The Purple Cloud
Page 53
where I soon found signs of the railway.And that minute commenced our journey across Turkey, Bulgaria, Servia,Bosnia, Croatia, to Trieste, occupying no day or two as in old times,but four months, a long-drawn nightmare, though a nightmare of richhappiness, if one may say so, leaving on the memory a vague vastimpression of monstrous ravines, ever-succeeding profundities, heightsand greatnesses, jungles strange as some moon-struck poet's fantasy,everlasting glooms, and a sound of mighty unseen rivers, cataracts, andslow cumbered rills whose bulrushes never see the sun, with largesseeverywhere, secrecies, profusions, the unimaginable, the unspeakable, asavagery most lush and fierce and gaudy, and vales of Arcadie, andremote mountain-peaks, and tarns shy as old-buried treasure, andglaciers, and we two human folk pretty small and drowned and lost inall that amplitude, yet moving always through it.
We followed the lines that first day till we came to a steam train, andI found the engine fairly good, and everything necessary to move it atmy hand: but the metals in such a condition of twisted, broken, vaulted,and buried confusion, due to the earthquake, that, having run somehundreds of yards to examine them, I saw that nothing could be done inthat way. At first this threw me into a condition like despair, for whatwe were to do I did not know: but after persevering on foot for fourdays along the deep-rusted track, which is of that large-gauge typepeculiar to Eastern Europe, I began to see that there were considerablesound stretches, and took heart.
I had with me land-charts and compass, but nothing for takingaltitude-observations: for the _Speranza_ instruments, except onecompass, had all been broken-up by her shock. However, on getting to thetown of Silivri, about thirty miles from our start, I saw in the ruinsof a half-standing bazaar-shop a number of brass objects, and therefound several good sextants, quadrants, and theodolites. Two morningslater, we came upon an engine in mid-country, with coals in it, and astream near; I had a goat-skin of almond-oil in the bag, and found themachinery serviceable after an hour's careful inspection, havingexamined the boiler with a candle through the manhole, and removed theautoclaves of the heaters. All was red with rust, and the shaft of theconnecting-rod in particular seemed so frail, that at one moment I wasvery dubious: I decided, however, and, except for a slight leakage atthe tubulure which led the steam to the valve-chest, all went very well;at a pressure never exceeding three-and-a-half atmospheres, we travellednearly a hundred and twenty miles before being stopped by a head-to-headblock on the line, when we had to abandon our engine; we then continuedanother seven miles a-foot, I all the time mourning my motor, which Ihad had to leave at Imbros, and hoping at every townlet to find a wholeone, but in vain.
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It was wonderful to see the villages and towns going back to the earth,already invaded by vegetation, and hardly any longer breaking thecontinuity of pure Nature, the town now as much the country as thecountry, and that which is not-Man becoming all in all with a certain_furore_ of vigour. A whole day in the southern gorges of the BalkanMountains the slow train went tearing its way through many a mile ofbind-weed tendrils, a continuous curtain, flaming with large flowers,but sombre as the falling shades of night, rather resembling jungles ofCeylon and the Filipinas; and she, that day, lying in the single carbehind, where I had made her a little yatag-bed from Tatar Bazardjik,continually played the kittur, barely touching the strings, and crooninglow, low, in her rich contralto, eternally the same air, over and overagain, crooning, crooning, some melancholy tune of her own dreaming,just audible to me through the slow-travailing monotony of the engine;till I was drunken with so sweet a woe, my God, a woe that was sweet aslife, and a dolour that lulled like nepenthe, and a grief that soothedlike kisses, so sweet, so sweet, that all that world of wood and gloomlost locality and realness for me, and became nothing but a charmed andpensive Heaven for her to moan and lullaby in; and from between myfingers streamed plenteous tears that day, and all that I could keep onmourning was 'O Leda, O Leda, O Leda,' till my heart was near to break.
The feed-pump eccentric-shaft of this engine, which was very poor andflaky, suddenly gave out about five in the afternoon, and I had to stopin a hurry, and that sweet invisible mechanism which had crooned andcrooned about my ears in the air, and followed me whithersoever I went,stopped too. Down she jumped, calling out:
'Well, I had a plesentiment that something would happen, and I am soglad, for I was tired!'
Seeing that nothing could be done with the feed-water pump, I got down,took the bag, and parting before us the continuous screen, we wentpioneering to the left between a rock-cleft, stepping over large stonesthat looked black with moss-growths, no sky, but hundreds of feet ofimpenetrable leafage overhead, and everywhere the dew-dabbled profusionof dim ferneries, dishevelled maidenhairs mixed with a large-leavedmimosa, wild vine, white briony, and a smell of cedar, and a softrushing of perpetual waters that charmed the gloaming. The way ledslightly upwards three hundred feet, and presently, after some windings,and the climbing of five huge steps almost regular, yet obviouslynatural, the gorge opened in a roundish space, fifty feet across, withfar overhanging edges seven hundred feet high; and there, behind acurtain which fell from above, its tendrils defined and straight like aJapanese bead-hanging, we spread the store of foods, I opening thewines, fruits, vegetables and meats, she arranging them in order withthe gold plate, and lighting both the spirit-lamp and the lantern: forhere it was quite dark. Near us behind the curtain of tendrils was asmall green cave in the rock, and at its mouth a pool two yards wide, ablack and limpid water that leisurely wheeled, discharging a littlerivulet from the cave: and in it I saw three owl-eyed fish, a fingerlong, loiter, and spur themselves, and gaze. Leda, who cannot be stillin tongue or limb, chattered in her glib baby manner as we ate, andthen, after smoking a cigarette, said that she would go and 'lun,' andwent, and left me darkling, for she is the sun and the moon and the hostof the stars, I occupying myself that night in making a calendar at theend of this book in which I have written, for my almanack and manythings that I prized were lost with the palace--making a calendar,counting the days in my head--but counting them across my thoughts ofher.
She came again to tell me good-night, and then went down to the train tosleep; and I put out the lantern, and stooped within the cave, and mademy simple couch beside the little rivulet, and slept.
But a fitful sleep, and soon again I woke; and a long time I lay so,gradually becoming conscious of a slow dripping at one spot in thecave: for at a minute's interval it darkly splashed, regularly, verydeliberately; and it seemed to grow always louder and sadder, and thesplash at first was 'Leesha,' but it became 'Leda' to my ears, and itsobbed her name, and I pitied myself, so sad was I. And when I could nolonger bear the anguished melancholy of its spasm and its sobbing, Iarose and went softly, softly, lest she should hear in that soundingsilence of the hushed and darksome night, going more slow, more soft, asI went nearer, a sob in my throat, my feet leading me to her, till Itouched the carriage. And against it a long time I leant my clammy brow,a sob aching in my poor throat, and she all mixed up in my head with thesuspended hushed night, and with the elfin things in the air that madethe silence so musically a-sound to the vacant ear-drum, and with thedripping splash in the cave. And softly I turned the door-handle, andheard her breathe in Asleep, her head near me; and I touched her hairwith my lips, and close to her ear I said--for I heard her breathe as ifin sleep--'Little Leda, I have come to you, for I could not help it,Leda: and oh, my heart is full of the love of you, for you are mine, andI am yours: and to live with you, till we die, and after we are dead tobe near you still, Leda, with my broken heart near your heart, littleLeda--'
I must have sobbed, I think; for as I spoke close at her ears, withpassionately dying eyes of love, I was startled by an irregularity inher breathing; and with cautious hurry I shut the door, and quite backto the cave I stole in haste.
And the next morning when we met I thought--but am not now sure--thatshe smiled singularly: I thought so. She may, she _may_, have heard--ButI cannot tell.
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Twice I was obliged to abandon engines on account of forest-treeobstructions right across the line, which, do what I might, I could notmove, and these were the two bitterest incidents of the pilgrimage; andat least thirty times I changed from engine to engine, when other trainsblocked. As for the extent of the earthquake, it is pretty certain thatit was universal over the Peninsula, and at many points exhibitedextreme violence, for up to the time that we entered upon Servianterritory, we occasionally came upon stretches of the lines sodislocated, that it was impossible to proceed upon them, and during thewhole course I never saw one intact house or castle; four times, wherethe way was of a nature to permit of it, I left the imbedded metals andmade the engine travel the ground till I came upon other metals, when Ialways succeeded in driving it upon them. It was all very leisurely, fornot everywhere, nor every day,