The Two Destinies
Page 47
the generations of man succeeded each other; and on the shoresof the new ocean there rose great and populous cities, rich in commerce,renowned in history. For centuries their prosperity lasted, beforethe next in this mighty series of changes ripened and revealed itself.Isolated from the rest of the world, vain of themselves and their goodfortune, careless of the march of progress in the nations round them,the inhabitants of the Zuyder Zee cities sunk into the fatal torpor ofa secluded people. The few members of the population who still preservedthe relics of their old energy emigrated, while the mass left behindresignedly witnessed the diminution of their commerce and the decay oftheir institutions. As the years advanced to the nineteenth century, thepopulation was reckoned by hundreds where it had once been numbered bythousands. Trade disappeared; whole streets were left desolate. Harbors,once filled with shipping, were destroyed by the unresisted accumulationof sand. In our own times the decay of these once flourishing cities isso completely beyond remedy, that the next great change in contemplationis the draining of the now dangerous and useless tract of water, andthe profitable cultivation of the reclaimed land by generations that arestill to come. Such, briefly told, is the strange story of the ZuyderZee.
As we advanced on our voyage, and left the river, I noticed the tawnyhue of the sea, caused by sand-banks which color the shallow water, andwhich make the navigation dangerous to inexperienced seamen. We foundour moorings for the night at the fishing island of Marken--a low,lost, desolate-looking place, as I saw it under the last gleams of thetwilight. Here and there, the gabled cottages, perched on hillocks, roseblack against the dim gray sky. Here and there, a human figure appearedat the waterside, standing, fixed in contemplation of the strange boat.And that was all I saw of the island of Marken.
Lying awake in the still night, alone on a strange sea, there weremoments when I found myself beginning to doubt the reality of my ownposition.
Was it all a dream? My thoughts of suicide; my vision of the mother anddaughter; my journey back to the metropolis, led by the apparitionof the child; my voyage to Holland; my night anchorage in the unknownsea--were these, so to speak, all pieces of the same morbid mentalpuzzle, all delusions from which I might wake at any moment, and findmyself restored to my senses again in the hotel at London? Bewildered bydoubts which led me further and further from any definite conclusion,I left my bed and went on deck to change the scene. It was a still andcloudy night. In the black void around me, the island was a blackershadow yet, and nothing more. The one sound that reached my ears was theheavy breathing of the captain and his crew sleeping on either side ofme. I waited, looking round and round the circle of darkness in which Istood. No new vision showed itself. When I returned again to the cabin,and slumbered at last, no dreams came to me. All that was mysterious,all that was marvelous, in the later events of my life seemed to havebeen left behind me in England. Once in Holland, my course had beeninfluenced by circumstances which were perfectly natural, by commonplacediscoveries which might have revealed themselves to any man in myposition. What did this mean? Had my gifts as a seer of visions departedfrom me in the new land and among the strange people? Or had my destinyled me to the place at which the troubles of my mortal pilgrimage wereto find their end? Who could say?
Early the next morning we set sail once more.
Our course was nearly northward. On one side of me was the tawny sea,changing under certain conditions of the weather to a dull pearl-gray.On the other side was the flat, winding coast, composed alternately ofyellow sand and bright-green meadow-lands; diversified at intervals bytowns and villages, whose red-tiled roofs and quaint church-steeplesrose gayly against the clear blue sky. The captain suggested to meto visit the famous towns of Edam and Hoorn; but I declined to go onshore. My one desire was to reach the ancient city in which Mrs. VanBrandt had been left deserted. As we altered our course, to make for thepromontory on which Enkhuizen is situated, the wind fell, then shiftedto another quarter, and blew with a force which greatly increased thedifficulties of navigation. I still insisted, as long as it was possibleto do so, on holding on our course. After sunset, the strength of thewind abated. The night came without a cloud, and the starry firmamentgave us its pale and glittering light. In an hour more the capriciouswind shifted back again in our favor. Toward ten o'clock we sailed intothe desolate harbor of Enkhuizen.
The captain and crew, fatigued by their exertions, ate their frugalsuppers and went to their beds. In a few minutes more, I was the onlyperson left awake in the boat.
I ascended to the deck, and looked about me.
Our boat was moored to a deserted quay. Excepting a few fishing vesselsvisible near us, the harbor of this once prosperous place was a vastsolitude of water, varied here and there by dreary banks of sand.Looking inland, I saw the lonely buildings of the Dead City--black,grim, and dreadful under the mysterious starlight. Not a human creature,not even a stray animal, was to be seen anywhere. The place might havebeen desolated by a pestilence, so empty and so lifeless did itnow appear. Little more than a hundred years ago, the record of itspopulation reached sixty thousand. The inhabitants had dwindled to atenth of that number when I looked at Enkhuizen now!
I considered with myself what my next course of proceeding was to be.
The chances were certainly against my discovering Mrs. Van Brandt if Iventured alone and unguided into the city at night. On the other hand,now that I had reached the place in which she and her child were living,friendless and deserted, could I patiently wait through the wearyinterval that must elapse before the morning came and the town wasastir? I knew my own self-tormenting disposition too well to accept thislatter alternative. Whatever came of it, I determined to walk throughEnkhuizen on the bare chance of meeting some one who might inform me ofMrs. Van Brandt's address.
First taking the precaution of locking my cabin door, I stepped from thebulwark of the vessel to the lonely quay, and set forth upon my nightwanderings through the Dead City.
CHAPTER XXXV. UNDER THE WINDOW.
I SET the position of the harbor by my pocket-compass, and then followedthe course of the first street that lay before me.
On either side, as I advanced, the desolate old houses frowned on me.There were no lights in the windows, no lamps in the streets. For aquarter of an hour at least I penetrated deeper and deeper into thecity, without encountering a living creature on my way--with only thestarlight to guide me. Turning by chance into a street broader thanthe rest, I at last saw a moving figure, just visible ahead, under theshadows of the houses. I quickened my pace, and found myself followinga man in the dress of a peasant. Hearing my footsteps behind him, heturned and looked at me. Discovering that I was a stranger, he lifteda thick cudgel that he carried with him, shook it threateningly, andcalled to me in his own language (as I gathered by his actions) tostand back. A stranger in Eukhuizen at that time of night was evidentlyreckoned as a robber in the estimation of this citizen! I had learned onthe voyage, from the captain of the boat, how to ask my way in Dutch,if I happened to be by myself in a strange town; and I now repeatedmy lesson, asking my way to the fishing office of Messrs. Van Brandt.Either my foreign accent made me unintelligible, or the man's suspicionsdisinclined him to trust me. Again he shook his cudgel, and again hesigned to me to stand back. It was useless to persist. I crossed to theopposite side of the way, and soon afterward lost sight of him under theportico of a house.
Still following the windings of the deserted streets, I reached what Iat first supposed to be the end of the town.
Before me, for half a mile or more (as well as I could guess), rose atract of meadow-land, with sheep dotted over it at intervals reposingfor the night. I advanced over the grass, and observed here and there,where the ground rose a little, some moldering fragments of brickwork.Looking onward as I reached the middle of the meadow, I perceived onits further side, towering gaunt and black in the night, a lofty arch orgateway, without walls at its sides, without a neighboring buildingof any sort, far or near. This (as I afterward learned) was one ofthe an
cient gates of the city. The walls, crumbling to ruin, had beendestroyed as useless obstacles that cumbered the ground. On the wastemeadow-land round me had once stood the shops of the richest merchants,the palaces of the proudest nobles of North Holland. I was actuallystanding on what had been formerly the wealthy quarter of Enkhuizen! Andwhat was left of it now? A few mounds of broken bricks, a pasture-landof sweet-smelling grass, and a little flock of sheep sleeping.
The mere desolation of the view (apart altogether from its history)struck me with a feeling of horror. My mind seemed to lose its balancein the dreadful stillness that was round me. I felt unutterableforebodings of calamities to come. For the first time, I repented havingleft England. My thoughts turned regretfully to the woody shores ofGreenwater Broad. If I had only held to my resolution, I might have beenat rest now in the deep waters of the lake. For what had I lived andplanned and traveled since I left Dermody's cottage? Perhaps only tofind that I had lost the woman whom I