Project Gutenberg's Tempest-Driven (Vol. III of 3), by Richard Dowling
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Title: Tempest-Driven (Vol. III of 3)
A Romance
Author: Richard Dowling
Release Date: May 20, 2013 [EBook #42752]
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TEMPEST-DRIVEN (VOL. III OF 3) ***
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THE WIDOW'S THEORY OF THE CASE.
"WHERE'ER I CAME I BROUGHT CALAMITY."
Luncheon that day at Carlingford House was a quiet, subdued meal. Edith Paulton, who was very small and vivacious, better-looking than Madge, and distinguished by shrewd discontent rather than the amiability which radiated from her elder sister, was the only one at the table that made an effort at being sprightly. Although she was not unsympathetic, she had a much more keen appreciation of her own annoyances and troubles than those of others. She took great liberties with her good-natured father and mother, and treated her brother as if he were a useless compound of slave, fool, and magnanimous mastiff. She was by no means wanting in affection, but she hated displays of sentiment, and felt desperately inclined to laugh on grave occasions.
That day, when the two girls left the back room, they went straight to Madge's, where they talked over the arrival of Jerry O'Brien, for whom Edith strongly suspected Madge had a warmer feeling than friendship, and who, she felt morally certain, greatly to her secret delight, was over head and ears in love with Madge. The only human being in whom she had infinite faith was Madge. She did not consider any hero or conqueror of history good enough for her sister. To her mind, there was only one flaw in Madge: Madge would not worship Madge. Madge thought every one else in the world of consequence but herself. Edith thought Madge the only absolutely perfect person living, or that ever had lived--leaving out, of course, the important defect just mentioned. The younger girl had, in human affairs, a certain hardness and common-sense plainness which shocked the more sensitive sister. For instance, she could not see anything at all pathetic in Mrs. Davenport's situation.
Before the bell rang for luncheon, she said to her sister:
"I can't for the life of me see what is so terribly melancholy in Mrs. Davenport's case. I think she got out of it rather well. She didn't care anything for that dreadful old man who poisoned himself out of some horrid kind of spite. She hasn't been put in prison, and he left her a whole lot of money. So that as she isn't exactly an old maid, or a grandmother, she can marry any other horrid old man she likes. Oh, yes; I know she's very beautiful, and what you call young, Madge. She's not fifty yet, I suppose. Every woman is young now until she's forty or fifty; and as to men, they don't seem to grow old now at any age. As long as a man doesn't use crutches, they say he is in the full vigour of manhood--that he's not marriageable until he's gray, and bald, and deaf of one ear, or can't read even with glasses. I suppose father will make her stop for dinner. I thought I'd laugh outright when I saw him go to her and call her 'child.' Child! Fancy calling a widow child! If ever he calls me child again, I'll tell him, as far as I know, I have not buried any husband yet. But, Madge, if she does stop for dinner, I'm not going to sit there and learn the very latest thing in the manners of widows. I'll go out for a walk after luncheon. Do you know, I think Jerry O'Brien is half in love with this beautiful widow! I'll ask him to come with me, I will; and you, good-natured fool, may sit within and catch the airs and graces of early widowhood, though I don't think they'll ever be of any use to you. You're certain to die an old maid. Alfred can't keep his eyes off her. It's a pity we haven't that nice Mr. Blake here--her old sweetheart. There, Madge, I don't mean a word I say, especially about Jerry O'Brien. I know he's madly in love with me. I'm going to give him a chance of proposing this evening. We'll walk as far as the Palace, and if you get separated from us, and see me holding my umbrella out from my side on two fingers--this way--just don't come near us, and you shall be my bridesmaid, and Jerry shall give you a present of a bracelet representing a brazen widow sitting on a silver salmon. There's the bell! Madge, love, I'm not a beast, only a brute. There!--I won't be rude again, and I'll try and rather like Mrs. Davenport. She'll be a neighbour of mine, you know, when I'm married to Jerry. I think I'll call him Jer then."
After luncheon, Mrs. Paulton suggested that Mrs. Davenport should lie down, as she must be quite worn out. But the latter would not consent to this. She said she felt quite refreshed, and in no need of rest, as she had slept well the previous night--although some memory of the Channel passage was in her brain, and the sound of the railway journey in her ears.
The evening was fine. Neither Mrs. Davenport nor Alfred cared for a walk when it was suggested by Edith, but Jerry said he would like it of all things; so he and the two sisters set off down the fine, broad, prosperous-looking Dulwich Road, in the direction of the Crystal Palace.
It is proverbially a small world, and the three pedestrians had not gone many hundred yards when whom should they see but Nellie Cahill, one of the firm friends and confidantes of the Paulton girls. Before the three came up with Miss Cahill, Edith gave a brief and graphic sketch of her to Jerry, who had not had the pleasure of meeting her before. She was good-looking, good-humoured, jolly, a dear old thing, mad as a March hare, true as steel, and last, though not least, interesting to him--a fellow country-woman of his, as her name betokened.
He must be introduced to her. He must like her awfully. He must love her, if it came to that, unless, indeed, that slow coach Alfred had been before him--in which case he, Jerry, was to be exceedingly obliging and deferential; for any one would rather have a nice girl like Nellie for a sister-in-law than a thousand widows.
Jerry was duly introduced, and said civil things and silly things, and the four walked on all abreast, until Edith suddenly remembered that she had to tell Nellie all about the reappearance of Mrs. Davenport, and a lot of other matters, in which two sober, steady-going, middle-aged people like Madge and Jerry could, by no stress of imagination, be supposed to take a sensible and hilarious interest. So the younger division of the party, comprised of Nellie Cahill and Edith Paulton, fell to the rear, and the other division kept the front. And thus, in spite of all Edith's designs on Jerry both for herself and Nellie, these two enterprising and eminently desirable and lovable young ladies lost all chance of his offering marriage to either that afternoon.
A long story of the detestable villainy of the Fishery Commissioners had to be first and foremost related to Madge. Considering that she did not know what a weir was, and had never seen a salmon except on the table or the marble slab of a fish-shop, and that according to her notion the appearance of a Commissioner was something between a beefeater of the Tower of London and a Brighton boatman, she listened with great patience, and made remarks which caused Jerry to laugh sometimes, and plunge into profound technicalities at others. But it became quite plain that Jerry himself did not take any consuming interest in his own wrongs and the refined ruffianism of the Commissioners; for at a most bewildering description of the channel, and the draught of water, and the set of tides, and the idiosyncrasies of coal barges, he looked over his shoulder and, finding Edith and her friend a good way behind, stopped suddenly in his discourse and said:
"Madge, I've been reeling off a lot of rubbish to you just to drop the others a good bit astern. I now want to say something very serious to you. Are you listening?"
"Yes; but look at that cow! Did you ever see a more contented-looking creature in all your life?"
She kept her face turned towards the hedge.
"Confound the cow!" he cried. "Do you think I am going to give up talking of Bawn salmon and barges, and talk about Dulwich cows? Are you listening?"
"I am. But did you--now--did you ever see such a lovely cow?"
"Look here, Madge: If this is reprisal for my harangue about my miserable salmon weirs, I'll not say another word about them. Are you going to be friends with me?"
"Yes--of course."
Still the cow occupied her eyes, to judge by the way her head was turned.
"I came out expressly to have a most serious talk with you on a most important matter----"
"I am sure I was very sorry to hear about your salmon nets----"
"Nets! Nets! Good heavens, Madge!--I never said a word about nets the whole time. I'm not a cot-man. Look here: you know it's only a few of the greatest minds that can attend to two things at the one time. You can't give your soul to fish and yet devote yourself to cows at the one moment, except you are a person like Julius Cæsar. He could dictate and write completely different things at the one time."
"Could he? He must have been very clever."
"Will you give up the cow? I want to talk of another beast."
"Trout?"
"No, not trout. Trout isn't a beast. If you're clever and smart, and that kind of thing, I won't talk about my beast."
"What is your beast?"
"A fool."
"Oh!"
"Are you not curious to know who the fool is?"
"There are so many, one cannot be interested in all."
"No; but you are interested in this one."
Silence.
"I say you are interested in Alfred."
"Alfred!" She looked quickly round for the first time since the cow had attracted her attention. Her colour was vivid, and her breath came short. "Alfred a fool!"
"Yes; he's hit--badly hit."
"You don't think him ill?"--in alarm. The colour faded quickly.
"I think him very bad."
"His brain again. Oh, do tell me!"--pleadingly.
"No. He told me all in the front room to-day. It's his heart this time."
"His heart?"
"Yes. Love."
"Love! In love with whom?"
"I forget."
"You forget whom he is in love with?"
"Yes. Another matter has put it out of my head. Madge, I'm a fool too. You needn't turn away. There are no more cows, Madge. Give up the salmon and cows, Madge, and have me instead! Will you, Madge? Give me your hand.... Thank you, love. Madge!"
"Yes."
"The other two have turned back. There is no one else in the road. May I kiss you?"
She looked over her shoulder on the side away from him. Then she looked at him....
"Thank you, darling. Let us turn back. I have touched the limits of my happiest road. Madge!"
"Yes."
"Yes, Jerry. Say 'Yes, Jerry.'"
"Yes, Jerry."
"That's better. I won't kiss you again until we get into the house. Do you think you can last out till then?"
"I--I think so, Jerry."
"That's right. Cultivate self-denial and obedience. You don't think it is respectable for a man to kiss his sweetheart on a public road?"
"No."
"That's right. Cultivate self-denial and obedience, but chiefly obedience. Don't you think it is the duty of woman to cultivate obedience chiefly?"
"I do."
"And if I asked it, you would, out of obedience to me, trample self-denial under foot?"
"Certainly, Jerry, if you wished it."
"I do. Oh, my Madge--my darling--my gentle love! Once more."
"But Edith has turned round and sees us.... And my hat--you have knocked off my hat.... Thanks. Now pick up my hair-pin. It fell with the hat. What will Edith think?"
"I'll tell her. I'll tell Edith quite plainly it was your self-restraint gave way, not mine."
That day settled many things. Alfred had told O'Brien that no matter how unwise or rash it might seem, he had made up his mind to try his fate with Mrs. Davenport--not, of course, at that time, perhaps not very soon, but ultimately, and as soon as possible.
Until that day--until he had seen her moved by the sense of her own loneliness, until he had seen the tears start into her eyes--he had not said even to himself that he loved her. He told himself over and over again that he would risk his prospects, his life, his honour for her. How his prospects or life could be imperilled he did not know, did not care. He had a modest fortune of his own, and her husband had left her the bulk of his great wealth. He would have preferred her poor rather than rich. But if she would marry him, he would not allow the fact that she had money to stand in the way of his happiness. She had for a while, owing to circumstances in which no blame attached to her, found herself labouring under a hideous suspicion. From the shadow of that suspicion she had emerged without blemish. She had been cruelly ill-used by fate, but it had been shown she was blameless. Where, then, could danger to his honour lie? Her beauty was undeniable; her family unexceptionable. She had been sold to an old man by a venal lover. In this lurked no disgrace to her. What could his father or mother find in her to object to? Nothing--absolutely nothing. That day his father and mother showed great pleasure in seeing her again. His father had suggested--nay, arranged--that he should accompany her on that long journey to Ireland.
When Jerry O'Brien left Carlingford House that afternoon, he had no intention of asking Madge to be his wife. All the way from Kilbarry to London he had been assuring himself that nothing could be more injudicious than to say anything to her on the subject at present. He believed she was not indifferent to him. Little actions and words of hers had given him cause to hope. He was sure she preferred him to any other man in whose society he had ever seen her. She had smiled and coloured at his approach, and once or twice, when he had ventured to press her hand, he had suffered no reproach by word or look. All this made it only the more necessary for him to be on guard and not allow himself to be betrayed into a declaration until his affairs were settled. But the opportunity came, and he could not resist the temptation of telling her he loved her, and of hearing from her that he was loved by her. It is true no word had been said between them of an engagement even. The mere formality of speech was nothing. Practically he had asked her to be his wife, and she had plainly given him to understand she was willing to marry him.
Madge got back to the house in a state of bewildered excitement. She confided nothing to her sister, and Edith behaved very well, never showing even a trace of curiosity or slyness. She persisted in talking of the most everyday topic. She wondered whether Miss Grant, the dressmaker, would keep her word?--whether this would be as bad a year for roses as last? She was of opinion the cold weather would not return. Nellie Cahill had told her the new play at the Ben Jonson was a complete failure, in spite of all said to the contrary, and so on. Madge replied in monosyllables or vacant laughs. When the girls got home, each went to her own room, and they did not meet again until dinner time. Madge decided she had no occasion to speak to her mother, or any one else, about what occurred on the Dulwich Road. It would be time enough to speak when Jerry said something more definite to her, or when either her father or mother spoke to her.
Jerry sought Alfred, whom he found alone in the library. He had been carried beyond himself that afternoon, and did not feel in the position to administer to his friend a lecture on prudence. Alfred was of full age, and, in the way of money, independent of his father. Let him do as he pleased and take his chance, as any other man must in similar circumstances. He himself, for instance, would take advice in his love affair from neither Fishery Commissioners nor John O'Hanlon.
"How far did you go?" asked Alfred, who looked flushed, radiant. He got up and began walking slowly about the room.
"Oh, a little beyond the College. It isn't a very pleasant day out of doors. We met an old flame of yours--Miss Cahill."
"Miss Cahill an old flame of mine! Why, I never was more than civil to the girl in all my life! Who invented that story for you?"
"I don't think it was pure invention. Edith mentioned it to us."
"'To us!' Good heavens, you don't mean to say she said anything of the kind in Miss Cahill's presence?"
"Well, no--not exactly in her presence, but when she was near us. How did you get on since?"
Jerry's object was to keep the conversation in his own hands, and prevent Alfred asking questions. To-morrow, when they were both clear of London, he might take his friend into his confidence, but not now.
"Oh, dully enough," answered Alfred, with a look of disappointment. "My father went out, my mother is busy about the house, and Mrs. Davenport is in her room. She will, I hope, be able to come down to dinner. You don't think, Jerry," he asked, anxiously, while he paused before his friend, "that her health has suffered by all she has gone through?"
"No; but I am quite sure your peace of mind has," replied Jerry, with a dry smile.
With all his desire to be conciliatory, he could not wholly curb his tongue.
"I," laughed the other, "was never happier in all my life. Why, only to think that she is under this roof now, and that we are going on a long journey with her to-morrow, and that I am to be near her for a whole month! It's too good to be true."
"I hope not."
"Well, Jerry, I hope not too; but it seems too good. I know you are one of those men who never give way to their feelings until they know exactly whither their feelings are taking them. It isn't every one who has such complete self-command as you. I am willing to risk everything in the world for a woman. Some men are too cautious to risk anything."
"There's a good deal of truth and a good deal of rubbish in what you say," rejoined Jerry, colouring slightly, and concealing his face from his companion by going to the window and looking out at the evergreens and leafless trees in the front garden.
Alfred's last speech had not been exactly a chance shot. He more than guessed Jerry cared a good deal for Madge; but the tone of the other had exasperated him, and he made an effort to compel silence, if not sympathy, from him. Jerry was not prepared to retort. He did not want to deny or assert his own susceptibility to the unconscious arts of any woman; and, above all, he did not wish Madge's name to be introduced even casually.
At last dinner came. It was an informal, a substantial, cosy meal. No special preparations had been made for the guests. There was no display, no stint, no profusion. Jerry sat beside Madge, and Alfred between Edith and Mrs. Davenport. Jerry was the most taciturn--Madge the most demure of the party. Mr. Paulton was chatty, cordial, and particularly gracious to the widow. Mrs. Davenport was polite, impassable, absent-minded.
When they were waiting for the joint, Mr. Paulton turned to Jerry, and said:
"Are you depressed at the prospect of spending a while with an invalid? To look at you both, one would think it was you, not Alfred, who wants change of air."
"And so it is," said Jerry, stealing a look at Madge.
In order to divert attention from her, for she felt her face growing hot, she said:
"I believe the south of Ireland is very mild?"
"Oh, very!" Jerry answered, with startling vivacity. "It's the mildest climate in the world; but the people are not particularly mild: they are full of fire and fight. I have no doubt Alfred will come back a regular Milesian. You know those who live a while in Ireland always become more Irish than the Irish."
"Never mind," said Mrs. Paulton. "He may become as Irish as he likes if he at the same time grows as well in health as we like."
"I intend coming back quite a Goliath, mother. I shall eat and drink everything I see," said Alfred gaily.
"You would find some of the things in the neighbourhood of Kilcash rather hard to chew. I think Mrs. Davenport will agree with me that it would take Goliath a long time to make a comfortable meal of the Black Rock, or to make a comfortable meal on it?"
At the name of the Rock, Mrs. Davenport looked up and shuddered visibly, and said, as she rested slightly on the back of her chair:
"The Black Rock is a hideous place."
Then, turning to Alfred: "You must not go there."
"I am altogether in the hands of this unprincipled wretch," answered Alfred, smiling and nodding at Jerry.
"Then," said Jerry, "if you are not very civil--if you show a disposition to exhibit your Goliath-like prowess on me, I shall take you to the Black Rock, and first frighten the life out of you, and then throw you into the Puffing Hole, where, except you are the ghost of your own grandfather, or something equally monstrous, you will be promptly smashed into ten billions of invisible atoms."
The rest of the dinner passed off quietly. When the dessert had been put on the table, and the servants had withdrawn, Mr. Paulton said:
"Mr. O'Brien, I have often heard you talk of this Black Rock and the Puffing Hole, but I am afraid I never had the industry to ask you for a description of either. Are they very wonderful?"
"There is nothing wonderful about the Rock, except its extent and peculiar shape and colour. But the Puffing Hole, although not unique, is curious and terrible."
"I am doubly interested in them now, since I have the pleasure of numbering Mrs. Davenport among my friends. What are the Black Rock and Puffing Hole like?" He smiled, and bent gallantly towards the widow.
"I think," said Jerry, "Mrs. Davenport herself is the best person to give you a description of either. Her house is near them, and she has lived, I may say, next door to them for years, and knows more than I do of the place. To make the matter even, if Mrs. Davenport will do the description I will do the narrative part of the tale. That is a fair division."
Mrs. Davenport trembled slightly again, and was about to speak, when Mr. Paulton said, in a tone of impetuous persuasion:
"Your house near these strange freaks of nature, Mrs. Davenport! Of course I did not know that, or I should not have dreamed of asking Mr. O'Brien for an account of them."
The old man's belief was that it would divert Mrs. Davenport's mind from wholly gloomy subjects if she were only induced to speak of matters of general interest.
She shook her head sadly.
"It is true my home was for many years at Kilcash House, which is near the Black Rock. But----"
She paused, and a peculiar smile took possession of her face. All eyes were fixed on her in expectation. No one cared to speak. What could that strange break mean? Surely, to describe a scene or phenomenon of the coast with which she was most familiar could not be very distressing?
"But," she resumed, "it is my home no longer. It is true I am going back there for a little time--a few weeks; but that is only to arrange matters. I have now no home."
The voice of the woman was almost free from emotion. It was slightly tremulous towards the end; but if she had been reading aloud a passage she but dimly understood, she could have displayed no less emotion.
"No home!--no home!" said Mr. Paulton, so softly as to be only just audible. "I was under the impression you had been left Kilcash House."
"Yes, my husband left me Kilcash House and other things--other valuable things--and a large sum of money. But----"
Again she paused at the ominous "but."
Again all were silent, and now even Mr. Paulton could not light on words that seemed likely to help the widow over her hesitation.
"But I cannot take anything."
Once more the old man repeated her words: "Cannot take anything! Are the conditions so extraordinary--so onerous?"
He and O'Brien thought that the principal condition must be forfeiture in case she married Blake. This would explain much of what was now incomprehensible.
"There are no conditions whatever in the will," she said in the same unmoved way.
"No conditions! And yet you have no home, although your late husband has left you a fine house?"
"Yes, and all that is necessary for the maintenance of that house; notwithstanding which, I have no home, and am a beggar."
"Mrs. Davenport," cried the old man, with genuine concern, "what you say is very shocking. I hope it is not true."
"I know this is not the time or place to talk of business. I know my business can have little or no interest for you."
"Excuse me, my dear Mrs. Davenport, there is nothing out of place about such talk now, and you really must not say we take but slight interest in your affairs. On the contrary, we are very much interested in them. I think I may answer for every member of my family, and say that beyond our own immediate circle of relatives there is no lady in whom we take so deep an interest."
The old man was solemn and emphatic.
"I am sure," said Mrs. Paulton, looking round the table, "that my husband has said nothing but the simple fact."
She turned her eyes upon the widow.
"Mrs. Davenport, I hope you will always allow me to be your friend. Your troubles have, I know, been very great, and you are now no doubt suffering so severely that you think the whole world is against you. We, at all events, are not. Anything we can do for you we will; and, believe me, Mrs. Davenport, doing anything for you will be a downright pleasure."
The widow bowed her head for a moment before speaking. It seemed as though she could not trust her voice. After a brief pause she sat up, and, resting the tips of the fingers of both hands on the table, said:
"As I told you earlier to-day, I have been alone all my life, and the notion of fellowship is terrible to me, coming now upon me when my life is over."
"Indeed you should not talk of your life being over. You are still quite young. Many a woman does not begin her life until she is older than you."
"I am thirty-four, and that is not young for one to begin life."
"But, may I ask," said Mr. Paulton, "how it is that the will becomes inoperative? How is it that you cannot avail yourself of your husband's bequests?"
"My reasons for not taking my husband's money must, for the present--I hope for ever--remain with myself. Mr. Blake has told me certain things, and I have found out others myself. I am now without money--I do not mean," she said, flushing slightly, "for the present moment, for a month or two--but I am without any money on which I can rely for my support. I shall have to begin life again--or, rather, begin it for the first time. I shall have to work for my living, just as any other widow who is left alone without provision. This is very plain speaking, but the position is simple."
"But, my dear Mrs. Davenport, you must not in this way give yourself up to despair," said Mr. Paulton, as he rose and stood beside her.
"Despair!" she cried, looking up at him with a quick glance of angry surprise. "Despair! You do not think me so poor a coward as to despair. How can one who never knew hope know despair? I am in no trouble about the future. I shall take to a line of life in which there is room and to spare for such as I."
"Do not do anything hastily, I have a good deal of influence left."
Mrs. Paulton, who saw that Mrs. Davenport was excited, over-wrought, rose and moved towards the door. The others stood up, excepting Mrs. Davenport, who, as she was excited and looking up into Mr. Paulton's face, did not hear the stir or see the move.
"I am most sincerely obliged to you, Mr. Paulton, but I greatly fear that, much as I know you would wish it, you could not aid me in my business scheme."
"May I ask what the business is?"
"The stage."
"The stage, Mrs. Davenport! You astound me."
"I have lived alone and secluded all my life. For the future I shall, if I can, live among thousands of people, whom I will compel to sympathise with my mimic trials, since I never had any one to sympathise with my real ones. I shall flee from an obscurity greater than a cloister's to the blaze and full publicity of the footlights. You think me mad?"
"No; ill-advised. Who suggested you should do this?"
She glanced around, and saw that the ladies were waiting for her.
"I beg your pardon," she said to them, as she rose and walked towards the door, which Alfred held open.
She turned back as she went out, and answered Mr. Paulton's question with the two words:
"Mr. Blake."
Alfred closed the door. The three men looked in amazement at one another.
"There's something devilish in her or Blake," said the old man.
"Or both," said Jerry O'Brien.
By a tremendous effort, Alfred Paulton sat down and kept still. He did not say anything aloud, but to himself he moaned:
"If I lose her, my reason will go again--this time for ever!"
When the men found themselves alone and somewhat calmed down after the excitement caused by Mrs. Davenport's astonishing announcement, Mr. Paulton and Jerry discussed the proposed step with great minuteness and intelligence, while Alfred sat mute and listless. He pleaded the necessity of his going to bed early on account of to-morrow's journey. In the course of the discussion between the two elder men, Jerry held that if she did take to the stage, she would make one of the most startling successes of the time.
"She has beauty enough," he said, "to make men fools, and fire enough to make them lunatics. What a Lady Macbeth she would be!"
Mr. Paulton was anything but a fogey. He did not forget that he had been once young, nor did he forget that, when young, a pretty face and a fine figure had seemed extremely bewitching things. He was liberal in all his views, except in the matter of betting. To that vice he would give no quarter whatever. He never once sought to restrain his son's reading, and Alfred had a latchkey almost as soon as he was tall enough to reach the keyhole. Although he did not smoke himself, he saw no objection to others, his son included, smoking in suitable places, and with moderation. He did not exclude shilling whist from his code, although he never played. He rarely went out after dinner now, but when he made his mind up to move, he did not think there was anything unbecoming in his visiting a theatre--the front of a theatre, mind you, sir. He supposed and believed there were many excellent men behind the scenes, and he did not feel himself called upon to say that the majority of the ladies were not all that could be desired; but--ah, well, he would be very sorry--it would, in fact, break his heart if either of his daughters--Madge, for instance--went upon the stage.
With the latter part of this somewhat long-winded speech Jerry heartily concurred. He felt furious and full of strength when he fancied Madge behind the curtain, subjected to dictation and uncongenial associations, not to speak of anything more disagreeable still. There were nasty draughts and nasty smells, and nasty ropes and nasty dust, and sometimes the carefully-attuned ear might catch a nasty word. It was blasphemy to think of Madge in such an atmosphere, amid such surroundings. And then fancy any "young man" of fifty-six putting his arm round Madge, and administering even a stage kiss to his darling! The thing was preposterous, and not to be entertained by any sane mind.
Coffee was sent into the dining-room, and the whole household retired early.
Alfred's reflections that night were the reverse of pleasant. He had that day seen the woman he loved. She had come before his eyes as unsought as the flowery pageant of summer. She had filled his heart with tropical heat, had set fancy dancing in his head, and restored strength and vigour to his invalid body. He had, before the moment his eyes rested on her that day, been satisfied with the hope of seeing her in weeks, months. She had come voluntarily, no doubt, without special thought of him, to their home; she had once more accepted their hospitality, and he and O'Brien were to accompany her to Ireland. They would not travel together, but he should know she was near--know she was in the same train, in the same steamboat; they should meet frequently on the journey, and, crowning thought of all, they had one common destination!
He had that day spent some delicious minutes in her company. While she was by he had forgotten his late illness, his present weakness. The immediate moment had been filled with incommunicable joy, and the future with splendid happiness.
What had befallen all this dream of enchantment? Ruin--ruin complete and irreparable! She was, owing to some secret and mysterious cause or other, no longer rich. In her own estimation she was a pauper. That was little. If that was all, it could be borne with a smile--nay, with gratitude; for riches would act as a lure to other men, and he wanted only herself and, if it might come in time, her love.
She had determined to go upon the stage. That was bad--entirely bad; but if this evil resolve stood alone, it might be combated. If she had determined merely with herself to follow the profession of an actress, she might be persuaded to abandon her design. But the unfortunate course she had made up her mind to follow had been suggested by Blake, by an old lover who years ago was dear to her, and now was absolute in her counsels. This put an end to every hope that she could ever be his.
Oh, weary day, and wearier night!
If he could, he would back out of going to Ireland; but that was now impossible. Under the pressure of his great joy, he had told O'Brien of his love for Mrs. Davenport, and all arrangements had, at his request, been made for their setting off to-morrow. She must go to-morrow. While there is life there is hope. He was hoping against hope; but accidents did happen in many cases, and might happen in this one. No man was bound to despair; in fact, despair was cowardly and unmanly. It was the duty of every man to hope, and he would hope. He would go to Ireland to-morrow; he would put his chance against Blake's. If this disappointment were to kill him or drive him mad, he might as well enjoy the pleasure of being near her until his health or mind gave way finally.
When he came to this decision he fell asleep.
Next day broke chill and dismal, and none of the folk at Carlingford House seemed lively except Edith. Mrs. Paulton was depressed because her only son was going away from home and into a country of which she had a vague and unfavourable notion. O'Brien was sulky at the thought of being torn from the side of Madge, now that he might talk freely to her of love and their prospects, and the brutal Commissioners. Mrs. Davenport was depressed by a variety of circumstances and considerations, and Alfred had much to make him anything but cheerful. Mr. Paulton's seriousness--that was the strongest word which could fairly be applied to his humour--was due to the dulness of the weather, and a depreciation in the value of some shares held by him.
During the day each of the travellers was more or less busy with preparations. Mrs. Davenport had to go to town early in order to transact business she had neglected the day before. Alfred stayed mostly in his room, and O'Brien, far from sweet-tempered, managed, through the unsought contrivance of Edith, to be a whole hour alone with Madge.
"You know," he said to her, when preliminaries had been disposed of, "it's a beastly nuisance to have to go away from you now. I'd much rather stop, I assure you."
"You are very kind."
"Don't be satirical, Madge. No woman ever yet showed to advantage when satirical. I say it's a great shame to have to go away, particularly when it's only to save appearances; for now that Blake has once more come on the scene, all is up with poor Alfred. Upon my word, Madge, I pity him."
"Do you like her, Jerry?"
"No. I like you. I like you very much. You're not a humbug."
"Is she?"
"No. But she's too awfully serious. I cannot help thinking she ought to do everything to the slow music of kettledrums."
"Why kettle-drums?"
"I don't know. I suppose it's because the concerted kettle-drum is the most bald and arid form of harmonious row. I'm afraid my language is neither select nor expressive. But one can't help one's feelings--particularly when one's feelings make one like you. I really am sorry to have to leave you."
"But you mustn't blame me for that."
"Now you are quite unreasonable. You must know that a man without a grievance is as insipid as a woman without vanity."
"Jerry, I'm not a bit vain; I never was a bit vain. What could I be vain about?"
"Ungrateful girl! Have I not laid my hand and fortune, including the bodies of the murdered Commissioners, at your feet?"
"You are silly, Jerry."
"How am I silly? In having laid my hand and fortune and the bodies----"
"No. In talking such nonsense."
"And you are not vain of having made a conquest of me?"
"Jerry, I'm very fond of you, and I don't like you to talk to me as if you thought I was only a silly girl whom you were trying to amuse with any silly things you could think of. I hope you don't believe I'm a fool?"
"No. You are right, Madge: it's a poor compliment for a man to talk mere tattle to his sweetheart. I wonder, darling, if you would give me a keepsake, now that I am going away?"
"No. I have no faith in keepsakes. I would not take any keepsake from you, because I shall need nothing to remind me of you when you are away."
"Darling, nor I of you. And if things go wrong with me?"
"They can't go wrong with you."
"I mean if I come off worse in these business affairs."
"That will not make any difference in you."
"No. Nor in you, darling?"
"No."
He held her in his arms a while, and said no more. Thus they parted.
It had been arranged that the two men should meet Mrs. Davenport at Euston. They were on the platform when she arrived. To their surprise she was not alone: Blake accompanied her. As soon as they came forward he shook hands with her, raised his hat, and retired.
O'Brien and Paulton were greatly taken aback by Blake's presence. They busied themselves about her luggage, and then took seats in the same compartment with her. They were the only passengers in the compartment.
As soon as the train was in motion she leaned forward to O'Brien, and said in a clear, distinct voice, the edge of which was not dulled by the rumble of the wheels:
"You arrived the day before yesterday from Ireland?"
"Yes," he answered, bending forward and looking into her inscrutable eyes.
"You have been at Kilcash?"
"Yes. I was there for about a month."
"Did you hear a ghost story there?"
He started and looked seriously at her.
"Yes, I did. May I ask if you have heard anything about it?"
"Yes. When I got back to Jermyn Street where I stayed, I found a letter there telling me that a ghost, the ghost of a man named Michael Fahey, had been seen in the neighbourhood of Kilcash."
"At the Black Rock. I was going to tell the story yesterday at dinner, but it slipped by."
"Do you know anything of this--apparition?"
"I saw it myself, and two others saw it."
"Where do we stop first?"
"At Rugby."
She took a note-book from her pocket, and wrote something in it. When the writing was finished, she tore out the leaf on which it was, and handed the leaf to O'Brien, saying:
"Will you be kind enough to telegraph this from Rugby for me?"
"It will have to be written on a form," he said, hesitatingly.
"Will you oblige by writing it on a form for me? There is no reason why you shouldn't read it."
When he got out at Rugby he read the message. It was addressed to Blake, and ran:
"Mr. O'Brien saw what I told you. Follow me to Ireland at once."
It was impossible for O'Brien to tell Alfred the nature of the telegram he had just despatched to Blake. It would not be seemly to whisper or to write, and to leave the compartment with the proclaimed intention of seeking a smoking carriage would be a transparent device. There was nothing for it but to sit still and keep silent.
The three travellers settled themselves in their corners, and pretended to go to sleep. Each had thoughts of an absorbing nature, but none had anything exceptionally happy with which to beguile the dreary midnight journey. It was impossible to see if Mrs. Davenport slept or not. She had, upon settling herself after leaving Rugby, pulled down her thick veil over her face, and remained quite motionless. Young Paulton was not yet as strong as he imagined, and the monotonous sound and motion soon fatigued him, and he fell asleep.
Although O'Brien kept his eyes resolutely shut he never felt more wakeful in his life.
What on earth could this woman want with this man of most blemished reputation and desperate fortune? She had seen him lately, and he had told her something of the mysterious appearance near the Puffing Hole; but it was not until after they had started from Euston that she had made up her mind to summon him to Ireland. What could she want him for? She was, according to her own statement, now no longer rich. She was no longer young. The best years of her beauty had passed away. No doubt she was still an extremely beautiful woman, but the freshness was gone. As far as he knew, Blake was the last man in the world to marry such a woman. And yet there was some secret bond, some concealed link between them. He was not unjust to her. He did not believe she would inveigle any man into a marriage, and he could not understand why this Blake was now even tolerable to her.
However matters might go, it looked as if Alfred were certain to suffer. It was quite plain he was madly in love with her, and that she did not see, or was indifferent to his passion. She was not a coquette. She showed no desire to claim indulgence because of her sex or sorrows, and certainly exacted no privilege as a tribute to her beauty. To him she seemed hard, mechanical, cold. She had, it is true, broken down the day before, but that was under extreme pressure. Usually she was as unsympathetic, self-contained as bronze.
Jerry was not a fool or a bigot, and he allowed to himself, with perfect candour, that although he looked on Alfred's passion as infatuation, he could understand it. He himself was no more in love with her than with the black night through which they were speeding; but if she, at that moment, raised her veil and stood before him and bade him undertake something unpleasant--nay, dangerous--he would essay it. Strength gives command to a man, beauty to a woman, love to either.
At Chester the three got coffee, and once more took up their corners and affected to sleep or slept.
When they reached the boat at Holyhead, Mrs. Davenport said good-night and descended to the ladies' cabin. The two friends got on the bridge, and as soon as the steamer had started O'Brien took Paulton to the weather bulwark, and told him the substance of the telegram Mrs. Davenport had sent to London.
To O'Brien's astonishment, the younger man made nothing of the matter. It was simply a business affair, he said: nothing of any moment. From all they had heard, Blake knew more than they had supposed of the dead man's affairs; and now that Mrs. Davenport had resolved not to take the fortune her husband had left her, it was almost certain Blake could be of assistance to her.
After a little while it was agreed that the bridge was too cold for Alfred, so both men went below and lay down. O'Brien fell asleep, and did not awake until he was called close to Kingstown.
It was a dreary, cold, bleak morning, with thin sunlight. There had been rain in the night, and everything looked chill and depressing. The passage had been smooth, and none of the three had suffered by it beyond the spiritless depression arising from imperfect rest and fatigue.
When they alighted at Westland Row, Jerry suggested that they should send on their luggage to the King's Bridge terminus, and seek breakfast.
"Not my luggage," said Mrs. Davenport; "I am not going to Kilcash to-day. Kindly get me a cab. I will stay at the 'Tourists' Hotel.' I have telegraphed, as you know, to Mr. Blake to come over, and will send him word to meet me there. I am extremely obliged to both of you for all your kindnesses on the way."
Alfred started, and Jerry looked surprised.
"You are," the latter said, "quite sure you prefer staying here. Of course I do not presume to interfere; but perhaps it might be more convenient for you, Mrs. Davenport, if Mr. Blake followed you to Kilcash?"
"I am quite sure," she said, decisively, "that it would be best for me to stay in Dublin for the present."
"If you simply wanted rest, we could wait for you a day or two," said Alfred, out of whose face all look of animation had gone.
"Thank you, I am not in the least tired; and if you will get me a cab, and tell the man to drive me to the 'Tourists', you will greatly oblige me."
Nothing more was to be done or said. Her luggage was put on a cab, she again thanked the two friends, and saying she hoped to have an opportunity of soon seeing them at Kilcash House, said goodbye to them, and drove away.
Alfred and Jerry O'Brien got breakfast, drove to the King's Bridge terminus, and started for the South in no very good humour.
"It's always the way," thought the latter, despondingly. "Only for the infernal Commissioners and O'Hanlon's craze about his brain--bless the mark!--I need not have left London last month. Only for Alfred's infatuated impatience and his father's vicarious gallantry, I might be there now; and here are the Commissioners gone to sleep, O'Hanlon's head good for nothing, any number of future bills of costs, and we deserted by the object of young love and elderly gallantry! Upon my word, it's too bad. If O'Hanlon had only had the good sense to murder the Commissioners while suffering from temporary or permanent insanity, and Blake owned the good taste to run away with the widow--why, then, things would be wholesome and comfortable. As it is, they are simply-beastly."
The two friends arrived late that night at the "Strand Hotel," Kilcash, and went to bed almost immediately. Neither rose early next morning, but when they did get up, they found the weather magically improved. A few high silver clouds floated against the deep blue screen of sky, beyond which one knew the stars lay; for the grass and bare branches of trees flashed and blazed, not with the yellow light of the gaudy sun, but with rays that seemed glorious memories of midnight stars. The sea in the bay was calm as a lake, and joined upon the level margin of the sand smoothly, like a steady white flame spreading out from a dull-red lake of fire. The doors of the cottages were open, and people were abroad. Thin wreaths of smoke went up from hushed hearths. Hundreds of gulls sailed slowly up and down across the mouth of the bay. Now a dog barked, now a cock crew, now a wild bird whistled.
Opposite Alfred, as he stood at his window, drinking in the peace of the scene, rose the sloping sides of the bay. On them were sheep grazing. Here the salt blasts from the Atlantic would let no wheat or oats, or grain of any other kind, prosper. Nothing would grow but short, poor grass, on which sheep picked up an humble livelihood. The harvest fields of Kilcash were beyond the bay, out there on the blue depths of the ocean, that great cosmopolitan common of the races of man.
Little labour was ever to be done in Kilcash. Its farms, its workshops, its mines were in the sea. No child, until he himself went to sea, ever saw his father work. The men came home not merely to their houses, but to the village to rest. When they had hauled up their boats, and carried away the nets and sails and oars and masts, their labours were at an end. The women bore the fish up to the Storm Wall, whence it was thrown into carts and creels, and driven off to Kilbarry. The visitors who came to the place in summer did not work. They came avowedly to do nothing--to idle through the sunny weather, to play at fishing, play at boating, play at swimming, to make grave business of doing nothing.
"I feel it doing me good already," said Alfred, as he threw up the window and spread his chest broad to take a full inspiration of the invigorating, balsamic air.
After a late breakfast the two friends strolled out.
"What shall we do to-day?" said Jerry, lighting a cigar.
"What is there to be done?" asked Alfred, by way of reply.
"Nothing," answered Jerry, throwing away the match--"absolutely nothing. It is because there is nothing to be done here I thought the place would do you good."
"Not by way of change?" said Alfred, with a smile.
"Well, doing nothing at Kilcash is very different from doing nothing in London. There you get up, eat breakfast, look at the morning papers, yawn over a book; write three notes to say you have no time to write a letter; wonder what the earlier portion of the day was intended for; resolve to go to bed early that night so as to find out the secret; dress; go out nowhere, anywhere; make a call on a person whom you don't want to see, and who doesn't want to see you; curse yourself for being so stupid as to look him up, and him for being so stupid as not to amuse you; buy a hairbrush you don't want; wonder where people can be going in hansoms at such an hour, and can't find out for the life of you where you could go in a hansom at that time, except to the British Museum, or Tower, or National Gallery, or some other place no respectable person ever yet went to; drop into a club for luncheon, and find that no one you ever saw before lunches at the club, and that those who do are intensely disagreeable; stroll into the park; pick up two dear old boys, who have been looking for you everywhere to tell you about something or other that makes you swear; back to the club to dinner, where you meet every man you care for, and dine; after dinner go somewhere or other--to Brown's, for instance, or to the theatre, or to see the performing Mastodon; afterwards cards or billiards, and bed at half-past two or three."
"That's rather a full and exhausting programme for an idle day. It isn't much good here. What do you do here a day you do nothing?"
"Nothing. Whether it's a busy or an idle day with you here, you can't do anything, except you get books and go in for the exact sciences. You couldn't buy a morning paper here for a sovereign, or a pack of cards for a hundred pounds. The hotel does not take in a paper at this time of the year, and only three come to the village--one each to the clergymen, and one to the police barracks. The garrison of the barracks is six men and a bull-terrier. There's no one to look at here, and no one to call on, except the echoes, which at this time of the year are uncommonly surly, not to say scurrilous. There is no fish, as the fish have all gone away on business; they come here only to stare at the summer visitors. The only thing one can do here is smoke--provided you don't buy the tobacco in the village."
"And walk?" asked Alfred. "Cannot one walk here?"
"Yes, mostly. Not always, though; for when it rains here you have to swim, and when it blows here, you have to fly."
"But to-day, for instance, we can walk."
O'Brien looked aloft, looked down in the light wind, and then out to sea.
"Yes, I think it will keep fine."
"Well, then, let us walk."
"But I forgot to tell you there is no place to walk to."
"Oh, yes, there is. I know more of the neighbourhood than you, short a time as I have been here."
"Where?"
"Kilcash House. Jerry, don't laugh or don't abuse me. I can't help it. Let me see where she lived--where she will live again."
When Mrs. Davenport reached the "Tourists' Hotel," she asked to be shown into a private sitting-room. She had slept in the boat, and was in no need of repose. In reply to the servant, she desired breakfast to be brought, and asked for writing materials. She wrote out a telegram to Blake: "I am staying at the 'Tourists', and shall await you here." She wrote a couple of notes of no consequence, and then breakfasted. At the very earliest Blake could not reach Dublin until that evening. In the meantime she would go and see her late husband's solicitor, Mr. Vincent Lonergan.
The old attorney received Mrs. Davenport with the most elaborate courtesy. He was tall, round-shouldered, white-haired, white-bearded, fresh-coloured, slow, oracular. He congratulated himself on meeting her for the first time, and fished up phrases of sympathy and condolence out of his inner consciousness, as though he was the first man in the world who had ever to refer to such matters. Then he paused, partly that his elaborate commonplaces might have time to sink into her mind, and partly that she might have time to collect her thoughts and bring her mind to the business of her visit.
"May I ask you," she said, "how long you acted as solicitor to my late husband?"
"About twelve years, I think. I can tell you exactly if you desire it."
"I will not trouble you for the exact date. During those twelve years you were well acquainted with all Mr. Davenport's affairs, I dare say?"
"With the legal aspect of his affairs, yes. With the business aspect of his affairs, no."
"You know that he made large sums of money by speculating in foreign stocks and shares?"
"I do not know it. I have heard it."
"From whom have you heard it?"
"From several people--himself among the number."
She paused a moment, and then said: "Your words seem to imply a doubt. You will, I am certain, give me all the information you can?"
"Assuredly, my dear lady."
"Then do you not know that he made his money out of foreign speculations?"
"Permit me to explain: I did not intend to imply any doubt as to the way in which the late Mr. Davenport made his money. We solicitors get into a legal way of talking when we are at business; and, legally speaking, I have no knowledge of my own of how the late Mr. Davenport made his money, because the making of the money did not come directly under my observation. I do know he told me he made it in foreign speculations, and I think you will be quite safe in taking it that he did make it abroad. We are now, as I take it, speaking of the time before your marriage with Mr. Davenport?"
"Yes, of the time before my marriage."
"Since then, you would naturally know more of his business affairs than I."
"He spoke little to me of business, and I know hardly anything of his affairs."
"As you know, you are largely benefited under the will. Roughly speaking, all his property goes to you, in addition to what you are entitled to under the marriage settlement."
She made a slight gesture, as though putting these subjects aside.
He made an elaborate gesture, indicating that he understood her, and that he was her obedient, humble servant. After another pause she asked:
"Do you know anything of a man named Fahey--a man who was in some way or other connected with Mr. Davenport, and who was drowned or committed suicide many years ago, shortly after Mr. Davenport's marriage?"
"Fahey--Fahey--Fahey? Yes, I do. I remember that he drowned himself near Kilcash House because the police were on his track for uttering forged bank-notes."
"Do you know in what relation he stood to Mr. Davenport?"
"I am under the impression he was some kind of humble hanger-on; but I am not sure."
"You know nothing of him?"
"Certainly not."
"Never saw him?"
"Not to my knowledge."
Another pause.
"You were good enough to tell me a moment ago that you are acquainted with the legal business of my late husband. Suppose I did not wish to take any money or property under my late husband's will, how would the matter be?"
"Not take your husband's money or property under the will! You are not, my dear Mrs. Davenport, thinking of anything so monstrous?" cried the old man, fairly surprised out of his measured tone and oracular manner.
"Suppose I am. Have I, or shall I soon have, absolute control over what has been left to me?"
"Certainly. There are no conditions. All will be yours absolutely."
"Thank you. I am very much obliged. You will add further to my obligations to you if you will kindly hurry forward all matters in connection with the will. I am most anxious to have the money in my own hands."
"Permit me to explain once more: I take it for granted you have not had leisure to read the copy of the will I forwarded to you?"
She bowed.
"In wills there are often very stupid conditions and provisions which govern the disposal of the property. In this case there are no conditions or provisions, so that you enter into possession quite untrammelled. You understand me when I say quite untrammelled?"
"I understand."
"So that if at any time it seemed well to you to----" He stopped. She had begun to rise, and he did not know whether it would be wise to complete the sentence or not.
She stood before him holding out her hand as she finished what he had begun--"To marry again I should run no risk of forfeiting the money."
"Precisely."
She smiled.
"Thank you. I am a little tired, and am not able to express my sense of your goodness to me during this interview. But I am, I assure you, grateful. I am not thinking of marriage. You will, I hope, be able to get everything into order soon. I must go now. Good-bye."
He saw her into the cab waiting for her at the door, and then walked back to his private office.
"A remarkable woman," he mused, "a remarkable and very fine woman. But I suppose she's mad. There's a screw loose in the heads of the Davenport family, and 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.' Perhaps she took the taint from him. There was no screw loose in his business head. He was as sharp as razors, and as close as wax. I think she's mad, or perhaps she's only a rogue. I suspect his money was not over clean, but that's no affair of mine. She married Davenport, every one said, for his money. She lived with him all these years for his money, every one said--although, for the life of me, I can't see what good it did him or her; and now he's gone, and the money is all hers, and she talks of doing away with it. Oh, she must be mad, for I don't see where the roguery could come in, unless--unless---- Ah, that may be it. By Jove, I'm sure that's it! Byron says, 'Believe a woman or an epitaph?' But he didn't mean it. Byron hardly ever meant what he said, and never what he wrote. It's a pity he never turned his attention to law. He never, as far as my reading has gone, did anything with law except to break all of it he could lay his hands on--civil and divine--especially divine, for that's cheap, and he was poor. She's a very fine woman, though. But what is this I was saying? Oh, yes. The only explanation of her conduct is that Blake, the blackguard Blake, has asked her, or is going to ask her, to marry him, and that she wants to test him by saying she is about to give away all her money to charitable institutions. That's the root of the mystery. And then, when she marries him, she'll throw all the money into his lap, and he'll spend it for her, and gamble it away and beat her. Anyway, he can't make quite a pauper of her, for even she herself can't destroy her marriage settlement, and the trustees won't stand any nonsense. Always 'believe a woman and an epitaph.' I wonder what kind of an epitaph will she put up to Davenport? Something about his name always reminding her of him--that she couldn't stand it, and so had to change it."
When Mrs. Davenport got back to the hotel, she inquired if any telegram had come for her, and was told not. She seemed displeased, disappointed. She asked questions, and discovered that it would be next to impossible that her telegram could reach London before the departure of the morning mail. This put things right, for she felt certain that if Blake got her message he would have replied. He was on his way, and would be in Dublin that evening. In Dublin, yes; but how should he know where to seek her? She spoke to the manager, to whom she explained her difficulty.
If the lady telegraphed to the mail-boat at Holyhead, the gentleman would be sure to get the message.
She thanked the manager, and adopted his suggestion. The day was unpleasant under foot and overhead. There were no friends upon whom she wished to call. The ten years of secluded life at Kilcash House had severed all connection with old acquaintances, and she had made no new ones.
She remained by herself in the sitting-room. She did not even try to read. She sat in the window, and kept her eyes turned towards the busy street. It could not be said she watched the crowds and vehicles, or was even conscious of their existence. She kept her eyes in their direction--that was all.
Luncheon was brought in. She sat at the table for a quarter of an hour, ate something, and then went back to the old place at the window. It was dark before dinner appeared, but she did not ring for lights. When dinner was over, it was close to the time for the arrival of the mail. She put on her bonnet, and went to Westland Row terminus. The weather was still unpleasant, but she did not care, did not heed it. She had not long to wait in that dismal, squalid cavern at the foot of the stone steps leading down from the platform. The train rumbled in, and the passengers began to descend and pass between the double row of people. Suddenly she stepped forward and touched a man on the arm. He turned quickly, and looked at her, exclaiming:
"You here, Marion! I got your telegram on the boat."
"I was afraid it might miss you, so I thought it safer to come myself."
"What extraordinary story is this? I can scarcely believe you were serious when you wired me yesterday from Rugby."
"I was in no humour for jesting," she said. "This is no place to talk in. Wait until we get to the hotel."
When they were seated in Mrs. Davenport's sitting-room, he waited for her to speak. She was in the arm of the couch--he by the table, with his elbow resting on it. They were facing one another. She clasped her hands in her lap and rested against the back of the couch. She was deadly pale, and when she spoke her voice was low, firm, and full of thought.
"I want you to tell me all you know about this man Fahey. Mind, you are to tell me all. There is no use in concealing anything now. I will not take a penny of that money. Speak plainly."
"Not take the money, Marion! Are you mad?" he exclaimed, starting forward on his chair.
"Not yet. The future of my reason will depend a good deal on the plainness of your speech. Go on."
"But I have told you all that is worth telling."
"Tell it to me all over again, and this time add everything, great or little, you can think of, you can recollect. Let me judge what is worth listening to, and what is not. I am waiting."
"I know next to nothing of Fahey, and never saw the man in all my life. You are allowing this absurd story of his ghost to prey on you. You will make yourself ill."
"Nothing is so bad as uncertainty. I am racked by uncertainty. Go on if you wish to do me a service."
"Service! I'd die for your sake, Marion."
"Then speak for my sake." She did not move or show any interest one way or the other in his words, although they had been spoken pleadingly, passionately.
"At Florence, when he was seized by that delusion, he raved now and then, and in his ravings he said continually that there was a plot to rob and murder him. He did not include me in the conspiracy, but all others were leagued against him. At times he would become furious, and defy his imaginary foes, swearing that all of them together were powerless against him, as Fahey was loyal, and would be loyal to the death."
"Loyal in what?"
"I don't know. He did not say in either his sane or frantic moments."
"What did he say?"
"That Fahey knew, but that no power on earth would drag the secret out of Fahey."
"What secret?"
"How should I know?"
"Do you know?"
"Upon my soul, Marion, I do not."
"Well, and after that what would happen?"
"He would laugh and snap his fingers at imaginary conspirators, and dare them to do their worst, and then he would break out into a laugh of triumph. And, as I hope to live, Marion, that's all."
"Every word?"
"Every syllable, I swear to you. Marion, I could not tell you a lie. Marion, I never loved you until now. If you bid me, I will die for you. If you tell me, I will go away and never see you again. Try me. Bid me go or bid me die. Tell me to do anything, if you will only believe I love you as I never loved you before--as I never loved any other woman in the world. Since you will not forgive me, since you will not give me your love for mine, since you will not let me be near you or see you, set me something to do by which I can show you I am sincere--madly in earnest."
He bent towards her, and held out his hands, but did not leave his chair. His voice, his whole frame shook with excitement.
She raised her hand and lowered it gently, as a signal that he was to be still and silent.
He drew his arms and his body quickly back, and sat mutely regarding her.
"I am sorry," she said, slowly, gently, "that you spoke in that strain now. This is not the time for such matters----"
"Then a time may come, Marion--a time may come soon or late? I do not care when----"
"No," she answered, quietly, resolutely.
"That time came and went long ago. Be silent on that subject. I want to speak of long ago."
He groaned, and struck his forehead with his clenched fist.
"It was scarcely fair of me to ask you to come. Will you answer my questions?"
"Ask me what you please. I'll do it. The only hope now left to me is that you will allow me to serve you."
"My next question may be, must be painful to you."
He laughed bitterly.
"That does not matter. Nothing can matter now, except feeling I can be of no use to you."
"What means of influence had you over my husband beyond what I knew of?"
"I am not in the least pained by that question. I was a poor idiotic fool to give you up, but I could not support you if I married you on my own means then. I had no means. But still less could I, vile as I was, marry you on money got from him."
"What influence had you?"
"I had only one spell to conjure with."
"And that was?"
"The name of Fahey."
"How did you employ that name?"
"I said to him once, 'Is Fahey still loyal?' I said it half in jest. We were alone. He begged of me never to mention that name again, as it recalled his awful condition in Florence. He said if I would do him the favour of never referring to that circumstance or name, he would be my life-long debtor--adding: 'And I mean what I say, and that it shall have practical results.'"
"He meant money."
"Yes."
"Was that before or after he gave you the thousand pounds?"
"Before--some months before. But now-poor Davenport is no more, and cannot be hurt by any one. And Fahey is dead, and can hurt no one, though foolish old women frighten themselves with the thought that they have seen his ghost. Did you know this Fahey?"
She shuddered. This was the first sign of feeling she showed. What it sprang from he could not guess.
"I did," she answered, unsteadily.
"And you believe this story about the ghost?"
"No."
"What then?"
"That"--with another shudder--"he is alive."
"Alive, Marion--alive! You are overexcited. You are talking nonsense. Go and lie down. You are worn out."
"I am. I feel my head whirling round. Leave me."
He rose obediently to go.
"My mind is giving way, Tom."
That name spoken by her lips again rooted him to the spot.
"They suspected you, Tom, of that awful deed, and they say he did it himself. I am going mad. Surely this is madness."
"What--what! Marion!"
"And now I suspect--him!"
"Whom, in the name of heaven?"
"Fahey. He was jealous of you both. Why did you put out the lights----"
She tottered!
Tom Blake was thunderstruck. They were both standing facing one another a few feet apart. Blake was not a man to be disturbed by a trifle. He had been a good deal about in the world, and had had experience of various kinds of men and women. Many years ago he had met this woman frequently, and in the end he made love to her. Although she accepted that love and returned it, she had never taken him fully into her confidence.
In Marion Butler, as he knew her eleven or twelve years ago, there had always been a certain undefined reserve. She would not refuse to answer any question put to her, nor was there a doubt she answered truly and fully. But she always created the impression that there were questions which he could not devise or discover, and the answer to which he was in no way prepared for. He had no idea or hint of what these questions might be. He was in no way uneasy about them. He was convinced there were portions of her nature which would always be concealed from him; but he was not jealous or suspicious. He was not then even slightly disquieted by this blankness, this reticence. It had no more meaning for him than would her native tongue, had she been born a Hindoo and laid that language aside for English. She had told him she had never loved any one but him, and he believed her without the possibility of doubt. She promised to be his wife, and he believed she would have stood at the altar with him though death were his rival for the first kiss.
But now he was amazed, confounded. He had never seen the man Fahey, but he had heard and read in the papers a little about him, and from all he had gathered he fancied Fahey was a kind of upper servant or hanger-on of some kind. Davenport had spoken to him of Fahey, but the talk had been very general and vague, except with regard to the conspiracy, and the former man always showed the greatest possible disinclination to hear anything, or be asked any questions relating to the latter. Blake had never run the risk of riding a free horse to death. He got money in large sums from Mr. Davenport, but he had been judicious. There was nothing so low or coarse as blackmail hinted at by Mr. Davenport. That gentleman and he were excellent friends, and he had had bad luck, or was in want of money for some other cause, and when men became alarmed about money matters, although they were quite innocent, they often did foolish things. Look at that idiot Fahey. So Mr. Davenport, because he was a gentleman and a friend of Blake's, gave him money out of mere courtesy and good nature, and not fear, as one gives to a strange fellow-pedestrian on the footway when the stranger carries a load. There was no more hint of threat or dread of fear in the case of Mr. Davenport's offering the money, or of Blake taking it, than in the case of the meeting of two unacquainted wayfarers.
He had thought nothing the widow could tell him would take him by surprise, and here he now was fairly breathless and amazed. There was no doubt in his mind this Fahey had not been the social equal of Marion Butler, and Blake was of opinion the man's origin had been much lower than Mr. Davenport's, though whence the dead man had sprung he did not exactly know. Kilcash House had not always been the dead man's property. He had bought it only a little while before his marriage. Davenport seemed to be a man accustomed to meet men only. He was not by any means at his ease in an ordinary mixed company, and he had explained this to Blake by saying that until comparatively late in life he had been almost wholly a business man and unaccustomed to the society of ladies.
But now what ghastly light shone on the dire tragedy of the Crescent House in Dulwich! What a wonderful revelation was this! Fahey, the humble follower of the dead man, had been an admirer of the dead man's wife; and he who had been declared dead a decade of years ago was by her believed to be living, and to have been connected directly with her husband's death! No wonder he was giddy. No wonder he could find no words to speak to her. No wonder he could only stand and gaze at her in stupid fear, revolving in a dim light the ghostly pageant of the past.
It was she who broke the silence.
"I wish I were dead!"
Her voice recalled him to her presence and the immediate hour. He took her by the hand, led her to a seat, and began pacing up and down the room without speaking.
"Advise me," she went on, after a pause. "Advise me, out of mercy. If I were dead, there would be no lips to tell, no soul to suspect the horrors by which I am haunted. Advise me. You know more of me than any other living being. Shall I die?"
Still he could not speak. Her question came to his ears as though it were something apart from her personality and his consideration--as though it were a tedious impertinence rising from an indifferent source. Although he knew he was in that room with the widow of Louis Davenport, and that she had just said she believed Fahey was alive, and had killed her husband from jealousy, he could not give the situation substantial form. There were confounding murmurs in his ears, and indeterminable shadows floating before his eyes. His mind was clamorous for quiet, and the clamour stunned and confounded him.
"Speak to me," she pleaded. "I am not deserted, yet I am alone. I have always been alone since I can first remember. Only I myself have broken the solitude in which I lived. Once, long ago, I thought you were coming towards me from a distance, to share my solitude, but you--you--went by. I felt like a castaway on a desolate island, who sees a sail bear down upon him in the twilight, only to find the morning sea a barren desert of water. Should I die? That is not a hard question for you to answer, is it?"
"No; not a hard question, Marion. You must live."
"For what?"
If she had asked this question an hour ago, before she told him her horrible suspicions, he would readily have answered, "For me." As it was, such an answer would have seemed flippant, profane. But an answer of some kind must be made. He could find no answer, and said merely, "Give me time."
She sat upright on her chair. One hand and arm rested on the table, the white hand lying open upon the leaf, the thumb holding on by the edge. Her head and face were thrust forward, her chin projecting, the forehead reclining. Her eyes, wide open, followed him closely, intently, but not eagerly. She seemed curious, more than anxious. It was as though she took but a reflected interest in the question, although the reply might govern her action. She waited for him patiently. He was a long time before he spoke.
"Marion," he said at length, "if I am to be of any use to you--if even my advice is to be of service to you--I must know all--all, without reserve of any kind. On the face of it, your question is absurd. Supposing you had no code--no religious feeling in the matter; suppose you had no fear or hope of the other world, what earthly good could come of your doing violence to yourself?--of your throwing away your life suddenly?"
While he was saying this, he continued to walk up and down the room, with his eyes bent on the floor.
Her eyes had continued to follow him in the same close, intent way. Still they lacked eagerness. She was a pupil anxious to know--not an enthusiast impatient to act.
"It would," she answered, with no trace of emotion, "close up his grave for ever, and give peace to his name."
"Your husband's--your husband's grave and name! Come, Marion, let us be frank."
"In what am I uncandid?"
"You did not--you swore at the inquest you did not--love your husband, and now you are talking of killing yourself for his sake. Marion, you cannot hold such words candid."
He paused in his walk, and stood before her. He looked at her a moment, and then averted his gaze. Her eyes, although they rested intelligently on him, did not appear to identify him. They were the eyes of one occupied with the solution of a mental problem, aided by formula of which he was merely the source.
"Thomas Blake," she said, "I once thought you might grow to understand me, and then I came to the conclusion you never could. You are now further off than ever. Louis Davenport was my husband, and I belonged to him. I belong to him still. I swore--as they were good enough to remind me at the inquest--to love, honour, and obey him. I did not come to love him as women love their husbands, but my feeling towards him was whole and loyal. I was his, and I am his; and if my death, now that he is dead, can benefit him or comfort his name with quiet, I am willing to die. Do not be alarmed. I shall make no unpleasantness here. Do you think I am in the way of his rest?"
"Marion, you are talking pure nonsense. Why, your feelings as a Christian alone----"
"Who told you I was a Christian? I tell you I am a Pagan. Leave me at least the Pagan virtues of courage and fearlessness." She did not move.
He looked at her. There could be no doubt she was sincere. Mad as her words sounded, they must be taken at the full value of their ordinary meaning.
"I will not seek to break down your resolution or turn your purpose aside. But before I can be of any real use to you in the way of advice, you must trust me wholly. How am I to judge of your duty unless I know the entire case? Tell me all you know. Tell me all that passed between you and this Fahey, and all you know of the relations between him and your husband."
"I will tell you all you need know."
"Do you think you are a good judge of where your confidence in a matter of this importance should end?"
"I think I am. At all events, I shall be reticent if I consider it better not to speak."
"Well, then, go on, Marion, and tell me all you may. Mind, the more I know the more likely I am able to be of use to you."
She passed the hand not resting on the table across her forehead.
"Sit down," she said. "I can speak with greater ease while you are sitting."
He took a chair directly opposite her, and she began:
"All that I said at the inquest is true, and I told the whole truth in answer to any questions I was asked; but I did not say all that was in my mind. I have had bitter trials in my life. I will not refer again to what was once between you and me; and, remember, in anything I may say I shall have no thought of that. I put that away from my mind altogether, and it will be ungenerous of you if you draw any deduction towards our relations in the past from anything I may say. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly, Marion. I know you too well to fancy for a moment you could be guilty of the mean cowardice of talking at any one. Go on."
"Thank you. I am glad you think I am no coward." She still kept her hand before her face, as though to concentrate her attention upon her mental vision. "As I said at that awful inquest, there was never anything ever so slightly like a quarrel between Mr. Davenport and me. Except that we lived almost exclusively at Kilcash House, which was dull, I had little or nothing to complain of; and the great quiet and isolation of that place did not affect me much, for I had small or no desire to go out into the world, and after a few years it would have given me more pain than pleasure to have to mingle in society. Very shortly after my marriage I met Michael Fahey for the first time----"
"What was he like?" asked Blake, interrupting her.
"He was tall and slender. His hair was brown, his eyes light in colour--blue, I think. He wore a moustache of lighter colour than his hair, and small whiskers of the same colour. He was good-looking in a way----"
"What kind of way?"
"Well, a soft and gentle way. At first he struck me as being a man who was weak, mentally and physically. Later I had reason to think him a man of average, if not more than average, physical strength."
"About how old was he then?"
"I could not say exactly. Under thirty, I should think. He also struck me as a man of not quite good social position. His manners were uneasy, apprehensive, and his English uncertain. He was restless and ill at ease, and for my own peace of mind I was glad when I parted from him; for it struck me he would be much more comfortable if he and my husband were left alone together.
"My husband spoke to me in the highest terms of Fahey, and said that although he wished nothing to be said about it just then, or until he gave me leave to mention it, Fahey had done him useful service in his time. That was all Mr. Davenport volunteered, and I asked no question. I was sure of one thing more--namely, that the less I was with Michael Fahey the better my husband would be satisfied.
"I smiled when this conviction came first upon me. Up to the moment I felt it I had in my mind treated this Fahey as a kind of upper servant, who was to be soothed into unconsciousness that he was not an equal. For a short time I felt inclined to expostulate with Mr. Davenport on the absurdity of fancying Fahey could think of me save as the wife of his patron; but I kept silence, partly out of pride and partly out of ignorance of the relations which really existed between this man and my husband. You may, or may not, have heard of a circumstance which occurred shortly after my marriage?"
"I remember nothing noteworthy. Tell me what it was."
"At that time it was Mr. Davenport's habit to keep large sums of money in the house. Once upon his having to go away for a few days, he left me the keys of the safe in which the money was locked up. While he was away, an attempt was made to rob the house. A door was forced from outside, and two men were absolutely in my room, where I kept the key of the safe, when Fahey, who was staying in the village of Kilcash at the time, rushed in and faced the thieves. I was aroused and saw the struggle. Fortunately the men were unarmed. The light was dim--only my low night lamp.
"The first blow Fahey struck he knocked one of the men through a window. Then he and the other man struggled a long time, and at last the thief broke loose and escaped by the way he had come in. Fahey had overheard the two thieves plan the robbery in the village, and had followed them that night to our house. My husband wished the matter to be kept quiet, and so it was hushed up.
"The next time I met Fahey after that night I was alone on the downs. He was alone too. I stopped to thank him. I do not remember exactly what I said--commonplace words of gratitude, no doubt. While I was speaking I was close to him, and gazing into his face. I cut my speech short, for I saw a look in his eyes that told me I was not indifferent to him."
The widow's hand fell from her face, and she looked at her visitor with an expression of trouble and dismay.
"There was nothing distressing or alarming in that," said Blake, with an encouraging smile. "You must remember you were then, as you are now, an exquisitely lovely woman.
"'No marvel, sovereign lady; in fair field
Myself for such a face had boldly died.'"
"Ay, ay," she said, with a shudder and a glance of horror round the room. "In the stanza before the one from which you quote my fate is written:
"'Where'er I came I brought calamity.'"
She stared before her, shuddered again, and sighed.
"Well?" said he. "You have more to tell me?"
"Yes; I'll go on."
Mrs. Davenport rested slightly against the back of her chair, and resumed:
"'Mrs. Davenport,' said Fahey, 'what I have done for you was nothing. It was really not done for you at all. It was done for Mr. Davenport, not you. The thieves did not want to steal you. They wanted to steal Mr. Davenport's money. If I may presume to ask you for that rose, I shall consider myself more than repaid for what I have done.'
"I gave him the rose. He bowed, and said: 'Yes, they were stupid, mercenary fools. They thought a few pounds of more value than anything else in the world. I am not a rich man, and I care very little for money itself. I care more for what it may bring with it. I would not care to be the richest man in the world. I have in my time, Mrs. Davenport, been the humble means of forwarding Mr. Davenport's plans for making money. He is a rich man. He is rich in more ways than money.' Here he raised the rose to his lips and kissed it. I stood amazed. I could not speak or move."
"Are you sure the man was serious, and that he meant it fully?--or was it only a piece of elaborate gallantry?" asked Blake, in perplexity.
"There can be no doubt whatever of his absolute sincerity. Listen. I merely smiled, as if I did not catch his drift, and moved as though I would resume my walk towards home. He lifted his hat, and, standing uncovered, with his hat in one hand and the rose I had given him in the other, said:
"'I would not give this rose for all Mr. Davenport's money, and I know more about his money than any other man living. Mr. Davenport and I have been close friends for a long time. It is my nature to be loyal. I have been loyal to him. If I liked I could do him injury--irreparable injury. If I cared, I could ruin him utterly. But it is my nature to be loyal. Do you credit me?'
"For a few seconds I did not answer. I believed he was crazy, and I thought that I must soothe him in some way and get off. I had become apprehensive, so I said: 'I am perfectly sure of your loyalty to Mr. Davenport. I have always heard my husband speak of you in the highest terms, I hope we may soon have the pleasure of seeing you again at the House.'
"'Not yet,' he said--'do not leave me yet. I want to say a few more words to you. It is easy to listen. Listen, pray. I would not, as I said before, give that rose for all his money. If I chose to speak, things might be different with him. By fair means or by foul, I will not say which, I could make his wealth melt like snow in the sun. But I have no caring, no need for wealth. I shall not hurt him if you will make me two promises. Will you make the two promises I ask?'
"By this time I felt fully persuaded I was in the presence of a madman. I looked around and could see no one but the man before me. We were not a hundred yards from the edge of the cliff. I no longer thought him physically weak; his encounter with the thieves had settled that point. If he were mad, the promise would count for nothing. There could be no doubt he was insane. I resolved to try him: 'How is it possible for me to make two promises to you until I know what they are?'
"'Your husband trusts me--you may trust me. Do you promise?'
"'First let me know what the promises are.'
"'That you will say nothing of what I have said to you to Mr. Davenport, and that, if ever I have it in my power to do you another service, and do it, you will give me another rose.'
"'Yes; in both cases,' I answered. 'You may rest satisfied.'
"I got away then and was very glad to escape. There was no occasion to speak to any one about this meeting with Fahey on the downs, unless indeed I firmly believed he was mad; and now that I had time to recall all he had said, and review all his actions, I began seriously to question my assumption as to his insanity. I took the first opportunity of asking my husband if there was anything remarkable about Fahey. Mr. Davenport seemed a good deal put out by the question, and asked me what I meant. I said I thought Fahey was odd at times. My husband said Fahey was all right, and did not seem disposed to go on any further with the conversation.
"I did not meet Fahey again for a long time--I mean months. He then seemed quite collected; but before wishing good-bye, he said significantly: 'A man may disappear at any moment on a coast like this, and yet may not be dead. Now, suppose I were to disappear suddenly on this coast, you would think I had died, and that Mr. Davenport no longer ran any risk from my being talkative, or you any chance of being called upon for that other rose. I am not enamoured of this coast. I consider it dreary and inhospitable, and it would not at all surprise me if one day I packed up and fled far away, and stopped away until almost all memory of me was lost. Do you think, Mrs. Davenport, that if, after such an absence, I were to come back, you would recognise me?'
"I answered that I was sure of it, and got away from him as soon as I could. Again I spoke to Mr. Davenport about Fahey's sanity. My husband did not seem to care about discussing the subject, and so I let the matter drop. Afterwards, when Fahey jumped into the Puffing Hole in order to avoid the police, I thought to myself that when he talked about disappearing from the coast he was much nearer the truth than he had any notion of.
"All this occurred many years ago, but it made a great impression on my mind, and I have not forgotten a tittle of it. The words Fahey spoke, and the way he looked, are as plain to me now as if it all happened only yesterday. For a long time after Fahey had disappeared, I believed his death at the Black Rock was nothing more than a pure coincidence. Now and then, at long intervals, Mr. Davenport would refer to the matter, but always in tones of anxiety and doubt. I do not know why I got the notion into my head, but gradually it found its way there, until at last I became quite sure Fahey was not dead. On more than one occasion when I had ventured to suggest such an idea to Mr. Davenport's mind, he showed great emotion, and, after a few struggles, either directly dismissed or changed the subject.
"If Fahey had been right about his power of disappearing from that coast without dying, why should I refuse to believe that Fahey could injure--nay, ruin, my husband, if he were to appear and make certain statements of matters within his own knowledge? What these matters were I could not guess. Since I saw you last I have got good reasons to feel sure my husband had no proper right to the money he possessed, and that this man Fahey was aware of the facts of the case."
"How did you find all this out, Marion?" asked Blake, looking across at her with freshly awakened interest.
"I found papers of my husband's."
"Will you tell me how you believe he came by the money?"
"No. And you must say nothing of this conversation to any living being."
"Trust me, I will not."
"The difficulties now are, Thomas Blake, that I believe my husband did not come fairly by his fortune, that Michael Fahey is still alive, and that he had a hand in the death of my husband."
Blake knit his brows, rose, and recommenced walking up and down the room.
"Mr. Jerry O'Brien, who travelled over from London with me, told me after we left Euston that he himself and Phelan, the boatman of Kilcash, had seen the ghost or body of Fahey on the cliffs just above the Black Rock."
"It may have been a delusion."
"Yes, it may; but the chances are ten thousand to one against it. He told me, too, that a friend of his had seen the same figure, clad in the same clothes it wore ten or a dozen years ago. The last-named phenomenon I cannot account for. But if you can believe that a man who jumped into the Puffing Hole years ago is still alive, all other beliefs in this case are easy. Now, Thomas Blake, I have spoken more fully to you than I have ever spoken to any other man. I want you to advise and help me.
"How?" asked Blake, stopping in his walk and looking straight into her white, fixed, expressionless face.
"By finding out Fahey and discovering whence my husband got his money. Then, if I may return it without disgracing his name or exposing him, I will, and if not----"
"Well, Marion, if not?"
"I shall put an end to my knowledge and myself, and so keep his grave quiet and silent for him."
"Marion, this is sheer madness."
"So much the better. If I do wrong in an access of insanity, no moral blame attaches to me or my act. Will you help me? Once upon a time I could have counted on your aid."
"At that time you held out the promise of a glorious reward. Do you hold it out still, Marion?"
"No. That thought must be put to rest for ever. You may think it monstrous that such being my mind, I should deliberately seek you and ask for your help. But I have no future, and you are all that is left to me of the past----"
"Marion, Marion, for Heaven's sake don't say it is too late!" he cried, passionately, and advanced a step towards her.
She retired two steps, and made an imperative gesture, bidding him stand still.
"Stay where you are and listen to me. To quote again from the poem you quoted awhile ago, 'My youth,' she said, 'was blighted with a curse.'"
"And," he said, pointing to himself, "if we alter the text slightly, we find 'This traitor was the cause.' Is not that what you mean, Marion? Do not spare me; I am meet for vengeance."
"The present one is not a case for vengeance. But if you like you may in this matter expiate the past."
"And when my expiation is complete, in what relation shall you and I stand to one another?"
"In the same relation as before we met. You will be just to me, and help me in this matter, Thomas Blake. Remember that my life has not been very joyous."
"But, Marion," he urged, softening his voice, and leaning towards her, "if I am to take what you say at its full value----"
"I mean it all quite literally."
"Then my expiation would assume the form of leading you to the tomb instead of the altar."
She drew back, and said:
"Yes, put it that way if you will. At one time I believed your hand was guiding me up to the altar, beyond which lay love and life, and all manner of good and bright things. We never reached the altar. But something happened, and there was a dull, dead pause in life, like the winter sleep of a lizard or the trance of the Sleeping Beauty, and then I awoke, and, to my horror, found the altar had been changed into a tomb, and the Fairy Prince into Death. There was no time for love. I had slept through the period of love. I had no power to hate, but I had the power and the will to die. You will help me?"
"Not to die, Marion. I will help you to solve the mystery of this Fahey, and the relations between him and Mr. Davenport, and then when all has been cleared up, you may----"
He held out his hand pleadingly.
"Yes," she said, coldly, firmly, "when all has been cleared up, I may say--good-bye."
When Jerry O'Brien said there was absolutely nothing to be done in Kilcash, he had told the naked truth. The weather was still far from genial, and Jerry and Alfred Paulton were the only visitors in that Waterford village. For a man of active habits, in full bodily and mental vigour, the place would have been the very worst in the world; but for an invalid who had never been a busy man, it was everything the most exacting could desire. If Alfred's mind had only been as peaceful as his surroundings, he would have picked up strength visibly from hour to hour.
But his mind was not at ease. For good or evil, he did not care which, he had given his heart to that woman, and now once more the shadow of this objectionable, this disreputable man Blake, had come between her and him. The most disquieting circumstance in the case was that Blake had not intruded, but had been summoned by her. It is true that on closer examination this did not seem to point to a love affair between the two; for unless a woman was fully engaged to a man, she would scarcely, he being her lover, summon him to her side, under the circumstances in Mrs. Davenport's case.
Such thoughts and doubts were not the best salve for a hurt constitution; and although Alfred recovered strength and colour from day to day, he did not derive as much benefit from Kilcash as if his mind had been even as untroubled as it had been when the journey from Dulwich began.
Jerry was by no means delighted with affairs. He put the best face he could on things, but still he was not content. As far as he was concerned, the detested Fishery Commissioners had gone to sleep, but there was no forecasting the duration of their slumber. Any moment they might shake themselves, growl, wake, and swallow up all his substance.
"Until they are done with this part of the unhappy country, I shall feel as if the country was overrun by 'empty tigers,' and I was the only wholesome piece of flesh after which the man-eaters hankered."
O'Brien did not pretend to be a philosopher when his own fortune or comfort was threatened or assailed. He chafed and fumed when things went wrong, or when he could not get his way. Now he was compelled, in a great measure, to keep silent, for there would be a want of hospitality in displaying impatience of Kilcash to Alfred. He had confided to the latter the secret of his love for Madge, and the brother had grasped his hand cordially and wished him all luck and happiness. No man existed, he had said, to whom he would sooner confide the future of his sister. How was O'Brien to act with regard to writing to Madge? There had been nothing underhand or dishonourable in telling the girl of his love that day on the Dulwich Road. The declaration had in a measure slipped from him before any suitable opportunity occurred of talking to Mr. Paulton. But speaking to Madge under the excitement of the moment and the knowledge of approaching separation was one thing, and writing clandestinely to her quite another. If he wrote to her openly, inquiries as to the nature of the correspondence would certainly be made at home, and then their secret would be found out, and the thought of being found out in anything about which an unpleasant word could be said was unendurable. In the haste of leaving Carlingford House he had made no arrangement with Madge as to writing to her. It was absolutely necessary for him to risk a letter. He would not be guilty of the subterfuge of writing under cover of one of Alfred's letters. Accordingly he wrote a bright, cheerful, chatty note to Madge, beginning "My dear Miss Paulton," and ending "Yours most sincerely, J. O'Brien." To those who were not in the secret, nothing could have been more ordinary than this letter. But its meaning was plain to Madge. Among other things, he said the Commissioners had not yet done with him, and until they had he could not count upon another visit to Dulwich; and he begged her to give his kindest regards to Mr. Paulton, and to express a hope that he might soon enjoy the pleasure of a walk on the Dulwich Road, when he would tell her father all about the Bawn salmon and the wretched Commissioners. Until then he should not bother either of them with any account of himself or the villains who were lying in wait for him. This he intended to show that he would not write to her again until he had cleared up matters with her father. And now that he had got rid of this letter--it was a task, not a pleasure, to write it--what should he do? He had told himself and Alfred that even in summer there was not anything to be done in Kilcash. But he, O'Brien, was in full health and vigour, and began to feel uneventful idleness very irksome. Boating even with the pretence of fishing was out of the question, and one grew tired of strolling along the strand or downs when fine, and looking out of the windows at the unneeded rain when wet. Against the weariness of the long evenings he had brought books, cards, and chess from Kilbarry. Time began to hang heavily on his hands. Nothing more had been heard or seen of the ghost of Fahey, and the two friends had been a couple of times to see the outside of Kilcash House, whither, he believed, Mrs. Davenport had not yet arrived from Dublin.
The weather was mild, moist, calm.
"I'll tell you what we shall do, Alfred," said Jerry briskly at breakfast one morning.
"What?" asked the other, looking up from his plate.
"There isn't a ripple on the sea. I'll go see Jim Phelan, and get him to launch his boat."
"Capital!" cried Alfred, who was in that state of convalescence when the daily addition to physical strength begets a desire to use it and yields indestructible buoyancy. "I should like a good long-sail of all things--or, indeed, a good pull. I'm sure I could manage an oar nearly as well as ever."
"Nonsense!" said Jerry, dogmatically. "I will not be accessory to your murder, or allow you to commit suicide in my presence. I have had enough of inquests for my natural life. It's too cold for sailing, and you're not strong enough for rowing. But there are the caves. The time of the year does, not make any difference in them, so long as the sea is smooth. They are as warm in winter as in summer. We can bring torches and guns, and a horn and grub with us. A torchlight picnic would be a novelty to me, anyway. The echoes in some places are wonderful, and I'll answer for the food being wholesome. I'll go down to Phelan immediately after breakfast."
Big Jim Phelan was at home in his cottage--not the shelter that covered him in the summer, but the one which the high and mighty of the land could rent for eight to twelve pounds a month when they wished to enjoy the sea.
O'Brien explained his design.
"Are you mad, sir?" said Jim, drawing back from the chair which he had placed for his unexpected guest.
"No. Why? What's mad about it? I and my friend want to see the caves, and they are just as good at this time of year as in summer. Will you take us?--Yes or no? Or are you afraid?"
"I'm not afraid of anything that swims or walks or flies, Mr. O'Brien," said Jim in a tone of indignant protest. "But nature is nature, and it's not right to fly in the face of nature."
"Face of fiddlesticks!" said O'Brien. "What has nature to do with our going to visit the caves? If you don't take us, some one else will. what on earth do you mean by 'flying in the face of nature'?"
"Go to the caves at this time of year!" said Jim, in a musing tone of voice. "Why, no one ever thought of such a thing before!"
"What difference does that make? No strangers are here, except in summer; and of course the people of the village never want to go to the caves either winter or summer, unless they are paid. Come on, Jim; don't send me off to look for some one else. I like to stick to old friends."
Phelan reflected awhile. There was no greater danger on such a day as this in going to the caves than on the finest day in July. But the novelty of the idea was almost too much for Jim. That any man in his sober senses could even during the dog-days want to go to the caves was wonderful enough; but that a man, and, moreover, a man who had lived most of his life hard by, could think of exploring those gloomy vaults in the chilly, damp days of spring, was too much for belief. O'Brien was liberal, and if he happened to spend a couple of the summer months at Kilcash, as he had hinted, Jim was certain to be a few pounds the better for it. But it wouldn't do to give in too easily.
"Mr. O'Brien, if you're bent on going, of course I must take you. I'll go to the Cove of Cork for you, sir, single-handed, in my own yawl. But mind you, sir, it wasn't I that put you up to going. If you ask me my advice, I say don't go. I won't take any of the responsibility, mind, sir."
"All right," cried O'Brien, with a laugh. "You know as well as I do that there is no danger on a calm day like this. How soon will you be ready?"
"I'll have to get a man to go with me, and gather a few hands to help to launch the yawl. Will an hour be soon enough, sir?" said Jim, who, now that he had decided on action, was already busy in preparation.
"Yes; an hour will do. How is the tide?"
"About an hour flood."
"And how will that answer for the Red Cave?"
"Red Cave!" said Phelan, pausing suddenly in his preparation. "Is it Red Gap Cave you're thinking of going to, sir?"
There was a sound of uneasiness in the boatman's voice.
"Yes. Isn't it the largest? Isn't it the one they say has never been explored?"
"Ay, sir. It never has been explored fully, and I don't suppose ever will--for what would be the good?--and it isn't over agreeable in there, with its windings and twistings, I can tell you. I don't mind much about the Red Cave itself; but, Mr. O'Brien, it's only a little bit beyond the Whale's Mouth, and you have some queer notions about that cursed place; and, mind, I'll have nothing to do with it for love or money."
"I didn't say anything about the Whale's Mouth," said O'Brien, in a tone of irritation. "I asked you how is the tide for the Red Cave? Can't you answer a simple question?"
"The tide is always right for the Red Cave," answered Phelan, sullenly. "You can always go into it when the water is smooth."
"Very well. I'll expect you on the strand by the rocks in an hour;" and saying this, O'Brien left the cottage and set out for the hotel.
Red Head is about a pistol-shot from the Black Rock to the east. It is a tall, perpendicular red cliff, more than a hundred feet high, projecting from the land a few hundred yards, and rising up sheer out of deep water. In places it overhangs slightly--in places reclines. The rocks of which it is formed are in no place angular, show no sharp fracture, declare no brittleness in formation. They are rounded and smooth like the human hand, abrupt nowhere, save in their giddy descent to the water.
The middle of the Head is cleft in two a hundred yards inward. This cleft is called the Gap, or the Red Gap, and is as wide as the nave of St. Paul's. At the depth of a hundred yards in the Gap the height of the opening suddenly grows less, and the mouth of a huge cave is formed by the precipitous sides, and an irregular, blunted, Gothic roof of the same firm, smooth red rock. The vast chamber, or system of chambers, beyond, is the Red Gap Cave, for brevity called the Red Cave.
At the time appointed, O'Brien and Paulton found Jim Phelan and his mate Tim Corcoran afloat on the bay by the flat stretch of rocks which served Kilcash as a landing-stage. Billy Coyne had brought down a basket of food, some torches, a crimson light, and gun--the torches and light to illumine the gloom, and the gun to awaken the echoes of the vast vault.
The day was fair and bright, with chill spring sunshine. Overhead vast fields of silvery white clouds stretched motionless across the full azure sky. There was no breath of wind, no threat of rain, no look of anger anywhere. The waters of the bay moved inward with a silken ripple that scarcely stirred the yawl as she glided slowly onward. When she reached the open water beyond the bay, and headed first south and then east, she met the long, even Atlantic roller, which glided towards her and under her as silently and gently as a summer's breeze. No sound broke the plenteous silence but the ripple of the water against the sides, the snap of the oars in the rowlocks, and the dull beat of the waves against the foam-footed crags. No ship, no boat, no bird was in view. The solitude of the air and sea was complete. The sounds of the sea on the crags seemed not the distant notes of opening war, but the soft prelude to long, breathless peace.
They rowed in silence until they were close to the Black Rock, until it rose dark, inhospitable, forbidding above them. Phelan was on the stroke, Corcoran on the bow oar. The yawl was now abreast the point at which the Black Rock joined the cliff at the westward. There was no rudder to the boat. On that coast rudders are looked on as foppery. In smooth weather the stroke steers from the rowlocks; in a sea-way some one steers with an additional oar from the sculling notch. O'Brien and Paulton were aft, but there was no oar in the sculling notch to steer with.
They were keeping a clean wake, and owing to the swelling out of the Black Rock they would, if they held on as they were going, pass within a few score fathoms of the Whale's Mouth. It was now about half flood.
All at once Jim Phelan began to ease without looking over his shoulder.
"Pull, after oar--ease bow!" sang out O'Brien, quickly.
The bow eased as ordered, but, contrary to the order, the stroke oar stopped pulling altogether, and Phelan looked up with an angry expression at O'Brien.
"I said ease bow--pull stroke," said O'Brien, quickly, in a tone of irritation.
"And I say--stop all," said Phelan, decisively.
Corcoran rested on his oar, and for a few seconds O'Brien and Phelan sat looking at one another. It was plain O'Brien was angry, and that Phelan was resolute. Paulton had no key to the difficulty. The clumsy yawl rose to the top and slid into the trough of two long, slow rollers before either of the men spoke further.
Jim Phelan peaked his oar and broke silence.
"Mr. O'Brien, I told you I wouldn't, and I won't. That's all."
"You won't what, you stubborn fool?"
O'Brien was hot, but he had not lost his temper.
"I told you," said Phelan, leaning his great body forward, and resting his hands on his thighs, "as plain as words could be that I'd have nothing to do with the Whale's Mouth. You may not care about your life, Mr. O'Brien, but I have people looking to me. You're independent, and can do what you like; but neither for you nor any other man will I go nearer than I think safe to the Whale's Mouth. The Red Gap is bad enough at this time of year; but not at this time of year or any other will I have anything to do with that cursed hole in the Black Rock here. Now, sir, am I to put about?"
"I think you're taking leave of your senses, Phelan," said Jerry, testily. "What on earth put it into your head I wanted to go into the Whale's Mouth? Why, if I wanted to do anything half so plucky as that, I'd get a man with a red liver, and a heart as big as a sparrow's! Give way, I tell you."
An ugly look came into Phelan's face. He was not bad-tempered or quarrelsome, but he justly had the reputation of being the most daring and the strongest man in the village. He was not very intelligent, and this was the first time in his life he had been accused of cowardice. He felt more amazed than angry, but he felt some anger. He knew he could, if he chose, catch O'Brien by the feet and throw him over the gunwale as easily as the oar lying across his legs. For a moment he thought the cold swim would do O'Brien good, but almost instantly he saw the punishment would be out of proportion to the offence. He drew a deep breath, partly straightened himself, and, catching his oar, said:
"Are we to go on to the Red Gap, sir?"
"Yes, confound you!" said O'Brien, far from amiably. "Keep as close to the rock as you think is safe, quite safe, Phelan. I wouldn't risk your life for a thousand pounds."
"Thank you, sir," said Phelan, sullenly. "Neither would I--in a cave; but if it came to anything between man and man----"
"I know," broke in O'Brien, with a laugh, "you'd be glad to risk your neck to satisfy your anger."
He had suddenly regained his good humour.
"That's it," said Phelan, laconically, as the yawl moved on.
Paulton looked in surprise from one to the other. O'Brien smiled and shook his head to reassure him, but said nothing. Visibly the spirits of the little party were damped.
At length they were opposite the much-dreaded Whale's Mouth. The two rowers, at the request of O'Brien, peaked their oars a few fathoms out of the direct set of the in-draught, now at its greatest strength.
The wall of rock, in which the opening of the cave appeared, was at this time of tide almost square, and considerably wider than the yawl was long. Nothing could be more harmless-looking than the Mouth. Its sides were smooth and almost perpendicular. No huge mass of rock hung threateningly on high; the water beneath was pellucid, green, gentle. No awful sounds issued from that Mouth. The internal sounds told of little disturbance or danger. No sign of conflict appeared on the sides of the Mouth or the water, or in the soft olive depths below. In the heat of summer a stranger would have found it almost impossible to deny himself the luxurious refreshment of repose in the moist twilight of that water-cave.
No teeth were visible; but the lithe, subtle, unceasing, undulating tongue was there--the polished, subtle water. It rose and fell, seemingly, as the water round it, in indolent, purposeless indifference; and looking at the water merely, it seemed to make no greater progress onward than the water outside and around. Yet the gentle swelling and hollowing of the waves had a purpose underlying, though they seemed, like other waves, to move tardily, almost imperceptibly forward. But here the water was dragged onward occultly by some power, and for some purpose unknown. The roof of the Mouth and the jaws were powerless for evil. No teeth were visible in this gigantic Mouth, but the unsuspected, oily, slimy water was there lying in wait for the unwary, and fatal to all things that touched it.
It was the tongue of the ant-bear that attracts, enfolds, and finally engulphs its prey in its noisome maw.
"Is that the Whale's Mouth of which you told me, Jerry?" asked Alfred.
"That's it," answered Jerry, shortly. He took up one of the torches lying on the stern-sheets and threw the torch towards the cave into the sea.
"It doesn't appear very dreadful now--does it?"
"Watch that torch. No sea looks very terrifying in a calm," said Jerry, sharply.
He had not yet quite recovered from the passage of arms with Phelan. The boatman had annoyed him by extravagantly over-estimating the dangers and powers of the chasm, and Paulton now ruffled him by seeming to make nothing of them.
Slowly but surely the torch was carried towards the Whale's Mouth. Slowly at first, but more quickly as it approached the rock, more quickly as it approached the cave. Second by second the rate increased, until, when it reached the Mouth and disappeared, it was hurrying on as fast as a man could walk.
"That's strange!" said Alfred. "I think you told me no one has been able to find out where all this water goes to."
"To a place that's more hot than comfortable," said Phelan grimly, directing a look of inquiry towards Jerry.
"It all comes back again," said Jerry.
"Barring what doesn't," muttered Phelan. "Pull a stroke or two, Tim," he said to the other boatman. "The current is under her keel already, and bad as this world is, I haven't made my will yet. A couple of more strokes, Tim."
He looked at Alfred and addressed him, although he could not do so by his name, as he had never heard it.
"I beg your pardon, sir; but if you'd like to make money, sir, I'll lay you the price of this day's work to a brass button you never see that torch again, and I'll lie by to watch for it until the ebb is done."
Alfred did not answer. His eyes had been raised for a few moments, and were now firmly fixed on the plain of the Black Rock. Jerry was peering intently into the jaws of the Whale's Mouth. Phelan was looking into Alfred's face to see the effect of his offer.
"Jerry!" cried Alfred, abruptly.
"What?" asked Jerry, without moving his eyes from the cavern.
"There's some one on the Black Rock."
"Good heavens!" exclaimed O'Brien, looking up. "Not Fahey?"
"No," said Alfred. "It's Mrs. Davenport!"
There was no mistaking that figure, and if the figure had not been ample confirmation of identity, there were the full widow's weeds, and, above all, the pale, placid face. The full light of the unclouded sun fell on her. The distance was not great, and she stood out in bold relief against the white field of cloud stretching across the northern sky.
On impulse, Alfred rose in the boat, and took off his hat and bowed.
She returned his salute, and without a moment's pause drew back from the edge on which she had been standing, and disappeared from view.
"Mrs. Davenport!" said Phelan, forgetting his ill-humour in his surprise. "What a place for a lady to be all by herself! I thought Mrs. Davenport was away somewhere in foreign parts."
Alfred sat down. The boatmen had resumed their oars, and the yawl was gliding steadily through the water.
"Is the Rock really dangerous at this time?" asked Alfred anxiously of Phelan. O'Brien was buried in thought, and did not heed what the others were saying.
"Not dangerous now, sir--not dangerous when the water is so smooth and the air so calm; but if there's a little sea on, and a little breeze, you never know what may happen here. Sometimes the sea alone will do it, and sometimes the wind alone will do it, and sometimes both together won't do it. You can only be sure she'll spout when the sea is high and the wind a strong gale from the south-west. What surprises me to see the lady there is because the place has a bad name, and she was just standing on the worst spot of all when we saw her first."
"How a bad name, and how the worst place of all? Are you quite sure there is no danger to the lady now?" asked Alfred, struggling violently and successfully to conceal his extraordinary solicitude.
"I am perfectly sure there is no danger of the spout now. The reason I said it has a bad name is because of all the people who were carried off that Rock; and where Mrs. Davenport stood is just the worst spot of all."
"But Mrs. Davenport must know the Rock well. I dare say, as her house is near, she often comes to see it."
"Ay, she may often come to see it. But to see it and to walk on it are different things. There are very few women in the village who would care to go on it without a man to lend them a hand. Why, sir, it's as slippery as ice, and two people fell and were killed on it out of regard to its slipperiness."
"Is there no way of landing here?"
"No, sir. You can't get a foot ashore anywhere nearer than Kilcash. You might, of course, land on many a rock here and there, but you couldn't get up the cliffs. It's iron-bound for miles."
"But could not the lady be cautioned in some way? She could hear a shout even though we cannot see her. She cannot yet be out of hearing?" Paulton could scarcely sit still in the boat.
"And suppose she could hear a shout, sir, what could you tell her she doesn't know? Do you think Mrs. Davenport has lived all these years and years a mile from the Black Rock, and doesn't know as much as any of us could tell her about it? Why, she lives nearer to it than any one else in the world! Her next-door neighbours are, I may say, the ghosts of men who lost their lives on that very spot."
"What is that you're saying?" asked O'Brien, coming suddenly out of his reverie.
"Only, sir, that Mrs. Davenport's next-door neighbours are the ghosts of the men who lost their lives on the Black Rock."
O'Brien looked in amazement at the boatman. He had been recalled from his abstraction by the word "ghost;" but he had not fancied, when he asked his question, that the answer would lie so close to the thoughts which had been occupying his mind a moment before. For a while he could not clear his mind of the effect of this coincidence.
"What on earth do you know or guess about the matter, Phelan?" he cried, quite taken off his guard.
"I suppose I know as much about the Rock as any man of my years along the coast," answered Phelan, with a slight return of his former sullenness.
O'Brien at once saw that he had made a mistake, that Phelan's words were perfectly consistent with ignorance of what he knew of the Fahey affair--or, indeed, with the absence of intention to refer to the Fahey affair. He hastened to put himself right.
"Of course you do, Phelan," said he cordially. "No man knows more than you. Excuse me for what I said. I was thinking of something else when you spoke, and I did not exactly hear what you said. I did not mean to annoy you. I was only stupid myself."
Jim Phelan considered this a very handsome and ample apology, not only for the words just then spoken, but for what had occurred a few minutes before.
"He was thinking, poor gentleman," thought Phelan, "of those blackguards of Commissioners. I know how anxious a man gets about fish."
"He was thinking," thought Alfred, "of Madge. I know all about that kind of thing."
He had not been thinking of one or the other. He was wondering how Mrs. Davenport would have been affected if the figure of Fahey suddenly rose before her on that Rock.
"This, sir," said the boatman, addressing Alfred, the stranger, "is what we call the Red Gap, and the cave beyond is what we call the Red Gap Cave--or the Gap Cave, or the Red Cave, for short."
Alfred looked around him, and then up.
Above towered the great perpendicular cliffs, silent and forlorn. From the dark green water at their bases, to the hard, dark line they made against the azure plain of sky that roofed the chasm, was no break, in form or colour, no noteworthy ledge or hollow, no clinging weeds below or verdurous patch above. All was smooth, and bluff, and huge, and liver-coloured.
A peculiar silence, a silence of a new and startling quality, filled the gigantic cleft. The silence abroad upon the sea was that in which vast spaciousness engulfed sound. Here adamantine walls, beetling and threatening, a thousand feet thick, stood between the stagnant air and the large breathings of the sea. The atmosphere was dense, motionless, inert with salt vapours. The prodigious circumvallation of cliff crushed vitality out of the air. There was a breathless whisper of water against the sea line of the ramparts, and deep in the gorge of the cave a smothered snore, like the hushed breathing of some stupendous monster.
The yawl glided slowly up between the closing walls of the Red Gap. No one spoke. The two boatmen were indifferent to the place. O'Brien and Paulton were lost in thoughts of diverse kinds, awakened by the spectacle of Mrs. Davenport on the Black Rock. None of the men was paying attention to the Gap.
At last a sudden darkness fell upon the boat. O'Brien and Paulton looked up. The sky was no longer overhead. A gloom of purple brown was above them. The light of day stood like a lofty, luminous pillar in their wake. They had entered the Red Cave.
The boatmen ceased rowing, and Phelan lit a torch.
For a few moments nothing could be seen but the blazing red torch flare against a vast black blank, and round the glowing red boat a narrow pool of glaring orange water.
No one moved. No sound informed the silence but the hiss of the torch and the profound sighs of distant, impenetrable hollows.
The water illumined near the boat looked trustworthy, denser than water, a ruddy platform with shadowy verge. No undulation moved over its face save a dulling ripple caused by the boat's imperceptible motion. The boat and figures in it seemed the golden boss of a fiery brazen shield hung in a night of chaos.
Alfred Paulton put his hand outward and downward. It touched the gleaming surface of the water. He drew his hand back with a start. The cold of the water froze his fingers, his soul. The water shone like solid metal, felt less buoyant than the ruddy air he breathed. Instead of resting on a firm plain of luminous beaten gold, the boat hung on a faint, thin fluid over a sightless abyss.
This was a terrible place. Here was nothing but space for thought--for visions and fears too awful to dwell upon. Nothing was surer than that no loathsome dangers lurked, or swam, or hung pendulous above. Nothing was surer than that the imagination crouched back from dreads which had never affrighted it before.
This water was only phantom water. It was no better than the spume of sea-mists held between invisible crags of blackness, of mute eternity. If one should fall out into that water, he would sink through it swift as lead through air. One would shoot down, and down, and down, giddy, but not stunned. One would sink--whither? Whither? To what fell intimacy with dripping rocks and clammy weeds and slime would one come? What agonising sense of impending gloom reaching infinitely upwards would lie upon one, as one fell! Would the falling ever cease? Never, never. Nor would one live, for to fall thus for a moment of time would serve to fill the infinite of eternity with chimeras of ebon adamant too foul for human eyes.
The oars dipped. The boat moved forward into the immeasurable vagueness of shadow--into this sleeping chamber of night. It glided over the silent floor between hushed arras, which saw neither the gaudy sun that drowns in light the tender whisperings of the sea, nor the silver moon that hearkens forlorn to the faint complainings of the weary waves, arras woven of the flame of earth's primal fire, and limned by night in the smoke of ancient chaos.
Something floated from the side of the boat and shone a while in the wake, and then was lost in the darkness as the boat moved slowly on.
"Keep her west," whispered a voice in the boat.
"We're keeping west," whispered another voice in the boat. The noise of the oars in the rowlocks clanked in the echoes like the complainings of a gigantic wheel whose bearings were dry. The whispers came back from the echoes like the whispers of a Titan whose teeth were gone, and whose tongue was thick with age or clumsy with disease. The voice of the giant seemed near--on a level with the head. It stirred the hair.
The torch went out.
"Light--give us light," whispered a voice in the boat.
"Wait. Watch astern," whispered another voice.
"Astern," whispered the awful, almost inarticulate voice close to the ear, in the hair.
Then all was still. The oars stopped. All eyes were, unseeing, turned in the direction whence the boat had come. The faintest glimmer indicated the opening to the cave. All was black as the heart of unhewn granite.
"Now watch," whispered a voice in the boat.
"Now watch," whispered the echo against the throat and neck.
"On no account start or stir. The report will be very loud. Hold on to the thwarts. I am going to fire!"
Blended with the earlier portion of this speech, the echoes gave back a sharp battering sound like that of throwing metal from a height. This was the cocking of the gun.
When this sound ceased, the echo whispered:
"Fire!"
A jagged rod of flame and luminous smoke shot outwards and upwards into the black void from the boat aft, and cleared the black space for a moment.
Then the clash and clangour of a thousand shattered echoes close at hand bore downward on the head and bent the head, while out of far-reaching caverns thunders were torn with shrieks and yells and flung against concave-resounding roofs, until the whole still air of the monstrous hollows roared, and secret off-spring tombs of darkness, never seen by man, answered with fearful groans and shrieks of the Mother Cave.
Paulton let go the thwart, bent his head, flung his arms up, and crossed them over his head.
Here was the solid earth riven through and through with prodigious thunders of all the heavens!
The roar of sound fell to a shout, the shout to a groan, the groan to a mutter. Then all was still, stiller than before--still with the silence of annihilation accomplished. Nothing that had been was. The echoes were dead, and would speak no more. The material had failed to be, and only darkness and the unweary spirit of man remained.
A voice whispered, "Watch."
Some lingering phantom of an echo whispered in ghostly gutturals, "Watch!"
There was a hiss, a purple commotion on the surface of the water, in the air on the wake of the boat. A cone of intense red flame, as thick as a man's arm, rose up from the level of the water in the wake, and stood a cubit high:
The air took fire and burned, and out from the brown darkness leaned huge polished pillars, copper-red, and broken walls, smooth pilasters, and architraves keen with light, and sightless gargoyles blurred with fire, and cloisters whose rich arches dripped with flame, and buttresses with fierce outlines impacted on plutonian shade, plinths with shafts of Moorish lightness and arabesques with ruby tags, sturdy bastions and flat curtains, broken Gothic windows, capitals of acanthus leaves flushed with ruddy flare.
Aloft yawned arches and domes and hollow towers, vast in sombre distances and sultry with hidden fires. The secrets of their depths no eye could pierce. They were abysmal homes of viewless voices--homes of virgin night.
Hither and thither, chapels and aisles and corridors and galleries, reached from the great central space into the copper gloom. Here above the surface of watery floor stood columns of fallen pillars, masses of broken walls, points of ruined spires.
In the centre of the level floor rose a block of stone, flat, a little above the surface of the water, and on this the headless form of a colossal figure, showing in rude outline like an Egyptian sphinx.
The ground was polished red granite here and there, ribbed with ruby marble, that shone with dazzling brightness against the aqueous glare.
On the pedestal of the sphinx the men of the boat landed, and stood to gaze upon this Pompeii beneath Vesuvia's pall--this subterranean Venice in ruins--this water-floored Heliopolis without the sun!
There was a loud hiss. The blood-red architecture thrust forward in fiercer light. A louder reverberating hiss, and all was dark! Everything had vanished--had drawn back into immeasurable darkness. The crimson light had burned down to the level of the tiny raft which bore it, and the water of the cave had quenched its flame.
All was black darkness, turn which way one might.
"Light!" whispered Paulton, overcome by what he had heard and seen.
"What is that?" asked O'Brien, catching Phelan's hand, and pointing down to where the western gallery had glowed a minute ago. Light was seen piercing the cliff to the westward.
For a while no answer was given. Then, in accents of awe and fear, the boatman answered:
"A light--a light made by no mortal hand!"
Far down in the gloom of the western gallery a yellow spot shone!
Mrs. Davenport's visit to the Black Rock that day had not been one of mere curiosity, although nothing of import to her life was likely to result from it. Her career was over, if, indeed, it might be said ever to have begun.
In her younger days she had been abandoned by the only man she had ever loved, and wed to a man whom she never loved, whom she could not even esteem. She had sworn to love her husband; she had fairly tried, and wholly failed. To her husband she had been a blameless wife, an admirable companion. He had signified his approval of her conduct by leaving her his fortune. All her lifetime she had been too proud to care for money, and now she could not take it. Her father had prevented her marrying the good-for-nothing, beggarly scamp, Tom Blake, and forced her into the arms of the elderly, rich, excellent Mr. Louis Davenport. In those days she had been torn by tempests of love and hate, of aspirations and despairs, which no mortal eye had seen, no mortal ear had heard. In the solitude of her own room, and of the woods about her father's home, she had wept and stormed, and pitied herself with the broken-hearted self-pity of youth. She had cast herself against the bars that confined her, and wished that the fury which shook her might end her. She had prayed in vain for death. In answer to her passionate appeals for a shroud, heaven sent her a bridal veil. When Blake gave her up, she did not care whether she walked into an open grave or up to the marriage altar. She took no interest in herself: why should she take interest in any one else?
If Blake had asked her to fly with him then, she would have rushed into his arms with unspeakable eagerness and joy. But he sold his claim to her for a sum of money, and walked off with the cash in his pocket!
She then knew she was beautiful--one of the most beautiful women in the country. Many men had sought her before Blake asked her for her love. But up to his coming she was heart-whole. She had never seriously considered any man. She thought little of the sex, of the race, herself included. She took but a weak interest in this world, and, up to the advent of her only sweetheart, would have stepped out of it any day without much reluctance. She was a dreamer, and told herself the hero of her dreams was not human. Then came Tom Blake, and forth went her whole heart to him. She gave him all the love she had to give. She told him her life had hitherto been dull, without expectation, hope, love, sunlight; but that, as he was now with her, and would, in spite of all opposition, be beside her all her life, her soul was filled with ineffable hope, with delicious love, and the dream-romance of her life had taken substantial form, which would be a thousand times sweeter than she had ever dared to figure in her thoughts.
Her lover had no money. He had lost his patrimony. Her father had nothing to give her, and----
And what?
How was it to be? How could they live on nothing? She had been brought up a lady, but her father was hopelessly in debt--over head and ears in debt--and if he were ever so willing to do so, he was powerless to help them now, and could leave them nothing later.
True--most sadly true. But what of that? Was Tom not her lover?--and was he going to die of hunger? Did he not think he could get enough money somehow to keep him from falling by the way?
No doubt. But she had been tenderly, luxuriously brought up. He had no means of keeping her in any such position as she had all along in life enjoyed.
But he could get bread? Not literally only bread, but as much as they paid a gamekeeper or a groom?
Oh, nonsense! Of course he could. But gentlefolk could not live on the wages of a gamekeeper or a groom.
Did he love her?
Very much. But a gamekeeper got no more----
Than a roof, and clothes, and food, and--love. How much did he love her?
Oh, better than anything else in the world.
Well, then, let him take time and look around him, and get house, and clothes, and food such as gamekeepers and grooms may have. Those would be his contributions to their lives. She would supply the love.
But lady and gentleman could not live in such a way.
Why not? He was a gentleman, and she was a lady, and poverty could take none of these poor possessions away, any more than riches could create them. Let him get a gamekeeper's wages, and she would share them with him, and give him all her love, every day renewed.
But----
Ah! Then all she had to give was not worth as much to him as a gamekeeper valued his own wife at. Good-bye. The air was damp, and this wood was chilly.
Yes, it looked as if it were going to rain. She would not leave him thus. She would say good-bye to him, and give him one kiss at parting.
She would say good-bye, and he might have as many kisses as he cared for, provided she got soon away--for it was going to rain. No man had ever kissed her but him. Kisses did not mean anything, or words either. Why did he draw back? She told him he might kiss her if he chose. Any man might kiss her now. Kisses or words did not mean anything. Well, good-bye. Whither was he going? It would surely rain. Whither, did he say?
"To hell!"
"No, not there. You are a gentleman, and gentlemen do not go there; only gamekeepers and grooms--and women such as I."
She walked slowly away through the moist wood in the drizzling rain.
He felt sorely sorry and hurt, and ill-used by fate; but he had a gay disposition, and was no dreamer. Besides, he was a man of the world, and devilishly pressed for money just then; so he took Louis Davenport's thousand pounds and went away.
After a while she married the odd, rich, old bachelor, Louis Davenport (she did not care what man kissed her now), and he took her away to Kilcash House, and although he never laid any restraint upon her, she knew he did not care that she should go much abroad; so she lived almost wholly in the house, and rarely went out alone, and never had any guest at the place.
Mr. Davenport was at home most of the time. Now and then he went away for a few days, and always came back alone. There were no callers at the house, and she at first hoped she might die, and when she found her bodily health unimpaired, looked forward with a sense of relief to the time when she should go mad.
Still her mental health held out as well as her bodily health, and weeks grew into months, and found no change in her or her manner of life.
But there came a slight change in her home. During the first few weeks of her married life no stranger ever crossed the threshold of Kilcash House.
Now a tall, gaunt, humble-mannered man, of slow, soft speech and unpretending ways, was often with Mr. Davenport for a long time in the day, sometimes far into the night, The husband never took the wife into his business confidence, and the wife had no curiosity whatever. But from odd words she gathered that this young man, whose name was Michael Fahey, depended on her husband, and was helped and received by him because of some old ties between the families of both. She heard Fahey was staying at the village of Kilcash for his health, which was delicate, and that he was completely trustworthy and well-disposed towards Mr. Davenport.
All this reached Mrs. Davenport without leaving any impression whatever on her mind beyond the simplest value of the words. Her husband introduced Fahey to her as a man in whom he took a sincere interest, and whom he wished her to think well of. Whether he intended his wife should or should not treat the stranger as an equal, she did not know, she did not care.
For a time she took little heed of Fahey, but gradually it dawned upon her that in him she had a new admirer. She was accustomed to admiration, surfeited with it. Her love romance was at an end. She was married to a man for whom she did not care, from whom she did not shrink, to whom she owed no ill-will, who was in his poor, narrow, selfish way good and kind to her. If she had now any commerce with laughter, she would have laughed; but even the pathetically absurd experience she had had of love could not provoke a smile, and she simply took no heed, said no word, gave no sign. She did not feel angry, flattered, amused, even bored. She was past any of these emotions now. She would, she could be no more than indifferent.
Nothing could be more respectful than Fahey's manner. He did not regard her as human. He worshipped her afar off. He ate his heart in silence. He breathed no word, no sigh, gave wilfully no sign. But she saw his downcast or averted face, and she read the homage in furtive glances of his wondering eyes.
Then came the scene with the rose and her husband's absence abroad, followed by his return, and a brief history of the marvellous escape he had from that French bank, and his resolution that he would now settle down in life and speculate no more. She then had but a dim idea of what speculation meant, of what his business was.
Soon came a day of mystery and horror to her.
She was alone in the little sitting-room on the ground floor, purely her own. It faced west. Broad daylight flooded the garden before her, the rolling downs beyond.
Suddenly the light of the window by which she sat was obscured. The window was opened by Fahey. She motioned him to enter. By way of reply he made an impatient gesture.
"Is he in?" asked Fahey, breathlessly.
"No," she answered. "Can I do anything for you?"
She now saw he was in violent agitation, and physically distressed.
He continued:
"I have not a moment to spare. Say to him, 'All is well. All is safe for him.' I have arranged that."
"Safe!" she answered. "Does any danger threaten my husband?"
"Yes, while I am here--while I live."
"You--you would not hurt him?"
She remembered the look of admiration she had seen in this man's eyes, and rose and recoiled in horror.
"Give him my message. Repeat all I have said, except this: 'I am not doing it for his sake, or my own sake, but for yours. Good-bye.' Tell no one else of my being here; no one but him--not a soul."
In a moment he was gone.
The next thing she heard of him was that he had drowned himself in the hideous Puffing Hole.
At first she had been inclined to think Fahey's words referred solely to his feelings towards her; but when she learned he had drowned himself she doubted this. Against what was her husband secure? To say he was secure against Fahey's admiration for her would be the height of gratuitous absurdity. She cared no more for the young man than for any misty figure in a fable. He must be mad; yes, that was it. That supposition made all simple--explained everything.
It was night when her husband returned. She, remembering Fahey's caution, and bearing in mind that walls have ears, went to the gate of the grounds, and there met Davenport. He had heard of Fahey's fate. It was dark--pitch dark--when she gave him the message with which she had been charged.
"Poor Michael!" her husband said--"poor Michael! Unfortunate fellow!"
He said no more then, and rarely spoke of the man afterwards. Davenport was not a communicative man, and there was nothing noteworthy in his silence.
After her husband's death she went through his papers, and found evidence of a much closer intimacy between Fahey and him than she had till then suspected. There was no clear evidence in these documents. They were partly in her husband's handwriting, partly in Fahey's. There was an air of mystery in them, and she was certain many passages of them were figurative. But one dreadful secret she learned from them beyond all doubt: Louis Davenport had not come by his money fairly, and Fahey was an accomplice in his schemes. When leaving London for the Continent, she had carried those papers with her unread. There she opened them, with a view to destroying them, and burned them in terrified haste. She had never suspected her husband of dishonest actions. Now she felt perfectly sure he had come by his money foully. How, she did not know. The man had been her husband, and she would shield his memory from shame; but she would touch none of his money, let who would have it, when she got back to London.
She was convinced Fahey had not thrown himself into the Puffing Hole for love of her, or because he was insane, but solely and simply because he and her husband were mixed up in crimes of some kind, and Fahey preferred death to discovery on his own part, and on her part too; for she would suffer from the exposure of her husband, and Fahey had nothing to expect from her. There was still a want of clearness and precision about the whole affair. But on her way back from France, she had no doubt her theory was right in the main.
Before the inquest she had been in horror of revealing in court the history of the treatment she had received at the hands of Blake, and the bare notion that she, being then a married woman, had driven this man Fahey in a frenzy of self-sacrifice or devotion to drown himself, filled her mind with thoughts of shame and anguish, the contemplation of which nearly took away her own reason. She had contemplated making away with herself rather than face the ordeal of the court. She had been a recluse for years, and haughty in her consciousness of unblameableness all her life.
On her return to London she heard the rumour of this apparition at the Puffing Hole. Phelan had told of the apparition to several people in Kilbarry. The news of it had got into the local papers, and London papers copied the account. No name was given but Fahey's, and attached to his name was a brief history of Fahey's disappearance years ago.
Upon these two discoveries she resolved to go to Ireland and renounce all claim to the fortune her husband had left her. There could no longer be in her mind any doubt that her husband's fortune, or a portion of it, had been obtained by fraud. At Paulton's she met O'Brien, who, on the way to Ireland, told her he himself had seen Fahey.
She was now quite sure Fahey was still alive. The horrible suspicion had taken hold of her mind that Fahey had, after keeping in hiding for years, poisoned her husband for her sake! In the light of her belief that Fahey still lived, the theory that her husband had poisoned himself while of unsound mind was absurd to her.
Before setting out this day for the Black Rock she opened a drawer of her late husband's, took out a revolver she knew to be loaded, and dropped it into her pocket.
When she left the edge of the Black Rock she walked carefully to the cliff and ascended by the path.
When she reached the level of the downs she gazed round.
She started. A loud explosion rose from beneath her feet. It was the gunfire of the boat and the tremendous reverberations from the caves and cliffs.
She looked round in alarm. A minute ago she had been alone. Now Michael Fahey stood by her side!
"Michael Fahey! Michael Fahey!" cried Mrs. Davenport, slowly. "Am I awake and sane?"
"Both," answered he, gently. "You are awake and sane, and I am Fahey, and alive. Nothing can be more incredible; but it is as I say, Mrs. Davenport. You will not betray me? You will not be unmerciful to me? Remember, I never meant to do you harm."
She shrank back from him. Did this man, whose hands were reddened with her husband's blood, dare to plead to her for mercy. "Betray you! What do you mean? Do you call it betraying you to give you into the hands of justice? You will gain nothing by threats. I am not afraid of you; and I am not defenceless, even though I am alone." She moved further off, and pressed the revolver in her hand.
He seemed dejected rather than alarmed. "What good can it do you? When I disappeared years ago, it was for the good of your husband----" He held out his hands appealingly to her.
Her tone and attitude were firm, as she interrupted him. "You disappeared years ago for the good of my husband, and reappear for his death--for his murder! I can have no more words with you. I shall certainly not shield you from the consequences of your crime."
"If you only knew me as well as you might--if you could only understand how I felt that day I was hunted like a beast, you could not believe I would willingly do anything to annoy, much less to harm you.... Mrs. Davenport," he burst out, vehemently, "I would have died then for you: I will die now if you bid me--die for that second rose."
She looked at him with a glance of loathing, and gathered herself together as though she felt contaminated by contact with the air he breathed.
"Go away at once. Your audacity is loathsome. Has it come to this with me, that I must bandy words with such a monster?"
"Mrs. Davenport," said he, in a tone of expostulation, "I am very far from saying I am blameless. I have committed crimes for which the punishment would be great, but I was not alone in my crimes. I did not invent them."
"And who invented the atrocious crime of last February? Who was in our house in Dulwich that night?"
"I read the case, and saw that Mr. Thomas Blake was at your house on that night."
"And where were you?"
"In Brussels. Good heavens!--you cannot imagine I had anything to do with that awful night! The idea is too monstrous to resent--to think of for a moment. I swear to you I was in Brussels at the time, and that I never did, or thought of doing, any injury to your husband. I loved him well; but I loved some one else better---better than all the world besides."
He did not look at her, but kept his eyes fixed on the sea.
She moved as if to go.
He heard the motion, and went to her and stood between her and the house.
"I will not say another word about myself; but hear me out. If I have nothing to hope for, let me go away in the belief I am not unjustly suspected by you of hurting your husband. I never cared much for my life. Let me feel that when I die I shall not be worse in your eyes than I deserve to be. Mrs. Davenport, hear me."
He entreated her with his voice, with his eyes, with his bent body, with his outstretched hands.
Without speaking, she gave him to understand he might go on.
"I knew Mr. Davenport years before I saw you. I had business connections with him which would not bear the light. You must have heard or guessed something of what we have been busy about?"
She made no sign--said nothing.
"I was a steel engraver. Now and then he wanted plates done. I did the plates for him."
"What kind of plates?"
She betrayed no emotion of any kind. Her voice was as calm as though she was asking an ordinary question.
"You had better not know. It would do you no good to know. But do you believe me that I was hundreds of miles away from London that awful night?"
"And what brought you back to this place now?"
"I came back--because you are free!"
She made a gesture of impatience and dissent.
"You do not mean to say you will continue your suspicion in the face of my denial, in the face of my horror at the mere thought?"
"But why should I take your unsupported word? If you are innocent, why were you so horrified at the mere thought of inquiry?"
"But, good heavens! Mrs. Davenport, you did not for a moment imagine I was afraid of inquiry into anything which occurred in February? I thought the inquiry to which you referred had reference to some old transactions between me and Mr. Davenport?"
"What were these transactions?"
"I beg of you not to ask. What good can it do to go into matters so far back? You would find my answers of no advantage to you."
"Were they of a business character?"
"Purely of a business character, I assure you."
"And they would not bear the light?"
"Not with advantage to me."
"Or to my husband?"
"Or with advantage to your late husband."
"And to you, and to you alone the secret of these transactions is now known?"
"To me, and to me alone."
She paused in thought. She held up her hand to bespeak his silence. After a few moments' pause, she said:
"In the course of these transactions injury was done to some one? Was that not so?"
"You are asking too much. Neither your happiness nor your fortune could be served by my answering your questions. I refuse to answer."
With a gesture, she declined to be satisfied with this treatment.
"I have no fortune and no happiness. Once you told me you would do anything I requested of you if I gave you a rose. There are no roses now. In all likelihood there will be no more roses while I live----"
"While you live!"
"Let me go on. I have not much to say. You could not prize a rose for its intrinsic value?"
"No; but for two other considerations--for the fact that it had once been yours, and for what the gift of it from you to me might signify."
"If I gave you a rose now it could signify nothing--mind, absolutely nothing. But if the mere fact that it belonged to me would make anything valuable in your eyes, I will give you my glove, or my bracelet, or this for your secret;" and she drew from her pocket the revolver and pointed it at him.
He started towards her at the sight of the weapon, crying angrily:
"What do you mean by carrying that? Great heavens, it cannot be that you came out here with the intention of committing suicide!"
He looked at her in horror.
"No," she answered quietly--"but with the intention of defending myself against you. I thought if I should meet you, and you had murdered my husband, and knew from me I had guessed it, that I might need this. But I have no evidence you did murder him, and I see no sign of guilt in you. Will you take it, or the bracelet, or the glove, or all three, and tell me about those transactions in which my husband was engaged with you?"
"It is not enough for my secret," he said.
"What more do you want? My purse?"
She put those questions in a placid tone, and showed no impatience or scorn.
"No," he said, shaking with conflicting passions, "I do not want your purse. If I wanted money, I could have had as much as any man could care for out of your husband's purse. I have enough for myself. You cured me of the love of money, and put another love in its place. Give me your hand, or fire."
She raised her hand quickly, and flung the revolver from her over the cliff. It fell on the Black Rock beneath. The fall was followed by a long silence on both sides.
"I make one last appeal to you," she cried in soft, supplicating tones--"one last appeal. I do not purpose keeping a penny of the money--not one farthing. Some papers which fell accidentally into my hands after my husband's death convinced me he came by his money dishonestly. He himself told me you had been of great service to him, and that your actions would not bear the light. Give me, for pity's sake, a chance of restoring this money to those who ought to have it. I did think of dying and shielding his memory, for if I died no one could be surprised at my leaving the wretched money to charities. But it would be better still to give what remains of the money to the rightful owners. Will you tell me who they are?"
She caught his hand in hers and drew it towards her.
He seized hers eagerly, and held it.
"I will for this," he whispered. "We can give all his money back if you will."
She snatched her hand away.
"That is impossible, sir. I have told you so finally."
She essayed to pass by him once more.
"Only a minute. I cannot live openly in this country; I must go abroad. I have been concealed close to this place in the hope of meeting you. I may never see you again. Do not go for a minute. Your husband was always good and loyal to me, and I was always loyal to him. He dealt honourably with me in money matters. It was necessary for us to have a hiding-place near this, and I found it. Just before I disappeared he made up his mind to abandon business of all kinds. He had enough of money, and so had I--though of course he was a rich man compared with me. Well, as you know, I disappeared. I went, no matter where. I disappeared because I had no longer any business here, and because of another reason to which I will not again refer. That is all I have to say, except that I left documents which would be intelligible to your husband--they contained the clue to our hiding-place should I die or your husband want it--in Mr. John O'Hanlon's hands for Mr. Davenport and you. Nothing, I suppose, ever reached you about them?"
"No."
"That, then, is all I have to say."
"You will tell me no more? Give me no key?"
"Mr. Davenport left you his money. Why should I help you to get rid of it? Good-bye."
He turned eastward, went along the cliff, and she moved off slowly in the direction of Kilcash House.
It was Phelan who said it was not the hand of mortal man that had kindled the fire the four men in the Red Cave saw after the dying of the red light on the water.
For a long time after he had spoken no human voice was heard. All was silence save the mystic whispers and breathings of the cave, which, after the prodigious clangour lately filling the void, were no more than the ripple of faint air flowing through mere night.
The three men watched the light breathlessly. At first it seemed steady, but now it began to waver slowly this way and that way, like a warning hand admonishing or threatening, a spiritual hand beckoning or blessing.
It was not crimson, as the other flame had been, but pale yellow, like the early east. It was not fierce and dazzling, but lambent and soft. It was not light in darkness, as a zenith moon, but light against darkness, as a setting star. It was independent, absolute, taking or giving nothing. Space lay between it and the eyes that saw; infinity between it and the sightless vault.
There was something in this cave that killed you, and yet in that place you must not die.
"Heaven be merciful to us!" whispered a human voice.
"To us," whispered the phantom voice against the men's hair.
"It's the corpse-candle of the dead men of the Black Rock," whispered Phelan.
"Of the Black Rock!" echoed the spirit.
The words "Black Rock" acted like a charm, and broke the terrible spell of the place. Never before had the name of that fatal and hated shelf of land sounded grateful to human ears.
The two boatmen had been often in that stupendous cave before, had seen its colossal glories in the ruby flare, and heard its reverberating thunders in the inexorable gloom. But never until now had they gazed upon this weird light; they were certain that if it had existed when they had been visitors on other occasions they could not have missed observing it.
What they now saw made a profound impression on them, and powerfully excited their superstitious minds. They had never rowed to the end of that eastern shaft of the labyrinth, but they knew from the sharp turn it struck west, and the great depth to which it penetrated, that the onward limit of it must be near the rear of the Black Rock.
This filled them with doubt--uneasy doubt. Owing to the darkness and the nature of the remote light, they could not form an exact notion of its position, but they guessed it to be no less than a mile from the Red Gap, and, allowing for everything, that would be the back of the Black Rock.
Why should there be a light at the back of the Black Rock? How could a light be accounted for there? except it was a corpse-candle on that murderous reef.
It was a thought to shudder at.
With the other two men the effect was wholly different. Neither had ever been in this marvellous place before; neither had seen its sights, or heard its sounds, or endured its darkness until now, and their imaginations had been powerfully excited and exercised. At one time they were exalted by the visible--at another overawed by the unseen. Sobriety of thought and familiarity of experience were absent, and they were face to face with things undreamed of and enormous, and with phantoms and monstrous ideas that baffled investigation and pursuit.
But to them the mention of the Black Rock meant the re-entry of ordinary ideas and homely thoughts. It lay out there in the noonday sunlight beside the sunlit sea. It was part of the pastoral land where people sang and trees waved their leaves and winds bore perfumes. There was nothing more disquieting about it than about a ship, or a house, or a rampart.
O'Brien's thoughts had now gone back to their ordinary course. If this light came from anywhere near the Black Rock, might it not have something to do with the Puffing Hole?
The question was fascinating, alluring. It might prove a beacon to discovery.
"Where do you think it is from, Phelan?" he asked, in a whisper.
"Somewhere near the Black Rock. I can't say exactly where."
"What do you believe it is?"
"A corpse-candle. The corpse-candle of the men that the Rock killed."
"Nonsense! You ought to know better. A corpse-candle is not for the dead--it's for the living."
"Above ground it may be so. But under ground it may be different."
"Let us go and see what it is."
"Not a stroke."
"What, Phelan!--afraid again? There's hardly a thing you are not afraid of."
"I'm not afraid of you or any other man."
"If you don't go to it with me, I'll swim to it."
"If you do, it will be your corpse-candle."
"I don't care. If you won't go, I'll swim to it. If you don't make up your mind while I'm counting twenty, I'll dive off and swim."
"It would be murder to let you, O'Brien. Put it out of your head. We won't let you go."
None of the men could see where another was standing.
O'Brien laughed.
"You can't touch me--you can't stop me."
"Whisht--whisht! For heaven's sake, don't laugh. This is no place for laughing with that candle before you."
O'Brien laughed softly, and counted, "One."
"If you laugh again, by heavens, I'll throw you in, O'Brien."
"Two!" O'Brien laughed. "Then you won't let me count twenty? You launch me on my swim at 'three'?"
"He'll bring the cliffs down on us."
"Four! Ha, ha, ha!"
Up to this the words and the laughter had been in whispers. This time O'Brien counted and laughed out loud.
The effect was prodigious. Those vast chambers of solemn night had never before heard human laughter, and they roared and bellowed, and yelled and shrieked, and grumbled, as though furiously calling upon one another to rush together and tear asunder or crush flat the impious intruders who dared to profane with such sounds the sanctuary of their repose.
"I'll go," whispered Phelan--"I'll go. But--wait!"
A torch was now lit, and by the aid of its fitful flame the four men scrambled into the yawl. The two rowers took their places standing and facing the bow. O'Brien held the flaring torch on high, and the boatmen gave way.
As they glided gently along, the irregular walls of the aisle came nearer to them out of the darkness with a nearness that was sinister and hateful. It was as though they crept close with the full intention of crushing the craft and grinding the men to death between their ponderous fangs and molars. They seemed avengers of the echoes outraged by the laughter.
The luminous shaft still shone; but as they came nearer, the light grew whiter and less like flame. The red glare of the torch seemed to overcome it.
The men watched it with starting eyes.
The walls of the cave came closer out of the darkness, and the roof lowered.
By this time Phelan had lost all his fears, and was as curious as the others to know what the light was.
All at once he cried out--"Ease!"
Both men stopped rowing. The sound of the oars ceased, and the noise of the ripple from the oars. All listened intently. A hissing sound could be distinctly heard--a loud hissing sound which they had not noticed before, because, no doubt, of the gradualness of their approach and the noises made by the rowers.
"It's water--falling water. But, in the name of all the saints, where is it falling from, and how can we see it in the darkness? Give way, Tim."
The cave grew narrower still, and now there was barely room for the shortened oars. The sides of it came closer, the roof lowered until it was no more than an arm's length above the heads of the standing men. The bright patch grew higher and broader. The torch still burned. A dull whiteness shone on the rocks.
The luminous space now looked like a faintly-lighted sheet of glass. The hissing sound of the water had gathered intensity.
"I don't know what's beyond, but I'll risk going through if you are willing," cried Phelan, who was now in a state of almost frenzy from suppressed excitement.
"Go on--go on!" shouted O'Brien, who found it difficult to keep from jumping overboard.
"Go on!" repeated Alfred, who, too, was now standing up.
"Give way with a will!" shouted Phelan; and in a minute the boat shot through a thick sheet of foam and falling water, and glided into a placid pool.
For a moment the men were blinded by the foam and water, and could see nothing.
They rubbed their eyes, looked up obliquely, and were blinded once again.
The mid-day sun flamed above their heads at the end of a stupendous tube.
An indescribable cry arose. Then all was still.
A crow flew between them and the sun. All bent their heads and crouched low as though instant death was rushing down upon them. The crow went by harmlessly.
"Do you know where we are?" asked Phelan, in the voice of an awestruck child.
"No."
"At the bottom of the shaft of the old mine. It slants to the southward, and that's the sun!"
They looked around: some wreckage floated on one side of the boat.
"The planks that covered the mouth of the shaft. They must have fallen in."
Something that was not a plank floated on the other side of the boat.
It was the body of Fahey!
"Yes, Madge, 'twas an awful time. I never felt anything like it in my life; and as for Alfred, he was stunned with terror. You see, that old mine shaft had followed the soft part of the cliff (there's not much use in looking for copper in solid sandstone), and so was like a huge telescope, pointed south at some angle or other--the angle, I think, at which you are now holding your chin."
"Jerry, don't talk nonsense."
"You'd be very sorry indeed if I didn't. Well, we hauled the dreadful thing we had found into the boat, and then began to think of getting back; but Phelan, the boatman, swore he would not go through that awful Red Cave with it on board.
"We looked round us to see the best thing we could do. We found we were in what I may call an under-ground pool, from which there were three ways out--one leading into the cliff, one leading in the direction of the sea, and the one by which we had entered. Am I tiring you with my long-winded description?"
"No, Jerry--go on; I came out to hear all," said Madge, pressing the arm on which her own rested.
"We first tried the way towards the sea, and found, to Phelan's amazement and consternation, that it led right under, or, rather, through the Puffing Hole. No power on earth could induce Phelan to go that way. When we made this discovery, I now plainly saw the meaning of those mysterious measurements and instructions left by the unfortunate Fahey, and the means by which he had effected his extraordinary disappearance years ago. He had jumped down and swum inward to where we had found his dead body. In his 'Memorandum,' 'Rise 15.6 lowest' meant what I had expected--the rise of the lowest tide. 'At lowest minute of lowest forward with all might undaunted,' meant that one entering at the Whale's Mouth at the lowest minute of the lowest tide was to push forward with all vigour.... But, Madge darling, this must bore you to death?"
"No, Jerry, I love to hear it. Just fancy having the hero of such an adventure telling it quietly to me on the Dulwich Road!"
"Twenty years hence how sick you'll be of these same adventures! You will then have heard them told at least a thousand times to every fresh acquaintance I make--man, woman, or child. But you'll be very tired of me also, sweetheart, and you shall go to sleep in an easy-chair while I prate on."
"Don't say such horrid things, or I shall cry. Please go on."
"Ah, well, you may bully me now, but you won't then. Where did I leave off, darling?" He pressed her arm and she pressed his.
"At the man going up under the Puffing Hole. The paper he left with your solicitor."
"Our solicitor--say our solicitor."
"Our solicitor. There! But how tiresome you are!"
"Oh, ay! I have the whole thing off by heart. The 'Memorandum' goes on, 'The foregoing refers to s-c-u-l-l-s with only one s-k-u-l-l any lowest, or any last quarter, but great forward pluck required for this. In both cases (of course!) left.' You see, here he underlines the words 'sculls' and 'skull,' which shows something unusual was meant. Remembering everything, 'sculls' evidently meant sculls, as very few people have more than one skull, and 'skull' meant what it seems to mean--your head. By-the-way, I beg your pardon. It's only men have skulls, not angels.'
"Jerry, I'm going home."
"Well, I won't, I won't! Put your arm back. Let us, in fact, have an armed peace."
"This kind of thing, Jerry, is very bitter, and I feel as if--as if--as if----"
"As if what?"
"As if I can't help liking you--sometimes when you're nice."
"I'll be good and nice. Well, what he meant was that when you wanted to get at his hiding-place by the sea, in a boat pulling sculls, you came and did certain things; and that when you wanted to get there by jumping down the Puffing Hole, you did other things.
"When we came back to the foot of the shaft the sun had gone off it, and it was comparatively dark. We tried the passage leading inward, and here we found Fahey's hiding-place. It was a small low cave, with a rocky ledge about as wide as the footway we are walking on.... Madge, are those new boots? They look new. I wonder did I ever tell you I think you have awfully pretty feet."
"I give you up. You are incorrigible."
"As I was saying, we found a ledge of rock about as broad as your foot. This was Fahey's retreat, and here were all the materials used by the forgers of bank-notes. How Fahey got them there unobserved is the puzzle. He must have brought them piecemeal Here, beyond all doubt, were printed the notes forged upon the bank of Bordelon and Company, of Paris, by means of which Mr. Davenport stole a colossal fortune.
"Here we found an explanation of how Fahey's suit of clothes lasted ten or twelve years. We found two suits precisely similar. He kept one to wear, no doubt, while the other was drying. There was a place which had evidently been used as a fireplace, and although there was water so close to this ledge, it was above the highest reach of the highest tide, and dry as tinder. The dryness of the place and the salt of the sea-water had preserved these clothes from decay, while most of the metal things had crumbled into dust.
"He must have discovered this place in his boat, and after that found out the shaft of the mine communicated with the whole cavernous system, which is so vast as to stagger the mind. Thus he had two means of gaining his retreat; and when he said he had lost his boat, she was safely moored in the cave in case of emergency--for we found the painter-chain hanging from a bolt."
"But what of that light you saw that turned out to be water? And did the miners work in the sea?"
"Attentive and intelligent darling, I thank thee. The theory is that Fahey, in falling or sliding down the shaft, struck the western wall of the pool in which we found him, and brought down a huge mass of clay which was ripe for falling, or that it had fallen recently, or that our gunshot had brought it down. The curtain of water was formed by a spring of fresh water. There are always dozens of such springs in cliffs. As to the foot of the shaft, the explanation is that at the time the miners were at work the sea had not eaten so far inward. In fact, that whole district is and has been gradually so enormously undermined, that soon a mighty subsidence must take place."
"But you say that the hole down to the mine slanted. How did he get up and down? It would have been barely possible, but dangerous, to crawl up."
"He had a rope by which to hold on, and while holding on thus, he could walk upright--that is, hand over hand. Before the fall of the planks that covered the top of the shaft, Fahey had crept out by a small opening looking seaward, and concealed from view, if any one ever should be so foolhardy as to go there, by a thick growth of furze."
"Well, what did you do afterwards?"
"When?"
"You told me only as far as coming back from the Puffing Hole."
"True. Well, we laid what remained of the unfortunate man on the rock which had often been his resting-place before, and then rowed back through the wonderful Red Cave, and put the matter in the hands of the police. At the inquest all about the forgery of Davenport and Fahey and the swindle on the Paris bank came out, and Mrs. Davenport was examined, She admitted Fahey had made love to her, as you saw by the papers. Wasn't it strange that Alfred should be the first to see her husband and her husband's partner in guilt dead, and not by natural means, and that at both inquests she spoke of a new lover, and that Alfred, the newest lover of all three, should have been at both inquests?"
"It is astonishing and terrible. I wonder what will come of it?"
"Heaven knows. But there, let it go now, Madge. When you come to Ireland, love, you shall see those wonderful caves."
"I'd rather die," she said, "than go near them."
"What!--if they were lit by the glorious effulgence of this splendid specimen of the O'Briens?"
This dialogue took place one day after dinner in the June following the visit to the cave. The villainous Fishery Commissioners had been overcome, and Jerry and Madge were to be married in a week.
Alfred Paulton was still at the "Strand Hotel," in the village of Kilcash.
"Marion, will you not listen to me?--will you not listen to reason? Your fortune, you say, is now all gone--must be restored to its lawful owners, the Paris bankers, and that you have made the necessary arrangements for doing so. You are bankrupt in fortune: why should you be bankrupt also in love?"
"Understand me, Thomas Blake, I will speak on this subject no more to you. I do not think you will have the bad taste to remain any longer in this house when I ask you to go."
"I will do anything on earth for you, Marion--anything in reason you ask me."
"Then go."
"But is that reasonable? Is it reasonable to ask me to leave you now that you are as free as you were in the olden times?"
She looked at him wrathfully, scornfully.
"Have you got a second bidder for me in view? Did you not take my heart when it was young, when you were young, and sell it for a sum of money down? You know there is no one in this house but servants. Save yourself the ignominy of my ringing the bell. Sir, will you go? I have affairs to attend to. You have broken your promise by renewing this subject."
"Why did you telegraph for me to London?"
"Because I thought you might be useful to me, and you have proved useless."
"And if I had proved useful, would you have rewarded me?"
"Yes."
"Oh, Marion, Marion, you are playing with me! Do you mean to say you would have allowed me to hope if I had proved of service in that affair? I did my best. I swear to you I did my best, and if you will only give me your hand now----"
"Thomas Blake, I would have rewarded you by saying that your debt to me had been diminished by one useful act of yours. But my contempt for you would have been just the same. Take your elderly protestations of love to fresh ears. Mine are too old and too weary, and too well acquainted with their value, to care much for them. Go now. When I have need of you again I shall send for you."
"Marion, this is too bad. You are treating me as if I were a dog."
"Worse--much worse. We were intended for one another. Once I would have died for you; now I cannot endure you except when I think you may be of use to me. I shall send for you if I should happen to want you again."
His face grew white, and he set his teeth. They were in the green drawing-room of Kilcash House. The full June sun was flaming abroad on the sea, and shining in through the windows.
"You outrage me. I am not accustomed to be----"
"Told the simple truth," she said, finishing the sentence for him. "I threatened to ring."
She went to the bell-rope. He sprang between her and it menacingly.
"I believe you are capable of violence," she said, surveying him with a taunting smile.
"I am capable of murder."
"Only for plunder," she said, still smiling.
He ground his teeth.
"You will drive me to it, Marion Butler."
At the mention of her maiden name, a swift flush of crimson darkened her face. Her eyes flashed, her nostrils dilated, her head bent forward, her mouth opened, the veins in her temple swelled. She clenched her hands--her bosom heaved--she stood still.
The sudden change in her appearance arrested his anger. He believed she was going to have a fit. Her maiden name had not been purposely uttered by him. It loosed some current in the brain which had not flowed for years.
Awhile she stood thus. Then all at once the colour fled from her face, and left it pallid, cold, rigid. She pressed her hand once or twice across her brow, and then, looking at him intently for a few moments, said, in a quiet, weary voice:
"I am ill. Leave me; but come to me soon again. In an hour--half-an-hour. I did not mean what I said. Pray leave me, and come to me soon. I shall be here. I am confused."
Without speaking, and scarcely believing the words he heard, he stole from the room.
She sat down on a couch and covered her face with her hands.
"Wait," she said softly to herself. "There is something I must do--something I have forgotten. Oh, I know! He is an honourable gentleman, and must not be disregarded."
She went over to a table, found writing materials, sat down, and wrote:
"Dear Mr. Paulton,
"I got your note this morning. I told you the first time you did me the honour of offering me marriage that there was no hope. I am sorry to say I am of the same mind still. You will forget and forgive me in time. I shall never forget your kindness to me in my distress.
"Yours sincerely,
"Marion Butler."
She read the note over and over again from top to bottom. Something in the look of it did not please her, but she could not think of anything better to say. She had received a note from him that morning, asking her to grant him another interview. He had proposed to her a week ago. She had told him plainly she would not marry him. He had begged that he might be allowed to call again. She said it was quite useless. He craved another interview, and she gave way, on the understanding no hope was to be based on the permission. He had come again, and again had been refused. And now he was asking for a third chance. She would not give it to him. It would be worse than useless under the circumstances. There was something wrong with this note, but it must serve, as Tom Blake was waiting.
She put the letter in an envelope, addressed it to Alfred at the "Strand Hotel," Kilcash, rang the bell, and sent a servant off with it.
When it was gone she said:
"I must go now and meet Tom. He said he'd be---- Where's this he said he'd be? Oh, I know! By the corner of the wood on the Bandon Road. I'll put on the white muslin Tom likes. If Mr. Paulton should come they must say I am out."
Alfred Paulton got the note, and although he could not understand the signature--it was no doubt the result of a lapse of memory, in which she went back for a moment to her girlish days--he knew his dismissal was final.
That day he set off for London, and arrived in time to see Madge married to his old friend, Jerry O'Brien, who was secretly delighted at the failure of Alfred's suit.
While Jerry was on his honeymoon he got a letter from his old friend and solicitor, the postscript of which gave him the latest news of Mrs. Davenport: the doctors had pronounced her hopelessly insane.
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