Kitabı oku: «Dorrien of Cranston», sayfa 16
“Is he safe?” whispered the anxious father to Jem Pollock, as the sound of something heavy reaching the ground was borne upward.
“Ay, sir, he is,” replied the other gravely. The stout fisherman had never ceased to reproach himself for allowing a lad like that to venture upon such an errand while he himself remained safe at the top. What would he find down there, he wondered?
And Eustace was thinking the same, as, very much exhausted, he thankfully realised that his feet were once more on solid ground. His heart beat fast and irregularly as he peered about in the dim half light, expecting every moment to meet with a horrible sight. But the cave was empty. A big crab sidled away into a dark corner, with its formidable nippers extended, menacingly, and shoals of smaller ones ran spiderlike into the little pools of water left by the tide in the rocks and sand. The green, slimy walls were hung with seaweed and studded with pointed limpets, but of anything human there was no trace.
No trace. Stay – what was that? A gleam of something caught his eye – something that lay half-buried in the sand. He picked it up, and his heart gave a great jump. It was a small and curiously-wrought silver matchbox.
A shout outside and Mr Curtis and his party joined him. In the flurry of his excitement and the exhaustion following upon his perilous and violent exertions, Eustace handed over his discovery to the vicar. The next moment he would have given anything to have kept it quietly to himself. Why, he could not for the life of him have told – one of those strange and most unerring instincts.
“I fancy there’s no doubt now as to the poor fellow’s fate,” said Mr Curtis. “He must have fallen from above, and even if he lived after it, must have been carried away by the tide. See, the high-water mark is a good many feet above our heads as we stand here.”
They looked up. It was as he said. Even at the highest point in the fissure, wherever they could stand, the wet slimy water-line was beyond their reach. A shout was heard above, and Jem Pollock’s face could be seen peering over the brink.
“The tide!” he shouted. “Get away out o’ that as fast as ever ye can. She’s a comin’ into the bight like a racer, and it’ll take ye all your time.”
No further warning was necessary, and they hastened to act upon this one. Hubert Dorrien’s sad fate was established beyond doubt, and unless his body was ultimately washed up on the beach, he would be no more seen until the day when the sea should give up her dead.
An hour later the party joined hands on the cliff. Further search was useless, for it was now quite dark. Next day it might be continued; and then it would be not for the living, but for the mangled remnants of the dead.
“I have greatly to thank you, Mr Ingelow,” said the General, his face very white and set and his speech forced. “Your help has been most valuable, and of the courage and energy you have displayed I cannot think too highly. And to you, too, my men, I must tender my thanks for your efforts towards the rescue or recovery of my unfortunate son. I cannot talk more about it at present, but you may be sure I shall not forget it. Good-night.”
He extended his hand to Eustace, who warmly grasped it.
“Believe me, General Dorrien, I would gladly have done more to have met with better success,” he said in a tone of sympathetic respect. And Eustace, in the midst of that sorrowful scene, could not feel so depressed as he told himself he ought, for athwart it there smiled upon him, though mournfully now, Nellie’s sweet face, and he felt she was nearer within his reach than he had of late so much as dared to dream.
The party separated on the dark cliff’s brow and the General and Mr Curtis rode sadly home.
And that night in the stately mansion a bitter cry went up, and the voice of great mourning – a mother sorrowing for her lost and passionately loved son, whose voice she was destined never again to hear on this side of the grave.
Chapter Thirty One.
“Death’s Altar, by the Lone Shore.”
A fortnight had slipped away since Hubert Dorrien’s disappearance, and still the stranger stayed on at “The Silver Fleece,” in Battisford. Those who had at first marvelled what attraction their dull little town had for one of his stamp had quite ceased speculating as to his pursuits and identity. As to the former, they had come to the conclusion that he was an antiquary of some sort – a professor most likely, and a member of some learned society – who was engaged on a work on the curiosities and antiquities of the neighbourhood, which he spent long days in exploring, asking many questions about it, and when not thus employed, he would shut himself up and sit for hours writing. As to the latter, well, it didn’t signify. Anyone could see that he was a gentleman born, and sure enough, didn’t he pay his way, and wasn’t he pleasant-spoken and friendly with everybody? So “The Silver Fleece” was right glad of its guest, and would fain keep him as long as he chose to stay. He got his letters, too, quite regularly, addressed to Robert Durnford, Esq, and now and then a learned looking pamphlet. What more could Battisford desire in the way of vouchers for his respectability?
In Battisford, sooner than in Wandsborough, Hubert Dorrien’s sad fate ceased to be a nine days’ wonder. It was talked of occasionally on market days by farmers assembled at their one o’clock dinner in the coffee-room at “The Silver Fleece,” and in the evening sometimes the loquacious waiter would entertain a batch of newly arrived “commercials,” over their hot spirits and water, with a highly graphic narrative of the event, to which the accompaniment of the supernatural lent unusual spice. Sometimes in these conversations the stranger would join, putting in a careless remark or two, or asking a question, but never by any chance would he attempt avoidance of the subject.
And what was Roland Dorrien’s real frame of mind, having committed a ruthless and what the world might call a cowardly murder! It is a strange thing to have to record, but the fact is he felt no great compunction. He had spent some of the most impressionable years of his life in the Far West, where human life was held at the lowest possible valuation, and he had known of at least a dozen instances where men had been shot dead upon far less provocation than he had received. Besides, he had not particularly meant to kill the other; unfortunately, the mouth of the fissure had been inconveniently close.
But he whom he had slain was his brother – his own mother’s son. Well, what of that? Relationship was a mere accident, in his case an accident in no sense to his advantage, and all the twaddle written and talked about blood being thicker than water, and family affection and so on, but the “thinnest” of cant. And had not this precious brother of his, not content with supplanting him in his inheritance, taken advantage of his downfall to blacken his name, so that she whom he loved and who had loved him as he felt persuaded she would never again love, even she had, in all probability, brought herself to regard his memory as a loathsome thing; something to be put far from her? Then, to crown all, those insulting words. Yes – whatever had occurred, the other had brought upon himself and had richly deserved, and now, as it happened, it was perhaps as well that the popular verdict should be one of accidental death.
And had this man no conscience? Since there was no chance of his being brought to the bar of human justice, had he no fear of the great Hereafter? He had none. He could meet it, whatever it was, without flinching. If he did not altogether disbelieve in a future existence, he was at any rate firmly convinced that for himself it could hold no worse state of things than did the present. That was impossible, for he was utterly without hope in the world.
And now he had made up his mind to leave Battisford. He had remained there long enough to avoid the suspicion that would inevitably have attached to a casual stranger coming and going coincidently with the fatality – now he would go. He had not seen Olive Ingelow since the brief glimpse he had obtained of her in the lamp-lit street that fateful evening, and it was better so. He was hard as adamant now, cold, stony – all his natural impulses petrified at their source. One glance into those sweet eyes: one pitiful, tender tone of the dear voice, and all might be undone. He would soften again, melt for the time, and his overthrow would be complete. No, he would not behold her face again, but he would once more, and for the last time, revisit Wandsborough, arriving towards nightfall, and then the next day he would leave the scene of his wrecked life for ever.
There are some men whom one is constrained to believe were sent into the world to enjoy prosperity, if only for the reason that they are so woefully and completely unfitted to sustain adversity. We must fall foul of another popular cant in asserting that adversity does not strengthen them, neither does it bring out sterling qualities which otherwise would never have seen the light. In no way does it benefit them; on the contrary, they succumb to it and sink down, down, lower and lower, till their ruin is complete. In some occult way this may be a Providential dispensation; we are told that everything is; but, if so, why then to the observer of human nature is it of all things the most marvellous?
Just such a man as this was Roland Dorrien. His rightful place in society he would have filled with credit – it is even probable that under favourable circumstances he would have adorned it; for he had plenty of good qualities, which, in their proper sphere, would have shone out to the advantage of himself and of those who came within his influence. But he was the last person in the world who should have been marked out for adversity, and with his natural temperament and the fatal way in which he had been brought up, or rather left to grow, it was no wonder that he succumbed.
What man but one who had temporarily taken leave of his better judgment – not to say his senses – would have mapped out for himself such a plan as that which he now proposed? To revisit the scenes of his former prosperity; to wander morbidly over the paths consecrated to his memory by the tenderest associations of love and happiness and bright hopes, knowing perfectly well that the joys of past days must ever be to him as the turned-down page of a sealed book – could mania itself carry a man to greater, to more unreasoning lengths? Yet this is what he deliberately resolved to do.
He would walk along the beach to Wandsborough. The tide was low in the afternoon, and he would be less likely to meet anybody that way. So, arming himself with an overcoat and umbrella, for the day was cloudy and lowering, he sallied forth.
A group of men were standing round the door of the taproom as he passed. Of them he took no notice at first, till a voice arrested his attention – a voice saying in a strong Scotch accent:
” – And I tell ye what it is, Williams. Ye just won’t see the young Squire back again. The General hates him wurrse than hell, and ’d sooner burrn the place down than see him in it, even nouw.”
For the life of him Roland could not resist turning his head, and his eyes met those of Johnston, the Cranston gardener. Then he kept on his way. Had the other recognised him? he wondered. Their glances had met full. The Scot was a shrewd fellow, and his gaze might have penetrated even this inimitable disguise. If so, why, the sooner he disappeared from Battisford the better, for if it was in Johnston’s power to work him mischief he would certainly do so – and it was. But it would not do to look round again, and, after all, why should he care?
He walked rapidly forward, and soon the town was left out of sight behind. A few sheep browsing the short grass on the turfy down scampered off a little distance and stood watching him as he made his way to the beach; but not a soul did he meet, and at length, as he reached the shore, it seemed to him that he stood in the world alone. He walked on, a great seething, tumbling plain on his left, the white, curling billows chasing each other obedient to the propulsion of a strong and freshening breeze, their foam-crests leaping to the misty sky. A flying scud partly hid the tall cliffs, and then passed, and the crescent-like bays and looming promontories of the iron coastline stood clear above the restless, leaden-hued waters. A scene of wild, solitary grandeur. The cold salt breeze played upon his face; the roll and hiss of the white waves breaking on the beach seemed full of voices speaking from that happier Past as the exile wended his way along the lone shore; and in the tones of the rising gale he could hear in a far-off, dreamy way the voice as he had heard it when they walked together over this very ground.
All the deepest chords in the man’s wretched, storm-tossed soul were harrowed and unstrung. This wild reach of roaring surf, and looming cliffs, and pebbly shingle, with the strong, chill winds resisting his advance, was to him as hallowed ground – to be trodden reverently, and to be lingered on as one is loth to leave the last haven. His head was bent low to resist the fury of the sudden gust which met him as he staggered round a projecting arm of the cliff, and his thoughts were given up to the free play of wildest fancy.
“God or demon – whoever you are that makes such a wretched muddle of the affairs of poor mortals,” he murmured in his despair, “take my soul – my life – anything – and plunge it in torments untold for all the ages if you will. Only bring her to me – here – let me see her here for one short half-hour!”
He was hardly conscious of having spoken aloud. It seemed to him but one among many unuttered wishes; and now, as he looked up, his face became ashy and his eyes were fixed, staring and dilated, while he stood rooted to the spot, unable to stir a limb. For not twenty yards off, alone in this remote spot, in the misty twilight of the darkening afternoon, stood the figure of a woman. She was leaning lightly upon a low rock, with one small, shapely hand, gazing out to sea. Her delicate profile was towards him, but there was a mournfulness in the sweet, sad face, and the repose of the mouth was that of one who had well-nigh forgotten how to laugh. A tress or two of soft, dark hair had escaped, and with this the wind was playing wild havoc. Yet she was heedless of it and of all around, and stood there calm and undisturbed, like a beautiful goddess of the wild stormy coast.
His invocation had been answered.
“Olive?”
His voice came harsh and inarticulate. She turned, startled at the strange sound, though not catching the name, and her face paled. Who could this intruder be? She was alone with him and at his mercy, and he looked so wild and queer. She was very frightened, and for a moment all manner of horrid conjecture flashed through her brain. She felt sickly and faint. An escaped lunatic, was one of her first thoughts, having dismissed the tramp theory – and she noticed that he was tall and strong of build, and well-dressed, withal. And he was approaching her.
“Have you lost your way?” she began gently, striving hard to repress the apprehensive tremor in her voice.
“Olive! Don’t you know me?”
With a low cry she sank down on the rock, and sat gazing wildly at him with a white, scared face.
“It is his voice – Roland!”
The spell was broken. He was beside her, and his arms were round her while he poured into her ears passionate words of tender reassurance. And it would be difficult to determine which of the two was most startled by the unexpected meeting.
“My love – my love! Why did you leave me all this long time?” she murmured at last.
Not an intonation of reproach towards himself on her account, only on his own, as if she had said, “Why did you leave me – your haven of refuge when the storm came upon you? Why did you leave me, who would have cleaved to you in adversity – who would have clung to you through evil report a hundred times closer than through good?”
“Yes – why did I?”
He had removed his glasses, and stood before her his old self – but such a shadow of it! She was horrified.
“What have you been doing with yourself?” she said. “Have you been trying to die?”
Then he laughed – a harsh, bitter laugh. It rang back from the cliffs in weird, mocking echo.
“Oh, no. The Fates are not so kind. Why did I leave you, you say? Everything was against us. Your father would not listen to me, even when I had my head above water – how could I expect him to when it was below, with no prospect of ever rising to the surface again? You, yourself, would never have acted contrary to his wishes, even if I had been in a position to urge you to – and for this I should be the last to blame you, understand that, well. But for me, an utterly ruined man, to hold you bound to me for life, was just the one thing I could not do.”
“Go on.”
“Well, we never saw each other again after that informal parting in Wandsborough street,” he went on. “I hoped – I mean I tried to hope – you would forget me and be happy again. After all, why should you not? Only three or four short months – a summer dream.”
His voice was harsh and grating. At times it seemed that he would choke.
“A summer dream! My whole life was lived within that summer dream,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “Roland, you will not leave me again!”
His haggard eyes devoured the sweet face which was bent down upon his hands, and he felt that if hell itself opened to receive him its torments would be rest compared with what he was undergoing at that moment. The pleading voice, the little hands imprisoning his own as she leant upon him, giving herself to him as it were in all the rich fulness of her love – this for which he had hungered and agonised, sleeping and waking, during the long weary period of his hopeless exile, and which, now that he had obtained it, he must deliberately forego. In one short hour, in fact, he would be apart from her, in bitter loneliness once more. No – there was no hope. His pride was a part of himself. Penniless and an outcast, how could he keep for himself and wear this priceless jewel? And now he was something more – he bore a burden that not all the untold wealth of ages could take from him. And yet at this moment he felt as if he could imbrue his hands in the most pitiless of crimes, to obtain the wealth which should save them both.
“My darling, you will not leave me again!”
Not the scud in the dark, lowering sky above – not the wild waves plunging and careering before the shrieking wind, to hurl themselves madly upon yonder sharp rocks – not the whirl of air and water and vaporous cloud, was more storm-tossed and chaotic than the thoughts which surged through the man’s soul, and flashed with well-nigh the fires of mania in his overwrought brain. His reply came – hoarse and labouring.
“I must.”
The sweet, sad face sank down upon his hands, which her own were grasping with an almost convulsive clutch, and a shiver like a great choking sob ran through her. She had found him – the wanderer whom everybody else had lost sight of. She had found him, as was her right, for he belonged to her. She had found him – how then could she let him wander from her again, away into the outer darkness of the cold, wide world! All too lightly had she valued those days in the by-gone past, until they had fled, never to return.
O fairest summer, with thy many-hued glories of rich verdure, and heathery-crimson and golden-tinted hills keeping watch above an azure sea! O halcyon time, of vows whispered amid the radiance of a passing glow from Heaven’s bright plains, as the westering sun drove his great amber-wheeled chariot down to his rest, shedding back an ethereal lustre upon a love-dawn which should lend a hundredfold more of beauty to a beauteous world – where are you now? Gone. And you – leaden waves, tossing wildly to the misty wrack above – storm-blast howling o’er the watery waste – cliffs spectral and grey, throwing back with hollow echo the surges’ tone – to you it is given, in mocking fitness, to behold the anguish of two breaking hearts, here on the lone seashore!
“It was never intended we should part again,” she murmured without looking up. “Oh! why should you have been brought here to-day? I never visit this place now, and to-day it must have been something more than chance that made me do so.”
“I don’t believe in your Heaven, or why should it delight to torture any living creature as it is torturing us, here, to-day,” broke jerkily from his set, dry lips. “Listen, Olive – darling, and you will understand why I must leave you again. I am destitute at this moment, utterly destitute; one who has gone down beneath the weight of what some might call a curse – but I don’t believe in such things. And above and beside all this there is – there is – a barrier between us – a barrier of my own raising, and with its shadow I would never cloud your dear life.”
“Oh, Roland. What is it?”
“Ah! If I were to tell you, you would shrink from me, now and for ever. You would even rush into yonder sea to escape from the horror wherewith my presence would inspire you. Why, even your love would turn to repugnance. Yet why should it? – except that the trammelled imagination of a canting world reads crime into what is no crime at all.”
“You are quite wrong. I would do none of all this,” she answered bravely. A horrid suspicion that the rumours she had heard about him might be true flashed through her mind. What if he had done in a moment of weak desperation that which nothing but death could undo?
“I had never expected to look upon your dear face again,” he went on in the same tones of heart-wrung misery. “I set out this day to visit for the last time the scenes we had looked upon together, and to break my heart over the memories that they would evoke. Then, as I trod these stones which your feet had trodden, as on holy ground, I invoked the aid of the demon who rules the universe – offering my life and limitless future of eternity, if such there be – for one glimpse of you. And I was answered. I looked up and there you stood. Now I care nothing for what may happen. I can face it without fear – for my prayer was answered.”
Her tears were falling like rain, and for some time she could not speak – could only cling to him all the firmer.
“You shall not go,” she said at length. “You belong to me. A hundred times more than when all things went well with you. Oh, my darling, do not leave me. I claim you now, for you belong to me!” she reiterated passionately.
It may be that to some lives comes a period such as that which these two had to undergo at this moment; it cannot be that it comes to many. But even while she spoke, another had claimed them both – ay, and had already made good his claim. With swift, remorseless subtlety the dark waves came sweeping in. The King of Terrors was about to exact the fulfilment of his awful bargain – and to exact it with interest.
“Olive, come. We must go, and go quickly.”
She gazed at him in surprise. His tone had changed to one of calmness, almost indifference, except for a quick anxiety, which her ear detected.
“It will be all we can do to turn the corner over there before the water is even knee-deep.”
She followed his glance, and her face paled slightly. Nearly a mile of beach lay between them and the jutting headland, whose base even now was all but hidden by the inflowing tide. As the waves receded, a few yards of ground were left visible, but the next roller or two swept over it completely, breaking into angry foam against the rock. Full well she knew – full well both of them knew – the perilous nature of the coast, for every year added its quota to the list of victims of the treacherous tides.
“We shall never do it, Roland.”
“We must try. Come along.”
He hurried her forward, and, with the aid of his strong right arm, she had no difficulty in keeping pace with him. But the beach was pebbly and yielding, and before they had gone a hundred yards the consciousness broke upon them that the desired point would be ten or twelve feet under water by the time they should reach it.
“Can’t be done. We must give it up,” he said anxiously, coming to a halt. “Our only chance is to try back. The beach is not so narrow on the Battisford side. We must look sharp, too, or the point behind us will be covered.”
The treacherous waves were creeping up to the promontory he had come round. To remain where they were was hopeless, for in less than an hour the whole of the bay would be completely swept by the sea, which would be breaking against the cliffs many feet higher than their heads as they then stood.
“Now, Olive! It is our only chance.”
Breathless and panting from the pace at which she had come over the heavy yielding ground, Olive resigned herself with a shiver to be half dragged, half carried through the belt of milky surf which barred their passage round the rocky promontory, and it was all her companion could do to support her and keep his own footing amid the powerful wash and swirl of the receding waves, for he had been obliged to watch his opportunity and make a dash through between the inflowing waves, and, being knee-deep in water, with the pebbly ground beneath his feet, uncertain and shifting in the treacherous “undertow,” the wonder is that both were not carried away there and then. Yet it was only putting off the evil hour. Two minutes later and they stood within the next bay.
A quick, despairing ejaculation escaped Roland’s lips. He had miscalculated his distance, and now the strip of beach by which he had reckoned they would be able to effect their escape was a mass of great rolling breakers. To retrace their steps was impossible, even were it of any use. There was no more means of exit from this bay than from the one they had just left. They had but exchanged one death-trap for another.
Then they stood still and stole a furtive look at each other, and all hope died away within their hearts. To the mind of each there came the same thought. The man’s wild prayer and desperate vow had been heard and answered. The King of Terrors was about to exact the fulfilment of the awful bargain – and to exact it with interest – and the great, cruel sea, which alone had witnessed and registered the reckless vow, was now lending itself and its rage a willing instrument for the pitiless fulfilment of that vow.
