CHAPTER XXIX.
This is peace! To conquer love of self and lust of life, To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast, To still the inward strife; For glory, to be lord of self;... ... For countless wealth, To lay up lasting treasure Of perfect service rendered, duties done In charity, soft speech, and stainless days;
These riches shall not fade away in life Nor any death dispraise.
(_Buddha's Sermon.--The Light of Asia._) ARNOLD.
Geoffrey Hampstead had come out of the penitentiary with his formerhopes for life shattered. Margaret was lost to him. He came out withouta tie on earth--a living man from whom all previous reasons forexistence seemed to have been removed. For six years he had worked inthe penitentiary with all the energy that was in him, in order to keephis thoughts from driving him mad. At one time all had been before him.And now--Oh, the silent grinding of the teeth during the first two yearsof it! After that he grew quieter and became able to regard his lifecalmly. He learned how to suffer. To a large extent he ceased now tothink about himself. In the lowest depths of mental misery self died.Then, for the first time in his life, he was able to realize the extentof his wrongs to others. What now broke him down gradually was not, asat first, the bitterness of his own lost hopes, but the thought that thelife of Margaret was wrecked--and by him, that the lives of others hadbeen wrecked--and by him. This was what the penitentiary now consistedof. This was the penitentiary which would last for always.
When the period of his sentence had expired, he had gone to New York andobtained work with his old employers on Wall Street. But his mind wasnot in his occupation. With his energy, it was impossible to live withno definite end in view. Why plod along on microscopic savings, like amere machine to be fed and to work? When mental anguish, for him theworst whip of retribution, had made thought for self so unbearable thatat last it died, there arose in him, untarnished by selfishness, thenobility which had always been occultly stamped upon him, and which inprison enabled him to protect himself, as it were, against madness, andto refuse to be unable to suffer--a nobility able to realize theperfection of a life lived for others, which none can realize untilfirst thought for self has been in some way killed. Rightly or wrongly,he had become convinced in years of anguished thought that with acontinually aching heart may coexist an internal gladness that arisesfrom the gift of self to others and makes the suffering not onlybearable but even desirable--that this was altogether a mentalphenomenon, such as memory, but one on which religions had been built,and that it was capable of making a heaven of earth and leading one,with the ecstasy of self-gift, even to crucifixion.
He determined to go to Paris to study medicine. For this, money wasrequired, and he conceived a plan for making a small fortune suddenly.If he failed, what then? The world would lose a helper. His employers,on being approached, saw that if proper contracts were made they weresure to get their money back, and supplied him with all he required forexpenses.
* * * * *
Mr. Rankin, of the firm of Godlie, Dertewercke, Toylor, and Rankin, had,for more than six years, shared with Jack Cresswell the old rooms"_vice_ Hampstead, on active service." All Geoffrey's old relics hadbeen left untouched. He had sent word to have them sold, and Rankin, tosatisfy him, had let him think they were sold and that the money theybrought had been applied as directed. The money had been applied asdirected; but it had come out of Rankin's little bank account, and so,until the time came when they could be handed over to Hampstead, the oldtrophies remained where they were after being insured for a sum which,for "old truck and rubbage only fit for a second-'and shop," seemed, toMrs. Priest, suspiciously large.
Rankin had received from a client the disposal of several passes on aspecial train that was to take some railway officials and their familiesto Niagara Falls to see the great swimmer, John Jackson, together withhis dog, endeavor to swim the Whirlpool Rapids. Half the world wasexcited over this event, which had been advertised everywhere. Whiledining with Jack at the Mackintoshes on the Sunday previous to theevent, Rankin proposed that Margaret should accompany Jack and him tosee the trial made.
Margaret hesitated, but Rankin said: "Oh, you know, as far as the fellowhimself is concerned, it will be hard to say how he is as he goes past.You'll just see a head in the water for a moment, and then it will havevanished down the river."
"I don't suppose there will be much to see if the water takes him pastat the rate of nineteen miles an hour," said Margaret.
"Just so. There won't be much to see. But we can have a pleasant day atthe falls and give the abused hack-men a chance. The 'special' will havea number of ladies on board, and, if you like champagne, now's yourchance. What is a special train without champagne?"
"Well, what do you say, mother?" asked Margaret.
Mrs. Mackintosh, to give her daughter an acceptable change and to gether out of her fixed ways, would have sent her to almost anything fromballoon ascension to a church lottery.
"Do as you wish, my dear. I think I would like you to go. I do not seehow it would be possible for a spectator to know whether the man wassuffering or not in those waters, and, as for his sacrificing his life,why that is his own lookout. If he lives I suppose he will get wellpaid, will he not, Mr. Rankin?"
"They expect he will make about twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars.Arrangements have been made not only with the railways, but also withthe hotels for his commission on all profits, which will be paid to himif he lives, or, if not, to his family. I don't know that it should benecessarily looked upon as a suicidal speculation. I have examined thewater a good many times, and am by no means certain that his safepassage is impossible, if he can keep on the surface and not get draggedunder where the water seems to shoot downward. If he gets through, oreven if he tries it and fails, he will prove himself as brave a man asever lived."
"I think I will go," said Margaret, brightening up with her old love fordaring. "It is not like going to a bullfight, and the excitement will beintense."
So they went off on the special, and when they arrived at the rapids,after descending the precipice in the hydraulic lift, they went alongthe path to the platform where the photographs are taken. This place wasfilled with seats, numbered and reserved, and Rankin's party were seatedin the front row. No less than a hundred thousand people were watchingthe forces of the river at this time. They were noticing how theprecipices gradually converged as they approached the rapids, and howapparent was the downward slope of the water as it rushed through thenarrowed gorge. They were noticing how the descending current struckprojections of fallen rock at the sides, causing back-waves to wash fromeach bank diagonally across the main volume of the river, and make acontinual combat of waters in the middle of the stream. Here, the deep,irresistible flow of the main current charges into the midst of thebattle raging between the lateral surges, and carries them off bodily,while they continue to fight and tear at each other as far as one cansee down the river. It is a bewildering spectacle of immeasurableforces, giving the idea of thousands of white horses driven madly into anarrowing gorge, where, in the crush, hundreds are forced upward andride along on the backs of the others, plunging and flinging their whitecrests high in the air and gnashing at each other as they go.
The worst spot of all is directly in front of the platform, whereRankin's party was sitting. They waited until the time at which Jacksonwas advertised to begin his swim, and then they grew impatient. Jack wasstanding on a wooden parapet near at hand waiting until the swimmershould appear around the bend far up the river, for they could not seehim take to the water from the place where they were.
All at once, before the rest of the people near him could see anything,Jack called out: "There he is!" as he descried, with his sailor's eyes,two black specks on the water far away, up above the bridges.
Jackson and his dog had jumped out of a boat in the middle of the river,in the calm part half a mile up, and, as they swam
down with the currentunder the bridges, the dense mass of people there admired the easy gracewith which he swam, and remarked the whiteness of his skin. His dog, ahuge creature, half Great Dane and half Newfoundland, swam in front ofhim, directed by his voice. Both of them could be seen to raisethemselves once or twice, so that they could get a better view of thewild water in front of them. The dog recognized the danger, and for amoment turned toward the shore and barked; but his master raised hishand and directed him onward. Another moment, now, and the fight forlife began, for reaching the shore was as impossible as flying to themoon.
The first back-wash that came to them was a small one, and they bothpassed through it, each receiving the water in the face. The next washfollowed almost immediately, and they tried to swim over it, but itturned both man and dog over on their sides and spread them out at fulllength on the surface of the main current. The people on the suspensionbridge could see that both received a terrible blow. They both seemed todive under the next wave, and then the water became so turbulent and thespeed of their passage so great that it was impossible to give a minutedescription of what happened.
Rankin's party and the multitude of spectators now watched what theycould see in breathless silence. At times, as the swimmers approached,our party could see them hoisted in the air on the top of a wave, orridge or upheaval of water. Most of the time they were lost to sight inthe gulleys or, valleys, or else they were beneath the surface. It doesnot take long to go a few hundred yards at nineteen miles an hour, andin what scarcely seemed more than an instant the man, with the dog stillin front of him, had come near them. What Jack noticed was that as theman here shook the water out of his eyes and raised himself, shouldersout, by "treading water," his skin was almost scarlet. This, alone tolda tale of what he had gone through since the people on the bridges hadremarked the whiteness of his skin.
He was now almost opposite them, and his face, set desperately, turned,during an instant in a quieter spot, toward the platform. Margaret gavea piercing shriek, and fell back into Rankin's arms. At the nexthalf-moment a huge boiling mountain, foaming up against the current inwhich the swimmer's body floated, struck him a terrible blow, and threwthe dog back on top of him. Both were engulfed. After a while the dog'shead appeared again, but Geoffrey Hampstead was overwhelmed in theBedlam of waters, whose foaming, raging madness battered out his life.
THE END.
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