Part 16 (1/2)

”May I ask for your explanation or your excuse?”

”You can call it an explanation or an excuse, whichever you like,” Hamel replied steadily, ”but the fact is that this little building, which some one else seems to have appropriated, is mine. If I had not been a good-natured person, I should be engaged, at the present moment, in turning out its furniture on to the beach.”

”What is your name?” Mr. Fentolin asked suddenly.

”My name is Hamel--Richard Hamel.”

For several moments there was silence. Mr. Fentolin was still leaning forward in his strange little vehicle. The colour seemed to have left even his lips. The hard glitter in his eyes had given place to an expression almost like fear. He looked at Richard Hamel as though he were some strange sea-monster come up from underneath the sands.

”Richard Hamel,” he repeated. ”Do you mean that you are the son of Hamel, the R.A., who used to be in these parts so often? He was my brother's friend.”

”I am his son.”

”But his son was killed in the San Francisco earthquake. I saw his name in all the lists. It was copied into the local papers here.”

Hamel knocked the ashes from his pipe.

”I take a lot of killing,” he observed. ”I was in that earthquake, right enough, and in the hospital afterwards, but it was a man named Hamel of Philadelphia who died.”

Mr. Fentolin sat quite motionless for several moments. He seemed, if possible, to have shrunken into something smaller still. A few yards behind, Meekins had alighted from his bicycle and was standing waiting.

”So you are Richard Hamel,” Mr. Fentolin said at last very softly.

”Welcome back to England, Richard Hamel! I knew your father slightly, although we were never very friendly.”

He stretched out his hand from underneath the coverlet of his little vehicle--a hand with long, white fingers, slim and white and shapely as a woman's. A single ring with a dull green stone was on his fourth finger. Hamel shook hands with him as he would have shaken hands with a woman. Afterwards he rubbed his fingers slowly together. There was something about the touch which worried him.

”You have been making use of this little shanty, haven't you?” he asked bluntly.

Mr. Fentolin nodded. He was apparently beginning to recover himself.

”You must remember,” he explained suavely, ”that it was built by my grandfather, and that we have had rights over the whole of the foresh.o.r.e here from time immemorial. I know quite well that my brother gave it to your father--or rather he sold it to him for a nominal sum. I must tell you that it was a most complicated transaction. He had the greatest difficulty in getting any lawyer to draft the deed of sale. There were so many ancient rights and privileges which it was impossible to deal with. Even now there are grave doubts as to the validity of the transaction. When nothing was heard of you, and we all concluded that you were dead, I ventured to take back what I honestly believed to be my own. Owing,” he continued slowly, ”to my unfortunate affliction, I am obliged to depend for interest in my life upon various hobbies. This little place, queerly enough, has become one of them. I have furnished it, in a way; installed the telephone to the house, connected it with my electric plant, and I come down here when I want to be quite alone, and paint. I watch the sea--such a sea sometimes, such storms, such colour!

You notice that ridge of sand out yonder? It forms a sort of natural breakwater. Even on the calmest day you can trace that white line of foam.”

”It is a strange coast,” Hamel admitted.

Mr. Fentolin pointed with his forefinger northwards.

”Somewhere about there,” he indicated, ”is the entrance to the tidal river which flows up to the village of St. David's yonder. You see?”

His finger traced its course until it came to a certain point near the beach, where a tall black pillar stood, surmounted by a globe.

”I have had a light fixed there for the benefit or the fishermen,” he said, ”a light which I work from my own dynamo. Between where we are sitting now and there--only a little way out to sea--is a jagged cl.u.s.ter of cruel rocks. You can see them if you care to swim out in calm weather. Fishermen who tried to come in by night were often trapped there and, in a rough sea, drowned. That is why I had that pillar of light built. On stormy nights it shows the exact entrance to the water causeway.”

”Very kind of you indeed,” Hamel remarked, ”very benevolent.”

Mr. Fentolin sighed.

”So few people have any real feeling for sailors,” he continued. ”The fishermen around here are certainly rather a casual cla.s.s. Do you know that there is scarcely one of them who can swim? There isn't one of them who isn't too lazy to learn even the simplest stroke. My brother used to say--dear Gerald--that it served them right if they were drowned. I have never been able to feel like that, Mr. Hamel. Life is such a wonderful thing. One night,” he went on, dropping his voice and leaning a little forward in his carriage--”it was just before, or was it just after I had fixed that light--I was down here one dark winter night. There was a great north wind and a huge sea running. It was as black as pitch, but I heard a boat making for St. David's causeway strike on those rocks just hidden in front there. I heard those fishermen shriek as they went under. I heard their shouts for help, I heard their death cries. Very terrible, Mr. Hamel! Very terrible!”

Hamel looked at the speaker curiously. Mr. Fentolin seemed absorbed in his subject. He had spoken with relish, as one who loves the things he speaks about. Quite unaccountably, Hamel found himself s.h.i.+vering.

”It was their mother,” Mr. Fentolin continued, leaning again a little forward in his chair, ”their mother whom I saw pa.s.s along the beach just now--a widow, too, poor thing. She comes here often--a morbid taste. She spoke to you, I think?”