The Clean Heart

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

Mr. Puddlebox watched that safety with unmoving eyes as though he were fascinated by it. The longer he watched the more it seemed to draw him. He kept his eyes upon one distant spot, half way along the bay and high up the shore, and his hypnotic state presented him to himself sitting there—safe. Still with his eyes upon it he moved across the narrow pier in its direction and sat down, legs dangling towards the bay, in the first action of descending. He twisted about to pursue the action, for he was a timid and unhandy climber who would climb downwards facing his hold. As he came to his hands and knees he went forward on them and looked across the fifty yards of shingle-bank, the sea close up, that separated him from the next pier of rocks. He was a creature of fear as he knelt there—a very figure of very ugly fear, ungainly in his form that hung bulkily between his arms and legs, white and loosely fat in his face that peered timorously over the edge, cowardly and useless in his crouching, shrinking pose.

He said aloud, his eyes on the distant barrier: "I'm as safe there—for a peep—as I am here. I can get back. Even if I get wet I can get back."

He shuffled forward and this time put his legs over the other side and sat a while. Here the drop was not more than three feet beneath the soles of his boots as they dangled. He drew them up. "If he's safe, he's safe," said Mr. Puddlebox. "And if he's drowned, he's drowned. Where's the sense of—"

Something that floated in the water caught his eye. A little, round, greyish clump. About the size of a face. Floating close to the shore. Not a face. A clump of fishing-net corks that Mr. Puddlebox remembered to have seen dry upon the sand when first he arrived here. But very like, very dreadfully like a face, and the water rippling very dreadfully over it at each pulsing of the tide. Floated his loony's face somewhere like that? Struggled he somewhere near to shore as that? The ripples awash upon his mouth? His eyes staring? Mouth that had laughed with Mr. Puddlebox these several months? Eyes that often in appeal had sought his own, and that he loved to light from fear to peace, to trust, to confidence, to merriment? Floated he somewhere? Struggled he somewhere? Waited he somewhere for these hands which, when he sometimes caught, proved them at last of use to some one, stronger than some one else's in many years of sin?

Mr. Puddlebox slid to the shingle and ran along it; came to the further barrier and got upon it; stood there in fear. Beyond, and to the next pier, there was no more, between sea and cliff, than room to walk.

His lips had been very dry when, a short space before, looking towards where now he stood, he had run his tongue around them. They were moist then to what, licking them again, his tongue now felt. Cold the sweat then that trickled down his body: warm to what icy stream fear now exuded on his flesh. He had shivered then: now he not shivered but in all his frame shook so that his knees scarcely could support him. Then it was merely safety that he desired: now he realised fear. Then only safety occupied his mind: now cowardice within him, and he knew it. Love, strangely, strongly conceived in these months, called him on: fear, like a live thing on the rock before him, held him, pressed him back. He thought of rippling water awash upon that mouth, and looked along the narrow path before him, and licked his arid lips again: he saw himself with that deep water, that icy water, that thick water, welling, swelling, to his knees, to his waist, to his neck, sucking him adrift—ah! and he looked back whence he had come and ran his tongue again about his ugly, hanging mouth.

"I'm a coward," said Mr. Puddlebox aloud. "I can't come to you, boy," he said. "I've got to go back, boy," he said. "I can't stand the water, boy. I've always been terrified of deep water, boy. I'd come to you through fire, boy; by God, I would. Not through water. I'm a coward. I can't help it, boy. Water takes your breath. I can't do it, boy."

He waited as if he thought an answer would come. There was only an intense stillness. There was only the very tiniest lapping of the water as it welled and swelled: sometimes there was the faint rattle of a stone that the sucking water sucked from the little ridge of pebbles against the cliff.

Mr. Puddlebox looked down upon the water and spoke to it. The words he spoke might have been employed fiercely, but he spoke them scarcely above a whisper as though it were a confidence that he invited of the sea. "Why don't you break and roar?" said Mr. Puddlebox to the sea, bending down to it. "Why don't you break and roar in waves with foam? You'd be more like fire then. There'd be something in you then. It's the dead look of you. It's the thick look of you. Why don't you break and roar? It's the swelling up from under of you. It's the sucking of you. Why don't you break and roar?"

No answer to that. Only the aching stillness. Only the very tiniest, tiniest lapping of the water as it welled and swelled: sometimes the tiny rattle of a stone that from the ridge against the cliff the sucking water sucked.