The Light of Scarthey: A Romance

by Egerton Castle

  CHAPTER I

  THE PEEL OF SCARTHEY

  He makes a solitude and calls it peace.

  BYRON.

  Alone in the south and seaward corner of the great bight on theLancastrian coast--mournfully alone some say, gloriously alone to mythinking--rises in singular unexpected fashion the islet of Scarthey;a green oasis secure on its white rocky seat amidst the breezywilderness of sands and waters.

  There is, in truth, more sand than water at most times round Scarthey.For miles northward the wet strand stretches its silent expanse, tawnyat first, then merging into silver grey as in the dim distance itmeets the shallow advance of briny ripple. Wet sand, brown and dull,with here and there a brighter trail as of some undecided riverseeking an aimless way, spreads westward, deep inland, until stoppedin a jagged line by bluffs that spring up abruptly in successions ofwhite rocky steps and green terraces.

  Turn you seaward, at low tide there lies sand again and shingle(albeit but a narrow beach, for here a depth of water sinks rapidly)laved with relentless obstinacy by long, furling, growling rollersthat are grey at their sluggish base and emerald-lighted at theircurvetting crest. Sand yet again to the south, towards the nearercoast line, for a mile or perhaps less, dotted, along an irregularpath, with grey rocks that look as though the advance guard of a giantarmy had attempted to ford its insecure footing, had sunk into itstreacherous shifting pits, and left their blanching skull-tops halfemerging to record the disaster.

  On the land side of the bight, far away beyond the grandly desolate,silent, yellow tract, a misty blue fringe on the horizon heralds thepresence of the North Country; whilst beyond the nearer beach asprinkling of greenly ensconced homesteads cluster round some peacefuland paternal looking church tower. Near the salty shore a fishingvillage scatters its greystone cabins along the first terrace of thebluffs.

  Outwards, ever changing in colour and temper roll and fret the greywaters of the Irish Sea, turbulent at times, but generally lenientenough to the brown-sailed ketches that break the regular sweep of thewestern horizon as they toil at the perpetual harvest of the deep.

  Thus stands Scarthey. Although appearing as an island on the charts,at low tides it becomes accessible dry-foot from the land by a narrowcauseway along the line of the white shallow reefs, which connect themain pile to the rocky steps and terraces of the coast. But woe betideman or beast that diverges many feet from the one secure path! Thesands of the great bay have already but too well earned their sinisterreputation.

  During the greater part of the day, however, Scarthey justifies itsname--Skard- or Scarth-ey, the Knoll Island in the language of the oldScandinavian masters of the land.

  In fair weather, or in foul, whether rising out of sunny sands whenthe ebbing waters have retired, or assailed on all sides by rampingbreakers, Scarthey in its isolation, with its well-preserved ruins andits turret, from which for the last hundred years a light has beenburning to warn the seafarer, has a comfortable look of security andprivacy.

  The low thick wall which in warlike times encompassed the bailey (nowsurrounding and sheltering a wide paddock and neat kitchen gardens)almost disappears under a growth of stunted, but sturdy trees; dwarfalders and squat firs that shake their white-backed leaves, and swingtheir needle clusters, merrily if the breeze is mild, obstinately ifthe gale is rousing and seem to proclaim: "Here are we, well andsecure. Ruffle and toss, and lash, O winds, the faithless waters, _we_shall ever cling to this hospitable footing, the only kindly soilamid this dreariness; here you once wafted our seed; here shall welive and perpetuate our life."

  On the sea front of the bailey walls rise, sheer from the steep rock,the main body and the keep of the Peel. They are ruinous and shorn oftheir whilom great height, humbled more by the wilful destruction ofman than by the decay of time.

  But although from a distance the castle on the green island seemsutterly dismantled, it is not, even now, all ruin. And, at the timewhen Sir Adrian Landale, of Pulwick, eighth baronet, adopted it as hisresidence, it was far from being such.

  True, the greater portion of that mediaeval building, half monastic,half military, exposed even then to the searching winds many bare androofless chambers; broken vaults filled with driven sands; more thanone spiral stair with hanging steps leading into space. But themassive square keep had been substantially restored. Although rooflessits upper platform was as firm as when it was first built; and in acorner, solidly ensconced, rose the more modern turret that shelteredthe honest warning light.

  The wide chambers of the two remaining floors, which in old warlikedays were maintained bare and free, and lighted only by narrowwatching loopholes on all sides, had been, for purposes of peacefultenanncy, divided into sundry small apartments. New windows had beenpierced into the enormous thickness of stone and cement; the barecoldness of walls was also hidden under more home-like panellings.Close-fitting casements and solid doors insured peace within; the windin stormy hours might moan or rage outside this rocky pile, might hissand shriek and tear its wings among the jagged ruins, bellow andthunder in and out of opened vaults, but it might not rattle a windowof the modern castellan's quarters or shake a latch of his chamberdoor.

  There, for reasons understood then only by himself, had Sir Adrianelected, about the "year seven" of this century and in the prime ofhis age, to transplant his lares and penates.

  The while, this Adrian Landale's ancestral home stood, in its placidand double pride of ancient and settled wealth, only some few milesaway as the bee flies, in the midst of its noble park, slightlyretired from the coast-line; and from its upper casements could bedescried by day the little green patch of Scarthey and the jaggedoutline of its ruins on the yellow or glimmering face of the greatbay, and by night the light of its turret. And there he was stillliving, in some kind of happiness, in the "year fourteen," when, outof the eternal store of events, began to shape themselves the latterepisodes of a life in which storm and peace followed each other asabruptly as in the very atmosphere that he then breathed.

  For some eight years he had nested on that rock with no othercompanions but a dog, a very ancient housekeeper who cooked and washedfor "t' young mester" as she obstinately persisted in calling the manwhom she had once nursed upon her knee, and a singular sturdy foreignman (Rene L'Apotre in the language of his own land, but known as RennyPotter to the land of his adoption); which latter was more thansuspected of having escaped from the Liverpool Tower, at that time thelawful place of custody of French war prisoners.

  His own voluntary captivity, however, had nothing really dismal forAdrian Landale. And the inhabited portions of Scarthey ruins hadcertainly nothing prison-like about them, nothing even that recalledthe wilful contrition of a hermitage.

  On the second floor of the tower (the first being allotted to the use,official and private, of the small household), clear of thesurrounding walls and dismantled battlements, the rooms were laid outmuch as they might have been up at Pulwick Priory itself, yonderwithin the verdant grounds on the distant rise. His sleeping quartersplainly, though by no means ascetically furnished, opened into a largechamber, where the philosophic light-keeper spent the best part of hisdays. Here were broad and deep windows, one to the south with a wideview of the bay and the nearer coast, the other to the west where theopen sea displayed her changeable moods. On three sides of this room,the high walls, from the white stone floor to the time-blackened beamsthat bore the ceiling, almost disappeared under the irregular rows ofmany thousand of volumes. Two wooden arm-chairs, bespeaking littleaversion to an occasional guest, flanked the hearth.

  The hearth is the chief refuge of the lone thinker; this was a cosyrecess, deep cut in the mediaeval stone and mortar; within which, onchilly days, a generous heap of sea-cast timber and dried turf shotforth dancing blue flames over a mound of white ash and glowingcinders; but which, in warmer times, when the casements were unlatchedto let in with spring or summer breeze the cries of circling sea-fowlsand the distant plash of billows, offered shelter to such green plant
sas the briny air would favour.

  At the far end of the room rose in systematical clusters the pipes ofa small organ, built against the walls where it bevelled off a corner.And in the middle of the otherwise bare apartment stood a broad andheavy table, giving support to a miscellaneous array of books, open orclosed, sundry philosophical instruments, and papers in orderlydisorder; some still in their virginal freshness, most, however,bearing marks of notemaking in various stages.

  Here, in short, was the study and general keeping-room of the masterof Scarthey, and here, for the greater part, daily sat Sir AdrianLandale, placidly reading, writing, or thinking at his table; or athis organ, lost in soaring melody; or yet, by the fireside, in hiswooden arm-chair musing over the events of that strange world ofthought he had made his own; whilst the aging black retriever withmuzzle stretched between his paws slept his light, lazy sleep, everand anon opening an eye of inquiry upon his master when the latterspoke aloud his thoughts (as solitary men are wont to do), and thenwith a deep, comfortable sigh, resuming dog-life dreams.