CHAPTER IV. — TYRREL’S REMORSE.
The two young men walked back, without interchanging another word, to the gate of the manor-house. Tyrrel opened it with a swing. Then, once within his own grounds, and free from prying eyes, he sat down forthwith upon a little craggy cliff that overhung the carriage-drive, buried his face in his hands, and, to Le Neve’s intense astonishment, cried long and silently. He let himself go with a rush; that’s the Cornish nature. Eustace Le Neve sat by his side, not daring to speak, but in mute sympathy with his sorrow. For many minutes neither uttered a sound. At last Tyrrel looked up, and in an agony of remorse, turned round to his companion. “Of course you understand,” he said.
And Eustace answered reverently, “Yes, I think I understand. Having come so near doing the same thing myself, I sympathize with you.”
Tyrrel paused a moment again. His face was like marble. Then he added, in a tone of the profoundest anguish, “Till this minute, Eustace, I’ve never told anybody. And if it hadn’t been forced out of me by that poor man’s tortured and broken-hearted face, I wouldn’t have told you now. But could I look at him to-day and not break down before him?”
“How did it all happen?” Le Neve asked, leaning forward and clasping his friend’s arm with a brotherly gesture.
Tyrrel answered with a deep sigh, “Like this. I’ll make a clean breast of it all at last. I’ve bottled it up too long. I’ll tell you now, Eustace.
“Nearly sixteen years ago I was staying down here at Penmorgan with my uncle. The Trevennacks, as I learned afterward, were in lodgings at Gunwalloe. But, so far as I can remember at present, I never even saw them. To the best of my belief I never set eyes on Michael Trevennack himself before this very morning. If I’d known who he was, you may be pretty sure I’d have cut off my right hand before I’d allowed myself to speak to him.
“Well, one day that year I was strolling along the top of the cliff by Michael’s Crag, with my uncle beside me, who owned Penmorgan. I was but a boy then, and I walked by the edge more than once, very carelessly. My uncle knew the cliffs, though, and how dangerous they were; he knew men might any time be walking below, digging launces in the sand, or getting lobworms for their lines, or hunting serpentine to polish, or looking for sea-bird’s eggs among the half-way ledges. Time after time he called out to me, ‘Walter, my boy, take care; don’t go so near the edge, you’ll tumble over presently.’ And time after time I answered him back, like a boy that I was, ‘Oh, I’m all right, uncle. No fear about me. I can take care of myself. These cliffs don’t crumble. They’re a deal too solid.’
“At last, when he saw it was no good warning me that way any longer, he turned round to me rather sharply—he was a Tyrrel, you see, and conscientious, as we all of us are—it runs in the blood somehow—‘If you don’t mind for yourself, at least mind for others. Who can say who may be walking underneath those rocks? If you let a loose stone fall you may commit manslaughter.’
“I laughed, and thought ill of him. He was such a fidget! I was only a boy. I considered him absurdly and unnecessarily particular. He had stalked on a yard or two in front. I loitered behind, and out of pure boyish deviltry, as I was just above Michael’s Crag, I loosened some stones with my foot and showered them over deliberately. Oh, heavens, I feel it yet; how they rattled and rumbled!
“My uncle wasn’t looking. He walked on and left me behind. He didn’t see me push them. He didn’t see them fall. He didn’t hear them rattle. But as they reached the bottom I heard myself—or thought I heard—a vague cry below. A cry as of some one wounded. I was frightened at that; I didn’t dare to look down, but ran on to my uncle. Not till some hours after did I know the whole truth, for we walked along the cliffs all the way to Kynance, and then returned inland by the road to the Lizard.
“That afternoon, late, there was commotion at Penmorgan. The servants brought us word how a bit of the cliff near Michael’s Crag had foundered unawares, and struck two people who were walking below—a Mr. Trevennack, in lodgings at Gunwalloe, and his boy Michael. The father wasn’t much hurt, they said; but the son—oh, Eustace! the son was dangerously wounded.... I listened in terror.... He lived out the night, and died next morning.”
Tyrrel leaned back in agony as he spoke, and looked utterly crushed. It was an awful memory. Le Neve hardly knew what to say, the man’s remorse was so poignant. After all those years the boy’s thoughtless act seemed to weigh like a millstone round the grown man’s neck. Eustace held his peace, and felt for him. By and by Tyrrel went on again, rocking himself to and fro on his rough seat as he spoke. “For fifteen years,” he said, piteously, “I’ve borne this burden in my heart, and never told anybody. I tell it now first of all men to you. You’re the only soul on earth who shares my secret.”
“Then your uncle didn’t suspect it?” Eustace asked, all breathless.
Walter Tyrrel shook his head. “On the contrary,” he answered, “he said to me next day, ‘How glad I am Walter, my boy, I called you away from the cliff that moment! It was quite providential. For if you’d loosened a stone, and then this thing had happened, we’d both of us have believed it was YOU that did it?’ I was too frightened and appalled to tell him it WAS I. I thought they’d hang me. But from that day to this—Eustace, Eustace, believe me—I’ve never ceased to think of it! I’ve never forgiven myself!”
“Yet it was an accident after all,” Le Neve said, trying to comfort him.
“No, no; not quite. I should have been warned in time. I should have obeyed my uncle. But what would you have? It’s the luck of the Tyrrels.”
He spoke plaintively. Le Neve pulled a piece of grass and began biting it to hide his confusion. How near he might have come to doing the same thing himself. He thanked his stars it wasn’t he. He thanked his stars he hadn’t let that stone drop from the cliff that morning.
Tyrrel was the first to break the solemn silence. “You can understand now,” he said, with an impatient gesture, “why I hate Penmorgan. I’ve hated it ever since. I shall always hate it. It seems like a mute reminder of that awful day. In my uncle’s time I never came near it. But as soon as it was my own I felt I must live upon it; and now, this terror of meeting Trevennack some day has made life one long burden to me. Sooner or later I felt sure I should run against him. They told me how he came down here from time to time to see where his son died, and I knew I should meet him. Now you can understand, too, why I hate the top of the cliffs so much, and WILL walk at the bottom. I had two good reasons for that. One I’ve told you already; the other was the fear of coming across Trevennack.”
Le Neve turned to him compassionately. “My dear fellow,” he said, “you take it too much to heart. It was so long ago, and you were only a child. The... the accident might happen to any boy any day.”
“Yes, yes,” Tyrrel answered, passionately. “I know all that. I try, so, to console myself. But then I’ve wrecked that unhappy man’s life for him.”
“He has his daughter still,” Le Neve put in, vaguely. It was all he could think of to say by way of consolation; and to him, Cleer Trevennack would have made up for anything.
A strange shade passed over Tyrrel’s face. Eustace noted it instinctively. Something within seemed to move that Cornish heart. “Yes, he has his daughter still,” the Squire of Penmorgan answered, with a vacant air. “But for me, that only makes things still worse than before.... How can she pardon my act? What can she ever think of me?”
Le Neve turned sharply round upon him. There was some undercurrent in the tone in which he spoke that suggested far more than the mere words themselves might perhaps have conveyed to him. “What do you mean?” he asked, all eager, in a quick, low voice. “You’ve met Miss Trevennack before? You’ve seen her? You’ve spoken to her?”
For a second Tyrrel hesitated; then, with a burst, he spoke out. “I may as well tell you all,” he cried, “now I’ve told you so much. Yes, I’ve met her before, I’ve seen her, I’ve spoken to her.”
“But she didn’t seem to recognize you,” Le Neve objected, taken aback.
Tyrrel shook his head despondently. “That’s the worst of it all,” he answered, with a very sad sigh. “She didn’t even remember me.... She was so much to me; and to her—why, to HER, Eustace—I was less than nothing.”
“And you knew who she was when you saw her just now?” Le Neve asked, greatly puzzled.
“Yes and no. Not exactly. I knew she was the person I’d seen and talked with, but I’d never heard her name, nor connected her in any way with Michael Trevennack. If I had, things would be different. It’s a terrible Nemesis. I’ll tell you how it happened. I may as well tell all. But the worst point of the whole to me in this crushing blow is to learn that that girl is Michael Trevennack’s daughter.”
“Where and when did you meet her then?” Le Neve asked, growing curious.
“Quite casually, once only, some time since, in a railway carnage. It must be two years ago now, and I was going from Bath to Bournemouth. She traveled with me in the same compartment as far as Temple Combe, and I talked all the way with her; I can remember every word of it.... Eustace, it’s foolish of me to acknowledge it, perhaps, but in those two short hours I fell madly in love with her. Her face has lived with me ever since; I’ve longed to meet her, But I was stupidly afraid to ask her name before she got out of the train; and I had no clue at all to her home or her relations. Yet, a thousand times since I’ve said to myself, ‘If ever I marry I’ll marry that girl who went in the carriage from Bath to Temple Combe with me.’ I’ve cherished her memory from that day to this. You mayn’t believe, I dare say, in love at first sight; but this I can swear to you was a genuine case of it.”
“I can believe in it very well,” Le Neve answered, most truthfully, “now I’ve seen Miss Trevennack.”
Tyrrel looked at him, and smiled sadly. “Well, when I saw her again this morning,” he went on, after a short pause, “my heart came up into my mouth. I said to myself, with a bound, ‘It’s she! It’s she! At last I’ve found her.’ And it dashed my best hopes to the ground at once to see she didn’t even remember having met me.”
Le Neve looked at him shyly. “Walter,” he said, after a short struggle, “I’m not surprised you fell in love with her. And shall I tell you why? I fell in love with her myself, too, the moment I saw her.”
Tyrrel turned to him without one word of reproach. “Well, we’re no rivals now,” he answered, generously. “Even if she would have me—even if she loved me well—how could I ask her to take—her brother’s murderer?”
Le Neve drew a long breath. He hadn’t thought of that before. But had it been other wise, he couldn’t help feeling that the master of Penmorgan would have been a formidable rival for a penniless engineer just home from South America.
For already Eustace Le Neve was dimly aware, in his own sanguine mind, that he meant to woo and win that beautiful Cleer Trevennack.
CHAPTER V. — A STRANGE DELUSION.
Trevennack and his wife sat alone that night in their bare rooms at Gunwalloe. Cleer had gone out to see some girls of her acquaintance who were lodging close by in a fisherman’s house; and the husband and wife were left for a few hours by themselves together.
“Michael,” Mrs. Trevennack began, as soon as they were alone, rising up from her chair and coming over toward him tenderly, “I was horribly afraid you were going to break out before those two young men on the cliff to-day. I saw you were just on the very brink of it. But you resisted bravely. Thank you so much for that. You’re a dear good fellow. I was so pleased with you and so proud of you.”
“Break out about our poor boy?” Trevennack asked, with a dreamy air, passing his bronzed hand wearily across his high white forehead.
His wife seated herself sideways upon the arm of his chair, and bent over him as he sat, with wifely confidence. “No, no, dear,” she said, taking his hand in hers and soothing it with her soft palm. “About—YOU know—well, of course, that other thing.”
At the mere hint, Trevennack leaned back and drew himself up proudly to his full height, like a soldier. He looked majestic as he sat there—every inch a St. Michael. “Well, it’s hard to keep such a secret,” he answered, laying his free hand on his breast, “hard to keep such a secret; and I own, when they were talking about it, I longed to tell them. But for Cleer’s sake I refrained, Lucy. For Cleer’s sake I always refrain. You’re quite right about that. I know, of course, for Cleer’s sake I must keep it locked up in my own heart forever.”
The silver-haired lady bent over him again, both caressingly and proudly. “Michael, dear Michael,” she said, with a soft thrill in her voice, “I love you and honor you for it. I can FEEL what it costs you. My darling, I know how hard you have to fight against it. I could see you fighting against it to-day; and I was proud of the way you struggled with it, single-handed, till you gained the victory.”
Trevennack drew himself up still more haughtily than before. “And who should struggle against the devil,” he said, “single-handed as you say, and gain the victory at last, if not I, myself, Lucy?”
He said it like some great one. His wife soothed his hand again and repressed a sigh. She was a great-hearted lady, that brave wife and mother, who bore her own trouble without a word spoken to anyone; but she must sigh, at least, sometimes; it was such a relief to her pent-up feelings. “Who indeed?” she said, acquiescent. “Who indeed, if not you? And I love you best when you conquer so, Michael.”
Trevennack looked down upon her with a strange tender look on his face, in which gentleness and condescension were curiously mingled. “Yes,” he answered, musing; “for dear Cleer’s sake I will always keep my peace about it. I’ll say not a word. I’ll never tell anybody. And yet it’s hard to keep it in; very hard, indeed. I have to bind myself round, as it were, with bonds of iron. The secret will almost out of itself at times. As this morning, for example, when that young fellow wanted to know why St. Michael always clung to such airy pinnacles. How jauntily he talked about it, as if the reason for the selection were a matter of no moment! How little he seemed to think of the Prince of the Archangels!”
“But for Cleer’s sake, darling, you kept it in,” Mrs. Trevennack said, coaxingly; “and for Cleer’s sake you’ll keep it in still—I know you will; now won’t you?”
Trevennack looked the picture of embodied self-restraint. His back was rigid. “For Cleer’s sake I’ll keep it in,” he said, firmly. “I know how important it is for her. Never in this world have I breathed a word of it to any living soul but you; and never in this world I will. The rest wouldn’t understand. They’d say it was madness.”
“They would,” his wife assented very gravely and earnestly. “And that would be so bad for Cleer’s future prospects. People would think you were out of your mind; and you know how chary young men are nowadays of marrying a girl when they believe or even suspect there’s insanity in the family. You can talk of it as much and as often as you like to ME, dear Michael. I think that does you good. It acts as a safety-valve. It keeps you from bottling your secret up in your own heart too long, and brooding over it, and worrying yourself. I like you to talk to ME of it whenever you feel inclined. But for heaven’s sake, darling, to nobody else. Not a hint of it for worlds. The consequences might be terrible.”
Trevennack rose and stood at his full height, with his heels on the edge of the low cottage fender. “You can trust me, Lucy,” he said, in a very soft tone, with grave and conscious dignity. “You can trust me to hold my tongue. I know how much depends upon it.”
The beautiful lady with the silvery hair sat and gazed on him admiringly. She knew she could trust him; she knew he would keep it in. But she knew at the same time how desperate a struggle the effort cost him; and visionary though he was, she loved and admired him for it.
There was an eloquent silence. Then, after a while, Trevennack spoke again, more tenderly and regretfully. “That man did it!” he said, with slow emphasis. “I saw by his face at once he did it. He killed our poor boy. I could read it in his look. I’m sure it was he. And besides, I have news of it, certain news—from elsewhere,” and he looked up significantly.
“Michael!” Mrs. Trevennack said, drawing close to him with an appealing gesture, and gazing hard into his eyes; “it’s a long time since. He was a boy at the time. He did it carelessly, no doubt; but not guiltily, culpably. For Cleer’s sake, there, too—oh, forgive him, forgive him!” She clasped her hands tight; she looked up at him tearfully.
“It was the devil’s work,” her husband answered, with a faint frown on his high forehead, “and my task in life, Lucy, is to fight down the devil.”
“Fight him down in your own heart, then, dear,” Mrs. Trevennack said, gently. “Remember, we all may fall. Lucifer did—and he was once an archangel. Fight him down in your own heart when he suggests hateful thoughts to you. For I know what you felt when it came over you instinctively that that young man had done it. You wanted to fly straight at his throat, dear Michael—you wanted to fly at his throat, and fling him over the precipice.”
“I did,” Trevennack answered, making no pretense of denial. “But for Cleer’s sake I refrained. And for Cleer’s sake, if you wish it, I’ll try to forgive him.”
Mrs. Trevennack pressed his hand. Tears stood in her dim eyes. She, too, had a terrible battle to fight all the days of her life, and she fought it valiantly. “Michael,” she said, with an effort, “try to avoid that young man. Try to avoid him, I implore you. Don’t go near him in the future. If you see him too often, I’m afraid what the result for you both may be. You control yourself wonderfully, dear; you control yourself, I know; and I’m grateful to you for it. But if you see too much of him, I dread an outbreak. It may get the better of you. And then—think of Cleer! Avoid him! Avoid him!”
For only that silver-headed woman of all people on earth knew the terrible truth, that Michael Trevennack’s was a hopeless case of suppressed insanity. Well suppressed, indeed, and kept firmly in check for his daughter’s sake, and by his brave wife’s aid; but insanity, none the less, of the profoundest monomaniacal pattern, for all that. All day long, and every day, in his dealings with the outer world, he kept down his monomania. An able and trusted government servant, he never allowed it for one moment to interfere with his public duties. To his wife alone he let out what he thought the inmost and deepest secret of his real existence—that he was the Archangel Michael. To no one else did he ever allow a glimpse of the truth, as he thought it, to appear. He knew the world would call it madness; and he didn’t wish the stigma of inherited insanity to cling to his Cleer.
Not even Cleer herself for a moment suspected it.
Trevennack was wise enough and cunning enough, as madmen often are, to keep his own counsel, for good and sufficient reason.
CHAPTER VI. — PURE ACCIDENT.
During the next week or so, as chance would have it, Cleer Trevennack fell in more than once on her walks with Eustace Le Neve and Walter Tyrrel. They had picked up acquaintance in an irregular way, to be sure; but Cleer hadn’t happened to be close by when her father uttered those strange words to his wife, “It was he who did it; it was he who killed our boy”; nor did she notice particularly the marked abruptness of Tyrrel’s departure on that unfortunate occasion. So she had no such objection to meeting the two young men as Trevennack himself not unnaturally displayed; she regarded his evident avoidance of Walter Tyrrel as merely one of “Papa’s fancies.” To Cleer, Papa’s fancies were mysterious but very familiar entities; and Tyrrel and Le Neve were simply two interesting and intelligent young men—the squire of the village and a friend on a visit to him. Indeed, to be quite confidential, it was the visitor who occupied the larger share of Cleer’s attention. He was so good-looking and so nice. His open face and pink and white complexion had attracted her fancy from the very first; and the more she saw of him the more she liked him.
They met often—quite by accident, of course—on the moor and elsewhere. Tyrrel, for his part, shrank somewhat timidly from the sister of the boy, for his share in whose death he so bitterly reproached himself; yet he couldn’t quite drag himself off whenever he found himself in Cleer’s presence. She bound him as by a spell. He was profoundly attracted to her. There was something about the pretty Cornish girl so frank, so confiding, in one word, so magnetic, that when once he came near her he couldn’t tear himself away as he felt he ought to. Yet he could see very well, none the less, it was for Eustace Le Neve that she watched most eagerly, with the natural interest of a budding girl in the man who takes her pure maiden fancy. Tyrrel allowed with a sigh that this was well indeed; for how could he ever dream, now he knew who she was, of marrying young Michael Trevennack’s sister?
One afternoon the two friends were returning from a long ramble across the open moor, when, near a little knoll of bare and weathered rock that rose from a circling belt of Cornish heath, they saw Cleer by herself, propped against the huge boulders, with her eyes fixed intently on a paper-covered novel. She looked up and smiled as they approached; and the young men, turning aside from their ill-marked path, came over and stood by her. They talked for awhile about the ordinary nothings of society small-talk, till by degrees Cleer chanced accidentally to bring the conversation round to something that had happened to her mother and herself a year or two since in Malta. Le Neve snatched at the word; for he was eager to learn all he could about the Trevennacks’ movements, so deeply had Cleer already impressed her image on his susceptible nature.
“And when do you go back there?” he asked, somewhat anxiously. “I suppose your father’s leave is for a week or two only.”
“Oh, dear, no; we don’t go back at all, thank heaven,” Cleer answered, with a sunny smile. “I can’t bear exile, Mr. Le Neve, and I never cared one bit for living in Malta. But this year, fortunately, papa’s going to be transferred for a permanence to England; he’s to have charge of a department that has something or other to do with provisioning the Channel Squadron; I don’t quite understand what; but anyhow, he’ll have to be running about between Portsmouth and Plymouth, and I don’t know where else; and mamma and I will have to take a house for ourselves in London.”
Le Neve’s face showed his pleasure. “That’s well,” he answered, briskly. “Then you won’t be quite lost! I mean, there’ll be some chance at least when you go away from here of one’s seeing you sometimes.”
A bright red spot rose deep on Cleer’s cheek through the dark olive-brown skin. “How kind of you to say so,” she answered, looking down. “I’m sure mamma’ll be very pleased, indeed, if you’ll take the trouble to call.” Then, to hide her confusion, she went on hastily, “And are YOU going to be in England, too? I thought I understood the other day from your friend you had something to do with a railway in South America.”
“Oh, that’s all over now,” Le Neve answered, with a wave, well pleased she should ask him about his whereabouts so cordially. “I was only employed in the construction of the line, you know; I’ve nothing at all to do with its maintenance and working, and now the track’s laid, my work there’s finished. But as to stopping in England,—ah—that’s quite another thing. An engineer’s, you know, is a roving life. He’s here to-day and there to-morrow. I must go, I suppose, wherever work may take me. And there isn’t much stirring in the markets just now in the way of engineering.”
“I hope you’ll get something at home,” Cleer said, simply, with a blush, and then blamed herself for saying it. She blushed again at the thought. She looked prettiest when she blushed. Walter Tyrrel, a little behind, stood and admired her all the while. But Eustace was flattered she should think of wanting him to remain in England.
“Thank you,” he said, somewhat timidly, for her bashfulness made him a trifle bashful in return. “I should like to very much—for more reasons than one;” and he looked at her meaningly. “I’m getting tired, in some ways, of life abroad. I’d much prefer to come back now and settle down in England.”
Cleer rose as he spoke. His frank admiration made her feel self-conscious. She thought this conversation had gone quite far enough for them both for the present. After all, she knew so little of him, though he was really very nice, and he looked at her so kindly! But perhaps it would be better to go and hunt up papa. “I think I ought to be moving now,” she said, with a delicious little flush on her smooth, dark cheek. “My father’ll be waiting for me.” And she set her face across the moor in the opposite direction from the gate of Penmorgan.
“We may come with you, mayn’t we?” Eustace asked, with just an undertone of wistfulness.
But Tyrrel darted a warning glance at him. He, at least, couldn’t go to confront once more that poor dead boy’s father.
“I must hurry home,” he said, feebly, consulting his watch with an abstracted air. “It’s getting so late. But don’t let me prevent YOU from accompanying Miss Trevennack.”
Cleer shrank away, a little alarmed. She wasn’t quite sure whether it would be perfectly right for her to walk about alone on the moorland with only ONE young man, though she wouldn’t have minded the two, for there is safety in numbers. “Oh, no,” she said, half frightened, in that composite tone which is at once an entreaty and a positive command. “Don’t mind me, Mr. Le Neve. I’m quite accustomed to strolling by myself round the cliff. I wouldn’t make you miss your dinner for worlds. And besides, papa’s not far off. He went away from me, rambling.”
The two young men, accepting their dismissal in the sense in which it was intended, saluted her deferentially, and turned away on their own road. But Cleer took the path to Michael’s Crag, by the gully.
From the foot of the crag you can’t see the summit. Its own shoulders and the loose rocks of the foreground hide it. But Cleer was pretty certain her father must be there; for he was mostly to be found, when tide permitted it, perched up on the highest pinnacle of his namesake skerry, looking out upon the waters with a pre-occupied glance from that airy citadel. The waves in the narrow channel that separate the crag from the opposite mainland were running high and boisterous, but Cleer had a sure foot, and could leap, light as a gazelle, from rock to rock. Not for nothing was she Michael Trevennack’s daughter, well trained from her babyhood to high and airy climbs. She chose an easy spot where it was possible to spring across by a series of boulders, arranged accidentally like stepping-stones; and in a minute she was standing on the main crag itself, a huge beetling mass of detached serpentine pushed boldly out as the advance-guard of the land into the assailing waves, and tapering at its top into a pyramidal steeple.
The face of the crag was wet with spray in places; but Cleer didn’t mind spray; she was accustomed to the sea in all its moods and tempers. She clambered up the steep side—a sheer wall of bare rock, lightly clad here and there with sparse drapery of green sapphire, or clumps of purple sea-aster, rooted firm in the crannies. Its front was yellow with great patches of lichen, and on the peaks, overhead, the gulls perched, chattering, or launched themselves in long curves upon the evening air. Cleer paused half way up to draw breath and admire the familiar scene. Often as she had gone there before, she could never help gazing with enchanted eyes on those brilliantly colored pinnacles, on that deep green sea, on those angry white breakers that dashed in ceaseless assault against the solid black wall of rock all round her. Then she started once more on her climb up the uncertain path, a mere foothold in the crannies, clinging close with her tiny hands as she went to every jutting corner or weather-worn rock, and every woody stem of weather-beaten sea plants.
At last, panting and hot, she reached the sharp top, expecting to find Trevennack at his accustomed post on the very tallest pinnacle of the craggy little islet. But, to her immense surprise, her father wasn’t there. His absence disquieted her. Cleer stood up on the fissured mass of orange-lichened rock that crowned the very summit, dispossessing the gulls who flapped round her as she mounted it; then, shading her eyes with her hand, she looked down in every direction to see if she could descry that missing figure in some nook of the crag. He was nowhere visible. “Father!” she cried aloud, at the top of her voice; “father! father! father!” But the only answer to her cry was the sound of the sea on the base, and the loud noise of the gulls, as they screamed and fluttered in angry surprise over their accustomed breeding-grounds.
Alarmed and irresolute, Cleer sat down on the rock, and facing landwards for awhile, waved her handkerchief to and fro to attract, if possible, her father’s attention. Then she scanned the opposite cliffs, beyond the gap or chasm that separated her from the mainland; but she could nowhere see him. He must have forgotten her and gone home to dinner alone, she fancied now, for it was nearly seven o’clock. Nothing remained but to climb down again and follow him. It was getting full late to be out by herself on the island. And tide was coming in, and the surf was getting strong—Atlantic swell from the gale at sea yesterday.
Painfully and toilsomely she clambered down the steep path, making her foothold good, step by step, in the slippery crannies, rendered still more dangerous in places by the sticky spray and the brine that dashed over them from the seething channel. It was harder coming down, a good deal, than going up, and she was accustomed to her father’s hand to guide her—to fit her light foot on the little ledges by the way, or to lift her down over the steepest bits with unfailing tenderness. So she found it rather difficult to descend by herself—both difficult and tedious. At last, however, after one or two nasty slips, and a false step or so on the way that ended in her grazing the tender skin on those white little fingers, Cleer reached the base of the crag, and stood face to face with the final problem of crossing the chasm that divided the islet from the opposite mainland.
Then for the first time the truth was borne in upon her with a sudden rush that she couldn’t get back—she was imprisoned on the island. She had crossed over at almost the last moment possible. The sea now quite covered two or three of her stepping-stones; fierce surf broke over the rest with each advancing billow, and rendered the task of jumping from one to the other impracticable even for a strong and sure-footed man, far more for a slight girl of Cleer’s height and figure.
In a moment the little prisoner took in the full horror of the situation. It was now about half tide, and seven o’clock in the evening. High water would therefore fall between ten and eleven; and it must be nearly two in the morning, she calculated hastily, before the sea had gone down enough to let her cross over in safety. Even then, in the dark, she dared hardly face those treacherous stepping-stones. She must stop there till day broke, if she meant to get ashore again without unnecessary hazard.
Cleer was a Trevennack, and therefore brave; but the notion of stopping alone on that desolate island, thronged with gulls and cormorants, in the open air, through all those long dark hours till morning dawned, fairly frightened and appalled her. For a minute or two she crouched and cowered in silence. Then, overcome by terror, she climbed up once more to the first platform of rock, above the reach of the spray, and shouted with all her might, “Father! father! father!”
But ‘tis a lonely coast, that wild stretch by the Lizard. Not a soul was within earshot. Cleer sat there still, or stood on top of the crag, for many minutes together, shouting and waving her handkerchief for dear life itself; but not a soul heard her. She might have died there unnoticed; not a creature came near to help or deliver her. The gulls and the cormorants alone stared at her and wondered.
Meanwhile, tide kept flowing with incredible rapidity. The gale in the Atlantic had raised an unwonted swell; and though there was now little wind, the breakers kept thundering in upon the firm, sandy beach with a deafening roar that drowned Cleer’s poor voice completely. To add to her misfortunes, fog began to drift slowly with the breeze from seaward. It was getting dark too, and the rocks were damp. Overhead the gulls screamed loud as they flapped and circled above her.
In an agony of despair, Cleer sat down all unnerved on the topmost crag. She began to cry to herself. It was all up now. She knew she must stop there alone till morning.
CHAPTER VII. — PERIL BY LAND.
The Trevennacks dined in their lodgings at Gunwalloe at half-past seven. But in the rough open-air life of summer visitors on the Cornish coast, meals as a rule are very movable feasts; and Michael Trevennack wasn’t particularly alarmed when he reached home that evening to find Cleer hadn’t returned before him. They had missed one another, somehow, among the tangled paths that led down the gully; an easy enough thing to do between those big boulders and bramble-bushes; and it was a quarter to eight before Trevennack began to feel alarmed at Cleer’s prolonged absence. By that time, however, he grew thoroughly frightened; and, reproaching himself bitterly for having let his daughter stray out of his sight in the first place, he hurried back, with his wife, at the top of his speed along the cliff path to the Penmorgan headland.
It’s half an hour’s walk from Gunwalloe to Michael’s Crag; and by the time Trevennack reached the mouth of the gully the sands were almost covered; so for the first time in fifteen years he was forced to take the path right under the cliff to the now comparatively distant island, round whose base a whole waste of angry sea surged sullenly. On the way they met a few workmen who, in answer to their inquiries, could give them no news, but who turned back to aid in the search for the missing young lady. When they got opposite Michael’s Crag, a wide belt of black water, all encumbered with broken masses of sharp rock, some above and some below the surface, now separated them by fifty yards or more from the island. It was growing dark fast, for these were the closing days of August twilight; and dense fog had drifted in, half obliterating everything. They could barely descry the dim outline of the pyramidal rock in its lower half; its upper part was wholly shrouded in thick mist and drizzle.
With a wild cry of despair, Trevennack raised his voice, and shouted aloud, “Cleer, Cleer! where are you?”
That clarion voice, as of his namesake angel, though raised against the wind, could be heard above even the thud of the fierce breakers that pounded the sand. On the highest peak above, where she sat, cold and shivering, Cleer heard it, and jumped up. “Here! here! father!” she cried out, with a terrible effort, descending at the same time down the sheer face of the cliff as far as the dashing spray and fierce wild waves would allow her.
No other ear caught the sound of that answering cry; but Trevennack’s keen senses, preternaturally awakened by the gravity of the crisis, detected the faint ring of her girlish voice through the thunder of the surf. “She’s there!” he cried, frantically, waving his hands above his head. “She’s there! She’s there! We must get across and save her.”
For a second Mrs. Trevennack doubted whether he was really right, or whether this was only one of poor Michael’s hallucinations. But the next moment, with another cry, Cleer waved her handkerchief in return, and let it fall from her hand. It came, carried on the light breeze, and dropped in the water before their very eyes, half way across the channel.
Frenzied at the sight, Trevennack tore off his coat, and would have plunged into the sea, then and there, to rescue her. But the workmen held him back. “No, no, sir; you mustn’t,” they said. “No harm can’t come to the young lady if she stops there. She’ve only got to sit on them rocks there till morning, and the tide’ll leave her high and dry right enough, as it always do. But nobody couldn’t live in such a sea as that—not Tim o’ Truro. The waves ‘u’d dash him up afore he knowed where he was, and smash him all to pieces on the side o’ the island.”
Trevennack tried to break from them, but the men held him hard. Their resistance angered him. He chafed under their restraint. How dare these rough fellows lay hands like that on the Prince of the Archangels and a superior officer in Her Majesty’s Civil Service? But with the self-restraint that was habitual to him, he managed to refrain, even so, from disclosing his identity. He only struggled ineffectually, instead of blasting them with his hot breath, or clutching his strong arms round their bare throats and choking them. As he stood there and hesitated, half undecided how to act, of a sudden a sharp cry arose from behind. Trevennack turned and looked. Through the dark and the fog he could just dimly descry two men hurrying up, with ropes and life buoys. As they neared him, he started in unspeakable horror. For one of them, indeed, was only Eustace Le Neve; but the other—the other was that devil Walter Tyrrel, who, he felt sure in his own heart, had killed their dear Michael. And it was his task in life to fight and conquer devils.
For a minute he longed to leap upon him and trample him under foot, as long ago he had trampled his old enemy, Satan. What was the fellow doing here now? What business had he with Cleer? Was he always to be in at the death of a Trevennack?
But true to her trust, the silver-haired lady clutched his arm with tender watchfulness. “For Cleer’s sake, dear Michael!” she whispered low in his ear; “for Cleer’s sake—say nothing; don’t speak to him, don’t notice him!”
The distracted father drew back a step, out of reach of the spray. “But Lucy,” he cried low to her, “only think! only remember! If I cared to go on the cliff and just spread my wings, I could fly across and save her—so instantly, so easily!”
His wife held his hand hard. That touch always soothed him. “If you did, Michael,” she said gently, with her feminine tact, “they’d all declare you were mad, and had no wings to fly with. And Cleer’s in no immediate danger just now, I feel sure. Don’t try, there’s a dear man. That’s right! Oh, thank you.”
Reassured by her calm confidence, Trevennack fell back yet another step on the sands, and watched the men aloof. Walter Tyrrel turned to him. His heart was in his mouth. He spoke in short, sharp sentences. “The coastguard’s wife told us,” he said. “We’ve come down to get her off. I’ve sent word direct to the Lizard lifeboat. But I’m afraid it won’t come. They daren’t venture out. Sea runs too high, and these rocks are too dangerous.”
As he spoke, he tore off his coat, tied a rope round his waist, flung his boots on the sand, and girded himself rapidly with an inflated life-buoy. Then, before the men could seize him or prevent the rash attempt, he had dashed into the great waves that curled and thundered on the beach, and was struggling hard with the sea in a life and death contest. Eustace Le Neve held the rope, and tried to aid him in his endeavors. He had meant to plunge in himself, but Walter Tyrrel was beforehand with him. He was no match in a race against time for the fiery and impetuous Cornish temperament. It wasn’t long, however, before the breakers proved themselves more than equal foes for Walter Tyrrel. In another minute he was pounded and pummeled on the unseen rocks under water by the great curling billows. They seized him resistlessly on their crests, tumbled him over like a child, and dashed him, bruised and bleeding, one limp bundle of flesh, against the jagged and pointed summits of the submerged boulders.
With all his might, Eustace Le Neve held on to the rope; then, in coat and boots as he stood, he plunged into the waves and lifted Walter Tyrrel in his strong arms landward. He was a bigger built and more powerful man than his host, and his huge limbs battled harder with the gigantic waves. But even so, in that swirling flood, it was touch and go with him. The breakers lifted him off his feet, tossed him to and fro in their trough, flung him down again forcibly against the sharp-edged rocks, and tried to float off his half unconscious burden. But Le Neve persevered in spite of them, scrambling and tottering as he went, over wet and slippery reefs, with Tyrrel still clasped in his arms, and pressed tight to his breast, till he landed him safe at last on the firm sand beside him.
The squire was far too beaten and bruised by the rocks to make a second attempt against those resistless breakers. Indeed, Le Neve brought him ashore more dead than alive, bleeding from a dozen wounds on the face and hands, and with the breath almost failing in his battered body. They laid him down on the beach, while the fishermen crowded round him, admiring his pluck, though they deprecated his foolhardiness, for they “knowed the squire couldn’t never live ag’in it.” But Le Neve, still full of the reckless courage of youth, and health, and strength, and manhood, keenly alive now to the peril of Cleer’s lonely situation, never heeded their forebodings. He dashed in once more, just as he stood, clothes and all, in the wild and desperate attempt to stem that fierce flood and swim across to the island.
In such a sea as then raged, indeed, and among such broken rocks, swimming, in the strict sense, was utterly impossible. By some mere miracle of dashing about, however—here, battered against the sharp rocks; there, flung over them by the breakers; and yonder, again, sucked down, like a straw in an eddy, by the fierce strength of the undertow—Eustace found himself at last, half unconscious and half choked, carried round by the swirling scour that set through the channel to the south front of the island. Next instant he felt he was cast against the dead wall of rock like an india rubber ball. He rebounded into the trough. The sea caught him a second time, and flung him once more, helpless, against the dripping precipice. With what life was left in him, he clutched with both hands the bare serpentine edge. Good luck befriended him. The great wave had lifted him up on its towering crest to the level of vegetation, beyond the debatable zone. He clung to the hard root of woody sea-aster in the clefts. The waves dashed back in tumultuous little cataracts, and left him there hanging.
Like a mountain goat, Eustace clambered up the side, on hands, knees, feet, elbows, glad to escape with his life from that irresistible turmoil. The treacherous herbs on the slope of the crag were kind to him. He scrambled ahead, like some mad, wild thing. He went onward, upward, cutting his hands at each stage, tearing the skin from his fingers. It was impossible; but he did it. Next minute he found himself high and dry on the island.
His clothes were clinging wet, of course, and his limbs bruised and battered. But he was safe on the firm plateau of the rock at last; and he had rescued Cleer Trevennack!
In the first joy and excitement of the moment he forgot altogether the cramping conventionalities of our every-day life; and, repeating the cry he had heard Michael Trevennack raise from the beach below, he shouted aloud, at the top of his voice, “Cleer! Cleer! Where are you?”
“Here!” came an answering voice from the depths of the gloom overhead. And following the direction whence the sound seemed to come, Eustace Le Neve clambered up to her.
As he seized her hand and wrung it, Cleer crying the while with delight and relief, it struck him all at once, for the very first time, he had done no good by coming, save to give her companionship. It would be hopeless to try carrying her through those intricate rock-channels and that implacable surf, whence he himself had emerged, alone and unburdened, only by a miracle. They two must stop alone there on the rock till morning.
As for Cleer, too innocent and too much of a mere woman in her deadly peril to think of anything but the delightful sense of confidence in a strong man at her side to guard and protect her, she sat and held his hand still, in a perfect transport of gratitude. “Oh, how good of you to come!” she cried again and again, bending over it in her relief, and half tempted to kiss it. “How good of you to come across like that to save me.”