Chapter XXI
'On thy cold grey stones, O sea!'
Stephen had said that he should come by way of Bristol, and thence
by a steamer to Castle Boterel, in order to avoid the long journey
over the hills from St. Launce's. He did not know of the
extension of the railway to Camelton.
During the afternoon a thought occurred to Elfride, that from any
cliff along the shore it would be possible to see the steamer some
hours before its arrival.
She had accumulated religious force enough to do an act of
supererogation. The act was this--to go to some point of land and
watch for the ship that brought her future husband home.
It was a cloudy afternoon. Elfride was often diverted from a
purpose by a dull sky; and though she used to persuade herself
that the weather was as fine as possible on the other side of the
clouds, she could not bring about any practical result from this
fancy. Now, her mood was such that the humid sky harmonized with
it.
Having ascended and passed over a hill behind the house, Elfride
came to a small stream. She used it as a guide to the coast. It
was smaller than that in her own valley, and flowed altogether at
a higher level. Bushes lined the slopes of its shallow trough;
but at the bottom, where the water ran, was a soft green carpet,
in a strip two or three yards wide.
In winter, the water flowed over the grass; in summer, as now, it
trickled along a channel in the midst.
Elfride had a sensation of eyes regarding her from somewhere. She
turned, and there was Mr. Knight. He had dropped into the valley
from the side of the hill. She felt a thrill of pleasure, and
rebelliously allowed it to exist.
'What utter loneliness to find you in!'
'I am going to the shore by tracking the stream. I believe it
empties itself not far off, in a silver thread of water, over a
cascade of great height.'
'Why do you load yourself with that heavy telescope?'
'To look over the sea with it,' she said faintly.
'I'll carry it for you to your journey's end.' And he took the
glass from her unresisting hands. 'It cannot be half a mile
further. See, there is the water.' He pointed to a short fragment
of level muddy-gray colour, cutting against the sky.
Elfride had already scanned the small surface of ocean visible,
and had seen no ship.
They walked along in company, sometimes with the brook between
them--for it was no wider than a man's stride--sometimes close
together. The green carpet grew swampy, and they kept higher up.
One of the two ridges between which they walked dwindled lower and
became insignificant. That on the right hand rose with their
advance, and terminated in a clearly defined edge against the
light, as if it were abruptly sawn off. A little further, and the
bed of the rivulet ended in the same fashion.
They had come to a bank breast-high, and over it the valley was no
longer to be seen. It was withdrawn cleanly and completely. In
its place was sky and boundless atmosphere; and perpendicularly
down beneath them--small and far off--lay the corrugated surface
of the Atlantic.
The small stream here found its death. Running over the precipice
it was dispersed in spray before it was half-way down, and falling
like rain upon projecting ledges, made minute grassy meadows of
them. At the bottom the water-drops soaked away amid the debris
of the cliff. This was the inglorious end of the river.
'What are you looking for? said Knight, following the direction of
her eyes.
She was gazing hard at a black object--nearer to the shore than to
the horizon--from the summit of which came a nebulous haze,
stretching like gauze over the sea.
'The Puffin, a little summer steamboat--from Bristol to Castle
Boterel,' she said. 'I think that is it--look. Will you give me
the glass?'
Knight pulled open the old-fashioned but powerful telescope, and
handed it to Elfride, who had looked on with heavy eyes.
'I can't keep it up now,' she said.
'Rest it on my shoulder.'
'It is too high.'
'Under my arm.'
'Too low. You may look instead,' she murmured weakly.
Knight raised the glass to his eye, and swept the sea till the
Puffin entered its field.
'Yes, it is the Puffin--a tiny craft. I can see her figure-head
distinctly--a bird with a beak as big as its head.'
'Can you see the deck?'
"Wait a minute; yes, pretty clearly. And I can see the black
forms of the passengers against its white surface. One of them
has taken something from another--a glass, I think--yes, it is--
and he is levelling it in this direction. Depend upon it we are
conspicuous objects against the sky to them. Now, it seems to
rain upon them, and they put on overcoats and open umbrellas.
They vanish and go below--all but that one who has borrowed the
glass. He is a slim young fellow, and still watches us.'
Elfride grew pale, and shifted her little feet uneasily.
Knight lowered the glass.
'I think we had better return,' he said. 'That cloud which is
raining on them may soon reach us. Why, you look ill. How is
that?'
'Something in the air affects my face.'
'Those fair cheeks are very fastidious, I fear,' returned Knight
tenderly. 'This air would make those rosy that were never so
before, one would think--eh, Nature's spoilt child?'
Elfride's colour returned again.
'There is more to see behind us, after all,' said Knight.
She turned her back upon the boat and Stephen Smith, and saw,
towering still higher than themselves, the vertical face of the
hill on the right, which did not project seaward so far as the bed
of the valley, but formed the back of a small cove, and so was
visible like a concave wall, bending round from their position
towards the left.
The composition of the huge hill was revealed to its backbone and
marrow here at its rent extremity. It consisted of a vast
stratification of blackish-gray slate, unvaried in its whole
height by a single change of shade.
It is with cliffs and mountains as with persons; they have what is
called a presence, which is not necessarily proportionate to their
actual bulk. A little cliff will impress you powerfully; a great
one not at all. It depends, as with man, upon the countenance of
the cliff.
'I cannot bear to look at that cliff,' said Elfride. 'It has a
horrid personality, and makes me shudder. We will go.'
'Can you climb?' said Knight. 'If so, we will ascend by that path
over the grim old fellow's brow.'
'Try me,' said Elfride disdainfully. 'I have ascended steeper
slopes than that.'
From where they had been loitering, a grassy path wound along
inside a bank, placed as a safeguard for unwary pedestrians, to
the top of the precipice, and over it along the hill in an inland
direction.
'Take my arm, Miss Swancourt,' said Knight.
'I can get on better without it, thank you.'
When they were one quarter of the way up, Elfride stopped to take
breath. Knight stretched out his hand.
She took it, and they ascended the remaining slope together.
Reaching the very top, they sat down to rest by mutual consent.
'Heavens, what an altitude!' said Knight between his pants, and
looking far over the sea. The cascade at the bottom of the slope
appeared a mere span in height from where they were now.
Elfride was looking to the left. The steamboat was in full view
again, and by reason of the vast surface of sea their higher
position uncovered it seemed almost close to the shore.
'Over that edge,' said Knight, 'where nothing but vacancy appears,
is a moving compact mass. The wind strikes the face of the rock,
runs up it, rises like a fountain to a height far above our heads,
curls over us in an arch, and disperses behind us. In fact, an
inverted cascade is there--as perfect as the Niagara Falls--but
rising instead of falling, and air instead of water. Now look
here.'
Knight threw a stone over the bank, aiming it as if to go onward
over the cliff. Reaching the verge, it towered into the air like
a bird, turned back, and alighted on the ground behind them. They
themselves were in a dead calm.
'A boat crosses Niagara immediately at the foot of the falls,
where the water is quite still, the fallen mass curving under it.
We are in precisely the same position with regard to our
atmospheric cataract here. If you run back from the cliff fifty
yards, you will be in a brisk wind. Now I daresay over the bank
is a little backward current.'
Knight rose and leant over the bank. No sooner was his head above
it than his hat appeared to be sucked from his head--slipping over
his forehead in a seaward direction.
'That's the backward eddy, as I told you,' he cried, and vanished
over the little bank after his hat.
Elfride waited one minute; he did not return. She waited another,
and there was no sign of him.
A few drops of rain fell, then a sudden shower.
She arose, and looked over the bank. On the other side were two
or three yards of level ground--then a short steep preparatory
slope--then the verge of the precipice.
On the slope was Knight, his hat on his head. He was on his hands
and knees, trying to climb back to the level ground. The rain had
wetted the shaly surface of the incline. A slight superficial
wetting of the soil hereabout made it far more slippery to stand
on than the same soil thoroughly drenched. The inner substance
was still hard, and was lubricated by the moistened film.
'I find a difficulty in getting back,' said Knight.
Elfride's heart fell like lead.
'But you can get back?' she wildly inquired.
Knight strove with all his might for two or three minutes, and the
drops of perspiration began to bead his brow.
'No, I am unable to do it,' he answered.
Elfride, by a wrench of thought, forced away from her mind the
sensation that Knight was in bodily danger. But attempt to help
him she must. She ventured upon the treacherous incline, propped
herself with the closed telescope, and gave him her hand before he
saw her movements.
'O Elfride! why did you?' said he. 'I am afraid you have only
endangered yourself.'
And as if to prove his statement, in making an endeavour by her
assistance they both slipped lower, and then he was again stayed.
His foot was propped by a bracket of quartz rock, balanced on the
verge of the precipice. Fixed by this, he steadied her, her head
being about a foot below the beginning of the slope. Elfride had
dropped the glass; it rolled to the edge and vanished over it into
a nether sky.
'Hold tightly to me,' he said.
She flung her arms round his neck with such a firm grasp that
whilst he remained it was impossible for her to fall.
'Don't be flurried,' Knight continued. 'So long as we stay above
this block we are perfectly safe. Wait a moment whilst I consider
what we had better do.'
He turned his eyes to the dizzy depths beneath them, and surveyed
the position of affairs.
Two glances told him a tale with ghastly distinctness. It was
that, unless they performed their feat of getting up the slope
with the precision of machines, they were over the edge and
whirling in mid-air.
For this purpose it was necessary that he should recover the
breath and strength which his previous efforts had cost him. So
he still waited, and looked in the face of the enemy.
The crest of this terrible natural facade passed among the
neighbouring inhabitants as being seven hundred feet above the
water it overhung. It had been proved by actual measurement to be
not a foot less than six hundred and fifty.
That is to say, it is nearly three times the height of
Flamborough, half as high again as the South Foreland, a hundred
feet higher than Beachy Head--the loftiest promontory on the east
or south side of this island--twice the height of St. Aldhelm's,
thrice as high as the Lizard, and just double the height of St.
Bee's. One sea-bord point on the western coast is known to
surpass it in altitude, but only by a few feet. This is Great
Orme's Head, in Caernarvonshire.
And it must be remembered that the cliff exhibits an intensifying
feature which some of those are without--sheer perpendicularity
from the half-tide level.
Yet this remarkable rampart forms no headland: it rather walls in
an inlet--the promontory on each side being much lower. Thus, far
from being salient, its horizontal section is concave. The sea,
rolling direct from the shores of North America, has in fact eaten
a chasm into the middle of a hill, and the giant, embayed and
unobtrusive, stands in the rear of pigmy supporters. Not least
singularly, neither hill, chasm, nor precipice has a name. On
this account I will call the precipice the Cliff without a Name.*
* See Preface
What gave an added terror to its height was its blackness. And
upon this dark face the beating of ten thousand west winds had
formed a kind of bloom, which had a visual effect not unlike that
of a Hambro' grape. Moreover it seemed to float off into the
atmosphere, and inspire terror through the lungs.
'This piece of quartz, supporting my feet, is on the very nose of
the cliff,' said Knight, breaking the silence after his rigid
stoical meditation. 'Now what you are to do is this. Clamber up
my body till your feet are on my shoulders: when you are there you
will, I think, be able to climb on to level ground.'
'What will you do?'
'Wait whilst you run for assistance.'
'I ought to have done that in the first place, ought I not?'
'I was in the act of slipping, and should have reached no stand-
point without your weight, in all probability. But don't let us
talk. Be brave, Elfride, and climb.'
She prepared to ascend, saying, 'This is the moment I anticipated
when on the tower. I thought it would come!'
'This is not a time for superstition,' said Knight. 'Dismiss all
that.'
'I will,' she said humbly.
'Now put your foot into my hand: next the other. That's good--
well done. Hold to my shoulder.'
She placed her feet upon the stirrup he made of his hand, and was
high enough to get a view of the natural surface of the hill over
the bank.
'Can you now climb on to level ground?'
'I am afraid not. I will try.'
'What can you see?'
'The sloping common.'
'What upon it?'
'Purple heather and some grass.'
'Nothing more--no man or human being of any kind?'
'Nobody.'
'Now try to get higher in this way. You see that tuft of sea-pink
above you. Get that well into your hand, but don't trust to it
entirely. Then step upon my shoulder, and I think you will reach
the top.'
With trembling limbs she did exactly as he told her. The
preternatural quiet and solemnity of his manner overspread upon
herself, and gave her a courage not her own. She made a spring
from the top of his shoulder, and was up.
Then she turned to look at him.
By an ill fate, the force downwards of her bound, added to his own
weight, had been too much for the block of quartz upon which his
feet depended. It was, indeed, originally an igneous protrusion
into the enormous masses of black strata, which had since been
worn away from the sides of the alien fragment by centuries of
frost and rain, and now left it without much support.
It moved. Knight seized a tuft of sea-pink with each hand.
The quartz rock which had been his salvation was worse than
useless now. It rolled over, out of sight, and away into the same
nether sky that had engulfed the telescope.
One of the tufts by which he held came out at the root, and Knight
began to follow the quartz. It was a terrible moment. Elfride
uttered a low wild wail of agony, bowed her head, and covered her
face with her hands.
Between the turf-covered slope and the gigantic perpendicular rock
intervened a weather-worn series of jagged edges, forming a face
yet steeper than the former slope. As he slowly slid inch by inch
upon these, Knight made a last desperate dash at the lowest tuft
of vegetation--the last outlying knot of starved herbage ere the
rock appeared in all its bareness. It arrested his further
descent. Knight was now literally suspended by his arms; but the
incline of the brow being what engineers would call about a
quarter in one, it was sufficient to relieve his arms of a portion
of his weight, but was very far from offering an adequately flat
face to support him.
In spite of this dreadful tension of body and mind, Knight found
time for a moment of thankfulness. Elfride was safe.
She lay on her side above him--her fingers clasped. Seeing him
again steady, she jumped upon her feet.
'Now, if I can only save you by running for help!' she cried.
'Oh, I would have died instead! Why did you try so hard to deliver
me?' And she turned away wildly to run for assistance.
'Elfride, how long will it take you to run to Endelstow and back?'
'Three-quarters of an hour.'
'That won't do; my hands will not hold out ten minutes. And is
there nobody nearer?'
'No; unless a chance passer may happen to be.'
'He would have nothing with him that could save me. Is there a
pole or stick of any kind on the common?'
She gazed around. The common was bare of everything but heather
and grass.
A minute--perhaps more time--was passed in mute thought by both.
On a sudden the blank and helpless agony left her face. She
vanished over the bank from his sight.
Knight felt himself in the presence of a personalized lonliness.
