But at the bottom we were dismayed to see our road cut off: the stream, not apparently deep but fast indeed, was swollen and empowered by the springtime torrents we had seen along the way; it had carried off central piers of a wooden bridge that spanned it. Alas, I had been something impatient at the progress of the day—no more adventuresome thus far than any stroll about the pasture—but there came now on us a spate of alarums and surprises that sweetened the memory of uneventfulness.
Our end of the bridge had washed out with the center. As we stood where it used to stand, debating what to do, G. Herrold all at once broke into his song:
“ ‘One more river,’ say the Founder-man Boss …”
His eyes were wide as on the day I had first seen them; following his gaze across the rapids we beheld a young woman in shift and sandals on the farther bank, who must just have appeared where the road came from a willow-grove there. She walked out on the bridge to its broken end, a stable’s-length from us, watching us the while as steadily as we her.
“Maybe she can tell us where another bridge is,” Max said. “Hush up, G. Herrold, George can ask once.”
But G. Herrold, so far from obeying, cried out
“Hallooyer!”
and stepped to the water’s edge. The woman looked from him to us; then she cupped her hands to her mouth and called out something over our heads. Two syllables, a long and a short, over and over; a plaintive sweet appeal:
“Croa-ker!”
she seemed to cry.
“Croa-ker!”
“What’s it about?” I asked my advisor. But couldn’t stay to hear his opinion, inasmuch as G. Herrold shouted again “Hallooyer!” and commenced to wade into the shallows, heedless of socks and sandals. I called him to stop and hobbled after, but was arrested by a further astonishment: quite daintily, as who should raise her skirt-hem from the mud, upon her next clear cry the lady girl fetched up her shift—nor halted at knee, but hoist it high as would go. Sturdy she stood there, feet apart and privates bare as milch-nan’s to the breeze, sweetly calling, “Croaker, croaker!” From so striking a picture nothing less than G. Herrold’s madness could have drawn me; but he forged and stumbled toward her headlong through the rapids, which drove now against his legs as against the bridge-piles.
“I’m a-coming,”
he sang out,
“Founder knows!”
I started after, but real pursuit was out of the question: my walking-stick found no purchase on the mossy stones, and I slipped at once hard down in the numbing shallows.
“Go back!” I heard the lady warn. Founder pass us, still she stood there, and though with one hand she waved G. Herrold away, with the other she yet clutched up her shift beneath her bosoms. Worse, she commenced to thrust her hips like a rutsome doe and call her call again. I feared now for his life, he was that bound to reach her; already the torrent was hip-high on him, and driving him off his balance. I scrambled up and looked to Max for counsel—whereat I beheld what he already was beholding: the next amazement.
From somewhere upshore, or the cliff-road behind us, or the pure March air, had appeared a party of nine men such as I’d never seen before. Their heads were shaved, their skin was of a darker tone than mine but lighter than G. Herrold’s, and all wore long yellow robes. Eight of them, lean as scarecrows, bore on their shoulders a two-poled platform whereon sat the well-fleshed ninth. His legs were folded tight before him, his hands pressed palm to palm above his belly; his eyes were closed (but not as in sleep), his lips smiled ever so slightly, his whole expression was of a serenity unbefitting the occasion. They crossed the beach—without so much as a glance at the broken bridge, the bare-snatched maid, or our floundering friend—and entered the river themselves. The cold current (which alas had pressed G. Herrold down until he clung now to a boulder for his life) had as well been a sheep-dip tank for all they paused or faltered; already they were waist-high and about to pass two meters upstream from the boulder.
“So save G. Herrold!” Max shouted. And I too: “Snatch him! Snatch him!”
Surely they could have, either by returning their burden to our shore or by excusing for only a moment one of the bearers; they each had a free arm to help with, had they deigned to pass just downstream of him; without even that aid G. Herrold might at least have clung to their yellow wrappers and got his footing. But they would not, they would not, nor so much as share our horror when, at the bridge-girl’s next cry
croaker
, G. Herrold with a wail went under. We saw him roll to the surface some yards down; the lady dropped her shift at last to clutch her hair and shriek. The current fetched G. Herrold against another rock; he scrambled for balance, his white fleece cap tumbled off and away, almost it seemed he might get to his knees again—but the rapids overcame him. Down he went, and under, shophar flopping: once only I thought I glimpsed his wrapper in the foaming rush, then lost sight of it, and he was gone.
We stood shocked for some moments, Max and I, then hastened down the beach. It was slow enough going, what with his age, my gimp, and the stones and slick clay underfoot, but we searched a kilometer at least downstream for some sign of G. Herrold. In vain. A sharp shale promontory blocked our way at the gorge’s mouth, where the river had been dammed. There we caught our breath and wept, half-expecting to see our friend’s body sweep with the river down that spillway into the lake.
“He might have washed ashore where we couldn’t see him,” I insisted. “He could be resting on the other side somewhere.”
Max shook his head.
“Why didn’t they help him?” I demanded angrily. “What was that girl doing those things on the bridge for?”
Max groaned, clutching his beard. “You’re asking me? I never saw such a thing!”
Dusk was upon us, there was no point in waiting longer. At Max’s suggestion we headed bridgewards: surely officials from the Department of Civil Engineering would arrive in the morning, if not that same evening, to inspect the wash-out, which could not go long unrepaired. The most we could do, when they fetched us across, was report the sad news so that the river could be searched for G. Herrold’s body.
“And the woods,” I insisted again, “in case he got out and he’s just lying hurt somewhere.”
“
Ja
, well,” Max agreed, “the woods too, then.” And for my sake he pretended there was some sense in our calling G. Herrold’s name all the way upshore. My burden wanted no explaining to him, who had been my tutor in Responsibility: it was not simply the river that had drowned G. Herrold, but the ruin of his mind, whereof WESCAC and my living self were cause.
Approaching the bridgehead in the last light, we could see the men in yellow on the far shore. Safe over, they had set down their passenger and were themselves positioned around him on the sand, as if to rest. Their legs were folded and their palms pressed together in his manner; I supposed their eyes were shut too, like his, as their ears had been and their hearts. The lady girl we saw still at the bridge-end, but on her knees now in what could be taken for grief: at least her hands hid her face, and her long dark hair her hands.
Yet even as I regarded her, uncertain how to feel, she lifted her head, espied us, and once more sent her flunkèd slender cry over the stream.
“Croa-ker!”
I clenched my fists: What madness
was
it? And before our unbelieving eyes, could it be the shift went up again? Almost unseparable it was from the white of her skin now, as distinction faded with the day—but yes, by dint of squinting I discerned her shame, that patch as it were on her else-pure-whiteness, or fallen fleck of night-sky in her lap! No drowning comrade to divert me, I couldn’t turn my gaze, for all Max warned me to. He understood her now, he declared, and spoke bitterly of those fair dread singers Laertides met, who, had he not stopped his colleagues’ ears and lashed himself to the mast, had lured his research vessel onto the rocks. Every hero sooner or later met their like, Max cautioned (a bit more severely, as I gazed on), and nothing could be more perilous than to attend
them. True, the call of this bridge-girl was nowise fetching, but her temptation was quite as dangerous as the Sirens’. What was more (he clutched at my fleece when I stepped toward the water for a clearer view) it would be a grave error to suppose her an idle whore or exhibitionist, and her presence on the bridge a mere coincidence: nothing could be more likely than that sinister elements in West Campus—the same that had sought my death at the first—had watched my growth carefully all those years, fearing the day I should understand my mission, and having by some means got word of my departure, were resolved to put every obstacle between me and their ruin.
I listened with considerable interest, though without turning my head, and agreed from the side of my mouth that Grand Tutors in general, and particularly one bent on ending forever the Quiet Riot and bringing peace of mind to the whole student body, must inevitably make powerful enemies, if only because riot-defense had become so important a feature in the life and budget of the colleges. And it was perfectly possible, I conceded further, that the girl with her shift up had been sent to intercept me, whether by the Nikolayans or by misguided professor-generals in New Tammany itself, who had a vested interest in the Quiet Riot: was it not on a bridge, after all, that my childhood exemplar W. W. Gruff had come near to being eaten?
“Shut your eyes already!” Max pleaded, coming round front now to push against me, with his toes dug into the sand.
But I would not take them from the thing that held them, which (my grief for G. Herrold notwithstanding) roused me as I’d not been roused since Chickie-in-the-buckwheat. Unmindful of my keeper’s distress—how he butted his head into my stomach, how leaped and waved to interrupt my view—I stared until that little patch of darkness seemed to grow, becoming one with the larger that presently enveloped all, as if the gorge itself had closed over our heads.
“You’re sunk,” Max said despairingly, and stalked off behind me. “Some Grand Tutor.”
The party on the opposite shore had made a little fire, towards which I saw the brown-haired beauty turn at last and go. I was enough myself now to start to wonder at what had possessed me, and at its import for my claim to Grand-Tutorhood. When I heard a new cry from Max behind me and a pebbly rush of footsteps at my back, my first thought was that he feared I might yet wade out in pursuit, as G. Herrold had done. I made to turn and reassure him that the spell was broken—but found myself seized from behind by a strength many times my keeper’s. Nay, I was swept
off my feet by mighty arms, lifted into the air, and borne a-kicking to the water’s edge! I joined my alarums to Max’s, flailed and laid about me with my stick till it flew from my hand. I had been fetched already some meters into the stream before I noticed that the arms about my middle were black ones; my struggles then disclosed my assailant to be wrapperless—more I could not see—and for an instant my heart thrilled: G. Herrold was it then, not drowned after all? Or was his ghost come back to wrestle as of old, or fetch me over to our hearts’ desire, or—fearful thought!—drag me under with him?
This last seemed likeliest, once my conscience had proposed it; not only did it match the tales I’d read of spookly retribution, but in fact I fell or was flung now into the water, and found myself fighting the current as well as my attacker. I managed once to cry G. Herrold’s name, and heard a grunting reply before my ears and mouth filled up with water. Then I had no time to care what had leaped me: I fought for air and footholds, struggling upstream against his clutch as he strove to pull me down, and always, despite my best efforts, working out to deeper water—until at length the rapids took my legs from under me and fetched me thump against my adversary. In a whole panic, strangling and spitting, I clambered on him as upon a black boulder, not to drown; in only a moment I had climbed to his shoulders and got my legs round his neck. Whereupon a remarkable change came over him: instead of flinging me off or ducking me under, he gripped my ankles, and giving over the assault, struck out purposefully and midstreamwards.
Now I had time to hear Max crying behind us, “Yi yi yi!” while from the shore ahead, where she flickered in the firelight, the bridge-girl resumed her call. And if it
was
G. Herrold’s ghost who bore me, death had worked alterations on him: the head I clutched was bald instead of woolly, he had grown a muscled paunch, and in general his body was huger and more gross. Then I heard him respond with his curious noise to the girl’s cry “Croaker,” and it struck me he
did
rather croak than grunt. I addressed him myself in that wise: sure enough, his grip tightened on my ankles, and he seemed to nod his head as he croaked acknowledgment. But all the while we were getting in deeper, until now the water rushed chest-high on him; little use learning his name if the brute meant to drown us after all.
“
Gee-up
, Croaker!” I therefore commanded, pounding on his skull for emphasis. “This way, flunk you!” I endeavored by grasping his ears to turn his head upstream; if I couldn’t face him round I hoped at least to work him up towards the bridge-piles, where with luck I might scramble free of
him and wait for rescue. But the white-smocked Siren (how I loathed and feared her now, and saw the truth—too late as always—of Max’s warning!) she
would
call him to her,
would
bare again her firelit shame, which caught Croaker’s eye as it had G. Herrold’s and my own, and brought helmsmanship to naught. In a bitter clear flash I saw the source and pattern of my ruin: this it was had lost me Lady Creamhair, else my friend; the same had brought me to slaughter Redfearn’s Tom and smite dear Max! A wretched hanker was my curse and flunking—as doubtless my enemies had seen at once. What need of troll or dragon to undo me? Only hire some lady co-ed to hoist her shift, and for what’s poor sake I’d spoilt every decent bond with my fellow creatures—abused, assaulted, killed—I could be counted upon to forfeit not only my misbegotten life but the claim and mission of Grand-Tutorhood. The whole of studentdom might languish unCommencèd, even EAT itself alive, for all
I’d
ever put by prurience on principle’s behalf!