A marrying man

by G. B. Stern

The boy stumbled up the dripping steps and ran into the little eating-house with the red stuff curtains, and the plates of fish in the window. Probably the proprietor's son.

Gareth's imagination reeled suddenly, appalled, from conception of that young life, spent in daily endless warfare with the enemy that lay just outside his very door; daily endless propitiation, pretence of defiance, tentative play ... fascination and panic clutching him alternately. Fascination usually existed together with that inborn morbid recoil.

And no escape. No needle-eye of escape. Home fixed irrevocably where the water could stealthily lick the wall beneath his window ... so that he might hear it sleeping, and waking, and before sleep. The talk all around him would be of the sea. His very food would taste of brine. The tang of ozone would lurk in every breath he drew into his lungs. As a matter of course he would be sent out with other little harbour brats to amuse himself on the rocks and among the pools; no relief from strain in confiding his obsession to any of his fellows.... "Afraid of the sea? Afraid of the sea?" ... they would not understand—but they would grin, and pass the joke about: "Afraid of the sea!"

Later on he would be expected to make his living dependent upon the sea.

No escape then? dodge desperately as he might, no escape from the enemy. He might defy it with every outward strut and swagger he had at his command.

It would have him in the end.

For this was the lad's adventure: to be afraid of water ... his round adventure; his, mysteriously, before birth and through life and after death, full sweep of the circle. Adventure need not of necessity be joyous adventure....

Gareth sat motionless on the pile of logs; absorbed, dreaming, happy, in his trance of inspiration....

For the harbour-urchin who was afraid of water had identified himself completely with the hero of "The Round Adventure." But he was aware of the enemy, and would not give in; set out to conquer it—always with the fear in his heart. And with the fear in his heart, he became the boldest swimmer and the keenest to sail of all the lads who lived in the fishermen's huts and over the little quayside shops. And he left his square of window unshaded at night so that from his bed he could see the water—deliberately, because of the fear in his heart.... Till by and by he came to hug the fear as his very own, his secret, unshared and unsuspected. There was a queer quality of jubilation in exposing himself to this heavy menacing horror which had singled him out.... Only there were moments when the cold sickening ripple up his thighs, as fiercely he waded in, almost drew from him that terrified scream he had vowed no one should hear....

He grew up to be a ship-builder; in time, prosperous. That was one of his ways of defiance. Only each time a ship of his went to the bottom, he knew the enemy had gained on him slightly. And he built more ships—with the fear in his heart; subconscious fear, aftermath of what has not yet happened....