Prince Charlie Part 13

The last up-train left at eight o'clock. In October the pa.s.sengers made no great demand on the guard's attention; in the season he might have been, with justness, likened to a sardine packer. Entrustment of the bundle of proofs, to be posted by the railway man on arrival in London, was an easily arranged matter.

Crossing the hand with a piece of silver is as effective with the average guard as it is with a gipsy: the oracle is worked thereby. The proofs would reach the publisher by first post in the morning.

Masters had effected this arrangement by five minutes to eight; five minutes before the scheduled time for the train's departure for London.

Having lighted a cigar in the shelter of the waiting-room doorway, he b.u.t.toned up his coat, prepared for his return walk home.

As--b.u.t.toned up, cigar in mouth--he emerged from the station's precincts, he could not fail to observe the lights in the back windows of Ivy Cottage. The bungalow stood not three minutes' walk away.

That he should have avoided, he knew; but the night was dark; he would not be seen. Moreover, he was in no way different from other moths who ever flutter round candles.

So, more or less unconsciously, he was attracted; slowly walked in the direction of the light. The little G.o.d with wings is as experienced in the use of the magnet as the dart.

The corner of the road, which the rear of the house faced, was reached.

Suddenly the back door of the house was opened. By the light in the pa.s.sage behind he saw a man and a woman silhouetted in the door-frame, evidently engaged in actions of a farewell.

The woman had her arms lovingly round the man's neck. She fervently kissed him--his lips--again and again. Her sorrow at the parting was apparently of the deepest kind; at times she applied her handkerchief to her eyes. Not a detail of the incident escaped the attention of the man in the road.

Masters stood quite still watching them. Not an act due to ill-breeding: he was for the moment simply incapable of movement. Had his existence depended on a forward step, Death would have added another name to his list.

The couple came out in the garden; walked towards the gate. The path led straight from the door; the hall lamp still showed him the positions: the woman's arms clinging around the man.

It was well he stood in the shadow on that road; well that they were so occupied as to prevent their noticing him. Perhaps the iron that had entered into his soul travelled via his face. That would account for the seared look on it. It was as the face of the dead.

So different. Ah! So different had he thought her. Had linked up, in his mind, the purity of the snow in connexion with her. This was the woman he had pictured; who was ever so before him that his pen seemed animated when he handled it to describe her.

His thoughts--edged with keen bitterness and self-contempt--went back to the pure, guileless heroine in his book. Had he been capable of laughter at himself, for being a fool, his mirth would have been of the greatest heartiness just then.

The couple at the gate parted; the watcher was not very clear how. What followed being--by reason of a sort of indescribable veil or mist which enveloped him--blurred, almost hidden from him. Dazed as was his condition, he was cognizant that the man crossed the road, ran past up the pathway to the station. Then came the sound of a whistle, followed by the rumbling of the departing train.

Footsteps! He knew them--short as had been his acquaintance with them--along the gravel path; then the door of Ivy Cottage was shut. The blackness of the night could not have been heavier than the thoughts he was alone with. Ideas of things seemed to grow more entangled and confused every instant.

From the moment that he had despatched his parcel, he had been mentally accusing himself of folly of the highest cla.s.s. Did so whilst lighting his cigar and on the way from the booking office--with the back of Ivy Cottage fronting him. Why had he believed those wretched over-the-wall gossips, when there was the face--those soulful eyes--of the woman herself to look into?

That he had listened to and questioned his landlady was an insult to the woman of whom his mind was so full. He knew how those glorious, plumbless blue eyes of hers would flash contempt for him did she but know: she must never know! Standing there--near the house which enshrined what he thought the dearest and best in the world--he almost cursed himself. For his folly in doubting her. His future faith should obliterate the memory of that moment.

Then--then the back door had opened! It was a shock; a horrible shock.

But there was confirmation of what he had been told. The scales fell from his eyes.

Minutes--they seemed to him centuries--pa.s.sed. The mist before his eyes cleared away; the veiling disappeared. But he felt that it would not be a display of wisdom to turn homewards, just yet.

Masters was a sensitive--hyper-sensitive is perhaps a better word--man.

To rub up against inquiries from a garrulous landlady as to his health would prove more irritating than sand paper. He knew that his appearance would provoke comment; felt how he looked; determined to try and walk the look off.

By setting his face eastward, continuing on the station road for a mile or so, he would come out on the sh.o.r.e at what was known as The Gap. By walking along the sands therefrom, past the private owner's wall, he would be able to mount to the parade by the steps which faced his seat.

Lips tightened and his fingers clenched when he remembered the reference to this as "our" seat. The walk would do him good; he laughed a little at that last idea. As if, he thought, anything in the whole world would ever do him any good again!

Shaken faith is a wound that smarts acutely; the only surgeon able to apply a salve is Time.

CHAPTER XI

THE VOICE IN THE DARKNESS

It was a fitful night; one on which the clouds travelled swiftly. One moment the brightness of a silvering moon; the next comparative darkness. When the extinguishers hid the lamp of night, the illumination of the heavens was left to the stars.

There was sufficient light for Masters to find his way over the breakwaters without stumbling. At times, though, despite the brightness of the moon, his eyes saw dimly. With a swiftness bred of anger he knuckled the dimness away, cursing his own irrepressible folly the while.

His heart--soul--was full to bursting point. If he could only laugh, he thought; only laugh at himself! What an immense, great big thing it would be!

Walking, smart walking, was the only relief he experienced; physical exertion was reputedly an antidote to mental excitement. He felt sufficient energy to have moved on indefinitely. Wished he could walk on till he fell from exhaustion. In that there would have been satisfaction; rest, at any rate. Rest from that tumultuous tide of recrimination surging in his brain.

His anger was directed against himself; no one else. It upsprung from the fact that he had been such a fool, such an utter, absolute fool, as to be gulled by a woman! Scoffingly he told himself that anger against her would be unfair; that her behaviour had been merely typical of her s.e.x!

He, who had ever with his pen written against womankind--until at last reviewers had spoken of his work as being that of a woman-hater--to have fallen such an easy victim to the first siren who spread her snare for him! The thought was fuel to the maddening fever in possession of him.

Then came before him her face; those sweet, eloquent, soulful eyes!

Well, he endeavoured to comfort himself with the thought that any man would have fallen a victim as he had done. The amount of comfort in it, though, would have found resting-place on a needle's point.

There was an underlying reason for the failure. Granted that his ideal was shattered, he still loved its ruins. Therein lay the hopelessness of it all--and he knew it. Striding on, he savagely kicked out of his way, now and then, a stone. Poor sort of relief again.

The configuration of the coast line brought him to an abrupt standstill.

The cliff, jutting out, was met by a barrier of high rocks. These latter were overgrown with seaweed of the slipperiest sort: defiance bidding.

Nature's sudden intervention in his proceedings produced a corresponding interruption in his thoughts.

Why should he think about this woman any longer? She was not worth wasting thought over. He had been happy enough without her--before he knew her. So he would be happy without her still.

Cut the thought of her clean out of his mind; out of his heart. That, he told himself, was the correct thing to do. Life should be for him as if he had never seen her, never looked into the unfathomable depths of those forget-me-not eyes. It would be quite easy; a little effort of will was needed--that was all.

All that he meant; every word of it. Framed a resolution that he looked on as adamantine. But he ignored an important factor; made no allowance for the strange vitality of that prolific pure white flower: Love.

The axe of common sense may be laid to the root of the tree; may cut it down root and branch. Still one small remaining tendril, hidden from the sight, will work its way into the heart; spread and grow until in its magnitude it overshadows every other thought. Such is love.

Masters reached the steps which led up from the sands to the seat.

Standing at their base, he looked away in the direction of the sea. It was easy to mark the spot where Gracie had worked so hard with spade and pail.

He thought of the child with a pang of pity. For his heart had gone out to her; he had been captivated by her loving, winsome ways. Even now his eyes rested on where Gracie had built her last castle. He could mentally see her gleesomely watching the waters overflowing the moat and gradually sweeping down the castle's inverted pail-shaped turrets.

Gracie! Poor little soul! And so she, whom he had mistaken for the governess--this woman--was the mother of that incarnation of innocence and purity! What of the child's future? He shuddered to think of it; it was horrible; all horrible in the extreme.

Well, he would go home to his lodgings. First he would look again--for the last time--on that portion of the sands. For he felt that he would never be able to come there again. He would have been thankful for a breeze just then: his brow was feeling so fevered.

Perhaps there was more air on the seawall; he would test it, pa.s.s up the steps. There was the seat to avoid looking at; the seat whereon they had both sat reading--heart reading heart. Where had been born to him the happiest moment in life: love's awakening.

There was other history about the seat too: pencil created. Thereon, before that meeting, had been born heroes and heroines, wicked men and wicked women. All to be bound together and pressed between covers later on, to gladden or sadden readers' hearts.