Drift from Two Shores | Page 4

he awoke, dazed and
bewildered, as upon a new world. The first sense of oppression over, he
came to love at last this subtle spirit of oblivion; and at night, when its
cloudy wings were folded over his cabin, he would sit alone with a
sense of security he had never felt before. On such occasions he was
apt to leave his door open, and listen as for footsteps; for what might
not come to him out of this vague, nebulous world beyond? Perhaps
even SHE,--for this strange solitary was not insane nor visionary. He
was never in spirit alone. For night and day, sleeping or waking, pacing
the beach or crouching over his driftwood fire, a woman's face was
always before him,--the face for whose sake and for cause of whom he
sat there alone. He saw it in the morning sunlight; it was her white
hands that were lifted from the crested breakers; it was the rustling of
her skirt when the sea wind swept through the beach grasses; it was the
loving whisper of her low voice when the long waves sank and died
among the sedge and rushes. She was as omnipresent as sea and sky
and level sand. Hence when the fog wiped them away, she seemed to
draw closer to him in the darkness. On one or two more gracious nights
in midsummer, when the influence of the fervid noonday sun was still
felt on the heated sands, the warm breath of the fog touched his cheek

as if it had been hers, and the tears started to his eyes.
Before the fogs came--for he arrived there in winter--he had found
surcease and rest in the steady glow of a lighthouse upon the little
promontory a league below his habitation. Even on the darkest nights,
and in the tumults of storm, it spoke to him of a patience that was
enduring and a steadfastness that was immutable. Later on he found a
certain dumb companionship in an uprooted tree, which, floating down
the river, had stranded hopelessly upon his beach, but in the evening
had again drifted away. Rowing across the estuary a day or two
afterward, he recognized the tree again from a "blaze" of the settler's
axe still upon its trunk. He was not surprised a week later to find the
same tree in the sands before his dwelling, or that the next morning it
should be again launched on its purposeless wanderings. And so,
impelled by wind or tide, but always haunting his seclusion, he would
meet it voyaging up the river at the flood, or see it tossing among the
breakers on the bar, but always with the confidence of its returning
sooner or later to an anchorage beside him. After the third month of his
self-imposed exile, he was forced into a more human companionship,
that was brief but regular. He was obliged to have menial assistance.
While he might have eaten his bread "in sorrow" carelessly and
mechanically, if it had been prepared for him, the occupation of
cooking his own food brought the vulgarity and materialness of
existence so near to his morbid sensitiveness that he could not eat the
meal he had himself prepared. He did not yet wish to die, and when
starvation or society seemed to be the only alternative, he chose the
latter. An Indian woman, so hideous as to scarcely suggest humanity, at
stated times performed for him these offices. When she did not come,
which was not infrequent, he did not eat.
Such was the mental and physical condition of the Man on the Beach
on the 1st of January, 1869.
It was a still, bright day, following a week of rain and wind. Low down
the horizon still lingered a few white flecks--the flying squadrons of the
storm--as vague as distant sails. Southward the harbor bar whitened
occasionally but lazily; even the turbulent Pacific swell stretched its
length wearily upon the shore. And toiling from the settlement over the
low sand dunes, a carriage at last halted half a mile from the solitary's
dwelling.

"I reckon ye'll hev to git out here," said the driver, pulling up to breathe
his panting horses. "Ye can't git any nigher."
There was a groan of execration from the interior of the vehicle, a
hysterical little shriek, and one or two shrill expressions of feminine
disapprobation, but the driver moved not. At last a masculine head
expostulated from the window: "Look here; you agreed to take us to the
house. Why, it's a mile away at least!"
"Thar, or tharabouts, I reckon," said the driver, coolly crossing his legs
on the box.
"It's no use talking; I can never walk through this sand and horrid
glare," said a female voice quickly and imperatively. Then,
apprehensively, "Well,