by Grant Allen
In such a sea as then raged, indeed, and among such broken rocks, swimming, in the strict sense, was utterly impossible. By some mere miracle of dashing about, however — here, battered against the sharp rocks; there, flung over them by the breakers; and yonder, again, sucked down, like a straw in an eddy, by the fierce strength of the undertow — Eustace found himself at last, half unconscious and half choked, carried round by the swirling scour that set through the channel to the south front of the island. Next instant he felt he was cast against the dead wall of rock like an india rubber ball. He rebounded into the trough. The sea caught him a second time, and flung him once more, helpless, against the dripping precipice. With what life was left in him, he clutched with both hands the bare serpentine edge. Good luck befriended him. The great wave had lifted him up on its towering crest to the level of vegetation, beyond the debatable zone. He clung to the hard root of woody sea-aster in the clefts. The waves dashed back in tumultuous little cataracts, and left him there hanging.
Like a mountain goat, Eustace clambered up the side, on hands, knees, feet, elbows, glad to escape with his life from that irresistible turmoil. The treacherous herbs on the slope of the crag were kind to him. He scrambled ahead, like some mad, wild thing. He went onward, upward, cutting his hands at each stage, tearing the skin from his fingers. It was impossible; but he did it. Next minute he found himself high and dry on the island.
His clothes were clinging wet, of course, and his limbs bruised and battered. But he was safe on the firm plateau of the rock at last; and he had rescued Cleer Trevennack!
In the first joy and excitement of the moment he forgot altogether the cramping conventionalities of our every-day life; and, repeating the cry he had heard Michael Trevennack raise from the beach below, he shouted aloud, at the top of his voice, “Cleer! Cleer! Where are you?”
“Here!” came an answering voice from the depths of the gloom overhead. And following the direction whence the sound seemed to come, Eustace Le Neve clambered up to her.
As he seized her hand and wrung it, Cleer crying the while with delight and relief, it struck him all at once, for the very first time, he had done no good by coming, save to give her companionship. It would be hopeless to try carrying her through those intricate rock-channels and that implacable surf, whence he himself had emerged, alone and unburdened, only by a miracle. They two must stop alone there on the rock till morning.
As for Cleer, too innocent and too much of a mere woman in her deadly peril to think of anything but the delightful sense of confidence in a strong man at her side to guard and protect her, she sat and held his hand still, in a perfect transport of gratitude. “Oh, how good of you to come!” she cried again and again, bending over it in her relief, and half tempted to kiss it. “How good of you to come across like that to save me.”
CHAPTER VIII.
SAFE AT LAST.
The night was long. The night was dark. Slowly the fog closed them in. It grew rainier and more dismal. But on the summit of the crag Eustace Le Neve stood aloft, and waved his arms, and shouted. He lit a match and shaded it. The dull glare of it through the mist just faintly reached the eyes of the anxious watchers on the beach below. From a dozen lips there rose an answering shout. The pair on the crag half heard its last echoes. Eustace put his hands to his mouth and cried aloud once more, in stentorian tones, “All right. Cleer’s here. We can hold out till morning.”
Trevennack alone heard the words. But he repeated them so instantly that his wife felt sure it was true hearing, not insane hallucination. The sea was gaining on them now. It had risen almost up to the face of the cliffs. Reluctantly they turned along the path by the gully, and mounting the precipice waited and watched till morning on the tor that overlooks Michael’s Crag from the Penmorgan headland.
Every now and again, through that livelong night, Trevennack whispered in his wife’s ear, “If only I chose to spread my wings, and launch myself, I could fly across and carry her.” And each time that brave woman, holding his hand in her own and smoothing it gently, answered in her soft voice, “But then the secret would be out, and Cleer’s life would be spoiled, and they’d call you a madman. Wait till morning, dear Michael; do, do, wait till morning.”
And Trevennack, struggling hard with the mad impulse in his heart, replied with all his soul, “I will; I will; for Cleer’s sake and yours, I’ll try to keep it down. I’ll not be mad. I’ll be strong and restrain it.”
For he knew he was insane, in his inmost soul, almost as well as he knew his name was Michael the Archangel.
On the island, meanwhile, Eustace Le Neve and Cleer Trevennack sat watching out the weary night, and longing for the dawn to make the way back possible. At least, Cleer did, for as to Eustace, in spite of rain and fog and cold and darkness, he was by no means insensible to the unwonted pleasure of so long a tete-a-tete, in such romantic circumstances, with the beautiful Cornish girl. To be sure the waves roared, and the drizzle dripped, and the seabirds flapped all round them. But many waters will not quench love. Cleer was by his side, holding his hand in hers in the dark for pure company’s sake, because she was so frightened; and as the night wore on they talked at last of many things. They were prisoners there for five mortal hours or so, alone, together; and they might as well make the best of it by being sociable with one another.
There could be no denying, however, that it was cold and damp and dark and uncomfortable. The rain came beating down upon them, as they sat there side by side on that exposed rock. The spray from the breakers blew in with the night wind; the light breeze struck chill on their wet clothes and faces. After awhile Eustace began a slow tour of inspection over the crag, seeking some cave or rock shelter, some projecting ledge of stone on the leeward side that might screen their backs at least from the driving showers. Cleer couldn’t be left alone; she clung to his hand as he felt his way about the islet, with uncertain steps, through the gloom and fog. Once he steadied himself on a jutting piece of the rock as he supposed, when to his immense surprise — wh’r’r’r — it rose from under his hand, with a shrill cry of alarm, and fluttered wildly seaward. It was some sleeping gull, no doubt, disturbed unexpectedly in its accustomed resting-place. Eustace staggered and almost fell. Cleer supported him with her arm. He accepted her aid gratefully. They stumbled on in the dark once more, lighting now and again for a minute or two one of his six precious matches — he had no more in his case — and exploring as well as they might the whole broken surface of that fissured pinnacle. “I’m so glad you smoke, Mr. Le Neve,” Cleer said, simply, as he lit one. “For if you didn’t, you know, we’d have been left here all night in utter darkness.”
At last, in a nook formed by the weathered joints, Eustace found a rugged niche, somewhat dryer than the rest, and laid Cleer gently down in it, on a natural spring seat of tufted rock-plants. Then he settled down beside her, with what cheerfulness he could muster up, and taking off his wet coat, spread it on top across the cleft, like a tent roof, to shelter them. It was no time, indeed, to stand upon ceremony. Cleer recognized as much, and nestled close to his side, like a sensible girl as she was, so as to keep warm by mere company; while Eustace, still holding her hand, just to assure her of his presence, placed himself in such an attitude, leaning before her and above her, as to protect her as far as possible from the drizzling rainfall through the gap in front of them. There they sat till morning, talking gradually of many things, and growing more and more confidential, in spite of cold and wet, as they learnt more and more, with each passing hour, of each other’s standpoint. There are some situations where you get to know people better in a few half-hours together than you could get to know them in months upon months of mere drawing-room acquaintance. And this was one of them. Before morning dawned, Eustace Le Neve and Cleer Trevennack felt just as if they had known one another quite well for years. They were old and trusted friends already. Old friends — and even something more than that. Though no word of love was spoken between them, each knew of what
the other was thinking. Eustace felt Cleer loved him; Cleer felt Eustace loved her. And in spite of rain and cold and fog and darkness they were almost happy — before dawn came to interrupt their strange tete-a-tete on the islet.
As soon as day broke Eustace looked out from their eyrie on the fissured peak, and down upon the troubled belt of water below. The sea was now ebbing, and the passage between the rock and the mainland though still full (for it was never dry even at spring-tide low water) was fairly passable by this time over the natural bridge of stepping-stones. He clambered down the side, giving his hand to Cleer from ledge to ledge as he went. The fog had lifted a little, and on the opposite headland they could just dimly descry the weary watchers looking eagerly out for them. Eustace put his hands to his mouth, and gave a loud halloo. The sound of the breakers was less deafening now; his voice carried to the mainland. Trevennack, who had sat under a tarpaulin through the livelong night, watching and waiting with anxious heart for the morning, raised an answering shout, and waved his hat in his hand frantically. St. Michael’s Crag had not betrayed its trust. That was the motto of the Trevennacks— “Stand fast, St. Michael’s!” — under the crest of the rocky islet, castled and mured, flamboyant. Eustace reached the bottom of the rock, and, wading in the water himself, or jumping into the deepest parts, helped Cleer across the stepping-stones. Meanwhile, the party on the cliff had hurried down by the gully path; and a minute later Cleer was in her mother’s arms, while Trevennack held her hand, inarticulate with joy, and bent over her eagerly.
“Oh, mother,” Cleer cried, in her simple girlish naivete, “Mr. Le Neve’s been so kind to me! I don’t know how I should ever have got through the night without him. It was so good of him to come. He’s been SUCH a help to me.”
The father and mother both looked into her eyes — a single searching glance — and understood perfectly. They grasped Le Neve’s hand. Tears rolled down their cheeks. Not a word was spoken, but in a certain silent way all four understood one another.
“Where’s Tyrrel?” Eustace asked.
And Mrs. Trevennack answered, “Carried home, severely hurt. He was bruised on the rocks. But we hope not dangerously. The doctor’s been to see him, we hear, and finds no bones broken. Still, he’s terribly battered about, in those fearful waves, and it must be weeks, they tell us, before he can quite recover.”
But Cleer, as was natural, thought more of the man who had struggled through and reached her than of the man who had failed in the attempt, though he suffered all the more for it. This is a world of the successful. In it, as in most other planets I have visited, people make a deal more fuss over the smallest success than over the noblest failure.
It was no moment for delay. Eustace turned on his way at once, and ran up to Penmorgan. And the Trevennacks returned, very wet and cold, in the dim gray dawn to their rooms at Gunwalloe.
As soon as they were alone — Cleer put safely to bed — Trevennack looked at his wife. “Lucy,” he said, slowly, in a disappointed tone, “after this, of course, come what may, they must marry.”
“They must,” his wife answered. “There’s no other way left. And fortunately, dear, I could see from the very first, Cleer likes him, and he likes her.”
The father paused a moment. It wasn’t quite the match he had hoped for a Trevennack of Trevennack. Then he added, very fervently, “Thank God it was HIM — not that other man, Tyrrel! Thank God, the first one fell in the water and was hurt. What should we ever have done — oh, what should we have done, Lucy, if she’d been cut off all night long on that lonely crag face to face with the man who murdered our dear boy Michael?”
Mrs. Trevennack drew a long breath. Then she spoke earnestly once more. “Dear heart,” she said, looking deep into his clear brown eyes, “now remember, more than ever, Cleer’s future is at stake. For Cleer’s sake, more than ever, keep a guard on yourself, Michael; watch word and deed, do nothing foolish.”
“You can trust me!” Trevennack answered, drawing himself up to his full height, and looking proudly before him. “Cleer’s future is at stake. Cleer has a lover now. Till Cleer is married, I’ll give you my sacred promise no living soul shall ever know in any way she’s an archangel’s daughter.”
CHAPTER IX.
MEDICAL OPINION.
From that day forth, by some unspoken compact, it was “Eustace” and “Cleer,” wherever they met, between them. Le Neve began it, by coming round in the afternoon of that self-same day, as soon as he’d slept off the first effects of his fatigue and chill, to inquire of Mrs. Trevennack “how Cleer was getting on” after her night’s exposure. And Mrs. Trevennack accepted the frank usurpation in very good part, as indeed was no wonder, for Cleer had wanted to know half an hour before whether “Eustace” had yet been round to ask after her. The form of speech told all. There was no formal engagement, and none of the party knew exactly how or when they began to take it for granted; but from that evening on Michael’s Crag it was a tacitly accepted fact between Le Neve and the Trevennacks that Eustace was to marry Cleer as soon as he could get a permanent appointment anywhere.
Engineering, however, is an overstocked profession. In that particular it closely resembles most other callings.
The holidays passed away, and Walter Tyrrel recovered, and the Trevennacks returned to town for the head of the house to take up his new position in the Admiralty service; but Eustace Le Neve heard of no opening anywhere for an energetic young man with South American experience. Those three years he had passed out of England, indeed, had made him lose touch with other members of his craft. People shrugged their shoulders when they heard of him, and opined, with a chilly smile, he was the sort of young man who ought to go to the colonies. That’s the easiest way of shelving all similar questions. The colonies are popularly regarded in England as the predestined dumping-ground for all the fools and failures of the mother-country. So Eustace settled down in lodgings in London, not far from the Trevennacks, and spent more of his time, it must be confessed, in going round to see Cleer than in perfecting himself in the knowledge of his chosen art. Not that he failed to try every chance that lay open to him — he had far too much energy to sit idle in his chair and let the stream of promotion flow by unattempted; but chances were few and applicants were many, and month after month passed away to his chagrin without the clever young engineer finding an appointment anywhere. Meanwhile, his little nest-egg of South-American savings was rapidly disappearing; and though Tyrrel, who had influence with railway men, exerted himself to the utmost on his friend’s behalf — partly for Cleer’s sake, and partly for Eustace’s own — Le Neve saw his balance growing daily smaller, and began to be seriously alarmed at last, not merely for his future prospects of employment and marriage, but even for his immediate chance of a modest livelihood.
Nor was Mrs. Trevennack, for her part, entirely free from sundry qualms of conscience as to her husband’s condition and the rightfulness of concealing it altogether from Cleer’s accepted lover. Trevennack himself was so perfectly sane in every ordinary relation of life, so able a business head, so dignified and courtly an English gentleman, that Eustace never even for a moment suspected any undercurrent of madness in that sound practical intelligence. Indeed, no man could talk with more absolute common sense about his daughter’s future, or the duties and functions of an Admiralty official, than Michael Trevennack. It was only to his wife in his most confidential moments that he ever admitted the truth as to his archangelic character; to all others whom he met he was simply a distinguished English civil servant of blameless life and very solid judgment. The heads of his department placed the most implicit trust in Trevennack’s opinion; there was no man about the place who could decide a knotty point of detail off-hand like Michael Trevennack. What was his poor wife to do, then? Was it her place to warn Eustace that Cleer’s father might at any moment unexpectedly develop symptoms of dangerous insanity? Was she bound thus to wreck her own daughter’s happiness? Was she bound to speak out the very secret of her hea
rt which she had spent her whole life in inducing Trevennack himself to bottle up with ceaseless care in his distracted bosom?
And yet … she saw the other point of view as well — alas, all too plainly. She was a martyr to conscience, like Walter Tyrrel himself; was it right of her, then, to tie Eustace for life to a girl who was really a madman’s daughter? This hateful question was up before her often in the dead dark night, as she lay awake on her bed, tossing and turning feverishly; it tortured her in addition to her one lifelong trouble. For the silver-haired lady had borne the burden of that unknown sorrow locked up in her own bosom for fifteen years; and it had left on her face such a beauty of holiness as a great trouble often leaves indelibly stamped on women of the same brave, loving temperament.
One day, about three months later, in their drawing-room at Bayswater, Eustace Le Neve happened to let drop a casual remark which cut poor Mrs. Trevennack to the quick, like a knife at her heart. He was talking of some friend of his who had lately got engaged. “It’s a terrible thing,” he said, seriously. “There’s insanity in the family. I wouldn’t marry into such a family as that — no, not if I loved a girl to distraction, Mrs. Trevennack. The father’s in a mad-house, you know; and the girl’s very nice now, but one never can tell when the tendency may break out. And then — just think! what an inheritance to hand on to one’s innocent children!”
Trevennack took no open notice of what he said. But Mrs. Trevennack winced, grew suddenly pale, and stammered out some conventional none-committing platitude. His words entered her very soul. They stung and galled her. That night she lay awake and thought more bitterly to herself about the matter than ever. Next morning early, as soon as Trevennack had set off to catch the fast train from Waterloo to Portsmouth direct (he was frequently down there on Admiralty business), she put on her cloak and bonnet, without a word to Cleer, and set out in a hansom all alone to Harley Street.