PURE ACCIDENT.
During the next week or so, as chance would have it, Cleer Trevennack
fell in more than once on her walks with Eustace Le Neve and Walter
Tyrrel. They had picked up acquaintance in an irregular way, to be
sure; but Cleer hadn't happened to be close by when her father uttered
those strange words to his wife, "It was he who did it; it was he who
killed our boy"; nor did she notice particularly the marked abruptness
of Tyrrel's departure on that unfortunate occasion. So she had no such
objection to meeting the two young men as Trevennack himself not
unnaturally displayed; she regarded his evident avoidance of Walter
Tyrrel as merely one of "Papa's fancies." To Cleer, Papa's fancies were
mysterious but very familiar entities; and Tyrrel and Le Neve were
simply two interesting and intelligent young men--the squire of the
village and a friend on a visit to him. Indeed, to be quite
confidential, it was the visitor who occupied the larger share of
Cleer's attention. He was so good-looking and so nice. His open face
and pink and white complexion had attracted her fancy from the very
first; and the more she saw of him the more she liked him.
They met often--quite by accident, of course--on the moor and
elsewhere. Tyrrel, for his part, shrank somewhat timidly from the
sister of the boy, for his share in whose death he so bitterly
reproached himself; yet he couldn't quite drag himself off whenever he
found himself in Cleer's presence. She bound him as by a spell. He was
profoundly attracted to her. There was something about the pretty
Cornish girl so frank, so confiding, in one word, so magnetic, that
when once he came near her he couldn't tear himself away as he felt he
ought to. Yet he could see very well, none the less, it was for Eustace
Le Neve that she watched most eagerly, with the natural interest of a
budding girl in the man who takes her pure maiden fancy. Tyrrel allowed
with a sigh that this was well indeed; for how could he ever dream, now
he knew who she was, of marrying young Michael Trevennack's sister?
One afternoon the two friends were returning from a long ramble across
the open moor, when, near a little knoll of bare and weathered rock
that rose from a circling belt of Cornish heath, they saw Cleer by
herself, propped against the huge boulders, with her eyes fixed
intently on a paper-covered novel. She looked up and smiled as they
approached; and the young men, turning aside from their ill-marked
path, came over and stood by her. They talked for awhile about the
ordinary nothings of society small-talk, till by degrees Cleer chanced
accidentally to bring the conversation round to something that had
happened to her mother and herself a year or two since in Malta. Le
Neve snatched at the word; for he was eager to learn all he could about
the Trevennacks' movements, so deeply had Cleer already impressed her
image on his susceptible nature.
"And when do you go back there?" he asked, somewhat anxiously. "I
suppose your father's leave is for a week or two only."
"Oh, dear, no; we don't go back at all, thank heaven," Cleer answered,
with a sunny smile. "I can't bear exile, Mr. Le Neve, and I never cared
one bit for living in Malta. But this year, fortunately, papa's going
to be transferred for a permanence to England; he's to have charge of a
department that has something or other to do with provisioning the
Channel Squadron; I don't quite understand what; but anyhow, he'll have
to be running about between Portsmouth and Plymouth, and I don't know
where else; and mamma and I will have to take a house for ourselves in
London."
Le Neve's face showed his pleasure. "That's well," he answered,
briskly. "Then you won't be quite lost! I mean, there'll be some chance
at least when you go away from here of one's seeing you sometimes."
A bright red spot rose deep on Cleer's cheek through the dark
olive-brown skin. "How kind of you to say so," she answered, looking
down. "I'm sure mamma'll be very pleased, indeed, if you'll take the
trouble to call." Then, to hide her confusion, she went on hastily,
"And are YOU going to be in England, too? I thought I understood the
other day from your friend you had something to do with a railway in
South America."
"Oh, that's all over now," Le Neve answered, with a wave, well pleased
she should ask him about his whereabouts so cordially. "I was only
employed in the construction of the line, you know; I've nothing at all
to do with its maintenance and working, and now the track's laid, my
work there's finished. But as to stopping in England,--ah--that's quite
another thing. An engineer's, you know, is a roving life. He's here
to-day and there to-morrow. I must go, I suppose, wherever work may
take me. And there isn't much stirring in the markets just now in the
way of engineering."
"I hope you'll get something at home," Cleer said, simply, with a
blush, and then blamed herself for saying it. She blushed again at the
thought. She looked prettiest when she blushed. Walter Tyrrel, a little
behind, stood and admired her all the while. But Eustace was flattered
she should think of wanting him to remain in England.
"Thank you," he said, somewhat timidly, for her bashfulness made him a
trifle bashful in return. "I should like to very much--for more reasons
than one;" and he looked at her meaningly. "I'm getting tired, in some
ways, of life abroad. I'd much prefer to come back now and settle down
in England."
Cleer rose as he spoke. His frank admiration made her feel
self-conscious. She thought this conversation had gone quite far enough
for them both for the present. After all, she knew so little of him,
though he was really very nice, and he looked at her so kindly! But
perhaps it would be better to go and hunt up papa. "I think I ought to
be moving now," she said, with a delicious little flush on her smooth,
dark cheek. "My father'll be waiting for me." And she set her face
across the moor in the opposite direction from the gate of Penmorgan.
"We may come with you, mayn't we?" Eustace asked, with just an
undertone of wistfulness.
But Tyrrel darted a warning glance at him. He, at least, couldn't go to
confront once more that poor dead boy's father.
"I must hurry home," he said, feebly, consulting his watch with an
abstracted air. "It's getting so late. But don't let me prevent YOU
from accompanying Miss Trevennack."
Cleer shrank away, a little alarmed. She wasn't quite sure whether it
would be perfectly right for her to walk about alone on the moorland
with only ONE young man, though she wouldn't have minded the two, for
there is safety in numbers. "Oh, no," she said, half frightened, in
that composite tone which is at once an entreaty and a positive
command. "Don't mind me, Mr. Le Neve. I'm quite accustomed to strolling
by myself round the cliff. I wouldn't make you miss your dinner for
worlds. And besides, papa's not far off. He went away from me,
rambling."
The two young men, accepting their dismissal in the sense in which it
was intended, saluted her deferentially, and turned away on their own
road. But Cleer took the path to Michael's Crag, by the gully.
From the foot of the crag you can't see the summit. Its own shoulders
and the loose rocks of the foreground hide it. But Cleer was pretty
certain her father must be there; for he was mostly to be found, when
tide permitted it, perched up on the highest pinnacle of his namesake
skerry, looking out upon the waters with a pre-occupied glance from
that airy citadel. The waves in the narrow channel that separate the
crag from the opposite mainland were running high and boisterous, but
Cleer had a sure foot, and could leap, light as a gazelle, from rock to
rock. Not for nothing was she Michael Trevennack's daughter, well
trained from her babyhood to high and airy climbs. She chose an easy
spot where it was possible to spring across by a series of boulders,
arranged accidentally like stepping-stones; and in a minute she was
standing on the main crag itself, a huge beetling mass of detached
serpentine pushed boldly out as the advance-guard of the land into the
assailing waves, and tapering at its top into a pyramidal steeple.
The face of the crag was wet with spray in places; but Cleer didn't
mind spray; she was accustomed to the sea in all its moods and tempers.
She clambered up the steep side--a sheer wall of bare rock, lightly
clad here and there with sparse drapery of green sapphire, or clumps of
purple sea-aster, rooted firm in the crannies. Its front was yellow
with great patches of lichen, and on the peaks, overhead, the gulls
perched, chattering, or launched themselves in long curves upon the
evening air. Cleer paused half way up to draw breath and admire the
familiar scene. Often as she had gone there before, she could never
help gazing with enchanted eyes on those brilliantly colored pinnacles,
on that deep green sea, on those angry white breakers that dashed in
ceaseless assault against the solid black wall of rock all round her.
Then she started once more on her climb up the uncertain path, a mere
foothold in the crannies, clinging close with her tiny hands as she
went to every jutting corner or weather-worn rock, and every woody stem
of weather-beaten sea plants.
At last, panting and hot, she reached the sharp top, expecting to find
Trevennack at his accustomed post on the very tallest pinnacle of the
craggy little islet. But, to her immense surprise, her father wasn't
there. His absence disquieted her. Cleer stood up on the fissured mass
of orange-lichened rock that crowned the very summit, dispossessing the
gulls who flapped round her as she mounted it; then, shading her eyes
with her hand, she looked down in every direction to see if she could
descry that missing figure in some nook of the crag. He was nowhere
visible. "Father!" she cried aloud, at the top of her voice; "father!
father! father!" But the only answer to her cry was the sound of the
sea on the base, and the loud noise of the gulls, as they screamed and
fluttered in angry surprise over their accustomed breeding-grounds.
Alarmed and irresolute, Cleer sat down on the rock, and facing
landwards for awhile, waved her handkerchief to and fro to attract, if
possible, her father's attention. Then she scanned the opposite cliffs,
beyond the gap or chasm that separated her from the mainland; but she
could nowhere see him. He must have forgotten her and gone home to
dinner alone, she fancied now, for it was nearly seven o'clock. Nothing
remained but to climb down again and follow him. It was getting full
late to be out by herself on the island. And tide was coming in, and
the surf was getting strong--Atlantic swell from the gale at sea
yesterday.
Painfully and toilsomely she clambered down the steep path, making her
foothold good, step by step, in the slippery crannies, rendered still
more dangerous in places by the sticky spray and the brine that dashed
over them from the seething channel. It was harder coming down, a good
deal, than going up, and she was accustomed to her father's hand to
guide her--to fit her light foot on the little ledges by the way, or to
lift her down over the steepest bits with unfailing tenderness. So she
found it rather difficult to descend by herself--both difficult and
tedious. At last, however, after one or two nasty slips, and a false
step or so on the way that ended in her grazing the tender skin on
those white little fingers, Cleer reached the base of the crag, and
stood face to face with the final problem of crossing the chasm that
divided the islet from the opposite mainland.
Then for the first time the truth was borne in upon her with a sudden
rush that she couldn't get back--she was imprisoned on the island. She
had crossed over at almost the last moment possible. The sea now quite
covered two or three of her stepping-stones; fierce surf broke over the
rest with each advancing billow, and rendered the task of jumping from
one to the other impracticable even for a strong and sure-footed man,
far more for a slight girl of Cleer's height and figure.
In a moment the little prisoner took in the full horror of the
situation. It was now about half tide, and seven o'clock in the
evening. High water would therefore fall between ten and eleven; and it
must be nearly two in the morning, she calculated hastily, before the
sea had gone down enough to let her cross over in safety. Even then, in
the dark, she dared hardly face those treacherous stepping-stones. She
must stop there till day broke, if she meant to get ashore again
without unnecessary hazard.
Cleer was a Trevennack, and therefore brave; but the notion of stopping
alone on that desolate island, thronged with gulls and cormorants, in
the open air, through all those long dark hours till morning dawned,
fairly frightened and appalled her. For a minute or two she crouched
and cowered in silence. Then, overcome by terror, she climbed up once
more to the first platform of rock, above the reach of the spray, and
shouted with all her might, "Father! father! father!"
But 'tis a lonely coast, that wild stretch by the Lizard. Not a soul
was within earshot. Cleer sat there still, or stood on top of the crag,
for many minutes together, shouting and waving her handkerchief for
dear life itself; but not a soul heard her. She might have died there
unnoticed; not a creature came near to help or deliver her. The gulls
and the cormorants alone stared at her and wondered.
Meanwhile, tide kept flowing with incredible rapidity. The gale in the
Atlantic had raised an unwonted swell; and though there was now little
wind, the breakers kept thundering in upon the firm, sandy beach with a
deafening roar that drowned Cleer's poor voice completely. To add to
her misfortunes, fog began to drift slowly with the breeze from
seaward. It was getting dark too, and the rocks were damp. Overhead the
gulls screamed loud as they flapped and circled above her.
In an agony of despair, Cleer sat down all unnerved on the topmost
crag. She began to cry to herself. It was all up now. She knew she must
stop there alone till morning.