MY PERPLEXITIES ARE EXPLAINED
There is no need for me to tell at any length the conversation that
passed between the three of us that night. Cullen Mayle spoke frankly
of his journey to the Sierra Leone River.
"Mr. Berkeley," he said, "already knows so much, that I doubt it would
not be of any avail to practise mysteries with him. And besides there
is no need, for, if I mistake not, Mr. Berkeley can keep a secret as
well as any man."
He spoke very politely, but with a keen eye on me to notice whether I
should show any confusion or change colour. But I made as though I
attached no significance to his words beyond mere urbanity. He told us
how he made his passage to the Guinea Coast as a sailor before the
mast, and then fell in with George Glen. It seemed prudent to
counterfeit a friendly opinion that the cross would be enough for all.
But when they discovered the cross was gone from its hiding place, he
took the first occasion to give them the slip.
"For I had no doubt that my father had been beforehand," said he. "Had
I possessed more wisdom, I might have known as much when I heard him
from my bed refuse his assistance to George Glen, and so saved myself
an arduous and a perilous adventure. For my father, was he never so
rich, was not the man to turn his back on the King of Portugal's
cross."
Of his father, Cullen spoke with good nature and a certain hint of
contempt; and he told us much which he had learned from George Glen.
"He went by the name of Kennedy," said Cullen, "but they called him
'Crackers' for the most part. He was not on the _Royal Fortune_ at the
time when Roberts was killed, so that he was never taken prisoner with
the rest, nor did he creep out of Cape Corse Castle like George Glen."
"Then he was never tried or condemned," said Helen, who plainly found
some relief in that thought.
"No!" answered Cullen, with a chuckle. "But why? He played
rob-thief--a good game, but it requires a skilled player. I would
never have believed Adam had the skill. Roberts put him in command of
a sloop called the _Ranger_, which he had taken in the harbour of
Bahia, and when he put out to sea on that course which brought him
into conjunction with the _Swallow_, he left the _Ranger_ behind in
Whydah Bay. And what does Adam do but haul up his anchor as soon as
Roberts was out of sight, and, being well content with his earnings,
make sail for Maryland, where the company was disbanded. I would I had
known that on the day we quarrelled. Body o' me, but I would have made
the old man quiver. Well, Adam came home to England, settled at
Bristol, where he married, and would no doubt have remained there till
his death, had he not fallen in with one of his old comrades on the
quay. That frightened him, so he come across to Tresco, thinking to be
safe. And safe he was for twenty years, until George Glen nosed him
out."
Thereupon, Cullen, from relating his adventures, turned to questions
asking for word of this man and that whom he had known before he went
away. These questions of course he put to Helen, and not once did he
let slip a single allusion to the meeting he had had with her in the
shed on Castle Down. For that silence on his part I was well prepared;
the man was versed in secrecy. But Helen showed a readiness no whit
inferior; she never hesitated, never caught a word back. They spoke
together as though the last occasion when they had met was the night,
now four years and a half ago, when Adam Mayle stood at the head of
the stairs and drove his son from the house. One thing in particular I
learned from her, the negro had died a month ago.
It was my turn when the gossip of the islands had been exhausted, and
I had to tell over again of my capture by Glen and the manner of my
escape. I omitted, however, all mention of an earlier visitant to the
Abbey burial grounds, and it was to this omission that I owed a
confirmation of my conviction that Cullen Mayle was the visitant. For
when I came to relate how George Glen and his band sailed away towards
France without the cross, he said:
"If I could find that cross, I might perhaps think I had some right to
it. It is yours, Helen, to be sure, by law, and----"
She interrupted him, as she was sure to do, with a statement that the
cross and everything else was for him to dispose of as he thought fit.
But he was magnanimous to a degree.
"The cross, Helen, nothing but the cross, if I can find it. I have a
thought which may help me to it. 'Three chains east of the east window
in south aisle of St. Helen's Church.' Those were the words, I think."
"Yes," said I.
"And Glen measured the distance correctly?"
"To an inch."
"Well, what if--it is a mere guess, but a likely one, I presume to
think,--what if the chains were Cornish chains? There would be a
difference of a good many feet, a difference of which George Glen
would be unaware. You see I trust you, Mr. Berkeley. I fancy that I
can find that cross upon St. Helen's Island."
"I have no doubt you will," said I.
Cullen rose from his chair.
"It grows late, Helen," said he, "and I have kept you from your sleep
with my gossiping." He turned to me. "But, Mr. Berkeley, you perhaps
will join me in a pipe and a glass of rum? My father had a good store
of rum, which in those days I despised, but I have learnt the taste
for it."
His proposal suited very well with my determination to keep a watch
that night over Helen's safety, and I readily agreed.
"You will sleep in your old room, Cullen," she said, "and you, Mr.
Berkeley, in the room next to it;" and that arrangement suited me very
well. Helen wished us both good-night, and left us together.
We went up into Mayle's cabin and Cullen mixed the rum, which I only
sipped. So it was not the rum. I cannot, in fact, remember at all
feeling any drowsiness or desire to sleep. I think if I had felt that
desire coming over me I should have shaken it off; it would have
warned me to keep wide awake. But I was not sensible of it at all; and
I remember very vividly the last thing of which I was conscious. That
was Cullen Mayle's great silver watch which he held by a ribbon and
twirled this way and that as he chatted to me. He spun it with great
quickness, so that it flashed in the light of the candle like a
mirror, and at once held and tired the eyes. I was conscious of this,
I say, and of nothing more until gradually I understood that some one
was shaking me by the shoulders and rousing me from sleep. I opened my
eyes and saw that it was Helen Mayle who had disturbed me.
It took me a little time to collect my wits. I should have fallen
asleep again had she not hindered me; but at last I was sufficiently
roused to realise that I was still in the cabin, but that Cullen Mayle
had gone. A throb of anger at my weakness in so letting him steal a
march quickened me and left me wide awake. Helen Mayle was however in
the room, plainly then she had suffered no harm by my negligence. She
was at this moment listening with her ear close to the door, so that I
could not see her face.
"What has happened?" I asked, and she flung up her hand with an
imperative gesture to be silent.
After listening for a minute or so longer she turned towards me, and
the aspect of her face filled me with terror.
"In God's name what has happened, Helen?" I whispered. For never have
I seen such a face, so horror-stricken--no, and I pray that I never
may again, though the face be a stranger's and not one of which I
carried an impression in my heart.
Yet she spoke with a natural voice.
"You took so long to wake!" said she.
"What o'clock is it?" I asked.
"Three. Three of the morning; but speak low, or rather listen! Listen,
and while you listen look at me, so that I may know." She seated
herself on a chair close to mine, and leant forward, speaking in a
whisper. "On the night of the sixth of October I went to the shed on
Castle Down and had word with Cullen Mayle. Returning I passed you,
brushed against you. So much you have maintained before. But listen,
listen! That night you climbed into Cullen's bedroom and fell asleep,
and you woke up in the dark middle of the night."
"Stop! stop!" I whispered, and seized her hands in mine. Horror was
upon me now, and a hand of ice crushing down my heart. I did not
reason or argue at that moment. I knew--her face told me--she had been
after all ignorant of what she had done that night. "Stop; not a word
more--there is no truth in it."
"Then there is truth in it," she answered, "for you know what I have
not yet told you. It is true, then--your waking up--the silk noose! My
God! my God!" and all the while she spoke in a hushed whisper, which
made her words ten times more horrible, and sat motionless as stone.
There was not even a tremor in the hands I held; they lay like ice in
mine.
"How do you know?" I said. "But I would have spared you this! You did
not know, and I doubted you. Of course--of course you did not know.
Good God! Why could not this secret have lain hid in me? I would have
spared you the knowledge of it. I would have carried it down safe with
me into my grave."
Her face hardened as I spoke. She looked down and saw that I held her
hands; she plucked them free.
"You would have kept the secret safe," she said, steadily. "You liar!
You told it this night to Cullen Mayle."
Her words struck me like a blow in the face. I leaned back in my
chair. She kept her eyes upon my face.
"I--told it--to Cullen Mayle?" I repeated.
She nodded her head.
"To-night?"
"Here in this room. My door was open. I overheard."
"I did not know I told him," I exclaimed; and she laughed horribly and
leaned back in the chair.
All at once I understood, and the comprehension wrapped me in horror.
The horror passed from me to her, though as yet she did not
understand. She looked as though the world yawned wide beneath her
feet. "Oh!" she moaned, and, "Hush!" said I, and I leaned forward
towards her. "I did not know, just as you did not know that you went
to the shed on Castle Down, that you brushed against me as you
returned,--just as you did not know of what happened thereafter."
She put her hands to her head and shivered.
"Just as you did not know that four years ago when Cullen Mayle was
turned from the door, he bade you follow him, and you obeyed," I
continued. "This is Cullen Mayle's work--devil's work. He spun his
watch to dazzle you four years ago; he did the same to-night, and made
me tell him why his plan miscarried. Plan!" and at last I understood.
I rose to my feet; she did the same. "Yes, plan! You told him you had
bequeathed everything to him. He knew that tonight when I met him at
St. Mary's. How did he know it unless you told him on Castle Down?
He bade you go home, enter his room, where no one would hear you,
and--don't you see? Helen! Helen!"
I took her in my arms, and she put her hands upon my shoulders and
clung to them.
"I have heard of such things in London," said I. "Some men have this
power to send you to sleep and make you speak or forget at their
pleasure; and some have more power than this, for they can make you do
when you have waked up what they have bidden you to do while you
slept, and afterwards forget the act;" and suddenly Helen started away
from me, and raised her finger.
We both stood and listened.
"I can hear nothing," I whispered.
She looked over her shoulder to the door. I motioned her not to move.
I walked noiselessly to the door, and noiselessly turned the handle. I
opened the door for the space of an inch; all was quiet in the house.
"Yet I heard a voice," she said, and the next moment I heard it too.
The candles were alight. I crossed the room and squashed them with the
palm of my hand. I was not a moment too soon, for even as I did so I
heard the click of a door handle, and then a creak of the hinges, and
a little afterwards--footsteps.
A hand crept into mine; we waited in the darkness, holding our breath.
The footsteps came down the passage to the door behind which we stood
and passed on. I expected that they would be going towards the room in
which Helen slept. I waited for them to cease that I might follow and
catch Cullen Mayle, damned by some bright proof in his hand of a
murderous intention. But they did not cease; they kept on and on.
Surely he must have reached the room. At last the footsteps ceased. I
opened the door cautiously and heard beneath me in the hall a key turn
in a lock.
A great hope sprang up in me. Suppose that since his plan had failed,
and since Tortue waited for him on Tresco, he had given up! Suppose
that he was leaving secretly, and for good and all! If that
supposition could be true! I prayed that it might be true, and as if
in answer to my prayer I saw below me where the hall door should be a
thin slip of twilight. This slip broadened and broadened. The murmur
of the waves became a roar. The door was opening--no, now it was
shutting again; the twilight narrowed to a slip and disappeared
altogether.
"Listen," said I, and we heard footsteps on the stone tiles of the
porch.
"Oh, he is gone!" said Helen, in an indescribable accent of relief.
"Yes, gone," said I. "See, the door of his room is open."
I ran down the passage and entered the room. Helen followed close
behind me.
"He is gone," I repeated. The words sounded too pleasant to be true. I
approached the bed and flung aside the curtains. I stooped forward
over the bed.
"Helen," I cried, and aloud, "out of the room! Quick! Quick!"
For the words _were_ too pleasant to be true. I flung up my arm to
keep her back. But I was too late. She had already seen. She had
approached the bed, and in the dim twilight she had seen. She uttered
a piercing scream, and fell against me in a dead swoon.
For the man who had descended the stairs and unlocked the door was not
Cullen Mayle.