The Light on the Water
Let it be noted carefully that so far Merritt had not the slightest
suspicion that the terror of Midlingham was quick over Meirion. Lewis
had watched and shepherded him carefully. He had let out no suspicion
of what had happened in Meirion, and before taking his brother-in-law
to the club he had passed round a hint among the members. He did not
tell the truth about Midlingham—and here again is a point of interest,
that as the terror deepened the general public cooperated voluntarily,
and, one would say, almost subconsciously, with the authorities in
concealing what they knew from one another—but he gave out a desirable
portion of the truth: that his brother-in-law was “nervy,” not by any
means up to the mark, and that it was therefore desirable that he
should be spared the knowledge of the intolerable and tragic mysteries
which were being enacted all about them.
“He knows about that poor fellow who was found in the marsh,” said
Lewis, “and he has a kind of vague suspicion that there is something
out of the common about the case; but no more than that.”
“A clear case of suggested, or rather commanded suicide,” said Remnant.
“I regard it as a strong confirmation of my theory.”
“Perhaps so,” said the doctor, dreading lest he might have to hear
about the Z Ray all over again. “But please don’t let anything out to
him; I want him to get built up thoroughly before he goes back to
Midlingham.”
Then, on the other hand, Merritt was as still as death about the doings
of the Midlands; he hated to think of them, much more to speak of them;
and thus, as I say, he and the men at the Porth Club kept their secrets
from one another; and thus, from the beginning to the end of the
terror, the links were not drawn together. In many cases, no doubt, A
and B met every day and talked familiarly, it may be confidentially, on
other matters of all sorts, each having in his possession half of the
truth, which he concealed from the other. So the two halves were never
put together to make a whole.
Merritt, as the doctor guessed, had a kind of uneasy feeling—it
scarcely amounted to a suspicion—as to the business of the marsh;
chiefly because he thought the official talk about the railway
embankment and the course of the river rank nonsense. But finding that
nothing more happened, he let the matter drop from his mind, and
settled himself down to enjoy his holiday.
He found to his delight that there were no sentries or watchers to
hinder him from the approach to Larnac Bay, a delicious cove, a place
where the ashgrove and the green meadow and the glistening bracken
sloped gently down to red rocks and firm yellow sands. Merritt
remembered a rock that formed a comfortable seat, and here he
established himself of a golden afternoon, and gazed at the blue of the
sea and the crimson bastions and bays of the coast as it bent inward to
Sarnau and swept out again southward to the odd-shaped promontory
called the Dragon’s Head. Merritt gazed on, amused by the antics of the
porpoises who were tumbling and splashing and gamboling a little way
out at sea, charmed by the pure and radiant air that was so different
from the oily smoke that often stood for heaven at Midlingham, and
charmed, too, by the white farmhouses dotted here and there on the
heights of the curving coast.
Then he noticed a little row-boat at about two hundred yards from the
shore. There were two or three people aboard, he could not quite make
out how many, and they seemed to be doing something with a line; they
were no doubt fishing, and Merritt (who disliked fish) wondered how
people could spoil such an afternoon, such a sea, such pellucid and
radiant air by trying to catch white, flabby, offensive, evil-smelling
creatures that would be excessively nasty when cooked. He puzzled over
this problem and turned away from it to the contemplation of the
crimson headlands. And then he says that he noticed that signaling was
going on. Flashing lights of intense brilliance, he declares, were
coming from one of those farms on the heights of the coast; it was as
if white fire was spouting from it. Merritt was certain, as the light
appeared and disappeared, that some message was being sent, and he
regretted that he knew nothing of heliography. Three short flashes, a
long and very brilliant flash, then two short flashes. Merritt fumbled
in his pocket for pencil and paper so that he might record these
signals, and, bringing his eyes down to the sea level, he became aware,
with amazement and horror, that the boat had disappeared. All that he
could see was some vague, dark object far to westward, running out with
the tide.
Now it is certain, unfortunately, that the _Mary Ann_ was capsized and
that two schoolboys and the sailor in charge were drowned. The bones of
the boat were found amongst the rocks far along the coast, and the
three bodies were also washed ashore. The sailor could not swim at all,
the boys only a little, and it needs an exceptionally fine swimmer to
fight against the outward suck of the tide as it rushes past Pengareg
Point.
But I have no belief whatever in Merritt’s theory. He held (and still
holds, for all I know), that the flashes of light which he saw coming
from Penyrhaul, the farmhouse on the height, had some connection with
the disaster to the _Mary Ann_. When it was ascertained that a family
were spending their summer at the farm, and that the governess was a
German, though a long naturalized German, Merritt could not see that
there was anything left to argue about, though there might be many
details to discover. But, in my opinion, all this was a mere mare’s
nest; the flashes of brilliant light were caused, no doubt, by the sun
lighting up one window of the farmhouse after the other.
Still, Merritt was convinced from the very first, even before the
damning circumstance of the German governess was brought to light; and
on the evening of the disaster, as Lewis and he sat together after
dinner, he was endeavoring to put what he called the common sense of
the matter to the doctor.
“If you hear a shot,” said Merritt, “and you see a man fall, you know
pretty well what killed him.”
There was a flutter of wild wings in the room. A great moth beat to and
fro and dashed itself madly against the ceiling, the walls, the glass
bookcase. Then a sputtering sound, a momentary dimming of the lamp. The
moth had succeeded in its mysterious quest.
“Can you tell me,” said Lewis as if he were answering Merritt, “why
moths rush into the flame?”
Lewis had put his question as to the strange habits of the common moth
to Merritt with the deliberate intent of closing the debate on death by
heliograph. The query was suggested, of course, by the incident of the
moth in the lamp, and Lewis thought that he had said, “Oh, shut up!” in
a somewhat elegant manner. And, in fact Merritt looked dignified,
remained silent, and helped himself to port.
That was the end that the doctor had desired. He had no doubt in his
own mind that the affair of the _Mary Ann_ was but one more item in the
long account of horrors that grew larger almost with every day; and he
was in no humor to listen to wild and futile theories as to the manner
in which the disaster had been accomplished. Here was a proof that the
terror that was upon them was mighty not only on the land but on the
waters; for Lewis could not see that the boat could have been attacked
by any ordinary means of destruction. From Merritt’s story, it must
have been in shallow water. The shore of Larnac Bay shelves very
gradually, and the Admiralty charts showed the depth of water two
hundred yards out to be only two fathoms; this would be too shallow for
a submarine. And it could not have been shelled, and it could not have
been torpedoed; there was no explosion. The disaster might have been
due to carelessness; boys, he considered, will play the fool anywhere,
even in a boat; but he did not think so; the sailor would have stopped
them. And, it may be mentioned, that the two boys were as a matter of
fact extremely steady, sensible young fellows, not in the least likely
to play foolish tricks of any kind.
Lewis was immersed in these reflections, having successfully silenced
his brother-in-law; he was trying in vain to find some clue to the
horrible enigma. The Midlingham theory of a concealed German force,
hiding in places under the earth, was extravagant enough, and yet it
seemed the only solution that approached plausibility; but then again
even a subterranean German host would hardly account for this wreckage
of a boat, floating on a calm sea. And then what of the tree with the
burning in it that had appeared in the garden there a few weeks ago,
and the cloud with a burning in it that had shown over the trees of the
Midland village?
I think I have, already written something of the probable emotions of
the mathematician confronted suddenly with an undoubted two-sided
triangle. I said, if I remember, that he would be forced, in decency,
to go mad; and I believe that Lewis was very near to this point. He
felt himself confronted with an intolerable problem that most instantly
demanded solution, and yet, with the same breath, as it were, denied
the possibility of there being any solution. People were being killed
in an inscrutable manner by some inscrutable means, day after day, and
one asked “why” and “how”; and there seemed no answer. In the Midlands,
where every kind of munitionment was manufactured, the explanation of
German agency was plausible; and even if the subterranean notion was to
be rejected as savoring altogether too much of the fairytale, or rather
of the sensational romance, yet it was possible that the backbone of
the theory was true; the Germans might have planted their agents in
some way or another in the midst of our factories. But here in Meirion,
what serious effect could be produced by the casual and indiscriminate
slaughter of a couple of schoolboys in a boat, of a harmless
holiday-maker in a marsh? The creation of an atmosphere of terror and
dismay? It was possible, of course, but it hardly seemed tolerable, in
spite of the enormities of Louvain and of the _Lusitania_.
Into these meditations, and into the still dignified silence of Merritt
broke the rap on the door of Lewis’s man, and those words which harass
the ease of the country doctor when he tries to take any ease: “You’re
wanted in the surgery, if you please, sir.” Lewis bustled out, and
appeared no more that night.
The doctor had been summoned to a little hamlet on the outskirts of
Porth, separated from it by half a mile or three-quarters of road. One
dignifies, indeed, this settlement without a name in calling it a
hamlet; it was a mere row of four cottages, built about a hundred years
ago for the accommodation of the workers in a quarry long since
disused. In one of these cottages the doctor found a father and mother
weeping and crying out to “doctor bach, doctor bach,” and two
frightened children, and one little body, still and dead. It was the
youngest of the three, little Johnnie, and he was dead.
The doctor found that the child had been asphyxiated. He felt the
clothes; they were dry; it was not a case of drowning. He looked at the
neck; there was no mark of strangling. He asked the father how it had
happened, and father and mother, weeping most lamentably, declared they
had no knowledge of how their child had been killed: “unless it was the
People that had done it.” The Celtic fairies are still malignant. Lewis
asked what had happened that evening; where had the child been?
“Was he with his brother and sister? Don’t they know anything about
it?”
Reduced into some sort of order from its original piteous confusion,
this is the story that the doctor gathered.
All three children had been well and happy through the day. They had
walked in with the mother, Mrs. Roberts, to Porth on a marketing
expedition in the afternoon; they had returned to the cottage, had had
their tea, and afterwards played about on the road in front of the
house. John Roberts had come home somewhat late from his work, and it
was after dusk when the family sat down to supper. Supper over, the
three children went out again to play with other children from the
cottage next door, Mrs. Roberts telling them that they might have half
an hour before going to bed.
The two mothers came to the cottage gates at the same moment and called
out to their children to come along and be quick about it. The two
small families had been playing on the strip of turf across the road,
just by the stile into the fields. The children ran across the road;
all of them except Johnnie Roberts. His brother Willie said that just
as their mother called them he heard Johnnie cry out:
“Oh, what is that beautiful shiny thing over the stile?”