The Clean Heart

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

In that silence Mr. Puddlebox continued to stare at the water. He stared at it; and at its silence, and as he stared, and as silent, motionless, he continued to stare, his face began to work as, in the presence of a sleeper, sudden stealthy resolve might come to one that watched. Then he began to act as though the water were in fact asleep. He looked all round, then he stepped swiftly down to the little ridge. The pebbles gave beneath him and carried his left foot into the water. He stood perfectly still, pressed against the cliff. "Why don't you break and roar?" whispered Mr. Puddlebox. No answer. No sound. He began to tread very cautiously towards the further pier, the palms of his hands against the cliff, and his face anxiously towards the sea, and all his action as though he moved in stealth and thought to give the sea the slip. As he neared the barrier, so neared the cliff the sea. When but twenty yards remained to be traversed the cliff began to thrust a buttress seaward, awash along its base. "Water takes your breath," Mr. Puddlebox had said. A dozen steps took him above his boots, and he began to catch at his breath as the chill struck him. He opened his mouth with the intent to make these sobbing inspirations less noisy than if drawn hissing through his teeth. He slid his feet as if to lift and splash them would risk awakening the sleeping tide. He was to his knees in it when he reached the rocks. Their surface was green in slimy weed: that meant the tide would cover them. He got up, and on his hands and knees upon the slime caught at his breath and peered beyond.

No beach was visible here: only water: perfectly still.

It was a very short way to the next barrier, and of the barrier very short what was to be seen. The buttress of the cliff pressed steadily out to what was no more than a little table of rock, scarcely thicker above the surface than the thickness of a table-top, then seemed to fall away. A trifle beyond the table there upstood a detached pile of rock, rather like a pulpit and standing about a pulpit's height above the water. That table—when it ran far out along the shore—was where Mr. Puddlebox, looking back, had last seen his loony stand. He remembered it, for he remembered the summit of the pulpit rock that peered above it.

The idea to shout occurred to him. That low table seemed to mark a corner. His loony might be beyond it. If he shouted— He did not dare to shout. Here, more than before, the intensity of the silence possessed him. He did not dare to break it. Here, with no beach visible, the water seemed profoundly dead in slumber.

"Why don't you break and roar?" said Mr. Puddlebox. "Why don't you—" he held his breath and crept forward. He lowered himself and caught his breath. His feet crunched upon the shingle bed, the water stood above his knees, and while the stones still moved where he had disturbed them he stood perfectly still. When they had settled he began to move, sideways, very slowly, his back against the cliff. Each sidelong step took him deeper; at each he more sharply caught his breath. It seemed to him as though the cliff were actually pressing him forward with huge hands. He pressed against it with all his force as though to hold it back. It thrust him, thrust him, thrust him. He was deep to his thighs. He was deep to his waist. "Water takes your breath," Mr. Puddlebox had said. At each deepening step more violently his breath seemed to be taken, more clutchingly had to be recalled. He was above his waist. He stumbled and gave a cry and recovered himself and began to go back; tried to control his dreadful breathing; came on again; then again retreated. Now his breathing that had been sobbing gasps became sheer sobs. He suddenly turned from his sidelong progress, went backwards in two splashing strides whence he had come—in three, in four, and then in a panic headlong rush, and as if he were pursued clambered frantically out again upon the slimy rocks.

As if he were pursued—and now, as if to sight the pursuit, looked sobbing back upon the water he had churned. There was scarcely a sign of his churning. Scarcely a mark of his track. Still as before the water lay there. Still, and thick, and silent, and asleep, and seemed to mock his fears.

"Blast you!" cried Mr. Puddlebox, responsive to the silent mock. "Blast you, why don't you break and roar?" He put a foot down to it and glared at the water. "Why in hell don't you break and roar?" cried Mr. Puddlebox, and flung himself in again, and splashed to the point at which he had turned and fled, and drew a deep breath and went forward above his waist....

The cliff thrust him out and he was deeper; thrust again, and he was above his waist. "Takes your breath"—he was catching at his breath in immense spasms. The shore dropped beneath his feet and he was to his armpits, the table of rock a long pace away. He was drawn from the cliff, and he screamed in dreadful fear. He tried to go back and floundered deeper. He was drowning, he knew. If he lost his footing—and he was losing it—he would go down, and if he went down he never would rise again. He called aloud on God and screamed aloud in wordless terror. The tide swung him against the cliff and drew him screaming and clutching along it. He stumbled and knew himself gone. His hands struck the table of rock. He clutched, found his feet, sprang frantically, and drew himself upon it. He lay there exhausted and moaning. When his abject mind was able to give words to his moans, "O my Christ, don't let me drown," he said. "Not after that, Christ, don't let me drown. O merciful Christ, not after that."

After a little he opened his eyes that had been shut in bewilderment of blind terror and in preparation of death and that he had not courage or thought to open. He opened his eyes. This is what he saw.

Beneath his chin, as he lay, the still, deep water. Close upon his right hand the cliff that towered upwards to the night. A narrow channel away from him stood the pulpit rock. The cliff ran sharply back from beside him, then thrust again towards the pulpit; stopped short of it and then pressed onwards out to sea. Its backward dip formed a tiny inlet over which, masking it from the open sea, the pulpit rock stood sentinel. The back of the inlet showed at its centre a small cave that had the appearance of a human mouth, open. At low water this mouth would have stood a tall man's height above the beach. A short ridge ran along its upper lip. In the dim light it showed there blackly like a little clump of moustache. From its under lip, forming a narrow slipway of beach up to it, there ran a rubble of stones as if the mouth had emitted them or as if its tongue depended into the sea. The corners of the mouth drooped, and here, as if they slobbered, the water trickled in and out responsive to the heaving of the tide.