XV
_'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day._
--JOHN WEBSTER.
On the stroke of two next morning the doctor conducted me down to thecreek in the river-bank where he kept his boat. There was little lightbut of the stars in the sky; nothing stirring. She floated dim andmonstrous on the softly-running water, a navy in germ, and could havesat without danger thirty men like me. We stood on the bank, side byside, eyeing her vacancy. And (I can answer for myself) night-thoughtsrose up in us at sight of her. Was it indeed only wind in the reedsthat sighed around us? only the restless water insistently whisperingand calling? only of darkness were these forbidding shadows?
I looked up sharply at the doctor from such pensive embroidery, andfound him as far away as I. He nodded and smiled, and we shook handson the bank in the thick mist.
"There's biscuits and a little meat, wine, and fruit," he said in anundertone. "God be with you, sir! I sadly mistrust the future. ...'Tis ever my way, at parting."
We said good-bye again, to the dream-cry of some little flutteringcreature of the rushes. And well before dawn I was floating midstream,my friend a memory, Rosinante in clover, and my travels, so far asthis brief narrative will tell, nearly ended.
I saw nothing but a few long-haired, grazing cattle on my voyage, thateyed me but cursorily. I passed unmolested among the waterfowl,between the never-silent rushes, beneath a sky refreshed and sweetenedwith storm. The boat was enormously heavy and made slow progress. Whentoo the tide began to flow I must needs push close in to the bank andawait the ebb. But towards evening of the third day I began toapproach the sea.
I listened to the wailing of its long-winged gulls; snuffed with howbroad-nostrilled a gusto that savour not even pinewoods can match,nor any wild flower disguise; and heard at last the sound that stirsbeneath all music--the deep's loud-falling billow.
I pushed ashore, climbed the sandy bank, and moored my boat to an ashtree at the waterside. And after scrambling some little distance overdunes yet warm with the sun, I came out at length, and stood like aGreek before the sea.
Here my bright river disembogued in noise and foam. Far to either sideof me stretched the faint gold horns of a bay; and beyond me, almostviolet in the shadow of its waves, the shipless sea.
I looked on the breaking water with a divided heart. Its light, saltairs, its solitary beauty, its illimitable reaches seemed tidings of aregion I could remember only as one who, remembering that he hasdreamed, remembers nothing more. Larks rose, singing, behind me. In acalm, golden light my eager river quarrelled with its peace. Hereindeed was solitude!
It was in searching sea and cliff for the least sign of life that Ithought I descried on the furthest extremity of the nearer of thehorns of the bay the spires and smouldering domes of a little city. IfI gazed intently, they seemed to vanish away, yet still to shine abovethe azure if, raising my eyes, I looked again.
So, caring not how far I must go so long as my path lay beside thesebreaking waters, I set out on the firm, white sands to prove this citythe mirage I deemed it.
What wonder, then, my senses fell asleep in that vast lullaby! And outof a daydream almost as deep as that in which I first set out, I wassuddenly aroused by a light tapping sound, distinct and regularbetween the roaring breakers.
I lifted my eyes to find the city I was seeking evanished away indeed.But nearer at hand a child was playing upon the beach, whose spadeamong the pebbles had caused the birdlike noise I had heard.
So engrossed was she with her building in the sand that she had notheard me approaching. She laboured on at the margin of the cliff'sshadow where the sea-birds cried, answering Echo in the rocks. Sosolitary and yet so intent, so sedate and yet so eager a little figureshe seemed in the long motionlessness of the shore, by the darkheedlessness of the sea, I hesitated to disturb her.
Who of all Time's children could this be playing uncompanioned by thesea? And at a little distance betwixt me and her in the softly-moundedsand her spade had already scrawled in large, ungainly capitals, theanswer--"Annabel Lee." The little flounced black frock, the tresses ofblack hair, the small, beautiful dark face--this then was Annabel Lee;and that bright, phantom city I had seen--that was the vanishingmockery of her kingdom.
I called her from where I stood--"Annabel Lee!" She lifted her headand shook back her hair, and gazed at me startled and intent. I wentnearer.
"You are a very lonely little girl," I said.
"I am building in the sand," she answered.
"A castle?"
She shook her head.
"It was in dreams," she said, flushing darkly.
"What kind of dream was it in then?"
"Oh! I often dream it; and I build it in the sand. But there's nevertime: the sea comes back."
"Was the tide quite high when you began?" I asked; for now it was low.
"Just that much from the stones," she said; "I waited for it ever solong."
"It has a long way to come yet," I said; "you will finish it _this_time, I dare say."
She shook her head and lifted her spade.
"Oh no; it is much bigger, more than twice. And I haven't the seaweed,or the shells, and it comes back very, very quickly."
"But where is the little boy you play with down here by the sea?"
She glanced at me swiftly and surely; and shook her head again.
"He would help you."
"He didn't in my dream," she said doubtfully. She raised long,stealthy eyes to mine, and spoke softly and deliberately. "Besides,there isn't any little boy."
"None, Annabel Lee?" I said.
"Why," she answered, "I have played here years and years and years,and there are only the gulls and terns and cormorants, and that!" Shepointed with her spade towards the broken water.
"You know all their names then?" I said.
"Some I know," she answered with a little frown, and looked far out tosea. Then, turning her eyes, she gazed long at me, searchingly,forlornly on a stranger. "I am going home now," she said.
I looked at the house of sand and smiled. But she shook her head oncemore.
"It never _could_ be finished," she said firmly, "though I tried andtried, unless the sea would keep quite still just once all day,without going to and fro. And then," she added with a flash ofanger--"then I would not build."
"Well," said I, "when it is nearly finished, and the water washes up,and up, and washes it away, here is a flower that came fromFairyland. And that, dear heart, is none so far away."
She took the purple flower I had plucked in Ennui's garden in herslim, cold hand.
"It's amaranth," she said; and I have never seen so old a little lookin a child's eyes.
"And all the flowers' names too?" I said.
She frowned again. "It's amaranth," she said, and ran off lightly andso deftly among the rocks and in the shadow that was advancing noweven upon the foam of the sea, that she had vanished before I had timeto deter, or to pursue her. I sought her awhile, until the dark rackof sunset obscured the light, and the sea's voice changed; then Idesisted.
It was useless to remain longer beneath the looming caves, among thestones of so inhospitable a shore. I was a stranger to the tides. Andit was clear high-water would submerge the narrow sands whereon Istood.
Yet I cannot describe how loth I was to leave to night's desolationthe shapeless house of a child. What fate was this that had set herto such profitless labour on the uttermost shores of "Tragedy"? Whathistory lay behind, past, or, as it were, never to come? What gladnesstoo high for earth had nearly once been hers? Her sea-mound tookstrange shapes in the gloom--light foliage of stone, dark heaviness ofgranite, wherein rumour played of all that restless rustling; smallcries, vast murmurings from those green meadows, old as night.
I turned, even ran away, at last. I found my boat in the gloamingwhere I had left her, safe and sound, except that all the doctor'sgood things had been nosed and tumbled by some hungry beast in myabsence. I stood and thought vacantly of Crusoe, and
pig, and guns.But what use to delay? I got in.
If it were true, as the excellent doctor had informed me, that seamenreported islands not far distant from these shores, chance might bearme blissfully to one of these. And if not true ... I turned a ratherstartled face to the water, and made haste not to think. Fortunepierces deep, and baits her hooks with sceptics. Away I went, bobbingmightily over the waves that leapt and wrestled where sea and rivermet. These safely navigated, I rowed the great creature straightforward across the sea, my face towards dwindling land, my prow toScorpio.