Chapter XXVIII

When the dark morning dawned at last the inhabitants of St. Nite’s parish could discover nothing of the meaning of the rocket of the night before; and as the days went on they gradually heard news from Falmouth that several ships had gone down in the severe tempest off the Cornish coast, including a packet, a transport ship, and a French barque--all of which had perished with all on board, and had only been identified, by the spars and the portions of wreckage and the bodies washed ashore. If any of these had sent up rockets the night before, no one knew; nor could they judge if this signal had come from the lonely occupants of the lighthouse. It was not repeated; and wind and waves continued so high, and strove with each other with such unabated violence, that it was quite impossible to think of reaching the lighthouse; and so on, dark day after dark day, until the New Year was there, and Lucius and his companion had been confined nearly six weeks upon the lighthouse, beset by seas as heavy and as fierce as any man could remember, even on this stormy coast.

Several attempts were made to cross the boiling seas and formidable reefs, but on each occasion the boat had had to return, and only with difficulty had made that return. Casks of fresh water were floated out to sea, in the hope that they might reach the lighthouse, and that Lucius might be able to haul them up, or find them landed on the rocks at the base of the lonely prison. Letters were also floated out in an indiarubber bag, cast on the tempestuous waves in the vague hope that they would reach the prisoners. In one of these the Earl prayed his son to send up another rocket if he should have received the water and the bag, and to strive to use the same means of communication with the shore by enclosing a note in some indiarubber enclosure or bottle. But no rocket came from St. Nite’s Lighthouse. The men sent by the Earl watched in vain.

Yet there was this supreme consolation; that every night, with the dusk, the lantern was lit on the cresset of St. Nite’s Lighthouse. Waves were now breaking on the lighthouse that could be seen in the daytime to rise about twenty feet higher than the lantern, enveloping the whole grim and stately structure in a fury of smoke and spray. Reassured as he was by the constant lighting of the lamp, the Earl was, however, convinced that his son was undergoing painful privations; the provisions must by now have become scarce, if not altogether exhausted; and he frantically endeavoured to send out food by means of a rocket apparatus which was brought over from Falmouth. But the lighthouse was too far, the sea too furious, and the rocks and reefs too numerous, the attempt was a complete failure.

The Earl then communicated his son’s plight to the warships which had put into Falmouth Harbour, and one of these set out to render assistance; but the sea was so rough that they could not approach within any reasonable distance of St. Nite’s Point, and, after standing by for twenty-four hours, returned to Falmouth without having been able in any way to communicate with Lucius. The storm was incessant and seemed to bow the spirits of men as it bowed the trees, and lash their souls as it lashed the waves. Ambrosia went frequently to Lefton Park to keep the Earl company; the old man’s confidence in his son’s safety had now changed to acute anxiety which he struggled in vain wholly to repress--he had for this only child, the child of his old age, a more than common affection. Ambrosia, though so racked with doubt herself, tried, with a dull sense of duty, to comfort the father of Lucius.

“He is really in no peril, dear sir; it is only the long separation makes one anxious--he has plenty of food and water, coal and oil; the lighthouse was newly built, you know, and well-equipped.”

“Yes, yes,” the old man would reply; “of course he has everything; and he will enjoy it, too--he likes the storm and the responsibility. He is doing a noble work and we should not worry about him at all, my dear, at all, of course.”

Oliver never came to Lefton Park, nor ever mentioned the old man. Amy told the Earl the condition of her brother, and implored his pity.

“In the spring,” the Earl replied, “you must go away--both of you.” Amy smiled without answering. She believed that she no longer had any feeling; surely, she pondered, if you chain down your heart too hard, it died for lack of air and liberty? Surely if you repressed your feelings with too firm a hand they withered and perished? She was no longer conscious of active pain or burning passions--only of a dull ache behind every duty performed and every formal word she said. She was almost as lonely as Lucius must be in the lighthouse, moving about that large house filled only by silent and half-frightened servants; sitting in that drawing-room, by that fire, evening after evening, with her account-books or her needlework, or some volume of meditation, pious and useless, given her by Mr. Spragge; or sitting there doing nothing at all, with her hands folded in her lap, staring into the fire, and not even thinking, either, but drowsy with melancholy. Ah! the long strain, the drab anxiety, the heavy gloom of this hideous winter! The desolation and the dreariness, and, above all and most bitter of all, the sense of utter futility! And Ambrosia held to her worn heart the bitter sentence, “He also serves who only stands and waits.”

One day she found, and with a sense of shock, the first snowdrops in the garden, half hidden beneath a black hedge of yew. Stark and even unnatural they looked in their vivid whiteness against the rotting grey of the earthy frozen beds; funereal, they seemed to Ambrosia, those cold, pure bells drooping downwards, those pale blades of clear green.

“The spring!” she thought. “The spring at last!”

She stooped and plucked these white flowers, and the thought ran through her mind like a dart:

“How delighted I should have been to see these. They mean the spring; and now there will be no spring for me.”

She took them into the house, and placed them in a little crystal vase on her work-table; Oliver came in that evening, as he had not come in for many evenings past; for now he nearly always spent his nights at the “Drum and Trumpet” and St. Nite’s Promontory.

“Strange to see you here,” said Ambrosia coldly, looking at those few snowdrops which showed so alien in the warm darkening room.

Oliver, looking at her as if he did not know to whom he spoke, replied:

“I think the wind is dropping. Perhaps by to-morrow or the day after we can get to the lighthouse.”

“Oh!” said Ambrosia, and was silent.

A fierce excitement seemed to possess Oliver. His deep gloom, his sombre dullness, seemed lit now by some violent emotion. It was a long while since Ambrosia had seen any of his usual passions, his tempers and furies flaming forth; and she glanced at him in surprise.

“Is it so much to you,” she asked, “that Lucius should be brought off the lighthouse?”

“I’ve been waiting for six weeks,” he answered harshly.

“Why?” demanded his sister; and yet she herself felt the question futile. Why question Oliver? In everything he was like one bereft of his wits. She had best be silent.

“I want to see Lucius,” he said. “I want to know how he has fared. Six weeks, you know, Amy; six weeks he’s been shut up there with this continual tempest.”

“Why, it is kind of you to show this sympathy for Lucius,” remarked Amy, a little softened by this unusual generosity in Oliver. “I did not think you cared so much. I am glad.”

The scowling smile that Oliver gave her scarcely confirmed her hopes that he had been moved by any warm interest in Lucius, or any concern for his safety; and when Amy spoke again, it was in a harder, colder tone. Whenever she did make any gesture or speech or movement towards warmness and confidence between them, he always chilled her thus, either with a look or a word, harsh, black, and unpleasant.

“It is useless for us to talk together, Oliver,” she said. “We can really only endure things when we are both silent. I will not ask you what you mean by this reference to Lucius, or why you have been so absorbed in the lighthouse since he has been there. Why, you never cared about the thing, never bothered about it.”

“It’s odd,” repeated Oliver sombrely, “it’s odd that he’s been there six weeks.”

“Very likely he’ll be ill,” shivered Ambrosia, “a changed and a broken man, people are, I’ve heard, after these long watches in these terrible gales, and perhaps he saw some of those wrecks--some of the people may have been washed on to the lighthouse. Lucius may have had ghastly experiences. We must expect to find him changed.”

“I,” declared Oliver, “shall be in the boat that goes out to bring him off.”

“You?” she asked. “Now why is that? Yet I said I would not question you.”

“I want to be the first to see him,” declared Oliver again.

Ambrosia rose with a heavy sigh.

“Still brooding on that grievance between you?” she said. “Still jealous, Oliver? What do you think is before either of us, if you continue to indulge this temper?” She expected no answer to this; it had merely been a lamentation, a reproach that she was not able to repress. She stood silent and listened, as so often, during the last weeks, she had stood silent and listened. Yes, surely the wind was dropping. The howl and the rush were less intense.

“We tried to launch a boat again to-day,” said Oliver. “It was hopeless. To-morrow there will be another attempt, and I believe it will succeed; and I shall be in that boat, Amy.”

“I will accompany you to St. Nite’s Head,” replied Amy, “if there is the least possibility of Lucius being brought off. Is everything in readiness?”

“In readiness!” sneered Oliver. “I don’t know what that old man, his father, has not sent down there! He has half a retinue in waiting, and I know not what mollycoddling comforts!”

“He is right,” said Amy. “Lucius may be very ill. How unfeelingly you always speak, Oliver!”

“Dr. Drayton has been there all day,” continued her brother, “and messages coming and going from the Earl. Well, I think the vigil of all of us is at an end.”

Amy could find no relief even in this prospect. Lucius would be restored to a normal life, but not to her. Whatever he had endured, it would not be to her he would turn for comfort; at least, so she feared. But a faint hope did gleam in the darkness of her thoughts. Possibly, just possibly, during that long confinement, during that strenuous responsibility and peril, he might have forgotten the Countess Fanny whom he had only known for so short a time. She had said he might be changed: perhaps he might be changed in that manner. He could turn again to her, and be the Luce with whom she had grown up--the friend of her childhood, the lover of a year ago; who had been so tender, so loyal and faithful. Perhaps, too, he would now have had enough of the lighthouse. She had always had to share him with the lighthouse; even before Fanny came, there had been that obsession to fight. Possibly that was now over. He would not again, surely, want to take the watch at St. Nite’s?

The wind continued to fall, almost to die away; Ambrosia, sitting up in her bed in her dark room, could hardly believe that she no longer had that roar in her ears.

With the morning came a stillness; the wind had gone. The sky was pale, scarcely coloured, and looked hard; but it was illuminated with a faded sunshine, and a little pallor of light lay on the bare park.

To-day, then, she would see him; to-day they would bring him off from the lighthouse. And she would be waiting on the shore, and see him come out of the boat; and perhaps he would be terribly changed--poor Luce! She shrank from that, and wished she need not go to meet him, but wait at home. And yet that would be cowardly in her, and she did not wish now to show a coward. There was just that possible hope that he might really need her, might really look for her, ask for her, when at length he found himself on the land again.

Early that morning she accompanied Oliver to St. Nite’s Head. Nearly all the male population, and many of the female, of St. Nite’s Promontory, was there to see the boats launched that were to go and rescue the lighthouse-keeper. The Earl had had sent overland, weeks ago, a large and modernly-equipped boat brought from Falmouth, in the hope that this would be able to dare the waves more successfully than the small, rude affair which commonly served the lighthouse; but this also had proved hopeless in the high seas. To-day, however, there was every confidence that it could be launched.

There were two men, also from Falmouth, who were prepared to take the next watch. Never had the lonely, desolate little cove been so crowded with people. The waters still ran high. To Ambrosia’s first dismayed glance the task seemed yet impossible, there was such a spume and fume of foam and spray round the Leopard’s Rock and dashing against the precipitous cliffs of the mainland; but the fishers declared that those who knew the treacherous reefs of the coast would find it possible now to row out and finally reach the rock; and, if not possible to land there, still, by means of ropes and pulleys or the rocket, to get off Lucius and his companion.

“We must not forget that poor boy!” said Amy to Dr. Drayton and Mr. Spragge. “Is there someone to look after him? I hear he is a waif who tramped up from the port.”

“Oh, surely, surely,” replied the clergyman, “if no one else will take him in I will myself, of course. I hear he was only a child.”

“Lucius will want to keep him in his service, I expect,” said Ambrosia. “They must have grown very intimate and close, being the sole occupants of the lighthouse for so long, together with so much responsibility and danger. And Lucius is most affectionate and easily moved to warmth of feeling.”

“If the lad,” observed Dr. Drayton, walking up and down, shuddering even in his greatcoat--for the cold on the shore was still intense--“has done his duty all these weeks, he certainly deserves some reward.”

“He can train as a lighthouse-keeper,” suggested Ambrosia. “I doubt if old Joshua will go again, I hear he had a stroke about a fortnight ago, and that leaves only two men, since young Mathews is disabled now. There should be a third in reserve, of course.”

“Your brother is going in the boat, I hear,” said Mr. Spragge, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice. It was the first time that Oliver Sellar had been known to concern himself with the peril or distress of others, and the fishermen had scarcely been able to conceal their amazement when he had declared that he wished to accompany them to the lighthouse.

“By God’s mercy we shall have some fair weather now,” said Mr. Spragge, looking at a thread of sky behind the rugged outline of the cliffs, that was tinged with a pure blue that seemed indeed to promise something of the softness and warmth of spring.

“The first snowdrops are out,” said Ambrosia. “I found them in the garden yesterday.”

“A good augury,” smiled the doctor; “a good augury, surely! But oh, it’s still bitterly cold!”

The new boat was now being launched. Oliver, in a fisherman’s tarpaulin, was the first to jump into it. With hoarse cheers from the spectators the boat was launched into the still angry surf. Ambrosia, the doctor, and the clergyman went into the parlour of the “Drum and Trumpet” to await its return, and to watch its slow and sturdy progress in and out of the dipping waves.