Chapter XXIX

With every hour the violence and power of the sea abated and though there remained a fury of foaming waves across the channel of the Leopard’s Rock, the outer sea dropped from hour to hour to a more easy serenity; and in the afternoon the lifeboat was seen returning across the grey, placated waters. A cold tranquillity had overspread the heavens. With the ceasing of the wind the sky was clear, the clouds drifting to the sad-coloured horizon. And Amy, still watching from the window of the “Drum and Trumpet,” could see the new moon, crystal clear above the dark shoulder of the jagged cliffs.

“There, madam,” remarked the innkeeper, who stood respectfully behind the lady, “are those wild folk from Pen Hall Farm. It is not often they come down to the shore when there are others about.”

Ambrosia glanced at the group his indicating finger pointed out--a ragged, wild-looking woman with a child, and a burly, ferocious man.

“They have a bad name, have they not?” remarked Ambrosia absently, “but I suppose they have some humanity, and are interested in the lighthouse.”

“But I wonder they should come here, madam, when Mr. Sellar is about, for they are very much in his bad graces. He is doing his best to prove that their farm is not freehold, after all, and have them moved. And it would be a charity to the neighbours could he succeed.”

“They show an effrontery in coming in here now,” remarked Ambrosia; for she knew that these people were indeed noted as thieves and law-breakers, poachers and vagabonds. “But I do not think,” she added coldly, “that my brother takes much interest in them.”

But the innkeeper had replied that, while Mr. Sellar had been keeping watch of the lighthouse from the “Drum and Trumpet,” he had continually ridden over to Pen Hall Farm, to warn the inhabitants, no doubt, of their trespasses. Ambrosia thought it odd in her brother to have troubled his head when he was so concerned with other deep matters, with such an affair as Pen Hall Farm. She thought it peculiar that at such a moment as this, when they were waiting with so much anxiety for the return of the boat with Lucius on board, that the innkeeper should have troubled to mention this fact to her. Surely it must have impressed him as very extraordinary. And she looked at him keenly, wondering if there were something more behind his words.

But the innkeeper’s face was blank, and he suggested to the lady that they should now go on the shore and welcome the boat back.

Ambrosia put on her pelisse and went out into the chill air. As she passed the little group from Pen Hall Farm--a little group of whom no one was taking the slightest notice--she glanced at the child, and saw, gleaming on her woollen coat, the little trifle of turquoise and pearls that the Countess Fanny had given her. And she turned away in distaste, vexed that these people should be here at such a moment, displaying such an ornament. Very likely that was the flimsy, whimsical reason why Oliver had been over so often to Pen Hall Farm. He knew that Fanny had stopped there and had given this trinket to the child; and so he had connected these people with her name and drawn them, as it were, into his infatuation.

Amy lifted high her flowing skirts, and stepped over the rough beach, and waited by one of the flat greenstone rocks, and watched the boat coming in with difficulty through the breaking surf.

The beach was crowded, and she remained apart from the others--apart, even, from Mr. Spragge, who was so ready with his fluent consolations and his conventional thanksgiving.

Amy reminded herself that she was not going to meet Lucius, her betrothed, the young man whom she was going to marry in the spring, but a stranger: she must be quite prepared to meet a stranger.

The fishers waded out into the surf to help the boat to land. Amy scanned the occupants of this boat, but did not move from where she stood, holding her fluttering shawl together on her breast, her veil blowing out behind her--for the wind, such of it as remained, came fresh and direct from the sea.

The tide being in their favour, the boat beached without much difficulty. Ambrosia saw Oliver sitting there in his oilskins, and the fishers who had manned the boat, and there--yes, there was Lucius. She recognised his comely figure, though she could scarcely see his face. Everyone was crowding round the boat; she must go too. She could not any longer remain apart; and she advanced slowly, holding her skirts together and walking fastidiously over the large flat, wet stones.

Lucius was one of the first to leap ashore and wade through the last eddy of the surf, and so come out on to the beach close to Ambrosia. He wore a rough suit of clothes which he had probably found in the lighthouse, and which were much stained and worn; and this changed him, in Ambrosia’s mind, as much as the alteration in his features.

He was not pale as she had expected, but tanned and reddened by exposure, and all the finer lines of his face appeared to have been marred or effaced. The countenance was older, harder; there was now not the least touch of effeminacy or delicacy about Lucius Foxe; and in this altered visage the grey eyes showed much lighter and clearer than Amy had ever remembered them to be: odd, pale-grey eyes, blank as glass, it seemed to Amy as she held out her hand with an embarrassed gesture, trying to force a warm and a natural welcome.

“Lucius, at last! It seems as if you had come back from the grave!”

“So I feel, Ambrosia,” he replied serenely. “I scarcely thought to return at all.”

“No,” agreed Ambrosia hurriedly, “we were in great fear and dread for your safety. This is indeed a great mercy, Lucius, and makes amends for much. You must hasten to your father, for I fear he will hardly survive the suspense.”

“My father!” repeated Lucius strangely. “Yes, I must make haste to see him.”

“You’re well, Lucius? You bore it without too great a strain?”

“I had the light to look after,” replied the young man simply, “and there didn’t seem time to think of anything else.”

Others were coming up now, with congratulations and questions and admiration. Amy observed that only Oliver remained in the boat and made no attempt to leave it, but sat there motionless when the boat was beached.

“Oliver would go to meet you,” she said, nervously. “Nothing could restrain him. You have seen him and spoken to him?”

“I have seen him,” said Lucius.

“Well,” cried Dr. Drayton cheerfully, “we thought you would be dead, sir! Or half dead, at least--starved and wasted; but it seems I am not required after all!”

“The food went very short, and I was scarce of water,” said Lucius, “but I am not ill, thank you. As I said just now to Amy, there was the light to look after, and somehow one didn’t seem able to think of anything else. Thank God there was plenty of fuel and oil there; but in future we must see that there are better supplies of food and water, in case anyone else has to endure so long a vigil.”

“Why doesn’t Oliver get out of the boat?” asked Amy. “Dr. Drayton, do you go and tell him to get out of the boat. He seems like one amazed.”

The doctor turned to (what the fishers had not dared to do) suggest to Mr. Sellar that he now left the boat, which was beached.

When he was thus directly addressed, Oliver Sellar rose, and made a stiff movement as if to step over the side of the boat; but instead of doing so, he collapsed and fell headlong, half on the shore. They thought it was an accident, that he had lost his balance, all stiff from the cold as he must be; but they discovered immediately that he was insensible, and when the heavy big man had been dragged away to a higher part of the beach, and the doctor bent over him, he said that it was no accident, but a fit or seizure of the kind that Mr. Sellar had had when the Countess Fanny’s bonnet and cashmere shawl were brought in to Sellar’s Mead--nothing dangerous, but he must be carried into the “Drum and Trumpet,” and left quiet for a while. And Dr. Drayton remarked, with a smile, that it was odd that he had come to attend Lucius and found himself so conveniently there to attend Oliver.

“I had feared a recurrence of this,” he observed, “on the least alarm; but what alarm could Mr. Sellar have had just now?”

“It was emotion,” said Ambrosia hurriedly, and very pale. “He has been watching the lighthouse so long, you know; now the vigil is over and Lucius is safe. That would be enough for one in the state of Oliver.”

“Been watching the lighthouse?” asked Lucius quickly. “Why?”

“It obsessed him,” replied Amy. “He was thinking of you out there, I suppose; I don’t quite know, Lucius. But he has not been home often during the last six weeks; he spent his time here at the little inn, watching your light, and wondering every night if you could get off. We all wondered that, you know; but to one whose nerves were as raw as Oliver’s--well, it might become an infatuation, you know, Luce.”

Deliberately she gave him the old loving name, but he appeared not to hear what she had taken on her lips. Surely he was as estranged as, in her most despondent moods, she had feared. How flat and stale this meeting seemed, after all these weeks of waiting, watching and suspense. Not one spark of rapture to enliven them--not one flash of relief or joy to bring them together. Chill and formal they stood looking at each other on the wet beach, with the grey background of rocks and sea and sky.…

“I must not keep you from your father,” murmured Amy.

“No,” added Mr. Spragge, who stood close to them, “I must take you there at once. That was my embassy, you know, Lord Vanden: to take you home immediately. Miss Sellar will come too, no doubt; the carriage is ready a little way up the road.” Then he added: “Where’s the boy?”

“Oh, yes!” added Amy. “Where’s the boy? I had forgotten the boy--where is he? Surely you owe him a great deal, and we must see that he is properly looked after.”

“The boy,” said Lucius, “is dead--drowned.”

Ambrosia recoiled, with an exclamation of horror. Not only was the fact in itself dreadful, but Lucius had spoken in so stiff and brutal a manner.

“Drowned?” she exclaimed.

And Mr. Spragge said:

“Why, this is very distressing, Lord Vanden! Poor lad! And how did it happen?”

“I have told all the people who came to take me off,” replied Lucius stiffly, as if he did not wish to go over an unpleasant matter again. “It was the night when the French barque went down--you must have seen the rockets.”

“Yes, yes,” they both said at once, “we saw the rockets.”

“Well, that was the night. They put out a boat, and it was broken on the rocks. I went down to see if I could save any of them, and I did do so. I found men clinging on the rocks. The boy would come too, and hold the lantern. The rocks were slippery… well, that’s all there is. We tried to rescue him when he lost his foothold--the sailor that I had pulled in and myself; but of course he was gone in a second. And I suppose it is of no great concern to anyone,” added Lucius, “since he was but a poor waif from Falmouth.”

“Then,” cried Ambrosia incredulously, “you’ve been alone there--_alone_ for all these weeks?”

“Alone,” smiled Lucius.

“It’s very horrible!” shivered Ambrosia.

“Yes,” said Lucius drily; “but do you know, it seems already so long ago, and it happened so swiftly, and I knew so little about the boy, that it does not seem to me now so horrible; and it was not a bad death, was it?--for a poor wretch who had but little prospects.”

“Did you know anything about him?” asked Mr. Spragge. “Is there anyone to whom we should give notice of his death--any relative whom we could compensate?”

“I know nothing about him,” said Lucius, proceeding up the beach, with these two walking slowly either side of him. “Nothing at all. He told me his name was Philip, and seemed to know no other; while I had him he was a good, obedient boy, but of so little strength or capacity that he was of not much use to me; and it was through his own daring that he lost his life, insisting on coming out on the rocks to hold the lantern.”

“The Frenchmen--what happened to them?” asked Mr. Spragge.

“The barque went to pieces, I believe,” said Lucius. “I saw no more of her. I had the men on the lighthouse two or three days--I hardly remember which--hoping the lifeboat would come, for the storm fell a little after then, as you may remember.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Spragge, “but the boat here is not strong enough; that’s why your father had another boat sent over from Falmouth. Without that we should scarce have reached you, even to-day.”

“Other ships passed,” continued Luce, telling his tale without much animation, and in a formal manner, “and I contrived a signal to one and they sent a boat off; they were French also, it seemed, bound for Brest; and they took on board my Frenchmen. We lowered them with rope, and that’s the last I know of it.”

“Well, well,” sighed Mr. Spragge, “I’m sorry for the boy!”

Lucius asked who now was going to take the watch in the lighthouse. He had seen the two men who had been left in his place; they had been rowed out in the boat that took them off. They were strangers to him. Mr. Spragge explained that they were new men from Falmouth, sent by his father, since none of the fisher-folk was either willing to go or capable of undertaking such a task as these long watches in the lighthouse of St. Nite’s during this perpetual stormy weather.

Amy stood wretched and irresolute; it was her plain duty to follow her brother, who was being laboriously carried by four or five fishers into the inn; but her wish was to go with Lucius. Perhaps all this estrangement and formality was only the result of their first meeting: here in public among all these people, on this gloomy, open beach. If she could go with him to Lefton Park, surely there some kindliness, some friendliness, would spring up between them! She had not mentioned, of course, the Countess Fanny. She wondered if she should do so--if it would be generous in her to say that there was no further news of the girl; and yet he must surmise as much--probably he has asked Oliver, or the men in the boat.

Well, if he did not speak of her, perhaps so much the better. Perhaps if he never took that name on his lips it might gradually leave his heart, and they might be as they once had been, before the foreign girl came to St. Nite’s Head.

“Are you coming with us, Miss Sellar?” asked the clergyman, as they reached the Earl’s carriage.

Lucius did not second this request.

“I suppose I should stay with Oliver,” said Amy sadly. Then, with an attempt to move her one-time lover to some compassion she turned to him and added: “I live a solitary life now; Oliver is sick, as you see, and he is often afflicted in body.”

“Poor Amy!” said Lucius, and yet without tenderness. “You also have had your vigil. Come with us now--your brother is well enough with Dr. Drayton.” But he did not speak in any manner to induce her to come, but stood there indifferently, as if he awaited the pleasure of a stranger to whom he owed courtesy--no more than courtesy.

But Amy could not leave it at that. She must endeavour to break within his guard, even if it were with weapons that inflicted a wound upon herself.

“Nothing has been heard of Fanny,” she said, in a loud voice that was almost shrill, and which made Mr. Spragge look at her in dismay. “She has not been found, Lucius.”

“No,” said Lucius, “no--one scarcely hoped it, after all these weeks.”

“But Oliver found something of hers--in Flimwel Grange, of all places; he must go there one night, in one of his mad moods. And what did he find, in one of the empty rooms, but one of her coral bracelets! Perhaps you remember them, Lucius--she nearly always wore them--grapes and vines in coral.”

“A coral bracelet?” repeated Lucius, with every accent of alarm and terror. “You say he found a coral bracelet?”

“Yes; what is there so odd in it, Lucius?”

“I think it extremely odd,” said Mr. Spragge, “and to be found in such a place, too; it is a mystery that one cannot attempt to solve.”

“Oliver has suffered,” remarked Lucius, in a calmer tone.

“I think he will always suffer,” said Amy, “and that I must always stand by and see him suffer. I will go to him now. Perhaps, later, you will come to Sellar’s Mead, Lucius.” She held out her hand, and he took it in his, which was, she remarked, so ruined and toil-worn and scarred; different indeed from the smooth hands that she had long touched.

“Good-bye, Amy,” he said; “yes, of course I’ll come soon. I’m distressed about Oliver.… For the moment everything seems strange, you know,” he added, in a half apology, “but we shall get it all adjusted presently. I feel half deafened still, by the noise of the sea in my ears, and the wind in that underground tunnel, and my eyes half blinded with the dazzle of the waves--those white lines, you know, always advancing towards you and always breaking at the foot of the lighthouse, one after another. Well--for a day or two, then, Amy--and forgive me!”

He got into the carriage, followed by Mr. Spragge; she saw him droop into an attitude of languor and apathy in one of the corners, and put those two poor stained and roughened hands before his face.

Well, so it was over, this long-promised meeting! After the suspense, and the watching, and the waiting, they had met and parted again, both like strangers. Estranged, estranged--he from her and she from Oliver; that dead girl between them all, always.

As she turned back to the “Drum and Trumpet,” she saw the three from Pen Hall Farm, moving slowly away from the sea. Ferocious and savage they looked, and they were talking together in excited though low hoarse accents.

Ambrosia could guess that they were talking about the boy, who had lodged with them for a little while. No doubt they had come down there to get some share of his reward, and were angered to find that he was dead, and there would be no reward. She must see to it that something was sent to them. Whatever they were, there must be no meanness over this matter. They should have the boy’s wages, and perhaps more.

She went into the “Drum and Trumpet,” to find Oliver still unconscious.

That night, the tempest began to rise again.