AT ARM'S LENGTH.
For three or four weeks Walter Tyrrel remained in town, awaiting the
result of the Wharfedale Viaduct competition. With some difficulty he
raised and paid over meanwhile to Erasmus Walker the ten thousand
pounds of blackmail--for it was little else--agreed upon between them.
The great engineer accepted the money with as little compunction as men
who earn large incomes always display in taking payment for doing
nothing. It is an enviable state of mind, unattainable by most of us
who work hard for our living. He pocketed his check with a smile, as if
it were quite in the nature of things that ten thousand pounds should
drop upon him from the clouds without rhyme or reason. To Tyrrel, on
the other hand, with his sensitive conscience, the man's greed and
callousness seemed simply incomprehensible. He stood aghast at such
sharp practice. But for Cleer's sake, and to ease his own soul, he paid
it all over without a single murmur.
And then the question came up in his mind, "Would it be effectual after
all? Would Walker play him false? Would he throw the weight of his
influence into somebody else's scale? Would the directors submit as
tamely as he thought to his direction or dictation?" It would be hard
on Tyrrel if, after his spending ten thousand pounds without security
of any sort, Eustace were to miss the chance, and Cleer to go unmarried.
At the end of a month, however, as Tyrrel sat one morning in his own
room at the Metropole, which he mostly frequented, Eustace Le Neve
rushed in, full of intense excitement. Tyrrel's heart rose in his
mouth. He grew pale with agitation. The question had been decided one
way or the other he saw.
"Well; which is it?" he gasped out. "Hit or miss? Have you got it?"
"Yes; I've got it!" Eustace answered, half beside himself with delight.
"I've got it! I've got it! The chairman and Walker have just been round
to call on me, and congratulate me on my success. Walker says my
fortune's made. It's a magnificent design. And in any case it'll mean
work for me for the next four years; after which I'll not want for
occupation elsewhere. So now, of course, I can marry almost
immediately."
"Thank God!" Tyrrel murmured, falling back into his chair as he spoke,
and turning deadly white.
He was glad of it, oh, so glad; and yet, in his own heart, it would
cost him many pangs to see Cleer really married in good earnest to
Eustace.
He had worked for it with all his might to be sure; he had worked for
it and paid for it! and now he saw his wishes on the very eve of
fulfillment, the natural man within him rose up in revolt against the
complete success of his own unselfish action.
As for Mrs. Trevennack, when she heard the good news, she almost
fainted with joy. It might yet be in time. Cleer might be married now
before poor Michael broke forth in that inevitable paroxysm.
For inevitable she felt it was at last. As each day went by it grew
harder and harder for the man to contain himself. Fighting desperately
against it every hour, immersing himself as much as he could in the
petty fiddling details of the office and the Victualing Yard so as to
keep the fierce impulse under due control, Michael Trevennack yet found
the mad mood within him more and more ungovernable with each week that
went by. As he put it to his own mind he could feel his wings growing
as if they must burst through the skin; he could feel it harder and
ever harder as time went on to conceal the truth, to pretend he was a
mere man, when he knew himself to be really the Prince of the
Archangels, to busy himself about contracts for pork, and cheese, and
biscuits, when he could wing his way boldly over sea and land, or
stand forth before the world in gorgeous gear, armed as of yore in the
adamant and gold of his celestial panoply!
So Michael Trevennack thought in his own seething soul. But that
strong, brave woman, his wife, bearing her burden unaided, and watching
him closely day and night with a keen eye of mingled love and fear,
could see that the madness was gaining on him gradually. Oftener and
oftener now did he lose himself in his imagined world; less and less
did he tread the solid earth beneath us. Mrs. Trevennack had by this
time but one anxious care left in life--to push on as fast as possible
Cleer and Eustace's marriage.
But difficulties intervened, as they always WILL intervene in this
work-a-day world of ours. First of all there were formalities about the
appointment itself. Then, even when all was arranged, Eustace found he
had to go north in person, shortly after Christmas, and set to work
with a will at putting his plan into practical shape for contractor and
workmen. And as soon as he got there he saw at once he must stick at it
for six months at least before he could venture to take a short holiday
for the sake of getting married. Engineering is a very absorbing trade;
it keeps a man day and night at the scene of his labors.
Storm or flood at any moment may ruin everything. It would be prudent
too, Eustace thought, to have laid by a little more for household
expenses, before plunging into the unknown sea of matrimony; and though
Mrs. Trevennack, flying full in the face of all matronly respect for
foresight in young people, urged him constantly to marry, money or no
money, and never mind about a honeymoon, Eustace stuck to his point and
determined to take no decisive step till he saw how the work was
turning out in Wharfedale. It was thus full August of the succeeding
year before he could fix a date definitely; and then, to Cleer's great
joy, he named a day at last, about the beginning of September.
It was an immense relief to Mrs. Trevennack's mind when, after one or
two alterations, she knew the third was finally fixed upon. She had
good reasons of her own for wishing it to be early; for the
twenty-ninth is Michaelmas Day, and it was always with difficulty that
her husband could be prevented from breaking out before the eyes of the
world on that namesake feast of St. Michael and All Angels. For, on
that sacred day, when in every Church in Christendom his importance as
the generalissimo of the angelic host was remembered and commemorated,
it seemed hard indeed to the seraph in disguise that he must still
guard his incognito, still go on as usual with his petty higgling over
corned beef and biscuits and the price of jute sacking. "There was war
in heaven," said the gospel for the day--that sonorous gospel Mrs.
Trevennack so cordially dreaded--for her husband would always go to
church at morning service, and hold himself more erect than was his
wont, to hear it--"There was war in heaven; Michael and his angels
fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and
prevailed not." And should he, who could thus battle against all the
powers of evil, be held in check any longer, as with a leash of straw,
by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty? No, no, he would stand
forth in his true angelic shape, and show these martinets what form
they had ignorantly taken for mere Michael Trevennack of the Victualing
Department!
One thing alone eased Mrs. Trevennack's mind through all those weary
months of waiting and watching: Walter Tyrrel had long since gone back
again to Penmorgan. Her husband had been free from that greatest of all
temptations, to a mad paroxysm of rage--the sight of the man who, as he
truly believed, had killed their Michael. And now, if only Tyrrel would
keep away from town till Cleer was married and all was settled--Mrs.
Trevennack sighed deep--she would almost count herself a happy woman!
On the day of Cleer's wedding, however, Walter Tyrrel came to town. He
came on purpose. He couldn't resist the temptation of seeing with his
own eyes the final success of his general plan, even though it cost him
the pang of watching the marriage of the one girl he ever truly loved
to another man by his own deliberate contrivance. But he didn't forget
Eustace Le Neve's earnest warning, that he should keep out of the way
of Michael Trevennack. Even without Eustace, his own conscience would
have urged that upon him. The constant burden of his remorse for that
boyish crime weighed hard upon him every hour of every day that he
lived. He didn't dare on such a morning to face the father of the boy
he had unwittingly and half-innocently murdered.
So, very early, as soon as the church was opened, he stole in
unobserved, and took a place by himself in the farthest corner of the
gallery. A pillar concealed him from view; for further security he held
his handkerchief constantly in front of his face, or shielded himself
behind one of the big free-seat prayer-books. Cleer came in looking
beautiful in her wedding dress; Mrs. Trevennack's pathetic face glowed
radiant for once in this final realization of her dearest wishes. A
single second only, near the end of the ceremony, Tyrrel leaned forward
incautiously, anxious to see Cleer at an important point of the
proceedings. At the very same instant Trevennack raised his face. Their
eyes met in a flash. Tyrrel drew back, horrorstruck, and penitent at
his own intrusion at such a critical moment. But, strange to say,
Trevennack took no overt notice. Had his wife only known she would have
sunk in her seat in her agony of fear. But happily she didn't know.
Trevennack went through the ceremony, all outwardly calm; he gave no
sign of what he had seen, even to his wife herself. He buried it deep
in his own heart. That made it all the more dangerous.