“WHERE THE COLD SEA RAVES.”
In the keen, fresh October afternoons, there was no walk Allegra
loved better than the walk to Neptune Point, and higher up by winding
footpaths to the Rashleigh Mausoleum, fitting sepulchre for a race born
and bred in the breath of the sea; a stately tomb perched on a rocky
pinnacle at the end of a promontory, like a sea-bird’s nest overhanging
the wave.
Allegra was in raptures with that strange resting-place.
“I like it ever so much better than your Cockneyfied cemetery,” she
exclaimed. “Think how grand it must be to lie for ever within the sound
of the sea--the terrible, inscrutable sea, whose anger means death--the
calm, summer sea, whose waves come dancing up the sands like laughing
water. I wonder whether the Rashleighs would let me have a little grave
of my own somewhere among these crags and hillocks--a modest little
grave, hidden under wild foliage, which nobody would ever notice? Only
I should hear the sea just as well as they do in their marble tomb.”
“Oh, Allegra, how can you talk so lightly of death?” said Isola,
shocked at this levity. “To me it is always dreadful to think of--and
yet it must come.”
“Poor child!” said Allegra, with infinite pity, putting her arm round
her sister-in-law’s slighter figure, as they stood by the railing of
the Mausoleum, in the loveliness of an October sunset.
The sun had just gone down, veiled in autumnal haze, and behind the
long ridge of waters beyond the Dodman there glowed the deep crimson of
the western sky. Eastward above the Polruan hills the moon moved slowly
upward, amidst dark masses of cloud which melted and rolled away before
her on-coming, till all the sky became of one dark azure. The two girls
went down the hill in silence, Allegra holding Isola’s arm, linked
with her own, steadying those weaker footsteps with the strength of her
own firm movements. The difference between the two in physical force
was no less marked than the difference in their mental characteristics,
and Allegra’s love for her sister-in-law was tempered with a tender
compassion for something so much weaker than herself.
“Poor child!” she repeated, as they moved slowly down the steep, narrow
path, “and do you really shudder at the thought of death? I don’t. I
have only a vast curiosity. Do you remember that definition of Sir
Thomas Browne’s which Martin read to us once--’Death is the Lucina
of life.’ Death only opens the door of the hidden worlds which are
waiting for all of us to discover. It is only an appalling name for
a new birth. I love to dream about the infinite possibilities of the
future--just as a boy might dream of the time when he should become
a man. Look, look, Isa, there’s a yacht coming in! Isn’t it a lovely
sight?”
It was a long, narrow vessel, with all her canvas spread, gleaming with
a silvery whiteness in the moonlight. Slowly and with majestic motion
she swept round towards Neptune Point and the mouth of the harbour.
There was only the lightest wind, and the waves were breaking gently on
the rocks at the base of the promontory--a night as calm and fair as
June.
“Look!” repeated Allegra, “isn’t she lovely? like a fairy boat. Whose
yacht can she be, I wonder? She looks like a racer, doesn’t she?”
Isola did not answer. She had seen such a yacht two years ago; had seen
such a long, narrow hull lying in the harbour under repairs; had seen
the same craft sailing out to Mevagissey on a trial trip in the wintry
sunlight. Doubtless there were many yachts in this world of just the
same build and character.
They stood at an angle of the hill-path looking up the river, and saw
the yacht take in her canvas as she came into the haven under the
hill; that sheltered harbour, with its two rivers cleaving the hills
asunder, one winding away to the right towards Lerrin, the other to the
left towards Trelasco and Lostwithiel. It looked so perfect a place of
shelter, so utterly safe from tempest or foul weather; and yet there
were seasons when a fierce wind from the great Atlantic came sweeping
up the deep valleys, and all the angry spirits of the ocean seemed at
war in that narrow gorge. To-night the atmosphere was unusually calm,
and Isola could hear the sailors singing at their work.
Slowly, slowly the two young women went down the hill, Allegra full of
speculation and wonderment about the unknown vessel, Isola curiously
silent. As they neared the hotel a man landed from a dinghy, and came
briskly up the slippery causeway--a tall, slim figure in the vivid
moonlight, loose limbed, loosely clad, moving with easiest motion.
Isola turned sick at the sight of him. She stopped, helplessly,
hopelessly, and stood staring straight before her, watching him as he
came nearer and nearer, nearer and nearer--like some awful figure in
a nightmare dream, when the feet of the dreamer seem frozen to the
ground, and flesh and blood seem changed to ice and stone.
He came nearer, looked at them, and passed them by--passed as one who
knew them not, and was but faintly curious about them. He passed and
walked quickly up towards the Point, with the rapid swinging movements
of one who was glad to tread the solid earth.
No, it was not Lostwithiel. She had thought at first that no one else
could look so like him at so short a distance; no one else could have
that tall, slender figure, and easy, buoyant walk. But the face she saw
in the moonlight was not his. It was like, but not the same: darker,
with larger features, a face of less delicacy and distinction; but oh,
God! how like the eyes that had looked at her, with that brief glance
of casual inspection, were to those other eyes that had poured their
passionate story into her own that unforgotten night when she sat out
the after-supper waltzes in the ante-room at the Talbot. She could not
have believed that any man living could so recall the man whose name
she never spoke of her own free will.
There were some sailors standing about at the top of the steep little
bit of road leading down to the granite causeway, and their voices
sounded fresh and clear in the still evening, mixed with the rippling
rush of the water as it came running up the stones. The moonlight shone
full upon one of the men as he stood with his face towards the sea, and
Isola read the name upon the front of his jersey.
“_Vendetta._”
“_Vendetta_,” cried Allegra, quick to observe the name. “Why, is not
that Lord Lostwithiel’s yacht?”
“Yes--I think so,” faltered Isola.
“Then that must have been Lord Lostwithiel who passed as just now; and
yet you would have known him, wouldn’t you?”
“That was not Lord Lostwithiel.”
“A friend of his, I suppose; such a nice-looking man, too. There was
something so frank and cheery in his look as he just glanced at us both
and marched briskly on. He did not pay us the compliment of seeming
curious. I wonder who he is?”
Isola was wondering about something else. She was looking with a
frightened gaze across the harbour, towards that one break in the long
golden trail of the moonbeams where the _Vendetta_ cast her shadow on
the water. There were lamps gleaming brightly here and there upon the
vessel--a look of occupation.
“Is Lord Lostwithiel on board his yacht?” Allegra asked of one of the
sailors, not ashamed to appear inquisitive.
“No, ma’am; Mr. Hulbert is skipper.”
“Who is Mr. Hulbert?”
“His lordship’s brother.”
“Was that he who went up towards the Point just now?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is he going to stop here long, do you know?”
“I don’t think he knows himself, ma’am. It’ll depend upon the weather
most likely. If we get a fair wind we may be off to the Lizard at an
hour’s notice, and away up north to the Hebrides.”
“Doesn’t that seem inconsistent?” exclaimed Allegra, as they walked
homewards. “What is the good of coming to Cornwall if he wants to go to
the Hebrides? It must be very much out of his way.”
“He may want to see his old home, perhaps. He was born at the Mount,
you know.”
“Indeed! I don’t know anything about him, but I want to know ever so
much. I call it an interesting face.”
Allegra was full of animation during the homeward walk. A stranger
of any kind must needs be a God-send, as affording a subject for
conversation; but such a stranger as Lostwithiel’s brother afforded
a theme of strongest interest. She had heard so much about Lord
Lostwithiel and all his works and ways--the pity of it that he did not
marry; the still greater pity that he did not live at the Mount, and
give shooting parties and spend money in the neighbourhood. She had
heard in a less exalted key of his lordship’s younger brother, who had
fought under Beresford in Egypt, and who had only lately left the navy.
What more natural than that such a man should sail his brother’s yacht?
Captain Hulbert was still unmarried; but no one talked about the pity
of that. People took a severely sensible view of his case, and were
unanimous in the opinion that he could not afford to marry, and that
any inspiration in that line would be criminal on his part. There was
an idea at Trelasco that the younger sons of peers of moderate fortune
have been specially designed by Providence to keep up the race of
confirmed bachelors. There must be bachelors; the world cannot get on
without them; society requires them as a distinct element in social
existence; and it would ill become the offshoots of the peerage to
shrink from fulfilling their destiny.
Allegra was not the less curious about Captain Hulbert, although
his celibate mission had been frequently expounded to her. She
was interested in him because she liked his face, because he was
Lostwithiel’s brother, because he was sailing a very beautiful yacht,
because he had appeared in her life with a romantic suddenness, sailing
out of the sea unheralded and unexpected, like a man who had dropped
from the moon.
She fell asleep that night wondering if she would ever see him
again--if the _Vendetta_ would have vanished from the harbour to-morrow
at noontide, like a boat that had only lived in her dreams; or whether
the yacht would still be anchored there in the haven under the hill.
And, if so, whether Captain Hulbert would call at the Angler’s Nest,
and tell them about Lostwithiel’s South American adventures, and how he
came to be skipper of his brother’s yacht.
* * * * *
At breakfast next morning, Colonel Disney’s talk was chiefly about
Captain Hulbert. The colonel had been for an early walk, and had
seen the _Vendetta_ from the little Quay at Fowey, by the Mechanics’
Institute, and had heard who was the skipper.
“I remember him when he and his brother were at Eton together--nice
boys--capital boys, both of them--but I liked Jack Hulbert better than
Lostwithiel. He was franker, more spontaneous and impulsive. Yes, Jack
was my favourite, and everybody else’s favourite, I think, when the two
were boys. I saw very little of them after they grew up. I was away
with my regiment, and Jack was away with his ship, and Lostwithiel was
wandering up and down the earth, like Satan. I left a card for Captain
Hulbert at the club, asking him to dinner this evening. You don’t mind,
do you, Isola?”
Isola had no objection to offer, and Allegra was delighted at the
prospect of seeing more of the man with the nice frank countenance, and
that seafaring air which most women like.
“I am a dreadful person for being influenced by first impressions,” she
said, “and that one glance at Captain Hulbert in the moonlight assures
me that I shall like him.”
“Don’t like him too well,” said Martin, laughingly, “for I’m afraid
he’s a detrimental, and would make even a worse match than Colfox, who
may be a bishop one day, while Hulbert has left the navy, and is never
likely to be anything.”
“Match! detrimental!” cried Allegra, indignantly. “Can it be my brother
who talks in such a vulgar strain? As if a woman could not look at a
man without thinking of marrying him!”
“Some women can’t,” answered Martin. “With them every free man is a
possible husband--indeed, I believe there are some who cannot look at a
married man without estimating the chances of the divorce court--if the
man is what they call a catch.”
“That is your Indian experience!” exclaimed Allegra, scornfully. “I
have heard that India is a sink of iniquity.”
She went about her day’s varied work as usual--curious to see the new
acquaintance--yet in no wise excited. Vivid and animated, enthusiastic
and energetic as she was in all her thoughts and ways, gushing
sentimentality made no part of Miss Leland’s character. Life at
Trelasco flowed with such an even monotony, there was such a dearth of
new interests, that it was only natural that a girl of vivacious temper
should be curious about new-comers. At St. John’s Wood every day had
brought some new element into the lives of the students, and almost
every day had brought a new pupil, drawn thither by the growing renown
of the school, pupils from the uttermost ends of the earth sometimes,
pupils of swart complexion speaking unknown tongues, pupils patrician
and pupils plebeian, each and all conforming to the same stringent
rules of art, spending patient months in the shading of a brace of
plums or a bunch of grapes, from a plaster cast, and toiling slowly up
the gradual ascent which leads to the Royal Academy and the gold medal.
Many there were who sickened at the slow rate of progress and who fell
away. Only the faithful remained. And this going and coming, this
strife between faith and unfaith, patience and impatience, had made
a perpetual movement in the life of the great school--to say nothing
of such bodily activities as lawn tennis, for which the master had
provided a court--a court for his girl-pupils, be it noted, where they
played among themselves, as if they had been so many collegians in the
college of Tennyson’s “Princess.”
Allegra had liked her life at the great art school, but she had never
regretted its abandonment. She loved her brother, and her brother’s
wife, better even than she loved art. It was only now and then that she
felt that existence at Trelasco was as monotonous as the flow of the
river going up and coming down day by day between Lostwithiel and the
sea.
She spent the hours between breakfast and luncheon hard at work in her
painting-room--a little room with a large window facing northward. She
had the coachman’s girl and boy for her models, and was engaged upon
a little water-colour picture after the school of Mrs. Allingham, a
little picture which told its story with touching simplicity.
It was not the first picture of the kind she had painted. Several
of her works had been exhibited at the minor galleries which are
hospitable to the new-comer in the world of art; and two small pictures
had been bought at prices which seemed to promise her an easy road to
fortune.
The coachman’s children profited greatly by this new profession which
had been devised for them. Allegra made their frocks in her leisure
hours, when the active fingers must have something to do, while the
active tongue ran on gaily in happy talk with Martin and Isola. Allegra
made up to her little models for their hours of enforced idleness by
extra tuition which kept them ahead of most of the other pupils in the
village school; and Allegra supplied them with pocket-money.
“I don’t know however the children got on before Miss Leland came,”
said the coachman’s wife. “They seem to look to her for everything.”
Allegra had other models, village children, and village girls--her
beauty-girl, a baker’s daughter with a splendid semi-Greek face,
like Mrs. Langtry’s, whom she dressed up in certain cast-off finery
of her own, and painted in her genre pictures, now in this attitude,
and now in that, imparting an air of distinction which elevated the
Cornish peasant into a patrician. She it was, this baker’s fair-haired
daughter, who stood for Allegra’s successful picture--“A daughter of
the gods, divinely tall,” a little bit of finished painting which had
brought the painter five and thirty guineas--boundless wealth as it
seemed to her--and ever so many commissions.
Art, even in despondency and failure, is a consolation; art successful
is an intoxicating delight. Allegra was as happy a young woman as could
be found in Cornwall that day, when she shut her colour-box, dismissed
her little maiden, and ran down to lunch, where she found Isola more
silent than usual, and made amends by her own light-hearted chatter
for the morning’s absorption over the easel. After lunch she ran off
to the village to pay her parish visits to the sick and old, and on
her way to an outlying cottage she met Mr. Colfox, who immediately
turned to accompany her, a way he had, but a way to which she had never
attached any significance. He was a clever, well-read man, of somewhat
original temper, who had to pass most of his life among unlettered or
dull people; therefore it surprised Allegra in no wise that he should
like to talk to her. A bright, attractive girl of three and twenty is
very unsuspicious about the feelings of a homely looking man at least a
dozen years her senior.
“Your brother has been good enough to ask me to dinner,” he said, after
a little talk about the Goodies and their ailments. “I met him at the
club this morning.”
“He wants you to meet Captain Hulbert. Perhaps you know him already?”
“No, he has not been here within my time. He only left the navy a year
ago, and he was generally stationed at the utmost ends of the earth,
keeping guard over our remote possessions. Have you seen him?”
“Only for an instant. He passed my sister and me yesterday evening in
the moonlight. I thought he looked a nice person--but I think women
have a natural leaning towards sailors. I could never imagine a seaman
telling a falsehood or doing a mean action.”
“There is a kind of open-air manner which suggests truthfulness,”
admitted Mr. Colfox. “Yet there have been dark deeds done by sailors;
there have been black sheep even in the Queen’s Navee. However, I
believe Captain Hulbert is worthy of your good opinion. I have never
heard anybody speak against him, and the old people who knew him as a
lad seem to have liked him better than Lord Lostwithiel.”
“Do tell me your opinion of Lord Lostwithiel. I am very curious
about him. Mr. Crowther talked of him so much the night we were at
Glenaveril.”
“Mr. Crowther loves a lord.”
“Please satisfy my curiosity. Is he really such a fascinating
personage?”
“He has very pleasant manners. I don’t know what constitutes
fascination in a man, though I know pretty well what it means in a
woman. Lord Lostwithiel’s manners are chiefly distinguished by repose
without languor or affectation--and by an interest in other people so
cleverly simulated that it deceives everybody. One finds him out by the
way in which people boast of his friendship. He cannot be so attached
to all the world. He has a manner which is generally described as
sympathetic.”
“Mr. Crowther enlarged a good deal upon his lordship’s admiration for
my sister at the Hunt Ball. Was that so very marked?”
Mr. Colfox coloured violently at this direct question--assuredly not
easy to answer truthfully without hazard of offence.
“I was not at the ball--I--I heard people talk a little--in the way
people talk of everything--about Lostwithiel’s attention to Mrs.
Disney, and about her prettiness--they all agreed that if not the
loveliest woman in the room, she was at least the most interesting.”
“It was very natural that he should admire her; but I don’t think
Martin liked Mr. Crowther’s talking about it in that way, at the
dinner-table. The man is horridly underbred. Has Lord Lostwithiel what
you call--” she hesitated a little--“a good character?”
“I don’t know about the present. I have heard that in the past his
reputation was not altogether good.”
“I understand,” said Allegra, quickly. “The admiration of such a man is
an insult; and that is why Mr. Crowther harped upon the fact. I am sure
he is a malevolent man.”
“Don’t be hard upon him, Miss Leland. I believe he has only the
misfortune to be a cad--a cad by birth, education, and associations.
Don’t fling your stone at such a man--consider what an unhappy fate it
is.”
“Oh, but he does not think himself unhappy. He is bursting with
self-importance and the pride of riches. He is the typical rich man of
the Psalmist. He must be the happiest man in Trelasco, a thick-skinned
man whom nothing can hurt.”
“I am sorry you think so badly of poor Mr. Crowther, because I am
really attached to his wife. She is one of the best women I know.”
“So my sister tells me, and I was very much taken with her myself, but
one cannot afford to be friendly with Mrs. Crowther at the cost of
knowing her husband.”
She spoke with some touch of the insolence of youth, which sets so
high a value upon its own opinions and its own independence, and
looks upon all the rest of humanity as upon a lower plane. And this
arrogant youth, which thinks so meanly of the multitude, will make
its own exceptions, and reverence its chosen ideals with a blind
hero-worship--for its love is always an upward-looking love, “the
desire of the moth for the star.”
Mr. Colfox sighed, and smiled at the same moment, a sad little
half-cynical smile. He was thinking how impossible it was to refrain
from admiring this bright out-spoken girl, with her quick intellect,
and her artistic instincts, so spiritual, so unworldly, and fresh as an
April morning--how impossible not to admire, how difficult not to love
her, and how hopeless to love.
He thought of himself with scathing self-contempt--middle-aged, homely
of feature and of figure, with nothing to recommend him except good
birth, a small independence--just so much as enabled him to live where
he pleased and serve whom he would, without reference to the stipend
attached to the cure; and a little rusty, dry-as-dust learning. Nothing
more than this; and he wanted to win and wed a girl whose image never
recurred to his mind without the suggestion of a rose garden, or a
summer morning. Yes, she reminded him of morning and dewy red roses,
those old-fashioned heavy red roses, round as a cup, and breathing
sweetest, purest perfume.
He jogged on by her side in silence, and only awoke from his reverie to
bid her good-bye at the gate of a cottage garden, in the lane that led
up the hill to Tywardreath.