CHAPTER II. THE HERMIT OF GATEHOUSE FARM
CHAPTER III. THE FOUNDATION OF A FRIENDSHIP
CHAPTER IV. GOLDEN TIDINGS
CHAPTER V. EDITH WEST
CHAPTER VI. FIRST DAYS AT PARK NEWTON
CHAPTER VII. KESTER ST. GEORGE
CHAPTER VIII. A MIDNIGHT INTRUDER
CHAPTER IX. MR. PERCY OSMOND
CHAPTER X. MASTER AND MAN
CHAPTER XI. IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
CHAPTER XII. TOM BRISTOW’S RETURN
CHAPTER XIII. A DINNER AT PINCOTE
CHAPTER XIV. AT ALDER COTTAGE
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT.
CHAPTER I.
OVER THE CLIFF.
A hot, windless August day had settled down into a dull, brooding
evening, presageful of a coming storm. It was nearly dark by the time
Lionel Dering was ready to turn his face homeward. The tide was coming
in with an ominous muffled roar; the wind, unfelt all day, was now
blowing in fitful puffs from various points of the compass, so that the
weathercock on the green, in front of the Silver Lion, was more
undecided than usual, and did not know its own mind for two minutes at
a time. The boatmen were busy with their tiny craft, making everything
fast for the night; and the bathing men were dragging their machines
high and dry beyond reach of the incoming tide. Many of the
excursionists—those with families chiefly—were already making their way
towards the railway station; but others there were who seemed bent on
keeping up their merriment to the last moment. These latter could be
seen through the wide-open windows of the Silver Lion, footing it
merrily on the club-room floor, to the music of two wheezy fiddles. A
few minutes later there comes a warning whistle from the engine. The
music stops suddenly; the country-dance is left unfinished; pipes are
laid aside; glasses are quickly emptied; and the lads and lasses, with
many a shout and burst of laughter, rush helter-skelter across the
green, to find their places in the train.
“We shall have a rough night, Ben,” said Mr. Dering to a man who was
coming up from the beach.
“Yes, sir, there’s a storm brewin’ fast,” answered Ben, carrying a
finger to his forehead. “If I was you, Mr. Dering,” he added, “I
wouldn’t go over the cliffs to-night. It ain’t safe after dark, and the
storm’ll break afore you get home.” But Mr. Dering merely shook his
head, laughed, bade Ben good-night, and kept on his way.
The old boatman’s words proved true. The first flash of lightning came
just as the last houses of Melcham were lost to view behind a curve of
the road, and when Lionel had two miles of solitary walking still
before him. The thunder and the rain, however, were still far out at
sea.
By this time it was almost dark, but Mr. Dering pressed forward without
hesitation or delay. The cliff road, dangerous as it would have been
under such circumstances to any ordinary wayfarer, had for him no
terrors. He knew every yard of it as well as he knew the walk under the
apple-trees in his own garden. It was not the first time by any means
that he had traversed it after nightfall. As for the lightning, it was
rather an assistance than otherwise, serving every two or three
minutes, as it did, to show him exactly where he was. It was a bad road
enough, certainly. Unfenced in several places, with here and there a
broad, yawning chasm in the direct path, where some huge bulk of the
soft earthy cliff, undermined by fierce winter tides, had broken bodily
away and had gone to feed the ever-hungry waves. But to Lionel every
dangerous point was familiar, and he followed the little circuitous
bends in the path, necessitated by the breaks in the frontage of the
cliff, instinctively and without thought.
He had been thinking of Edith West—his ladye-love, whom he might not
hope ever to see again. In his long solitary walks both by day and
night she was almost always in his thoughts. Not but what Lionel, this
evening, had an eye for the lightning, so beautifully terrible in its
apparently purposeless vagaries. Fast following one another, came the
blue, quivering flashes, lighting up, for one brief moment at a time,
the barren skyward-climbing cliff, and the still more barren waste of
sea.
“Like my life—like my life,” murmured Lionel to himself, his eyes still
bent on the wide tract of moorland, which had just been lighted up by a
more vivid flash than common. “Barren and unprofitable. Without byre or
homestead. Left unploughed, unfenced, uncared for. Of no apparent use,
were it not that a few wild-flowers choose to grow there, and a few
birds, equally wild, to build their nests there. But over it, as over
more favoured spots, the free breeze of heaven blows day and night, and
keeps it sweet; and the sea makes everlasting music at its feet.”
These thoughts were still in Mr. Dering’s mind when a sudden turn in
the pathway brought him in view of the lighthouse, whose gleaming
lantern, although full half a mile away, shone out through the coming
storm like the cheery welcome of a friend.
The thunder was coming nearer, bringing the rain with it. The flashes
were becoming more vividly painful. The sea’s hoarse chorus was growing
more loud, and triumphant. Lionel had paused for a moment to gather
breath. A flash—and there, not fifty yards away, and coming towards
him, was a man—a stranger! It was the work of an instant for the
lightning to photograph the picture on his brain, but that one instant
was enough for him to see and recognize the deadly peril in which the
man was placed. He was marching unknowingly to his death. Not six yards
in front of him yawned the most dangerous chasm in the whole face of
the cliff.
In another moment Lionel had recovered his presence of mind. “Stop!
stop for your life!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Don’t stir
another step.” It was too dark for him to see whether the man had heard
and understood his warning cry. He must wait for the next flash to tell
him that. The words had hardly left his lips when the thunder burst
almost immediately overhead, as it seemed, and the first heavy drops of
rain began to fall. Lionel, meantime, was making his way as quickly as
he could round the back of the chasm. Two minutes more would bring him
to the very spot where he had seen the stranger. But while he had still
some dozen yards or more of the dangerous path to traverse, there came
another blinding flash. It had come and gone in the twinkling of an
eye, but that brief second of time was sufficient to show Lionel that
the man was no longer there. An inarticulate cry of horror burst from
his lips. With beating heart and straining nerves, he pressed forward
till he stood on the very spot where he had seen the man; but he was
standing there alone.
The storm was at its height. The forked flashes came thick and fast.
One crack of thunder was followed by another, before the echoed
mutterings of the last had time to die away. A wild hurricane of wind
and rain was beating furiously over land and sea. Utterly regardless of
the storm, Lionel lay down at full length on the short, wet turf, and
shading his eves with his hands, peered down into the black gulf below.
It was a dangerous thing to do, but in the excitement of the moment all
sense of personal fear was forgotten. He waited for the flashes; but
when they came they showed him nothing save the wild turmoil of the
rising tide as it dashed itself in fury against the huge boulders with
which the beach was thickly strewn. It would be high water in
half-an-hour. Already the base of the cliff was washed by the inrushing
waves. Lionel shouted with all his might, but the wind blew the sound
back again, and the thunder drowned it. He stood up despairingly. What
should he do to succour the poor wretch who lay there, dying or,
perhaps, already dead, at the foot of the cliff? What _could_ he do?
Alone and unaided he could do nothing. He must seek the help of others.
But where? The nearest point where he could hope to get assistance was
the lighthouse, and that was nearly half-a-mile away. But long before
the lighthouse could have been reached, and help brought back, the
rising tide would have completely barred the passage along the foot of
the cliffs, and would, in all probability, have washed the body out to
sea. At the point where he was standing, the cliff had a sheer descent
of a hundred feet to the beach. But suddenly Mr. Dering remembered, and
it seemed to him like a flash of inspiration, that no great distance
away there was a slight natural break in the cliff, known as “The
Smugglers’ Staircase.” It was merely a narrow gully or seam in the face
of the rock, not much wider than an ordinary chimney. If it had ever
really been used by smugglers in years gone by as a natural staircase,
by means of which access could be had to the beach, they must have been
very active and reckless fellows indeed. But what had been made use of
by one man might be made use of by another, Lionel thought, and, with
some faint renewal of hope in his breast, he made his way along the
cliff in the direction of the staircase. If he could only get down to
the beach before the tide had risen much higher, and could succeed in
finding the body, he might, perhaps, be able to obtain some foothold
among the crannies of the cliff, where he would be beyond reach of the
waves, and where he might wait till daybreak, and the ebbing of the
tide, should give him a chance of seeking help elsewhere.
But here he was at the staircase—a place, of a truth, to try a man’s
nerve, even by broad daylight. Although Lionel had never ventured
either up or down it, he was no stranger to its peculiar features. More
than once, in his rambles along the cliffs, he had paused to examine
it, and to wonder whether the jagged, misshapen ledges of protruding
rock from which it was supposed to derive its likeness to a gigantic
staircase, were the result of nature’s handiwork or that of man.
Lionel had lost no time. From his first sight of the stranger till now
was not more than five or six minutes. Pausing for a moment on the edge
of the staircase, he flung his hat aside, buttoned his coat, and then,
instinctively, turned up his cuffs. Then he went down on his hands and
knees, and was just lowering one leg over the edge of the cliff; when
his collar was roughly seized, and a hoarse voice growled in his ear:
“In heaven’s name, Mr. Dering, what are you about?”
For the moment, Lionel was startled. Next instant he recognized Bunce,
the coastguardsman—a very worthy fellow, to whom he was well known. A
few rapid words from Lionel explained everything. “All the same, Mr.
Dering, you can’t bring the dead back to life, do how you will,” said
Bunce, “and that man’s as dead as last year’s mackerel, you may depend
on’t. Let alone which, the tide’s right up to the bottom of the cliff.
No, no, Mr. Dering—axing your pardon—but one live man is worth twenty
dead uns.”
“Bunce, you are a fool!” said Lionel, wrathfully. “If I were not in a
hurry, I would prove it to you. Take your hand off my collar, sir. I
tell you I am going down here. If you choose to help me, go to the
lighthouse and get Jasper to come back with you, and bring some ropes
and a lantern or two, and whatever else you think might be useful. If
you don’t choose to help me, go about your business, and leave me to do
mine.”
“But you are going to certain death; you are indeed, Mr. Dering,”
pleaded the coastguardsman.
“Bunce,” said Lionel, “you are an old woman. Goodbye.” There was a
flash, and Bunce caught a momentary glimpse of a stern white face, and
two resolute eyes. When the next flash came, Lionel was not to be seen.
He was on his perilous journey down the Smugglers’ Staircase.
“A madman—a crazy madman,” muttered Bunce. “If he gets safe to the
bottom of the staircase, he’ll go no farther. Not as I’m going to
desert him. Not likely. Though he did call me a old woman.”
Going down on one knee on the wet grass, he put both his hands to his
mouth, and shouted with all his might: “I’m going to the lighthouse for
help, Mr. Dering.” He listened, but there came no answer. Presently,
with a little quaking of the heart, he rose to his feet. “He needn’t
have called me a old woman,” he muttered. With that he pulled his hat
fiercely over his brow, and set off for the lighthouse at a rapid walk,
which soon quickened into a run.
How Lionel got down to the bottom of the staircase he could never
afterwards have told. He only knew that when about half way down his
foot slipped. The next thing he remembered was finding himself among
the rocks at the bottom, bruised, bleeding, and partially stunned. A
larger wave than usual, which dashed completely over him, gave him a
shock which helped to revive him. Not the least perilous part of his
enterprise was still before him. Already the tide was two feet deep at
the foot of the cliff. Fortunately, the wind had gone down, and the
rain had in some measure abated; but had it not been for the
lightning’s friendly flashes, Lionel’s task would have been a hopeless
one. The road he had to take was thickly strewn with huge boulders, and
gigantic masses of rock which had fallen—some of them centuries
ago—from the cliffs overhead. Between and over these Lionel had to make
his way to the point where the stranger had fallen. It was a work of
time and peril, more especially now that the tide was coming in so
dangerously fast, beating and eddying round the rocks and dashing over
them in showers of stinging spray. Lionel saw clearly that, in any
case, it would be quite impossible for him to return by the way he was
going till ebb of tide. He must find some “coign of vantage” among the
fallen rocks, or high up in the face of the cliff, beyond reach of the
waves, and there wait patiently for further help. But first to find the
stranger.
Manfully, gallantly, Lionel Dering set himself to the task before him.
Foot by foot, yard by yard, he fought his way forward. The lightning
showed him at once the dangers he had to contend against, and how best
to avoid them. Over some of the rocks he had to clamber on all fours;
round others he had to pick his way, waist-deep in water. Now and then,
a larger wave than common would seize him, dash him like a log against
the rocks, and then leave him, bruised and breathless, to gather up its
forces for another attack. But Lionel never faltered or looked back.
Onward he went, slowly but surely nearing the object of which he was in
search. Nearly exhausted, all but worn out, at length he reached the
heap of débris formed by the falling of the cliff—or rather that
portion of it which the sea had spared. He was terribly anxious by this
time. If the body of the stranger when it fell had been caught by any
of the ledges or rough projecting angles of the débris, and had lodged
there, there was just a faint possibility that the man might be still
alive. But if, on the contrary, it had rolled down to the foot of the
cliff, the waves would long ago have claimed it as their own.
The storm was passing away inland. The lightning was no longer either
so frequent or so vivid. Lionel’s difficulty was to find the exact
point of the cliff from which the stranger had fallen. At the most he
could only guess at it. Still, here was the mass of fallen cliff, and
the body, unless washed away by the tide, could not be far off.
Having accomplished so much, he had neither long nor far to search.
Putting out his hand in the dark to grasp a projecting ledge of rock,
which the last flash of lightning had shown to him, his fingers touched
a clammy ice-cold face. He drew back his arm with an involuntary
shudder. Next moment his heart gave a great throb of relief, and he
felt that, whether the man were alive or dead, his labour had not been
entirely in vain.
The body was lying among a heap of jagged rocks, half in and half out
of the water. Lionel’s first idea was that the man was stone dead. But
a more careful examination, which he made as soon as he had dragged the
body beyond reach of the still-rising tide, convinced him that there
were still some flickering signs of life—just the faintest possible
pulsation of the heart. The forehead was marked by a thin streak of
blood, which Lionel tried to stanch with his handkerchief. For the
rest, he made out, by the momentary glimpses which the lightning
afforded him, that the man was young, fair, slightly built, and, to all
appearance, a gentleman. Feeling some hard substance, Lionel put his
hand into the stranger’s pocket, and drew from it a small travelling
flask. It contained a little brandy, with which Lionel moistened the
unconscious lips, but the stranger’s teeth were so firmly set that he
found it impossible to open them. What more could he do? he asked
himself, and he was obliged to answer, Nothing. If Bunce had not
deserted him, help would be forthcoming before long. Otherwise, he must
wait there for daybreak and the ebbing of the tide.
But faithful, good-hearted Bunce had not deserted him. He had roused up
Jasper, the lighthouse-keeper, out of his first snooze—Jasper’s two
mates being on duty—and had brought that individual, still half dazed,
but responding manfully to the call, together with a quantity of stout
rope, and a couple of ship’s lanterns, not forgetting a blanket and a
nip of cognac, and was back again on the cliffs only a few minutes
after Lionel’s search was at an end.
Never had human voice sounded so welcome to Lionel as did the
coastguardsman’s hoarse shouts that August night. They soon made each
other out, and then the rest was comparatively easy. A rope was slung
round the body of the still unconscious stranger, which was then hauled
up by the two men with all possible care to the top of the cliff; a
process which was repeated in the case of Lionel.
“I never thought to see you alive again, Mr. Dering,” said Bunce, with
tears in his eyes, as Lionel grasped him warmly by the hand. “Where do
you wish to have the gentleman taken to?”
“To Gatehouse Farm, of course,” said Lionel. “Jasper, you run into the
village, and borrow a horse and cart, and some straw, and another
blanket or two, and get back again as if your life depended on it.”
And so about midnight the stranger, who had never recovered
consciousness, was laid in Mr. Dering’s own bed at Gatehouse Farm. They
had found a card-case in his pocket, the cards in which were inscribed
with the name of “Mr. Tom Bristow,” but that was the only clue to his
identity. Dr. Bell, the local practitioner, was quickly on the spot.
“A serious case, Mr. Dering—a very serious case,” said the little man,
two hours later, while pulling on his gloves and waiting for his cob to
be brought round, “But we have an excellent constitution to fall back
upon, and, with great care, we shall pull through. We have dislocated
our left shoulder; we have broken three of our ribs; and we have got
one of the ugliest cuts on the back of our head that it was ever our
good fortune to have to deal with. But with care, sir, we shall pull
through.”
Somewhat comforted in mind by the doctor’s assurance, Lionel went back
upstairs, and having taken a parting glance at his guest, and satisfied
himself that nothing more could be done for the present, he lay down on
the sofa in the next room to catch an hour’s hurried sleep.
He had no prevision of the future, that August morning: there was no
voice to whisper in his ear that the man whose life he had just saved
at the risk of his own would, before many months were over, repay the
obligation by rescuing him, Lionel Dering, from a still more bitter
strait, and be the means of restoring him both to liberty and life.