Mr. Fentolin, arrived outside on the stone front of the boat-house,
pointed the wheel of his chair towards the Hall. Hannah Cox, who kept by
his side, however, drew it gently towards the beach.
“Down here,” she directed softly. “Bring your chair down the plank-way,
close to the water’s edge.”
“My good woman,” Mr. Fentolin exclaimed furiously, “I am not in the
humour for this sort of thing! Lock up, Sarson, at once; I am in a hurry
to get back.”
“But you will come just this little way,” she continued, speaking
without any change of tone. “You see, the others are waiting, too. I
have been down to the village and fetched them up.”
Mr. Fentolin followed her outstretched finger and gave a sudden start.
Standing at the edge of the sea were a dozen or twenty fishermen. They
were all muttering together and looking at the top of the boat-house. As
he realised the direction of their gaze, Mr. Fentolin’s face underwent a
strange transformation. He seemed to shrink in his chair. He was ghastly
pale even to the lips. Slowly he turned his head. From a place in the
roof of the boat-house a tall support had appeared. On the top was a
swinging globe.
“What have you to do with that?” he asked in a low tone.
“I found it,” she answered. “I felt that it was there. I have brought
them up with me to see it. I think that they want to ask you some
questions. But first, come and listen.”
Mr. Fentolin shook her off. He looked around for Meekins.
“Meekins, stand by my chair,” he ordered sharply. “Turn round; I wish to
go to the Hall. Drive this woman away.”
Meekins came hurrying up, but almost at the same moment half a dozen of
the brown jerseyed fishermen detached themselves from the others. They
formed a little bodyguard around the bath-chair.
“What is the meaning of this?” Mr. Fentolin demanded, his voice shrill
with anger. “Didn’t you hear what I said? This woman annoys me. Send her
away.”
Not one of the fishermen answered a word or made the slightest movement
to obey him. One of them, a grey-bearded veteran, drew the chair a
little further down the planked way across the pebbles. Hannah Cox kept
close to its side. They came to a standstill only a few yards from where
the waves were breaking. She lifted her hand.
“Listen!” she cried. “Listen!”
Mr. Fentolin turned helplessly around. The little group of fishermen
had closed in upon Sarson and Meekins. The woman’s hand was upon his
shoulder; she pointed seaward to where a hissing line of white foam
marked the spot where the topmost of the rocks were visible.
“You wondered why I have spent so much of my time out here,” she said
quietly. “Now you will know. If you listen as I am listening, as I have
listened for so many weary hours, so many weary years, you will hear
them calling to me, David and John and Stephen. ‘The light!’ Do you hear
what they are crying? ‘The light! Fentolin’s light!’ Look!”
She forced him to look once more at the top of the boat-house.
“They were right!” she proclaimed, her voice gaining in strength and
intensity. “They were neither drunk nor reckless. They steered as
straight as human hand could guide a tiller, for Fentolin’s light! And
there they are, calling and calling at the bottom of the sea--my three
boys and my man. Do you know for whom they call?”
Mr. Fentolin shrank back in his chair.
“Take this woman away!” he ordered the fishermen. “Do you hear? Take her
away; she is mad!”
They looked towards him, but not one of them moved. Mr. Fentolin raised
his whistle to his lips, and blew it.
“Meekins!” he cried. “Where are you, Meekins?”
He turned his head and saw at once that Meekins was powerless. Five or
six of the fishermen had gathered around him. There were at least thirty
of them about, sinewy, powerful men. The only person who moved towards
Mr. Fentolin’s carriage was Jacob, the coast guardsman.
“Mr. Fentolin, sir,” he said, “the lads have got your bully safe. It’s a
year and more that Hannah Cox has been about the village with some story
about two lights on a stormy night. It’s true what she says--that her
man and boys lie drowned. There’s William Green, besides, and a nephew
of my own--John Kallender. And Philip Green--he was saved. He swore by
all that was holy that he steered straight for the light when his boat
struck, and that as he swam for shore, five minutes later, he saw the
light reappear in another place. It’s a strange story. What have you to
say, sir, about that?”
He pointed straight to the wire-encircled globe which towered on its
slender support above the boat-house. Mr. Fentolin looked at it and
looked back at the coast guardsman. The brain of a Machiavelli could
scarcely have invented a plausible reply.
“The light was never lit there,” he said. “It was simply to help me in
some electrical experiments.”
Then, for the first time in their lives, those who were looking on saw
Mr. Fentolin apart from his carriage. Without any haste but with amazing
strength, Hannah Cox leaned over, and, with her arms around his middle,
lifted him sheer up into the air. She carried him, clasped in her arms,
a weird, struggling object, to the clumsy boat that lay always at the
top of the beach. She dropped him into the bottom, took her seat, and
unshipped the oars. For one moment the coast guardsman hesitated; then
he obeyed her look. He gave the boat a push which sent it grinding down
the pebbles into the sea. The woman began to work at the oars. Every now
and then she looked over her shoulder at that thin line of white surf
which they were all the time approaching.
“What are you doing, woman?” Mr. Fentolin demanded hoarsely. “Listen! It
was an accident that your people were drowned. I’ll give you an annuity.
I’ll make you rich for life--rich! Do you understand what that means?”
“Aye!” she answered, looking down upon him as he lay doubled up at the
bottom of the boat. “I know what it means to be rich--better than you,
maybe. Not to let the gold and silver pieces fall through your fingers,
or to live in a great house and be waited upon by servants who desert
you in the hour of need. That isn’t being rich. It’s rich to feel the
touch of the one you love, to see the faces around of those you’ve given
birth to, to move on through the days and nights towards the end, with
them around; not to know the chill loneliness of an empty life. I am a
poor woman, Mr. Fentolin, and it’s your hand that made me so, and not
all the miracles that the Bible ever told of can make me rich again.”
“You are a fool!” he shrieked. “You can buy forgetfulness! The memory of
everything passes.”
“I may be a fool,” she retorted grimly, “and you the wise man; but this
day we’ll both know the truth.”
There was a little murmur from the shore, where the fishermen stood in a
long line.
“Bring him back, missus,” Jacob called out. “You’ve scared him enough.
Bring him back. We’ll leave him to the law.”
They were close to the line of surf now; they had passed it, indeed, a
little on the left, and the boat was drifting. She stood up, straight
and stern, and her face, as she looked towards the land, was lit with
the fire of the prophetess.
“Aye,” she cried, “we’ll leave him to the law--to the law of God!”
Then they saw her stoop down, and once more with that almost superhuman
strength which seemed to belong to her for those few moments, she lifted
the strange object who lay cowering there, high above her head. From the
shore they realised what was going to happen, and a great shout arose.
She stood on the side of the boat and jumped, holding her burden tightly
in her arms. So they went down and disappeared.
Half a dozen of the younger fishermen were in the water even before
the grim spectacle was ended; another ran for a boat that was moored a
little way down the beach. But from the first the search was useless.
Only Jacob, who was a person afflicted with many superstitions, wiped
the sweat from his forehead as he leaned over the bow of his boat and
looked down into that fathomless space.
“I heard her singing, her or her wraith,” he swore afterwards. “I’ll
never forget the moment I looked down and down, and the water seemed to
grow clearer, and I saw her walking there at the bottom among the rocks,
with him over her back, singing as she went, looking everywhere for
George and the boys!”
But if indeed his eyes were touched with fire at that moment, no one
else in the world saw anything more of Miles Fentolin.