by Grant Allen
“No sir,” the guard answered, touching his hat with marked respect, for he knew the Admiralty official well. “Signals are against us. Line’s blocked as far as Plymouth.”
“I’ll get out here, then,” Trevennack said, in haste; and the guard opened the door. A new idea had rushed suddenly into the madman’s head. This was St. Michael’s Day — his own day; and there was St. Michael’s Tor — his own tor — full in sight before him. He would go up there this very evening, and before the eyes of all the world, in his celestial armor, taking Lucy’s advice, do battle with and quell this fierce devil within him.
No sooner thought than done. Fiery hot within, he turned out of the gate, and as the shades of autumn evening began to fall, walked swiftly up the moor toward the tor and the uplands.
As he walked his heart beat to a lilting rhythm within him. “Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince! — Go, Michael! — Go, Michael! Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince — Go, Michael! — Go, Michael!”
The moor was draped in fog. It was a still, damp evening. Swirling clouds rose slowly up, and lifted at times and disclosed the peaty hollows, the high tors, the dusky heather. But Trevennack stumbled on, o’er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, as chance might lead him, clambering ever toward his goal, now seen, now invisible — the great stack of wild rock that crowned the gray undulating moor to northward. Often he missed his way; often he floundered for awhile in deep ochreous bottoms, up to his knees in soft slush, but with some strange mad instinct he wandered on nevertheless, and slowly drew near the high point he was aiming at.
By this time it was pitch dark. The sun had set and fog obscured the starlight. But Trevennack, all on fire, wandered madly forward and scaled the rocky tor by the well-known path, guided not by sight, but by pure instinctive groping. In his present exalted state, indeed, he had no need of eyes. What matters earthly darkness to angelic feet? He could pick his own way through the gloom, though all the fiends from hell in serried phalanx broke loose to thwart him. He would reach the top at last; reach the top; reach the top, and there fight that old serpent who lay in wait to destroy him. At last he gained the peak, and stood with feet firmly planted on the little rocky platform. Now, Satan, come on! Ha, traitor, come, if you dare! Your antagonist is ready for you!
Cr’r’r’k! as he stood there, waiting, a terrible shock brought him to himself all at once with startling suddenness. Trevennack drew back aghast and appalled. Even in his mad exaltation this strange assault astonished him. He had expected a struggle, indeed; he had expected a conflict, but with a spiritual foe; to meet his adversary in so bodily a form as this, wholly startled and surprised him. For it was a fierce earthly shock he received upon his right leg as he mounted the rocky platform. Satan had been lying in wait for him then, expecting him, waylaying him, and in corporeal presence too. For this was a spear of good steel! This was a solid Thing that assaulted him as he rose — assaulted him with frantic rage and uncontrollable fury!
For a moment Trevennack was stunned — the sharpness of the pain and the suddenness of the attack took both breath and sense away from him. He stood there one instant, irresolute, before he knew how to comport himself. But before he could make up his mind — cr’r’k, a second time — the Presence had assailed him again, fighting with deadly force, and in a white heat of frenzy. Trevennack had no leisure to think what this portent might mean. Man or fiend, it was a life-and-death struggle now between them. He stood face to face at last in mortal conflict with his materialized enemy. What form the Evil Thing had assumed to suit his present purpose Trevennack knew not, nor did he even care. Stung with pain and terror he rushed forward blindly upon his enraged assailant, and closed with him at once, tooth and nail, in a deadly grapple.
A more terrible battle man and brute never fought. Trevennack had no sword, no celestial panoply. But he could wrestle like a Cornishman. He must trample his foe under foot, then, in this final struggle, by sheer force of strong thews and strained muscles alone. He fought the Creature as it stood, flinging his arms round it wildly. The Thing seemed to rear itself as if on cloven hoofs. Trevennack seized it round the waist, and grasping it hard in an iron grip, clung to it with all the wild energy of madness. Yield, Satan, yield! But still the Creature eluded him. Once more it drew back a pace — he felt its hot breath, he smelt its hateful smell — and prepared to rush again at him. Trevennack bent down to receive its attack, crouching. The Creature burst full tilt on him — it almost threw him over. Trevennack caught it in his horror and awe — caught it bodily by the horns — for horned it seemed to be, as well as cloven-footed — and by sheer force of arm held it off from him an elbow’s length one minute. The Thing struggled and reared again. Yes, yes, it was Satan — he felt him all over now — a devil undisguised — but Satan rather in medieval than in Miltonic fashion. His skin was rough and hairy as a satyr’s; his odor was foul; his feet were cleft; his horns sharp and terrible. He flung him from him horrified.
Quick as lightning the demon rose again, and tilted fiercely at him once more. It was a death fight between those two for that rocky platform. Should Satan thus usurp St. Michael’s Tor? Ten thousand times, no! Yield, yield! No surrender! Each knew the ground well, and even in the dark and in the mad heat of the conflict, each carefully avoided the steep edge of the precipice. But the fiend knew it best, apparently. He had been lying in a snug nook, under lee of a big rock, sharpening his sword on its side, before Trevennack came up there. Against this rock he took his stand, firm as a rock himself, and seemed to defy his enemy’s arms to dislodge him from his position.
Trevennack’s hands and legs were streaming now with blood. His left arm was sorely wounded. His thumb hung useless. But with the strange energy of madness he continued the desperate conflict against his unseen foe. Never should Michael turn and yield to the deadly assaults of the Evil One! He rushed on blindly once more, and the Adversary stooped to oppose him. Again, a terrible shock, it almost broke both his knees; but by sheer strength of nerve he withstood it, still struggling. Then they closed in a final grapple. It was a tooth-and-nail conflict. They fought one another with every weapon they possessed; each hugged each in their fury; they tilted, and tore, and wrestled, and bit, and butted.
Trevennack’s coat was in ribbons, his arm was ripped and bleeding; but he grasped the Adversary still, he fought blindly to the end. Down, Satan, I defy thee!
It was a long, fierce fight! At last, bit by bit, the Enemy began to yield. Trevennack had dashed him against the crag time after time like a log, till he too was torn and hurt and bleeding. His flesh was like pulp. He could endure the unequal fight no longer. He staggered and gave way. A great joy rose up tremulous in Trevennack’s heart. Even without his celestial sword, then, he had vanquished his enemy. He seized the Creature round the middle, dragged it, a dead weight, in his weary arms, to the edge of the precipice, and dropped it, feebly resisting, on to the bare rock beneath him.
Victory! Victory! Once more, a great victory!
He stood on the brink of the tor, and poised himself, as if for flight, in his accustomed attitude. But he was faint from loss of blood, and his limbs shook under him.
A light seemed to break before his blinded eyes. Victory! Victory! It was the light from heaven! He stared forward to welcome it. The brink of the precipice? What was THAT to such as he? He would spread his wings — for once — at last — thus! thus! and fly forward on full pinions to his expected triumph!
He raised both arms above his head, and spread them out as if for flight. His knees trembled fearfully. His fingers quivered. Then he launched himself on the air and fell. His eyes closed half-way. He lost consciousness. He fainted. Before he had reached the bottom he was wholly insensible.
Next day it was known before noon in London that a strange and inexplicable accident had befallen Mr. Michael Trevennack C.M.G., the well-known Admiralty official, on the moor near Ivybridge. Mr. Trevennack, it seemed, had started by the Cornish express for Fal
mouth, on official business; but the line being blocked between Ivybridge and Plymouth, he had changed his plans and set out to walk, as was conjectured, by a devious path across the moor to Tavistock. Deceased knew the neighborhood well, and was an enthusiastic admirer of its tors and uplands. But fog coming on, the unfortunate gentleman, it was believed, had lost his way, and tried to shelter himself for a time behind a tall peak of rock which he used frequently to visit during his summer holidays. There he was apparently attacked by a savage moorland ram — one of that wild breed of mountain sheep peculiar to Dartmoor, and famous for the strength and ferocity often displayed by the fathers of the flock. Mr. Trevennack was unarmed, and a terrible fight appeared to have taken place between these ill-matched antagonists on the summit of the rocks, full details of which, the Telegram said in its curt business-like way, were too ghastly for publication. After a long and exhausting struggle, however, the combatants must either have slipped on the wet surface and tumbled over the edge of the rocks together in a deadly grapple, or else, as seemed more probable from the positions in which the bodies were found, the unhappy gentleman had just succeeded in flinging his assailant over, and then, faint from loss of blood, had missed his footing and fallen beside his dead antagonist. At any rate, when the corpse was discovered life had been extinct for several hours; and it was the opinion of the medical authorities who conducted the post-mortem that death was due not so much to the injuries themselves as to asphyxiation in the act of falling.
* * *
The jury found it “Death from accidental circumstances.” Cleer never knew more than that her father had met his end by walking over the edge of a cliff on Dartmoor.
* * *
But when the body came home for burial, Dr. Yate-Westbury looked in by Mrs. Trevennack’s special request, and performed an informal and private examination of the brain and nervous system. At the close of the autopsy he came down to the drawing-room where the silver-haired lady sat pale and tearful, but courageous. “It is just as I thought,” he said; “a clot of blood, due to external injury, has pressed for years above the left frontal region, causing hallucinations and irregularities of a functional character only. You needn’t have the slightest fear of its proving hereditary. It’s as purely accidental as a sprain or a wound. Your daughter, Mrs. Le Neve, couldn’t possibly suffer for it.”
And neither Cleer nor Le Neve nor anyone else ever shared that secret of Trevennack’s delusions with his wife and the doctor.
The Scallywag
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLIII.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CHAPTER XLV.
CHAPTER XLVI.
CHAPTER XLVII.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
CHAPTER XLIX.
CHAPTER L.
CHAPTER LI.
CHAPTER LII.
CHAPTER I.
IN WINTER QUARTERS.
“FOR my part,” said Armitage, “I call him a scallywag.”
“What’s a scallywag?” Nea Blair asked, looking up at him from her seat with inquiring wonder.
Armitage paused a moment, and perused his boots. It’s so hard on a fellow to be pounced upon like that for a definition offhand. “Well, a scallywag,” he answered, leaning his back for moral support against the big eucalyptus tree beside which he stood, “a scallywag, I should say, well — well, is — why, he’s the sort of man, you know, you wouldn’t like to be seen walking down Piccadilly with.”
“Oh, I see,” Nea exclaimed, with a bright little laugh. “You mean, if you were walking down Piccadilly, yourself, in a frock coat and shiny tall hat, with an orchid from Bull’s stuck in your buttonhole! Then I think, Mr. Armitage, I rather like scallywags.”
Mme. Ceriolo brought her eyes (and eyeglasses) back from space, where they had been firmly fixed on a point in the heavens at an infinite distance, and ejaculated in mild and solemn surprise, “But why, my dear Nea?”
“Oh, because, madame, scallywags are always far the most interesting people in the world. They’re so much more likely to be original and amusing than all the rest of us. Artists and authors, for example, are almost always scallywags.”
“What a gross libel on two liberal professions!” Armitage put in with a shocked expression of face. He dabbled in water colors as an amateur himself, and therefore considered he was very nearly implicated in this wholesale condemnation of Art and Literature.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Mme. Ceriolo said, with angelic softness, rearranging her pince-nez, “I hate originality. And I’m not very fond of artists or authors. Why should people wish to be different from their fellow Christians?”
“Who is it you’re calling a scallywag, anyway?” Isabel Boyton asked from her seat beyond, with her clear American accent. If Mme. Ceriolo was going to start an abstract discussion on an ethical question of wide extent, Isabel meant, with Philadelphian practicality, to nail her down at once to the matter in hand, and resolutely resist all attempts at digression.
“Why, this new man, Gascoyne,” Armitage drawled out in answer, annexing a vacant chair just abandoned by a fat old Frenchman in the background by the café, and seating himself opposite them.
“It’s a good name, Gascoyne,” Nea suggested quietly.
“Yes, indeed,” Miss Boyton echoed, with American promptitude. “A first-rate name. I’ve read it in a history book.” —
“But a good name doesn’t count for much nowadays,” Mme. Ceriolo interposed, and then straightway repented her. Anybody can assume a good name, of course; but surely she was the last person on earth who ought to have called attention just then to the facility of the assumption. For did she not print a countess’ coronet on top of her own card on no better title; and was not her vogue in Rivieran society entirely due to her personal assertion of her relationship to the Ceriolos of Castle Ceriolo in the Austrian Tyrol?
“Well, he’s a nice-looking young fellow enough,” Nea added, pleading his cause with warmth, for she had committed herself to Mr. Gascoyne’s case now, and she was quite determined he should have an invitation.
“Besides, we’re awfully short of gentlemen,” Isabel Boyton put in sharply. “I haven’t seen him, but a man’s a man. I don’t care whether he is a scallywag or not, I mean to go for him.” And she jotted down the name on her list at once without waiting to hear Mme. Ceriolo for the prosecution.
It was seasonable weather at Mentone for the 20th of December. The sky was as cloudlessly blue as July, and from the southern side of the date-palms on the Jardin Public, where they all sat basking in the warm rays of the sun, the great jagged peaks of the bare mountains in the rear showed distinct and hard against a deep sapphire background. A few hundred feet below the summit of one of the tallest and most rugged, the ruined walls of the Saracen fortress of Sant�
� Agnese just caught the light; and it was to that airy platform that Nea and Isabel proposed their joint picnic for the twenty-fourth — the day before Christmas. And the question under debate at that particular moment was simply this — who should be invited by the two founders of the feast, each alternately adding a name to her own list according to fancy.
“Well, if you take Mr. Gascoyne,” Nea said, with a faint air of disappointment at losing her guest, “I shall take Mr. Thistleton.”
And she proceeded to inscribe him.
“But, Nea, my dear,” Mme. Ceriolo broke in with an admirable show of maternal solicitude, “who is Mr. Gascoyne, and who is Mr. Thistleton? I think we ought to make sure of that. I haven’t even heard their names before. Are they in society?”
“Oh, they’re all right, I guess,” Isabel Boyton answered briskly, looking up much amused. “Mamma was talking to them on the promenade yesterday, and she says she apprehends Mr. Thistleton’s got money, and Mr. Gascoyne’s got brains if he aint got family. They can just come right along. Don’t you be afraid, madame.”
“Your mamma’s opinion is very reassuring, no doubt,” Mme. Ceriolo continued dryly, as one who liked not the security, and in a voice that half mimicked Isabel’s frank Americanism; “but still, as being in charge of dear Nea’s conduct and society while she remains at Mentone, I should prefer to feel certain, before we commit ourselves to inviting them, exactly who these young men are. The fact that they’re stopping at a decent hotel in the town is not in itself sufficient. Such very odd people get into good hotels on the Riviera sometimes.”
And Mme. Ceriolo, measuring Isabel through her eyeglasses with a strong stare, drew herself up with a poker down her back, in perfect imitation of the stereotyped British matronly exclusiveness.
The fact was, having accepted the post of chaperon-companion to Nea Blair for the winter, Mme. Ceriolo was laudably anxious to perform her part in that novel capacity with strict propriety and attention to detail; but, never having tried her hand at the proprieties in her life before, and being desirous now of observing them to the utmost letter of the law, if anything, she rather overdid it than otherwise.
