Part 12 (2/2)
”No,” said she, bravely enough. ”I am not afraid for myself.”
”And you will do that?”
”What?” she asked.
”Sleep in peace,” said I; and putting my hand into my pocket as if by accident, I let her see again the corner of her white scarf. Her face flushed a little as she saw it.
”Oh, yes,” she answered, and to my surprise with the easiest laugh imaginable. ”I shall sleep in peace. You need have no fear.”
I could not understand her. What a pa.s.sion of despair it must have needed to string her to that act of death last night! Yet to-day--she could even allude to it with a laugh. I was lost in perplexity, but I had this one sure thing to comfort me. She was to-day hopeful, however much she despaired yesterday. She relied upon me to rescue Cullen from his peril. I was not sure that I should be doing her the service she imagined it to be, even if I succeeded. But she loved him, and looked to me to help her. So that I, too, could sleep in peace without fear that to-night another scarf would be fetched out to do the office this one I kept had failed to do.
I gave d.i.c.k my valise to carry across the island, and waited until he was out of sight before I started. Then I walked to the palisade at the end of the house. I found a spot where the palisade was broken; the splintered wood was fresh and clean; it was I who had broken the palisade last night. From that point I marched straight up the hill through the gorse, and when I had walked for about twenty minutes I stopped and looked about me. I struck away to my left, and after a little I stopped again. I marched up and down that hill, to the right, to the left, for perhaps the s.p.a.ce of an hour, and at last I came upon that for which I searched--a steep slope where the gra.s.s was crushed, and underneath that slope a sheer descent. On the brink of the precipice--for that I judged it to be--I saw a broken gorse-bush. I lay down on my face and carefully crawled down the slope. The roots of the gorse-bush still held firmly in the ground. I clutched it in my left hand, dug the nails of my right through the gra.s.s into the soil and leaned over. My precipice was no more than a hollow some twenty feet deep, and had I slipped yesterday night, I should not have fallen even those twenty feet; for a sort of low barn was built in the hollow, with its back leaning against the perpendicular wall. I should have dropped perhaps ten feet on to the roof of this barn.
I drew myself up the hill again and sat down. The evening was very quiet and still. I was near to the summit of the island. Over my left shoulder I could see the sun setting far away in the Atlantic, and the waves rippling gold. Beneath me was the house, a long one-storied building of granite, on the horn of a tiny bay. The windows looked across the bay; behind the house stretched that tangled garden, and at the end of the garden rose the Merchant's Rock. As it stood thus in the evening light, with the smoke curling from its chimneys, and the sea murmuring at its door, it seemed quite impossible to believe that any story of turmoil and strife and tragedy could have locality there.
That old buccaneer Adam Mayle, and his soft-voiced son Cullen, whom he had turned adrift, seemed the figures of a dream and my adventure in Cullen's room--a hideous nightmare.
And yet even as I looked footsteps brushed through the gra.s.s behind me, and turning I saw a sailor with a bra.s.s telescope under one arm and a black patch over one eye; who politely pa.s.sed me the time of day and went by. He was a big man, with a great beard and hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils. He was another of the five no doubt, and though he went by he did not pa.s.s out of sight. I waited, hoping that he would go, for I had a great desire to examine the barn beneath me more closely. It was from the barn that the unearthly screeching had risen which had so terrified d.i.c.k Parmiter. It was between the barn and the house that a girl had brushed against my wounded hand and taken a stain of blood upon her dress.
The hollow was only a break in the steep slope of the hill. The barn could easily be approached by descending the hill to the right or the left, and then turning in. I was anxious to do it, to try the door, to enter the barn, but I dared not, for the sailor was within sight, and I had no wish to arouse any suspicions. Helen had told me everything, she had said--everything which it concerned me to know. But had she? I found myself asking, as I got to my feet and crossed the hill down towards New Grimsby.
The sun had set by this time, a cool twilight took the colour from the gorse, and numberless small winged things flew and sung about one's face; all round a grey sea went down to a grey sky, and sea and sky were merged; and at my feet the lights began to twinkle in the little fis.h.i.+ng village by the sea. I hired a bed at the ”Palace” Inn, bade them prepare me supper and then walked on to Parmiter's cottage for my valise.
There was a great hubbub going on within; d.i.c.k's voice was explaining, and a woman's shrill voice overtopped his explanation. The cause of his offence was twofold. He had not been near the cottage all day, so that it was thought he had run away again, and the key of the cottage was gone. It had not been seen since yesterday, and d.i.c.k had been accused of purloining it. I explained to Mrs. Parmiter that it was my fault d.i.c.k had kept away all day, and I made a bargain with her that I should have the lad as my servant while I stayed upon the island. d.i.c.k shouldered my valise in a state of considerable indignation.
”What should I steal the key for?” said he. ”It only stands in the door for show. No one locks his door in Tresco. What should I steal the key for?” and he was within an ace of whimpering.
”Come, d.i.c.k,” said I, ”you mustn't mind a trifle of a scolding. Why, you are a hero to everybody in these parts, and to one man at all events outside them.”
”That doesn't hinder mother from chasing me about with an oar,” he answered.
”It is the fate of all heroes,” said I, ”to be barbarously used by their womenfolk.”
”Then I am d.a.m.ned if I want to be a hero,” said d.i.c.k, violently. ”And as for the key--of what consequence is it at all if you never lock your door?”
”Of no more consequence than your bruises, d.i.c.k,” said I.
But I was wrong. You may do many things with a key besides locking a door. You can slip it down your back to stop your nose bleeding, for instance; if it's a big key you can weigh a line with it, and perhaps catch a mackerel for your breakfast. And there's another use for a key of which I did not at this time know, or I should have been saved from considerable perplexity and not a little danger.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH I LEARN SOMETHING FROM AN ILL-PAINTED PICTURE
I took my supper in the kitchen of the Palace Inn, with a strong reek of tobacco to season it, and a succession of gruesome stories to make it palatable. The company was made up for the most part of fishermen, who talked always of wrecks upon the western islands and of dead men drowned. But occasionally a different accent and a different anecdote of some other corner of the world would make a variation; and doing my best to pierce the haze of smoke, I recognised the speaker as Peter Tortue, the Frenchman, or the man with the patch on his eye. George Glen was there too, tucked away in a corner by the fireplace, but he said very little. I paid, therefore, but a scanty attention, until, the talk having slid, as it will, from dead men to their funerals, some native began to descant upon the magnificence of Adam Mayle's.
”Ay,” said he, drawing a long breath, ”there _was_ a funeral, and all according to orders dictated in writing by the dead man. He was to be buried by torchlight in the Abbey Grounds. I do remember that! Mortal heavy he was, and he needed a big coffin.”
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