“He wrote because he thought it was his duty,” the boy said doggedly.
“So you want to be a soldier,” Mr. Fentolin continued musingly. “Well, well, why not? Our picture galleries are full of them. There has been a Fentolin in every great battle for the last five hundred years. Sailors, too—plenty of them—and just a few diplomatists. Brave fellows! Not one, I fancy,” he added, “like me—not one condemned to pass their days in a perambulator. You are a fine fellow, Gerald—a regular Fentolin. Getting on for six feet, aren’t you?”
“Six feet two, sir.”
“A very fine fellow,” Mr. Fentolin repeated. “I am not so sure about the army, Gerald. You see, there are some people who say, like your American friend, that we are even now almost on the brink of war.”
“All the more reason for me to hurry,” the boy begged.
Mr. Fentolin closed his eyes.
“Don’t!” he insisted. “Have you ever stopped to think what war means—the war you speak of so lightly? The suffering, the misery of it! All the pageantry and music and heroism in front; and behind, a blackened world, a trail of writhing corpses, a world of weeping women for whom the sun shall never rise again. Ugh! An ugly thing war, Gerald. I am not sure that you are not better at home here. Why not practise golf a little more assiduously? I see from the local paper that you are still playing at two handicap. Now with your physique, I should have thought you would have been a scratch player long before now.”
“I play cricket, sir,” the boy reminded him, a little impatiently, “and, after all, there are other things in the world besides games.”
Mr. Fentolin’s long finger shot suddenly out. He was leaning a little from his chair. His expression of gentle immobility had passed away. His face was stern, almost stony.
“You have spoken the truth, Gerald,” he said. “There are other things in the world besides games. There is the real, the tragical side of life, the duties one takes up, the obligations of honour. You have not forgotten, young man, the burden you carry?”
The boy was paler, but he had drawn himself to his full height.
“I have not forgotten, sir,” he answered bitterly. “Do I show any signs of forgetting? Haven’t I done your bidding year by year? Aren’t I here now to do it?”
“Then do it!” Mr. Fentolin retorted sharply. “When I am ready for you to leave here, you shall leave. Until then, you are mine. Remember that. Ah! this is Doctor Sarson who comes, I believe. That must mean that it is five o’clock. Come in, Doctor. I am not engaged. You see, I am alone with my dear niece and nephew. We have been having a little pleasant conversation.”
Doctor Sarson bowed to Esther, who scarcely glanced at him. He remained in the background, quietly waiting.
“A very delightful little conversation,” Mr. Fentolin concluded. “I have been congratulating my nephew, Doctor, upon his wisdom in preferring the quiet country life down here to the wearisome routine of a profession. He escapes the embarrassing choice of a career by preferring to devote his life to my comfort. I shall not forget it. I shall not be ungrateful. I may have my faults, but I am not ungrateful. Run away now, both of you. Dear children you are, but one wearies, you know, of everything. I am going out. You see, the twilight is coming. The tide is changing. I am going down to meet the sea.”
His little carriage moved towards the door. The brother and sister passed out. Esther led Gerald into the great dining-room, and from there, through the open windows, out on to the terrace. She gripped his shoulder and pointed down to the Tower.
“Something,” she whispered in his ear, “is going to happen there.”
CHAPTER XI
Table of Contents
The little station at which Hamel alighted was like an oasis in the middle of a flat stretch of sand and marsh. It consisted only of a few raised planks and a rude shelter—built, indeed, for the convenience of St. David’s Hall alone, for the nearest village was two miles away. The station-master, on his return from escorting the young lady to her car, stared at this other passenger in some surprise.
“Which way to the sea?” Hamel asked.
The man pointed to the white gates of the crossing.
“You can take any of those paths you like, sir,” he said. “If you want to get to Salthouse, though, you should have got out at the next station.”
“This will do for me,” Hamel replied cheerfully.
“Be careful of the dikes,” the station-master advised him. “Some of them are pretty deep.”
Hamel nodded, and passing through the white gates, made his way by a raised cattle track towards the sea. On either side of him flowed a narrow dike filled with salt-water. Beyond stretched the flat marshland, its mossy turf leavened with cracks and creeks of all widths, filled also with sea-slime and sea-water. A slight grey mist rested upon the more distant parts of the wilderness which he was crossing, a mist which seemed to be blown in from the sea in little puffs, resting for a time upon the earth, and then drifting up and fading away like soap bubbles.
More than once where the dikes had overflown he was compelled to change his course, but he arrived at last at the little ridge of pebbled beach bordering the sea. Straight ahead of him now was that strange-looking building towards which he had all the time been directing his footsteps. As he approached it, his forehead slightly contracted. There was ample confirmation before him of the truth of his fellow-passenger’s words. The place, left to itself for so many years, without any attention from its actual owner, was neither deserted nor in ruins. Its solid grey stone walls were sea-stained and a trifle worn, but the arched wooden doors leading into the lifeboat shelter, which occupied one side of the building, had been newly painted, and in the front the window was hung with a curtain, now closely drawn, of some dark red material. The lock from the door had been removed altogether, and in its place was the aperture for a Yale latch-key. The last note of modernity was supplied by the telephone wire attached to the roof of the lifeboat shelter. He walked all round the building, seeking in vain for some other means of ingress. Then he stood for a few moments in front of the curtained window. He was a man of somewhat determined disposition, and he found himself vaguely irritated by the liberties which had been taken with his property. He hammered gently upon the framework with his fist, and the windows opened readily inwards, pushing back the curtain with them. He drew himself up on to the sill, and, squeezing himself through the opening, landed on his feet and looked around him, a little breathless.
He found himself in a simply furnished man’s sitting-room. An easel was standing close to the window. There were reams of drawing paper and several unfinished sketches leaning against the wall. There was a small oak table in the middle of the room; against the wall stood an exquisite chiffonier, on which were resting some cut-glass decanters and goblets. There was a Turkey carpet upon the floor which matched the curtains, but to his surprise there was not a single chair of any sort to be seen. The walls had been distempered and were hung with one or two engravings which, although he was no judge, he was quite sure were good. He wandered into the back room, where he found a stove, a tea-service upon a deal table, and several other cooking utensils, all spotlessly clean and of the most expensive description. The walls here were plainly whitewashed, and the floor was of hard stone. He then tried the door on the left, which led into the larger portion of the building—the shed in which the lifeboat had once been kept. Not only was the door locked, but he saw at once that the lock was modern, and the door itself was secured with heavy iron clamps. He returned to the sitting-room.
“The girl with the grey eyes was right enough,” he remarked to himself. “Mr. Fentolin has been making himself very much at home with my property.”
He withdrew the curtains, noticing, to his surprise, the heavy shutters which their folds had partly concealed. Then he made his way out along the passage to the front door, which from the inside he was able to open easily enough. Leaving it carefully ajar, he went out with the intention of making an
examination of the outside of the place. Instead, however, he paused at the corner of the building with his face turned landwards. Exactly fronting him now, about three-quarters of a mile away, on the summit of that strange hill which stood out like a gigantic rock in the wilderness, was St. David’s Hall. He looked at it steadily and with increasing admiration. Its long, red brick front with its masses of clustering chimneys, a little bare and weather-beaten, impressed him with a sense of dignity due as much to the purity of its architecture as the singularity of its situation. Behind—a wonderfully effective background—were the steep gardens from which, even in this uncertain light, he caught faint glimpses of colouring subdued from brilliancy by the twilight. These were encircled by a brick wall of great height, the whole of the southern portion of which was enclosed with glass. From the fragment of rock upon which he had seated himself, to the raised stone terrace in front of the house, was an absolutely straight path, beautifully kept like an avenue, with white posts on either side, and built up to a considerable height above the broad tidal way which ran for some distance by its side. It had almost the appearance of a racing track, and its state of preservation in the midst of the wilderness was little short of remarkable.
“This,” Hamel said to himself, as he slowly produced a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it with tobacco from a battered silver box, “is a queer fix. Looks rather like the inn for me!”
“And who might you be, gentleman?”
He turned abruptly around towards his unseen questioner. A woman was standing by the side of the rock upon which he was sitting, a woman from the village, apparently, who must have come with noiseless footsteps along the sandy way. She was dressed in rusty black, and in place of a hat she wore a black woolen scarf tied around her head and underneath her chin. Her face was lined, her hair of a deep brown plentifully besprinkled with grey. She had a curious habit of moving her lips, even when she was not speaking. She stood there smiling at him, but there was something about that smile and about her look which puzzled him.
“I am just a visitor,” he replied. “Who are you?”
She shook her head.
“I saw you come out of the Tower,” she said, speaking with a strong local accent and yet with a certain unusual correctness, “in at the window and out of the door. You’re a brave man.”
“Why brave?” he asked.
She turned her head very slowly towards St. David’s Hall. A gleam of sunshine had caught one of the windows, which shone like fire. She pointed toward it with her head.
“He’s looking at you,” she muttered. “He don’t like strangers poking around here, that I can tell you.”
“And who is he?” Hamel enquired.
“Squire Fentolin,” she answered, dropping her voice a little. “He’s a very kind-hearted gentleman, Squire Fentolin, but he don’t like strangers hanging around.”
“Well, I am not exactly a stranger, you see,” Hamel remarked. “My father used to stay for months at a time in that little shanty there and paint pictures. It’s a good many years ago.”
“I mind him,” the woman said slowly. “His name was Hamel.”
“I am his son,” Hamel announced.
She pointed to the Hall. “Does he know that you are here?”
Hamel shook his head. “Not yet. I have been abroad for so long.”
She suddenly relapsed into her curious habit. Her lips moved, but no words came. She had turned her head a little and was facing the sea.
“Tell me,” Hamel asked gently, “why do you come out here alone, so far from the village?”
She pointed with her finger to where the waves were breaking in a thin line of white, about fifty yards from the beach.
“It’s the cemetery, that,” she said, “the village cemetery, you know. I have three buried there: George, the eldest; James, the middle one; and David, the youngest. Three of them—that’s why I come. I can’t put flowers on their graves, but I can sit and watch and look through the sea, down among the rocks where their bodies are, and wonder.”
Hamel looked at her curiously. Her voice had grown lower and lower.
“It’s what you land folks don’t believe, perhaps,” she went on, “but it’s true. It’s only us who live near the sea who understand it. I am not an ignorant body, either. I was schoolmistress here before I married David Cox. They thought I’d done wrong to marry a fisherman, but I bore him brave sons, and I lived the life a woman craves for. No, I am not ignorant. I have fancies, perhaps—the Lord be praised for them!—and I tell you it’s true. You look at a spot in the sea and you see nothing—a gleam of blue, a fleck of white foam, one day; a gleam of green with a black line, another; and a grey little sob, the next, perhaps. But you go on looking. You look day by day and hour by hour, and the chasms of the sea will open, and their voices will come to you. Listen!”
She clutched his arm.
“Couldn’t you hear that?” she half whispered.
“‘The light!’ It was David’s voice! ‘The light!’” Hamel was speechless. The woman’s face was suddenly strangely transformed. Her mood, however, swiftly changed. She turned once more towards the hall.
“You’ll know him soon,” she went on, “the kindest man in these parts, they say. It’s not much that he gives away, but he’s a kind heart. You see that great post at the entrance to the river there?” she went on, pointing to it. “He had that set up and a lamp hung from there. Fentolin’s light, they call it. It was to save men’s lives. It was burning, they say, the night I lost my lads. Fentolin’s light!”
“They were wrecked?” he asked her gently.
“Wrecked,” she answered. “Bad steering it must have been. James would steer, and they say that he drank a bit. Bad steering! Yes, you’ll meet Squire Fentolin before long. He’s queer to look at—a small body but a great, kind heart. A miserable life, his, but it will be made up to him. It will be made up to him!”
She turned away. Her lips were moving all the time. She walked about a dozen steps, and then she returned.
“You’re Hamel’s son, the painter,” she said. “You’ll be welcome down here. He’ll have you to stay at the Hall—a brave place. Don’t let him be too kind to you. Sometimes kindness hurts.”
She passed on, walking with a curious, shambling gait, and soon she disappeared on her way to the village. Hamel watched her for a moment and then turned his head towards St. David’s Hall. He felt somehow that her abrupt departure was due to something which she had seen in that direction. He rose to his feet. His instinct had been a true one.
CHAPTER XII
Table of Contents
From where Hamel stood a queer object came strangely into sight. Below the terrace of St. David’s Hall—from a spot, in fact, at the base of the solid wall—it seemed as though a gate had been opened, and there came towards him what he at first took to be a tricycle. As it came nearer, it presented even a weirder appearance. Mr. Fentolin, in a black cape and black skull cap, sat a little forward in his electric carriage, with his hand upon the guiding lever. His head came scarcely above the back of the little vehicle, his hands and body were motionless. He seemed to be progressing without the slightest effort, personal or mechanical, as though he rode, in deed, in some ghostly vehicle. From the same place in the wall had issued, a moment or two later, a man upon a bicycle, who was also coming towards him. Hamel was scarcely conscious of this secondary figure. His eyes were fixed upon the strange personage now rapidly approaching him. There was something which seemed scarcely human in that shrunken fragment of body, the pale face with its waving white hair, the strange expression with which he was being regarded. The little vehicle came to a standstill only a few feet away. Mr. Fentolin leaned forward. His features had lost their delicately benevolent aspect; his words were minatory.
“I am under the impression, sir,” he said, “that I saw you with my glasses from the window attempting to force an entrance into that building.”
Hamel nodded.
“I not on
ly tried but I succeeded,” he remarked. “I got in through the window.”
Mr. Fentolin’s eyes glittered for a moment. Hamel, who had resumed his place upon the rock close at hand, had been mixed up during his lifetime in many wild escapades. Yet at that moment he had a sudden feeling that there were dangers in life which as yet he had not faced.
“May I ask for your explanation or your excuse?”
“You can call it an explanation or an excuse, whichever you like,” Hamel replied steadily, “but the fact is that this little building, which some one else seems to have appropriated, is mine. If I had not been a good-natured person, I should be engaged, at the present moment, in turning out its furniture on to the beach.”
“What is your name?” Mr. Fentolin asked suddenly.
“My name is Hamel—Richard Hamel.”
For several moments there was silence. Mr. Fentolin was still leaning forward in his strange little vehicle. The colour seemed to have left even his lips. The hard glitter in his eyes had given place to an expression almost like fear. He looked at Richard Hamel as though he were some strange sea-monster come up from underneath the sands.
“Richard Hamel,” he repeated. “Do you mean that you are the son of Hamel, the R.A., who used to be in these parts so often? He was my brother’s friend.”
“I am his son.”
“But his son was killed in the San Francisco earthquake. I saw his name in all the lists. It was copied into the local papers here.”
Hamel knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“I take a lot of killing,” he observed. “I was in that earthquake, right enough, and in the hospital afterwards, but it was a man named Hamel of Philadelphia who died.”
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