Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://archive.org/details/tempestdrivenrom03dowl
(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Jerry O'Brien's words had been no sooner uttered than he saw how foolishly injudicious they were. In the excitement of the moment he had forgotten what ought to have been uppermost in his thoughts--the condition of his friend.
He rang the bell. In a few seconds Madge entered the room. He briefly explained what had occurred, and then set off to summon Dr. Santley.
The doctor looked grave, and hurried back to Carlingford House. Here he stayed an hour, and left with gloomy looks and words. A relapse was possible, and a great delay to convalescence certain. There was danger, serious danger of the patient's life.
Jerry O'Brien was in despair. He had the greatest affection for Alfred, and he was in love with Alfred's sister. Yes, he might as well confess the matter boldly to himself; plain-looking, gentle, cheerful Madge was worth more to him than all the rest of the girls in the world put together. And here his impetuous rashness had brought her brother to death's door. Curses on his rashness!
Santley said he was by no means to see Alfred again that day, or until he got formal leave to do so. He would give no opinion as to the ultimate course of the disease; but there was cause for anxiety--great anxiety.
Jerry took his leave of the house with a heavy heart. He was quite alone in the world, and since he lost his mother, now years ago, he had known no trouble so trying as this. He told himself over and over again that all would yet be well with Alfred. In vain! His heart would not be comforted; his mind would not abide in peace.
When he got into town, he did not know where to turn. The idea of going to the club under the unpleasant circumstances was out of the question. Walking about alone was dull work. He did not care to call on any friend, and the notion of spending the evening at a place of entertainment was simply monstrous. There seemed to be nothing else for it but to go home, and that was a stupid programme enough.
Jerry had lodgings in Cecil Street, Strand, and thither he went. He let himself in with a latchkey, and walked upstairs in the gathering gloom of a late February afternoon. His rooms were on the second floor. He entered the one looking out on the street, and lit the lamp deliberately. There were two reasons for his proceeding slowly. In the first place, it was not yet quite dark; in the second, deliberation killed time, and he had nothing to do between that hour and to-morrow morning, when he should call to know how Alfred was.
"Killing time," he thought, "is, when one is anxious, an excellent though slow way of killing one's self."
He pulled down the blinds, drew the curtains, and roused up the smouldering fire; then, with a heavy sigh, he threw himself into an easy-chair, and looked indolently, discontentedly around.
The room at best was not very cheering or elegant. The house was old, the room low, the furniture heavy, by no means fresh, and far from new. The table on which the lamp stood had a staring crimson cover. This was a recent and outrageous addition to the chromatic elements of the place. Until that afternoon the cover had been of a dim, nameless green, quite inoffensive, except for motley stains.
In his present state of mind, this cover felt like an insult, and he rose quickly, and, having lifted the lamp, flung the obnoxious cover into a corner, and was about to sit down again, when his eyes caught sight of a letter lying on the carpet at his feet.
He stooped and picked it up.
"A letter from O'Hanlon, and a fat letter, too! What can it be, now? Nothing more about those weirs and the commissioners, I hope. Well, even the weirs and the commissioners in moderation would be better than dwelling on this wretched business about poor Alfred."
He broke the cover, sat down, and began to read a long and closely-written letter in a clerks hand. It was signed in a different hand "John O'Hanlon," and from a printed chaplet in the corner it appeared John O'Hanlon was a solicitor residing at Kilbarry.
Jerry O'Brien read on resolutely. The only sign he gave of perturbation while mastering the eight pages he held in his hand was now and then crossing, uncrossing, and recrossing his legs. When he came to the end he threw the letter from him with an exclamation of annoyance and disgust. Then he sat awhile motionless, with his elbow resting on the table, his cheek on his hand, and his eyebrows drawn low down over his eyes. At last he muttered:
"It is my unfortunate weirs again--or, rather, it is the weirs of unfortunate me. They'll end by tearing up my weirs and leaving me to graze on the parish. I'll make a nice pauper--splendid! I don't think paupers have numbers like convicts; but if they have, I shall be number naught, naught, naught recurring. Confound those commissioners eternally! Obstruct the navigation of the Bawn! My salmon weirs obstruct as much the navigation of the Bawn as they do of the Euphrates or the Mississippi! If I had my will, these infernal, meddling commissioners would be drowned first in the Euphrates and then in the Mississippi, after which I'd give them a roasting alive in Vesuvius for a change. This will take eight hundred a year out of my pocket, and hand it over to--the Atlantic, and parts adjacent! That's a nice way to help a struggling country!"
He paused for a while, and began walking up and down the room hastily, angrily. Presently his thoughts took another turn.
"It's fortunate I said nothing to Madge. She must know by this time how I feel towards her, and I don't think her people would have any objection if this infernal affair was not hanging over me. But I could not speak to her father if I had to say: 'Will you, sir, be good enough to bring your daughter over to Kilbarry, and see her married to me in the poor-house?' It would not look swell. Not a bit of it! Why, 'twould look quite squalid and ungenteel. Never mind, Madge. I'll fight them, darling, to the last. I won't leave a stone unturned, and every one I turn I'll fling at these rapacious fools."
He paused in his walk at the table.
He took up the letter again and looked at the end of it.
"He says I must go over at once--that I must start to-night. That's peremptory and but short notice. Never mind; it may be all for the best. I know the people at Dulwich will not think I am running away from them after bringing this fresh trouble upon them. They are the most generous people in the world. My honour is perfectly safe with them. I have plenty of time to catch the mail. This letter must have come at noon, and fallen off the table. I'll write a letter to Carlingford House explaining matters, and then when I have packed a portmanteau I shall be all right for the road." He sang in a low voice:
"With my pistols cocked, and a kind good-night,
Then hurrah, hurrah for the road!"
Adding: "I wish to heavens the days were not gone for 'pistols cocked' and 'the road.' Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to bag these accursed commissioners on the road, or in the water, or on the wing. Unfortunately, 'old times are changed, old manners gone,' as the poet says, and shooting even ruffianly commissioners is against the law of the land, or the sea, or the air."
He got writing materials, gave Mr. Paulton a short account of the reason for his unexpected departure from London; then he ordered his dinner, packed his portmanteau, ate his dinner, and caught the mail train for Holyhead easily.
He slept half the way from Euston to Holyhead, and nearly all the way from Holyhead to Kingstown. In Dublin, at an hotel close to the Westland Row Station, he got his breakfast, and then drove to Kingsbridge, where he booked and took train for Kilbarry, an important town in the south of Ireland.
A railway journey in the early part of the year from Dublin to the south of Ireland is far from exhilarating. Half the way may be performed at a fair, but the second half is done at a funereal pace. The country looks damp, and is ill-clad with trees. It has not yet donned its summer vesture of astonishing green. The towns are small, far apart, and generally invisible from the train. Few people are on the platforms, and the stations of even important towns are paltry and forlorn. There are occasionally lovely mountains and pastoral streams, but the whole effect is dulling, depressing, from the absence of trees and the melancholy thinness of the population. It is a country empty of its children, and desolate at the loss of them.
Jerry O'Brien was of a mercurial nature, and when he was down he was at zero, and when up, at boiling. This last stage of his journey plunged him into the profoundest gloom. Overhead there was a sick, watery sun, which gave a feeble white glare more dejecting than a pall of thunder cloud. Tobacco was powerless to ameliorate the chill influence of that changing landscape. He tried to read a newspaper, but found he could not fix his attention on one word of what he read. After ascertaining there was nothing in it about Fishery Commissioners, he gave it up as a bad job, and laid it with resignation on the rug which covered his knees.
When he arrived at Kilbarry he was in the lowest and most desponding state of mind. He was firmly persuaded that nothing could save his weirs, and was almost convinced that the first news he should hear was that his weirs had been destroyed, and that the commissioners had resolved to lynch him if they could lay hands on him before he died of hunger.
He left the station in an omnibus and drove along the mile of broad quays beside the noble river Bawn to the "Munster Hotel." Here the prospect was more cheering than on the bleak, cold journey down. The river was thick with shipping; the quays noisy with traffic; the stores, warehouses, wharfs, and shops alive with people. Sailing vessels were discharging corn and coal, and steamers taking in cattle, and cases of eggs, and bales of bacon, and firkins of butter. Here the stream of humanity was vivid and strong. Moderate prosperity asserted its presence blithely. The weather had cleared and brightened, and the sun hung in the clear western air, a pale golden shield of light.
O'Brien was well known at "The Munster," and as he went up the steps of the hotel, was greeted cordially by the cheerful landlord and a few loungers with whom he was acquainted. He did not see a trace of the hated Fishery Commissioners, and by the time he had eaten a light luncheon, he began to think they were little more than an amiable fiction of a jovial Government. No one he met seemed to think his fortunes were in peril. The manners of John, the old waiter, were respectful and joyous as though the traveller had just returned from far distant lands, after an absence of many years, to enter into possession of a princely patrimony.
There was no time to be lost if he wanted to catch his solicitor, O'Hanlon, at the office. Accordingly he set off at once in that direction, and, having gone through two or three streets, found himself in the presence of his legal adviser, agent, and friend all in one.
John O'Hanlon was a man past middle life, tall, a little stooped in the shoulders, black-haired, neither fat nor lean, dark, ruddy, with whiskers just tinged with gray, loud-voiced, and aggressive in manner, and owning a pair of enormous brown hands. One of the peculiarities of O'Hanlon was that no matter how well prepared he might be for the advent of any one who came to him he was always at that moment busy, or about to be busy, with something or somebody else.
As the young man entered the private office of the solicitor the latter rose hastily, pointed to a chair, and said rapidly:
"A minute, O'Brien--a minute. Sit down. I want to tell Gorman something."
Gorman was the head clerk--a red-haired, restless little man, who was always to be found in the front office, and who never seemed to have anything more important to do than lean against the folded window-shutter and look out into the street, but who was reputed to be more wily than any two fully sworn-in attorneys in Kilbarry.
After a short absence, O'Hanlon came back.
"My dear O'Brien, I'm delighted to see you."
He took both his client's hands, and shook them most cordially. He had the reputation of being the most insincere man you could meet on a summer's day; but no one had ever been able to point out any one act of insincerity in his conduct.
"I got your letter," said O'Brien, after replying to the greetings of the other, "and here I am. I came post-haste."
"Right, right, my boy! Those rascally commissioners will be the death of me. They'll be the death of every man in the neighbourhood who takes an interest in salmon, except the net men."
"Well, what is it this time? The same old story, as well as I could gather from your letter."
"The same old story over again. The same old three-and-fourpence--(a professional sum, which, I am sorry to see, has grown into a saying, although a colourless and unmeaning saying). The facts are these."
Here the solicitor gave a long and energetic account of the vile proceedings of these rascally commissioners, and wound up by saying that they hadn't a leg to stand on, and that "we" were sure to win in the long run, but that to insure success it was absolutely necessary for O'Brien to be in town or within very easy call for a month or two, as petitions and declarations and so-ons had to be considered, drawn up, and attended to generally and particularly.
When Jerry heard the whole state of affairs, he felt considerably relieved on the score of his salmon weirs on the lower Bawn. Upon telling this to his friend, the latter became hilarious, slapped Jerry on the back, and said that he'd prove the commissioners were the greatest fools in Ireland, and, moreover, make them confess it themselves in their own little dirty hole-and-corner court.
These and other gallant words and brave assurances served to put Jerry in good spirits, and when he rose to leave he was as buoyant as though he already held the proofs of triumph in his hand.
As he was about to quit the office, O'Hanlon took him by the hand, and mysteriously said:
"You were in London while that Davenport inquest was going on?"
"Yes."
"Do you know anything about it?"
O'Brien's good spirits instantly took flight.
"Too much! I know everything about it."
"You read a good report of the inquest?"
"No; I was at the inquest."
"Ah-h!" It was a long-drawn, deep breath. The eyes of the solicitor became suddenly introspective, and he lolled his head over his right shoulder as if in deep thought. "Why did you attend that inquest?"
"Well, for two reasons. First, I, as you of course know, was acquainted with the Davenports; and second, because the dearest friend I have in London was greatly interested in Mrs. Davenport. It's a long story."
"Is it? Ah-h! I am greatly interested in that story too."
"Are you? Why? I didn't think you knew the Davenports."
The solicitor straightened his head on his shoulders. His eyes were still turned inward.
"You are right so far. I did not know the Davenports. But do you remember a client of mine named Michael Fahey--commonly called Mike Fahey!"
"Let me see. That's a good while ago?"
"Ten or eleven years ago," said the solicitor, shaking his head in accord with his private thoughts rather than with his words.
"I do. He was drowned near Kilcash, wasn't he?"
"At the Black Rock."
"An awful death. I never think of any one being drowned there without shuddering. Wasn't there something wrong with that man--that client of yours?"
"Yes. The police were after him."
"Why do you speak of him now?"
"Don't you remember that when seen by the police who were in chase he was in the neighbourhood of Davenport's house, and that he ran like a madman until he got to the Black Rock, and then threw himself in?"
"Yes; it makes my flesh creep," said O'Brien, with a shiver.
"He left some documents in my possession. They are in my possession yet. They show he had some connection with Davenport. I had forgotten all about it until----"
The solicitor paused, and suddenly the eyes, which had been so long turned inward, flashed out their light, and blazed into those of the young man standing opposite.
O'Brien started back in vague dread.
"Until when?" he asked, in a low, constrained voice.
"Until this day week."
"And then"--O'Hanlon's eyes dilated--"I saw----"
"In the name of Heaven, what?"
"His ghost."
For a moment the young man looked at the other in amazement and doubt. But it was impossible to resist for any great length of time the conviction that O'Hanlon had spoken sincerely. O'Hanlon himself looked troubled, scared, affrighted, as though scarcely able, and wholly unwilling, to believe his own words. O'Brien was the first to recover his composure.
"I will not," he said, "question what you say; I will go so far as to assure you I am fully convinced you saw the ghost of that unhappy man. You want me to tell you a story which, as I said, is a long one, and I want you to tell me your story at length. Dine with me at 'The Munster' this evening at seven, and we can chat the matter over."
The reference to the hotel and dinner drew the mind of the lawyer back once more into its ordinary groove. With a shrug of his shoulders and a forced laugh, he said:
"Right--you are right, O'Brien. This is not a good time or place for our little private theatricals. I'll join you with pleasure at seven. Here I have been holding you, which is an assault, and detaining you against your will, which is false imprisonment--both punishable by law. I ought to be too old a stager to be guilty of either offence. But I cry mercy, and will do my best to wash away my offences in your claret this evening. Till then, adieu."
So they parted.
O'Brien resolved to stroll about until it was time for dinner. He knew every street, almost every house in Kilbarry. He had lived in the neighbourhood the most part of his life. He had no relative alive, nor any place he could call home. When in this neighbourhood he usually stopped at "The Munster"; but of late years he had spent much of his time in London. He owned the land close to which his salmon weirs stood on the Bawn; but there was no house for him on them--only a few rude, primitive farmers' houses.
He was now thirty years of age, and had been a rover most of his life. He had always made it a point to spend a month or two of the summer at Kilcash, a sea-bathing and fishing village ten miles by road from Kilbarry. Here it was that he learned what he knew of the Davenports, for Mr. Davenport's place, Kilcash House, was only a mile inland from the village whose name it bore. He had been personally acquainted with the Davenports, and had often seen them, and knew all about them.
O'Hanlon's words, now that he was from under the influence of the manner which accompanied them, filled him with wonder more than anything else. He was only nineteen or twenty at the time that man Fahey was drowned--or, rather, committed suicide--and he could not recall all the particulars of the case. When it occurred, he had been living with his widowed mother at Kilbarry, and had not, like other young men of the city, gone out to the scene of the tragedy. He knew every nook of the coast for miles around Kilcash. It was a bold, bad, rock-bound coast save at the village, where there was a bay and a strand fatal to ships. He remembered that, from the first news of Fahey's death, there had not been the least hope of recovering the man's body. It was a tradition of the coast that the body of no one who had been drowned there was ever recovered. Who or what Fahey was he did not know, and so he resolved to banish the subject from his mind until O'Hanlon reopened it that evening.
The great feature of this day was O'Hanlon's assurance that his weirs would not be torn up. If that were true, and Alfred Paulton recovered, then he would have to think of building a house somewhere near the weirs for--Madge.
He got back to the hotel a little before seven, and wrote a letter to Mr. Paulton, announcing his safe arrival, asking for news of Alfred, and sending his kindest regards to the others in the order of their seniority. It was a little comfort to be able to send even kind regards to Madge through her father. But if he had the commissioners by the collective throat at that moment, he could have throttled them with great comfort to himself, and an assured consciousness that he was a benefactor to mankind.
Seven o'clock brought O'Hanlon and the dinner. The latter was served in a small, snug, private room overlooking the broad white river. When at length they were alone and had lighted their cigars, the guest reverted to the Davenport affair, and asked for the full and true history of the case as far as it was known to Jerry.
Then O'Hanlon's turn came:
"Since I saw you I have hunted up and glanced over the documents left in my hands by the dead man Fahey. They are, I find, unintelligible, as far as my lights now lead me, and I think we may dismiss them from our minds for the present. I shall, however, keep them safe. I will say nothing more of them than that in whatever portions of them Mr. Davenport is mentioned, they always speak of him in terms of gratitude and respect. It is plain that at one time the relations between these two men were very close, but of the nature of these relations there is no hint. At the time of the death of Fahey he had been hovering about Kilcash for months. No one exactly knew who or what he was. He had taken a mean lodging in the village, and given out that he was poor, and had been ordered to the seaside for his health, and recommended to get as much sea air and boating as possible. He often went out with the fishermen, and at last bought a small punt, a mere cockleshell, and kept it for his own exclusive use. In this he put off at all times of the day and night, and the fishermen predicted that he would be drowned some time or other; and so he was, but not in the way anticipated by the people of the village. They made sure his boat would be swamped one day, and that would be the end of him. An additional reason for their fears was that he never swam, and said he was too old to learn.
"On the day of his death he was followed from a distance by two policemen in plain clothes. They watched him leave the cottage in which he lived at Kilcash, take to the downs, and make straight for Kilcash House. They were not able to get near him until he had just gained the house. He then became aware that he was followed, and ran straight for the cliffs. The rest I have already told you. There never was an inquest, for, as you may know, the bodies of people drowned there are never found.
"A week ago I was in the neighbourhood of Kilcash House. I had left my horse and car at Kilcash, and was walking over the downs to the village, when on the cliffs, just over the Black Rock, I cast my eyes down, and there, on that large shelf of rock, as plain as I see you now, I saw him. The same coat, the same Scotch bonnet, the same trousers--not a thing altered since the first day he stood in my office, going on eleven years ago."
"What time of the day was it?"
"Broad day. About three o'clock in the afternoon."
"It must have been some one of about his stature dressed identically."
"Must it?" cried the lawyer, scornfully. "You have not heard all yet. I made up my mind to be sure. I ran--I ran to the top of the path, and went down to the rocks below. There was nobody there. You know the place. Tell me how a living man could get away alive, except up the path that I went down? It was Michael Fahey's ghost, as sure as I am a living man."
"I confess," said Jerry, in perplexity, "I cannot explain away what you say, except upon the supposition that you were suffering from delusion. How do you account for the appearance yourself?"
"This is my way of reasoning it out. I either saw the ghost of Michael Fahey or I did not. If I did, I account for it by the fact that Davenport and he were associated together in something while they were alive, and now that both are dead, one of them has to come back and see that something left undone--a wrong unrighted, a debt unpaid, an explanation unmade--is put straight."
"But why should the one be Fahey? And why should it be at the Black Rock? And why should he appear to you?"
"The first, because I had nothing to do with Mr. Davenport; the second, because seeing Fahey's ghost there would recall to my mind most vividly the circumstance of his death; and the third, because I hold the documents to which I have referred."
"But don't you think the fact of Davenport's name having been brought before the public so lately, and that you recollected the documents you held belonging to Fahey, and that you looked over the cliff at the very spot where he lost his life, may all have helped to impose upon your imagination?"
"Sir, an attorney of my years does not know the meaning of the word imagination. You may say I am mad if you like, but don't attribute imagination to me, or I shall break down altogether. O'Brien, do you mean to say seriously that you take me for a crazy young poet? Great heavens, sir, it can't have come to that with me in my declining years!"
"But, then, what did you see?"
"A ghost--Fahey's ghost."
"You don't mean to tell me seriously you believe in ghosts!"
"I mean to tell you most emphatically I do not."
"Then what is your contention?"
"That I, being one who does not believe in ghosts, saw the ghost of Michael Fahey this day week at the Black Rock."
"I can make nothing of your position."
"I can make nothing of my position either. I am beginning to think I shall lose my reason. You are the first person I spoke to on the subject. Don't say anything about it to a soul. I have no wife to blab to, and I look on you as a friend. I had hoped you would have brought me news from London--some facts not published in the papers, and bearing on this branch of the case. But you haven't. If you let this get abroad, some of my kind friends will get me locked up. I got old Coolahan locked up because he kept on saying that farthings were as valuable as sovereigns because they had the Queen's head on them."
O'Brien was sorely puzzled. It did not now look like a matter which ought to be laughed at. Either O'Hanlon had seen the ghost of this man, or he was losing his reason. There was one other possibility. He said: "I am not going to make light of what you have told me, or communicate it to a soul. There is one other question--a wild one, I own. I wonder have you thought of it?"
"What is it? If you have thought of anything which has escaped me, you are a very Daniel come to judgment."
"Could it be that man was not really drowned ten or eleven years ago? Either the police may have been mistaken in their man, and the wrong man may have leaped into the hole, or Fahey may have leaped in and by some miracle escaped."
"Yes, I have thought of both possibilities. The only answer will dispose of both. The clothes seen ten or eleven, years ago, and those seen this day week, were identical."
"What! You identify them?"
"Yes, if"--with a shudder--"those of last week could be produced and handled. O'Brien, I'm not afraid of ghosts, but I begin to be afraid of myself, now that I have begun to see them."
"But after such a lapse of time, and at a long distance, as from the top of the cliff to the plain of rock below. It must be a hundred feet."
"It is a hundred and twenty feet from the brow of the cliff to where the cliff meets the sloping rock, and the figure was about one hundred and seventy or eighty feet from the base. I measured both roughly. That gives between seventy and eighty yards from my eye. Now, ten years ago, and this day week, the colour, cut, and material of the coat and trousers were identical, and both times there was a circular green patch on the right elbow of the coat, about the size of my palm; and both times the right leg of the trousers had evidently been torn up as high as the knee-joint behind, and rudely stitched by an unskilful hand. I'm not," he said, looking timidly around, "afraid of ghosts, but I am of men. Keep my secret, O'Brien, if you care for me."
"You may swear by me. By-the-way, I have more time than you. Let me see those documents you have, and I'll try if I can puzzle anything out of them."
"With the greatest pleasure and thankfulness."
And so the two parted.
The documents Jerry O'Brien found in his hand were four in number. He read them all hastily first, and then went over them carefully word by word. When he examined them next day, they proved in substance or text to be as follows:
No. 1. A will dated about eleven years back, by which he left all property of any kind of which he might die possessed to Mrs. Davenport, wife of his good friend Louis Davenport. He explained that he would have left his property to Mr. Davenport himself, but that so well did he know the depth of affection between Mr. Davenport and his wife, that the surest way to make a bequest acceptable to the former, was to leave it to the latter. The bequest was accompanied by no conditions, and the will wound up with a hope that Mr. and Mrs. Davenport might live long and happy lives.
To the will was affixed a piece of paper, on which appeared in the handwriting of O'Hanlon, the solicitor, this comment:
Note.--There being no trace of property or relatives of deceased, nothing could be done. I sent my clerk to Mr. Davenport to make some inquiries, but could learn nothing except that deceased was an eccentric friend of Mr. Davenport, and that as far as he (Davenport) knew, deceased had neither relatives nor property.
This was signed "John O'Hanlon."
No. II. This was half a sheet of note-paper partly covered by writing not nearly so regular or well-formed as the will. To judge by the handwriting of No. III., it was the manuscript of Michael Fahey. It ran thus:
Memorandum.--Rise 15·6 lowest. At lowest minute of lowest forward with all might undaunted. The foregoing refers to skulls. With only one skull any lowest or any last quarter; but great forward pluck required for this. In both cases (of course!) left.
No. III. was a letter of instructions from Fahey to O'Hanlon in the handwriting of Fahey. It was as follows:
"Dear Sir,
"I leave with you my will and three other papers. In case of anything happening to me, please read the will and put it in force. But if between this and then you hear nothing more from me, it will not be worth while taking any trouble in the matter. The 'Memorandum' is to be kept by you for me. In case I should absent myself from the neighbourhood for any length of time do not be uneasy, as I am much abroad. If I am away fifteen years, you may hand all these to my friend, Mr. Davenport, but not till fifteen years have passed without my return to the neighbourhood.
"Yours truly,
"Michael Fahey."
No. IV. was merely a long, narrow, slip of paper, bearing the following:
"Dear Mr. Davenport,
"Time has swallowed me, and everything connected with me. I hope when you receive this you will have forgotten I ever existed. I leave all the documents I own with Mr. O'Hanlon for you.
"Always most faithfully yours,
"Michael Fahey."
These did not throw a great flood of light on the subject. In fact, they did not help him to see an inch further than he had seen before. It was plain on the face of it that there must have been some kind of connection between this Fahey and the Davenports; but what the nature of that connection was there was no clue to. He had no particular interest in the mystery, if it could be said to reach the dignity of a mystery. He was a kind of indifferent centre in the events. He had known the Davenports and O'Hanlon for years, and now by a strange coincidence, or rather a series of coincidences, the Davenports, O'Hanlon, the Paultons, Fahey, and himself had all been drawn together.
He shook himself and tried to argue himself into indifference, but failed. He told himself the whole matter was nothing in the world to him, and that, in fact, there was nothing particular in it to engage attention.
What were the facts?
Mr. Davenport had, under acute mental excitement, committed suicide after an interview with Tom Blake. He had left two documents respecting that act. Both of these documents were written in pencil, and on leaves of his pocket-book. One of these memoranda said he, Davenport, had committed suicide. The other accused Blake of poisoning, murdering him. Every one except Edward Davenport credited the former statement. Blake had formerly been Mrs. Davenport's lover, and might love her even still. Blake had got a thousand pounds years ago from the deceased for giving up his pretensions to that lady's hand. Blake had long been abroad; turned up unexpectedly at Davenport's house in London the first night the latter was in London, and the night of his death. Blake gets a hundred pounds from Davenport, and a promise of a further hundred in a few days.
What was this money given for? Not, of course, with the old object. It did not come out at the inquest or elsewhere that the dead man had been in the least jealous of his wife. She had not seen Blake for a good while before her husband's death. Blake had been some years on the Continent, without visiting the United Kingdom. It was discreditable, but intelligible, that when the dead man was an elderly and unfavoured lover he should buy off his rival; but it would be absurd to suppose that ten or eleven years after marriage any man would continue to pay considerable sums of money to a former rival for absolutely nothing. Such an act would be that of a coward and a fool, and the dead man had been neither.
For what, then, had Davenport given this money to Blake? The latter said the interview between the two had been of a pleasant character. Why? Blake was disreputable, and Davenport eminently respectable. It was absurd to suppose Davenport could have had a liking for Blake. Taking that thousand pounds years ago must have destroyed any good opinion Davenport had of Blake. Why, then, had the latter been received well and been given money? He had not only been received well and given money, but invited to dinner on a later date! It was simply incredible that out of gratitude for that service rendered long ago in Florence, Davenport was going to forget that this man had been his rival, and invite him to his house and a necessary meeting with his beautiful wife.
O'Brien did not for a moment suspect the widow and her former admirer of perjury, of concocting their stories. These stories were not at all calculated to exculpate either of the two. In fact, these stories, uncorroborated by the evidence obtained at the post-mortem examination, would have heightened suspicion rather than allayed it. At first these stories seemed prodigal in daring, but this very excess of apparent improbability made them seem most probable when read by the light of Davenport's written confession. No, there was no reason to suspect perjury.
He could make nothing of it so far. But did those documents of Fahey's aid one towards a solution? He could not see how they bore on the case one way or the other, and yet the coincidences were remarkable. He had seen Blake in London the day of the night on which Davenport died. When Alfred Paulton told him what had happened at Crescent House, he came to the conclusion Blake was in some way or other mixed up in the matter. This conclusion turned out right, although not exactly in the way he had expected. Now upon his coming back to Kilbarry he is met by a still more remarkable story. A man whom O'Hanlon knew ten or eleven years ago, and was then drowned at the hideous Black Rock, appears to O'Hanlon in the same spot and same clothes as he had been last seen alive in. It seemed as if he, O'Brien, were destined to be connected with the Davenport affair whether he would or not. Alfred Paulton was the greatest friend he had in London, and John O'Hanlon was the best friend he had in Kilbarry. He knew Blake by appearance and report, and he was acquainted with the Davenports; and here were all mixed up in the same matter in more or less degree, and all in a disagreeable way. It was the smallest of small worlds. He had no particular reason for being interested in the complication; and, indeed, except for the extraordinary statement made by O'Hanlon, the incident might be said to be closed, were it not that he was not quite sure whether Alfred Paulton--whom he hoped one day to have for a brother-in-law--had got over the fascination exercised on him by that beautiful woman. Any way, he had nothing particular to do now but fight those rascally commissioners; so he'd just glance over these documents again, and see if he could make anything out of them.
With a sigh, he put them away a second time. He might as well look for help to the stars. He would call at O'Hanlon's to-day and ask was there any news.
He found Mr. Gorman, head clerk to O'Hanlon, leaning against his favourite shutter with his hands in his trousers' pockets, placidly regarding through the window a tattered, battered, and wholly miserable-looking man of between sixty and seventy, who was playing "The Young May Moon," atrociously out of tune and out of time, on a penny tin whistle.
"Well," said O'Brien, briskly to Gorman, "any news?"
"Not a blessed word," answered the clerk, resting his back against the shutter instead of his shoulder, and so facing the visitor. "I suppose you came over about your weirs? Deuced bother, Mr. O'Brien!"
"It is an infernal nuisance. Do you know, Mr. Gorman, I think half the people who ought to be hanged are never even brought to trial."
"These Fishery Commissioners don't murder any one but fisheries and the proprietors of fisheries, and there is no precedent for hanging a man merely because he killed a fishery or the proprietor of a fishery. However, Mr. O'Brien, you need not be afraid. Your weirs are as safe as the Rock of Cashel. I often wonder why they call a rock a rock. It's about the last thing that would think of rocking, and the sea, which is the best rocker out, can't stir a rock that's in good wind and form. It would take the Atlantic a month of Sundays to rock the Black Rock, for instance, at Kilcash."
The mention of the Black Rock made O'Brien start slightly, for it was in the rock that famous and treacherous Hole yawned and breathed dismay and destruction. It was odd Gorman should mention the rock which had occupied such a prominent place in his thoughts that forenoon.
"It's strange," said O'Brien, walking over to the window, and placing himself against the shutter opposite Gorman, "that I should have been thinking of the Black Rock a little while ago! What put it into your head now?"
"Well, I tell you, nothing could be simpler or more natural. I knew you arrived from London yesterday. I knew you were acquainted with the Davenports of Kilcash, and a man who once had some connection with the Davenports was last seen on the Black Rock, and drowned himself, to escape the police, in the Hole. You may remember the circumstance?"
"Yes," said O'Brien, instantly interested; "I have a faint recollection of that man's death. Were you with Mr. O'Hanlon then?"
"Oh, yes. I remember all about it. He was a client of ours. We didn't do much for him; in fact, we didn't do anything for him. He left some papers with the governor, and then got into trouble about passing flash notes. The police had their hands just on him, when he leapt into the Hole. You know what that means. The body was never found; but that does not count as anything, for the bodies of persons drowned near that spot are never found."
"And nothing was known of the connection between this unfortunate Fahey and the Davenports?"
"I don't know anything about it, and I don't think the governor does. It was supposed he was an old hanger-on of old Davenport's, since the time Davenport was abroad. Davenport himself, as far as I could find out, never volunteered information about Fahey; and, you know, he wasn't the kind of man you'd care to ask unnecessary questions. He was about the closest man in the county. I never had any business to do with him, but I've kept my ears open."
"He died very rich, I suppose?"--with a laugh. "A friend of mine is already greatly interested in the widow."
"Ah, no wonder! She's a fine woman--the finest woman in these parts. I often saw her. You might do worse than try your luck there yourself, Mr. O'Brien. If he left her the bulk of his fortune she will be very well off. He had no one else in the world but his brother, who is crack-brained, I believe; and the dead man was very rich--made a whole fortune abroad, in various kinds of speculations, both in Europe and America."
"What did he speculate in chiefly?"
"I don't know. All kinds of stocks and shares. They say he had some plan never before adopted, and out of which he made money as fast as he liked, and this plan he never would tell any one. At all events, for more than ten years before he settled down here he had been wandering pretty well over the whole civilized world. Every one who knew of his great business cleverness wondered why he retired before fifty, but he said he had enough for a lifetime, and that his asthma was too bad for him to go on any longer. But somehow it leaked out that he got a great fright about some bank on the Continent in which he had a large sum of money--I think ten thousand pounds--lodged to his credit."
"Do you remember the story, Gorman?"
"I do."
"Well, tell it to me. But, for heaven's sake, first send out the boy and order that man with the tin whistle to go away. Here's sixpence for him."
"Not fond of music! I thought you were." He took the coin, and despatched the boy. "The Bank of England had its own reasons for keeping the thing quiet at the time, and it never came fully before the public, as the criminal was never discovered. Mr. Davenport gave notice to the foreign bank that on a certain day he would require the ten thousand he had lodged there, and that the more Bank of England notes he found in the packet, the better he should be pleased.
"On the day he had named he called and got the money, and that very evening started for London with the cash. This was an unusual mode of proceeding, but most of his ways were unusual, if not odd. On his arrival the Bank declared several of the one hundred pound notes in his packet to be forgeries, and a few tens were also spurious.
"This discovery started an inquiry, and in a little while it was found that one of the largest and most skilful forgeries ever made on the Bank of England had just been committed, and that upwards of two hundred thousand pounds worth of valueless notes had been palmed off on foreign banks of the highest class.
"The forgeries did not stop at the notes. The signatures of some of the greatest banking firms had been imitated and used as introductions to the Continental houses of eminence, and an elaborate scheme of fraud had been based on these bogus introductions. The scheme had been in preparation for a long time. At first a small private account was opened in the regular way in London, the referees--two customers of the bank--being a retired military man and a shopkeeper, I think. I forget what name the account was opened in--false one, of course, say Jenkins.
"Jenkins's account was gradually augmented, and a balance of a couple or three thousand was always kept. Moneys were now and then paid in and drawn out. The account was highly respectable. In the end Jenkins said he was going to live in Paris, and would feel obliged if his banker would give him an introduction to a Paris house. This was done as a matter of course.
"In Paris the balance was still further increased, until it was kept above five thousand pounds. Then Jenkins asked if he might deposit a box containing valuable documents for safety in the bank. He got permission and lodged the box.
"Then he drew out all his balance very gradually, and when it was exhausted, called, asked for his box, opened it in the presence of the manager, and taking from it fifty Bank of England one hundred pound notes, asked that they might be placed to his credit, as he was expecting heavy calls momently. He had been speculating and had lost, he said. In a couple of weeks he drew out the five thousand in one cheque payable to himself.
"Shortly after this he took from the box, and handed the manager ten thousand pounds, saying he was still losing heavily, and should want the money that day, subject, of course, to a fair charge on the part of the bank. The bank accommodated him. He said there was a great deal more than ten ten thousands in the box, and showed the notes to the manager. Next day he came in a great state of excitement. He had a vast fortune within his grasp if he could only get money that day. He took from his pocket one hundred thousand pounds in Bank of England notes, and from his box all that was in it--one hundred and ten thousand more. Would they oblige him? It was neck or nothing with him. If he hadn't the money within three hours, he would be a ruined man; if he got the money, he could make a stupendous fortune. He would leave the odd ten thousand in the hands of the bank against expenses, interest, etc. Would they let him have two hundred thousand in French notes on the security of the Bank of England notes?
"After an hour's consideration the bank gave him the money, and never saw Mr. Jenkins afterwards. The two hundred and ten thousand pounds were forged notes. He had of course a capital of ten thousand pounds in good notes, but these he carried off. What he did at the box was mostly sleight-of-hand, for he was supposed to have brought the good notes in his pocket, and by a little elementary legerdemain appeared to take them out of the box which contained the forged notes.
"Mr. Davenport was in Paris at the time, and by the merest chance drew out all his money next day, when he got some of the forged notes, and on bringing them to London the crime was discovered.
"At first people were much concerned for Mr. Davenport, but they afterwards heard he would get all his money from the French bank. It appears Mr. Davenport gave two forged ten-pound notes--all the notes were tens and hundreds--to the unfortunate Fahey; and although he passed them in Dublin, he got as far as Kilcash before the police came up with him. The silliest part of it all was that he should be such a fool as to drown himself; for after he threw himself into the Hole, Mr. Davenport recollected he had given him the notes, and said Fahey's had come out of what the French bank had handed him.
"The whole affair gave Mr. Davenport an ugly turn, and they say he retired from business earlier than he had intended, even bad as his asthma undoubtedly was. That's all I know of the story," said Gorman, as he turned once more with his shoulder to the shutter, and gazed out into the dull, damp street.
After a few more words of no interest with Gorman, Jerry O'Brien went into the private office of O'Hanlon, and found that gentleman encircled by hedges of legal documents, fast asleep, with a newspaper before him. The opening of the door roused the solicitor, who straightway sprang to his feet, exclaiming:
"My dear O'Brien, delighted to see you! Sit down. I'll be back in a moment."
He left the room, hastened into the outer office, asked Gorman what o'clock it was, and if the mail had been delivered yet, and then hurried back to his client, saying:
"Excuse my running away; there was something I had to say to my clerk. Now, how are you? What kind of a night had you?"
"I'm quite well, and had an excellent night. And you?"
"Oh, bad, bad! Nothing could be much worse. I didn't get an hour's sleep. I was dozing as you came in. Don't say anything about it. Remember your promise! But I am sure I am breaking down. I am certain I shall break down mentally soon."
"Nonsense!" cried O'Brien, cheerfully. "I am not going to listen to that rubbish in the noonday."
"And a beautiful noonday it is," said O'Hanlon, looking out into the meagrely illumined back-yard, with its grass-green water-butt resting unevenly on its grass-green stand; its flower-pots three-quarters full of completely sodden clay; its brokenhearted, lopsided, bedraggled whisk, reclining dejectedly partly against the humid white wall and partly against the bulged and staring water-butt; its dilapidated wooden shed that did not go through the farce of sheltering anything from the universal moisture save a battered watering-pot without a rose; and its ghastly six-foot-high arbor vitæ--a shrub which makes even summer sunshine look dull.
"I've been looking over the papers you lent me, and I had a chat with Gorman before I came into this room. Gorman told me more of Davenport and long ago than I knew up to this. But I can make nothing of your old client, and am sure the apparition was the result of pure nervous relaxation."
"But, confound it, my dear O'Brien, can't you see extreme mental relaxation is what I am in dread of?"
"Well, then, I won't say that. I'll say it was pure or impure liquor, or liver, or anything you like. Of only one thing am I sure--namely, that there was more than a little between this Fahey and Davenport."
"That's my own impression too; but I can make nothing of these documents."
"It is not intended you should be able to make anything of them; and if I were you, now that the two men concerned in them are dead and done for, I'd bother no more about them."
"Get it out of your head for good and all, O'Brien, that I am troubling about the men. I am not; I am troubling about myself. I am afraid I am going to have something seriously wrong with my brain, and that's not a comfortable thing for a man who is not yet old to get into his mind."
"Well, I'm sure I don't know what to do. I have often heard it said that one of the best ways to adopt in a case of this kind is to bring the man face to face with the thing which causes him annoyance----"
"What! Bring me face to face with what I saw! I think, O'Brien, your brain is giving way before merely the story of my troubles."
"No, no; I mean to set you face to face with the scene of your adventure, and then when you perceive nothing unusual there, you will be less disturbed by the memory of your last visit than you are now. I myself am curious to look at the place once more. Will you drive over with me now, and put your mind at rest for ever?"
He spoke earnestly, considerately.
O'Hanlon thought a moment, and then said with a sigh, followed by a lugubrious smile:
"I don't know about putting my mind at rest, but I think the drive would do me good. I have been staying too much indoors of late. Yes, I'll go. I'll be ready in half-an-hour. Call for me then, and I'll have a car waiting outside. I hope the weather will keep up."
O'Brien called at the time appointed, and they drove away towards Kilcash.
When they cleared the city, their road lay through miles of bog and marsh, in which nothing grew but flags and osiers and bulrushes, with here and there patches of thin rank grass. The causeway along which they drove had been formed of the earth obtained from cuttings on each side of it, and these cuttings made long straight lines of dreary canals, uncheered by traffic. Snipe, and duck, and cranes were to be seen here, but the ground was rotten, and, in places, dangerous. As far as the eye could reach no human habitation was to be seen. On one of these canals a poor hare-brained enthusiast had built a small mill, now fallen into the last stage of decay. The useless water had no power to turn the useless wheel. Now and then a bald gray rock rose a few feet above the flat monotony of the swamp. To right and left, low green hills touched the leaden sky. All in front and behind was cheerless, unbroken morass.
The air was heavy with moisture, but no rain fell. The iron rails, woodwork, and cushions of the car were clammy to the touch. The horse's head drooped as he plodded spiritlessly along the dark, miry road. The driver wore an oilcap, oilskin coat, and had a heavy, sodden, yellow rug about his knees. He used the whip with monotonous regularity and monotonous absence of result. The horse seemed to feel that not even man could be in a hurry on such a day. There was no movement in sky, or air, or on the land. The car startled two cranes that were fishing by the side of the road. They rose and fled with such intolerable slowness as proclaimed their belief that no creature which had once gone beneath could ever get from under the flat pressure of those purposeless clouds--could ever shake off the slimy unctuousness of the land.
The two travellers sat back to back, holding their heads forward against the soft, clinging, clammy air. They scarcely spoke a word the whole way. The landscape afforded no subject for pleasant remark, and the younger man did not care to make matters gloomier. He had nothing new to communicate, so he smoked in silence. The elder man could not rouse himself to take an interest in any subject not immediate to himself, and the driver was half asleep.
At last the ground began to rise very gradually. They were getting near the sea. The air grew lighter, fresher, brisker. A thin white vapour lay upon the marsh and rolled slowly inward, yet no wind could be felt. The air had grown much warmer, and although the dull pall of leaden sky still spread unbroken above, it could be felt that sunlight existed somewhere overhead. The bleak vacuity of an overcast winter day was being insensibly filled with assurances of activity and life, and from the wide sweep of the full horizontal front there was the breath, the inchoate murmur as though the leaves of a hundred thousand trees felt the approach of wind. That was the fine, broad, opening phrase of the diapason tones drawn by the ocean from the shore in its portentous prelude to the silence of eternity.
Higher and higher they crawled slowly, gradually, until they could tell what part of the sky lay over the sea by reason of its greater whiteness.
And now the various movements in the orchestra of the sea began to assemble and marshal before their ears. Here the shrill silver hiss of the long waves toppling in curved cascades, and running swiftly inland on the sand. Here the roar and rattle of stubborn boulders torn from their rocky holds by the mad out-wash of the shattered wave. Here the low hollow groaning of protesting caves, vocal, inscrutable. Afar off the deep boom of the mighty wave, which, gliding up to the land, a green, unbroken mound of water, flung itself in white, impotent rage against the unrepining, unappalled, forlorn cliffs, and made the air thunder with mutinous clamour.
There was no storm--nothing beyond the ordinary winter roller of the Atlantic.
The car stopped, and the two friends descended.
"It's only a few hundred yards from this to the cliff over the Black Rock," said the driver. "But it's lonely there on a day like this. Don't go down. Don't trust yourself on that rock a day like this. She may begin any minute a day like this, and if she catches you between her and the water, you're dead men."
The two friends struck across the downs, the younger leading the way.
Here was the dull blue wintry sea under the dull gray wintry sky. No wind blew, no rain fell. A thin, soft sea moisture rose from the sea and met a thin, soft cloud moisture descending from the clouds. The long, even roller of the Atlantic stole slowly, deliberately, sullenly, from the level plains of the ocean, growing to the eye imperceptibly as it came. The water was thickly streaked with tawny, vapid froth; the base of the high, impassable, brown rocky coast was marked by a broad but diminishing line of yellow foam.
No bird was visible in the air, no ship on the sea, no living creature on the land but the two men, O'Hanlon and O'Brien. A mile inland stood lonely Kilcash House, which had for years been the home of the dead man and his beautiful wife. Below, between the towering, oppressive, liver-coloured cliffs and the foam-mantled, blanched blue sea lay the Black Rock, a huge, flat, monstrous table cast off by the land and spurned by the sea.
For a while the two men stood speechless on the edge of the cliff overlooking the barren waste of heaving waters and the sullen ramparts of indomitable heights. The deep boom of the bursting wave, the roar of the outwashing boulders, and the shrill hiss of the falling spray, made the dismal scene more deserted and forlorn. The sea and cliffs were forbidding to man. They seemed to resent the presence of man--to desire, now that they were not engaged in actual war, no intrusion on the lines where their gigantic conflicts were waged.
The Black Rock stretched out half-a-mile from the base of the cliff into the sea, and was half-a-mile wide. Above it the land was slightly hollowed towards the sea, and would, but for the Black Rock beneath, form a bay-like indentation in the shore. The chord of this arc was about six hundred yards, so that the greater mass of the Black Rock projected into the sea beyond the heads of the cliffs.
The Rock, as it was called for brevity in the neighbourhood, was only a few feet above the reach of the waves and broken water when a strong wind blew from the south-west. It shelved outward, and when the waters were very rough, when a storm raged, the shattered waves leaped up on it, and bounded, hissing in irresistible fury, towards the inner cliff, but were arrested, dispersed, and poured down the sides of the Rock ere they reached the inner cliff. The Rock was highest at the centre, and descended to right, left, front, and rear. But although it was lower at the rear than in the centre, it was much higher there than in front. Viewed from above, it was not unlike the back of some prodigious sea monster rising above the surface of the water. In shape it resembled a vast creature of the barnacle kind, the apex of whose shell would represent the highest point of the Rock, and the corrugations stand for the ridges and hollows of the sides from the highest point of the ledge to the lower ones.
The colour, too, was not unlike that of a barnacle. For, although the people had given it the name of the Black Rock, it was black only by comparison with the cliffs. The surface was made up of smooth, slimy ridges, dark blue-green in the hollows, growing lighter as the curve sloped upward, and on the summit, here and there, deep yellow brown or oak.
Winter or summer, the Rock was never quite dry. It was always damp, clammy, treacherous. It was always dangerous to the foot. There was no fear of one who fell slipping into the sea, unless the misfortune occurred very near the brink. Then a fall and a plunge were certain death, for the great rollers of the ocean would grind or dash the life out of a man against these rocks in a few minutes. But many a man had slipped and hurt himself badly, and two fatally, on that cruel Black Rock.
Once a man of the village of Kilcash had fallen, broken his leg in two places, and been carried up the cliff path and across the downs to die. Another had slipped on the top of one ridge. For a moment his body swept backward in an arc like a bent bow, until his head touched the top of the next ridge behind. All his muscles instantly relaxed, his chin was crushed down upon his chest, he rolled for an instant into a shapeless heap, rolled down into the trough, and lay at full length with dead, wide open eyes turned upward to the sun. Several people had from time to time met with dire accidents on that dangerous slope by reason of the uncertain footing it afforded.
But the great terror of the Black Rock did not lie in the greasiness of its surface. The chief danger lay below the surface. The deadly monster of that desolate tract was hidden from view, until suddenly, and generally without warning, it sprang forth upon its victim, and seized him and bore him away to certain and awful death. It gave no chance of respite or rescue; it gave no time for thought or prayer. One moment man in the full vigour of life, full of the pride of life, full joy in life, stood upon that awful field of slippery rock, and the next was caught from behind and dragged into the foaming sea by a force no ten men could fight against for a moment.
All the year round this terrible monster of death lurked here, and upon provocation would rush out, and, when opportunity offered, invariably destroy. It could not be drowned with water or scared by fire, or slain with lethal weapons. It could not be lured or trapped. It would come to an end no one knew when. It had begun to exist centuries ago. It varied in length with the season of the year, and in bulk with the phases of the moon. It had its lair in a cave. No boat along all that coast durst enter the Whale's Mouth for fear of it; for although much could be foretold of its habits, all could not. No one could infallibly predict for an hour what it would do--except one thing: that any boat in that cave when it did appear would infallibly be dashed into a thousand splinters. That was the only thing certain about it. To be caught in its cave would, if possible, be still more terrible than to be caught by it on the Black Rock.
Its dimensions varied from twenty to a hundred and fifty feet one way by ten to twelve and six to eight another.
Along the whole coast it was spoken of with fear. Nothing else like it was known in those parts. It was one of the sights which made holiday makers seek the secluded fishing of Kilcash. The inhabitants knew its ways better than strangers. And yet people of the village had fallen a prey to its fury. More than a dozen villagers had within four generations died in its deadly embrace, and more than an equal number of visitors within the same period. Suppose the season visitors had been at their highest number all the year round, it had been calculated that forty of them would have been sacrificed in the time.
Over and over again visitors had been warned against going near the place; but the attraction of danger proved too strong for prudence, and people would go for mere bravado or out of morbid curiosity. The chance of contracting a fatal malady has no allurements for man: the prospect of a violent death fascinates him. The love of daring certain death by violence is found in few; the willingness to dare great peril by violence is almost universal in young men of healthy bodies and minds. It has been justly said that the most extraordinary contract into which large bodies of men ever voluntarily enter is that by which they agree to stand up in a field and allow themselves to be shot at for thirteenpence a day; and yet men risk their lives daily willingly, at a less price--nay, for no price at all.
Here, on this very Black Rock, a terrible instance occurred with disastrous result five years before, when three young Trinity College students were staying for the summer vacation at Kilcash. They were friends, and lodged in the same cottage. They went on little excursions together. Of course they had heard all about the terrors of the Black Rock. In an hour of eclipse they resolved not only to visit the fatal Rock, but to lunch there under circumstances of the greatest danger. They mentioned their intention freely, and were warned by the simple people of the village that they ran a risk in going to the spot they named, and at the time they selected, and that they absolutely courted death by delaying for luncheon. That afternoon one of the three ran the whole way back into the village and told the appalling tale. He had strayed a few yards from his friends, when suddenly burst upon his ears a thunderous roar. The Rock shook beneath his feet as though it would burst asunder. He was instantly covered and blinded with mist and sea smoke. He gave himself up for lost, and instinctively ran towards the cliff. Then he heard a fearful crash of waters, and again the Rock shook. He wondered his destruction had been so long delayed. He waited until all was still. He turned round. His friends had disappeared. Their bodies were never recovered.
As it has been said, the Black Rock was not in reality black, but a dark, dirty olive green. Perhaps it got its name from the dark or black deeds which had been enacted on it.
Around the Black Rock the cliffs do not stand very high. They reach to little more than a hundred feet above the solid shelf below. In colour they are of a deep liver hue. They lean outward and take the form of huge broad broken pilasters, set against an irregular wall. These cliffs, like the Rock, are always damp, but, unlike the Rock, never clammy. They are smooth and flat, with sharp angles and rectangular fractures. They are cold and hard, and seem built by nature to define for ever the frontier of the ocean.
At the point of the Rock furthest inland the cliff is of a softer nature, and hence the water has eaten deeper in here. The cliff is part clay, part gravel, and part boulder. Here is a temporary break in the continuity of the regular formation. There is no depression on the downs above to correspond with this fault. Thus at the back of what has been called the bay, there are about two hundred yards long of cliff, which the sea would soon tear away if it could get at it. But the Black Rock stood between the greedy ocean and the vulnerable point of the cliff. It formed a sufficient outpost. This part of the bay slants inwards, not outwards, as the two arms. In this part a little copper ore was once found, and a shaft sunk. But the mine proved of no practical value, and, after absorbing much money, was abandoned fifty years ago. The shaft was sunk two hundred feet; but here, even if the mine had proved rich, the water would have presented serious difficulties, for after getting down a hundred and twenty feet it began to appear, and at a hundred and fifty it occasioned delay and inconvenience. Forty years ago the top of the shaft had been covered with planks and clay to prevent accident. Long ago the machinery and wooden engine-house and tool-house had been carried away, and now the site of the head of the shaft was indistinguishable from the other bramble-grown parts of the sloping cliff over the Black Rock. This head of the mine was always carefully avoided by the inhabitants, for every one said some day or other the planks were sure to give way and fall to the bottom. It was of no interest whatever to visitors, for nothing was to be seen, and a landslip had destroyed the rude road long ago made to it. It was on the right-hand side of one looking seaward.
On this inside of the bay of stone ran downwards the path leading to the great table below. It was a natural path almost the whole way. Art of the simplest kind had cut a little here and filled up a little there, and levelled a little in another place, but the lion's share of the work had been found ready to man's hand. There was no attempt at road-making, or attaining to a surface. Those were luxuries of civilisation: this was a work of rough art and benignant nature.
As one faced the sea, the path crossed over from left to right, then from right to left, and finally from left to right. Standing on the cliff at the middle point of the bay, and looking down at the broad expanse of slanting rock, only two things caught the eye, when the dimensions, the colour, and conformation had been taken in. Directly in front, and almost in the middle of the Rock, rose the apex of what has been likened to the shell of a barnacle. It was not more than ten feet above the level of the Rock, twenty feet from its centre, and was part of the Rock itself.
In a direct line with the apex, and about half-way between it and the outer rim of the Rock, there is a black spot which, upon closer inspection, proves to be a hole of some kind. At the distance it is impossible to perceive any more.
Towards this hole O'Hanlon pointed his arm, and said to O'Brien:
"There's the Hole. You know it well enough."
"Of course. But you could not recognise him so far off," said O'Brien, shading his eyes to look.
"No; but I told you I saw him in here quite close;" and he pointed. "He or it went on without hesitation, and then jumped in. He or it, whichever you prefer, O'Brien, went in as sure as I have a head on me. Either that or I am going mad."
O'Brien thought awhile in silence, with his hand on his chin and his eyes turned on the bleak, dreary waste of stone and water before him.
"O'Hanlon, you're not afraid to risk seeing anything--that thing again?" he asked at length--adding, "I want to have a look at the place."
The other hesitated a little before he drew himself up, and said:
"No. I may as well face it and be sure of the worst--be certain whether I am to end my days in a lunatic asylum or not."
The two men descended to the Black Rock.
It was now growing dusk. The loneliness of the place was extreme. A few sea-gulls were wheeling and crying in the dull air overhead. They had come back from their long day's fishing far out to sea and up and down the coast, and were leisurely wheeling, scouting, and sailing shoreward to their homes among the crags.
Nothing else stirred or broke the stillness, except the sea--the imperial, the insatiable, the eternal sea!--the sea that for ever chafes and storms, and seeks to eat away or overwhelm the land because it spurns and writhes under its function of merely filling up the hollows of earth and balancing the volume of the world.
If all the solids of the earth were turned smooth in the mighty lathe that drives the earth round its axis, then water would be supreme, and this planet would be a polished, argent sphere, flashing through interspaces between clouds as it spun and flew along the orbit of gold woven of light for it by the sun.
Day and night the waters work without ceasing to overwhelm the earth. Day and night the torrents tear down the sand and boulders and trees of the mountains and fling them into the hidden hollows at the mouths of rivers. All the deltas of the world are offerings of the torrents and rivers towards carrying out the grand scheme of the oceans metropolitan. Pool and tarn and lake and inland sea, and remotest waters that touch undreamed-of isles, are daily and nightly fretting or tearing away the uncomplaining shores.
The sun and moon and winds are leagued against the pastoral earth. Daily the sun transports millions of tons of water from the harmless plains of deep-sea waters, and the wind takes these vaporous foes of the land and hurls them on the loftiest mountains, so that they may gain the greatest speed and rending force and carrying power as they fly back with spoils of earth to their old friend the sea. The sun splits the cliffs with heat, and the winds lend fascines to the waves, so that the injured portions may be reached, cast down, and another line of defence destroyed.
Lest the sun and the winds and the rivers are not enough to accomplish the ruin of man's territory, the moon--the gentle moon of poets and lovers--the cold, frigid moon helps with that coldest of all things on earth, the glacier, to complete the havoc. The power of the wind is but partial, intermittent; that of the moon and the glacier general, everlasting. The tides are the heights commanding the outworks of the land; the moving fields of ice unsuspected traitors, in the garb of solidity, sapping the walls of the citadel.
Even now the list of enemies is not complete. In the core and centre of the earth itself the arch-traitor, the mightiest traitor of all, lies, gravitation, which should naturally be the lieutenant of the denser of the two combatants. This is the most relentless, the most unmerciful leveller of all. It seizes with equal avidity upon the moat that the sunlight only makes visible, and the loosened but yet unapportioned cliff of a thousand feet high, cut by the river of a Mexican cañon.
Electricity, the irresistible enemy and imponderable slave of man, is on the side of the waters. It binds the vapours of the oceans together, and scatters them when it reaches the hills. It rends trees and stones and buildings, and flings them down ready for easy porterage by the more methodical water.
One of these forces that ought to be on the side of the land, gravitation, has deserted its own side for the water. It is one force, and is universally operative. One of these forces that ought to be on the side of the sea has deserted its own side for the land. It is one force, but it operates through hundreds of thousands, of millions of agents; it is the coral insect. It transmutes the waters which give life and sustenance to it into land against which the waters war. It raises up an island where there ought to be two hundred fathoms of water. It uses up more material in making islands than all the great rivers put together deposit at their deltas.
The only loyal servant land has is the central fire. It can throw up in one minute as much as all the others can tear down in a hundred years. The central fire pushes an ocean aside with as much ease as a wave raises a boat. It throws up the Andes in less time than it took the sea, with its allied forces, to rob England of Lyonnesse.
The coral insect and the central fire, the least and the hugest of the world's working forces, are more than equal to all the forces arrayed against them, and are the humble and the terrible friends of man.
Here, by this gloomy sea, no coral insect toiled, no earthquake heaved, no volcano thrust up a flaming torch of hope to heaven. Here the enemies of the land had no foe to encounter but the resolute indifference of the veteran cliffs. Here the sea, and the tides, and the winds, and gravitation worked on unchallenged by active resistance. Year after year, almost imperceptible pieces of cliff fell, were engulfed. Year after year the incessant action of the waves was gnawing deeper and deeper into the heart of the land. Year after year the adamantine substance of the Black Rock was diminishing, though in a generation no man noticed a change in the Rock, and few a change in the cliff.
This coast was honeycombed with caves. In the summer time, when the weather was fine, pleasure parties put off from Kilcash for "The Caves," as the district in which they were to be found was, with peculiar want of fancy or imagination in so imaginative a race, called by the inhabitants of the village.
The region of caves was all to the east of Kilcash, and extended along several miles of coast. Some caves were wide-mouthed, shallow, low, uninteresting; others spacious, lofty, ramified. In order to excite curiosity and inspire awe, some were reported to be unexplored; others had legends. Others had sad stories of truthful tragedies. It was safe to enter one at low water only, and safe to stay no longer than a few minutes because of the stalactites. If you wished to see another, and not stay in its black, chill maw for four hours, you must go on the top of high water, and stay no more than a good hour. To a third you might go at any time of tide. To a fourth only on the last of the lowest of neaps, and then be quick and get away again. To a sixth only on the top of spring tides. To one, and one only, which might be entered at any state of tide--Never.
This last cave, which not the boldest fisherman in Kilcash or the next village to it would face, was called the Whale's Mouth, and ran in under the Black Rock.
The opening of the Whale's Mouth is on the south-west or extreme seaward side of the Black Rock. At full of spring tide the entrance to it is about fifteen feet high and of equal breadth. The difference between high and low water here is about fifteen feet. Hence, at lowest of spring tide, the measurement from the surface of the water to the roof at the entrance would be thirty feet.
At the entrance of the Whale's Mouth the outline of the Black Rock is blunt, abrupt, solid. The base of the Rock is never uncovered by water. The wash of the long roller of the Atlantic is always against its sides. The general formation of the cave is that of a square. It is more like the hideous distended jaws of the crocodile than of the whale; but the reason for calling it the Whale's Mouth does not lie in the immediate entrance, but further on, in the roof of the forbidding cavern.
For years no one had dared to enter that cavern. Along the coast were stories of two boats which had ventured in. Not a plank, oar, or man of the first had ever been seen again. Part of the boat, oars, and crew of the other had been seen for one brief moment, smashed and mangled, and then disappeared for ever. What the fate of the former was no one could tell; what the fate of the latter had been all knew.
As far as could be seen into the cave from the outside, there was nothing dangerous or remarkable-looking about it. It declined slightly in height, but the walls did not seem to come any closer together. There was no rock or obstruction of any kind visible in it. The long, even swells rolled in unbroken; but after each wave passed out of sight there was a deep tumultuous explosion, and a strange, loud sound of rushing and struggling water. There was no weakening or gradual dispersion of the force of the wave. Its power seemed shattered and absorbed at once.
This cave had another mysterious and disquieting faculty. It absorbed and discharged more water than could be accounted for by any other supposition but that inside somewhere it expanded prodigiously. At flood tide the water went in eagerly; at ebb tide it ran out at so quick a rate, many believed a large body of fresh water, or foreign water of some other kind, found a way into it. On flood tide, the fishermen gave it a wide berth, lest by any chance or mischance they might be sucked into it.
Often curious people passing by at flood tide threw overboard articles that would float, and watched them as they were slowly but surely drawn into that gaping vault. There was no doubt they were swallowed by that inky void, but they never were seen by man again. Some of the simpler people believed that there was a whirlpool at the end of the cave, and that if this whirlpool took anything down, it never gave that thing, or sign or token of that thing, back again. People on these shores attach miraculous powers to whirlpools. There are no whirlpools of consequence in the neighbourhood, but terrible stories of them had reached the people, and filled the simple folk with superstitious awe.
In this shunned and mysterious cell the rock-monster had its home. On the sea it was harmless. But no one durst enter its haunt, and yet this was not wholly from fear of the monster, but of the place itself, with its loud explosions, its unaccountable indraught and outflow, and the unreturning dead of the two boats. The monster had its home in the cave; but his sphere of action was on the vast plain of rock above.
O'Hanlon and O'Brien succeeded in crossing the Black Rock without accident, and were drawing near the Hole.
"It was there," said O'Hanlon, pointing--"just there. I saw him as plain as ever eyes saw anything."
O'Hanlon pointed to the north-east, or shore side, of the Hole.
The two men drew nearer, and then, pausing a moment to fix their hats firmly on their heads and grasp one another round the waist, crept cautiously forward until they stood on the brink of the Hole. They looked down.
The Hole was almost square, about thirty feet by thirty feet, and narrowing irregularly as it went down to about half that size. The depth from where the two stood to the surface of the water below was thirty-five feet.
The bottom of the Hole was naturally scant of light, and the light now in the sky was poor and thin.
The sides were almost smooth, and at the bottom of the funnel the angles a little rounded in. The rock upon which they stood seemed to be about twenty-five feet thick, and the free space between the bottom of the rock and the surface of the water ten feet. Thus the height of the cave at the Hole was at the present time of tide--half-tide flood--ten feet.
At the bottom of the Hole the water was no longer smooth, even quiet, but broken and turbid, opaque, and mantled with froth. Every wave that entered the vestibule of the cave swung the uneasy seething mass inward, to return in a few seconds on the back-wash. But the froth did not come back every time; it crept further on, until at the third wave the froth disappeared inward, to be succeeded by other froth moving at the same rate.
It made one giddy to look for any length of time. After a few minutes both men drew back by mutual consent.
"No mortal man could live down there for five minutes," said O'Hanlon, with a shiver.
"No," said O'Brien, with a laugh, "or ghost either, for that matter. But, I say, O'Hanlon, what cool and roomy lodging it would afford to all the Fishery Commissioners in the United Kingdoms!"
"This is no place for joking," said O'Hanlon, uneasily. "Let us get back. I am sick of this place."
"Wait a minute," said O'Brien. "As this wretched man Fahey was seen here both in the flesh and the spirit for the last time, let me read the documents he left in your charge."
He put his hand in his pocket, and read the papers by the fast-fading light.
"Come on. Take care you don't slip. The papers are simple enough on the surface, except No. 11. Shall I read it to you?"
"Ay," answered O'Hanlon absently.
It was nothing to him. He was devoting his thoughts to getting safely over this greasy, clammy, slippery surface.
O'Brien read out slowly:
"'Memorandum.--Rise 15·6 lowest. At lowest minute of lowest forward with all might undaunted. The foregoing refers to sculls. With only one skull any lowest or any last quarter; but great forward pluck required for this. In both cases (of course!) left.'
"Well," said O'Brien, "I confess I can't make anything of it. Can you?"
"No," said the other listlessly.
They had now reached the foot of the path.
"I think it's rubbish. What do you say?"
"Unmitigated rubbish."
"What, for instance, can he mean by 'skull' and 'sculls' with a line under each? The writing is that of a man of some education."
"Oh, yes--he was a man of some education."
O'Brien paused in his walk, and cried:
"Stop! I think I have an idea."
"Eh?"
"From what you know of this man, do you think he could spell a word of ordinary English?"
"I should think so."
"Then I have an idea.
"What is it?"
"Wait."
O'Brien and O'Hanlon gained the top of the cliff, and reached the car waiting on the road without saying anything further. The former was busy with his thoughts; the latter, after O'Brien's word "Wait," sank into indifference.
"I'm ashamed of two sensible men such as you," said the driver, in a southern brogue, "going down there on an uncertain season like this, and at the end of daylight. It's a mercy you ever got back alive."
"Or dead," said O'Brien, with a laugh.
"Never mind, Terry; we're none the worse for it. Now, drive on to Kilcash, and pull up at the Strand Hotel."
The driver whipped his horse, and the remainder of the journey was accomplished in silence.
Kilcash is a small, straggling village, built on the slopes of the cliffs surrounding Kilcash Bay, and on the low ground lying in front of the bay. In summer it is usually pretty full of people, for although no railway has yet reached it, hundreds of families live in the neighbourhood, and many who dwell at a distance use it as a holiday resort. In winter it is dreary, deserted, dead. The closed-up lodging-houses and cottages which, under the influence of the summer sun, grow bright and cheerful with flowers and the faces of children, in winter stare with blank window eyes at the cold gray sky and monotonous level of the sea. It was difficult to say who governed Kilcash--five policemen and seven coastguardsmen, possibly; for there was no other sign of official life.
There was no Corporation, no Commissioners under the Towns Improvement Act, no gas-house, no water-works, no sanitary board, no guardians of the poor, no bellman, no watering-carts, no workhouse, no police-court, no tax or rate collector, no exciseman, no soldier, no lawyer. There were only three institutions, and these were curative--namely, two houses of worship of different denominations, and a dispensary.
Indirect taxation reached the people occultly; of direct taxation they knew nothing. No doubt some one paid for mending their sewer when the rain-water of winter burst it. No doubt some one paid for putting metal on the roads when the ruts became absolutely dangerous. No doubt some one paid the men who built up the breach in the Storm Wall.
There was a slumbering belief that the police had powers, and the coastguards functions. For instance, the police fished a good deal, smoked fairly well, and were respectable with haughtiness. The coastguards had a boat. In the eyes of Kilcash the possession of a boat was sufficient to account for anything in the world. The coastguards went out in their boat only in fine weather, which gave them the aspect of gentlemen. They kept their boat scrupulously mopped and painted--painted, not tarred; which was foppish, and a little weak-minded. They carefully displayed in the station on the hill, carbines and cutlasses of which Kilcash stood in no more awe than it did of the bulrushes in the bog at the back of the village. To be sure, there was a theory that upon occasion the police might call on the coastguards to come out and assist them. But what this occasion was no one knew. Sergeant Mahony had been heard to hint broadly that in such a dire extremity--which would not, he said, curdle his blood in the least--the chief command would devolve on him. Although nothing was known for certain as to the exigency which might place the whole offensive and defensive forces of the village under the command of Mahony, Tim Curran had, when going home late of an evening, said he supposed the landing of the French in Dublin Bay would lead to that extraordinary act of power. Tim had been in Dublin for three days, and was believed to be infallible on all matters connected, or that might ever be connected, with the bay--from herrings to the French Fleet. It must not be deduced from this that Kilcash assumed a very servile attitude towards Dublin; for if Dublin had a bay, so likewise had Kilcash.
In the village there was one secret held by all, known by all, but scarcely once in a lifetime spoken of by one neighbour to another. It is more than likely that this secret would never have been dreamed of only for a fool once famous in the village, now long since dead. And even this fool told the secret to but few. For a reason lost in the obscurity of local dulness, this fool was named "The Prince of Orange." He went about barefooted, in the most gaudy raiment he could beg. He preferred a soldiers or a huntsman's cast-off coat to any other, and if he was fortunate enough to get such a garment, he stitched to it all the blue, yellow, and green ribbons he could lay hands on. He was one of the villagers killed by the monster of the Black Rock. On the outer face of it the fishing was generally good for long lines, and one day, while making believe to fish there with an old brace and a piece of tattered ribbon tied together, he was surprised and overwhelmed.
The great secret of the people of Kilcash was that no man, woman, or child of the whole village could understand why people came there in summer. Of course the advent of the visitors filled the pockets of the inhabitants, which was no more than the inhabitants were entitled to expect, which was no more than natural, since it has been so for generations. But why should people come to Kilcash in the summer months? It was said they came to the sea. But why?
Supposing a sailor had been at sea for three years and then came home to Kilcash, did he want to look at the land? Did any one in the world ever want to see the land? These people who came with the long, hot days had near their own homes lakes or rivers, or pools or wells. All these were water--nothing but water. There was salt in one, and not in the other--that was all the difference. Put a bucket of sea-water beside a bucket of fresh, and who could tell the difference without tasting or smelling?
When a man came back from a three years' cruise, did he go straight off into the country and stand or lie staring at the fields and haystacks? Not he. Either he came home to Kilcash, or went to a big town where he could see strange sights and buy fine things with his wages. Some came to fish. To fish! Why, every gurnet they caught cost them about a pound of money. The doctors told them to come for health. Health! What did they think of rheumatism, and fever, and bronchitis, and pleurisy, and lumbago, and other diseases, a thousand times worse at the sea than inland? Did any one ever know the land to kill a man? How many thousands a year did the sea kill? In the heat of summer it was all very well to bathe, and swim, and lie about on the sands and rocks, to wade and tumble into pools and get drenched with spray. But wait until the winter comes. Wait until they get the wages of their summer folly. Wait until they are racked by pains, and choked with a cough, and crippled with stiff joints. When they feel the penalties they are far from the place where they incurred them, and the fools of doctors tell them they must go back to the sea next summer in order to get finally rid of their maladies! Rubbish. In reality they come to the sea to drive in the few nails still wanting in their coffins.
This secret made the people of Kilcash conscious of being hypocrites, and accounted for the forced smile with which they greeted visitors in summer, and the night of leaden gloom which descended on them when the visitors departed for the year. The inhabitants of Kilcash never smiled in winter. To laugh in winter would have sounded like a pæan over their miserable, misguided visitors. It would have indicated a heartless and brutal nature.
O'Brien and O'Hanlon alighted at the "Strand Hotel," and ordered dinner and beds. During dinner, O'Hanlon made two ineffectual attempts to extract O'Brien's idea from him, but the latter would not speak. He smiled, and repeated his former word "Wait." O'Brien in his turn tried to induce O'Hanlon to talk, but the latter answered in the briefest and most apathetic way. The dinner was finished in absolute silence.
When it was over, O'Brien rose and said:
"You won't mind my going out for an hour or so?"
"Going out!" cried O'Hanlon, rousing up. "Where on earth are you going at such an hour, in such a place? Not to that accursed Black Rock?"
"No, no," said O'Brien. "Only I'm quite sure you would never dream of entering such a place, I would ask you to come with me."
"What place?"
"Oh, you're too respectable for it, I assure you."
"Nonsense! I'll go with you."
"I'll lay you a sovereign you don't."
"Done!"
"Done! I'm going to the 'Blue Anchor' to drink a pint of beer and smoke a pipe of tobacco. Hand over the money."
"The 'Blue Anchor'--the Blue 'Anchor!' Are you out of your mind too, or are you joking? Oh, I know! You want to get rid of me for an hour, but don't like to say so."
"I have a bet of a sovereign on it, and I'll take the money now, if you like. Will that convince you?"
"No; I'll pay when you come back and tell me you have been there. But if you really are going to that low beershop, tell me what you are going there for."
"Amusement. I find you dull."
O'Hanlon screwed up his eyes and regarded O'Brien closely.
"What is it?" he asked.
He knew O'Brien much too well to think he meant to be offensive, or even smart at the expense of an old friend without good reason. He suspected O'Brien was waiving a direct answer, which might cause pain to his hearer.
"It's something you suspect, and don't like to tell me. You're not going over to the dispensary to ask Dr. Flynn to drop in presently, as though by accident, and find me here, and make an informal examination?"
This was said half-playfully.
"Take care," said O'Brien, as he buttoned on his overcoat. "If you don't knock off talking about your infernal sanity, you'll drive me mad; and won't that be a nice kettle of fish? Now look here: Are you, or are you not, coming with me to the 'Blue Anchor' to smoke a frugal pipe and drink a frugal pint of beer--or, more correctly, a pint of frugal beer? Yes or no?"
"No," answered O'Hanlon, sinking back hopelessly on the chair from which he had risen. "It would be as much as my professional position is worth."
"All right, then; I'm off. I'll be back within an hour. Don't forget you owe me a sovereign;" and he left the room.
The "Blue Anchor" was certainly not a place suited to the leisure moments of a respectable solicitor enjoying first-rate practice in an important town. It was small, low, dingy, blear-windowed, dilapidated. It stood in a little by-street, if a place like Kilcash can be said to have a by-street, since it has no main street or streets, all streets being in some way or another intimately connected with the Storm Wall, as the road inside that work was called.
The "Blue Anchor" has no pretensions to a "front." On one side of the door is a small, square window filled with small panes of unclean glass. The house is two storeys high; the ground-floor consists of three rooms--namely, the bar, tap-room, and kitchen. The floors of these three rooms are formed of beaten clay, and boast of neither straw nor sand.
Within the bar are a plain deal table and four chairs. By means of these, the bar is, for the sake of gentility, used as the family refectory, for people of any pretensions know that dining in the kitchen is a sign of low origin. Opposite the counter of the bar stands the door into the tap-room. Folk who are in haste can be served at the bar, but most of the customers of the "Blue Anchor" are strangers to haste, and take their liquor seated in the tap-room--or tap, as it is familiarly and affectionately called by those who are familiar with the place. It is about twelve feet square, with a large deal table in the middle, and a bench on each side of the table. At the upper end is a hearth, on which smoulders a good peat fire, the smoke from which goes up a large flue that comes down to within five feet of the floor like a huge funnel. Two short pieces of logs, the spoil of some wreck, serve as chimney-seats. The benches are of home-make, and very unsteady on their legs. The continual presence of beer seems to have muddled them as to the exact position of their centre of gravity; and this condition, combined with the deplorable unevenness of the floor, has made them despair of ever being able to find it out.
But the table is as firm as the Black Rock itself John Tobin, the landlord--an enormously fat man, in gaiters, knee-breeches, and a cutaway-coat--takes great pride in the invincible stability of that table. Whenever he is angered by anything, he goes into the tap-room, places his hands flat on the middle of the table, and gives two, three, or four shakes, according to the agitation of his feelings. Then he goes out to the front door, looks critically at the sky to seaward, comes back to the bar, and, having mopped his forehead, sighs, and is once more calm.
The wonder of every one in the village is how the "Blue Anchor" manages to live, and support John, his wife, and daughter. In summer the men are too busy to go often, except for a pint or two before retiring for the night; and in winter the men have very little or no money to spend.
When Jerry O'Brien reached the "Blue Anchor" he spoke a few cheerful words to John Tobin, whom every frequenter of Kilcash knew, told him he had run out from Kilbarry for the evening, with a view to seeing how things were in the village, and how things were likely to be there in the coming season. Jerry did not know exactly what the latter phrase could mean, but it sounded friendly, as though he took an interest in the place.
Old John instantly attached a definite meaning to his words, and said, with a smile:
"Ah, sir, glad to hear it. Going to marry, sir, and settle down and take a house here for the season?"
Jerry started a little, coloured a little, and then said gaily:
"No such luck, John--no such luck! I meant about the fishing, you know. I'll go in and smoke a pipe for a bit."
"And welcome, sir," said the fat old man, steering himself around the end of the counter, and bringing his vast stomach safely into view, with watch-chain, watch-key, and seals swaying giddily from his overhanging fob.
There were only two guests in the "Blue Anchor." Both were smoking short clay pipes; each had a pint pewter pot before him. Jerry nodded to each and said "Good evening" before sitting down. He called for a pipe and tobacco for himself, and then asked if all, John Tobin included, would have a drink, "because, you know," said he, "as I never have been here before, it is only fair I should pay my footing," a speech which was very cordially received. A wish was expressed by John Tobin that since it was the first time he hoped it wouldn't be the last. Upon which the two fishermen applauded and cleared their throats in anticipation of beer.
For a while O'Brien led the men to speak of the prospects of the next season's fishing, and the chances of its being a good one. By the end of half-an-hour they were ready for more beer. Then he ceased to ask questions, and began to talk:
"As I was coming along from Kilbarry to-day, I told Tim to stop opposite the Black Rock, and I and Mr. O'Hanlon, who was with me, got down and went out on it. I haven't been on it for I don't know how long. Horrible place! I suppose very few people go over from the village this time of year?"
"Very few. Only for the good fishing there's off the tail of it, no one out of the village would ever go there. It's a cursed spot. I wonder you weren't afraid to go down, sir, at such a time of year. Ah, but when you were passing it was no more than about half flood. There's not so much danger at half flood as at full. Were you to the southward of the Hole, sir?" said one of the fishermen.
"No. I took care of that. I may be a fool, but I'm not such a fool as that. I was curious to see the place because of the death of Mr. Davenport."
"Ah, yes," said John Tobin. "He's gone."
There was neither joy nor sorrow in Tobin's voice, and that tone expressed the general feeling of Kilcash towards the event. It was nothing to the village, neither good nor harm. He had been little more than a name to them.
"Well, you all remember an unfortunate fellow named Fahey--Mike Fahey, wasn't it?--who went down the Hole of his own free will, or, rather, when he was chased by the police, ten or eleven years ago. Of course you all remember him?"
"Oh, yes"--they all remembered him.
"Well, the affair of Mr. Davenport's death put him in my mind, and I thought we'd go and look at the place where he took his awful leap. It nearly made me giddy to look down, and sick to think of his awful end."
"And he wasn't in the wrong, after all!" said John Tobin. "Mr. Davenport, I will say, afterwards cleared the man's character. That was good of Mr. Davenport, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said O'Brien; "but why did he make away with himself? If a man knows he's innocent, he needn't run off and drown himself. He must have remembered Mr. Davenport gave him the money. Why didn't he trust Mr. Davenport to clear him?"
The three men shook their heads.
"That's what puzzles me," said O'Brien. "This unfortunate man was fond of fishing."
"And little's the good he got by it," said one of the fishermen. "He had a miserable cockleshell of a punt, and it was the wonder of every one he wasn't drowned seven days in the week. Nothing would satisfy him but to keep dodging about that Black Rock in his tub of a punt, all by himself, and he not able to swim a stroke. If he hadn't gone down the Hole of his own will, he'd have been drowned by his own foolishness some day."
"How used he to manage that boat? With a sail?"
"Sail! No, sculls."
"Did he pull well?"
"Not particularly well. Well enough, though, for a raw-boned chap like him. Now that I remember it, I think he was pretty handy with the oars--for a spell, you know. He'd be dead beat in a jim-crack with a heavy oar in a yawl, but he could fiddle pretty fairly with the oars he carried."
"Did you ever see him scull from the notch?"
"Ay, I have, sir."
"And was he handy from the notch, too?"
"Yes, in a hop-o'-my-thumb cockleshell like his. Why, you could twist her round your finger in a mill-race. But as far as I can remember, he could handle an oar aft as well as most of those that weren't brought up to the work from boys."
"And what happened to this miserable punt of his?"
"Well, I don't think, sir, I can remember that. I know he lost it in some kind of way or other--west, I think he said. Anyway, whether he said so or not, it must have been west somewhere, for if anything happened to the punt on the east shore he'd never come back to tell what it was, for there isn't a landing-place there for anything from the sea but gulls and curlews; and even if he was the strongest swimmer in the barony his swimming would be no use to him, for he could never get into Kilcash Bay--never get round the head."
"Although, as you say, the east is much more dangerous than the west, isn't it strange he should have lost his boat on the west side?"
"Well, sir, it may and may not be strange. You see the western coast is more broken up, and there are more coves, and little bays, and little strands, and sharp rocks half covered, and so on, so that he might stave her in there, and yet manage to get ashore. I'm very sorry I can't remember what became of the punt."
"Never mind," said O'Brien. "Now, do you know the exact rise and fall of a neap tide at the Black Rock?"
"The exact rise and fall?"
"Yes; the exact rise of a neap tide from dead low water to the top of high water."
"I could not say to the inch, Mr. O'Brien."
"Well, to the foot. I don't want it to the inch; the foot will do."
The fisherman consulted his companion, who had not yet opened his mouth. After a muttered talk, the spokesman said:
"We wouldn't say to a foot, sir, if anything of consequence depended upon it."
"Fill up the measures again, John," said O'Brien, whose pint stood before him untasted. "There's no bet on it; you needn't be afraid. I'm only asking for information. I may be coming round here for the summer, and I just want to find out all I can. How much do you think?"
"Fourteen to sixteen feet."
"You don't think fifteen feet six would be far out?"
"No, sir. That's as near as can be. But there's the wind to be taken into account when you come to inches."
"How near were you ever to the Whale's Mouth--I mean, what was the nearest?"
"As close as that," he answered, stretching out his hand at arm's length. He added significantly--"On the ebb."
"How wide is the Mouth?"
"I couldn't say exactly, sir. It's a place we're rather shy of, as you know. I dare say it's as big as this room."
"You couldn't pull a yawl into it?"
"God forbid!" said the man devoutly. "Two did go in, and one was swallowed up into the bowels of the land, and the other was broken into ten thousand splinters. Pull a yawl in there! I'd go to the Canary Islands for life first."
"I don't mean to say would you, but could you?"
"No."
"Why?"
"For two reasons. In the first place, there isn't room for the yawl and the oars; and in the other place, I'd drop dead with the fright. Heaven be between us and all harm!"
"Is the Mouth much too narrow to allow a yawl to pull in?"
"Mr. O'Brien, I and every one in Kilcash have a great wish for you, sir; and if you're asking me these questions with the intention of going into the Whale's Mouth, I'll not answer another one."
"Upon my word and honour, Phelan. I haven't the least intention of making away with myself, or with anybody else, by means of the Whale's Mouth. I am inquiring simply for information, and perhaps if I come here in the summer, I may ask you to take care of me while I am having a look for myself; but just at present I want you to give me the benefit of what you know. How much too small is it for a yawl to pull in?"
"I couldn't say how many feet, but some feet."
"Ten?"
"Hardly so many as that, but thereabouts."
O'Brien was silent for a while. He looked down at the table, and made some figures on it with his finger. The other men talked together. At last he looked up and said:
"Tell me, Phelan, did you, in looking into the Whale's Mouth, notice whether it was straight, or inclined to the right or the left?"
"It's quite straight, as far as you can see."
"Are you quite sure of that?"
"Certain."
O'Brien then turned the conversation back into local channels again. Soon after he took his leave, having by some strange freak of preoccupation forgotten to drink his beer, although he had smoked his pipe like a man.
It was pitch dark. There was not a star in the heavens; no lights in the village, save here and there the thin ray of a rushlight shining through the wet window of some cottage. No phosphorescent gleam came from the sea, but a mournful, ghostly sound of wailing, as its waves, reduced by their passage up the bay, broke in diminished force against the flat, uneventful sand. Here were none of the grand organ tones heard near the lonely Black Rock, with its deadly legends, hideous Hole, and irresistible monster.
But O'Brien did not want to hear the sea now, either in its tame and civilised musing or in its insane roar when it flung itself unimpeded against the barriers of its dominions. He was thinking of the Black Rock, and of his sick friend, Alfred Paulton; and of O'Hanlon, and of the fate of Mike Fahey, and of Mr. Davenport, and of Tom Blake, and of--of Madge--his Madge, as he called her to himself, now that it was dark and no one was near. His Madge!
All around him was dark, cold, vacuous; all within him was full of light and warmth, and rich with figures in motion. He could not keep his great company of players in order at first. They hustled and jostled one another in his mind--all except Madge--his Madge! She moved apart from all the others, and the moment she appeared all the others fled as though abashed before her unstudied perfections.
Up to this he had never seriously concerned himself about anything. He had always been in fairly comfortable circumstances, although never rich. He had been brought up in the belief that he need never take much more trouble about the present or the future than an occasional glance at his salmon weirs on the river, and here he was now threatened with the loss of those weirs, which formed the backbone of his income--at a time, too, when this income meant the one thing he held dearest in the future--Madge! He had never been really in love before; there had been a few trifling affairs, but up to this he had never made up his mind to marry. That was the great test. Then look at the way he was mixed up in the Paulton and Davenport affair! Alfred, Madge's brother, succours Mrs. Davenport, and falls in love with the widow. He, Jerry O'Brien, causes a relapse in Alfred's case by some indiscreet words spoken by him of Mrs. Davenport. Then the Fishery Commissioners (whom may perdition lay hold of and keep for ever!) come howling to him about those weirs, and O'Hanlon tells him he must come over to Ireland post-haste, or he'll be picked dry as a bone by the Fishery Commissioners (whom may perdition--as before!); and no sooner does he set his foot in Kilbarry than O'Hanlon placidly confesses there is not so much need for haste for a day or two, or perhaps more, and that his (O'Hanlon's) real reason for sending for him was because of the ghost, or the ghost of a ghost, of one Mike Fahey, who had been connected with the Davenports ten or eleven years ago, and had jumped into the Hole in the Black Rock. A pretty complication, truly, for a man to get into in a fortnight or three weeks!
A pretty complication to get into, no doubt; but how would it all end? Except for poor Alfred's illness and the Fishery Commissioners (whom-- as before!), upon the whole he rather liked it.
And now he must go back to O'Hanlon, who would think him lost.
"I say, O'Hanlon," he said, cheerfully, as he got back to the coffee-room, "you've won that sovereign, not I."
"Did you go?"
"Yes. I went and ordered the beer; but, I'm blowed, I was so much amused that I came away and left it undrunk."
"Amused! What in the name of all that is wonderful could amuse you at that wretched beer-shop?"
"I was only picking up some facts about your old friend, Mike Fahey."
"Well, has any one seen him?"
"I met three men, and they had all seen him."
"In the name of heaven, when?"
"Ten or twelve years ago."
"Oh!" groaned O'Hanlon. "And not since?"
"No."
"That's not much good for me, is it?"
"Is it the fact that they have not seen the ghost which strikes you as being bad for you?"
"Yes, O'Brien. You know something."
"No, I do not; but I hope to know. I have learned something. But still--wait."
Next morning O'Hanlon went back by himself to Kilbarry. Jerry O'Brien made up his mind to stay a few days at Kilcash. His last words to the perturbed attorney were encouraging, reassuring. He would divulge nothing, nor indicate the nature of his hopes; but he told O'Hanlon in a confident manner that he might dismiss all thought of his brain being affected. "I now," he said, "verily believe you saw a ghost, the ghost of Mike Fahey, on the Black Rock within the past month. Will that satisfy you?"
O'Hanlon shook his head.
"I'm in the old fix still. I don't believe in ghosts; neither do you, I am sure. You are saying this merely to quiet my fears."
"You may trust me, I assure you. I am not saying anything out of a desire to quiet your fears. If I do not tell you all, I am prevented from doing so only by the want of conclusive evidence. I shall hang about here until some more evidence turns up. I really believe what you saw was no figment of your own brain."
They parted thus. O'Hanlon was little satisfied, still he had no resource but to endure. His faith in O'Brien was great in everything save this one subject, which so unpleasantly and threateningly engrossed his thoughts. He was a man of sanguine temperament, and now the strength and impetuosity of his mind was turned inward and preyed on his peace.
O'Brien had little or nothing to do. His curiosity was strongly excited. Owing to the uncertainty of the movements of the Fishery Commissioners he could not leave the country. His heart was in London; no hour went over his head that he did not think of his friends there. He wrote to Mr. Paulton, and to his great relief heard that Alfred was gradually recovering, and that Dr. Santley hoped to have his patient up and about in a short time, his youth and good constitution favouring rapid convalescence now that the acute stage of the disease was passed. All at Carlingford House were well, and joined in sending kindest regards to him, and hoped he would soon get rid of his troublesome business, and run back to them. There was a postscript to the effect that Dr. Santley had just that moment pronounced Alfred out of danger, and said that he hoped in a fortnight or three weeks the invalid would be able to seek change of air and scene--the two things which would then be sufficient to ensure his restoration.
O'Brien, upon reading this, struck the table with his hand, and cried out:
"Capital!--capital! Nothing could be better! This is the mildest climate in all Europe. He shall come here. I'll run over for him if all the Fishery Commissioners whom Satan can spare were to try and bar my way. The least I may do after causing that relapse is to nurse him for a while."
O'Brien had little or nothing to do in Kilcash. No newspapers came to him from London or Dublin. After luncheon he walked every day along the downs as far as the Black Rock. There, when the weather was fine, he lounged for an hour or so, and then strolled back to the hotel, where he read some book until dinner.
The "Strand Hotel" was of course deserted. He was the only guest, and the staff had been reduced to one maid-of-all-work.
"If Alfred wants quiet," thought Jerry, grimly, "he can have it here with a vengeance. As long as those wretched Commissioners are about, I could not stand Kilbarry. I'd be an object of commiseration there, and I can't bear commiseration. If I only had Alfred here I'd be as happy as a king. But until he comes I must try and keep up an interest in O'Hanlon's ghost. I begin now to think O'Hanlon is going mad, after all; for I can neither hear nor see anything of the late Mr. Fahey. It wouldn't do to tell my misgivings to O'Hanlon. He really is cut up about that spectre, and the only way to keep his spirits up is by professing an unbounded belief in his phantom."
No doubt Kilcash was dull, and would have been found intolerable by any one not used to such a place at such a time. But O'Brien had been brought up close to the sea, and its winter aspect was as familiar to him as its summer glories.
In summer, the sun and the clouds and the genial warmth of the air take the mind off the sea, and reduce it to a mere accessory to the scene. It is only one of many things which claim attention. In winter the sea is absolute, dominant--master of the scene. In its presence there is nothing to take the mind away from it. The land and the air and the clouds have suffered change: the sea is alone immutable. It is not then the adjunct to a holiday. In winter and summer its colour is the result of reflection; but the dull, gloomy colours it reflects in winter seem more congenial to it than the vivid brightness of gayer skies.
From his childhood O'Brien had been familiar with every phase of change that possesses the watery waste. There was for him no loneliness by the shore. He was no poet in the ordinary sense of the word. He had never tried to string rhymes together. He considered that a man who deliberately sat down to write verses which were not intended purely to bring in money must be in a bad state of health. He never concerned himself with elaborate analysis of his feelings, or moaned because the destinies had not ordained splendours for his career. He wished the Commissioners would let his weirs alone, so that he might marry Madge Paulton. He wanted to lead a quiet, unromantic life. He felt much more relief in abusing the Commissioners than he should feel in writing a mournful ditty against fate.
But he was in love, and dwelling by the sea in winter. He had inadvertently caused his dearest friend a serious relapse in illness, and he was asked by another friend to help him over a horrible suspicion that this other friend had of his own sanity. Here surely was matter for abundance of thought. So that, on the whole, he had no moment of the day that was not filled with engrossing reflection of some kind or another.
He answered Mr. Paulton's letter at once. He was overjoyed to hear the good news of Alfred, and he had made up his mind beyond any chance of alteration that the finest place in the world for Alfred would be the south of Ireland, and that there was no spot in the south of Ireland at all equal to Kilcash for any one who needed recruiting. Then he sent his very kindest regards to each member of the family by name, and tried to write "Miss Paulton" like the rest of the letter, but failed, so that it was the most ill-written part of all. He had little hope of Alfred's coming.
To his astonishment he got a reply thanking him for his kind invitation, and saying that although Dr. Santley at first thought the south of Europe would be preferable, he had at length yielded to Alfred's earnest importunities to be sent to Ireland, where he could enjoy the society of his friend Jerry, which he was certain would tend more to his recovery than anything else in the world.
"I am astonished," thought O'Brien, "that he did not insist on going abroad, if it was only for the chance of meeting that siren who has bewitched him. There is one thing plain from this--he has not only got over his dangerous physical illness, but that much more dangerous affection of the heart from which he has been suffering. What a madness that was! I hope and trust, for his sake, that woman has married Blake by this time. But no--I do not. That would be too bad a fate to wish even to an enemy; and surely she has never done me harm."
O'Brien did not repeat his visit to the "Blue Anchor," but now and then he met burly Jim Phelan, the boatman, and talked to him about the Black Rock and the Whale's Mouth.
For the first week O'Brien was at Kilcash the weather had been singularly calm. It had rained nearly every day; nothing else was to be expected there at that time of the year. But scarcely a breath of wind touched the sea. The long even rollers slid into the bay, and burst upon the sands in front of the village. They flung themselves wearily, carelessly against the cliffs without the bay, and after tossing their arms languidly a moment in the air, fell back exhausted into their foamy bed.
One morning, as O'Brien was walking on the strand after breakfast, he met Jim Phelan, and, as usual, got into talk with him. After a few sentences of ordinary interest, Jim said:
"The other night, sir, at the 'Blue Anchor,' you asked me a whole lot about the Black Rock and the Whale's Mouth. Did you ever see her spout?"
"No," answered O'Brien, looking at the south-western region of the sky. "I have often been here, winter and summer, but I have never been so fortunate. Do you think there's going to be a gale?"
"Yes, sir; there's going to be a heavy gale from the southward and westward, and it will be high water at about three. You can see the scuds flying aloft already, and I'm greatly mistaken if we haven't a whole gale before a couple of hours are over. That won't give much time for the sea to get up, but I am sure she'll spout to-day even before the top of high water. Anyway, if she doesn't, I'm greatly mistaken. Would you like to go over and see it, sir?"
"Yes, Jim. I have nothing particular to do to-day, and I certainly should like to see it."
"Very good, sir. I have nothing particular to do to-day either, and if you like I'll go over with you."
"I should be very glad. When shall we start?"
"Well, sir, if you are to see it you may as well be there at the beginning, so we'll be off at once. Did you feel that?"
"Yes."
A puff of warm wind touched the two men, and then the air was still again.
"Go on, then, sir, to the hotel and put on your oilskins. I'll run and get mine, and be back in a minute."
"But I haven't got oilskins!" said O'Brien, with a smile. "Will a mackintosh and gaiters do?"
The boatman looked long and fixedly into the south-west before he answered:
"No, sir; a mackintosh would not be any use out there against what's coming. This will be a whole gale, or I'm a Dutchman. It's been brewing a long time, and we're going to have it now, and no mistake. I'll get you a set of oilskins, and maybe if you went up to the hotel and put your flask in your pocket, it wouldn't be out of the way by-and-by. I'll bring the oilskins up to the hotel."
"All right," said O'Brien; and he set off.
In less than half-an-hour he found himself in a clumsy, ill-fitting set of oilskins a size too big. Jim had brought a sou'-wester also. He himself wore his own oilskins and his sou'-wester, and, so equipped, the two set out for the Black Rock.
As they reached the high ground of the downs, another gust of wind, stronger and of longer duration than the former one, struck them. Jim tied the strings of his sou'-wester under his chin, and O'Brien followed his example.
"It will be a sneezer," said the boatman, shaking himself loose in his over-alls, as if getting ready for action.
The sea was still unruffled. The two puffs of wind which had come as the advance guard of the storm had passed lightly and daintily over the sleeping ocean. The long clean-backed rollers swept slowly shoreward, staggering a little here and there when they passed over some sunken rock. Down in the south-west the sky was leaden-coloured, with long fangs of cloud stretching towards the land and gradually stealing upward and onward. An unnatural stillness filled the air. No wild bird of any kind was to be seen. The gulls had long ago sailed far inland. There were few sea birds here but gulls.
"We'll be there before the first puff," said Phelan, buttoning the lowest button of his coat. "She hasn't spouted now since a little after Christmas. In that southerly gale we had then she spouted fine."
"Did it come over the cliffs?"
"No, sir--not quite up to the cliffs. 'Twas a southerly gale, you know; and it takes a south-westerly gale to send it over the cliffs. Ah, that was a stiffer squall than the last! It's coming on. Heaven help the ship that makes this a lee shore for the next twenty-four hours!"
The prediction was verified, for a fierce gust had caught O'Brien in front and threatened to tear the strings out of his sou'-wester.
The two men turn and resume their way. The torn skirts of the south-western pall of cloud are now almost overheard. They are hurrying on at a dizzy rate. Out far upon the water under the lowering cloud a dulness has crept. The great mirror of the sea has been breathed upon and sullied by the wind. In shore, the waves rise and fall tranquilly.
The squalls now become frequent. Although the solid mass of the water beneath is still unchanged, when the gusts fly across the waves and strike the cliffs the foam is blown upward, hissing, and bursts into smoke against the crags. From under the broadening cloud a faint whispering sound comes, thin and shrill like a broadened whisper of the wind in grass.
"Do you think the storm will last so long as twenty-four hours?"
"Impossible to say, sir. But I think there's that much due to us. Turn your back to it, sir."
They draw near the Black Rock. Each man keeps his body bent to windward ready to meet the next onslaught of the gale. Now only a few seconds pass between each gust. Each gust is stronger and longer than the former one. When they are within a few hundred yards of the rock, when they can plainly see the outline of the little bay in which it is wedged, the storm bursts fully upon them. One blast strikes them, and lasts a minute. They are obliged to stand still, leaning against the gale. A lull of a few seconds follows, and then the broad, mighty torrent of the wind bursts upon them in its uninterrupted fury, and for a while it seems as if they must be swept away by its persistent, tremendous force.
At length they turn round, and, holding on their sou'-westers, gaze into the face of the wind. The sea is now boiling, churning, but not yet roused. Foam spurts aloft, where, before, the dull blue waters rose and fell unbroken. The spray crawls further and further upward against the red-brown cliffs. The roar and tumult of the wind is pressing against them. The roar and tumult of the waters have not yet begun.
At that moment Phelan catches O'Brien by the arm, and points towards the Black Rock. The figure of a man is seen clearly against the sky-line. It gradually sinks from view. It is descending the path to the Black Rock below.
"Let us run," shouts Phelan. "It is certain death if he goes down."
They run at the top of their speed in their clumsy oilskins. They reach the cliff directly over the fatal rock. They look down, around, at one another. Both start back with cries of surprise and horror.
No one is to be seen.
Neither man spoke. Phelan's amazement had bereft him of words. He knew the place thoroughly. He had known and feared it from his earliest years. To left and right were perpendicular cliffs. In front stretched the evil Black Rock. From where they stood descended the pathway to the table rock below. On the broken ground around them was nothing taller than dwarf bushes, which could not conceal a goat and to reach which the sure-footedness of a goat would have been needed. In his youth Phelan had been as bold as any lad in the village. But neither he nor any other lad of the village had ever dared to tempt death on those steep, friable, rotten slopes.
Beyond all doubt he had seen the figure of a man disappear over this cliff a few moments ago. Where was he--it--now? The Black Rock lay bare, naked, at their feet. A man's head could not be hidden there. Whither had that figure gone? It could not have reached the sea in the time. The monster had not yet broken loose, and the man could not have been swept into the water. No shattered corpse lay on the greasy rock beneath. A man cannot fly. What had become of this man? Or had they seen a ghost?
He turned to O'Brien and noticed that the latter looked pale and scared.
"You saw him?" he shouted above the storm. "You saw him as plain as daylight?"
"Yes."
"What do you make of it?"
"I don't know."
Once more Phelan looked carefully around him. Absolutely no trace of man was to be seen. Except for their presence, the place might have been alone since the making of the world. He again turned to O'Brien.
"Heaven be between us and all harm, but it must have been a ghost!"
"He could not have got to the Hole in the time."
"Not if he had wings."
"Did you ever see Fahey? Of course you did. You told me about him."
"Merciful Lord, it was Fahey!"
The two men looked mutely into each other's faces. Anything like a regular conversation was now impossible owing to the force and noise of the storm.
O'Brien had had a theory. The events of the last two minutes had shattered his theory to atoms. The two policemen who had seen Fahey jump into the Hole had not been mistaken. It was no ghost they saw. They had tracked their man as surely as they had ever tracked any one on whom they laid hands. He, being innocent, was suspected of a crime; or, rather, he had innocently, in ignorance, committed a criminal act, and being pursued and hard pressed, had flung himself headlong into that awful pit. Within a couple of weeks or so, O'Hanlon had seen that same figure in this place, and now he (O'Brien) had seen such a figure, and Phelan had identified it. This was monstrous. What came of all his inquiries respecting the Whalers Mouth and the accessibility of the cave? Nothing--absolutely nothing. His theory was childish. He was glad he had spoken of it to no man.
What was to be his theory now?
Phelan was stupefied, and stood staring at the cliffs and the rock as if he expected them to undergo some stupendous change, display some more incomprehensible marvel. O'Brien stood back a few paces from the brink, and kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, which had lowered and come nearer.
Suddenly Phelan stepped back to O'Brien, and, putting his mouth close to the ear of the other, shouted--
"She blows!"
O'Brien dropped his eyes to the Black Rock.
From the Hole a thin wreath of sea-smoke rose, and, bent sharply by the gale, almost touched the cliff. A booming, hollow sound, like the flapping of distant thunder among hills, weighed on the air, and then came a shrill, loud hiss, as of falling water, and again the wind was drenched in sea-smoke.
Phelan stretched out his hands towards the Hole, and shouted--
"Look!"
The word was scarcely uttered when the ground shook, and from that Hole a solid column of water sprang aloft with a shriek that drowned the raging of the storm. It rose fifty feet into the air, turned inward towards the cliff, and then toppled and fell with a mighty crash that again made the gigantic bases of the immemorial cliffs tremble to their lowest depths.
The monster had broken loose!
O'Brien started back. He had from childhood heard of the awful Puffing Hole, but had never seen it in action before. His first feeling was that this could be no display of ordinary power, but that the cliffs and rocks were riven by some Titanic force never exercised before. He felt certain that when again he looked down he should see the Black Rock shattered, disintegrated, annihilated. What could withstand such a blow?
The boatman drew him towards the edge of the cliff once more. He was scarcely in position when the huge shaft of water sprang once more into the air, this time to twice its former height. He was appalled, and again sprang back. The gale caught the capital of the column and lifted it bodily, dashing it against the cliff. O'Brien was covered from head to foot with water.
The two men shifted their position, so as to get out of the reach of the water, and then stood mutely looking at the terrible phenomenon.
When O'Brien's alarm subsided, and he knew by the conduct of his companion that there was no occasion for fear, he stood fascinated by the stupendous spectacle. He had heard this described hundreds of times, but his imagination had not had space for grandeur such as this. The Hole did not spout at every wave, but took breathing space like a living thing. Now he understood why the opening of the cave was called the Whale's Mouth. Now he understood why the people said "she spouts" when the Puffing Hole flung its hundreds of tons of water a hundred feet into the air. It was a daring fancy which saw in the strange freak of nature a colossal representation of the spouting of the whale. The Black Rock was the head, the cave the jaws, the shaft in the rock the blow-hole of a whale multiplied a thousand times.
And he, presumptuous fool that he was, had imagined a boat might enter that cave and come out uninjured--that a man might throw himself into that awful funnel and survive!
In half an hour O'Brien and Phelan left the edge of the cliff and turned their faces towards the village. Notwithstanding the oilskins, both were wet through, for the spray and fine mist from the sea penetrated at the neck, the wrists, and under the buttons in front. They kept more inland on their way back. Phelan was the first to speak of the mysterious figure they had seen. He had no difficulty in the matter. They had seen the ghost of Fahey, who had committed suicide there ten or eleven years ago. Nothing could be simpler or more natural than this explanation. It was a horribly wicked thing to commit suicide, but to throw one's self into the Puffing Hole was a double crime; for, in addition to making away with life, it was defying Providence--it was courting the most awful death that could be sought by man. The supernatural appearance that day was to be a warning to O'Brien, who had displayed an unwise curiosity as to the Puffing Hole and the Whale's Nose. From the nature of O'Brien's inquiries, it was, notwithstanding his denials, almost certain that he had formed a design of going in a boat up the cavern. The spirit of the dead man had been sent to show him the penalty of any such impious risking of life, and to remind him of the fate he would surely encounter if he dared to do anything so rash.
When O'Brien got back to the "Strand Hotel" at Kilcash, he thought the whole matter over for an hour or so. Then he sat down and wrote a note:
"My dear O'Hanlon,
"Jim Phelan, the boatman, and I went to the Black Rock to-day to see the Puffing Hole spout. When within a few hundred yards of the cliff over the Rock, we both plainly saw the figure of a man, which Phelan declared to be Fahey's! Are you satisfied now? I am not. I'll run in to Kilbarry to-morrow.
"Yours always,
"Jeremiah O'Brien."
Then he ate his dinner, and went out to pay another visit to the "Blue Anchor."
By this time Jim Phelan had told the story of that day's visit to the Black Rock to many of the villagers, and although the simple fisher folk as a rule retired very early during the long nights, most of them made an exception on this occasion. Many of the men and women sought neighbours' houses, and discussed the mysterious appearance of the form of Fahey hours after their usual time for going to bed.
But Jim himself was not at any of these domestic gatherings. He was the hero of the hour, and the natural place for a hero was the taproom of the "Blue Anchor."
There was a feeling among the men of Kilcash that no subject of prime importance to the village could be discussed anywhere else so well as in the taproom of the "Blue Anchor." Ordinary events of an ordinary day might be suited to the shelter of the Storm Wall on the shoreward face in a breeze or rain, or the rocks beneath the wall when the weather was fine. But neither of these, nor even the bar of the "Blue Anchor" itself, accorded with grave or exciting discourse of an exceptional nature. The taproom was the only place in which men could give unbridled license to debate. Here one could not only unbend, but give expression to the most audacious theories without danger of reproof or repression by wives or mothers.
When O'Brien entered, a dozen men were crowded into the dimly-lighted, squalid room. As he had drawn near the house he heard voices raised in eager conversation. His entrance was the signal for silence. This was partly owing to his superior social position, and partly to the fact that his name had mingled freely in the talk for some time. He sat down, called for beer for himself and those around him, and lit a cigar. The storm was still blowing so strongly that he had found it impossible to smoke in the open air.
Jim Phelan was there, and the men were all seated as close as the rickety benches would allow.
"Well, men," said O'Brien, "I dare say I could guess what you were talking of. Did any of you ever hear of anything like it until now?--I mean, did any of you ever hear that the ghost of this man Fahey had been seen in the neighbourhood before?"
Several men answered in the negative; the others shook their heads.
O'Brien then rehearsed all he had gathered from Phelan of Fahey, and asked the others if they could add anything to the tale.
At this they shook their heads also. He then inquired if among them they could find an explanation. But this produced no better result. He felt baffled, discouraged. He had not counted on learning much, but he had expected to gather something.
After a stay of some time he left the "Blue Anchor" with nothing added to his store of facts or surmises. During the time he had sat there and smoked his cigar, he had heard much of what he knew repeated over and over again, with the wearying garrulity of those into whose lives few events of varied interest enter.
The storm was raging still abroad, although the violence of the wind had considerably abated. The sky was now strewn with shattered, rugged clouds, wreckage of the gale. Here and there groups of pale stars shone out in the dull sky. The night was not dark. No moon shone, but a pale blue radiance filled the clefts and chasms between the clouds, and fringed their rugged edges with hues of dull steel.
By this time the tide was falling. The sea, even in the bay, had been lashed into fury, and was breaking in sheets over the Storm Wall, under the partial shelter of which O'Brien walked towards the "Strand Hotel."
He kept his head bent low, in order to avoid the flying spray. On his right was the Storm Wall, with the bay beyond. On the left the village, with its few scattered lights. Kilcash Bay made an irregular shallow bow on the innermost side, and along this bow from one end to the other of it the village was built. As became a house of such importance as the "Blue Anchor," it stood near the middle of the bow, not on the main road, but on a little narrow road running at right angles to the Storm Wall, and on which were very few houses. At the end of this by-road, and to the right facing the sea, lay the cottages of the village. These were owned chiefly by fishermen, and were let to visitors in the summer, while the families of the fishermen retired to some other shelter, situate visitors never knew exactly where. To the left stood the more ambitious half of the village. Here were the few shops and two-storey houses it contained. At the further end of this left-hand half stood the "Strand Hotel," the most imposing-looking house in the place, and the point towards which Jerry O'Brien was now making his way in the lee of the wave-beaten wall.
O'Brien did not look at his watch before leaving the "Blue Anchor," but he knew it was about nine o'clock. At such an hour, in such a season of the year, the village was usually plunged in darkness, except for the lights in the one hotel and the one public-house. The few shops were never in the winter open after seven, and not ten in a hundred of the inhabitants were out of bed at nine o'clock. But owing to the story which Jim Phelan had brought back from the downs that day, this was not considered an ordinary night, and there were more lights than usual twinkling in the houses still.
But as O'Brien forged his way laboriously forward, under the protection afforded by the wall, he became aware that one of the shops was not only open, but doing business too, at this advanced hour of night.
Between O'Brien and the shop were a broad road and a little garden--for all the houses and cottages, including those with shops, had gardens in front.
O'Brien's mind was not busy at the moment, and out of idleness, rather than curiosity, he kept his eyes on the open door of the shop as he drew near and passed it.
Before he had gone beyond the point at which he could command a view of it without turning his head back inconveniently, some one came out of the shop, the door closed, and all was dark.
Here a severe gust of wind almost carried off O'Brien's hat, and he paused a moment to pull it down over his brows, and wait until the spray of a wave, which had just climbed the wall and sprung over it, fell on the road in front. Partly to shield his face from the wind, and partly out of a desire to try and make out what kind of being had the daring to come with custom to M'Grath's at such an unusual hour, he kept his face turned inland, and looked at the figure which had emerged from the shop. The form was that of a man--a man of the average, or perhaps slightly over the average height--bulky, or, rather, bulged--no, not bulky, but bulged--irregular--stooped, stooped as though he carried a bundle, or was very old, or was a hunchback. The man was going on at a quick pace in the direction of the hotel.
"He can't be staying at the 'Strand,'" thought O'Brien. "I am the only visitor at the 'Strand.' And yet where can he be going? No person living in the village would dream of knocking up M'Grath at such an hour except in a matter of life and death, and M'Grath doesn't sell drugs."
They were now getting near the end of the houses. The "Strand" was the last building in the village. The garden at its rear climbed partly up the slope of the downs. The nearest dwelling-place beyond the hotel was Kilcash House, the late Mr. Davenport's home. That house stood a mile back from the cliff, and the shortest line from it to the sea would bring one to the Black Rock.
As O'Brien saw the man pass the last house of the terrace and approach the hotel, he watched no longer, but turned his eyes out for one last look at the sea, with the reflection, "There is nowhere else for him but the 'Strand'--unless," he thought, with a smile, "he is going to visit our old friend Fahey at the Black Rock. A nice quiet place to spend an evening like this would be the Puffing Hole."
He shuddered. Even here, two miles away from it, and within a few yards of his comfortable room, with lamps and a fire, and absolute security from the sea, it was not possible to think of that awful Hole unmoved. Although the tide was receding, it was higher than when he and Jim Phelan had been at the Rock. The water had then been flung up a hundred feet into the air. Now, no doubt, it was mounting a hundred and fifty feet--ay, two hundred feet, in a solid, unbroken, bent column! What a hideous fate it would be to stand down on that fatal rock and, with the certainty of immediate destruction, watch that dire column mount up into the air! Ugh! It wasn't a thing to think of just now. He had had enough of the sea and storm for one day. He'd go in and turn up the lamps, and fit himself into an easy-chair in front of the fire, and mix a tumbler of punch and smoke a cigar, and forget all about the confounded sea, except that it was out here foaming and fuming away, wholly unable to get at him.
He looked towards the hotel. The man who had come out of M'Grath's ought by this time to have got within its hospitable walls. No one was to be seen stirring near it.
"Ah, as I thought!" mused O'Brien complaisantly. "But what can they have wanted from M'Grath's at the 'Strand' at this hour of the night? And now that I think of it, the whole male force attached to the house in any capacity consists of old Billy Coyne, the stable man, and myself. I've not been in M'Grath's buying things--that is, at least, not with my knowledge and consent. But then this is a queer place, where queer things happen now and then."
He turned to cross the road, but was again brought to a standstill by a fierce gust of wind and dash of spray. While he was holding on his hat, his face was turned towards the pathway leading to the downs high above. He shook the spray off him, and was on the point of moving away when his eyes caught something moving upward and forward on that path. What the object was he could not determine, for the light was poor and uncertain, and the distance considerable. One moment he thought it was a pony; the next it seemed to resemble a human being. He stood still a minute or two, long enough to make sure he could not come to a conclusion, as the thing continued to recede and the light did not improve.
He shrugged his shoulders. The affair was not of the least moment to him. He crossed the road and entered the hotel. He was in the act of taking off his overcoat in the hall when he caught sight of old Billy Coyne, who in the winter acted as handy man about the place, and discharged now and then the functions of waiter and boots.
"Who came in just now, Billy?" he asked.
"Sorrow a soul, sir," answered the old man, helping O'Brien with the coat.
"I mean, who was the man that came out of M'Grath's carrying a bundle on his back?"
"Some one carrying a bundle on his back?" queried the man in respectful perplexity.
"Yes," said O'Brien, sharply.
He was annoyed at what he considered the stupidity of Coyne.
"The yard door is locked this hour, and no one could come in that way. Ever since you went out, sir, I've been about here; and although the sea and the wind are high, I am used to them, and no one could, and no one did, come in. Nobody," added Coyne, emphatically, "crossed that threshold"--pointing to the front doorway--"since you went out, sir, until you yourself crossed it this minute. If you saw anything"--mysteriously--"for goodness sake don't say a word about it, or you'll have the missus and Mary in dread of their lives, if they don't die of the fright. Did you see it come in?"
O'Brien dropped his brows a little over his eyes, and looked at the man. Coyne did not seem as though he had been drinking or asleep.
"Go and ask Mrs. Carey and Mary, and when you are coming back, bring me some whisky and hot water."
When Coyne reappeared it was with the full assurance that neither Mrs. Carey, the landlady, nor Mary, the housemaid, had seen or heard any one enter the house between Jerry's leaving it and his return just now.
What was Jerry to make of this? There was not the shadow of a doubt that a man had come out of M'Grath's with a bundle of some kind on his back. He had watched that man with a little curiosity until he was quite sure he had no other cover to go to but the hotel. Then came a time when his attention was taken off the figure and given to the sea. No man was to be seen when he turned round, but something was going up the path to the downs. That something must have been the man he had seen leave M'Grath's. Nothing could be plainer than that. But who in the name of all that was mysterious could think of knocking at M'Grath's, and then ascend the downs with a heavy bundle on such a night? There was no house for several miles in the direction taken by the man with the bundle except the residence of the late Mr. Davenport, and that was two miles off.
Fahey, or----
Nonsense! This rubbish about ghosts was unworthy of a moment's consideration. It was puerile, old-womanish, contemptible. Besides, ghosts did not, as far as he knew, knock up the proprietor of a general shop and buy or any way carry away heavy bundles on their backs. He must not waste time with such rubbish again.
But what about Fahey? Fahey was more of a ghost than his own ghost. Either Fahey was dead or he was not. To jump into the Puffing Hole, was, every one said, certain death. Fahey had been seen to jump into the Puffing Hole--seen by two witnesses incapable of making a mistake in the matter. The word of one man in a case of this kind would be open to doubt, but two men said they saw Fahey jump into the Puffing Hole years ago. That very day he (O'Brien) had seen a figure which Jim Phelan recognised as that of Fahey, and that figure had vanished near the hideous caldron, but without having time to get near it, and in face of the fact that there was not another means of accounting for its disappearance.
What on earth could he make of this? And now here was a mysterious figure getting a shop opened at night, and in the face of a fierce storm starting over the downs in the direction of the Black Rock.
But the whole thing wasn't worth thinking of. What was it to him if Fahey's ghost were fictitious or real, or if Fahey were alive or dead? He'd put the whole thing from him, and think of where exactly he should build that house for Madge.
Next morning, before starting for Kilbarry, he took a stroll and turned into M'Grath's shop to buy a strap for his rugs. They sold everything at M'Grath's--twine, and candles, and bread, and gunpowder, and kettles, and vinegar, and calico, and tea, and butter, and sweetmeats, and fishing-hooks, and hoops, and wooden spades, and white lead, and garden seeds, and flowers of sulphur, and dried haddock, and camp-stools, and crockery-ware, and pious pictures, and wall-hooks, and penny bugles, and cod-liver oil, and bran, and a thousand other things--to make a list of which would puzzle the most experienced auctioneer or valuer.
"You had a late customer last night," said O'Brien, when he had selected the strap.
"Yes, sir. He came to buy a few articles he wanted. He said that in my father's time he often bought things in this shop, and that as he was passing through the village late he wanted to see this place again for the sake of old times."
"How long is it since he was here, did he say?"
"Thirty-seven years since he saw Kilcash."
"Then he is not young."
"Bless you, no, Mr. O'Brien! He's seventy-five, and with a bad cough too; and to think of him walking a night like last night from this to Kilbarry, with such a load too!"
"Seventy-five--seventy-five!" muttered Jerry. "That's no good."
"Ay, seventy-five, and looked every day of it. I don't think the poor fellow is long for this world."
O'Brien left. A man of seventy-five did not, he thought, bear much on the case. The years were thirty or thirty-five too many.
When Jerry O'Brien reached Kilbarry that afternoon, he drove straight to O'Hanlon's office, and briefly recounted to the astonished solicitor what he and Jim Phelan had seen at the Black Rock the day before. O'Hanlon was for a few moments speechless with amazement. When his amazement wore off a little, he found himself bound in on all sides with perplexities. He told himself a hundred times that here was evidence enough to satisfy the most sceptical of judges and juries; and yet he, a mere solicitor, could not make up his mind to believe. O'Brien, Phelan, and himself had seen something they would swear was the figure of a man, and Phelan and himself would swear that what they had seen was in the likeness of that Mike Fahey who had committed suicide years ago by throwing himself into the Puffing Hole while, in respect of a groundless charge, pursued by the police. It was distracting--it was incredible; but it must be believed.
He remembered when he was told at school that if a penny had been put out at five per cent, compound interest in the year 1 A.D., it would then equal in value a mass of gold containing a globe as big as the earth for every second of time since the beginning of the Christian era. At first he had said this astounding statement was not true, but when it was plainly demonstrated that it was even a ridiculous understatement, he did not say it was not true, but he could not believe it, although the figures were irrefutable.
This history of the reappearance of Fahey, or some shade or likeness of him, was now above question. It stood on as firm a basis as testimony could desire, and yet it was naught to him but myth. Many of the greatest truths are unbelievable. This was a little truth, but in its integrity was impenetrable.
The one great consolation was that he, O'Hanlon, need no longer fear his brain was playing him false.
Like O'Brien, he came to the conclusion that impossible ghost or still more impossible man, the affair was none of his. He wasn't going mad; that was the great thing.
That day the two friends chatted the matter over while they sat before O'Hanlon's fire after dinner, and they both agreed that they would then and there say good-bye to Mr. Michael Fahey, whether he was matter or spirit.
The solicitor had no more certain news of the beastly Fishery Commissioners. They were still hovering about the neighbourhood; but no one alive, themselves included, could tell what they were going to do, or were not going to do, but they were still deucedly hard on weirs. And--no; it would not be at all safe for Jerry to go to London--just at present.
The two friends separated early, Jerry going back to "The Munster." He had no desire for a further time in Kilcash. Alfred Paulton would be soon fit to travel, and then once more he should go back to the village; but he now had business to watch in Kilbarry. Certificates, and memorials, and declarations, and so on, had to be obtained or attended to, and although O'Hanlon did all the business in connection with the weirs and the Commissioners, both men deemed Jerry's presence advisable. He was extremely popular in the town, and the request of a principal is always more efficacious than that of an agent.
He had been only a few days at "The Munster," when a letter put into his hand one morning caused him an agreeable surprise. The envelope bore the London postmark, and the superscription, shaky though it happened to be, was unmistakably in the handwriting of Alfred himself.
Jerry broke the cover hastily, and read the brief pencil note with pleasure, until he came to the last two sentences--"I do not know where she is. They will not tell me anything about her."
"Not cured, by Jove!" said Jerry to himself, with disappointment. "One would think his illness and relapse would have put some sense into his head, or knocked some nonsense out of it. But, after all, what is there wrong in it? Why shouldn't he fall in love with whom he likes? She is older than he, and I am sure she would not marry him, even if a sleepy Government would only have the good sense and good taste to hang Blake instead of worrying honest folk about weirs and other things. Alfred is the best fellow in the world. Who could associate with Madge and not be good--except, of course, myself? But Alfred is dull; there's no denying that. He's more than a trifle mutton-headed. Madge has all the brains of the family, and the best heart, too, only she's going to throw that away. Is she? Wait till you see, Madge. My darling!"
He crooked his arm and held it out from him, and looked at the sleeve of his coat tenderly, as though a head rested there.
"I'll spoil you with love when I get you. Spoil you with love! No woman ever yet was spoiled with love. It's the flattery and foolishness which spring from a desire to win a woman any way, no matter how, so long as you win, that spoil women. I'd like to see a Fishery Commissioner spooning. By Jove, it would be a fine thing if a fellow had a sister a Commissioner was spooning! First you could get him to allow you to do anything you liked, and the moment he turned crusty, you would only have to ask your sister to poison him. I'm sorry I haven't a sister. But, stay, I will have one soon. Edith must marry a Commissioner. When Madge and I are settled, I will ask Edith to stay with us, and fill the house from garret to basement with Commissioners. (I wonder how many of the beasts there are?) But I must not say anything to Madge about this scheme until we are married. If I mentioned it now she might object to the poison--there is no depending on women, until they are married. But once a woman is married you may count on her for anything. Look at Lady Macbeth! What a wife she was to have at a fellow's elbow! Why, she wasn't merely a wife--she was a spouse. What the difference is I don't know; but I'm sure she was a spouse more than a wife--just as an awful father or mother is a parent. But what is it I was thinking of?"
Jerry could be cool and collected and coherent when he liked, but he did not like it now.
Days passed by uneventfully with Jerry at Kilbarry. He answered Alfred's letter, but made no reference to Mrs. Davenport. He thought it safer not. He was quite sure neither Mr. nor Mrs. Paulton would look with favour on their son taking a continued interest in the widow. To him there was something grotesque in Alfred falling in love with a widow. Beyond doubt Alfred was in love with this strange and beautiful woman. Jerry did not wonder at his young friend's enthusiasm. He would have been a cold-blooded man under thirty who could see her without feeling profound admiration. But Alfred would have to get over this infatuation. It could never come to anything. Of course time would cure him. Up to this, time had apparently been losing its opportunity. When a man is in love with the sister of a friend, it makes matters pleasanter if the girl's brother is involved in a similar enterprise. But Jerry would rather forego such an advantage in his case than that matters should become serious between Alfred and the beautiful widow.
Daily Jerry saw O'Hanlon, and daily urged upon him the desirability of despatch. So importunate was the younger man, that his friend and adviser at length became suspicious and finally certain of the cause from which Jerry's anxiety for haste sprang. "When the weirs are out of danger," said the solicitor, "I know the next job you'll give me to do."
"What is it?" said Jerry, colouring slightly, and looking his companion defiantly in the face.
"A settlement--a settlement! A marriage settlement, I mean!"--with a wink.
"Don't be a fool, O'Hanlon. I wish you'd get a settlement about the weirs."
At length the day came on which Jerry set out for London for the purpose of bringing over his friend for change of air and scene. In two senses of the phrase, the weirs were still where they had been five weeks ago. One of these senses was satisfactory: the weirs had not been pulled down by the ruthless Commissioners. The other sense was discouraging: the Commissioners had not yet done with the weirs, and the weirs were still in danger of being pulled down, as engines which obstructed the free navigation of the river Bawn. Notwithstanding this, Jerry made the journey in the best of humours, and having arrived without adventure or accident at Euston, drove to his old lodgings and renewed his acquaintance with the civil landlady and the odious table-cover.
His first call next morning was at Dulwich. He had not written to say the hour at which he would reach Carlingford House, and when he arrived and asked the servants after each member of the family, he found they were all out with the exception of the invalid. At first this rather chilled Jerry, but upon a moment's consideration he thought that after all it was best Alfred and he should have a few moments together alone. There was no reason, as far as he knew, for precautions of any kind; but Alfred might be excitable, and it was desirable that Mrs. Davenport's name should occur but sparingly, or not at all.
He was shown into a little back drawing-room, where he found Alfred sitting in an easy-chair at the window. Alfred rose with eager alacrity. The two friends held one another by the hand for some time in silence. Then Jerry spoke and thanked heaven Alfred looked so well, quite well, better than ever he had seen him before--thinner no doubt, but better. "Why, you have got a colour like a bashful girl in a little fix!"
"I--I have just heard surprising news."
"What is it?" asked Jerry, looking keenly at his friend.
"First, tell me when are we to go to Ireland--to Kilcash?"
"Whenever you like, my dearest Alfred."
"But how soon?" he asked eagerly.
"Whenever you like, my dear boy, I am at your disposal. But do not run any risk--do not hasten away for my sake."
Jerry was thinking of how little it would cost him in the way of self-denial if he were obliged to pass a month under this roof.
"But will you hurry away for mine?"
"For yours, my dear Alfred! Of course I'll do anything you wish. But how hurry away for yours?"
"Then we can start to-morrow for Kilcash?"
"To-morrow! Why, what's the matter, Alfred?"
"Ah, I know it is too late for to-day. But to-morrow we set out for Kilcash."
"If you wish it. But why this excitement? It's the dullest place in the world."
"Dull--dull! Why, she's there by this time!"
"Who, in the name of mercy?"
"Mrs. Davenport."
O'Brien was struck dumb. "Mrs. Davenport," he thought, in a dazed, unbelieving way--"Mrs. Davenport at Kilcash! It can't be possible. There is some mistake." Here was a complication on which he had never counted--which it would have been idle to anticipate. The position in which he found himself was perplexing, absurd. It was useless to hope any longer that Alfred was not desperately in love with this woman, who had recently been the central figure in a most notorious and unpleasant inquiry. Alfred had seen her only a few times, and could not have exchanged a word with her since that awful night. It was absurd.
"Mrs. Davenport," said Jerry, slowly, "had, I thought, gone away by this time. How do you know she is in Ireland, or on her way there? Who told you?"
Alfred smiled and sat down.
"A friend found it out for me. She did go to France for a week, but she came back the day before yesterday, and is in Ireland now. I am most anxious to see her again. Poor woman!--she must have suffered horribly."
He had observed a look of anxiety, if not disapproval, on Jerry's face, and tried to make it seem as though he took no more than a friendly interest in the widow.
"Alfred," said Jerry, slowly and seriously, "it won't do. I can see you are hard hit."
"Nonsense!" cried Alfred, gaily.
Jerry directed the conversation far afield from the subject to which Alfred would willingly have confined it.
But Alfred was not to be baffled or denied. The moment a pause occurred he broke in with:
"Jerry, you have not told me yet whether we shall start for Ireland tomorrow or not?"
"Alfred, have you ever been in love?"
"Never!"--with a laugh, a slight increase of colour, and a dull, dim kind of pride in some feeling he had, he knew not what--a feeling of comfort and exaltation.
"Because, you know, it's an awfully stupid and miserable feeling. It's not good enough to cry over or to curse over. Sighing is despicable."
"How on earth do you know anything about it, Jerry? I thought you were a woman-hater."
"Ay," said Jerry, vaguely. "Do you know of all people in the world whom I should most like to be?"
"No."
"One of Shakespeare's clowns. What digestions these clowns had! They are the only perfect all-round men I know. Mind you, they are no more fools than they choose to be. If they pleased, they could all be Chief Justices, or Archbishops, or Fishery Commissioners, or anything else fearfully intellectual they liked; but they preferred to be clowns, and kept their superb digestions, and made jokes at lovers and such-like human rubbish. Motley's the only wear."
"What on earth is the matter with you, Jerry? I never knew until now that you had a leaning towards poetry!" Alfred was gratified to find O'Brien thus bordering on the sentimental. He would have embraced with delight any chance of breaking into the most extravagant sentimentality himself. To think of O'Brien countenancing sentiment was too delicious. He added: "I don't know much about Shakespeare; but, for my part, I think his fools are awful fools."
"Why, Alfred--why?"
"Because they are so desperately wise."
"Ay," said O'Brien, in a still more desponding tone. "A fool must be a fool indeed when he chooses to be wise.
"'Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness!--serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?'"
"No," answered Alfred: "I don't see anything to laugh at. That seems a very wise speech. Is it spoken by a fool?"
"By an amateur fool, and a bad amateur fool, too. It is one of the silliest speeches in all Shakespeare. Whenever Shakespeare wanted to have a little sneer up his sleeve, and to his own self, he put the thing in rhyming couplets. Nearly all his rhyming couplets are jokes for his own delight, and for the vexation and contempt of all other men. Shakespeare did penance for his sins in his puns, and revenged his injuries on mankind in his rhyming couplets.... That's your mother's voice."
"Yes," said Alfred, going to the door and opening it, "that's my mother and the girls. Come here, mother; here's Jerry O'Brien."
"Your mother and my girl," said Jerry, down low in his heart. "'Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is.' Romeo is the most contemptible figure in all history, and Juliet the most adorable." Aloud he said at that moment: "And you, Miss Paulton--how are you?"
"Quite well, thank you."
"What a low blackguard," he thought, "Shakespeare was to kill Juliet! But he killed Romeo, too, and that may have justified him in the eyes of heaven. I'd forgive him even his rhyming couplets if he'd only turn his tragic attention to those accursed Commissioners. Just fancy a lot of apoplectic fools, bursting, so to speak, with the want of knowledge of anything, and standing between that darling and me! May the maledictions of----" To Madge he said aloud, in answer to her question: "Yes, I had a very good passage across--not a ripple on the water. You have never been across?"
"No, never. I should very much like to go," she said, as she sat down on a chair, adjusted her mantle, and looked up in his face.
"Oh, you ought to go over," he said; "the scenery is romantic."
He thought "romantic" might be too strong for Mrs. Paulton, so he added hastily:
"And the garden produce--owing," he added, in explanation, "to the humidity of the climate."
He felt rather foolish, and that he had been saying very foolish things. But then he didn't care. He did not want to shine before her: she was the beacon of his hope.
"Perhaps," she said, looking up, "father might take us over next summer, or the summer after."
She looked up in his face again. It was desperately provoking.
"Or the summer after," thought Jerry, with a pang. "Does that girl sitting there, three feet away from me, and who doesn't think I care for her a bit, imagine for a moment that I am going to let her wander about all the earth with that respectable old gentleman, her father, till the crack of doom? Nonsense! She isn't a bit good-looking," he thought, looking down into her eyes, and when she lowered her eyes, gazing devoutly at her hat--"she isn't a bit good-looking--not half as good-looking as Edith, and Edith is no beauty. But still, I think, I'd feel excellently comfortable if the others would go away, and I might put my arm round her and try to persuade her that she was happy because I did so."
"You find Alfred almost quite well again?" asked Mrs. Paulton genially of Jerry.
"Oh, yes. He is almost as well as ever, and of course will be better than ever in a little while."
"A few whiffs of sea air will put me on my legs once more," said Alfred, with abounding cheerfulness. "I feel as if the very look of the sea would set me all right."
"You unfortunate devil!" thought Jerry. "Are you so bad as that? Oh, for the mind of one of those plaguey clowns! Falstaff was the only man who ever enjoyed life thoroughly--Falstaff and Raffaelle. What was the burden of flesh carried by Falstaff compared to this 'feather of lead!' What were all the jealousies which surrounded Raffaelle's career compared to my jealousy of the hat that touches her hair, or the glove that touches her cheek!"
"You will of course stay with us while you are in London," said Mrs. Paulton. "I told Alfred to be sure to say that we insisted upon your doing so, and the silly boy forgot it."
"Oh, he'll stay, mother," answered Alfred. "He'll stay with us while he's in London."
The invalid gave a glance at Jerry. The latter understood it to be an appeal for a very brief respite indeed from travelling. Jerry was in no small difficulty as to what he should say or how he should act. He would like to stop at Carlingford House a month, a year. Even a month was out of the question. But it was too bad that Alfred should be in such a violent hurry to go away. He believed Madge's brother had no suspicion that Madge was particularly dear to him. Still, common hospitality would scarcely allow a man to hurry a guest away from under his own roof after twenty-four hours' stay, particularly when that friend had come several hundred miles to do his host a good turn. No, hospitality would not allow a man to do it, but love would. He, Jerry, could not plead fatigue. That would be grotesque in a healthy young man. He would not lie and say he had business in London which would keep him a few days there, and yet it was shameful and ridiculous that after a whole month of separation he should be obliged to fly from her almost before he had time to get accustomed to the music of her voice. What delicious music it did make in his hungry ears! He would ask Alfred, without any explanation, if the day after to-morrow would not suit him quite as well as tomorrow.
He made a sign to Alfred, and the two young men passed through the folding doors into the front drawing-room. Here a bright fire burned. Alfred went to the fire--Jerry to the window. The latter looked out, started, and said slowly:
"Alfred, there's a visitor coming up the garden."
"All right," said Alfred without interest.
"And it's a woman."
"All right."
"And it's Mrs. Davenport."
"What!"
In a second Alfred was by Jerry's side.
Jerry laughed softly.
"All right?" he repeated in an interrogative voice.
Alfred's face blazed, but he did not speak or move.
Mrs. Davenport knocked at the front door, and was shown into the back drawing-room, where the ladies were sitting.
"I have come, Mrs. Paulton," she said, "to thank you and Mr. Paulton and your family for the great kindness you showed me in my trouble. I am afraid that at the time I was too intent on my own misfortunes to say as fully as I ought what I should have felt. Indeed, to be quite candid, I do not know exactly what I said to you or your husband, or exactly how I felt."
Mrs. Paulton went over to her, and took the hand of the widow. O'Brien and Paulton could hear and see everything going on in the back drawing-room, as they approached the folding-doors slowly.
"My dear Mrs. Davenport," said Mrs. Paulton gently, as she pressed the visitor's hand, "you must not think of the matter. We were, and are, deeply sorry for you, and our only feeling in the matter was one of regret at not having had an opportunity of being more useful."
This was true now. Both William Paulton and his wife were by the inquest perfectly satisfied Mrs. Davenport had for a while suffered from ugly suspicions because a crazy old husband had made away with his life in a perfectly mad manner, and without being in the least induced to the act by any fault of his wife. Every one agreed with the jury that it had been a case of suicide while suffering from temporary insanity.
Another thing greatly helped Mrs. Davenport into the good graces of the Paultons. After Blake's release he stayed in London, although Mrs. Davenport was away in France. Since the trial young Pringle had kept Alfred informed on all matters connected with the widow.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Paulton now felt as though they had done an absolute wrong to this woman, and Mrs. Paulton knew that her husband would be delighted to show her any civility or kindness he could. The husband and wife were, as their son had said, two of the kindest and most generous people in England.
Alfred and Jerry entered the back room. She held out her hand to the former, and thanked him for what he had done. She gave her hand to Jerry, and said, with a wan smile:
"I owe you an apology, Mr. O'Brien, for my rudeness to you when last we met."
"Rudeness! Mrs. Davenport!--your rudeness to me! I am shocked to hear you say such a thing. I am shocked to think you should have for a moment rested under so unpleasant an idea. Believe me, you were never anything but most polite and considerate to me."
Madge admired this speech of Jerry's, for it seemed to her very generous. She did not greatly admire Mrs. Davenport. She thought her too grand and cold and reserved. But she did not go as far as Edith, who positively disliked their visitor.
"I am quite clear as to my bad conduct," insisted Mrs. Davenport, with her wan smile. "When I met you in this house the day after the--the dreadful event, I did not speak to you, although I recognised you instantly."
"But, Mrs. Davenport, you don't for a moment imagine I did not realise how terribly you were tried just then?"
"It is very good of you to make such liberal allowances for my conduct, but I fear I did not deserve your generosity; and I am more than afraid, if you knew exactly how I felt, you would not be able to forgive me so readily. I suppose it was owing to the state of excitement I was in at the time that the moment I set eyes on you, Mr. O'Brien, I looked upon you as an enemy."
"An enemy--an enemy!" cried Jerry, in surprise and confusion. "What could have put such a notion into your mind?"
"I am sure I don't know," she answered, shaking her head slowly. "I experienced nothing but the greatest consideration from you and every one else here. I have since learned that I owe my introduction to Mr. Pringle to you--to you and Mr. Paulton," she added, looking gratefully at the young man.
Alfred coloured with delight and embarrassment. To see and hear her was delight enough to outweigh all the troubles he had yet known; but to feel that her voice and eyes were thanking and praising him was intoxicating.
She was dressed in complete widow's weeds. Her face was pale, placid, unwrinkled. Her dark eyebrows, dark eyes and lashes, and full red mouth afforded the only breaks in colour. All the rest was pale, delicate olive. The head had still the grand imperial carriage, the eye the same unflinching, haughty fearlessness. The full, red lips met closely, readily, at the clear, curved line, and parted easily, readily. Only hints of the superlative graces of the figure came through her heavy mantle. The hands lay clasped in suppliant ease in the lap. Now that she was free from commanding excitement, her voice drew attention to itself. The face and head, and the carriage and pose of the head, were full of authority and command; the figure full of feminine yielding gentleness. Now that the voice was unburdened by heavy emotions, it partook at one time of the nature of the head; at another of the nature of the figure. In giving thanks to Mrs. Paulton, it was slow, stately, gravely harmonious; in confessing her want of generosity to Jerry, it was low, soft, full, intensely sympathetic.
Her words had taken O'Brien quite aback. Was it divination, instinct, that told her he had been friendly only in externals, and that he owed her no particular goodwill? Or was it that she did not at the time of the fatal occurrence wish any one to be near who knew much of her former life? Could it be that if he had been absent from the inquest some of the unpleasant events preceding her marriage would not have been so nakedly exposed by either her or Blake? Who could tell? Not he, certainly.
He looked from Mrs. Davenport to Alfred, and mentally pitied him.
"I cannot wonder," he thought, "at his falling in love with her. If I were in his shoes, I don't know what might happen to me. Fortunately I am safe."
He glanced gratefully at Madge.
She could not understand exactly what he meant by his eyes; but she knew they were not eyes of disapproval or dislike, and so she looked down because she would have liked to look up.
A general and desultory talk was going on. Alfred felt quite well already. Notwithstanding his feeble state, he felt the strength of ten men against all the world. He felt towards her a worshipful tenderness he could not describe--did not want to describe, only wanted to enjoy. When one is sailing in the sun over a summer bay, who wants to analyse the light, and hear of the solar spectrum? When one is at the opera, who cares about the number of vibrations it takes to produce a certain note? When one is in love, who cares to analyse the charm? Delight is not so plentiful in the world that we need pick it to pieces. Alfred would not try to find out why he was supremely happy in her presence. His happiness was enough for him. Others might say what they pleased of her. All he would say was "Let me be near her."
Of the two friends, O'Brien was the more robust by far. His nature was sturdy, almost aggressive. He had a hatred of what he called "tinkering his opinions." He could be as straightforward and downright as any other man alive. He could stick to his opinions, and had a contempt for consequences. In manner he was a trifle arrogant. It was this feeling of independence and self-assertion which made him feel but slightly attracted towards Mrs. Davenport, and which often repelled him from her.
"If she were my wife," he thought, "there would be two masters in the house, and it would end in my throwing her out of a window--an act which would no doubt import unpleasantness into our household. And yet if she thought well of wheedling me, she could. A man could never be her husband. Davenport was her owner. If ever she marries again, it will be a master or a slave. Poor Alfred would make a fine master for such an Amazon! But it's downright brutal of me to call her an Amazon. After all, it would be a very terrible thing to be loved by that woman. I think if I were married to her, I'd rather she hated me and mastered me, always provided it was not I who went through that window. When you find yourself continually thinking of a woman you are not in love with, it's a bad sign of the woman, as a rule."
Alfred had been of service to her--service however slight--on the evening of that terrible catastrophe. He had seen her aidless, alone, helpless, dismayed. Her voice that night struck the keynote of the music she had awakened in his heart. To those who did not know her well--to those who had not seen her in difficulty and despair, her outward seeming might be one of command and victory. But he had found her distracted with horror, had lent her aid, and seen her relieved by his own act. He had, in however humble a way, played the part of protector. He had seen the feminine, the dependant side of her nature revealed. She might be stately, commanding, self-sufficient, imperious to others. To him she would always be the woman who once leaned upon his manhood. Her beauty, her grace, her commanding stateliness might draw other admirers to her side; to him the child-like helplessness of her womanhood lent the charm which could never die or fade away, and brought him more close to her heart than if he had sat and worshipped at her feet for years. He had been the donor of little in her distress; he would be the donor of all he had or could command in the world for her protection and peace.
While the ladies and the two young men were chatting soberly together, Mr. Paulton came in. He was unfeignedly delighted to see Mrs. Davenport. He had never been easy in his mind since that day she left his roof in the depth of her misery. Although she had gone away of her own free will and of her own independent initiative, he was unable to rid himself of the feeling that he expelled this woman from his roof when she most needed friendship and protection. She had come out of the ordeal of the trial purified, if purification were necessary; and public opinion, of which he stood in great respect, not only held him justified in the countenance he had given her, but applauded him loudly for his bold, open-handed help to a lonely woman in a strange place.
"And what are your plans for the future?" asked the old man in his most solicitous voice. "If I, or any of us, can be of the least service to you, I hope you will command us."
She thanked him sadly, and said that all which any one could do for her he had already done. She had gone to France for a short time to calm herself after the late excitement, but she could not content herself abroad.
"My life, Mr. Paulton, up to this, has been tempest-tossed, although little may have been seen of the disturbance. I am weary of strife, and yearn for quiet. Kilcash is not a very lively place, but it seems to me that I have within the past couple of months had enough of excitement to satisfy me for the rest of my time."
He smiled, and shook his head in gallant expostulation.
"No doubt," he said, "a little rest in your old home will be grateful and beneficial to you; but we must see you again. We have not so many friends that we can afford to lose you."
"I am a very new friend," she said sadly.
Alfred would have given ten years of his life to tell her she was dearer to them than all the other friends they had in the world. His father said:
"The depth of friendship is not to be measured by years only, or, indeed, chiefly. Some people have the faculty of making better friends in an hour than others can in a lifetime. We were brought together under most peculiar and distressing circumstances, and you have won all our love." He took her hand with paternal cordiality. "If we are so unfortunate as not to find a little place in your heart, it must be owing to some defect on our part--owing to the want in us of some faculty which could enlist your regard. It is not, I am sure, my dear madam, from any lack of desire to win your confidence and good will."
All this rather long and old-fashioned speech was said with a sweet, benevolent chivalry which would have silenced and abashed any one who felt disposed to regard it as too fine and elaborate for a drawing-room scene of our own day. "Bravo, sir!" cried Alfred. He was a good, affectionate son, and had always been on the best terms with his father; but he never felt absolutely proud of the old man before. He coloured with pleasure. This simple homage of the old man touched all--Mrs. Davenport herself--as something sacred. The tears stood in his wife's eyes. What a privilege it was to own the love and share the confidences of such a gentle and generous heart! "I am sure," said Mrs. Paulton, scarcely able to keep her tears back, "that you will always think of us as of old friends. I know you will make up out of your own goodness whatever you may find wanting in us."
Mrs. Paulton took the widow's other hand in both hers.
Mrs. Davenport opened her lips as if to speak, but no words came. Then slowly and mutely the tears formed in her eyes and fell down upon her black dress. Alfred and O'Brien withdrew into the front room and closed the folding doors; the two girls stole noiselessly away.
Mr. Paulton moved to the window. Mrs. Davenport's head gradually sank on her chest; she breathed heavily, and swayed slightly to and fro. She rose slowly.
"I must go now," she said.
"No, no; you must not. You must stay with us. You are too lonely."
She looked fearfully into the other woman's eyes.
"I have been alone since I was born, and I am afraid."
"Afraid of what?" asked Mrs. Paulton, anxiously.
She thought the fear must have some connection with the widow's recent trial.
"I am afraid of companionship."
Mrs. Paulton rose and stood before her guest, gazing wonderingly into the dark, fathomless, tearful eyes, now startled, looking as though they expected to see a strange, disturbing object.
"Come with me to my room." She nodded towards her husband. "We shall be quieter there."
"I cannot. I must get back. I am going"--a shudder--"home this evening."
Mr. Paulton turned round and said:
"You shall not go to-night. You must not leave us so soon. Go with my wife; she will comfort you. You have an hour between this and luncheon."
The beautiful woman raised her face.
"Forgive me, Mr. Paulton. I have as much hatred of anything like a scene as any one else, but I feel--I feel a bit broken--broken down. I am not so young as I look. I am thirty-four; but in all my life I have lived alone, within myself, and your kindness--the kindness of you and Mrs. Paulton has been too much for me. It may sound strange, but kindness is unkindness to me. I shall be better when I find myself alone once more. I am used to such companionship--none other. Good-bye."
He went to her, and took her again by the hand.
"Hush, child--hush! I will not have you leave us to-day. If we have been able to do a little for you, do you a little for us. Stay with us this one day, if no more--only this one day."
"No, no; I cannot. Good-bye."
"Wait!" he said, holding up his hand and approaching the folding doors that opened into the front room. "It is a long and lonely journey to the south of Ireland. Perhaps we can find you an escort--company." He passed into the front room. The two young men were seated at the window looking out on the little garden between the house and the road. "You re going to Ireland, to Kilcash, Alfred--when?"
"We were thinking of going soon, sir; but----"
He paused and looked at his friend. He knew his father well, and guessed that he had asked the lonely woman to stay with them for a while. His father had indeed said more than once he wished an opportunity of this kind might occur.
"Can you go to-morrow? Mrs. Davenport wants to go to-night; but if you can manage to go to-morrow she may be induced to stay to-night with us."
"We shall only be too happy, sir," said Alfred, turning away to hide his satisfaction.
"Very good. We shall say to-morrow evening," said the old man, as he withdrew into the back room and shut the doors. He went to where the two women stood. "It is all settled. We will not ask you to do too much for us this time. Mr. O'Brien and my son are starting for the south of Ireland to-morrow. They are going to the village near which you live--Kilcash--and will leave you at your own gate."
"Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Paulton going to Kilcash! Surely this is arranged for me--at the moment."
"No, indeed; it has been settled for weeks. You see"--he smiled, and imported some gaiety into his voice--"Fate is stronger than you. You would not ask them to set off at once--to-night? Mr. O'Brien arrived in London only last night, and I could not dream of asking him to start again for Ireland this evening. Besides, Alfred, I am sure, could not get ready in time, and you must not go alone. Take her upstairs now, Kate, and make her rest till luncheon. Take her away, Kate."
"But," she persisted, as Mrs. Paulton guided her reluctant steps to the door, "I am used to being alone."
"Not travelling alone. I must have my way this time."
"But I really am used to travelling alone."
"Then we must insist upon this being an exception. Now, we never allow any arguments in this house."
He opened the door for the two ladies. Mrs. Davenport shook her head mournfully, and suffered herself to be led out of the room by Mrs. Paulton.