The Aerodrome: A Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

scramble to the ledge. Here he paused for a moment as I had done. Most merciful and divine Lord, in the mist and cold the blood was beating in me like hammers. I felt his body at the end of the rope as one might feel a fish. I threw myself sideways, jerking him from the ledge, as I knew from his whole weight on the rope and the short cry which he uttered. "Redeemer, very quickly I fastened the rope to the jut of rock that I knew was close to my right hand. Then I looked down and could see his body swinging scarcely eight feet below me, near enough, God, but with no holds for fingers or toes, and sheer rock for two hundred feet. The cloud was now dense over the face of rock. I reached down as far as I could, though still out of reach of Anthony's hands. It was difficult to see his face, but when I glanced at it, before I took out my knife, it seemed to bear a look rather of bewilderment than of anything else. I did not look at him, O God, while I was cutting the rope. Had I looked, O Great Dove, would I have desisted? Lord, thou knowest. I only know that it was at this moment that my excitement began to ebb and that I felt myself to be doing something unpleasant and almost dull. So, in an awkward position, I tussled with the thick strands of rope, as if it were a necessary task which I had unwillingly undertaken, and I never looked at him once, nor did he utter a word, till the rope parted and I saw him drop away from me into the mist. I threw the knife after him, scrambled to my knees and let out another three or four feet from the rope which I had belayed round the rock, so that it would appear that it was he who had used the knife himself while standing on the ledge. Merciful God, I spared neither his life nor his honour; for my story would be that in the mist he had lost his nerve while he was on the ledge, that I, unable either to inspire him with fortitude or to haul him up the cliff face single-handed, had made the rope fast and gone to get help; that in my absence his panic had got the better of him and that he had severed the rope himself. O God, have mercy! Christ, have mercy! Son of God, save! Spirit, Ghost, Thrones and Powers, do not utterly reject me, but look from your great height with pity upon my wasted heart! "My Dove, there is little else to say, little else but once more to implore you to extend over me your compassionate and healing wings. My story was received as true. The body was recovered by Doctor Faulkner, a great friend both of Anthony and myself. I never saw it, but I attended the funeral and, though it may seem odd to you, my Saviour, I wept as the coffin was being lowered into the ground. It was not for weeks and months, God, not till my ambitions had been realized, not till I had received the offer of this living and had married the lady who is now my wife, that the veil and mist of my deliberate sin fell from me and I began, O too late, O Hope of Jacob, to repent. And thou knowest, Lord, that even now, after twenty-two years in which I have endeavoured to do thy work, that even now my repentance is incomplete, my soul foul and unwashed, mere filthiness, my Love, and desolation." Here there succeeded a long silence, and I peered out again into the room from behind the curtain. The Rector had let his head fall upon his arms and, though his lips were moving, he uttered no words that were audible. I looked to the right and saw his wife's head, with the night-cap on top of it, protruding from the other alcove. Her eyes were clouded in a kind of mistiness, though not from tears, and I thought that her face expressed sorrow and, mingled with it, something peaceful. She was gazing at the kneeling figure of her husband, but not as though she took a great interest in the sight. For myself, I was too shocked and alarmed by what I had heard to pay any minute attention to her. I had now no thought of leaving the room, no consciousness of the dishonest position in which we were both placed. I listened as the