by Grant Allen
Le Neve’s face showed his pleasure. “That’s well,” he answered, briskly. “Then you won’t be quite lost! I mean, there’ll be some chance at least when you go away from here of one’s seeing you sometimes.”
A bright red spot rose deep on Cleer’s cheek through the dark olive-brown skin. “How kind of you to say so,” she answered, looking down. “I’m sure mamma’ll be very pleased, indeed, if you’ll take the trouble to call.” Then, to hide her confusion, she went on hastily, “And are YOU going to be in England, too? I thought I understood the other day from your friend you had something to do with a railway in South America.”
“Oh, that’s all over now,” Le Neve answered, with a wave, well pleased she should ask him about his whereabouts so cordially. “I was only employed in the construction of the line, you know; I’ve nothing at all to do with its maintenance and working, and now the track’s laid, my work there’s finished. But as to stopping in England, — ah — that’s quite another thing. An engineer’s, you know, is a roving life. He’s here to-day and there to-morrow. I must go, I suppose, wherever work may take me. And there isn’t much stirring in the markets just now in the way of engineering.”
“I hope you’ll get something at home,” Cleer said, simply, with a blush, and then blamed herself for saying it. She blushed again at the thought. She looked prettiest when she blushed. Walter Tyrrel, a little behind, stood and admired her all the while. But Eustace was flattered she should think of wanting him to remain in England.
“Thank you,” he said, somewhat timidly, for her bashfulness made him a trifle bashful in return. “I should like to very much — for more reasons than one;” and he looked at her meaningly. “I’m getting tired, in some ways, of life abroad. I’d much prefer to come back now and settle down in England.”
Cleer rose as he spoke. His frank admiration made her feel self-conscious. She thought this conversation had gone quite far enough for them both for the present. After all, she knew so little of him, though he was really very nice, and he looked at her so kindly! But perhaps it would be better to go and hunt up papa. “I think I ought to be moving now,” she said, with a delicious little flush on her smooth, dark cheek. “My father’ll be waiting for me.” And she set her face across the moor in the opposite direction from the gate of Penmorgan.
“We may come with you, mayn’t we?” Eustace asked, with just an undertone of wistfulness.
But Tyrrel darted a warning glance at him. He, at least, couldn’t go to confront once more that poor dead boy’s father.
“I must hurry home,” he said, feebly, consulting his watch with an abstracted air. “It’s getting so late. But don’t let me prevent YOU from accompanying Miss Trevennack.”
Cleer shrank away, a little alarmed. She wasn’t quite sure whether it would be perfectly right for her to walk about alone on the moorland with only ONE young man, though she wouldn’t have minded the two, for there is safety in numbers. “Oh, no,” she said, half frightened, in that composite tone which is at once an entreaty and a positive command. “Don’t mind me, Mr. Le Neve. I’m quite accustomed to strolling by myself round the cliff. I wouldn’t make you miss your dinner for worlds. And besides, papa’s not far off. He went away from me, rambling.”
The two young men, accepting their dismissal in the sense in which it was intended, saluted her deferentially, and turned away on their own road. But Cleer took the path to Michael’s Crag, by the gully.
From the foot of the crag you can’t see the summit. Its own shoulders and the loose rocks of the foreground hide it. But Cleer was pretty certain her father must be there; for he was mostly to be found, when tide permitted it, perched up on the highest pinnacle of his namesake skerry, looking out upon the waters with a pre-occupied glance from that airy citadel. The waves in the narrow channel that separate the crag from the opposite mainland were running high and boisterous, but Cleer had a sure foot, and could leap, light as a gazelle, from rock to rock. Not for nothing was she Michael Trevennack’s daughter, well trained from her babyhood to high and airy climbs. She chose an easy spot where it was possible to spring across by a series of boulders, arranged accidentally like stepping-stones; and in a minute she was standing on the main crag itself, a huge beetling mass of detached serpentine pushed boldly out as the advance-guard of the land into the assailing waves, and tapering at its top into a pyramidal steeple.
The face of the crag was wet with spray in places; but Cleer didn’t mind spray; she was accustomed to the sea in all its moods and tempers. She clambered up the steep side — a sheer wall of bare rock, lightly clad here and there with sparse drapery of green sapphire, or clumps of purple sea-aster, rooted firm in the crannies. Its front was yellow with great patches of lichen, and on the peaks, overhead, the gulls perched, chattering, or launched themselves in long curves upon the evening air. Cleer paused half way up to draw breath and admire the familiar scene. Often as she had gone there before, she could never help gazing with enchanted eyes on those brilliantly colored pinnacles, on that deep green sea, on those angry white breakers that dashed in ceaseless assault against the solid black wall of rock all round her. Then she started once more on her climb up the uncertain path, a mere foothold in the crannies, clinging close with her tiny hands as she went to every jutting corner or weather-worn rock, and every woody stem of weather-beaten sea plants.
At last, panting and hot, she reached the sharp top, expecting to find Trevennack at his accustomed post on the very tallest pinnacle of the craggy little islet. But, to her immense surprise, her father wasn’t there. His absence disquieted her. Cleer stood up on the fissured mass of orange-lichened rock that crowned the very summit, dispossessing the gulls who flapped round her as she mounted it; then, shading her eyes with her hand, she looked down in every direction to see if she could descry that missing figure in some nook of the crag. He was nowhere visible. “Father!” she cried aloud, at the top of her voice; “father! father! father!” But the only answer to her cry was the sound of the sea on the base, and the loud noise of the gulls, as they screamed and fluttered in angry surprise over their accustomed breeding-grounds.
Alarmed and irresolute, Cleer sat down on the rock, and facing landwards for awhile, waved her handkerchief to and fro to attract, if possible, her father’s attention. Then she scanned the opposite cliffs, beyond the gap or chasm that separated her from the mainland; but she could nowhere see him. He must have forgotten her and gone home to dinner alone, she fancied now, for it was nearly seven o’clock. Nothing remained but to climb down again and follow him. It was getting full late to be out by herself on the island. And tide was coming in, and the surf was getting strong — Atlantic swell from the gale at sea yesterday.
Painfully and toilsomely she clambered down the steep path, making her foothold good, step by step, in the slippery crannies, rendered still more dangerous in places by the sticky spray and the brine that dashed over them from the seething channel. It was harder coming down, a good deal, than going up, and she was accustomed to her father’s hand to guide her — to fit her light foot on the little ledges by the way, or to lift her down over the steepest bits with unfailing tenderness. So she found it rather difficult to descend by herself — both difficult and tedious. At last, however, after one or two nasty slips, and a false step or so on the way that ended in her grazing the tender skin on those white little fingers, Cleer reached the base of the crag, and stood face to face with the final problem of crossing the chasm that divided the islet from the opposite mainland.
Then for the first time the truth was borne in upon her with a sudden rush that she couldn’t get back — she was imprisoned on the island. She had crossed over at almost the last moment possible. The sea now quite covered two or three of her stepping-stones; fierce surf broke over the rest with each advancing billow, and rendered the task of jumping from one to the other impracticable even for a strong and sure-footed man, far more for a slight girl of Cleer’s height and figure.
In a moment
the little prisoner took in the full horror of the situation. It was now about half tide, and seven o’clock in the evening. High water would therefore fall between ten and eleven; and it must be nearly two in the morning, she calculated hastily, before the sea had gone down enough to let her cross over in safety. Even then, in the dark, she dared hardly face those treacherous stepping-stones. She must stop there till day broke, if she meant to get ashore again without unnecessary hazard.
Cleer was a Trevennack, and therefore brave; but the notion of stopping alone on that desolate island, thronged with gulls and cormorants, in the open air, through all those long dark hours till morning dawned, fairly frightened and appalled her. For a minute or two she crouched and cowered in silence. Then, overcome by terror, she climbed up once more to the first platform of rock, above the reach of the spray, and shouted with all her might, “Father! father! father!”
But ’tis a lonely coast, that wild stretch by the Lizard. Not a soul was within earshot. Cleer sat there still, or stood on top of the crag, for many minutes together, shouting and waving her handkerchief for dear life itself; but not a soul heard her. She might have died there unnoticed; not a creature came near to help or deliver her. The gulls and the cormorants alone stared at her and wondered.
Meanwhile, tide kept flowing with incredible rapidity. The gale in the Atlantic had raised an unwonted swell; and though there was now little wind, the breakers kept thundering in upon the firm, sandy beach with a deafening roar that drowned Cleer’s poor voice completely. To add to her misfortunes, fog began to drift slowly with the breeze from seaward. It was getting dark too, and the rocks were damp. Overhead the gulls screamed loud as they flapped and circled above her.
In an agony of despair, Cleer sat down all unnerved on the topmost crag. She began to cry to herself. It was all up now. She knew she must stop there alone till morning.
CHAPTER VII.
PERIL BY LAND.
The Trevennacks dined in their lodgings at Gunwalloe at half-past seven. But in the rough open-air life of summer visitors on the Cornish coast, meals as a rule are very movable feasts; and Michael Trevennack wasn’t particularly alarmed when he reached home that evening to find Cleer hadn’t returned before him. They had missed one another, somehow, among the tangled paths that led down the gully; an easy enough thing to do between those big boulders and bramble-bushes; and it was a quarter to eight before Trevennack began to feel alarmed at Cleer’s prolonged absence. By that time, however, he grew thoroughly frightened; and, reproaching himself bitterly for having let his daughter stray out of his sight in the first place, he hurried back, with his wife, at the top of his speed along the cliff path to the Penmorgan headland.
It’s half an hour’s walk from Gunwalloe to Michael’s Crag; and by the time Trevennack reached the mouth of the gully the sands were almost covered; so for the first time in fifteen years he was forced to take the path right under the cliff to the now comparatively distant island, round whose base a whole waste of angry sea surged sullenly. On the way they met a few workmen who, in answer to their inquiries, could give them no news, but who turned back to aid in the search for the missing young lady. When they got opposite Michael’s Crag, a wide belt of black water, all encumbered with broken masses of sharp rock, some above and some below the surface, now separated them by fifty yards or more from the island. It was growing dark fast, for these were the closing days of August twilight; and dense fog had drifted in, half obliterating everything. They could barely descry the dim outline of the pyramidal rock in its lower half; its upper part was wholly shrouded in thick mist and drizzle.
With a wild cry of despair, Trevennack raised his voice, and shouted aloud, “Cleer, Cleer! where are you?”
That clarion voice, as of his namesake angel, though raised against the wind, could be heard above even the thud of the fierce breakers that pounded the sand. On the highest peak above, where she sat, cold and shivering, Cleer heard it, and jumped up. “Here! here! father!” she cried out, with a terrible effort, descending at the same time down the sheer face of the cliff as far as the dashing spray and fierce wild waves would allow her.
No other ear caught the sound of that answering cry; but Trevennack’s keen senses, preternaturally awakened by the gravity of the crisis, detected the faint ring of her girlish voice through the thunder of the surf. “She’s there!” he cried, frantically, waving his hands above his head. “She’s there! She’s there! We must get across and save her.”
For a second Mrs. Trevennack doubted whether he was really right, or whether this was only one of poor Michael’s hallucinations. But the next moment, with another cry, Cleer waved her handkerchief in return, and let it fall from her hand. It came, carried on the light breeze, and dropped in the water before their very eyes, half way across the channel.
Frenzied at the sight, Trevennack tore off his coat, and would have plunged into the sea, then and there, to rescue her. But the workmen held him back. “No, no, sir; you mustn’t,” they said. “No harm can’t come to the young lady if she stops there. She’ve only got to sit on them rocks there till morning, and the tide’ll leave her high and dry right enough, as it always do. But nobody couldn’t live in such a sea as that — not Tim o’ Truro. The waves ‘u’d dash him up afore he knowed where he was, and smash him all to pieces on the side o’ the island.”
Trevennack tried to break from them, but the men held him hard. Their resistance angered him. He chafed under their restraint. How dare these rough fellows lay hands like that on the Prince of the Archangels and a superior officer in Her Majesty’s Civil Service? But with the self-restraint that was habitual to him, he managed to refrain, even so, from disclosing his identity. He only struggled ineffectually, instead of blasting them with his hot breath, or clutching his strong arms round their bare throats and choking them. As he stood there and hesitated, half undecided how to act, of a sudden a sharp cry arose from behind. Trevennack turned and looked. Through the dark and the fog he could just dimly descry two men hurrying up, with ropes and life buoys. As they neared him, he started in unspeakable horror. For one of them, indeed, was only Eustace Le Neve; but the other — the other was that devil Walter Tyrrel, who, he felt sure in his own heart, had killed their dear Michael. And it was his task in life to fight and conquer devils.
For a minute he longed to leap upon him and trample him under foot, as long ago he had trampled his old enemy, Satan. What was the fellow doing here now? What business had he with Cleer? Was he always to be in at the death of a Trevennack?
But true to her trust, the silver-haired lady clutched his arm with tender watchfulness. “For Cleer’s sake, dear Michael!” she whispered low in his ear; “for Cleer’s sake — say nothing; don’t speak to him, don’t notice him!”
The distracted father drew back a step, out of reach of the spray. “But Lucy,” he cried low to her, “only think! only remember! If I cared to go on the cliff and just spread my wings, I could fly across and save her — so instantly, so easily!”
His wife held his hand hard. That touch always soothed him. “If you did, Michael,” she said gently, with her feminine tact, “they’d all declare you were mad, and had no wings to fly with. And Cleer’s in no immediate danger just now, I feel sure. Don’t try, there’s a dear man. That’s right! Oh, thank you.”
Reassured by her calm confidence, Trevennack fell back yet another step on the sands, and watched the men aloof. Walter Tyrrel turned to him. His heart was in his mouth. He spoke in short, sharp sentences. “The coastguard’s wife told us,” he said. “We’ve come down to get her off. I’ve sent word direct to the Lizard lifeboat. But I’m afraid it won’t come. They daren’t venture out. Sea runs too high, and these rocks are too dangerous.”
As he spoke, he tore off his coat, tied a rope round his waist, flung his boots on the sand, and girded himself rapidly with an inflated life-buoy. Then, before the men could seize him or prevent the rash attempt, he had dashed into the great waves that curled and thundered o
n the beach, and was struggling hard with the sea in a life and death contest. Eustace Le Neve held the rope, and tried to aid him in his endeavors. He had meant to plunge in himself, but Walter Tyrrel was beforehand with him. He was no match in a race against time for the fiery and impetuous Cornish temperament. It wasn’t long, however, before the breakers proved themselves more than equal foes for Walter Tyrrel. In another minute he was pounded and pummeled on the unseen rocks under water by the great curling billows. They seized him resistlessly on their crests, tumbled him over like a child, and dashed him, bruised and bleeding, one limp bundle of flesh, against the jagged and pointed summits of the submerged boulders.
With all his might, Eustace Le Neve held on to the rope; then, in coat and boots as he stood, he plunged into the waves and lifted Walter Tyrrel in his strong arms landward. He was a bigger built and more powerful man than his host, and his huge limbs battled harder with the gigantic waves. But even so, in that swirling flood, it was touch and go with him. The breakers lifted him off his feet, tossed him to and fro in their trough, flung him down again forcibly against the sharp-edged rocks, and tried to float off his half unconscious burden. But Le Neve persevered in spite of them, scrambling and tottering as he went, over wet and slippery reefs, with Tyrrel still clasped in his arms, and pressed tight to his breast, till he landed him safe at last on the firm sand beside him.
The squire was far too beaten and bruised by the rocks to make a second attempt against those resistless breakers. Indeed, Le Neve brought him ashore more dead than alive, bleeding from a dozen wounds on the face and hands, and with the breath almost failing in his battered body. They laid him down on the beach, while the fishermen crowded round him, admiring his pluck, though they deprecated his foolhardiness, for they “knowed the squire couldn’t never live ag’in it.” But Le Neve, still full of the reckless courage of youth, and health, and strength, and manhood, keenly alive now to the peril of Cleer’s lonely situation, never heeded their forebodings. He dashed in once more, just as he stood, clothes and all, in the wild and desperate attempt to stem that fierce flood and swim across to the island.
