Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/silentshoreroman00blourich
(University of California Libraries)
THE SILENT SHORE
A Romance
BY
JNO. BLOUNDELLE-BURTON
"To die is landing on a silent shore,
Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar."
LONDON
JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL
MILTON HOUSE, ST. BRIDE STREET, LUDGATE CIRCUS
AND
SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET, E.C.
[_All rights reserved_]
THE SILENT SHORE
Prologue
THE STORY OF THIRTY YEARS AGO
"And you are certain of the year he was married in?"
"Perfectly--there is no possibility of my being mistaken. He was
married on New Year's Day, '58; I was born in May, '59."
"It is strange, certainly. But there is one solution of it--is it not
possible that, even if this is he, the lady registered as his wife
might not have been so? In fact she could not have been, otherwise he
could never have married your mother."
"I will not believe it! He was too cold and austere--too puritanical I
had almost said--to form any such connection."
"Do you think, then, that he would commit bigamy?"
"I don't know what to think!" the other answered gloomily.
Two men, both about the same age, twenty-five, were seated in a
private room at an inn, known as the Hôtel Bellevue, at Le Vocq, a
dreary fishing town with a good though small harbour, a dozen miles
west of Havre. On a fine day the bay that runs in from Barfleur to
Fécamp is gay and bright, but it presented a melancholy appearance
on this occasion, as the two young men gazed out at it across the
rain-soaked plots of grass that formed the lawn of the "Bellevue."
Down below the cliff on which the inn stood, the port was visible, and
in the port was to be seen an English cutter, the _Electra_, in which
the friends had run for Le Vocq when the storm, that had now been
raging for twenty-four hours, broke upon them. They had left Cowes a
fortnight ago, and had been yachting pleasantly in the Channel since,
putting into Cherbourg on one occasion, into Ste. Mère Eglise on
another, and Havre on a third; and now, as ill-luck would have it, it
seemed as if they were doomed to be weather-bound in, of the many
dreary places on the coast, the dreariest of all, Le Vocq.
The first night in the inn, to which they had come up after seeing the
yacht made snug and comfortable in the harbour below, and the sailors
left in charge of her also provided for, passed easily enough. There
was the hope of the storm abating--which was cheering--and they had
cards, and some Paris newspapers to read, and above all, they were
fatigued and could sleep well. But, on the next day, the storm had not
abated, and they were tired of cards, the old Paris papers had been
read and re-read, and later ones had not arrived, and they were
refreshed with their night's rest and wanted to be off. But there was
no getting off, and what was to be done?
They had stood all the morning looking out of the window
disconsolately, had smoked pipes and cigarettes innumerable, and had
yawned a good deal, and sworn a little.
"What the deuce are we to do to prevent ourselves from dying of
_ennui_, Philip?" the one asked the other.
"Jerry," the other answered solemnly, "I know no more than you do.
There is nothing left to read, and soon--very soon, alas!--there will
be nothing left to smoke but the _caporal_ obtainable in the village.
That, however, might poison us and end our miseries."
Then the one called Philip began looking about the salon that was at
their disposal, and whistling plaintively, and peering into the
cupboards, of which there were two:
"Hullo!" he suddenly exclaimed, "here is another great mental treat
for us--a lot of old books; and precious big ones, too! I wonder what
they are?"
"Pull them out and let us see. Probably only _Le Monde Illustré_, or
_Le Journal Amusant_, bound up for the landlord's winter nights'
delectation, after they have been thumbed by every sailor in the
village."
"Oh, confound the books!" Philip exclaimed when he had looked into
them, "they are only the old registers, the _Livres des Étrangers_ of
bygone years."
"Nevertheless, let us see them," the other answered; "at any rate we
shall learn what kind of company the house has kept."
So, obeying his behest, Philip brought them out, and they sat down "to
begin at the beginning," as they said laughingly; and each took a
volume and commenced to peruse it.
Every now and then they told one another of some name they had
come across, the owner of which was known to them by hearsay,
and they agreed that the "Hôtel Bellevue" had, in its day, had
some very good people for its guests. They had found several
titles--English--inscribed in the pages of the register, and also many
prominent names belonging to the same nationality.
"Probably half these people have occupied this very sitting-room at
some time or the other," Philip said to Gervase. "I only wish to
heaven some of them were here now, and that----"
He stopped at a sudden exclamation of his friend, who was gazing
fixedly at the page before him.
"What kind of a find is it now, Jerry?" he asked. "Any one very
wonderful?"
"It must be a mistake," the other said in a low voice. "And yet how
could such a mistake happen? Look at this!" and he pointed with his
finger to a line in the book.
"By Jove!" the other exclaimed, as he read, "_Août_ 17, 1854, _L'Hon.
Gervase Occleve et sa femme_." Then he said, "Your father of course,
before he inherited his title?"
"Of course! There never was any other Gervase Occleve in existence,
except myself, while he was alive. But what can it mean?"
"It means that your father knew this place many years ago, and came
here: that is all, I should say. It is a coincidence, but after all it
is no more strange that he should know Le Vocq, than that you should."
"But you don't see the curious part of it, Philip! It is the words _et
sa femme_. My father had no wife in 1854! He never had a wife until he
married my mother, and then he was Lord Penlyn and no longer known as
Gervase Occleve."
And then followed the conversation with which this story opens.
"It _is_ a strange thing," Philip said, "but it must be a mistake."
In his own heart, being somewhat of a worldling, he did not think it
was any mistake at all. He thought it highly probable that the late
Lord Penlyn had, when here, a lady travelling with him who was
registered as his wife, but who, in actual fact, was not his wife at
all.
After a few moments spent in thought, Gervase turned to his friend and
said, "The landlord, the man who stared so hard at me yesterday when
we came in, was an elderly person. He may have had this hotel in '54,
might even remember this mysterious namesake of mine. I think I will
ask him to come up."
"I shouldn't," Philip said. "He isn't at all likely to remember
anything about it." In his mind he thought it very probable that the
man might, even at that distance of time, remember something of
Gervase's father, especially if he had made a long stay at the house,
and would perhaps be able to give some reminiscences of his whilom
guest that might by no means make his son feel comfortable.
But his remonstrance was unheeded, and the other rang the bell. It was
answered by a tidy waitress wearing the cap peculiar to the district,
to whom Gervase--who was an excellent linguist--said in very good
French:
"If the landlord is in, will you be good enough to say that Lord
Penlyn would be glad to speak to him?"
The girl withdrew, and in a few minutes the landlord tapped at the
door. When he had received an invitation to enter, he came into the
room and bowed respectfully, but, as he did so, Lord Penlyn again
noticed that his eyes were fixed upon him with a wondering stare; a
stare exactly the same as he had received on the previous day when
they entered the hotel. There was nothing rude nor offensive in the
look; it partook more of the nature of an incredulous gaze than
anything else.
"Milor has expressed a wish to see me," he said as he entered. "He
has, I trust, found everything to his wish in my poor house!"
"Perfectly," Gervase answered; "but I want to ask you a question. Will
you be seated?" And then when the landlord had taken a chair--still
looking intently at him--he went on:
"We found these _Livres des Étrangers_ in your cupboard, and, for want
of anything else to read, we took them down and have been amusing
ourselves with them. I hope we did not take a liberty."
"_Mais, Milor!_" the landlord said with a shrug of his shoulders and a
twitch of his eyebrows, that were meant to express his satisfaction at
his guests being able to find anything to distract them.
"Thank you," Gervase said. "Well! in going through this book--the one
of 1854--I have come upon a name so familiar to me, the name of
Gervase Occleve, that----"
But before he could finish his sentence the landlord had jumped up
from his chair, and was speaking rapidly while he gesticulated in a
thorough French fashion.
"_C'est ça, mon Dieu, mais oui!_" he began. "Occleve--of course! That
is the face. Sir, Milor! I salute you! When you entered my house
yesterday, I said to myself, 'But where, mon Dieu, but where have I
seen him? Or is it but the spirit of some dead one looking at me out
of his eyes?' And now that you mention to me the name of Occleve, then
in a moment he comes back to me and I see him once again. _Ah! ma foi,
Milor!_ but when I regard you, then in verity he returns to me, and I
recall him as he used to sit in this very room--_parbleu!_ in that
very chair in which you now sit."
The young men had both stared at him with some amazement as he spoke
hurriedly and excitedly, repeating himself in his earnestness, and now
as he ceased, Gervase said:
"Do I understand you to say, then, that I bear such a likeness to this
man, whose name is inscribed here, as to recall him vividly to you?"
"_Mais, sans doute!_ you are his son! It must be so. There is only one
thing that I do not comprehend. You bear a different name."
"He became Lord Penlyn later in life, and at his death that title came
to me."
"_Bien compris!_ And so he is dead! He can scarcely have lived the
full space of man's years. And Madame your mother? She is well?"
For a moment the young man hesitated. Then he said: "She is dead too."
"_Pauvre dame_," the landlord said, and as he spoke it seemed as
though he was talking to himself. "She was bright and happy in those
days so far off, bright and happy once; and she, too, is gone. And I,
who was older than either of them, am left! But, Lord Penlyn," he
said, readdressing himself to his guest, "you look younger than your
years. It is thirty years since you used to run about those sands
outside and play; I have carried you to them often----"
"You carried me to those sands thirty years ago! Why, I was not----"
"Stop!" Philip Smerdon said to him in English, and speaking in a low
tone. "Do you not see it all? Say no more."
"Yes," Gervase answered. "Yes, I see it all."
Later on, when the landlord had left the room after insisting upon
shaking the hand of "the child he had known thirty years ago," Gervase
said:
"So he who was so stern and self-contained, who seemed to be above the
ordinary weaknesses of other men, was, after all, worse than the
majority of them. I suppose he flung this poor woman off when he
married my mother, I suppose he left the boy, for whom this man takes
me--to starve or to become a thief preying on his fellow men. It is
not pleasant to think that I have an elder brother who may be an
outcast, perhaps a felon!"
"I should not take quite such a pessimist view of things as that,"
Philip said. "For aught you know, the lady he had with him here may
have died between 1854 and 1858, and, for the matter of that, so may
the boy; or he may have made a good allowance to both when he parted
with them. For anything you know to the contrary he might have seen
the boy frequently until his death, and have taken care to place him
comfortably in the world."
"In such a case I must have known it. I must have met him somewhere."
"Nothing more unlikely! The world is large enough--in spite of the
numerous jokes about its smallness--for two peculiarly situated
individuals not to meet. If I were you, Jerry, I should think no more
about the matter."
"It is not a thing one can easily forget!" the other answered.
The landlord had given them a description of what he remembered of the
Gervase Occleve whom he had known thirty years ago, but what he had
told them had not thrown much light upon the subject. He described how
Gervase Occleve had first come there in the summer of '54 accompanied
by his wife (he evidently had never doubted that they were married)
and by his son, "the Monsieur now before him," as he said innocently.
They had lived very quietly, occupying the very rooms in which they
were now sitting, he told the young men; roaming about the sands in
the day, or driving over to the adjacent towns and villages, or
sailing in a boat that Mr. Occleve hired by the month. They seemed
contented and happy enough, he said, and stayed on and on until the
autumn's damp and rain, peculiar to that part of the coast, drove them
away. It was strange, he thought, that Milor did not remember anything
about that period; but it was true, he was but a little child!
Then, he continued, in the following summer they returned again, and
again spent some months there--and then, he never saw nor heard of
them more. But, so well did he remember Mr. Occleve's face, even after
all these years, that, ever since Lord Penlyn had been in the house,
he had been puzzling his brains to think where he had seen him before.
He certainly should not, he said, have remembered the child he had
played with so often, but that his likeness to his father was more
than striking. To Madame, his mother, he saw no resemblance at all.
"But I did not tell him," he said to himself afterwards, as he sat in
his parlour below and sipped a little red wine meditatively, "I did
not tell him that on the second summer a gloom had fallen over them,
and that I often saw her in tears, and heard him speak harshly to her.
Why should I? _À quoi bon_ to disturb the poor young man's meditations
on his dead father and mother!"
And the good landlord went out and served a chopine of _petit bleu_ to
one customer, and a _tasse_ of _absinthe gommée_ to another, and
entertained them with an account of how there was, upstairs, an
English Milor who had been there thirty years ago with his father; the
Milor who was the owner of the yacht now in port.
On the next day the storm was over, there was almost a due south wind,
and the _Electra_ was skimming over the waves and leaving the dreary
French coast far behind it.
"It hasn't been a pleasant visit," Lord Penlyn said to Philip, as they
leant over the bows smoking their pipes and watching Le Vocq fade
gradually into a speck. "I would give something never to have heard
that story!"
"It is the story of thirty years ago," his friend answered. "And it is
not you who did the wrong. Why let it worry you?"
"I cannot help it! And--I daresay you will think me a fool!--but I
cannot also help wondering on which of my father's children--upon that
other nameless and unknown one, or upon me--his sins will be visited!"
The Story
CHAPTER I.
Ida Raughton sat, on a bright June day of that year, in her pretty
boudoir looking out on the well-kept gardens of a West End square, and
thinking of an important event in her life that was now not very far
off--her marriage. Within the last month she had become engaged, not
without some earlier doubts on her part as to whether she was
altogether certain of her feelings--though, afterwards, she told
herself over and over again that the man to whom she was now promised
was the only one she could ever love: and the wedding-day was fixed
for the 1st of September. Her future husband was Gervase Occleve,
Viscount Penlyn.
She was the only daughter of Sir Paul Raughton, a wealthy Surrey
baronet, and had been to him, since her mother's death, as the apple
of his eye--the only thing that to him seemed to make life worth
living. It was true that he had distractions that are not uncommon to
elderly gentlemen of means, and possessed of worldly tastes; perfectly
true that Paris and Nice, and Ascot and Newmarket, as well as his
clubs and his friends--not always male ones--had charms for him that
were still very seductive; but, after all, they were nothing in
comparison to his daughter's love and his love for her. Never during
his long widowerhood, a widowerhood dating from her infancy, had he
failed to make her life and happiness the central object of his
existence; never had he allowed his pleasures to stand in the way of
the study of her comfort. The best schools and masters when she was a
child, the best friends and chaperons for her when womanhood was
approaching, and when it had arrived, the greatest liberality as
regards cheques for dressmakers, milliners, upholsterers, horses,
etc., had been but a small part of his way of showing his devotion to
her. And she had returned his affection, had been to him a daughter
giving back love for love, and endeavouring in every way in her power
to make him an ample return for all the thought and care he had
showered on her. Of course he had foreseen that the inevitable day
must come when--love him however much she might--she would still be
willing to leave him, when she would be willing to resign being
mistress of her father's house to be mistress of her husband's. His
worldly knowledge, which was extensive enough for half-a-dozen
ordinary men, told him clearly enough that the parent nest very soon
palled on the bird that saw its way to building one for itself. Yet,
when the blow fell, as he had known it must fall, he did not find that
his philosophy enabled him to endure it very lightly. On the other
hand, there was his love for her, and that bade him let her go, since
it was for her happiness that she should do so.
"I promised her mother when she lay dying," he said to himself, "that
my life should be devoted to her, and I have kept my vow to the best
of my power. I am not going to break it now. Besides, it is part of a
father's duty to see his daughter well married; and I suppose Penlyn
is a good match. At any rate, there are plenty of other fathers and
mothers who would like to have caught him for their girls."
That she should have made a sensation during her first season was not
a thing to astonish Sir Paul, nor, indeed, any one else. Ida Raughton
was as thoroughly beautiful a girl, when first she made her appearance
in London society, as any who had ever taken their place in its ranks.
Tall and graceful, and possessed of an exquisitely shaped head, round
which her auburn hair curled in thick locks; with bright hazel eyes,
whose expression varied in accordance with their owner's thoughts and
feelings, sometimes sparkling with laughter and mirth, and sometimes
saddened with tears as she listened to any tale of sorrow; with a nose
the line of which was perfect, and a mouth, the smallness of which
disguised, though it could not hide, the even, white teeth within, no
one could look at Ida without acknowledging how lovely she was. Even
other and rival _débutantes_ granted her loveliness, and the woman who
can obtain such a concession as this from her sisters has fairly
established her right to homage.
As she sat at her boudoir window on this June day, thinking of her now
definitely settled marriage, she was wondering if the life before her
would be as bright and happy as the one she was leaving behind for
ever. That--with the exception of the death of her mother, a sorrow
that time had mercifully tempered to her--had been without alloy.
Would the future be so? There was no reason to think otherwise, she
reflected, no reason to doubt it. Lord Penlyn was young, handsome, and
manly, the owner of an honoured name, and well endowed with the
world's goods. Yet that would not have weighed with her had she not
loved him.
She had asked herself if she did love him several times before she
consented to give him the answer he desired, and then she acknowledged
that he alone had won her heart. She recalled other men's attentions
to her, their soft words, their desire to please; how they had haunted
her footsteps at balls and at the Opera, and how no other man's homage
had ever been so sweet to her as the homage of Gervase Occleve. At
first--wishing still to be sure of herself--she would not agree to be
his wife, telling him that she did not know her heart; but when he
asked her a second time, after she had had ample opportunity for
reflection, she told him he should have his wish.
"And you do love me, Ida?" he asked rapturously, perhaps boyishly, as
they drove back from a large dinner-party to which they had gone at
Richmond. "You are sure you do?"
"Yes," she said, "I am sure I do. I was not sure when first you asked
me, but I am now."
"Then kiss me, darling, and tell me so. Otherwise I shall scarcely be
able to believe it;" and he bent over her and kissed her, and she
returned the kiss.
"I love you, Gervase," she said, blushing as she did so.
"You have made me supremely happy," he said to her after their lips
had met; "happy beyond all thought. And, dearest, you shall never have
cause to repent of it. I will be to you the best, the truest husband
woman ever had. There shall be no shadow ever come over your life that
I can keep away."
For answer she put her hand in his, and so they drove along the lanes
that were getting thick with hawthorn and chestnut blossom, while
ahead of them sounded the merry voices of others of the party who were
on a four-in-hand. They had come down, a joyous company, from town in
the afternoon, had dined at the "Star and Garter," and were now on
their way home under the soft moonlight of an early summer evening.
Sir Paul had been with them in the landau on the journey out, but on
this return one he was seated on the top of the coach, talking to a
lady whom he addressed more than once as "his dear old friend," and
was smoking innumerable cigarettes. Probably he did not imagine for
one moment that Lord Penlyn was going to take this opportunity of
proposing to his daughter; but he had noticed that they seemed to
enjoy each other's society very much, especially when they could
enjoy it alone. And so, all things being suitable and harmonious, and
the baronet having a heart beneath his exceedingly well-fitting
waistcoat--and that a very big heart where Ida was concerned--had let
them have the gratification of the drive home together.
"And you never loved any other man, Ida?" Gervase asked. "Forgive the
question, but every lover likes to know, or think, that no one has
ever been before him in the affection of the woman he loves."
"No," she answered, "never. You are the first man I have ever loved."
This had happened nearly a month ago, but as Ida sat in her boudoir
her thoughts returned to the drive on that May night. Yes, she
acknowledged, she loved him, and she loved him more and more every
time she saw him. But as she recalled this conversation she also
recalled the question he had asked her, the question as to whether she
had ever loved any other man; and she wondered what had made him ask
it. Could it be that it was supposed by some of their circle--though
erroneously supposed, she told herself--that another man loved her?
Perfectly erroneously, because that other man had never breathed one
word of love to her; and because, though he would sometimes be in her
society continually for perhaps a week, and then be absent for a
month, he never, during all the time they were thus constantly
meeting, paid her more marked attention than other men were in the
habit of doing. Yet, notwithstanding this, it had come to her
knowledge that it had been whispered about that Walter Cundall loved
her.
This man, Walter Cundall, this reported admirer of hers, was well
known in society, was in a way famous, though his fame was in the
principal part due to the simplest purchaser of that commodity--to
wealth. He was known to be stupendously rich, to be able to spend any
large sum of money he chose in order to gratify his inclinations, to
be able to look upon thousands as ordinary men looked upon hundreds,
and upon hundreds as other men looked upon tens. This was the
principal part of his fame; but there was a lesser, though a better
part! It was true that he did spend hundreds and thousands, but, as a
rule, he spent them quite as much upon others as upon himself. His
fours-in-hand, his yachts and steam-yachts, his villa at Cookham, and
his house in Grosvenor Place, as well as his villa at Cannes--to which
a joyous party went every winter--were as much for his friends as for
him. He gave dinners that men and women delighted in getting
invitations to; but it was noticed that, though his _chéf_ was a
marvel, he rarely ate of anything but the soup and joint himself, and
that, while others were drinking the best wine that Burgundy, or Aÿ,
or Rheims could produce, he scarcely ever quenched his thirst with
anything but a tumbler of claret. But he would sit at the head of his
table with a smile of satisfaction upon his handsome face, contented
with the knowledge that his guests were happy and enjoying themselves.
This man of whom Ida was now thinking and whose story may be told
here, had commenced life at Westminster School, to which he had been
put by his uncle, a rich owner of mines and woods in Honduras, from
which place he paid flying visits to England once a year, or once in
two years. The boy was an orphan, left by his mother to her brother's
care, and that brother had not failed in his trust. The lad went to
Westminster with the full understanding that Honduras must be his home
when school days were over; but he knew that it would be a home of
luxury and tropical splendour. There, after his school days, he passed
some years of his life, attending to the mines, seeing to the
consignments of shiploads of mahogany and cedar, going for days in the
hills with no companions but the Mestizos and the Indians, and helping
his uncle to garner up more and more wealth that was eventually
destined to be his. Once or twice in the space of ten years he came to
Europe, generally with the object of increasing their connection with
London or Continental cities, and of looking up and keeping touch with
his old schoolfellows and friends.
And then, at last, two or three years before this story opens, and
when his uncle was dead, it came to be said about London that Walter
Cundall, the richest man from the Pacific to the Gulf of Honduras, had
taken a house in Grosvenor Place, and meant to make London more or
less permanently his residence. The other places that have
been mentioned were purchased one by one, and he used all his
possessions--sharing them with his friends--by turn; but London was,
as people said, his home. Occasionally he would go off to Honduras on
business, or would rush by the Orient express to St. Petersburg or
Vienna; but he loved England better than any other spot in the globe,
and never left it unless he was obliged to do so.
This was the man whom gossip had said was the future husband of Ida
Raughton--this tall, dark, handsome man, who was, when in England, a
great deal by her side. But gossip had been rather staggered when it
heard that, during Mr. Cundall's last absence of six months in the
tropics, she had become the affianced wife of Lord Penlyn! It wondered
what he would say when he came back, as it heard he was about to do
very shortly, and it wondered why on earth she had taken Penlyn when
she might have had Cundall. It talked it over in the drawing-rooms and
the ball-rooms, at Epsom and on the lawn at Sandown, but it did not
seem to arrive at any conclusion satisfactory to itself.
"I suppose the fact of it is that Cundall never asked her," one said
to another, "and she got tired of waiting."
"I should have waited a bit longer on the off chance," the other said
"Cundall's a fifty times richer fellow than Penlyn, and there's no
comparison between the two. The one is a man of the world and a
splendid fellow, and the other is only a boy."
"He isn't a bad sort of a boy though," said a third, "good-looking,
and all that. And," he continued sententiously, "he has the pull in
age. That's what tells! He is about twenty-five, and Cundall's well
over thirty, isn't he?"
"Thirty is no such great age," said the first one, who, being over
forty himself, looked upon Cundall also as almost a boy, "and, for my
part, I think she has made a mistake!"
And that was what the world said: "She had made a mistake!" Did she
think so herself, as she sat there that bright afternoon? No, that
could not be possible! Ida Raughton was a girl with too pure and
honourable a heart to take one man when she loved another. And we know
what the gossips did not know, that no word of love had ever passed
between her and Walter Cundall. The world was indulging in profitless
speculations when it debated in its mind why Ida had not taken as a
husband a man who had never spoken one word of love to her!