CHAPTER XIX
The news of Rosanna's disappearance had, as it appeared, spread amongthe out-of-door servants. They too had made their inquiries; and theyhad just laid hands on a quick little imp, nicknamed "Duffy"--who wasoccasionally employed in weeding the garden, and who had seen RosannaSpearman as lately as half-an-hour since. Duffy was certain that thegirl had passed him in the fir-plantation, not walking, but RUNNING, inthe direction of the sea-shore.
"Does this boy know the coast hereabouts?" asked Sergeant Cuff.
"He has been born and bred on the coast," I answered.
"Duffy!" says the Sergeant, "do you want to earn a shilling? If you do,come along with me. Keep the pony-chaise ready, Mr. Betteredge, till Icome back."
He started for the Shivering Sand, at a rate that my legs (though wellenough preserved for my time of life) had no hope of matching. LittleDuffy, as the way is with the young savages in our parts when they arein high spirits, gave a howl, and trotted off at the Sergeant's heels.
Here again, I find it impossible to give anything like a clear accountof the state of my mind in the interval after Sergeant Cuff had leftus. A curious and stupefying restlessness got possession of me. I dida dozen different needless things in and out of the house, not one ofwhich I can now remember. I don't even know how long it was after theSergeant had gone to the sands, when Duffy came running back with amessage for me. Sergeant Cuff had given the boy a leaf torn out of hispocket-book, on which was written in pencil, "Send me one of RosannaSpearman's boots, and be quick about it."
I despatched the first woman-servant I could find to Rosanna's room; andI sent the boy back to say that I myself would follow him with the boot.
This, I am well aware, was not the quickest way to take of obeying thedirections which I had received. But I was resolved to see for myselfwhat new mystification was going on before I trusted Rosanna's boot inthe Sergeant's hands. My old notion of screening the girl, if I could,seemed to have come back on me again, at the eleventh hour. This stateof feeling (to say nothing of the detective-fever) hurried me off, assoon as I had got the boot, at the nearest approach to a run which a manturned seventy can reasonably hope to make.
As I got near the shore, the clouds gathered black, and the rain camedown, drifting in great white sheets of water before the wind. I heardthe thunder of the sea on the sand-bank at the mouth of the bay. Alittle further on, I passed the boy crouching for shelter under the leeof the sand hills. Then I saw the raging sea, and the rollers tumblingin on the sand-bank, and the driven rain sweeping over the waters like aflying garment, and the yellow wilderness of the beach with one solitaryblack figure standing on it--the figure of Sergeant Cuff.
He waved his hand towards the north, when he first saw me. "Keep on thatside!" he shouted. "And come on down here to me!"
I went down to him, choking for breath, with my heart leaping as ifit was like to leap out of me. I was past speaking. I had a hundredquestions to put to him; and not one of them would pass my lips. Hisface frightened me. I saw a look in his eyes which was a look of horror.He snatched the boot out of my hand, and set it in a footmark on thesand, bearing south from us as we stood, and pointing straight towardsthe rocky ledge called the South Spit. The mark was not yet blurred outby the rain--and the girl's boot fitted it to a hair.
The Sergeant pointed to the boot in the footmark, without saying a word.
I caught at his arm, and tried to speak to him, and failed as I hadfailed when I tried before. He went on, following the footsteps downand down to where the rocks and the sand joined. The South Spit was justawash with the flowing tide; the waters heaved over the hidden faceof the Shivering Sand. Now this way and now that, with an obstinatepatience that was dreadful to see, Sergeant Cuff tried the boot in thefootsteps, and always found it pointing the same way--straight TO therocks. Hunt as he might, no sign could he find anywhere of the footstepswalking FROM them.
He gave it up at last. Still keeping silence, he looked again at me; andthen he looked out at the waters before us, heaving in deeper and deeperover the quicksand. I looked where he looked--and I saw his thought inhis face. A dreadful dumb trembling crawled all over me on a sudden. Ifell upon my knees on the beach.
"She has been back at the hiding-place," I heard the Sergeant say tohimself. "Some fatal accident has happened to her on those rocks."
The girl's altered looks, and words, and actions--the numbed, deadenedway in which she listened to me, and spoke to me--when I had found hersweeping the corridor but a few hours since, rose up in my mind, andwarned me, even as the Sergeant spoke, that his guess was wide of thedreadful truth. I tried to tell him of the fear that had frozen me up. Itried to say, "The death she has died, Sergeant, was a death of her ownseeking." No! the words wouldn't come. The dumb trembling held me in itsgrip. I couldn't feel the driving rain. I couldn't see the rising tide.As in the vision of a dream, the poor lost creature came back before me.I saw her again as I had seen her in the past time--on the morning whenI went to fetch her into the house. I heard her again, telling methat the Shivering Sand seemed to draw her to it against her will, andwondering whether her grave was waiting for her THERE. The horror of itstruck at me, in some unfathomable way, through my own child. My girlwas just her age. My girl, tried as Rosanna was tried, might have livedthat miserable life, and died this dreadful death.
The Sergeant kindly lifted me up, and turned me away from the sight ofthe place where she had perished.
With that relief, I began to fetch my breath again, and to see thingsabout me, as things really were. Looking towards the sand-hills, I sawthe men-servants from out-of-doors, and the fisherman, named Yolland,all running down to us together; and all, having taken the alarm,calling out to know if the girl had been found. In the fewest words, theSergeant showed them the evidence of the footmarks, and told them thata fatal accident must have happened to her. He then picked out thefisherman from the rest, and put a question to him, turning about againtowards the sea: "Tell me," he said. "Could a boat have taken her off,in such weather as this, from those rocks where her footmarks stop?"
The fisherman pointed to the rollers tumbling in on the sand-bank, andto the great waves leaping up in clouds of foam against the headlands oneither side of us.
"No boat that ever was built," he answered, "could have got to herthrough THAT."
Sergeant Cuff looked for the last time at the foot-marks on the sand,which the rain was now fast blurring out.
"There," he said, "is the evidence that she can't have left this placeby land. And here," he went on, looking at the fisherman, "is theevidence that she can't have got away by sea." He stopped, andconsidered for a minute. "She was seen running towards this place, halfan hour before I got here from the house," he said to Yolland. "Sometime has passed since then. Call it, altogether, an hour ago. How highwould the water be, at that time, on this side of the rocks?" He pointedto the south side--otherwise, the side which was not filled up by thequicksand.
"As the tide makes to-day," said the fisherman, "there wouldn't havebeen water enough to drown a kitten on that side of the Spit, an hoursince."
Sergeant Cuff turned about northward, towards the quicksand.
"How much on this side?" he asked.
"Less still," answered Yolland. "The Shivering Sand would have been justawash, and no more."
The Sergeant turned to me, and said that the accident must have happenedon the side of the quicksand. My tongue was loosened at that. "Noaccident!" I told him. "When she came to this place, she came weary ofher life, to end it here."
He started back from me. "How do you know?" he asked. The rest of themcrowded round. The Sergeant recovered himself instantly. He put themback from me; he said I was an old man; he said the discovery had shakenme; he said, "Let him alone a little." Then he turned to Yolland, andasked, "Is there any chance of finding her, when the tide ebbs again?"And Yolland answered, "None. What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps forever." Having said that, the fisherman came a step nearer, and addresse
dhimself to me.
"Mr. Betteredge," he said, "I have a word to say to you about the youngwoman's death. Four foot out, broadwise, along the side of the Spit,there's a shelf of rock, about half fathom down under the sand. Myquestion is--why didn't she strike that? If she slipped, by accident,from off the Spit, she fell in where there's foothold at the bottom, ata depth that would barely cover her to the waist. She must have wadedout, or jumped out, into the Deeps beyond--or she wouldn't be missingnow. No accident, sir! The Deeps of the Quicksand have got her. And theyhave got her by her own act."
After that testimony from a man whose knowledge was to be relied on, theSergeant was silent. The rest of us, like him, held our peace. With oneaccord, we all turned back up the slope of the beach.
At the sand-hillocks we were met by the under-groom, running to us fromthe house. The lad is a good lad, and has an honest respect for me. Hehanded me a little note, with a decent sorrow in his face. "Penelopesent me with this, Mr. Betteredge," he said. "She found it in Rosanna'sroom."
It was her last farewell word to the old man who had done hisbest--thank God, always done his best--to befriend her.
"You have often forgiven me, Mr. Betteredge, in past times. When younext see the Shivering Sand, try to forgive me once more. I have foundmy grave where my grave was waiting for me. I have lived, and died, sir,grateful for your kindness."
There was no more than that. Little as it was, I hadn't manhood enoughto hold up against it. Your tears come easy, when you're young, andbeginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leavingit. I burst out crying.
Sergeant Cuff took a step nearer to me--meaning kindly, I don't doubt. Ishrank back from him. "Don't touch me," I said. "It's the dread of you,that has driven her to it."
"You are wrong, Mr. Betteredge," he answered, quietly. "But there willbe time enough to speak of it when we are indoors again."
I followed the rest of them, with the help of the groom's arm. Throughthe driving rain we went back--to meet the trouble and the terror thatwere waiting for us at the house.
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