CULLEN MAYLE COMES HOME
The search was entirely unsuccessful. Through the months of November
and December I travelled hither and thither, but I had no hint as to
Cullen Mayle's whereabouts; and towards the end of the year I took
passage in a barque bound for St. Mary's, where I landed the day
before Christmas and about the fall of the dusk. It was my intention
to cross over that night to Tresco and report my ill-success, which I
was resolved to do with a deal of stateliness. I was also curious to
know whether Peter Tortue was still upon the island.
But as I walked along the street of Hugh Town to the "Dolphin" Inn, by
the Customs House, a band of women dancing and shouting, with voices
extraordinarily hoarse, swept round the corner. I fell plump amongst
them, and discovered they were men masquerading as women. Moreover,
they stopped me, and were for believing that I was a woman
masquerading as a man; and, indeed, when they had let me go I did come
upon a party of girls dressed up for sea captains and the like, who
swaggered, counterfeiting a manly walk, and drawing their hangers upon
one another with a great show of spirit.
The reason of these transformations was explained to me at the
"Dolphin." It seems that they call this sort of amusement "a
goose-dancing," and the young people exercise it in these islands at
Christmas time. I was told that it would be impossible for me to hire
a boatman to put me over to Tresco that night; so I made the best of
the matter, and to pass the time stepped out again into the street,
which was now lighted up with many torches and crowded with
masqueraders. They went dancing and singing from house to house; the
women paid their addresses with an exaggeration of courtly manners to
the men, who, dressed in the most uncouth garments that could be
devised, received them with a droll shyness and modesty, and
altogether, what with liquor and music, the festival went with a deal
of noise and spirit. But in the midst of it one of these false women,
with a great bonnet pulled forward over her face, clapped a hand upon
my shoulder and said in my ear:
"Mr. Berkeley, I hope you have been holding better putt cards of
late;" and would have run on, but I caught him by the arm.
"Mr. Featherstone," said I, "you stole my horse; I have a word to say
to you."
"I have not the time to listen," said he, wrenching his arm free as he
flung himself into the thick of the crowd. I kept close upon his
heels, however, which he perceived, and drawing into a corner he
suddenly turned round upon me.
"Your horse is dead," said he. "I very much regret it; but I will pay
you, for I have but now come into an inheritance. I will pay you for
it to-morrow."
"I did not follow you to speak of the horse, or to Mr. Featherstone at
all, but to Mr. Cullen Mayle."
"You know me?" he exclaimed, looking about him lest the name should
have been overheard.
"And have news for you," I added. "Will you follow me to the
'Dolphin?'"
I went back to the inn, secured from my host a room where we could be
private, and went out to the door. Cullen Mayle was waiting; he
followed me quickly in, hiding his face so that no one could recognise
him, and when the door was shut--
"How in the world did you come to know of my name?" said he. "I cannot
think, but I shall be obliged if you will keep it secret for a day or
so, for I am not sure but what I may have some inconvenient friends
among these islands."
"Those inconvenient friends are all gone but one," said I.
"You know that too," he exclaimed. "Indeed, Mr. Berkeley, you seem to
be very well acquainted with my affairs; but I cannot regret it, since
you give me such comforting news. Only one of my inconvenient friends
left! Why, I am a match for one--I think I may say so without
vaunting--so it seems I can come to Tresco and take up my
inheritance."
With that he began briskly to unhook the cotton dress which he had put
on over his ordinary clothes.
"Inheritance!" said I. "You mentioned the word before. I do not
understand."
"Oh," said he, "it is a long story and a melancholy. My father drove
me from the house, and bequeathed his fortune to an adopted daughter."
"Yes," said I quickly, "I know that too."
"Indeed!" and he stopped his toilette to stare at me. "Perhaps you are
aware then that Helen Mayle, conscious of my father's injustice,
bequeathed it again to me."
"Yes, but--but--you spoke of an immediate inheritance."
"Ah," said he, coolly, "there is something, then, I can inform you of.
Helen Mayle is dead."
"What's that?" I cried, and started to my feet. I did not understand.
I was like a man struck by a bullet, aware dimly that some hurt has
come to him, but not yet conscious of the pain, not yet sensible of
the wound.
"Hush!" said Cullen Mayle, and untying a string at his waist he let
his dress fall about his feet. "It is most sad. Not for the world
would I have come into this inheritance at such a cost. You knew Helen
Mayle, perhaps?" he asked, with a shrewd glance at me. "A girl very
staunch, very true, who would never forget a _friend_." He emphasised
that word "friend" and made it of a greater significance. "Indeed, I
am not sure, but I must think it was because she could not forget
a--friend that, alas! she died."
I was standing stupefied. I heard the words he spoke, but gave
them at this moment no meaning. I was trying to understand the one
all-important fact.
"Dead!" I babbled. "Helen Mayle--dead!"
"Yes, and in the strangest, pitiful way. I cannot think of it, without
the tears come into my eyes. The news came to me but lately, and you
will perhaps excuse me on that account." His voice broke as he spoke;
there were tears, too, in his eyes. I wondered, in a dull way, whether
after all he had really cared for her. "But how comes it that you knew
her?" he asked.
I sat down upon a chair and told him--of Dick Parmiter's coming to
London, of my journey into the West. I told him how I had come to
recognise him at the inn; and as I spoke the comprehension of Helen's
death crept slowly into my mind, so that I came to a stop and could
speak no more.
"You were on your way to Tresco," said he, "when we first met. Then
you know that she is dead?"
"No," I answered. "When did she die?"
"On the sixth of October," said he.
I do not think that I should have paid great heed to his words, but
something in his voice--an accent of alarm--roused me. I lifted my
eyes and saw that he was watching me with a singular intentness.
"The sixth of October," I repeated vaguely, and then I broke into a
laugh, so harsh and hysterical that it seemed quite another voice than
mine. "Your news is false," I cried; "she is not dead! Why, I did not
leave Tresco till the end of October, and she was alive then and no
sign of any malady. The sixth of October! No, indeed, she did not die
upon that day."
"Are you sure?" he exclaimed.
"Sure?" said I. "I have the best of reasons to be sure; for it was on
the sixth of October that I first set foot in Tresco," and at once
Cullen Mayle sprang up and shook me by the hand.
"Here is the bravest news," he said. His whole face was alight; he
could not leave hold of my hand. "Mr. Berkeley, I may thank God that I
spoke to you to-night. 'Helen!'"--and he lingered upon the name. "Upon
my word, it would take little more to unman me. So you landed on the
sixth of October. But are you sure of the date?" he asked with
earnestness. "I borrowed your horse but a few days before. You would
hardly have travelled so quickly."
"I travelled by sea with a fair wind," said I. "It was the sixth of
October. Could I forget it? Why, that very night I crossed Castle Down
to Merchant's Point; that very night I entered the house. Dick
Parmiter showed me a way. I crept into the house, and slept in your
bedroom----"
I had spoken so far without a notion of the disclosure to which my
words were leading me. I was not looking at Cullen Mayle, but on to
the ground, else very likely I might have read it upon his face. But
now in an instant the truth of the matter was clear to me. For as I
said, "I slept in your bedroom," he uttered one loud cry, leapt to his
feet, and stood over against me, very still and quiet. I had
sufficient wit not to raise my head and betray this new piece of
knowledge. That sad and pitiful death on the sixth of October, of
which he had heard with so deep a pain--he had never heard it, he had
_planned_ it, and the plan miscarried. He knew why, now, and so was
standing in front of me very still and quiet. He had seen Helen that
night on Castle Down; there, no doubt, she had told him how in her
will she had disposed of her inheritance; and he had persuaded her,
working on her generosity--with what prepared speeches of despair!--to
that strange, dark act which it had been my good fortune to interrupt.
It was clear to me. The very choice of that room, wherein alone
secrecy was possible, made it clear. He had suggested to her the whole
cunning plan; and a moment ago I had almost been deceived to believe
his expressions of distress sincere!
"I told you I was nearly unmanned," I heard him say; "and you see even
so I underrated the strength of my relief, so that the mere surprise
of your ingenious shift to get a lodging took my breath away."
He resumed his seat, and I, having now composed my face, raised it
full to him. I have often wondered since whether, as he stood above
me, motionless and silent during those few moments, I was in any
danger.
"Yes," said I, "it was no doubt surprising."
This, however, was not the only surprise I was to cause Cullen Mayle
that night.
He proposed immediately that we should cross to Tresco together, and
on my objecting that we should get no one to carry us over--
"Oh," said he, "I have convenient friends in Scilly as well as
inconvenient." He looked out of the window. "The tide is high, and
washes the steps at the back of the inn. Do you wait here upon the
steps. I will have a boat there in less than half an hour;" and on the
word he hooked up his dress again and got him out of the inn.
I waited upon the steps as he bade me. Behind me were the lights and
the uproar of the street; in front, the black water and the cool
night; and still further, out of sight, the island of Tresco, the
purple island of bracken and gorse, resonant with the sea.
In a little I heard a ripple of water, and the boat swam to the steps.
I was careful as we sailed across the road to say nothing to Cullen
Mayle which would provoke his suspicion. I did not even allow him to
see I was aware that he himself had been upon Tresco on the sixth of
October. It was not difficult for me to keep silence. For as the water
splashed and seethed under the lee of the boat, and Tresco drew
nearer, I had to consider what I should do in the light of my new
knowledge. It would have been so much easier had only Helen been frank
with me.
Tresco dimly loomed up out of the darkness.
"By the way," said Cullen Mayle, who had been silent too, "you said
that one of the watchers had remained. It will be George Glen, I
suppose."
"No," I answered. "It is a Frenchman, Peter Tortue," and by the mere
mention of the name I surprised Cullen Mayle again that evening. It is
true that this time he uttered no exclamation, and did not start from
his seat. But the boat shot up into the wind and got into irons, as
the saying is, so that I knew his hand had left the tiller. But he
said nothing until we were opposite to the Blockhouse, and then he
asked in a low trembling voice:
"Did you say Peter Tortue?"
"Yes."
There was another interval of silence. Then he put another question
and in the same tone of awe:
"A young fellow, less than my years----"
"No. The young fellow's father," said I. "A man of sixty years. I
think I should be wary of him."
"Why?"
"He said, 'I am looking, not for the cross, but for a man to nail upon
the cross,' and he meant his words, every syllable."
Again we fell to silence, and so crossed the Old Grimsby Harbour and
rounded its northern point. The lights of the house were in view at
last. They shot out across the darkness in thin lines of light and
wavered upon the black water lengthening and shortening with the
slight heave of the waves. When they shortened, I wondered whether
they beckoned me to the house; when they lengthened out, were they
fingers which pointed to us to be gone?
"Since you know so much, Mr. Berkeley," whispered Cullen Mayle,
"perhaps you can tell me whether Glen secured the cross."
"No, he failed in that."
"I felt sure he would," said Cullen with a chuckle, and he ran the
boat aground, not on the sand before the house but on the bank beneath
the garden hedge. We climbed through the hedge; two windows blazed
upon the night, and in the room sat Helen Mayle close by the fire, her
violin on a table at her side and the bow swinging in her hand. I
stepped forward and rapped at the window. She walked across the room
and set her face to the pane, shutting out the light from her eyes
with her hands. She saw us standing side by side. Instantly she drew
down the blinds and came to the door, and over the grass towards us.
She came first to me with her hand outstretched.
"It is you," she said gently, and the sound of her voice was wonderful
in my ears. I had taken her hand before I was well aware what I did.
"Yes," said I.
"You have come back. I never thought you would. But you have come."
"I have brought back Cullen Mayle," said I, as indifferently as I
could, and so dropped her hand. She turned to Cullen then.
"Quick," she said. "You must come in."
We went inside the door.
"It is some years since I trod these flags," said Cullen. "Well, I am
glad to come home, though it is only as an outcast; and indeed, Helen,
I have not the right even to call it home."
It was as cruel a remark as he could well have made, seeing at what
pains the girl had been, and still was, to restore that home to him.
That it hurt her I knew very well, for I heard her, in the darkness of
the passage, draw in her breath through her clenched teeth. Cullen
walked along the passage and through the hall.
"Lock the door," Helen said to me, and I did lock it. "Now drop the
bar."
When that was done we walked together into the hall, where she
stopped.
"Look at me," she said, "please!" and I obeyed her.
"You have come back," she repeated. "You do not, then, any longer
believe that I deceived you?"
"There is a reason why I have come back," I answered. It was a reason
which I could not give to her. I was resolved not to suffer her to lie
at the mercy of Cullen Mayle. Fortunately, she did not think to ask me
to be particular about the reason. But she beat her hands once or
twice together, and--
"You still believe it, then!" she cried. "With these two months to
search and catch and hold the truth, you still hold me in the same
contempt as when you turned your back on me and walked out through
that door?"
"No, no!" I exclaimed. "Contempt! That never entered into any thought
I ever had of you. Make sure of that!"
"Yet you believe I tricked you. How can you believe that, and yet
spare me your contempt!"
"I am no philosopher. It is the truth I tell you," I answered, simply;
and the face of Cullen Mayle appeared at the doorway of the parlour,
so that no more was said.