No purple cloud could I see as, on and on, for two hours, I tore southward: but at hot noon, on the weather beam I spied through the glass across the water something else which moved, and it was you who came to me, Oh Leda, my spirit’s breath!
I bore down upon her, waving: and soon I saw her stand like an ancient mariner, but in white muslins that fluttered, at her wheel on the bridge—it was one of those little old Havre-Antwerp craft very high in the bows—and she waved a little white thing. And we came nearer, till I could spy her face, her smile, and I shouted her to stop, and in a minute stopped myself, and by happy steering came with slowing headway to a slight crash by her side, and ran down the trellised steps to her, and led her up; and on the deck, without saying a word, I fell to my knees before her, and I bowed my brow to the floor, with obeisance, and I worshipped her there as Heaven.
And we were wedded: for she, too, bowed the knee with me under the jovial blue sky; and under her eyes were the little moist semicircles of dreamy pensive fatigue, so dear and wifish: and God was there, and saw her kneel: for He loves the girl.
And I got the two ships apart, and they rested there some yards divided all the day, and we were in the main-deck cabin, where I had locked a door, so that no one might come in to be with my love and me.
I said to her:
“We will fly west to one of the Somersetshire coal-mines, or to one of the Cornwall tin-mines, and we will barricade ourselves against the cloud, and provision ourselves for six months—for it is perfectly feasible, and we have plenty of time, and no crowds to break down our barricades—and there in the deep earth we will live sweetly together, till the danger is overpast.”
And she smiled, and drew her hand across my face, and said:
“No, no: don’t you tlust in my God? do you think He would leally let me die?”
For she has appropriated the Almighty God to herself, naming Him “my God”—the impudence: though she generally knows what she is saying, too. And she would not fly the cloud.
And I am now writing three weeks later at a little place called Château-les-Roses, and no poison-cloud, and no sign of any poison-cloud, has come. And this I do not understand.
It may be that she divined that I was about to destroy myself … she may be quite capable. … But no, I do not understand, and shall never ask her.
But this I understand: that it is the White who is Master here: that though he wins but by a hair, yet he wins, he wins: and since he wins, dance, dance, my heart.
I look for a race that shall resemble its Mother: nimble-witted, light-minded, pious—like her; all-human, ambidextrous, ambicephalous, two-eyed—like her; and if, like her, they talk the English language with all the r’s turned into l’s, I shall not care.
They will be vegetable-eaters, I suppose, when all the meat now extant is eaten up: but it is not certain that meat is good for men: and if it is really good, then they will invent a meat: for they will be her sons, and she, to the furthest cycle in which the female human mind is permitted to orbit, is, I swear, all-wise.
There was a preaching man—a Scotchman he was, named Macintosh, or something like that—who said that the last end of Man shall be well, and very well: and she says the same: and the agreement of these two makes a Truth. And to that I now say: Amen, Amen.
For I, Adam Jeffson, second Parent of the world, hereby lay down, ordain, and decree for all time, clearly perceiving it now: That the one Motto and Watchword essentially proper to each human individual, and to the whole Race of Man, as distinct from other races in heaven or in earth, was always, and remains, even this: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”
Endnotes
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This I intend to publish under the title of “The Last Miracle”; “II.” will bear that of “The Lord of the Sea”; the present book is marked “III.” The perusal of “IV.” I have yet finished, but so far do not consider it suitable for publication. ↩
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This must be French reckoning, from meridian of Paris. ↩
Colophon
The Purple Cloud
was published in by
M. P. Shiel.
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