THE WATCHER AT THE DOOR
This was what had happened. Just about the centre of the reef is a
large flat-topped rock—it may be twenty feet in the square—known to the
Bryngelly fishermen as Table Rock. In ordinary weather, even at high
tide, the waters scarcely cover this rock, but when there is any sea
they wash over it with great violence. On to this rock Geoffrey and
Beatrice had been hurled by the breaker. Fortunately for them it was
thickly overgrown with seaweed, which to some slight extent broke the
violence of their fall. As it chanced, Geoffrey was knocked senseless
by the shock; but Beatrice, whose hand he still held, fell on to him
and, with the exception of a few bruises and a shake, escaped unhurt.
She struggled to her knees, gasping. The water had run off the rock,
and her companion lay quiet at her side. She put down her face and
called into his ear, but no answer came, and then she knew that he was
either dead or senseless.
At this second Beatrice caught a glimpse of something white gleaming in
the darkness. Instinctively she flung herself upon her face, gripping
the long tough seaweed with one hand. The other she passed round the
body of the helpless man beside her, straining him with all her
strength against her side.
Then came a wild long rush of foam. The water lifted her from the rock,
but the seaweed held, and when at length the sea had gone boiling by,
Beatrice found herself and the senseless form of Geoffrey once more
lying side by side. She was half choked. Desperately she struggled up
and round, looking shoreward through the darkness. Heavens! there, not
a hundred yards away, a light shone upon the waters. It was a boat’s
light, for it moved up and down. She filled her lungs with air and sent
one long cry for help ringing across the sea. A moment passed and she
thought that she heard an answer, but because of the wind and the roar
of the breakers she could not be sure. Then she turned and glanced
seaward. Again the foaming terror was rushing down upon them; again she
flung herself upon the rock and grasping the slippery seaweed twined
her left arm about the helpless Geoffrey.
It was on them.
Oh, horror! Even in the turmoil of the boiling waters Beatrice felt the
seaweed give. Now they were being swept along with the rushing wave,
and Death drew very near. But still she clung to Geoffrey. Once more
the air touched her face. She had risen to the surface and was floating
on the stormy water. The wave had passed. Loosing her hold of Geoffrey
she slipped her hand upwards, and as he began to sink clutched him by
the hair. Then treading water with her feet, for happily for them both
she was as good a swimmer as could be found upon that coast, she
managed to open her eyes. There, not sixty yards away, was the boat’s
light. Oh, if only she could reach it. She spat the salt water from her
mouth and once more cried aloud. The light seemed to move on.
Then another wave rolled forward and once more she was pushed down into
the cruel depths, for with that dead weight hanging to her she could
not keep above them. It flashed into her mind that if she let him go
she might even now save herself, but even in that last terror this
Beatrice would not do. If he went, she would go with him.
It would have been better if she had let him go.
Down she went—down, down! “I will hold him,” Beatrice said in her
heart; “I will hold him till I die.” Then came waves of light and a
sound as of wind whispering through the trees, and—all grew dark.
“I tell yer it ain’t no good, Eddard,” shouted a man in the boat to an
old sailor who was leaning forward in the bows peering into the
darkness. “We shall be right on to the Table Rocks in a minute and all
drown together. Put about, mate—put about.”
“Damn yer,” screamed the old man, turning so that the light from the
lantern fell on his furrowed, fiercely anxious face and long white hair
streaming in the wind. “Damn yer, ye cowards. I tells yer I heard her
voice—I heard it twice screaming for help. If you put the boat about,
by Goad when I get ashore I’ll kill yer, ye lubbers—old man as I am
I’ll kill yer, if I swing for it!”
This determined sentiment produced a marked effect upon the boat’s
crew; there were eight of them altogether. They did not put the boat
about, they only lay upon their oars and kept her head to the seas.
The old man in the bow peered out into the gloom. He was shaking, not
with cold but with agitation.
Presently he turned his head with a yell.
“Give way—give way! there’s something on the wave.”
The men obeyed with a will.
“Back,” he roared again—“back water!”
They backed, and the boat answered, but nothing was to be seen.
“She’s gone! Oh, Goad, she’s gone!” groaned the old man. “You may put
about now, lads, and the Lord’s will be done.”
The light from the lantern fell in a little ring upon the seething
water. Suddenly something white appeared in the centre of this
illuminated ring. Edward stared at it. It was floating upwards. It
vanished—it appeared again. It was a woman’s face. With a yell he
plunged his arms into the sea.
“I have her—lend an hand, lads.”
Another man scrambled forward and together they clutched the object in
the water.
“Look out, don’t pull so hard, you fool. Blow me if there ain’t another
and she’s got him by the hair. So, _steady, steady!_”
A long heave from strong arms and the senseless form of Beatrice was on
the gunwale. Then they pulled up Geoffrey beside her, for they could
not loose her desperate grip of his dark hair, and together rolled them
into the boat.
“They’re dead, I doubt,” said the second man.
“Help turn ‘em on their faces over the seat, so—let the water drain
from their innards. It’s the only chance. Now give me that sail to
cover them—so. You’ll live yet, Miss Beatrice, you ain’t dead, I swear.
Old Eddard has saved you, Old Eddard and the good Goad together!”
Meanwhile the boat had been got round, and the men were rowing for
Bryngelly as warm-hearted sailors will when life is at stake. They all
knew Beatrice and loved her, and they remembered it as they rowed. The
gloom was little hindrance to them for they could almost have navigated
the coast blindfold. Besides here they were sheltered by the reef and
shore.
In five minutes they were round a little headland, and the lights of
Bryngelly were close before them. On the beach people were moving about
with lanterns.
Presently they were there, hanging on their oars for a favourable wave
to beach with. At last it came, and they gave way together, running the
large boat half out of the surf. A dozen men plunged into the water and
dragged her on. They were safe ashore.
“Have you got Miss Beatrice?” shouted a voice.
“Ay, we’ve got her and another too, but I doubt they’re gone. Where’s
doctor?”
“Here, here!” answered a voice. “Bring the stretchers.”
A stout thick-set man, who had been listening, wrapped up in a dark
cloak, turned his face away and uttered a groan. Then he followed the
others as they went to work, not offering to help, but merely
following.
The stretchers were brought and the two bodies laid upon them, face
downwards and covered over.
“Where to?” said the bearers as they seized the poles.
“The Vicarage,” answered the doctor. “I told them to get things ready
there in case they should find her. Run forward one of you and say that
we are coming.”
The men started at a trot and the crowd ran after them.
“Who is the other?” somebody asked.
“Mr. Bingham—the tall lawyer who came down from London the other day.
Tell policeman—run to his wife. She’s at Mrs. Jones’s, and thinks he
has lost his way in the fog coming home from Bell Rock.”
The policeman departed on his melancholy errand and the procession
moved swiftly across the sandy beach and up the stone-paved way by
which boats were dragged down the cliff to the sea. The village of
Bryngelly lay to the right. It had grown away from the church, which
stood dangerously near the edge of the cliff. On the further side of
the church, and a little behind it, partly sheltered from the sea gales
by a group of stunted firs, was the Vicarage, a low single-storied
stone-roofed building, tenanted for twenty-five years past and more by
Beatrice’s father, the Rev. Joseph Granger. The best approach to it
from the Bryngelly side was by the churchyard, through which the men
with the stretchers were now winding, followed by the crowd of
sightseers.
“Might as well leave them here at once,” said one of the bearers to the
other in Welsh. “I doubt they are both dead enough.”
The person addressed assented, and the thick-set man wrapped in a dark
cloak, who was striding along by Beatrice’s stretcher, groaned again.
Clearly, he understood the Welsh tongue. A few seconds more and they
were passing through the stunted firs up to the Vicarage door. In the
doorway stood a group of people. The light from a lamp in the hall
struck upon them, throwing them into strong relief. Foremost, holding a
lantern in his hand, was a man of about sixty, with snow-white hair
which fell in confusion over his rugged forehead. He was of middle
height and carried himself with something of a stoop. The eyes were
small and shifting, and the mouth hard. He wore short whiskers which,
together with the eyebrows, were still tinged with yellow. The face was
ruddy and healthy looking, indeed, had it not been for the dirty white
tie and shabby black coat, one would have taken him to be what he was
in heart, a farmer of the harder sort, somewhat weather-beaten and
anxious about the times—a man who would take advantage of every drop in
the rate of wages. In fact he was Beatrice’s father, and a clergyman.
By his side, and leaning over him, was Elizabeth, her elder sister.
There was five years between them. She was a poor copy of Beatrice, or,
to be more accurate, Beatrice was a grand development of Elizabeth.
They both had brown hair, but Elizabeth’s was straighter and
faint-coloured, not rich and ruddying into gold. Elizabeth’s eyes were
also grey, but it was a cold washed-out grey like that of a February
sky. And so with feature after feature, and with the expression also.
Beatrice’s was noble and open, if at times defiant. Looking at her you
knew that she might be a mistaken woman, or a headstrong woman, or
both, but she could never be a mean woman. Whichever of the ten
commandments she might choose to break, it would not be that which
forbids us to bear false witness against our neighbour. Anybody might
read it in her eyes. But in her sister’s, he might discern her father’s
shifty hardness watered by woman’s weaker will into something like
cunning. For the rest Elizabeth had a very fair figure, but lacked her
sister’s rounded loveliness, though the two were so curiously alike
that at a distance you might well mistake the one for the other. One
might almost fancy that nature had experimented upon Elizabeth before
she made up her mind to produce Beatrice, just to get the lines and
distances. The elder sister was to the other what the pale unfinished
model of clay is to the polished statue in ivory and gold.
“Oh, my God! my God!” groaned the old man; “look, they have got them on
the stretchers. They are both dead. Oh, Beatrice! Beatrice! and only
this morning I spoke harshly to her.”
“Don’t be so foolish, father,” said Elizabeth sharply. “They may only
be insensible.”
“Ah, ah,” he answered; “it does not matter to you, _you_ don’t care
about your sister. You are jealous of her. But I love her, though we do
not understand each other. Here they come. Don’t stand staring there.
Go and see that the blankets and things are hot. Stop, doctor, tell me,
is she dead?”
“How can I tell till I have seen her?” the doctor answered, roughly
shaking him off, and passing through the door.
Bryngelly Vicarage was a very simply constructed house. On entering the
visitor found himself in a passage with doors to the right and left.
That to the right led to the sitting-room, that to the left to the
dining-room, both of them long, low and narrow chambers. Following the
passage down for some seven paces, it terminated in another which ran
at right angles to it for the entire length of the house. On the
further side of this passage were several bedroom doors and a room at
each end. That at the end to the right was occupied by Beatrice and her
sister, the next was empty, the third was Mr. Granger’s, and the fourth
the spare room. This, with the exception of the kitchens and servants’
sleeping place, which were beyond the dining-room, made up the house.
Fires had been lit in both of the principal rooms. Geoffrey was taken
into the dining-room and attended by the doctor’s assistant, and
Beatrice into the sitting-room, and attended by the doctor himself. In
a few seconds the place had been cleared of all except the helpers, and
the work began. The doctor looked at Beatrice’s cold shrunken form, and
at the foam upon her lips. He lifted the eyelid, and held a light
before the contracted pupil. Then he shook his head and set to work
with a will. We need not follow him through the course of his dreadful
labours, with which most people will have some acquaintance. Hopeless
as they seemed, he continued them for hour after hour.
Meanwhile the assistant and some helpers were doing the same service
for Geoffrey Bingham, the doctor himself, a thin clever-looking man,
occasionally stepping across the passage to direct them and see how
things were getting on. Now, although Geoffrey had been in the water
the longer, his was by far the better case, for when he was immersed he
was already insensible, and a person in this condition is very hard to
drown. It is your struggling, fighting, breathing creature who is
soonest made an end of in deep waters. Therefore it came to pass that
when the scrubbing with hot cloths and the artificial respiration had
gone on for somewhere about twenty minutes, Geoffrey suddenly crooked a
finger. The doctor’s assistant, a buoyant youth fresh from the
hospitals, gave a yell of exultation, and scrubbed and pushed away with
ever-increasing energy. Presently the subject coughed, and a minute
later, as the agony of returning life made itself felt, he swore most
heartily.
“He’s all right now!” called the assistant to his employer. “He’s
swearing beautifully.”
Dr. Chambers, pursuing his melancholy and unpromising task in the other
room, smiled sadly, and called to the assistant to continue the
treatment, which he did with much vigour.
Presently Geoffrey came partially to life, still suffering torments.
The first thing he grew aware of was that a tall elegant woman was
standing over him, looking at him with a half puzzled and half
horrified air. Vaguely he wondered who it might be. The tall form and
cold handsome face were so familiar to him, and yet he could not recall
the name. It was not till she spoke that his numbed brain realized that
he was looking on his own wife.
“Well, dear,” she said, “I am so glad that you are better. You
frightened me out of my wits. I thought you were drowned.”
“Thank you, Honoria,” he said faintly, and then groaned as a fresh
attack of tingling pain shook him through and through.
“I hope nobody said anything to Effie,” Geoffrey said presently.
“Yes, the child would not go to bed because you were not back, and when
the policeman came she heard him tell Mrs. Jones that you were drowned,
and she has been almost in a fit ever since. They had to hold her to
prevent her from running here.”
Geoffrey’s white face assumed an air of the deepest distress. “How
could you frighten the child so?” he murmured. “Please go and tell her
that I am all right.”
“It was not my fault,” said Lady Honoria with a shrug of her shapely
shoulders. “Besides, I can do nothing with Effie. She goes on like a
wild thing about you.”
“Please go and tell her, Honoria,” said her husband.
“Oh, yes, I’ll go,” she answered. “Really I shall not be sorry to get
out of this; I begin to feel as though I had been drowned myself;” and
she looked at the steaming cloths and shuddered. “Good-bye, Geoffrey.
It is an immense relief to find you all right. The policeman made me
feel quite queer. I can’t get down to give you a kiss or I would. Well,
good-bye for the present, my dear.”
“Good-bye, Honoria,” said her husband with a faint smile.
The medical assistant looked a little surprised. He had never, it is
true, happened to be present at a meeting between husband and wife,
when one of the pair had just been rescued by a hair’s-breadth from a
violent and sudden death, and therefore wanted experience to go on. But
it struck him that there was something missing. The lady did not seem
to him quite to fill the part of the Heaven-thanking spouse. It puzzled
him very much. Perhaps he showed this in his face. At any rate, Lady
Honoria, who was quick enough, read something there.
“He is safe now, is he not?” she asked. “It will not matter if I go
away.”
“No, my lady,” answered the assistant, “he is out of danger, I think;
it will not matter at all.”
Lady Honoria hesitated a little; she was standing in the passage. Then
she glanced through the door into the opposite room, and caught a
glimpse of Beatrice’s rigid form and of the doctor bending over it. Her
head was thrown back and the beautiful brown hair, which was now almost
dry again, streamed in masses to the ground, while on her face was
stamped the terrifying seal of Death.
Lady Honoria shuddered. She could not bear such sights. “Will it be
necessary for me to come back to-night?” she said.
“I do not think so,” he answered, “unless you care to hear whether Miss
Granger recovers?”
“I shall hear that in the morning,” she said. “Poor thing, I cannot
help her.”
“No, Lady Honoria, you cannot help her. She saved your husband’s life,
they say.”
“She must be a brave girl. Will she recover?”
The assistant shook his head. “She may, possibly. It is not likely
now.”
“Poor thing, and so young and beautiful! What a lovely face, and what
an arm! It is very awful for her,” and Lady Honoria shuddered again and
went.
Outside the door a small knot of sympathisers was still gathered,
notwithstanding the late hour and the badness of the weather.
“That’s his wife,” said one, and they opened to let her pass.
“Then why don’t she stop with him?” asked a woman audibly. “If it had
been my husband I’d have sat and hugged him for an hour.”
“Ay, you’d have killed him with your hugging, you would,” somebody
answered.
Lady Honoria passed on. Suddenly a thick-set man emerged from the
shadow of the pines. She could not see his face, but he was wrapped in
a large cloak.
“Forgive me,” he said in the hoarse voice of one struggling with
emotions which he was unable to conceal, “but you can tell me. Does she
still live?”
“Do you mean Miss Granger?” she asked.
“Yes, of course. Beatrice—Miss Granger?”
“They do not know, but they think——”
“Yes, yes—they think——”
“That she is dead.”
The man said never a word. He dropped his head upon his breast and,
turning, vanished again into the shadow of the pines.
“How very odd,” thought Lady Honoria as she walked rapidly along the
cliff towards her lodging. “I suppose that man must be in love with
her. Well, I do not wonder at it. I never saw such a face and arm. What
a picture that scene in the room would make! She saved Geoffrey and now
she’s dead. If he had saved her I should not have wondered. It is like
a scene in a novel.”
From all of which it will be seen that Lady Honoria was not wanting in
certain romantic and artistical perceptions.