The Watchers: A Novel

by A. E. W. Mason

  CHAPTER XVII

  CULLEN MAYLE COMES HOME

  The search was entirely unsuccessful. Through the months of Novemberand December I travelled hither and thither, but I had no hint as toCullen Mayle's whereabouts; and towards the end of the year I tookpassage in a barque bound for St. Mary's, where I landed the daybefore Christmas and about the fall of the dusk. It was my intentionto cross over that night to Tresco and report my ill-success, which Iwas resolved to do with a deal of stateliness. I was also curious toknow whether Peter Tortue was still upon the island.

  But as I walked along the street of Hugh Town to the "Dolphin" Inn, bythe Customs House, a band of women dancing and shouting, with voicesextraordinarily hoarse, swept round the corner. I fell plump amongstthem, and discovered they were men masquerading as women. Moreover,they stopped me, and were for believing that I was a womanmasquerading as a man; and, indeed, when they had let me go I did comeupon a party of girls dressed up for sea captains and the like, whoswaggered, counterfeiting a manly walk, and drawing their hangers uponone another with a great show of spirit.

  The reason of these transformations was explained to me at the"Dolphin." It seems that they call this sort of amusement "agoose-dancing," and the young people exercise it in these islands atChristmas time. I was told that it would be impossible for me to hirea boatman to put me over to Tresco that night; so I made the best ofthe matter, and to pass the time stepped out again into the street,which was now lighted up with many torches and crowded withmasqueraders. They went dancing and singing from house to house; thewomen paid their addresses with an exaggeration of courtly manners tothe men, who, dressed in the most uncouth garments that could bedevised, received them with a droll shyness and modesty, andaltogether, what with liquor and music, the festival went with a dealof noise and spirit. But in the midst of it one of these false women,with a great bonnet pulled forward over her face, clapped a hand uponmy shoulder and said in my ear:

  "Mr. Berkeley, I hope you have been holding better putt cards oflate;" and would have run on, but I caught him by the arm.

  "Mr. Featherstone," said I, "you stole my horse; I have a word to sayto you."

  "I have not the time to listen," said he, wrenching his arm free as heflung himself into the thick of the crowd. I kept close upon hisheels, however, which he perceived, and drawing into a corner hesuddenly turned round upon me.

  "Your horse is dead," said he. "I very much regret it; but I will payyou, for I have but now come into an inheritance. I will pay you forit to-morrow."

  "I did not follow you to speak of the horse, or to Mr. Featherstone atall, but to Mr. Cullen Mayle."

  "You know me?" he exclaimed, looking about him lest the name shouldhave been overheard.

  "And have news for you," I added. "Will you follow me to the'Dolphin?'"

  I went back to the inn, secured from my host a room where we could beprivate, and went out to the door. Cullen Mayle was waiting; hefollowed me quickly in, hiding his face so that no one could recognisehim, and when the door was shut--

  "How in the world did you come to know of my name?" said he. "I cannotthink, but I shall be obliged if you will keep it secret for a day orso, for I am not sure but what I may have some inconvenient friendsamong these islands."

  "Those inconvenient friends are all gone but one," said I.

  "You know that too," he exclaimed. "Indeed, Mr. Berkeley, you seem tobe very well acquainted with my affairs; but I cannot regret it, sinceyou give me such comforting news. Only one of my inconvenient friendsleft! Why, I am a match for one--I think I may say so withoutvaunting--so it seems I can come to Tresco and take up myinheritance."

  With that he began briskly to unhook the cotton dress which he had puton over his ordinary clothes.

  "Inheritance!" said I. "You mentioned the word before. I do notunderstand."

  "Oh," said he, "it is a long story and a melancholy. My father droveme from the house, and bequeathed his fortune to an adopted daughter."

  "Yes," said I quickly, "I know that too."

  "Indeed!" and he stopped his toilette to stare at me. "Perhaps you areaware then that Helen Mayle, conscious of my father's injustice,bequeathed it again to me."

  "Yes, but--but--you spoke of an immediate inheritance."

  "Ah," said he, coolly, "there is something, then, I can inform you of.Helen Mayle is dead."

  "What's that?" I cried, and started to my feet. I did not understand.I was like a man struck by a bullet, aware dimly that some hurt hascome to him, but not yet conscious of the pain, not yet sensible ofthe wound.

  "Hush!" said Cullen Mayle, and untying a string at his waist he lethis dress fall about his feet. "It is most sad. Not for the worldwould I have come into this inheritance at such a cost. You knew HelenMayle, perhaps?" he asked, with a shrewd glance at me. "A girl verystaunch, very true, who would never forget a _friend_." He emphasisedthat word "friend" and made it of a greater significance. "Indeed, Iam not sure, but I must think it was because she could not forgeta--friend that, alas! she died."

  I was standing stupefied. I heard the words he spoke, but gavethem at this moment no meaning. I was trying to understand the oneall-important fact.

  "Dead!" I babbled. "Helen Mayle--dead!"

  "Yes, and in the strangest, pitiful way. I cannot think of it, withoutthe tears come into my eyes. The news came to me but lately, and youwill perhaps excuse me on that account." His voice broke as he spoke;there were tears, too, in his eyes. I wondered, in a dull way, whetherafter all he had really cared for her. "But how comes it that you knewher?" he asked.

  I sat down upon a chair and told him--of Dick Parmiter's coming toLondon, of my journey into the West. I told him how I had come torecognise him at the inn; and as I spoke the comprehension of Helen'sdeath crept slowly into my mind, so that I came to a stop and couldspeak no more.

  "You were on your way to Tresco," said he, "when we first met. Thenyou know that she is dead?"

  "No," I answered. "When did she die?"

  "On the sixth of October," said he.

  I do not think that I should have paid great heed to his words, butsomething in his voice--an accent of alarm--roused me. I lifted myeyes and saw that he was watching me with a singular intentness.

  "The sixth of October," I repeated vaguely, and then I broke into alaugh, so harsh and hysterical that it seemed quite another voice thanmine. "Your news is false," I cried; "she is not dead! Why, I did notleave Tresco till the end of October, and she was alive then and nosign of any malady. The sixth of October! No, indeed, she did not dieupon that day."

  "Are you sure?" he exclaimed.

  "Sure?" said I. "I have the best of reasons to be sure; for it was onthe sixth of October that I first set foot in Tresco," and at onceCullen Mayle sprang up and shook me by the hand.

  "Here is the bravest news," he said. His whole face was alight; hecould not leave hold of my hand. "Mr. Berkeley, I may thank God that Ispoke to you to-night. 'Helen!'"--and he lingered upon the name. "Uponmy word, it would take little more to unman me. So you landed on thesixth of October. But are you sure of the date?" he asked withearnestness. "I borrowed your horse but a few days before. You wouldhardly have travelled so quickly."

  "I travelled by sea with a fair wind," said I. "It was the sixth ofOctober. Could I forget it? Why, that very night I crossed Castle Downto Merchant's Point; that very night I entered the house. DickParmiter showed me a way. I crept into the house, and slept in yourbedroom----"

  I had spoken so far without a notion of the disclosure to which mywords were leading me. I was not looking at Cullen Mayle, but on tothe ground, else very likely I might have read it upon his face. Butnow in an instant the truth of the matter was clear to me. For as Isaid, "I slept in your bedroom," he uttered one loud cry, leapt to hisfeet, and stood over against me, very still and quiet. I hadsufficient wit not to raise my head and betray this new piece ofknowledge. That sad and pitiful death on the sixth of October, ofwhich
he had heard with so deep a pain--he had never heard it, he had_planned_ it, and the plan miscarried. He knew why, now, and so wasstanding in front of me very still and quiet. He had seen Helen thatnight on Castle Down; there, no doubt, she had told him how in herwill she had disposed of her inheritance; and he had persuaded her,working on her generosity--with what prepared speeches of despair!--tothat strange, dark act which it had been my good fortune to interrupt.It was clear to me. The very choice of that room, wherein alonesecrecy was possible, made it clear. He had suggested to her the wholecunning plan; and a moment ago I had almost been deceived to believehis expressions of distress sincere!

  "I told you I was nearly unmanned," I heard him say; "and you see evenso I underrated the strength of my relief, so that the mere surpriseof your ingenious shift to get a lodging took my breath away."

  He resumed his seat, and I, having now composed my face, raised itfull to him. I have often wondered since whether, as he stood aboveme, motionless and silent during those few moments, I was in anydanger.

  "Yes," said I, "it was no doubt surprising."

  This, however, was not the only surprise I was to cause Cullen Maylethat night.

  He proposed immediately that we should cross to Tresco together, andon my objecting that we should get no one to carry us over--

  "Oh," said he, "I have convenient friends in Scilly as well asinconvenient." He looked out of the window. "The tide is high, andwashes the steps at the back of the inn. Do you wait here upon thesteps. I will have a boat there in less than half an hour;" and on theword he hooked up his dress again and got him out of the inn.

  I waited upon the steps as he bade me. Behind me were the lights andthe uproar of the street; in front, the black water and the coolnight; and still further, out of sight, the island of Tresco, thepurple island of bracken and gorse, resonant with the sea.

  In a little I heard a ripple of water, and the boat swam to the steps.I was careful as we sailed across the road to say nothing to CullenMayle which would provoke his suspicion. I did not even allow him tosee I was aware that he himself had been upon Tresco on the sixth ofOctober. It was not difficult for me to keep silence. For as the watersplashed and seethed under the lee of the boat, and Tresco drewnearer, I had to consider what I should do in the light of my newknowledge. It would have been so much easier had only Helen been frankwith me.

  Tresco dimly loomed up out of the darkness.

  "By the way," said Cullen Mayle, who had been silent too, "you saidthat one of the watchers had remained. It will be George Glen, Isuppose."

  "No," I answered. "It is a Frenchman, Peter Tortue," and by the meremention of the name I surprised Cullen Mayle again that evening. It istrue that this time he uttered no exclamation, and did not start fromhis seat. But the boat shot up into the wind and got into irons, asthe saying is, so that I knew his hand had left the tiller. But hesaid nothing until we were opposite to the Blockhouse, and then heasked in a low trembling voice:

  "Did you say Peter Tortue?"

  "Yes."

  There was another interval of silence. Then he put another questionand in the same tone of awe:

  "A young fellow, less than my years----"

  "No. The young fellow's father," said I. "A man of sixty years. Ithink I should be wary of him."

  "Why?"

  "He said, 'I am looking, not for the cross, but for a man to nail uponthe cross,' and he meant his words, every syllable."

  Again we fell to silence, and so crossed the Old Grimsby Harbour androunded its northern point. The lights of the house were in view atlast. They shot out across the darkness in thin lines of light andwavered upon the black water lengthening and shortening with theslight heave of the waves. When they shortened, I wondered whetherthey beckoned me to the house; when they lengthened out, were theyfingers which pointed to us to be gone?

  "Since you know so much, Mr. Berkeley," whispered Cullen Mayle,"perhaps you can tell me whether Glen secured the cross."

  "No, he failed in that."

  "I felt sure he would," said Cullen with a chuckle, and he ran theboat aground, not on the sand before the house but on the bank beneaththe garden hedge. We climbed through the hedge; two windows blazedupon the night, and in the room sat Helen Mayle close by the fire, herviolin on a table at her side and the bow swinging in her hand. Istepped forward and rapped at the window. She walked across the roomand set her face to the pane, shutting out the light from her eyeswith her hands. She saw us standing side by side. Instantly she drewdown the blinds and came to the door, and over the grass towards us.She came first to me with her hand outstretched.

  "It is you," she said gently, and the sound of her voice was wonderfulin my ears. I had taken her hand before I was well aware what I did.

  "Yes," said I.

  "You have come back. I never thought you would. But you have come."

  "I have brought back Cullen Mayle," said I, as indifferently as Icould, and so dropped her hand. She turned to Cullen then.

  "Quick," she said. "You must come in."

  We went inside the door.

  "It is some years since I trod these flags," said Cullen. "Well, I amglad to come home, though it is only as an outcast; and indeed, Helen,I have not the right even to call it home."

  It was as cruel a remark as he could well have made, seeing at whatpains the girl had been, and still was, to restore that home to him.That it hurt her I knew very well, for I heard her, in the darkness ofthe passage, draw in her breath through her clenched teeth. Cullenwalked along the passage and through the hall.

  "Lock the door," Helen said to me, and I did lock it. "Now drop thebar."

  When that was done we walked together into the hall, where shestopped.

  "Look at me," she said, "please!" and I obeyed her.

  "You have come back," she repeated. "You do not, then, any longerbelieve that I deceived you?"

  "There is a reason why I have come back," I answered. It was a reasonwhich I could not give to her. I was resolved not to suffer her to lieat the mercy of Cullen Mayle. Fortunately, she did not think to ask meto be particular about the reason. But she beat her hands once ortwice together, and--

  "You still believe it, then!" she cried. "With these two months tosearch and catch and hold the truth, you still hold me in the samecontempt as when you turned your back on me and walked out throughthat door?"

  "No, no!" I exclaimed. "Contempt! That never entered into any thoughtI ever had of you. Make sure of that!"

  "Yet you believe I tricked you. How can you believe that, and yetspare me your contempt!"

  "I am no philosopher. It is the truth I tell you," I answered, simply;and the face of Cullen Mayle appeared at the doorway of the parlour,so that no more was said.