Thereby Hangs a Tale. Volume One

“Yes,” said Mervyn; “but had you not better get some legal advice?”

“What for?” said Richard. “Can anything be plainer? As I said, Mr Trevor’s will be a peculiar position. He will be the mark of the designing, and he will need a staunch friend at his side. Will you be that friend?”

“I will,” said Mervyn, wringing his hand. “Yours too, my dear fellow, if you’ll let me. But,” he added, in a whisper, “Miss Rea?”

A spasm of pain shot across Richard’s face, and he was about to speak when Humphrey turned to him.

“Master Richard,” he said, in a husky voice, “we was boys together, and played together almost like brothers. This here comes to me stunning, like. You say it’s mine. Well, it aint my fault. I don’t want it. Keep it all, if you like; if not, let’s share and share alike.”

The last words fell on empty air, for Richard had waved his hand to both, and hurried out of the room.

That evening, with beating heart, he walked towards Tolcarne gates. He had been busy amongst his papers, tearing up and making ready for that which he had to do on the morrow; and now, more agitated than he would own, he sought the lane where so many happy hours had been spent to see if Tiny Rea would grant him the interview he had written to ask for, that he might say good-bye.

It was a soft, balmy night, and the stars seemed to look sadly down through the trees as he leaned against a mass of lichen-covered granite, pink here and there with the pretty stonecrop of the place, waiting, for she was behind time.

“Will she come,” he said, “now that I am a beggar without a shilling, save that which I could earn? Oh, shame! shame! shame! How could I doubt her?”

No, he would not doubt her; she could not have cared about his money. She was too sweet and loving and gentle. And what should he say – wait? No, he dared not. He could only – only – leave her free, that she might —

“Oh, my darling!” he groaned; and he laid his broad forehead upon the hard, rugged stone, weeping now like a child.

The clouds came across the sky, blotting out one by one the glistening stars; a chilly mist swept along the valley from the sea, and all around was dark and cold as the future of his blasted life. For the minutes glided into hours, and she came not – came not to say one gentle, loving word – one God-speed to send him on his way; and at last, heart-broken, he staggered to the great floral gate, held the chilly rails, kissed the iron, and gazed with passionate longing up at the now darkened house, and then walked slowly away, stunned by the violence of his grief.

The wind was rising fast, and coming in heavy soughs from off the sea. As he reached the lodge gates at Penreife he paused, staring before him in a helpless way, till a heavy squall smote him, and with it a sharp shower of rain, whose drops seemed to cool his forehead and rouse him to action.

Starting off, with great strides, he took the short cut, and made for the sea, where the fields ended suddenly, their short, thyme-scented grass seeming to have been cut where there was a fall of full four hundred feet, down past a rugged, piled-up wall of granite, to the white-veined rock, polished by the restless sea below. To any one unaccustomed to the coast a walk there on a dark night meant death, either by mutilation on the cruel rocks, always seeming to be studded with great gouts of crimson blood, where the sea anemones clung in hundreds, or else by drowning in the deep, clear water, when the tide was up, and the waves played amidst the long, chocolate strands of fucus and bladder-wrack, waving to and fro.

It was going to be a wild night, but it seemed in keeping with the chaos of his mind. Far out on the sea, softly rising to and fro in the thick darkness, were the lights of the fishing-boats, as a score or so lay drifting with their herring-nets; and in his heart there was not a rough fisher there whose lot he did not envy.

“And she could not come!” he groaned, as he stood there, with bare head. “Oh, my love – my love! To go without one gentle word, far, far away, and but yesterday so happy!”

The wind increased in force, and, with the gathering strength of the tide, the waves came rushing in, to beat in thunder against the rocks far beneath his feet; and then, with a rush, the fine salt spray was whirled up, and swept in his face, as he gazed straight out to sea.

At another time he might have shuddered, standing thus upon the edge of that great cliff, with – just dimly seen in its more intense blackness – the rugged headland that stretched like a buttress into the sea upon his left. But now the horrors of the place seemed welcome, and he felt, as a smile came on his dripping features, that it would be pleasant to leap from where he stood right off at once into oblivion.

It seemed so easy, such a quiet way of getting rest from the turmoil and trouble of the future, that the feeling seemed to grow upon him.

“No,” he said at last; “that would be a coward’s end. I’ve done one brave thing to-day; and now, old friend, you shall have me again to toss upon your waves, but it shall be as your master, not as a slave.”

As he spoke he raised his hands and stretched them out, when he heard a hoarse cry behind him, and as he sharply turned and stepped back, something seemed to come out of the darkness, seize him by the throat, and the next moment he was over the cliff, suspended above eternity.

Then there was an awful silence, only broken by the roar, thud, and hiss of the waves below, as they rushed in, broke upon the rocks, and then fled back in foamy spray.

Richard’s fingers were dug into the short, velvet turf, and he hung there, with his legs rigid, afraid to move, and wondering whether those were friendly or inimical hands that clutched his throat. It seemed an age of horror before the silence was broken, and then came a panting voice, which he knew as Humphrey’s, to sob, as it were, in his ear —

“Master Dick, don’t be scar’d. I’ve got you tight, but I can’t move. Get your nerve, and then shift your hands one at a time to me.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Richard did so, with the damp gathering on his brow the while.

“That’s brave, sir. Now get your toes in the cracks of the granite somewhere – gently, don’t hurry – I won’t let go, though I can’t move.”

Richard obeyed, drew himself up an inch, then another, and another, felt that he was saved – then made a slip, and all seemed over, but Humphrey held to him with all his strength, and once more Richard tried, tearing hands and knees with the exertion, till he got his chest above the cliff edge, then was halfway up, and crawled safely on, to fall over panting on his side.

“Quick, Master Richard, your hand!” shouted Humphrey.

And the saved had to turn saver, for the keeper had been drawn closer and closer to the edge by Richard’s efforts, and but for a sudden snatch, and the exercise of all his strength, the new owner of Penreife would have glided off the slippery grass into the darkness beneath.

“Safe,” muttered Humphrey, rising. “Give me your hand, Master Richard. I thought, when I followed you, you meant to leap off.”

“No, Humphrey,” said Richard, sadly, “I will not throw my worthless life away. It is such glimpses of death as that we have just seen that teach the value of life. Goodnight; don’t speak to me again.”

Humphrey obeyed, and followed him in silence to the house.

The next morning, as soon as the letters had been brought in, Richard took his – a single one – and, without a word to a soul, carried a small portmanteau to the stable-yard, waited while the horse was put to, and then had himself driven off.

As he passed the lodge a note was put into his hand by a boy. An hour later he was in the train, and the destination of that train was the big metropolis, where most men come who mean to begin afresh.

Correspondence

It never struck Richard that some of his behaviour was verging on the Quixotic. His only thought now was that he was degraded from his high estate, and that the woman whom he had loved with all his heart – did love still – had turned from him in his poverty and distress.

At such times men are not disposed to fairly analyse the motives of others; and Richard was anything but an unbiased judge, as he knit his brow, told himself that he had the fight to begin now, and determined to take help from no one who had known him in his prosperity.

With this feeling strong upon him he dismissed the man who had driven him over; and, to the utter astonishment of the Saint Kitt’s station-master, took a third-class ticket for London, and entered a compartment wherein were a soldier with a bottle, a sailor just landed, an old lady with several bundles, bound on a visit to her boy in London – a gentleman, she informed everybody, who kept a public – and the customary rural third-class passengers.

And then the long, dreary journey began, Richard making up his mind to suit himself to the company amongst whom he was thrown, and failing dismally; for both soldier and sailor, whose idea of enjoyment seemed to be that they must get hopelessly intoxicated as soon as possible, took it as an offence that he would not “take a pull” of rum out of the bottle belonging to the son of Neptune, and of gin from that of the son of Mars.

To make up for this, Richard tried to be civil to a couple of rustic lasses, who received all his little bits of matter-of-fact politeness and conversation with giggles and glances at a young Devonian in the corner of the carriage, till his brickdust-coloured visage became the colour of one of his own ruddy ploughed fields, and he announced that “for zigzpence he’d poonch that chap’s yed.”

Hereupon the old lady with the bundles loudly proclaimed a wish that her “zun” was there; and ended by hoping that, if “this young man” (meaning Richard) intended to make himself unpleasant, he would go into another carriage.

It was hard – just at a time, too, when Richard’s temper seemed to be angular and sore – when the slightest verbal touch made him wince. But he set his teeth, bore a good deal of vulgar banter with patience, and was able to compliment himself grimly for his forbearance during the long ride along that single line of Cornish railway that is one incessant series of scaffold-like viaducts, over some of the most charming little valleys in our isle.

After passing Plymouth, the old lady became so sociable that she dropped asleep against our traveller. The rustics had given place to a tall traveller; and the soldier and sailor grew hilariously friendly after replenishing their bottles at Plymouth. And so, fighting hard to put the past in its proper place – behind – the train bore Richard onward to his goal.

Just before nearing Paddington Station, Trevor took out his pocket-book, and the rugged, hard look upon his face was softened. He glanced round the compartment, to see that half his fellow-passengers were asleep, the soldier drunk, the stout old lady with the bundles busy hunting for her railway ticket, and the sailor disconsolately trying to drain a little more rum out of his bottle.

By this time Trevor had grown weary of the long journey – so tedious on the hard third-class seats – in spite of his determination; and a sigh would once or twice escape, as recollections of his old first-class luxury intruded.

“I’ll hold to it, though,” he muttered.

And, determined to go on in his course, he opened his pocket-book, and drew from it a letter which he had received from Tolcarne. It was not long, but it sent the blood dancing through his veins, and nerved him for the fight to come. It ran as follows: —

“Dearest Dick – What shall I say to you in this your great trouble? Can I say more than that I would give anything to be by your side, to try and advise – at all events, to try and help and comfort? Papa was very angry when your letter came, and read it to Aunt Matty; but let that pass, as I tell you only, Dick, that you have a friend in dear mamma, who stood up for you as nobly as did darling little Fin, who had been in unaccountably low spirits before. I tried so hard, Dick, to come to you – to answer your letter and scold you; but they would not let me stir. I dare not tell you what they said; you must guess when I tell you that I was a dreadfully disobedient child, and Aunt Matty declared that no good could ever come to a girl who set herself up in opposition to her father and aunt. Poor dear mamma was left out of it altogether. I say all this, Dick, for fear you should think I fell away from you in your trouble, and would not come to you as you wished; but my heart was with you all the time. And now, Dick, darling, to be more matter-of-fact, what is all this to us? You could not help it; and whether you are Richard Trevor or Richard Lloyd by name, how does it alter you in the eyes of her to whom you said so much? Dick, you don’t know me, or you would never have sent me that cruel letter, so full of your dreadful determination. Oh, Dick, do you think – can you think – I wish to be free? You taught me to love you, and you cannot undo your work. For shame, to write in that desponding tone because of this accident. It was very wicked and dreadful of Mrs Lloyd, but you could not help it; and now you have so nobly determined to make restitution to poor Humphrey, let it all go. My Dick only stands out more nobly than ever. You have your profession, sir – go back to that, and they will only be too proud to have you; but don’t go long voyages, or where there are storms. I lay awake all night listening to the wind, and thinking how thankful I ought to be that you were ashore, Dick, and all the time I felt prouder than ever of my own boy. Oh, Dick, never talk to me of freedom! Nothing can make me change. Even if I saw with my own poor little crying eyes that you cared for me no more, I could not leave off loving; and, dear Dick – dearest Dick – don’t think me bold and unmaidenly if I say now what I should not have dared to say if you had not been in trouble – Dick, recollect this – that there is some one waiting your own time, when, rich or poor, you shall ask her to come to you, when and where you will, and she will be your own little wife – Tiny.

“P.S. – Pin has looked over my shoulder, and read all this as I wrote it; and she says it is quite right, besides sending her dear love to brother Dick.”

Trevor’s forehead went down on his hands as he finished, his face was very pale, and a strange look was in his eyes as he re-perused the note.