Thereby Hangs a Tale Part 60

"I give it up," said Richard.

"But you might hold it, and give friend Humphrey here a great deal of trouble."

"Mr Mervyn, I claim to be still a gentleman, whatever my birth," said Richard, haughtily. "Will you act as Humphrey's friend?"

"I will."

"Then understand this, sir. I have had a hard fight, and I have come through the temptation, I hope, like a man. I now resign everything to Mr Humphrey Trevor here. I ask his pardon for usurping his rights, and I beg his forbearance towards my poor father and mother. I will not make this cruel injury to him worse by any opposition."

Humphrey shuffled in his seat, and tried to speak, but he only wiped his damp face, and looked helplessly at the man he was bound to oust.

"You see, Mr Mervyn," continued Richard, "Mr Trevor's will be a peculiar position."

"Yes," said Mervyn; "but had you not better get some legal advice?"

"What for?" said Richard. "Can anything be plainer? As I said, Mr Trevor's will be a peculiar position. He will be the mark of the designing, and he will need a staunch friend at his side. Will you be that friend?"

"I will," said Mervyn, wringing his hand. "Yours too, my dear fellow, if you'll let me. But," he added, in a whisper, "Miss Rea?"

A spasm of pain shot across Richard's face, and he was about to speak when Humphrey turned to him.

"Master Richard," he said, in a husky voice, "we was boys together, and played together almost like brothers. This here comes to me stunning, like. You say it's mine. Well, it aint my fault. I don't want it.

Keep it all, if you like; if not, let's share and share alike."

The last words fell on empty air, for Richard had waved his hand to both, and hurried out of the room.

That evening, with beating heart, he walked towards Tolcarne gates. He had been busy amongst his papers, tearing up and making ready for that which he had to do on the morrow; and now, more agitated than he would own, he sought the lane where so many happy hours had been spent to see if Tiny Rea would grant him the interview he had written to ask for, that he might say good-bye.

It was a soft, balmy night, and the stars seemed to look sadly down through the trees as he leaned against a ma.s.s of lichen-covered granite, pink here and there with the pretty stonecrop of the place, waiting, for she was behind time.

"Will she come," he said, "now that I am a beggar without a s.h.i.+lling, save that which I could earn? Oh, shame! shame! shame! How could I doubt her?"

No, he would not doubt her; she could not have cared about his money.

She was too sweet and loving and gentle. And what should he say--wait?

No, he dared not. He could only--only--leave her free, that she might--

"Oh, my darling!" he groaned; and he laid his broad forehead upon the hard, rugged stone, weeping now like a child.

The clouds came across the sky, blotting out one by one the glistening stars; a chilly mist swept along the valley from the sea, and all around was dark and cold as the future of his blasted life. For the minutes glided into hours, and she came not--came not to say one gentle, loving word--one G.o.d-speed to send him on his way; and at last, heart-broken, he staggered to the great floral gate, held the chilly rails, kissed the iron, and gazed with pa.s.sionate longing up at the now darkened house, and then walked slowly away, stunned by the violence of his grief.

The wind was rising fast, and coming in heavy soughs from off the sea.

As he reached the lodge gates at Penreife he paused, staring before him in a helpless way, till a heavy squall smote him, and with it a sharp shower of rain, whose drops seemed to cool his forehead and rouse him to action.

Starting off, with great strides, he took the short cut, and made for the sea, where the fields ended suddenly, their short, thyme-scented gra.s.s seeming to have been cut where there was a fall of full four hundred feet, down past a rugged, piled-up wall of granite, to the white-veined rock, polished by the restless sea below. To any one unaccustomed to the coast a walk there on a dark night meant death, either by mutilation on the cruel rocks, always seeming to be studded with great gouts of crimson blood, where the sea anemones clung in hundreds, or else by drowning in the deep, clear water, when the tide was up, and the waves played amidst the long, chocolate strands of fucus and bladder-wrack, waving to and fro.

It was going to be a wild night, but it seemed in keeping with the chaos of his mind. Far out on the sea, softly rising to and fro in the thick darkness, were the lights of the fis.h.i.+ng-boats, as a score or so lay drifting with their herring-nets; and in his heart there was not a rough fisher there whose lot he did not envy.

"And she could not come!" he groaned, as he stood there, with bare head.

"Oh, my love--my love! To go without one gentle word, far, far away, and but yesterday so happy!"

The wind increased in force, and, with the gathering strength of the tide, the waves came rus.h.i.+ng in, to beat in thunder against the rocks far beneath his feet; and then, with a rush, the fine salt spray was whirled up, and swept in his face, as he gazed straight out to sea.

At another time he might have shuddered, standing thus upon the edge of that great cliff, with--just dimly seen in its more intense blackness-- the rugged headland that stretched like a b.u.t.tress into the sea upon his left. But now the horrors of the place seemed welcome, and he felt, as a smile came on his dripping features, that it would be pleasant to leap from where he stood right off at once into oblivion.

It seemed so easy, such a quiet way of getting rest from the turmoil and trouble of the future, that the feeling seemed to grow upon him.

"No," he said at last; "that would be a coward's end. I've done one brave thing to-day; and now, old friend, you shall have me again to toss upon your waves, but it shall be as your master, not as a slave."

As he spoke he raised his hands and stretched them out, when he heard a hoa.r.s.e cry behind him, and as he sharply turned and stepped back, something seemed to come out of the darkness, seize him by the throat, and the next moment he was over the cliff, suspended above eternity.

Then there was an awful silence, only broken by the roar, thud, and hiss of the waves below, as they rushed in, broke upon the rocks, and then fled back in foamy spray.

Richard's fingers were dug into the short, velvet turf, and he hung there, with his legs rigid, afraid to move, and wondering whether those were friendly or inimical hands that clutched his throat. It seemed an age of horror before the silence was broken, and then came a panting voice, which he knew as Humphrey's, to sob, as it were, in his ear--

"Master d.i.c.k, don't be scar'd. I've got you tight, but I can't move.

Get your nerve, and then s.h.i.+ft your hands one at a time to me."

Without a moment's hesitation, Richard did so, with the damp gathering on his brow the while.

"That's brave, sir. Now get your toes in the cracks of the granite somewhere--gently, don't hurry--I won't let go, though I can't move."

Richard obeyed, drew himself up an inch, then another, and another, felt that he was saved--then made a slip, and all seemed over, but Humphrey held to him with all his strength, and once more Richard tried, tearing hands and knees with the exertion, till he got his chest above the cliff edge, then was halfway up, and crawled safely on, to fall over panting on his side.

"Quick, Master Richard, your hand!" shouted Humphrey.

And the saved had to turn saver, for the keeper had been drawn closer and closer to the edge by Richard's efforts, and but for a sudden s.n.a.t.c.h, and the exercise of all his strength, the new owner of Penreife would have glided off the slippery gra.s.s into the darkness beneath.

"Safe," muttered Humphrey, rising. "Give me your hand, Master Richard.

I thought, when I followed you, you meant to leap off."

"No, Humphrey," said Richard, sadly, "I will not throw my worthless life away. It is such glimpses of death as that we have just seen that teach the value of life. Goodnight; don't speak to me again."

Humphrey obeyed, and followed him in silence to the house.

The next morning, as soon as the letters had been brought in, Richard took his--a single one--and, without a word to a soul, carried a small portmanteau to the stable-yard, waited while the horse was put to, and then had himself driven off.

As he pa.s.sed the lodge a note was put into his hand by a boy. An hour later he was in the train, and the destination of that train was the big metropolis, where most men come who mean to begin afresh.

Volume 3, Chapter II.

CORRESPONDENCE.

It never struck Richard that some of his behaviour was verging on the Quixotic. His only thought now was that he was degraded from his high estate, and that the woman whom he had loved with all his heart--did love still--had turned from him in his poverty and distress.

At such times men are not disposed to fairly a.n.a.lyse the motives of others; and Richard was anything but an unbiased judge, as he knit his brow, told himself that he had the fight to begin now, and determined to take help from no one who had known him in his prosperity.

With this feeling strong upon him he dismissed the man who had driven him over; and, to the utter astonishment of the Saint Kitt's station-master, took a third-cla.s.s ticket for London, and entered a compartment wherein were a soldier with a bottle, a sailor just landed, an old lady with several bundles, bound on a visit to her boy in London--a gentleman, she informed everybody, who kept a public--and the customary rural third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers.

And then the long, dreary journey began, Richard making up his mind to suit himself to the company amongst whom he was thrown, and failing dismally; for both soldier and sailor, whose idea of enjoyment seemed to be that they must get hopelessly intoxicated as soon as possible, took it as an offence that he would not "take a pull" of rum out of the bottle belonging to the son of Neptune, and of gin from that of the son of Mars.