Mr. Fentolin, his carriage drawn up close to the beach, was painting
steadily when Hamel stood once more by his side. His eyes moved only
from the sea to the canvas. He never turned his head.
“So your wooing has not prospered, my young friend,” he remarked gently.
“I am sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
“Your niece has gone out to lunch,” Hamel replied shortly.
Mr. Fentolin stopped painting. His face was full of concern as he looked
up at Hamel.
“My dear sir,” he exclaimed, “how can I apologise! Of course she has
gone out to lunch. She has gone out to Lady Saxthorpe’s. I remember the
subject being discussed. I myself, in fact, was the instigator of her
going. I owe you a thousand apologies, Mr. Hamel. Let me make what
amends are possible for your useless journey. Dine with us to-night.”
“You are very kind.”
“A poor amends,” Mr. Fentolin continued. “A morning like this was made
for lovers. Sunshine and blue sky, a salt breeze flavoured just a little
with that lavender, and a stroll through my spring gardens, where my
hyacinths are like a field of purple and gold, a mantle of jewels upon
the brown earth. Ah, well! One’s thoughts will wander to the beautiful
things of life. There were once women who loved me, Mr. Hamel.”
Hamel looked doubtfully at the strange little figure in the chair. Was
this genuine, he wondered, a voluntary outburst, or was it some subtle
attempt to incite sympathy? Mr. Fentolin seemed almost to have read his
thought.
“It is not for the sake of your pity that I say this,” he continued.
“Mine is only the passing across the line which age as well as infirmity
makes inevitable. No one in the world who lives to grow old, and who has
loved and felt the fire of it in his veins, can pass that line without
sorrow, or look back without a pang. I am among a great army. Well,
well, I shall paint no more to-day,” he concluded abruptly.
“Where is your servant?” Hamel asked.
Mr. Fentolin glanced around him carelessly.
“He has wandered away out of sight. He knows well how necessary solitude
is to me if once I take the brush between my fingers--solitude natural
and entire, I mean. If any one is within a dozen yards of me I know it,
even though I cannot see them. Meekins is wandering somewhere the other
side of the Tower.”
“Shall I call him?”
“On no account,” Mr. Fentolin begged. “Presently he will appear,
in plenty of time. There is the morning to be passed--barely eleven
o’clock, I think, now. I shall sit in my chair, and sink a little down,
and dream of these beautiful lights, these rolling, foam-flecked waves,
these patches of blue and shifting green. I can form them in my brain. I
can make a picture there, even though my fingers refuse to move. You are
not an aesthete, I think, Mr. Hamel? The study of beauty does not mean
to you what it did to your father, and my father, and, in a smaller way
to me.”
“Perhaps not,” Hamel confessed. “I believe I feel these things
somewhere, because they bring a queer sense of content with them. I am
afraid, though, that my artistic perceptions are not so keen as some
men’s.”
Mr. Fentolin looked at him thoughtfully.
“It is the physical life in your veins--too splendid to permit you
abstract pleasures. Compensations again, you see--compensations. I
wonder what the law is that governs these things. I have forgotten
sometimes,” he went on, “forgotten my own infirmities in the soft
intoxication of a wonderful seascape. Only,” he went on, his face a
little grey, “it is the physical in life which triumphs. There are the
hungry hours which nothing will satisfy.”
His head sank, his chin rested upon his chest. He had all the appearance
now of a man who talks in bitter earnest. Yet Hamel wondered. He looked
towards the Tower; there was no sign of Meekins. The sea-gulls went
screaming above their heads. Mr. Fentolin never moved. His eyes seemed
half closed. It was only when Hamel rose to his feet that he looked
swiftly up.
“Stay with me, I beg you, Mr. Hamel,” he said. “I am in one of the moods
when solitude, even for a moment, is dangerous. Do you know what I have
sometimes thought to myself?”
He pointed to the planked way which led down the steep, pebbly beach to
the sea.
“I have sometimes thought,” he went on, “that it would be glorious to
find a friend to stand by my side at the top of the planks, just there,
when the tide was high, and to bid him loose my chair and to steer it
myself, to steer it down the narrow path into the arms of the sea. The
first touch of the salt waves, the last touch of life. Why not? One
sleeps without fear.”
He lifted his head suddenly. Meekins had appeared, coming round from the
back of the Tower. Instantly Mr. Fentolin’s whole manner changed. He sat
up in his chair.
“It is arranged, then,” he said. “You dine with us to-night. For the
other matters of which you have spoken, well, let them rest in the hands
of the gods. You are not very kind to me. I am not sure whether you
would make Esther a good husband. I am not sure, even, that I like you.
You take no pains to make yourself agreeable. Considering that your
father was an artist, you seem to me rather a dull and uninspired young
man. But who can tell? There may be things stirring beneath that torpid
brain of yours of which no other person knows save yourself.”
The concentrated gaze of Mr. Fentolin’s keen eyes was hard to meet, but
Hamel came out of the ordeal without flinching.
“At eight o’clock, Mr. Fentolin,” he answered. “I can see that I must
try to earn your better opinion.”
Hamel read steadily for the remainder of the morning. It was past one
o’clock when he rose stiffly from his seat among the sand knolls and,
strolling back to the Tower, opened the door and entered. The cloth was
laid for luncheon in the little sitting-room, but there were no signs
of Hannah Cox. He passed on into the kitchen and came to a sudden
standstill. Once more the memory of his own work passed away from him.
Once more he was back again among that queer, clouded tangle of strange
suspicions, of thrilling, half-formed fears, which had assailed him at
times ever since his arrival at St, David’s. He stopped quite short.
The words which rose to his lips died away. He felt the breathless,
compelling need for silence and grew tense in the effort to make no
sound.
Hannah Cox was kneeling on the stone floor. Her ear was close to the
crack of the door which led into the boat-house. Her face, half turned
from it, was set in a strange, concentrated passion of listening; her
lips were parted, her eyes half closed. She took no more notice of Hamel
or his arrival than if he had been some useless piece of furniture.
Every faculty seemed to be absorbed in that one intense effort of
listening. There was no need of her out-stretched finger. Hamel fell
in at once with a mood so mesmeric. He, too, listened. The small clock
which she had brought with her from the village ticked away upon the
mantelpiece. The full sea fell with placid softness upon the high beach
outside. Some slight noise of cooking came from the stove. Save for
these things there was silence. Yet, for a space of time which Hamel
could never have measured, they both listened. When at last the woman
rose to her feet, Hamel, finding words at last, was surprised to find
that his throat was dry.
“What is it, Mrs. Cox?” he asked. “Why were you listening there?”
Her face was absolutely expressionless. She was busying herself now with
a small saucepan, and her back was turned towards him.
“I spend my life, sir,” she said, “listening and waiting. One never
knows when the end may come.”
“But the boat-house,” Hamel objected. “No one has been in there his
morning, have they?”
“Who can tell?” she answered. “He could go anywhere when he chose, or
how he chose--through the keyhole, if he wanted.”
“But why listen?” Hamel persisted. “There is nothing in there now but
some odds and ends of machinery.”
She turned from the fire and looked at him for a moment. Her eyes were
colourless, her tone unemotional.
“Maybe! There’s no harm in listening.”
“Did you hear anything which made you want to listen?”
“Who can tell?” she answered. “A woman who lives well-nigh alone, as
I live, in a quiet place, hears things so often that other folk never
listen to. There’s always something in my ears, night or day. Sometimes
I am not sure whether it’s in this world or the other. It was like that
with me just then. It was for that reason I listened. Your luncheon’s
ready, sir.”
Hamel walked thoughtfully back into his sitting-room. He seated
himself before a spotless cloth and watched Hannah Cox spread out his
well-cooked, cleanly-served meal.
“If there’s anything you want, sir,” she said, “I shall hear you at a
word. The kitchen door is open.”
“One moment, Mrs. Cox.”
She lingered there patiently, with the tray in her hand.
“There was some sound,” Hamel continued, “perhaps a real sound, perhaps
a fancy, which made you go down on your knees in the kitchen. Tell me
what it was.”
“The sound I always hear, sir,” she answered quietly. “I hear it in the
night, and I hear it when I stand by the sea and look out. I have heard
it for so many years that who can tell whether it comes from this world
or the other--the cry of men who die!”
She passed out. Hamel looked after her, for a moment, like a man in
a dream. In his fancy he could see her back again once more in the
kitchen, kneeling on the stone floor,--listening!