"Perhaps, after all, he has not come," said Harry to his silent
companion, for no word left her lips; she only restlessly led him from
place to place, pressing his arm with her hand when she wished him to
speak to porter or guard. Once he heard her mutter a few words--"To
escape and hide--taken her there;" but she made no reply to his remark.
They had searched the waiting-rooms of the station and hotel, paced up
and down the wharf, boarded the steamer, and examined every labelled
berth, but there was no sign of either Richard Pellet or his luggage.
Then they returned to the pier, and watched in the direction that would
be taken by any one coming from the little hotel in the town, till a
blinding storm of wind-borne snow would have made Harry lead his
companion into shelter, but she seemed not to pay the slightest heed to
the weather, as she gazed incessantly here and there, trying to catch a
glimpse of the missing man.
The mooring cables creaked and groaned as the steamer rose and fell upon
the swell in the little harbour, the water rushing fiercely past, black
and angry, save where it broke and glistened now and again upon the bows
of a boat, or upon the piles and piers around, while the snow fell
fitfully in great soft pats, whirled here and there, each flake darting
from its fellow when they passed the lamps, which flickered and danced
as the squalls penetrated every nook and cranny. Now the platform and
pier would be white, but in a few moments a black patch would break out
here, another there, growing rapidly larger, till, once more, all would
be a wet, slippery, blackened sheet, upon whose surface the rays of the
lamps flickered and blinked.
A bitter night--cold, dark, and dreary; the men about, clad in oilskin
wrappers, which glistened with the wet that streamed down them as the
snow melted. Nearly every one carried a lanthorn to swing about as a
signal to guide his steps amongst the railway trucks. Dark clouds
floated by, to halt now and then, and send shimmering down what seemed a
winding-sheet of snow. Then would come a moaning gust of wind, sweeping
the heavier clouds away, to leave the heavens but little lighter. The
few passengers bound for Dieppe hurried across the pier, and made the
best of their way on board to secure their berths, perhaps with no very
pleasant anticipations of the coming night, and, saving for here and
there a railway official with a lanthorn, scarcely a soul was to be seen
as Harry and his companion still kept watch in the direction of the
town.
The time had nearly expired, so nearly, that if Richard Pellet were to
take his departure by that steamer, he must be there within the next
five minutes, while upon their once more going on board, and questioning
the steward respecting the advent of a short, stout, grey gentleman,
that functionary, evidently put somewhat out of temper by the weather,
and the poor array of passengers, incontinently cursed the stout
gentleman, and turned his back upon the querists, who made their way
back over the slippery deck, crossed the gangway, and again began to
pace up and down upon the landing-stage.
If Richard Pellet had come down, which Harry now very much doubted, he
must, as the waiter had suggested, have gone into the town, and Harry
now repented that he had not at once hurried on there, and made
inquiries. For, though he kept scouting the idea as absurd, and telling
himself that his stepfather had some other reason for coming down here,
his imagination was full of horrors suggested by his memory of destroyed
directions and cards, and of men who had sought hotels in remote places
to do some deed which should only produce an inquest on the body of a
man unknown, unrecognised, unclaimed, so that the memory of the horror
might soon pass away, and relatives only know that one of their family
was missing.
His fears must though, he felt, be groundless, for Richard Pellet,
wealthy, prosperous, was not the man to make an end of his life; but
then he might not after all be prosperous; his affairs might be in a
hopeless state of confusion; and now this strange connection with the
woman at his side might have urged him to flight or the commission of
the crime at which she had hinted.
But might not the woman be deceiving him? A glance, though, at the
anxious, pallid face at his side, showed him plainly enough that even if
she believed not the words she had uttered, she was moved by some strong
impulse to overtake his stepfather; and, after all, what she had
whispered might be true.
At last he determined to speak--to question her; but it was in vain, for
he could obtain no answer. In fact, she had, in her eagerness to
overtake the man whom she believed to have her child, forgotten the ruse
that she had used to set Harry in search of his stepfather. It was the
half insane prompting of her fevered brain; but as soon as her object
was effected, it was entirely forgotten--crushed out of her memory by
the intense desire to overtake him. Richard Pellet and her child: there
seemed room for nothing else in her thoughts; and once only had she
spoken to Harry during the last quarter of an hour of their watch, and
then only to inquire whether there was any other boat, and when answered
in the negative, she relapsed into her former silence.
The night darker than ever, a star now and then appearing, but only to
be directly blotted out by some dense cloud; whenever a light patch of
sky was visible low down on the horizon, the interlacing rigging and
masts of the few vessels about could be seen rocking to and fro, while
the steamer lights rose and fell in a way that betokened rough weather
in the Channel. In the intervals of the squalls, too, would be heard
the long, low roar of the sea, breaking upon the beach below the chalk
cliffs that towered away to the west, or round by the sandy bay by
Seaford. Waves rose, too, and washed with a heavy dash against the pier
at the harbour entrance; and more than once Harry had heard it hinted
that the steamer would not put to sea in such weather.
But the hints were from those ill-informed: the steamer was bound for
Dieppe that night, and as Harry and his companion stood by the gangway,
looking down upon the vessel's deck, the paddles began to revolve, and
Harry thought she had started, and that he had come, after all, on an
errand of folly--such an one as a little forethought would have stayed
him from attempting. But the boat was not yet off: the movement had
only been to ease the strain upon the cables stretched on to the
landing-place, for, as if eager to set off, the vessel had been tugging
at them, until one threatened to part.
Another squall, and a fall of snow, during which the last bell rang, and
a man shouted to Harry to know if he were going on board.
"No," he answered, but hesitatingly, as if it were possible that he whom
they sought might, after all, be in the steamer; but it was too late now
to search, for two men seized the gangway to draw it back, as the signal
was given to go on. The wheels creaked, and the first beat of the
paddle was heard, when the figure of a man bearing a valise was seen to
hurry down towards the boat.
What followed seemed to occupy but a moment or two, and Harry felt
powerless to do more than look on. For, as he first caught sight of and
recognised the figure in spite of its wrappings, he was suddenly thrust
back, and his companion darted forward, half shrieking, "My child! where
is she?"
Richard Pellet stopped, turned, as if to hurry back; but the next moment
he dropped the valise and ran a few steps forward along the edge of the
landing-stage, as if to leap the distance between that and the steamer
as she came by. Then he turned for an instant, just in time to see a
woman wrest herself from a man who had tried to stay her: in another
second she was upon him, crying, as she grasped at his breast, "Give me
my child!"
Then there was a shout, a shriek, and Richard Pellet had stepped
backward to fall from the wharf in front of one of the paddle-boxes,
where his wife would have followed, but for one of the men, who dragged
her away.
And what saw those who had rushed to the edge of the wharf, holding
their lanthorns, and swinging them to and fro, while others flung ropes,
or rushed to the places where boats were moored? The black, gliding
hull of the steamer, the turbulent water, churned into a white foam by
the beating paddles, and a momentary glimpse of a grey head and two
raised hands, as they were sucked into the stream, and beaten beneath
the floats, which crashed down heavily upon the drowning man's head,
before there was a clank, clanking noise in the engine-room, and the
huge wheels ceased to revolve.
Then, as the white foam was swept away, and the steamer lay to, the
life-buoy was thrown over, men were seen with lanthorns in boats rising
and falling upon the black water, which reflected the gleam of the
light; but in spite of searchings here and there, backwards and
forwards, no one was seen clinging to the life-buoy, or hauled into
either of the boats; no grey head or appealing hands were visible at the
summit of a wave or in its hollow; black water only, everywhere, save
when it curled back in a creamy foam from shore or pile.
Then came once more the order, "Go on a-head!" the "clink, clank,
clank," in the engine-room, where there was a warm red glow from
furnace-doors, and the hot smell of oil and steam, a loud hiss or two,
the huge cylinders, beginning to swing to and fro, and the pistons to
rise and fall with their cranks, churning the black water again into
white foam. Then the stern lights of the steamer might be seen rising
and falling as she passed out of the harbour mouth, and slowly, one by
one the boats returned to their moorings, and those who had manned them,
to the landing-stage.
"Name on portmanter, R. Pellet," said one man in wet oilskins, holding
down his lanthorn, and examining the little black valise as it lay upon
the pier, now covered with snow-flakes. "Very shocking, but I don't see
as we could have saved him, or done more than we did."
"Get his body to-morrow, d'ye think?" said a bystander with a short pipe
to a fishy-looking man in a blue jersey and a sou'wester.
"May be yes, may be no," said the man addressed; "but most like no, for
he'll be carried out to sea, safe as wheat."
Then there was a buzz of voices as fresh faces appeared on the scene.
"Here, for God's sake, help!" exclaimed Harry Clayton, sick himself
almost unto death; "this lady has fainted."
Volume 3, Chapter XXIV.