"There, that's right. Sit up, my dear, and keep the blankets round you.
They're only wet at one corner. I did that bringing them in. There,
drink that!"
He snatched at the bottle held to him, and drank with avidity till it
was drawn away.
"That'll put some life into you, my dear; it's milk, and brandy too.
Now eat that. It's only bread and hake, but it was all I could manage
now. To-morrow I'll bring you something better, or I'll know the reason
why."
Grilled fish still warm, and pleasant homemade bread. It was a feast to
the starving man; and he sat there with a couple of blankets sending
warmth into his chilled limbs, while the old fishwoman sat and talked
after she had placed the lantern upon the sand.
"Let them go on thinking so," said Harry at last. "Better that I should
be dead to every one I know."
"Now, Master Harry, don't you talk like that. You don't know what may
happen next. You're talking in the dark now. When you wake up in the
sunshine to-morrow morning you'll think quite different to this."
"No," he said, "I must go right away; but I shall stay in hiding here
for a few days first. Will you bring me a little food from time to
time, unknown to any one?"
"Why of course I will, dear lad. But why don't you put on your
pea-jacket and weskit? They is dry now."
Harry shuddered as he glanced at the rough garments the woman was
turning over.
"Throw them here on the dry sand," he said hastily. "I don't want them
now."
"There you are, then, dear lad," said the old woman, spreading out the
drowned man's clothes; "p'r'aps they are a bit damp yet. And now I must
go. There's what's left in the bottle, and there's a fried mackerel and
the rest of the loaf. That'll keep you from starving, and to-morrow
night I'll see if I can't bring you something better."
"And you'll be true to me?"
"Don't you be afraid of that," said the old woman quietly, as Harry
clasped her arm.
"Why, you are quite wet," he said.
"Wet! Well, if you'll tell me how to get in there with the tide pretty
high and not be wet I should like to know it. Why, I had hard work to
keep the basket out of the water, and one corner did go in."
"And you'll have to wade out," said Harry thoughtfully.
"Well, what of that? How many times have I done the same to get
alongside of a lugger after fish? Drop o' salt water won't hurt me,
Master Harry; I'm too well tanned for that."
"I seem to cause trouble and pain to all I know," he said mournfully.
"What's a drop o' water?" said the old woman with a laugh. "Here, you
keep that lantern up in the corner, so as nobody sees the light.
There's another candle there, and a box o' matches; and now I'm going.
Goodbye, dear lad."
"Good-bye," he said, with a shudder; "I trust you, mind."
"Trust me! Why, of course you do. Good-night."
"One moment," said Harry. "What is the time?"
"Lor', how particular people are about the time when they've got naught
to do. Getting on for twelve, I should say. There, good-night. Don't
you come and get wet too."
She stepped boldly into the water, and waded on with the depth
increasing till it was up to her shoulders, and then Harry Vine watched
her till she disappeared, and the yellow light of the lantern shone on
the softly heaving surface, glittering with bubbles, which broke and
flashed. Then, by degrees, the rushing sound made by the water died
out, and the lit-up place seemed more terrible than the darkness of the
nights before.
The time glided on; now it was day, now it was night; but day or night,
that time seemed to Harry Vine one long and terrible punishment. He
heard the voices of searchers in boats and along the cliffs overhead,
and sat trembling with dread lest he should be discovered; and with but
one thought pressing ever--that as soon as Poll Perrow could tell him
that the heat of the search was over, he must escape to France, not in
search of the family estates, but to live in hiding, an exile, till he
could purge his crime.
After a while he got over the terrible repugnance, and put on the rough
pea-jacket and vest which had lain upon a dry piece of the rock, for the
place was chilly, and in his inert state he was glad of the warmth;
while as the days slowly crept by, his sole change was the coming of the
old fishwoman with her basket punctually, almost to the moment, night by
night.
He asked her no questions as to where she obtained the provender she
brought for him, but took everything mechanically, and in a listless
fashion, never even wondering how she could find him in delicacies as
well as in freshly-cooked fish and homemade bread. Wine and brandy he
had, too, as much as he wished; and when there was none for him, it was
Poll Perrow who bemoaned the absence, not he.
"Poor boy!" she said to herself, "he wants it all badly enough, and he
shall have what he wants somehow, and if my Liza don't be a bit more
lib'ral, I'll go and help myself. It won't be stealing."
Several times over she had so much difficulty in obtaining supplies that
she determined to try Madelaine and the Van Heldres; but her success was
not great.
"If he'd only let me tell 'em," she said, "it would be as easy as easy."
But at the first hint of taking any one into their confidence, Harry
broke out so fiercely in opposition that the old woman said no more.
"No," he said; "I'm dead--they believe I'm dead. Let them think so
still. Some day I may go to them and tell them the truth, but now let
them think I'm dead."
"Which they do now," said the old woman.
"What do you mean?"
She hesitated to tell him what had taken place, but he pressed her
fiercely, and at last he sat trembling with horror and with great drops
bedewing his brow as she told him of the finding of the body and what
had followed.
It was only what he had planned and looked for, but the fruition seemed
too horrible to bear, and at last a piteous groan escaped from his
breast.
That night, after the old woman had gone, the food she had obtained from
his old home remained untouched, and he lay there upon the sand
listening to the sighing wind and the moaning and working of the waves,
picturing the whole scene vividly--the finding of the body, the inquest,
and the funeral.
"_Yes_," he groaned again and again, "I am dead. I pray God that I may
escape now, forgotten and alone, to begin a new life."
He pressed his clasped hands to his rugged brow, and thought over his
wasted opportunities, the rejected happiness of his past youth, and
there were moments when he was ready to curse the weak old woman who had
encouraged him in the chimerical notions of wealth and title. But all
that passed off.
"I ought to have known better," he said bitterly. "Poor, weak old piece
of vanity! Poor Louise! My sweet, true sister! Father!" he groaned,
"my indulgent, patient father! Poor old honest, manly Van Heldre!
Madelaine! my lost love!" And then, rising to his knees for the first
time since his taking refuge in the cave, he bowed himself down in body
and spirit in a genuine heartfelt prayer of repentance, and for the
forgiveness of his sin.
One long, long communing in the gloom of that solemn place with his God.
The hours glided on, and he still prayed, not in mere words, but in
thought, in deep agony of spirit, for help and guidance in the future,
and that he might live, and years hence return to those who had loved
him and loved his memory, another man.
The soft, pearly light of the dawn was stealing in through the narrow
opening, and the faint querulous cry of a gull fell upon his ear, and
seemed to arouse him to the knowledge that it was once more day--a day
he spent in thinking out what he should do.
Time glided slowly on, and a hundred plans had been conceived and
rejected. Poll Perrow came and went, never once complaining of the
difficulties she experienced in supplying him and herself, and daily did
her best to supply him with everything but money. That was beyond her.
And that was the real necessary now. He must have money to enable him
to reach London, and then France. So long a time had elapsed, and there
had been so terrible a finale to the episode, that he knew he might
endeavour to escape unchallenged; and at last, after a long hesitancy
and shrinking, and after feeling that there was only one to whom he
could go and confide in, and who would furnish him with help, he finally
made up his mind.
It was a long process, a constant fight of many hours of a spirit
weakened by suffering, till it was swayed by every coward dread which
arose. He tried to start a dozen times, but the heavier beat of a wave,
the fall of a stone from the cliff, the splash made by a fish, was
sufficient to send him shivering back; but at last he strung himself up
to the effort, feeling that if he delayed longer he would grow worse,
and that night poor old Poll Perrow reached the hiding-place after
endless difficulties, to sit down broken-hearted and ready to sob
wildly, as she felt that she must have been watched, and that in spite
of all her care and secrecy her "poor boy" had been taken away.
Volume 3, Chapter V.