Part 27 (1/2)

”Why?”

”He said, 'I am looking, not for the cross, but for a man to nail upon the cross,' and he meant his words, every syllable.”

Again we fell to silence, and so crossed the Old Grimsby Harbour and rounded its northern point. The lights of the house were in view at last. They shot out across the darkness in thin lines of light and wavered upon the black water lengthening and shortening with the slight heave of the waves. When they shortened, I wondered whether they beckoned me to the house; when they lengthened out, were they fingers which pointed to us to be gone?

”Since you know so much, Mr. Berkeley,” whispered Cullen Mayle, ”perhaps you can tell me whether Glen secured the cross.”

”No, he failed in that.”

”I felt sure he would,” said Cullen with a chuckle, and he ran the boat aground, not on the sand before the house but on the bank beneath the garden hedge. We climbed through the hedge; two windows blazed upon the night, and in the room sat Helen Mayle close by the fire, her violin on a table at her side and the bow swinging in her hand. I stepped forward and rapped at the window. She walked across the room and set her face to the pane, shutting out the light from her eyes with her hands. She saw us standing side by side. Instantly she drew down the blinds and came to the door, and over the gra.s.s towards us.

She came first to me with her hand outstretched.

”It is you,” she said gently, and the sound of her voice was wonderful in my ears. I had taken her hand before I was well aware what I did.

”Yes,” said I.

”You have come back. I never thought you would. But you have come.”

”I have brought back Cullen Mayle,” said I, as indifferently as I could, and so dropped her hand. She turned to Cullen then.

”Quick,” she said. ”You must come in.”

We went inside the door.

”It is some years since I trod these flags,” said Cullen. ”Well, I am glad to come home, though it is only as an outcast; and indeed, Helen, I have not the right even to call it home.”

It was as cruel a remark as he could well have made, seeing at what pains the girl had been, and still was, to restore that home to him.

That it hurt her I knew very well, for I heard her, in the darkness of the pa.s.sage, draw in her breath through her clenched teeth. Cullen walked along the pa.s.sage and through the hall.

”Lock the door,” Helen said to me, and I did lock it. ”Now drop the bar.”

When that was done we walked together into the hall, where she stopped.

”Look at me,” she said, ”please!” and I obeyed her.

”You have come back,” she repeated. ”You do not, then, any longer believe that I deceived you?”

”There is a reason why I have come back,” I answered. It was a reason which I could not give to her. I was resolved not to suffer her to lie at the mercy of Cullen Mayle. Fortunately, she did not think to ask me to be particular about the reason. But she beat her hands once or twice together, and--

”You still believe it, then!” she cried. ”With these two months to search and catch and hold the truth, you still hold me in the same contempt as when you turned your back on me and walked out through that door?”

”No, no!” I exclaimed. ”Contempt! That never entered into any thought I ever had of you. Make sure of that!”

”Yet you believe I tricked you. How can you believe that, and yet spare me your contempt!”

”I am no philosopher. It is the truth I tell you,” I answered, simply; and the face of Cullen Mayle appeared at the doorway of the parlour, so that no more was said.

CHAPTER XVIII