The Light of Scarthey Part 66

As her face grew out of the distance towards him, a minute white patch amid the dark cloud of silk and lace that enwrapt it, it seemed as though he had known for centuries that she was thus to come to him.

And the glow of his heart spread to his brain.

When the boat was about to land, he began, like one walking in his sleep, to move away; and, slowly descending the stairs of the keep, he advanced towards the margin of the sea. He walked slowly, for the body was heavy whilst the soul trembled within its earthly bounds.

Molly had alighted and was toiling, with her new born and yet but feeble strength upon the yielding sand, supported between Rene and Moggie. She halted as she saw him approach, and, when he came close, looked up into his face. Her frail figure wavered and bent, and she would have fallen on her knees before him, but that he opened his arms wide and caught her to him.

An exclamation rose to Moggie's lips, to die unformed under an imperious glance from Rene who, with s.h.i.+ning eyes and set mouth, had stood apart to watch the momentous issue.

Adrian felt his wife nestle to him as he held her. And then the tide of his long-bound love overflowed. And gathering her up in his arms as if she were a child, he turned to carry the broken woman with him into the shelter, the silence of the ruins.

At the foot of the outer wall, just out of reach of high water, yet within reach of its salt spray, a little mound of red stony soil rose very slightly above the green turf; at its head, a small stone cross, roughly hewn, was let into the masonry itself. The grave of Hubert Cochrane was not obtrusive: in a few months it would have merged again into the greensward, and its humble memorial symbol would be covered with moss and lichen like the matrix of stone which encompa.s.sed it.

Involuntarily as he pa.s.sed it, the man, with his all too light burden, halted. A flame shot through him as Molly turned her head to gaze too: he shook with a brief agony of jealousy--jealousy of the dead! The next instant he felt her recoil, look up pleadingly and cling to him again, and he knew into the soul of his soul that the words spoken by those loyal lips--now clay beneath that clay--were coming true, that, out of his house laid desolate to him was to rise a new and stately mansion.

Grasping her closer he hurried into the sanctuary of the old room, where he had first seen her bright young beauty.

At the door he gently suffered her to stand, still supporting her with one arm about her waist. As they entered, she cast a rapid glance around: her eyes, bedewed with rising tears, fell upon the heap of gold glinting under the rays of the sinking sun, and she understood the nature of the task her coming had interrupted. Her tears gushed forth; catching his hand between hers, and looking up at him with a strange, wonderful humility, she pressed it to her lips.

What need for words between them, then?

He stood a little while motionless in front of her, entranced yet still almost incredulous, as one suddenly freed from long intolerable pain, when there rose once more, for the last time, before his mind's eye the ideal image that had been the companion of twenty years of his existence. It was vivid almost as life. He saw Cecile de Savenaye bend over her child with grave and tender look, then turn and smile upon him with the old exquisite sweetness that he had adored so madly in that far off past. And then, it was as if she had merged into Molly.

Behold, she was gone! there was no Cecile, only Molly the woman he loved. Molly, whom now he seized to his heart, who smiled at him through her tears as he bent to kiss her lips.

Twilight was waning and the light of Scarthey beamed peacefully over the yellow sands; and the waves receded dragging away sand and s.h.i.+ngle from the foot of the hidden grave.