Basil

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From the churchyard, I look down the ravine, on fine days, towards the
sea. Mighty piles of granite soar above the fishermen's cottages on
each side; the little strip of white beach which the cliffs shut in,
glows pure in the sunlight; the inland stream that trickles down the
bed of the rocks, sparkles, at places, like a rivulet of silver-fire;
the round white clouds, with their violet shadows and bright wavy
edges, roll on majestically above me; the cries of the sea-birds, the
endless, dirging murmur of the surf, and the far music of the wind
among the ocean caverns, fall, now together, now separately on my ear.
Nature's voice and Nature's beauty--God's soothing and purifying
angels of the soul--speak to me most tenderly and most happily, at
such times as these.

It is when the rain falls, and wind and sea arise together--when,
sheltered among the caverns in the side of the precipice, I look out
upon the dreary waves and the leaping spray--that I feel the unknown
dangers which hang over my head in all the horror of their
uncertainty. Then, the threats of my deadly enemy strengthen their
hold fearfully on all my senses. I see the dim and ghastly
personification of a fatality that is lying in wait for me, in the
strange shapes of the mist which shrouds the sky, and moves, and
whirls, and brightens, and darkens in a weird glory of its own over
the heaving waters. Then, the crash of the breakers on the reef howls
upon me with a sound of judgment; and the voice of the wind, growling
and battling behind me in the hollows of the cave, is, ever and ever,
the same thunder-voice of doom and warning in my ear.

Does this foreboding that Mannion's eye is always on me, that his
footsteps are always secretly following mine, proceed only from the
weakness of my worn-out energies? Could others in my situation
restrain themselves from fearing, as I do, that he is still
incessantly watching me in secret? It is possible. It may be, that his
terrible connection with all my sufferings of the past, makes me
attach credit too easily to the destroying power which he arrogates to
himself in the future. Or it may be, that all resolution to resist him
is paralysed in me, not so much by my fear of his appearance, as by my
uncertainty of the time when it will take place--not so much by his
menaces themselves, as by the delay in their execution. Still, though
I can estimate fairly the value of these considerations, they exercise
over me no lasting influence of tranquillity. I remember what this man
_has_ done; and in spite of all reasoning, I believe in what he has
told me he will yet do. Madman though he may be, I have no hope of
defence or escape from him in any direction, look where I will.

But for the occupation which the foregoing narrative has given to my
mind; but for the relief which my heart can derive from its thoughts
of Clara, I must have sunk under the torment of suspense and suspicion
in which my life is now passed. My sister! Even in this self-imposed
absence from her, I have still found a means of connecting myself
remotely with something that she loves. I have taken, as the assumed
name under which I live, and shall continue to live until my father
has given me back his confidence and his affection, the name of a
little estate that once belonged to my mother, and that now belongs to
her daughter. Even the most wretched have their caprice, their last
favourite fancy. I possess no memorial of Clara, not even a letter.
The name that I have taken from the place which she was always fondest
and proudest of, is, to me, what a lock of hair, a ring, any little
loveable keepsake, is to others happier than I am.

I have wandered away from the simple details of my life in this place.
Shall I now return to them? Not to-day; my head burns, my hand is
weary. If the morrow should bring with it no event to write of, on the
morrow I can resume the subject from which I now break off.

October 20th.--After laying aside my pen, I went out yesterday for the
purpose of renewing that former friendly intercourse with my poor
neighbours, which has been interrupted for the last three weeks by
unintermitting labour at the latter portions of my narrative.

In the course of my walk among the cottages and up to the old church
on the moor, I saw fewer of the people of the district than usual. The
behaviour of those whom I did chance to meet, seemed unaccountably
altered; perhaps it was mere fancy, but I thought they avoided me. One
woman abruptly shut her cottage door as I approached. A fisherman,
when I wished him good day, hardly answered; and walked on without
stopping to gossip with me as usual. Some children, too, whom I
overtook on the road to the church, ran away from me, making gestures
to each other which I could not understand. Is the first superstitious
distrust of me returning after I thought it had been entirely
overcome? Or are my neighbours only showing their resentment at my
involuntary neglect of them for the last three weeks? I must try to
find out to-morrow.

21st--I have discovered all! The truth, which I was strangely slow to
suspect yesterday, has forced itself on me to-day.

I went out this morning, as I had purposed, to discover whether my
neighbours had really changed towards me, or not, since the interval
of my three weeks' seclusion. At the cottage-door nearest to mine, two
young children were playing, whom I knew I had succeeded in attaching
to me soon after my arrival. I walked up to speak to them; but, as I
approached, their mother came out, and snatched them from me with a
look of anger and alarm. Before I could question her, she had taken
them inside the cottage, and had closed the door.

Almost at the same moment, as if by a preconcerted signal, three or
four other women came out from their abodes at a little distance,
warned me in loud, angry voices not to come near them, or their
children; and disappeared, shutting their doors. Still not suspecting
the truth, I turned back, and walked towards the beach. The lad whom I
employ to serve me with provisions, was lounging there against the
side of an old boat. At seeing me, he started up, and walked away a
few steps--then stopped, and called out--

"I'm not to bring you anything more; father says he won't sell to you
again, whatever you pay him."

I asked the boy why his father had said that; but he ran back towards
the village without answering me.

"You had best leave us," muttered a voice behind me. "If you don't go
of your own accord, our people will starve you out of the place."

The man who said these words, had been one of the first to set the
example of friendliness towards me, after my arrival; and to him I now
turned for the explanation which no one else would give me.

"You know what we mean, and why we want you to go, well enough," was
his reply.

I assured him that I did not; and begged him so earnestly to enlighten
me, that he stopped as he was walking away.

"I'll tell you about it," he said; "but not now; I don't want to be
seen with you." (As he spoke he looked back at the women, who were
appearing once more in front of their cottages.) "Go home again, and
shut yourself up; I'll come at dusk."

And he came as he had promised. But when I asked him to enter my
cottage, he declined, and said he would talk to me outside, at my
window. This disinclination to be under my roof, reminded me that my
supplies of food had, for the last week, been left on the
window-ledge, instead of being brought into my room as usual. I had
been too constantly occupied to pay much attention to the circumstance
at the time; but I thought it very strange now.

"Do you mean to tell me you don't suspect why we want to get you out
of our place here?" said the man, looking in distrustfully at me
through the window.

I repeated that I could not imagine why they had all changed towards
me, or what wrong they thought I had done them.

"Then I'll soon let you know it," he continued. "We want you gone from
here, because--"

"Because," interrupted another voice behind him, which I recognised as
his wife's, "because you're bringing a blight on us, and our
houses--because _we want our children's faces left as God made
them_--"

"Because," interposed a second woman, who had joined her, "you're
bringing devil's vengeances among Christian people! Come back, John!
he's not safe for a true man to speak to."

They dragged the fisherman away with them before he could say another
word. I had heard enough. The fatal truth burst at once on my mind.
Mannion _had_ followed me to Cornwall: his threats were executed to
the very letter!

(10 o'clock.)--I have lit my candle for the last time in this cottage,
to add a few lines to my journal. The hamlet is quiet; I hear no
footstep outside--and yet, can I be certain that Mannion is not
lurking near my door at this moment?

I must go when the morning comes; I must leave this quiet retreat, in
which I have lived so calmly until now. There is no hope that I can
reinstate myself in the opinions of my poor neighbours. He has arrayed
against me the pitiless hostility of their superstition. He has found
out the dormant cruelties, even in the hearts of these simple people;
and has awakened them against me, as he said he would. The evil work
must have been begun within the last three weeks, while I was much
within doors, and there was little chance of meeting me in my usual
walks. How that work was accomplished it is useless to inquire; my
only object now, must be to prepare myself at once for departure.

(11 o'clock.)--While I was putting up my few books, a minute ago, a
little embroidered marker fell out of one of them, which I had not
observed in the pages before; and which I recognised as having been
worked for me by Clara. I have a memorial of my sister in my
possession, after all! Trifling as it is, I shall preserve it about
me, as a messenger of consolation in the time of adversity and peril.

(1 o'clock.)--The wind sweeps down on us, from off the moorland, in
fiercer and fiercer gusts; the waves dash heavily against our rock
promontory; the rain drifts wildly past my windows; and the densest
darkness overspreads the whole sky. The storm which has been
threatening for some days, is gathering fast.

(Village of Treen, October 22nd.)--The events of this one day have
changed the whole future of my life. I must force myself to write of
them at once. Something warns me that if I delay, though only till
to-morrow, I shall be incapable of relating them at all.

It was still early in the morning--I think about seven o'clock--when I
closed my cottage door behind me, never to open it again. I met only
one or two of my neighbours as I left the hamlet. They drew aside to
let me advance, without saying a word. With a heavy heart, grieved
more than I could have imagined possible at departing as an enemy from
among the people with whom I had lived as a friend, I passed slowly by
the last cottages, and ascended the cliff path which led to the moor.

The storm had raged at its fiercest some hours back. Soon after
daylight the wind sank; but the majesty of the mighty sea had lost
none of its terror and grandeur as yet. The huge Atlantic waves still
hurled themselves, foaming and furious, against the massive granite of
the Cornish cliffs. Overhead, the sky was hidden in a thick white
mist, now hanging, still and dripping, down to the ground; now rolling
in shapes like vast smoke-wreaths before the light wind which still
blew at intervals. At a distance of more than a few yards, the largest
objects were totally invisible. I had nothing to guide me, as I
advanced, but the ceaseless roaring of the sea on my right hand.

It was my purpose to get to Penzance by night. Beyond that, I had no
project, no thought of what refuge I should seek next. Any hope I
might have formerly felt of escaping from Mannion, had now deserted me
for ever. I could not discover by any outward indications, that he was
still following my footsteps. The mist obscured all objects behind me
from view; the ceaseless crashing of the shore-waves overwhelmed all
landward sounds, but I never doubted for a moment that he was watching
me, as I proceeded along my onward way.

I walked slowly, keeping from the edge of the precipices only by
keeping the sound of the sea always at the same distance from my ear;
knowing that I was advancing in the proper direction, though very
circuitously, as long as I heard the waves on my right hand. To have
ventured on the shorter way, by the moor and the cross-roads beyond
it, would have been only to have lost myself past all chance of
extrication, in the mist.

In this tedious manner I had gone on for some time, before it struck
me that the noise of the sea was altering completely to my sense of
hearing. It seemed to be sounding very strangely on each side of
me--both on my right hand and on my left. I stopped and strained my
eyes to look through the mist, but it was useless. Crags only a few
yards off, seemed like shadows in the thick white vapour. Again, I
went on a little; and, ere long, I heard rolling towards me, as it
were, under my own feet, and under the roaring of the sea, a howling,
hollow, intermittent sound--like thunder at a distance. I stopped
again, and rested against a rock. After some time, the mist began to
part to seaward, but remained still as thick as ever on each side of
me. I went on towards the lighter sky in front--the thunder-sound
booming louder and louder, in the very heart, as it seemed, of the
great cliff.

The mist brightened yet a little more, and showed me a landmark to
ships, standing on the highest point of the surrounding rocks. I
climbed to it, recognised the glaring red and white pattern in which
it was painted, and knew that I had wandered, in the mist, away from
the regular line of coast, out on one of the great granite
promontories which project into the sea, as natural breakwaters, on
the southern shore of Cornwall.

I had twice penetrated as far as this place, at the earlier period of
my sojourn in the fishing-hamlet, and while I now listened to the
thunder-sound, I knew from what cause it proceeded.

Beyond the spot where I stood, the rocks descended suddenly, and
almost perpendicularly, to the range below them. In one of the highest
parts of the wall-side of granite thus formed, there opened a black,
yawning hole that slanted nearly straight downwards, like a tunnel, to
unknown and unfathomable depths below, into which the waves found
entrance through some subterranean channel. Even at calm times the sea
was never silent in this frightful abyss, but on stormy days its fury
was terrific. The wild waves boiled and thundered in their
imprisonment, till they seemed to convulse the solid cliff about them,
like an earthquake. But, high as they leapt up in the rocky walls of
the chasm, they never leapt into sight from above. Nothing but clouds
of spray indicated to the eye, what must be the horrible tumult of the
raging waters below.

With my recognition of the place to which I had now wandered, came
remembrance of the dangers I had left behind me on the rock-track that
led from the mainland to the promontory--dangers of narrow ledges and
treacherous precipices, which I had passed safely, while unconscious
of them in the mist, but which I shrank from tempting again, now that
I recollected them, until the sky had cleared, and I could see my way
well before me. The atmosphere was still brightening slowly over the
tossing, distant waves: I determined to wait until it had lost all its
obscurity, before I ventured to retrace my steps.

I moved down towards the lower range of rocks, to seek a less exposed
position than that which I now occupied. As I neared the chasm, the
terrific howling of the waves inside it was violent enough to drown,
not only the crashing sound of the surf on the outward crags of the
promontory, but even the shrill cries of the hundreds on hundreds of
sea-birds that whirled around me, except when their flight was
immediately over my head. At each side of the abyss, the rocks, though
very precipitous, afforded firm hold for hand and foot. As I descended
them, the morbid longing to look on danger, which has led many a man
to the very brink of a precipice, even while he dreaded it, led me to
advance as near as I durst to the side of the great hole, and to gaze
down into it. I could see but little of its black, shining, interior
walls, or of the fragments of rock which here and there jutted out
from them, crowned with patches of long, lank, sea-weed waving slowly
to and fro in empty space--I could see but little of these things, for
the spray from the bellowing water in the invisible depths below,
steamed up almost incessantly, like smoke, and shot, hissing in clouds
out of the mouth of the chasm, on to a huge flat rock, covered with
sea-weed, that lay beneath and in front of it. The very sight of this
smooth, slippery plane of granite, shelving steeply downward, right
into the gaping depths of the hole, made my head swim; the thundering
of the water bewildered and deafened me--I moved away while I had the
power: away, some thirty or forty yards in a lateral direction,
towards the edges of the promontory which looked down on the sea.
Here, the rocks rose again in wild shapes, forming natural caverns and
penthouses. Towards one of these I now advanced, to shelter myself
till the sky had cleared.

I had just entered the place, close to the edge of the cliff, when a
hand was laid suddenly and firmly on my arm; and, through the crashing
of the waves below, the thundering of the water in the abyss behind,
and the shrieking of the seabirds overhead, I heard these words,
spoken close to my ear:--

"Take care of your life. It is not your's to throw away--it is
_mine!_"

I turned, and saw Mannion standing by me. No shade concealed the
hideous distortion of his face. His eye was on me, as he pointed
significantly down to the surf foaming two hundred feet beneath us.

"Suicide!" he said slowly--"I suspected it, and, this time, I followed
close: followed, to fight with death, which should have you."

As I moved back from the edge of the precipice, and shook him from me,
I marked the vacancy that glared even through the glaring triumph of
his eye, and remembered how I had been warned against him at the
hospital.

The mist was thickening again, but thickening now in clouds that
parted and changed minute by minute, under the influence of the light
behind them. I had noticed these sudden transitions before, and knew
them to be the signs which preceded the speedy clearing of the
atmosphere.

When I looked up at the sky, Mannion stepped back a few paces, and
pointed in the direction of the fishing-hamlet from which I had
departed.

"Even in that remote place," he said, "and among those ignorant
people, my deformed face has borne witness against you, and Margaret's
death has been avenged, as I said it should. You have been expelled as
a pest and a curse, by a community of poor fishermen; you have begun
to live your life of excommunication, as I lived mine.
Superstition!--barbarous, monstrous superstition, which I found ready
made to my use, is the scourge with which I have driven you from that
hiding-place. Look at me now! I have got back my strength; I am no
longer the sick refuse of the hospital. Where you go, I have the limbs
and the endurance to go too! I tell you again, we are linked together
for life; I cannot leave you if I would. The horrible joy of hunting
you through the world, leaps in my blood like fire! Look! look out on
those tossing waves. There is no rest for _them;_ there shall be no
rest for _you!_"

The sight of him, standing close by me in that wild solitude; the
hoarse sound of his voice, as he raised it almost to raving in his
exultation over my helplessness; the incessant crashing of the sea on
the outer rocks; the roaring of the tortured waters imprisoned in the
depths of the abyss behind us; the obscurity of the mist, and the
strange, wild shapes it began to take, as it now rolled almost over
our heads---all that I saw, all that I heard, seemed suddenly to
madden me, as Mannion uttered his last words. My brain felt turned to
fire; my heart to ice. A horrible temptation to rid myself for ever of
the wretch before me, by hurling him over the precipice at my feet,
seized on me. I felt my hands stretching themselves out towards him
without my willing it--if I had waited another instant, I should have
dashed him or myself to destruction. But I turned back in time; and,
reckless of all danger, fled from the sight of him, over the rugged
and perilous surface of the cliff.

The shock of a fall among the rocks, before I had advanced more than a
few yards, partly restored my self-possession. Still, I dared not look
back to see if Mannion was following me, so long as the precipice
behind him was within view.

I began to climb to the higher range of rocks almost at the same spot
by which I had descended from them--judging by the close thunder of
the water in the chasm. Halfway up, I stopped at a broad
resting-place; and found that I must proceed a little, either to the
right or to the left, in a horizontal direction, before I could easily
get higher. At that moment, the mist was slowly brightening again. I
looked first to the left, to see where I could get good foothold--then
to the right, towards the outer sides of the riven rocks close at
hand.

At the same instant, I caught sight dimly of the figure of Mannion,
moving shadow-like below and beyond me, skirting the farther edge of
the slippery plane of granite that shelved into the gaping mouth of
the hole. The brightening atmosphere showed him that he had risked
himself, in the mist, too near to a dangerous place. He
stopped--looked up and saw me watching him--raised his hand--and shook
it threateningly in the air. The ill-calculated violence of his
action, in making that menacing gesture, destroyed his equilibrium--he
staggered--tried to recover himself--swayed half round where he
stood--then fell heavily backward, right on to the steep shelving
rock.

The wet sea-weed slipped through his fingers, as they madly clutched
at it. He struggled frantically to throw himself towards the side of
the declivity; slipping further and further down it at every effort.
Close to the mouth of the abyss, he sprang up as if he had been shot.
A tremendous jet of spray hissed out upon him at the same moment. I
heard a scream, so shrill, so horribly unlike any human cry, that it
seemed to silence the very thundering of the water. The spray fell.
For one instant, I saw two livid and bloody hands tossed up against
the black walls of the hole, as he dropped into it. Then, the waves
roared again fiercely in their hidden depths; the spray flew out once
more; and when it cleared off; nothing was to be seen at the yawning
mouth of the chasm--nothing moved over the shelving granite, but some
torn particles of sea-weed sliding slowly downwards in the running
ooze.

The shock of that sight must have paralysed within me the power of
remembering what followed it; for I can recall nothing, after looking
on the emptiness of the rock below, except that I crouched on the
ledge under my feet, to save myself from falling off it--that there
was an interval of oblivion--and that I seemed to awaken again, as it
were, to the thundering of the water in the abyss. When I rose and
looked around me, the seaward sky was lovely in its clearness; the
foam of the leaping waves flashed gloriously in the sunlight: and all
that remained of the mist was one great cloud of purple shadow,
hanging afar off over the whole inland view.

I traced my way back along the promontory feebly and slowly. My
weakness was so great, that I trembled in every limb. A strange
uncertainty about directing myself in the simplest actions, overcame
my mind. Sometimes, I stopped short, hesitating in spite of myself at
the slightest obstacles in my path. Sometimes, I grew confused without
any cause, about the direction in which I was proceeding, and fancied
I was going back to the fishing village.. The sight that I had
witnessed, seemed to be affecting me physically, far more than
mentally. As I dragged myself on my weary way along the coast, there
was always the same painful vacancy in my thoughts: there seemed to be
no power in them yet, of realising Mannion's appalling death.

By the time I arrived at this village, my strength was so utterly
exhausted, that the people at the inn were obliged to help me
upstairs. Even now, after some hours' rest, the mere exertion of
dipping my pen in the ink begins to be a labour and a pain to me.
There is a strange fluttering at my heart; my recollections are
growing confused again--I can write no more.

23rd.--The frightful scene that I witnessed yesterday still holds the
same disastrous influence over me. I have vainly endeavoured to think,
not of Mannion's death, but of the free prospect which that death has
opened to my view. Waking or sleeping, it is as if some fatality kept
all my faculties imprisoned within the black walls of the chasm. I saw
the livid, bleeding hands flying past them again, in my dreams, last
night. And now, while the morning is clear and the breeze is fresh, no
repose, no change comes to my thoughts. Time bright beauty of
unclouded daylight seems to have lost the happy influence over me
which it used formerly to possess.

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