The Castle by the Sea/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
ANDROMEDA AND THE DRAGON
MISS Harvey stood silent for a moment, looking at him; then "This seems tangled up some," she said with a little laugh.
"I'm awfully sorry," said Norroy. "I've been a fool all round and all along."
"No one's in a particular hurry to contradict," said Miss Harvey, but her face mitigated the brusquerie of her words. "You want some taking care of," she suggested. "Mr. Brabazon doesn't seem quite happy with the job." Her eyes twinkled at me.
"No; I'm a sad failure," said I. "But after all who shoved Sir Gilbert in?"
"Oh, we're all in it," she said. "Don't let us recriminate." She looked at me. "What is to be done." she asked with an anxious frown.
The situation was undoubtedly comic in some aspects, and if I had not been really chagrined I should have laughed. Norroy's difficulties seemed to have settled themselves by their own dead weight; he was, I thought, fading sensibly out of my purview.
"If I might suggest," said he at this juncture, "I should very much like that drive you spoke of." He was far less perturbed than we were, now that he had removed all the dust from his coat and trousers.
"Certainly," said Miss Harvey, and her voice trilled out in sudden merriment. "It's so awfully like a game we 've been playing and have got tired of," she said.
"I'm pretty sick of it," said Sir Gilbert, good-humoredly.
"Won't you come, Mr. Brabazon?" called the girl in her sweetest voice. "I must get out of the way of thinking of you as Sir Gilbert."
"Why, did you think—?" The real Sir Gilbert searched our faces critically, as if he suspected us of some duplicity.
"I have had the honor to run as your understudy," I said to him.
"Oh!" he grimaced. "Wish you joy!"
"I was told," said Miss Harvey, slyly, "that Sir Gilbert was in the neighborhood incog."
"Oh, Mrs. Jacker!" said he, with a nod. "I thought as much. She has a wagging tongue. Good Lord, Brabazon, do all the folk here take you for me? Great Scott, what a lark!"
"I fail to see the humor of it," I answered with dignity.
"Don't be ratty, man," he adjured. "Hiding in my own castle under another name! Not a bad idea," he exclaimed, suddenly struck by the brightness of it. "No one would have suspected if it hadn't been for Mrs. Jacker. Damn! I wish I'd thought of it."
We motored to the village, where Miss Harvey had to communicate our news to her friends. We all descended at Mrs. Lane's and went in after her, myself, I will confess, with some misgivings. Sir Gilbert took it easily, without showing consciousness of being either hero or scapegrace. It seemed that he was not concerned as to the opinion of either Miss Forrest or Miss Fuller. Miss Harvey broke out with the facts, and Sir Gilbert stood modestly by. Miss Fuller could not keep sympathy out of her honest gaze, but I could not read Perdita's eyes.
"It is very awkward for—for Mr. Eustace," she said.
"For Sir Gilbert Norroy, my dear, for Sir Gilbert Norroy," said Christobel, triumphantly.
The faces of the two girls were mildly blank and civil, and Miss Harvey explained swiftly.
"Then Sir Gilbert has been masquerading," was Perdita's cold comment.
"Playing the goat!" agreed that gentleman, amiably, "and now he's got to pay the piper."
I do not know what made me say it; and I really don't think it was malice. But I did say it.
"Oh, you 'll have to marry Miss Rivers," I said lightly.
"Miss Rivers!" said Miss Harvey, turning abruptly to me.
I was aware of my folly at once. "Miss Rivers of the north," I explained weakly, though it was no explanation.
"Not me," said Sir Gilbert, stoutly; and after a pensive moment, added: "But perhaps she'd lend me a bit. I 've a good mind to write to her."
"I 've no doubt she would be anxious to do it on such excellent security," remarked Miss Fuller, with what seemed to me uncharacteristic irony.
"Is this lady—whatever her name is—wealthy?" inquired Miss Harvey.
"Heaps of tin, I believe,—manufacturers, you know," said Sir Gilbert, and with a total disregard for others' interest in a question, which was one of his qualities, he barred the topic with his stubborn insensitiveness. "I say, had n't we better be off?"
I had to drive off with them, much against my will, and later, while Norroy was despatched on some purposeless errand by the lady, I had the privilege of being cross-questioned by her. She wanted to know who Miss Rivers might be. I told her that my own knowledge was limited, but I understood she was cousin to Sir Gilbert. "Daughter of the late Mr. Rivers of Rivers and Poulter, iron founders," I added.
"Oh!" said she, dubiously, and then, "Why did you say he ought to marry her?" she asked ruthlessly.
"A feeble jest," I replied, "merely arising from the fact that such a match was once planned by their forbears."
"Cradle matches," said Miss Harvey, sententiously, "are the most disgraceful offences against real civilization."
"They are the rotten fruit of an effete world," I agreed.
"I am surprised such a thing should be proposed in England," she went on slowly.
"Comparatively enlightened as she is," I added for her. "So am I. But Sir Gilbert takes a healthy view of it. He won't be bought and sold for any one's money. And no doubt," I added sarcastically, "he has an essentially aristocratic contempt for mere wealth."
She was silent, contemplating the view, but recurred to the subject presently, when I was thinking of something else.
"Do you think he ought to borrow money from her in the circumstances?"
"I think it's risky for her," I said.
"I did n't mean that," she said impatiently, and then added crossly, "Men are so stupid."
I know they are; but I was glad to see Norroy stalking back through the bushes.
We had run over to Dartmoor, and it was not the last journey which Sir Gilbert was destined to make to that wilderness in that company. For the next day Miss Harvey and her mother called at the Castle with cordial invitation that we should visit them at their hotel on the moor. I was not anxious to go, and made a mountain out of my neglected work. Alas, I had written but two pages since my inauguration in the Castle; and I had confidently expected so much from this quiet holiday in the west! Immediately afterwards, when I had definitely committed myself to my statement, I repented, for I learned by a casual remark that Miss Fuller and Perdita were to be invited. And so, when they drove off, I fell a prey to gloom and morosity, and I snapped Mr. Toosey's head off. To do him justice he did not much mind, being by now accustomed to my ways, but he watched me sadly from time to time as he painted. My conduct was the more unreasonable that I had voluntarily sought his company to console me. So, cross with myself, I wandered about the gallery, picking out books at random and examining them without interest. The day was a most perfect day in June, and the sun was bright overhead, its splendor tempered by a cool sea-breeze. I had gone down the length of the western wall, and reached the book-cases protruding into the room at the bottom, when I thought of the secret panel, and turned to it idly. I pressed the clip and opened it, stared in, and shut it again. As I did so my eyes lighted on the genuine shelf immediately overhead. It contained a number of volumes of the Annual Register, but one was a stranger to the series, a "rogue," to use the gardener's parlance. This was the sole reason which induced me to take it down.
It was a copy of Bacon's "Novum Organum dated in the eighteenth century, and I turned the leaves quite mechanically, before slapping it up again. But in that running flux of the pages my eye was caught by a diagram on the fly-leaf, and I went back to it. It was figured thus:
3X3
20 Staires
R. Wall.
I studied it with the vague impression that it had reference to something within the covers of the Great Philosopher. Then I deciphered in smaller letters below—Jasper N. What was there familiar in the appearance of that?
Taking the book with me I went back to Toosey, and, having shed my ill humor, complimented him on the work which he was doing. He was pleased.
"The style is a little troublesome," he said, "but I 've got the hang of it at last."
I wondered if he suspected on what a nefarious task he was engaged, and I smiled. "I shall have some difficulty with that one farther on," he said with a nod at it.
I went up to the wall and languidly examined the landscape he had indicated, and then my glance passed to the next picture, which was a portrait.
"Oh, that's Sir Jasper, and a thundering good one, too, but I don't do that," he said, seeing the direction of my gaze.
Sir Jasper! By sheer coincidence the name had fallen within my notice twice in five minutes. I opened the fly-leaf of my book. Undoubtedly this was the hand of Sir Jasper Norroy. I looked again at the portrait, which portrayed a bluff, low-lidded, insolent devil of a man. What in the name of conscience did he with annotations of Bacon? 20 Staires, I read. I left Toosey and sped swiftly down the gallery till I reached the panel, pressed the clip, and entered the aperture. Striking a match I descended the stone stairs, counting carefully, and my match went out when I reached the fifteenth. I lit another and completed the twenty. Then I looked about me. The passage was narrow within the limits of the outer wall, being no more than three feet across, and was built in with brickwork. Below me, as I could discern by the flare of the match, it dipped a dozen feet or more farther. I continued to the end, and found the door of the sally-port, which I succeeded in getting open. The broad expanse of daylight greeted me, and I could see that the passage ended thus in a little shrubbery of laurels against the western wall. I closed the door and retraced my steps, and once more made a survey from the twentieth stair. There was no indication of any difference in the nature of the wall, and, though I tried it as high as I could reach on both sides, I discovered nothing. Then it occurred to me that I should count from the bottom, and down I went to the sally-port and did so. But still no "find" rewarded my efforts. I emerged from the passage, dusty and hot, shut the panel, and went down to my room, taking the book.
I had fully made up my mind that there was some secret here, but how to unearth it. I pored over the cypher with its nest of rectangles, seeking for some clue; and then, resolving to return to it again, I put it aside and went out. The lovely afternoon made its call on me.
I roamed through the gardens and made my exit through the wicket gate in the sea-wall. The sea was bright and dancing, flecked by heads of foam so far as the eye could carry. The foreshore lay wet with the recent tide, which was moving out, and long trails of seaweed littered the rocks. I walked along the shingle, receiving the buffets of the brave wind with exhilaration, and, turning a corner, saw the cliffs on which Norroy and I had stood a night or two before. The cavern yawned to the vacant air. I went towards it. The tide was some distance out, raking on the sands, and the scene was very different from that on the occasion of my previous visit. Then it had been forbidding, lowering, ominous; to-day in the fine sunshine with the receded tide it had a holiday aspect. It did not seem as if the crisp bright sand could ever have been the cockpit of warring waters. And yet, looked at carefully, the cliff face held a certain menace, treacherously disguised. The chasm in it opened wide with interior and unfathomed blackness, as it might be an ugly creature of prey, a dragon with its coils in the bowels of the earth, that yawned and slept in the sun after its appetite was appeased. In the outer shell of the cavern was only a whisper of the approaching sea; otherwise it was still and sombre and cold like death. It slept, but it would awake, awake to the champing of the foam about its ragged teeth, to the roaring of the flood-tide, to the gurgitation of that relentless maelstrom of waters in the narrow channel.
I was conscious of these possibilities in the monster while it basked in the sun, and then, under the influence of the usual human curiosity, I penetrated the inner cavity. I was here in a sort of twilight, and now the sounds of the outside world were dwindled to a mere murmur; the dank walls struck colder, and the seaweed and sea-moss on the rocks sent a chill into the blood when touched by the hand. I went farther in, and now all sounds ceased, and I stood in a world of silence, in the darkness and stillness of a world unheated and unlighted by any sun, as it might be in a world in its last stages of decay. I was glad to retreat to the sands before the cliffs, and, directly I emerged, my eye was caught by a figure between me and the advancing sea. I had turned from the dragon; here was my Andromeda. Blessing the good fortune which had brought about this conjunction I hastened towards her. She stooped as I came, took a stone from the beach, and, with a girlish hook of her arm, sent it spinning into the waves. I called to her, and, with one hand raised to retain her errant hat from the breeze she turned about, her vivid face rosy from her exercise, her gown snapping in the wind against her lissom body.
"So you did n't go?" I asked, as I reached her.
"You mean to Dartmoor? No, Isabel went. It's a day for the sea, don't you think?" she added after a pause.
Since I had encountered her there, of course it was. The breeze played in the surfaces of our garments and carried our voices to a higher pitch. It was full of a salt savor and stung pleasantly. Screaming gulls wheeled in front of us, and dipped to the glistening water.
"And so you took me for Sir Gilbert!" I said abruptly.
She smiled a little. "We all did," she said, facing the freshening breeze.
I watched the hair ruffling under the wind that caressed it. "Well, altogether, we've had a regular comedy of errors," I said. She shot a glance at me. "I took Sir Gilbert for a rogue, and you took me for him."
"And you took me for a burglar," she said lightly.
"In my heart and on my soul, not really," I pleaded.
"Oh, that makes it less complete,—and less interesting," she added.
"We could n't very well add any more complications to it," I said.
She was silent, and then ventured, "unless Miss Harvey turned out a princess in her own right."
"As for that," I said, "she is that already. Don't you know Rule No. 42A—All American women are princesses in their own right."
She laughed at my small joke and looked around at the cliff.
"Is that your—Sir Gilbert's property."
"I have my doubts. It depends how far the cave runs. The foreshore, I suppose, belongs to him, but the tide marches into that open mouth every twelve hours. Yet I should say he had certain proprietary rights in the cavern. I've been exploring it. Shall we inspect it?"
She moved off with me in silent assent, and when we had got half way to the cliff turned as if reluctant to abandon her view of the sea.
"'With chafe and change of surges chiming,
The dashing channels rocked and rang.
Large music, wave to wild wave timing,
And all the choral water sang.'"
I quoted one of those magnificent stanzas, and her lips parted slightly as she drank in the music with the sea sounds and the sea air.
"Go on," she said, when I had finished.
"It is a night scene," I said. "If I were with you here by night it would be appropriate. But no," I added, remembering the burden of the poem, which was that of satiate love, "it would be most inappropriate. I should never walk with you in such a setting."
"I don't think I know the poem," she said innocently. "But it's beautiful."
I had risked her knowledge, and now I hardly cared if she should track it down, and with it my sentiments.
"It is by the greatest singer of the sea that has ever lived," I said. "It is Swinburne's."
"Tell me more of it?" she asked.
The sense of the words collected in my memory and shamed me. Never would I apply to her those vivid, languid, and hectic verses. But the beauty of them caught me up. "This is not you and I," I said. "This is some less fortunate couple at the end of their ideals. I believe we are fortunate enough to have them still.
"'The rustling sand and shingle shaken
With light sweet touches and small sound—
These could not move us, could not waken
Hearts to look forth, eyes to look round.
"'Silent we went an hour together.
Under grey skies by waters white,
Our hearts were full of windy weather,
Clouds and blown stars and broken light.'"
She said nothing, but turned and resumed her walk to the cliff, and I with her silent. "Silent we went—". Was it ominous? The sun merged suddenly in a passing cloud, and the cliff stood starkly in shadow—with its dark cavernous mouth.
"Is it far in?" asked Perdita, surveying the interior gloom doubtfully.
"We can go just as far as you like," I said.
We entered and penetrated the second cavern. "To go deeper we should want lights," I said. "But I should say it continued for some distance. This coast was a favorite resort of smugglers in the old days, and no doubt these caves were used by them for their illicit trade. It is more than hinted that Sir Gilbert's ancestors had a finger in the pie."
We lingered a little longer, and then withdrew into the larger and outer cavern which was comparatively full of light.
"Do you think people the happier for having ideals?" asked Perdita, abruptly. "Ideals that can be broken and so create in the heart a greater ruin than would otherwise have existed?"
"Oh, undoubtedly. I mustn't quote you the old Tennysonian tag as to loving and losing. But, look at it how you will, the argument is in favor of ideals. On the low plane of practical happiness you have what holds you up for years, until, indeed, that blow you dread; and at the highest, 'one needs must love the highest'—there is no alternative. It comes to this, that you can't help having ideals, and that you are the happier for any ideal you have, even if it be destined to be broken."
"Yes, you must be right," she said with a sigh. "But it's hard to puzzle out."
Idealism is a fascinating subject, and it has even more fascinating affinities, into which one is tempted to slide in conversation. After all there is no idealism so great, so absorbing and so unselfish as Love. Beside it religious devotion is but a thin-blooded passion, lacking the touch of earth which keeps it in relation with human things. I could have drifted into that supreme idealism, but for Perdita. She evaded the topic, seemed not to notice when I slipped and fell, waited demurely till I had recovered and joined her, when she talked on prettily again. So I was kept hanging on the fringe of a mighty matter, and sad and happy together. And at last Perdita remembered the time and the place. We went out of that cavern which had been lit for me with a radiance of fairyland.
It was odd, and even startling to notice the difference in the aspect of the sea. The tide had rolled in patiently, winning yard after yard of the shore, until it had reached the sea-line of rocks, where its advance became rapid. It was as though the resistance of the opposing land had been at last overcome and the spears of the tide were storming the shore in a serried rush. The flood came down upon the cliff and the caverns like a race-horse,—roaring, foaming, mouthing, menacing. Perdita uttered a little cry of alarm, and I put out a hand and drew her to me.
"There is plenty of time," I said reassuringly. "The utmost that can happen is that we may get a little wetting."
She made no resistance as I put her arm in mine, but she gazed at the sea fearfully and then looked away. I felt she had committed herself to my charge like a trusting child. I picked the way over the shrinking delta of sand towards the rocks round which the tide was spuming in its alternations of sally and retreat.
Just before we reached this refuge, a wave, running free and fast above its fellows, broke with a crash on the shore and submerged us to the ankles. I stooped, lifted Perdita bodily in my arms and set her on the rock, joining her a moment later. The tide sucked round the base of our resting-place, drawing out with reluctance. I cast an eye towards the rising ground behind us. The cliffs here descended quite low and were not more than twenty feet above the level of the sands. But the way to it was a mere track of big boulders. We scrambled over them as best we might, until we reached the steep face fifteen paces away. From here the cliff swooped outwards, and, where it descended to an easy level, the tide was already breaking. The wall before us was not a very difficult one for a man to scale, but it had obvious terrors for a woman in skirts and with delicate and unaccustomed hands. I made up my mind to a course at once.
"We'll get a bad ducking if we try to go along the cliff," I said. "I want you to put yourself in my hands. There's absolutely no danger."
IWe scrambled over them as best we might, until we reached the steep face fifteen paces away
For a moment she hesitated; her color had gone, and she looked anxious. Then she put her hand in mine.
"Yes," she said simply.
If nothing else could do it that simple confidence would have inspired me. I stooped, made a back, and put my clasped hands behind me, palms uppermost. Have you seen boys help each other over a wall to rob orchards? Well, that was my primitive plan. Perdita mounted, and I gripped her small feet, and I felt her knees in my back. I encouraged her and she scrambled to my shoulders.
"Now step upon the ledge just over me," I enjoined. "You will find a projection to cling by above."
Skirts drifted against my face, the weight lifted from my back, and I knew she had done what I wanted. The tide was thundering over the rocks towards us. She was clinging with both hands to the angle I had mentioned, and her two little feet were firmly set in the niche on the level of my neck. Above was another step, but she could not reach it in her retarding skirts; she must have an intermediate stage.
"I am going to make a ladder step for you," I said, "and you can mount to the next ledge."
There was no time for explanations. What had to be done I had to do at once. I took hold of her ankles fast in both hands, and pushed my right arm upwards, steadying my body against the wall.
"Now step upwards," I called out, and I pushed forward my left arm.
For an instant the whole burden of her sweet body rested on my wrists, and then I knew she had reached the second ledge. Good! I breathed more freely. She was nearly half-way. I mounted to the ledge she had left and put my arm round her waist to give her assurance.
"Not afraid?" I asked lightly.
She shook her head. We repeated the mounting process by the ladder of my hands, and so both attained a wide breach in the cliff within reach of the top, where we rested. We both breathed heavily.
"My dear, how brave!" I said, touching her hand.
She said nothing, but the pallor receded from her face, and a faint color charged it. Her eyes were bright as if the tears bedewed them. Was I a beast? But I could not have helped it. Nor could I help what I did. One acts sometimes under a violent reaction. I put an arm about her, drawing her closer.
"You shan't fall, dearest," I said. "I will protect you."
Still she said nothing, nor did she look at me. Her heart beat quickly under my hand. Was she frightened? I could not say. I experienced the vertigo of acute emotions, but I should not have fallen had I been a thousand feet above safety. "Come!" said I, gently.
The rest of the way was easy, and we gained the summit. Her hand lay weakly in mine as I set her in safety, and glanced down.
Below, a little way to the left, the tide was leaping into the black mouth of the monster, and raising the reverberations of the interior caverns.