The Vanished Messenger

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  CHAPTER XXXV

  Mr. Fentolin, arrived outside on the stone front of the boat-house,pointed the wheel of his chair towards the Hall. Hannah Cox, who kept byhis side, however, drew it gently towards the beach.

  "Down here," she directed softly. "Bring your chair down the plank-way,close to the water's edge."

  "My good woman," Mr. Fentolin exclaimed furiously, "I am not in thehumour for this sort of thing! Lock up, Sarson, at once; I am in a hurryto get back."

  "But you will come just this little way," she continued, speakingwithout any change of tone. "You see, the others are waiting, too. Ihave been down to the village and fetched them up."

  Mr. Fentolin followed her outstretched finger and gave a sudden start.Standing at the edge of the sea were a dozen or twenty fishermen. Theywere all muttering together and looking at the top of the boat-house. Ashe realised the direction of their gaze, Mr. Fentolin's face underwent astrange transformation. He seemed to shrink in his chair. He was ghastlypale even to the lips. Slowly he turned his head. From a place in theroof of the boat-house a tall support had appeared. On the top was aswinging globe.

  "What have you to do with that?" he asked in a low tone.

  "I found it," she answered. "I felt that it was there. I have broughtthem up with me to see it. I think that they want to ask you somequestions. But first, come and listen."

  Mr. Fentolin shook her off. He looked around for Meekins.

  "Meekins, stand by my chair," he ordered sharply. "Turn round; I wish togo to the Hall. Drive this woman away."

  Meekins came hurrying up, but almost at the same moment half a dozen ofthe brown jerseyed fishermen detached themselves from the others. Theyformed a little bodyguard around the bath-chair.

  "What is the meaning of this?" Mr. Fentolin demanded, his voice shrillwith anger. "Didn't you hear what I said? This woman annoys me. Send heraway."

  Not one of the fishermen answered a word or made the slightest movementto obey him. One of them, a grey-bearded veteran, drew the chair alittle further down the planked way across the pebbles. Hannah Cox keptclose to its side. They came to a standstill only a few yards from wherethe waves were breaking. She lifted her hand.

  "Listen!" she cried. "Listen!"

  Mr. Fentolin turned helplessly around. The little group of fishermenhad closed in upon Sarson and Meekins. The woman's hand was upon hisshoulder; she pointed seaward to where a hissing line of white foammarked the spot where the topmost of the rocks were visible.

  "You wondered why I have spent so much of my time out here," she saidquietly. "Now you will know. If you listen as I am listening, as I havelistened for so many weary hours, so many weary years, you will hearthem calling to me, David and John and Stephen. 'The light!' Do you hearwhat they are crying? 'The light! Fentolin's light!' Look!"

  She forced him to look once more at the top of the boat-house.

  "They were right!" she proclaimed, her voice gaining in strength andintensity. "They were neither drunk nor reckless. They steered asstraight as human hand could guide a tiller, for Fentolin's light! Andthere they are, calling and calling at the bottom of the sea--my threeboys and my man. Do you know for whom they call?"

  Mr. Fentolin shrank back in his chair.

  "Take this woman away!" he ordered the fishermen. "Do you hear? Take heraway; she is mad!"

  They looked towards him, but not one of them moved. Mr. Fentolin raisedhis whistle to his lips, and blew it.

  "Meekins!" he cried. "Where are you, Meekins?"

  He turned his head and saw at once that Meekins was powerless. Five orsix of the fishermen had gathered around him. There were at least thirtyof them about, sinewy, powerful men. The only person who moved towardsMr. Fentolin's carriage was Jacob, the coast guardsman.

  "Mr. Fentolin, sir," he said, "the lads have got your bully safe. It's ayear and more that Hannah Cox has been about the village with some storyabout two lights on a stormy night. It's true what she says--that herman and boys lie drowned. There's William Green, besides, and a nephewof my own--John Kallender. And Philip Green--he was saved. He swore byall that was holy that he steered straight for the light when his boatstruck, and that as he swam for shore, five minutes later, he saw thelight reappear in another place. It's a strange story. What have you tosay, sir, about that?"

  He pointed straight to the wire-encircled globe which towered on itsslender support above the boat-house. Mr. Fentolin looked at it andlooked back at the coast guardsman. The brain of a Machiavelli couldscarcely have invented a plausible reply.

  "The light was never lit there," he said. "It was simply to help me insome electrical experiments."

  Then, for the first time in their lives, those who were looking on sawMr. Fentolin apart from his carriage. Without any haste but with amazingstrength, Hannah Cox leaned over, and, with her arms around his middle,lifted him sheer up into the air. She carried him, clasped in her arms,a weird, struggling object, to the clumsy boat that lay always at thetop of the beach. She dropped him into the bottom, took her seat, andunshipped the oars. For one moment the coast guardsman hesitated; thenhe obeyed her look. He gave the boat a push which sent it grinding downthe pebbles into the sea. The woman began to work at the oars. Every nowand then she looked over her shoulder at that thin line of white surfwhich they were all the time approaching.

  "What are you doing, woman?" Mr. Fentolin demanded hoarsely. "Listen! Itwas an accident that your people were drowned. I'll give you an annuity.I'll make you rich for life--rich! Do you understand what that means?"

  "Aye!" she answered, looking down upon him as he lay doubled up at thebottom of the boat. "I know what it means to be rich--better than you,maybe. Not to let the gold and silver pieces fall through your fingers,or to live in a great house and be waited upon by servants who desertyou in the hour of need. That isn't being rich. It's rich to feel thetouch of the one you love, to see the faces around of those you've givenbirth to, to move on through the days and nights towards the end, withthem around; not to know the chill loneliness of an empty life. I am apoor woman, Mr. Fentolin, and it's your hand that made me so, and notall the miracles that the Bible ever told of can make me rich again."

  "You are a fool!" he shrieked. "You can buy forgetfulness! The memory ofeverything passes."

  "I may be a fool," she retorted grimly, "and you the wise man; but thisday we'll both know the truth."

  There was a little murmur from the shore, where the fishermen stood in along line.

  "Bring him back, missus," Jacob called out. "You've scared him enough.Bring him back. We'll leave him to the law."

  They were close to the line of surf now; they had passed it, indeed, alittle on the left, and the boat was drifting. She stood up, straightand stern, and her face, as she looked towards the land, was lit withthe fire of the prophetess.

  "Aye," she cried, "we'll leave him to the law--to the law of God!"

  Then they saw her stoop down, and once more with that almost superhumanstrength which seemed to belong to her for those few moments, she liftedthe strange object who lay cowering there, high above her head. From theshore they realised what was going to happen, and a great shout arose.She stood on the side of the boat and jumped, holding her burden tightlyin her arms. So they went down and disappeared.

  Half a dozen of the younger fishermen were in the water even beforethe grim spectacle was ended; another ran for a boat that was moored alittle way down the beach. But from the first the search was useless.Only Jacob, who was a person afflicted with many superstitions, wipedthe sweat from his forehead as he leaned over the bow of his boat andlooked down into that fathomless space.

  "I heard her singing, her or her wraith," he swore afterwards. "I'llnever forget the moment I looked down and down, and the water seemed togrow clearer, and I saw her walking there at the bottom among the rocks,with him over her back, singing as she went, looking everywhere forGeorge and the boys!"

  But if indeed his eyes were touched with fire at that moment, no oneelse in the world saw
anything more of Miles Fentolin.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  Mr. John P. Dunster removed the cigar from his teeth and gazed at thelong white ash with the air of a connoisseur. He was stretched in a longchair, high up in the terraced gardens behind the Hall. At his feetwere golden mats of yellow crocuses; long borders of hyacinths--pinkand purple; beds of violets; a great lilac tree, with patches of blossomhere and there forcing their way into a sunlit world. The sea was blue;the sheltered air where they sat was warm and perfumed. Mr. Dunster, whowas occupying the position of a favoured guest, was feeling very much athome.

  "There is one thing," he remarked meditatively, "which I can't helpthinking about you Britishers. You may deserve it or you may not, butyou do have the most almighty luck."

  "Sheer envy," Hamel murmured. "We escape from our tight corners byforethought."

  "Not on your life, sir," Mr. Dunster declared vigorously. "A year orless ago you got a North Sea scare, and on the strength of a merelyhonourable understanding with your neighbour, you risk your country'svery existence for the sake of adding half a dozen battleships to yourNorth Sea Squadron. The day the last of those battleships passed throughthe Straits of Gibraltar, this little Conference was plotted. I tell youthey meant to make history there.

  "There was enough for everybody--India for Russia, a time-honoureddream, but why not? Alsace-Lorraine and perhaps Egypt, for France;Australia for Japan; China and South Africa for Germany. Why not? Youmay laugh at it on paper but I say again--why not?"

  "It didn't quite come off, sir," Gerald observed.

  "It didn't," Mr. Dunster admitted, "partly owing to you. There wereonly two things needed: France to consider her own big interests and toignore an entente from which she gains nothing that was not assuredto her under the new agreement, and the money. Strange," Mr. Dunstercontinued, "how people forget that factor, and yet the man who wasresponsible for The Hague Conference knew it. We in the States are rightoutside all these little jealousies and wrangles that bring Europe,every now and then, right up to the gates of war, but I'm hanged ifthere is one of you dare pass through those gates without a hand on ourmoney markets. It's a new word in history, that little document, news ofwhich Mr. Gerald here took to The Hague, the word of the money kings ofthe world. There is something that almost nips your breath in the ideathat a dozen men, descended from the Lord knows whom, stopped a warwhich would have altered the whole face of history."

  "There was never any proof," Hamel remarked, "that France would not haveremained staunch to us."

  "Very likely not," Mr. Dunster agreed, "but, on the other hand, yourcountry had never the right to put such a burden upon her honour.Remember that side by side with those other considerations, a greatstatesman's first duty is to the people over whom he watches, not tostudy the interests of other lands. However, it's finished. The HagueConference is broken up. The official organs of the world allude toit, if at all, as an unimportant gathering called together to discusscertain frontier questions with which England had nothing to do. But thememory of it will live. A good cold douche for you people, I should say,and I hope you'll take warning by it. Whatever the attitude of Americaas a nation may be to these matters, the American people don't want tosee the old country in trouble. Gee whiz! What's that?"

  There was a little cry from all of them. Only Hamel stood without signof surprise, gazing downward with grim, set face. A dull roar, like thebooming of a gun, flashes of fire, and a column of smoke--and all thatwas left of St. David's Tower was one tottering wall and a scatteredmass of masonry.

  "I had an idea," Hamel said quietly, "that St. David's Tower was goingto spoil the landscape for a good many years. My property, you know, andthere's the end of it. I am sick of seeing people for the last few dayscome down and take photographs of it for every little rag that goes topress."

  Mr. Dunster pointed out to the line of surf beyond. "If only some hand,"he remarked, "could plant dynamite below that streak of white, so thatthe sea could disgorge its dead! They tell me there's a Spanish galleonthere, and a Dutch warship, besides a score or more of fishing-boats."

  Mrs. Fentolin shivered a little. She drew her cloak around her. Gerald,who had been watching her, sprang to his feet.

  "Come," he exclaimed, "we chose the gardens for our last afternoon here,to be out of the way of these places! We'll go round the hill."

  Mrs. Fentolin shook her head once more. Her face had recovered itsserenity. She looked downward gravely but with no sign of fear.

  "There is nothing to terrify us there, Gerald," she declared. "The seahas gathered, and the sea will hold its own."

  Hamel held out his hand to Esther.

  "I have destroyed the only house in the world which I possess," he said."Come and look for violets with me in the spinney, and let us talkof the houses we are going to build, and the dreams we shall dream inthem."