a draught. Going
to bed was out of the question.  He felt that he dared not sleep, - that he
scarcely dared to think.  All he could do was to change his linen, pile on
more logs, wrap himself in his blankets, and sit all night in an easy-chair
before the fire.

     My brother had not long sat thus, however, before the warmth, and
probably the nervous reaction, drew him off to sleep.  In the morning, he
found himself lying on the bed, without being able to remember in the least
how or when he reached it.

     It was again a glorious day.  The rain and wind were gone, and the
Silverhorn at the end of the valley lifted its head into an unclouded sky.
Looking out upon the sunshine, he almost doubted the events of the night, and
but for the evidence of his watch, which still pointed to twenty minutes
before twelve, would have been disposed to treat the whole matter as a dream.
As it was, he attributed more than half his terrors to the promptings of an
over-active and over-wearied brain.  For all this, he still felt depressed and
uneasy, and so very unwilling to pass another night at Lauterbrunnen, that he
made up his mind to proceed that morning to Interlaken.  While he was yet
loitering over his breakfast, and considering whether he should walk the seven
miles of road, or hire a vehicle, a char came rapidly up to the inn-door, and
a young man jumped out.

     "Why, Battisto!" exclaimed my brother, in astonishment, as he came into
the room; "what brings you here to-day?  Where is Stefano?"

     "I have left him at Interlaken, signor," replied the Italian.

     Something there was in his voice, something in his face, both strange and
startling.

     "What is the matter?" asked my brother, breathlessly.  "He is not ill?
No accident has happened?"

     Battisto shook his head, glanced furtively up and down the passage, and
closed the door.

     "Stefano is well, signor; but - but a circumstance has occurred - a
circumstance so strange! - Signor, do you believe in spirits?"

     "In spirits, Battisto?"

     "Ay, signor; for if ever the spirit of any man, dead or living, appealed
to human ears, the spirit of Christien came to me last night, at twenty
minutes before twelve o'clock."

     "At twenty minutes before twelve o'clock!" repeated my brother.

     "I was in bed, signor, and Stefano was sleeping in the same room.  I had
gone up quite warm, and had fallen asleep, full of pleasant thoughts. By and
by, although I had plenty of bed-clothes, and a rug over me as well, I woke,
frozen with cold, and scarcely able to breathe.  I tried to call to Stefano,
but I had no power to utter the slightest sound.  I thought my last moment was
come.  All at once I heard a sound under the window, - a sound which I knew to
be Christien's musical-box; and it played as it played when we lunched under
the fir-trees, except that it was more wild and strange and melancholy, and
most solemn to hear, - awful to hear!  Then, signor, it grew fainter and
fainter, - and then it seemed to float past upon the wind and die away.  When
it ceased, my frozen blood grew warm again, and I cried out to Stefano.  When
I told him what happened, he declared I had been only dreaming.  I made him
strike a light, that I might look at my watch.  It pointed to twenty minutes
before twelve, and had stopped there; and - stranger still - Stefano's watch
had done the very same.  Now tell me, signor, do you believe that there is any
meaning in this, or do you think, as Stefano persists in thinking, that it was
all a dream?"

     "What is your own conclusion, Battisto?"

     "My conclusion, signor, is that some harm has happened to poor Christien
on the glacier, and that his spirit came to me last night."

     "Battisto, he shall have help if living, or rescue for his poor corpse if
dead; for I, too, believe that all is not well."

     And with this my brother told him briefly what had occurred to himself in
the night; despatched messengers for the three best guides in Lauterbrunnen;
and prepared ropes, ice-hatchets, alpenstocks, and all such matters necessary
for a glacier expedition.  Hasten as he would, however, it was nearly midday
before the party started.

     Arriving in about half an hour at a place called Stechelberg, they left
the char in which they had travelled so far, at a chalet, and ascended a steep
path in full view of the Briethorn glacier, which rose up to the left like a
battlemented wall of solid ice.  The way now lay for some time among pastures
and pine-forests.  Then they came to a little colony of chalets, called
Steinberg, where they filled their water bottles, got their ropes in
readiness, and prepared for the Tschlingel glacier.  A few minutes more and
they were on the ice.

     At this point the guides called a halt and consulted together.  One was
for striking across the lower glacier toward the left, and reaching the upper
glacier by the rocks which bound it on the south.  The other two preferred the
north, or right side; and this my brother finally took.  The sun was now
pouring down with almost tropical intensity, and the surface of the ice, which
was broken into long, treacherous fissures, smooth as glass and blue as the
summer sky, was both difficult and dangerous. Silently and cautiously they
went, tied together at intervals of about three yards each; with two guides in
front, and the third bringing up the rear.  Turning presently to the right,
they found themselves at the foot of a steep rock, some forty feet in height,
up which they must climb to reach the upper glacier.  The only way in which
Battisto or my brother could hope to do this was by the help of a rope
steadied from below and above.  Two of the guides accordingly clambered up the
face of the crag by notches in the surface and one remained below.  The rope
was then let down, and my brother prepared to go first.  As he planted his
foot in the first notch a smothered cry from Battisto arrested him.

     "Santa Maria!  Signor!  Look yonder!"

     My brother looked, and there (he ever afterward declared), as surely as
there is a heaven above us all, he saw Christien Baumann standing in the full
sunlight not a hundred yards distant!  Almost in the same moment that my
brother recognized him he was gone.  He neither faded, nor sank down, nor
moved away; but was simply gone as if he had never been.  Pale as death,
Battisto fell upon his knees and covered his face with his hands.  My brother,
awe-stricken and speechless, leaned against the rock, and felt that the object
of his journey was but too fatally accomplished. As for the guides, they could
not conceive what had happened.

     "Did you see nothing?" asked my brother and Battisto, both together.

     But the men had seen nothing, and the one who had remained below said,
"What should I see but the ice and the sun?"

     To this my brother made no other reply than by announcing his intention
to have a certain crevasse, from which he had not once removed his eyes since
he saw the figure standing on the brink, thoroughly explored before he went a
step further, whereupon the two men came down from the top of the crag.
resumed the ropes, and followed my brother incredulously.  At the narrow end
of the fissure he paused, and drove his alpenstock firmly into the ice.  It
was an unusually long crevasse, - at first a mere crack, but widening
gradually as it went, and reaching down to unknown depths of dark, deep blue,
fringed with long, pendent icicles like diamond stalactites.  Before they had
followed the course of the crevasse for more than ten minutes the youngest of
the guides uttered a hasty exclamation.

     "I see something!" cried he.  "Something dark, wedged in the teeth of the
crevasse, a great way down!"

     They all saw it, - a mere indistiguishable mass, almost closed over by
the ice-walls at their feet.  My brother offered a hundred francs to the man
who would go down and bring it up.  They all hesitated.

     "We don't know what it is," said one.

     "Perhaps it's only a dead chamois," suggested another.

     Their apathy enraged him.

     "It is no chamois," he said, angrily.  "It is the body of Christien
Baumann, native of Kandersteg.  And, by Heaven, if you are all too cowardly to
make the attempt, I will go down myself!"

     The youngest guide threw off his hat and coat, tied a rope about his
waist, and took a hatchet in his hand.

     "I will go, monsieur," said he, and without another word suffered himself
to be lowered in.  My brother turned away.  A sickening anxiety came upon him,
and presently he heard the dull echo of the hatchet far down in the ice.  Then
there was a call for another rope, and then - the men all drew aside in
silence, and my brother saw the youngest guide standing once more beside the
chasm, flushed and trembling, with the body of Christien lying at his feet.

     Poor Christien!  They made a rough bier with their ropes and alpenstocks,
and carried him, with great difficulty, back to Steinberg. There they got
additional help as far as Stechelberg, where they laid him in the char, and so
brought him on to Lauterbrunnen.  The next day my brother made it his sad
business to precede the body to Kandersteg, and prepare his friends for its
arrival.  To this day, though all these things happened thirty years ago, he
cannot bear to recall Marie's despair, or all the mourning that he innocently
brought upon that peaceful valley. Poor Marie has been dead this many a year;
and when my brother last passed through the Kander Thal on his way to the
Ghemmi, he saw her grave, beside the grave of Christien Baumann, in the
village burial-ground.  This is my brother's Ghost Story.

     The chairman now announced that the clock declared the teetotum spun out,
and that the meeting was dissolved.  Yet even then the young fisherman could
not refrain from once more asking his question.  This occasioned the Gentlemen
King Arthurs, as they got on their hats and great-coats, evidently to regard
him as a young fisherman who was touched in the head, and some of them even
cherished the idea that the captain was his keeper.

     As no man dared to awake the mighty Parvis, it was resolved that a heavy
member of the society should fall against him as it were by accident, and
immediately withdraw to a safe distance.  The experiment was so happily
accomplished that Mr. Parvis started to his feet on the best terms with
himself, as a light sleeper whose wits never left him, and who could always be
broad awake on occasion.  Quite an airy jocundity sat upon this respectable
man in consequence; and he rallied the briskest member of the fraternity on
being "a sleepyhead," with an amount of humour previously supposed to be quite
incompatible with his responsible circumstances in life.

     Gradually the society departed into the cold night, and the captain and
his young companion were left alone.  The captain had so refreshed himself by
shaking hands with everybody to an amazing extent that he was in no hurry to
go to bed.

     "To-morrow morning," said the captain, "we must find out the lawyer and
the clergyman here; they are the people to consult on our business. And I'll
be up and out early, and asking questions of everybody I see; thereby
propagating at least one of the Institutions of my native country."

     As the captain was slapping his leg the landlord appeared with two small
candlesticks.

     "Your room," said he, "is at the top of the house.  An excellent bed, but
you'll hear the wind."

     "I've heard it afore," replied the captain.  "Come and make a passage
with me, and you shall hear it."

     "It's considered to blow here," said the landlord.

     "Weather gets its young strength here," replied the captain; "goes into
training for the Atlantic Ocean.  Yours are little winds just beginning to
feel their way and crawl.  Make a voyage with me, and I'll show you a grown-up
one out on business.  But you haven't told my friend where he lies."

     "It's the room at the head of the stairs, before you take the second
staircase through the wall," returned the landlord.  "You can't mistake it, -
it's a double-bedded room, - because there's no other."

     "The room where the seafaring man is!" said the captain.

     "The room where the seafaring man is."

     "I hope he mayn't finish telling his story in his sleep," remarked the
captain.  "Shall I turn into the room where the seafaring man is, Alfred?"

     "No, Captain Jorgan, why should you?  There would be little fear of his
waking me, even if he told his whole story out."

     "He's in the bed nearest the door," said the landlord.  "I've been in to
look at him once, and he's sound enough.  Good-night, gentlemen."

     The captain immediately shook hands with the landlord in quite an
enthusiastic manner, and having performed that national ceremony as if he had
had no opportunity of performing it for a long time, accompanied his young
friend upstairs.

     "Something tells me," said the captain as they went, "that Miss Kitty
Tregarthen's marriage ain't put off for long, and what we shall light on what
we want."

     "I hope so.  When, do you think?"

     "Wa'al, I couldn't say just when, but soon.  Here's your room," said the
captain, softly opening the door and looking in; "and here's the berth of the
seafaring man.  I wonder what like he is.  He breathes deep, don't he?"

     "Sleeping like a child, to judge from the sound," said the young
fisherman.

     "Dreaming of home, maybe," returned the captain.  "Can't see him. Sleeps
a deal more wholesomely than Arson Parvis, but a'most as sound; don't he?
Good night, fellow-traveller."

     "Good-night, Captain Jorgan, and many many thanks!"

     "I'll wait till I 'arn 'em, boy, afore I take 'em," returned the captain,
clapping him cheerfully on the back.  "Pleasant dreams of - you know who!"

     When the young fisherman had closed the door, the captain waited a moment
or two, listening for any stir on the part of the unknown seafaring man.  But
none being audible, the captain pursued the way to his own chamber.