The striding place by Gertrude Atherton Wigel continental and attached, tired early of grouse
shooting, to stand propped against a sod fence while his host's workmen routed up
the birds with long poles and drove them towards the waiting guns. Made him
feel himself a parody on the ancestors who had roamed the moors and forests of
this west riding of Yorkshire in hot pursuit of game worth the killing. But
when in England in August, he always accepted whatever proffered for the season,
and invited his host to shoot pheasants on his estates in the south. The
amusements of life, he argued, should be accepted with the same philosophy as
its ills. It had been a bad day. A heavy rain had made
the moor so spongy that it fairly sprang beneath the feet, whether or not
the grouse had haunts of their own, wherein they were immune from rheumatism,
the bag had been small. The woman, too, were an unusually dull
lot, with the exception of a new minded debutante who bothered Wagel at dinner
by demanding the verbal restoration of the vague paintings on the vaulted roof above them.
But it was no one of these things that sat on Weagel's mind,
as when the other men went up to bed, he let himself out of
the castle and sauntered down to the river. His intimate friend, the companion
of his boyhood, the chum of his college days, his fellow traveler in
many Lands, the man for whom he possessed stronger affection than for all men,
had mysteriously disappeared two days ago, and his track might have sprung to
the upper air for all trace he had left behind him. He had been
aghast on the adjoining estate during the past week, shooting with the fervor of
the true sportsman, making love in the intervals to Adeline Kavan, and apparently
in the best of spirits. As far as was known, there was nothing
to lower his mental mercury, for his rent roll was a large one.
Miss Cavan blushed whenever he looked at her, and being one of the best
shots in England, he was never happier than in August. The suicide theory
was preposterous, all agreed, and there was as little reason to believe him
murdered Nevertheless, he had walked out of march Abbey two nights ago without hat
or overcoat, and had not been seen since the country was being patrolled night
and day. A hundred keepers and workmen were beating the woods and poking the
bogs on the moors, but as yet not so much as a handkerchief had
been found. Weigel did not believe for a moment that Wyat Gifford was dead,
and although it was impossible not to be affected by the general uneasiness,
he was disposed to be more angry than frightened. At Cambridge, Gifford had
been an incorrigible, practical joker, and by no means had outgrown the habit.
It would be like him to cut across the country and his evening clothes,
board a cattle train, and amuse himself touching up the picture of the
sensation in west Riding. However, Wakel's affection for his friend was too deep
to companion with tranquility in the present state of doubt, and instead of going
to bed early with the other men, he determined to walk until ready for
sleep. He went down to the river and followed the path through the woods.
There was no moon, but the stars sprinkled their cold light upon the
pretty belt of water flowing placidly plast wood, and between green masses of overhanging
rocks or sloping banks, tangled with tree and shrub leaping occasionally over stones with
the harsh notes of an angry scold to recover its equanimity. The moment the
way was clear again, it was very dark in the depths where Ragel trod.
He smiled as he recalled a remark of Gifford's. An English wood is
like a good many other things in life, very promising at a distance,
but a hollow mockery when you get within. You see daylight on both sides,
and the sun freckles the very bracken. Our woods need the night to
make them seem what they ought to be, what they once were before our
ancestors descendants demanded so much more money in these so much more various days.
Weigel strolled along, smoking and thinking of his friend, his pranks, many
of which had done more credit to his imagination than this, and were calling
conversations that had lasted the night through. Just before the end of the London
season, they had walked the streets one hot night after a party discussing the
various theories of the soul's destiny. That afternoon they had met at the coffin
of a college friend whose mind had been a blank for the past three years.
Some months previously they had called at the asylum to see him. His
expression had been senile, his face imprinted with the record of debauchery. In
death. The face was placid, intelligent, without ignoble lineation, the face
of the man they had known at college. Wagel and Gifford had had no
time to comment there, and the afternoon and evening were full, but coming
forth from the House of Festivity together they had reverted almost at once to the
topic I cherish the theory. Giffert had said that the soul sometimes lingers in
the body after death, during madness. Of course, it is an impotent
prisoner, albeit a conscious one. Fancy it's agony and its horror. Of
what more natural than that when the life spark goes out, the tortured soul
should take possession of the vacant skull and triumph once more for a few hours
while old friends look their last. It has had time to repent, while
compelled to crouch and behold the state of its work, and it has shrived
itself into a state of comparative purity. If I had my way, I
should stay inside my bones until the coffid had gone into its niche, that
I might obviate from my poor old comrade the tragic and personality of death.
And I should like to see justice done to it as it were, to
see it lowered among its ancestors, with the ceremony and solemnity that are its
due. I'm afraid that if I dissevered myself too quickly, I should yield
to curiosity and hasten to investigate the mysteries of space. You believe in the
soul as an independent entity, then that it and the vital principle are not
one and the same. Absolutely, the body and the soul are twins.
Life comrades, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, but always loyal. In the
last instance, some day, when I am tired of the world, I
shall go to India and become a Mahatma, solely for the pleasure of receiving
proof during life of this independent relationship. Suppose you were not sealed up properly
and returned after one of your astral flights to find your earthly part unfit for
habitation. It is an experiment I don't think I should care to try,
unless even juggling with soul and flesh had palled, That would not be an
uninteresting predicament. I should rather enjoy experimenting with broken machinery. The high,
wild roar of water suddenly smote upon a Wagel's ear, and checked his memories.
He left the wood and walked out on the huge slippery stones which nearly
closed the river wharf at this point, and watched the waters boil down into
the narrow pass with their furious, untiring energy. The black quiet of the
woods rose high on either side. The stars seemed colder and whiter. Just
above. On either hand, the perspective of the river might have run into
a rayless cavern. There was no lonelier spot in England, nor one which
had the right to claim so many ghosts, if ghosts there were. Wakele
was not a coward, but he recalled uncomfortably the tales of those that had
been done to death in the Strid. Footnote one. This striding place is
called the Strid, a name which it took of yore a thousand years hath
it borne the name and its shell. A thousand more Wordsworth's Boy of Egremont
had been disposed of by the practical Whittaker, but countless others, more venturesome
than wise, had gone down to that narrow boiling course, never to appear
in the still pool. A few yards beyond below the great rocks which formed
the walls of the strid was believed to be a natural vault, on to
whose shelves the dead were drawn. The spot had an ugly fascination. Wakele
stood, visioning skeletons uncoffined and green, the home of the eyeless things which
had devoured all that had covered and filled that rattling symbol of man's mortality.
Then fell to wondering if any one had attempted to leap the strait of late
it was covered with slime. He had never seen it look so treacherous.
He shuddered and turned away, impelled despite his manhood to flee the spot.
As he did so, something tossing in the foam below the fall, something
as white yet independent of it, caught his eye and arrested his step.
Then he saw that it was describing a contrary motion to the rushing water,
an upward backward motion, Wagl stood rigid, breathless. He fancied he heard
the crackling of his hair. Was that a hand? It thrust itself still
higher above the boiling foam, turned sidewise, and or frantic fingers were distinctly
visible against the black rock beyond. Wakel's superstitious terror left him. A man
was there, struggling to free himself from the suction beneath the strid swept down
doubtless but a moment before his arrival. Perhaps as he stood with his back
to the current, he stepped as close to the edge as he dared.
The hand doubled, as if in imprecation, shaking savagely in the face of
that force which leaves its creatures to immutable law, then spread wide again,
clutching, expanding, crying for help as audibly as the human voice. Wakel
dashed to the nearest tree, dragged and twisted off a branch with his strong
arms, and returned as swiftly to the strid. The hand was in the
same place, still gesticulating as wildly. The body was undoubtedly caught in the
rocks below, perhaps already half way along one of those hideous shelves. Weagel
let himself down upon a lower rock, braced his shoulder against the mass beside
him, Then, leaning out over the water, thrust the branch into the
hand. The fingers clutched at it convulsively. Wagel tugged powerfully, his own
feet dragged perilously near the edge. For a moment he produced no impression.
Then an arm shot above the waters. The blood sprang to Weagl's head.
He was choked with an impression that the strid had him in her roaring hold,
and he saw nothing. Then the mist cleared, The hand and arm
were nearer, although the rest of the body was still concealed by the foam.
Weagl peered out with distended eyes. The meager light revealed in the coff's
links of a peculiar device. The fingers clutching the branch were as familiar.
Weagel forgot the slippery stones, the terrible death if he stepped too far.
He pulled with passionate will, and muscle memories flung themselves into the hot light
of his brain, trooping rapidly upon each other's heels, as in the thought
of the drowning. Most of the pleasures of his life, good and bad,
were identified in some way with this friend. Scenes of college, days
of travel where they had deliberately sought adventure, and stood between one another and
death upon more occasions than one. Of hours of delightful companionship, among the
treasures of art and others in the pursuit of pleasure flashed like the changing particles
of kaleidoscope. Wagle had loved several women, but he would have flouted in
these moments the thought that he had ever loved any woman as he loved Wyatt
Gifford. There were so many charming women in the world, and in the
thirty two years of his life, he had never known another man to whom
he had cared to give his intimate friendship. He threw himself upon his face.
His wrists were cracking, the skin was torn from his hands. The
fingers still gripped the stick. There was life in them. Yet suddenly something
gave way. The hand swung about, tearing the branch from Weagel's grasp.
The body had been liberated and flung outward, though still submerged by the foam
and spray. Weagel scrambled to his feet and sprang along the rocks, Knowing
that the danger from suction was over, and that Gifford must be carried straight
to the quiet pool. Gifford was a fish in the water and could live
under it longer than most men. If he survived this, it would not
be the first time that his pluck and science had saved him from drowning.
Weagle reached the pool. A man in his evening clothes floated on it.
His face turned towards a projecting rock over which his arm had fallen upholding the
body. The hand that had held the branch hung limply over the rock,
its white reflection visible in the black water. Wagl plunged into the shallow pool,
lifted Gifford in his arms, and returned to the bank. He laid
the body down and threw off his coat, that he might be the freer
to practice the methods of resuscitation. He was glad of the moment's respite.
The valiant life in the man might have been exhausted in that last struggle.
He had not dared to look at his face to put his ear to the
heart. The hesitation lasted but a moment. There was no time to lose.
He turned to his prostrate friend. As he did so, something strange
and disagreeable, smote his senses. For a half moment, he did not
appreciate its nature. Then his teeth clacked together his feet, his outstretched arms
pointed toward the woods. But he sprang to the side of the man and
bent down and peered to his face. There was no face.