Speaker 1: The striding place by Gertrude Atherton Wegel continental and detached,
tired early of grouse shooting, to stand propped against a
sad 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 women, too, were an
unusually dull lot, with the exception of a new minded
debutante who bothered Wagle 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 Weagle'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 a guest 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 Kavan 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 Wyatt 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 in his evening clothes, board
a cattle train, and amuse himself touching up the picture
of the sensation in west Riding. However, Wagl'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 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. Wikel strolled along, smoking and thinking
of his friend, his pranks, many of which had done
more credit to his imagination than this, and recalling 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 cherished. The theory Gifford
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 its agony and its horror.
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 coffie had gone into its niche, that
I might aviate for my poor old comrade, the tragic
impersonality 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, someday, 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 Weagel's ear, and checked his memories.
He left the wood and walked out on the huge
slippery stone 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.
Lakel 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 Egremond 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 shells
the dead were drawn. The spot had an ugly fascination
lakel 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. Weigel 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 for poor frantic fingers were distinctly visible against the
black rock beyond. Weaggel'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. Weggle 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. We
wagele 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. Wegel 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 Weggil's head. He was choked with the
impression that the strid had to 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. Weagel peered out with
distended eyes. The meager light revealed in the cuff SLINKs
of a peculiar device. The fingers clutching the branch were
as familiar. Wegel 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.
Weggl had loved several women, but he would have flouted
in these moments the thought that he had ever loved
any woman as he loved Wyat 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 Wegel'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. Weggel 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 in to his face. There was no face.