The Watchers Part 24

d.i.c.k looked at me in surprise, as well he might; for I have no doubt my voice betrayed something of the fear and pain I felt.

"I am certain."

"Well, then, have you, has any one heard these dead sailormen making merry--G.o.d save the mark--since that shed has been disused?"

d.i.c.k thought with considerable effort before he answered. But it did not matter; I was certain what his answer would be.

"I have never heard them," he said.

"Nor have met others who have?"

"No," said he, after a second deliberation, "I don't remember any one who has."

"From the time Cullen Mayle left Tresco to the night when we crossed the Down to Merchant's Rock? There's one thing more. Cullen was in league with the Brittany smugglers. He would be in league, then, with smugglers from Penzance, who would put him over to Tresco secretly, if he needed it?"

"He was very good friends with all smugglers," said d.i.c.k.

"Then," said I, rising from the ground, "we will sail back, d.i.c.k, to Tresco, and have another look into that shed."

I made him steer the boat eastwards and land behind the point of the old Grimsby Harbour, on which the Block House stands, and out of sight of Merchant's Point. It was not that I did not wish to be seen by any one in that house. But--but--well, I did not wish at that moment to land near it--to land where a voice now grown familiar might call to me.

From the Block House we struck up through Dolphin Town on to the empty hill, and so came to the shed. I pushed open the door and went in.

d.i.c.k followed me timidly.

The floor was of stone. I had been thinking of that as we sailed across from St. Helen's. I had been thinking, too, that when I was carried into the inner room the door of the part.i.tion was jambed against the floor, that Roper had kicked it open, and that, as it yielded, I had heard some iron thing spring from beneath it and jingle across the floor. That iron thing was, undoubtedly, the key which I held in my hand.

I placed it again under the door. There was a fairly strong wind blowing. I told d.i.c.k to set the outer door wide open to the wind, which he did. And immediately the inner door began to swing backwards and forwards in the draught. But it dragged the key with it, and it dragged the key over the stone floor. The shed was filled with a harsh, shrill, rasping sound, which set one's fingernails on edge. I set my hand to the door and swung it more quickly backwards and forwards. The harsh sound rose to a hideous inhuman grating screech.

"There are your dead sailormen, d.i.c.k," said I. "It was Cullen Mayle who took the key from your door on the night I landed on Tresco--Cullen Mayle, who had my horse to carry him on the road and smuggler friends at Penzance to carry him over the sea. It was Cullen Mayle who was in this shed that night, and used his old trick to scare people from his hiding-place. It was Cullen Mayle who was first in the Abbey burial ground. No doubt Cullen Mayle has that cross. And it was Cullen Mayle whom the woman---- But, there, enough."

The door was wide open now, and this key had opened it. I could see everything clearly. My eyes were, indeed, now accustomed to the gloom--so accustomed that, as I stepped from the shed, all the sunlight seemed struck out of the world.

It was all clear. Helen Mayle had come up to the shed that night. She had told Cullen of the stick in the coffin--yes, she must have done that. She told him of the men who watched. What more had pa.s.sed between them I could not guess, but she had come back with despair in her heart, and, in the strength of her despair, had walked late at night into his room--with that silk noose in her hand.

That she loved him--that was evident. But why could she not have been frank with me? Cullen had spoken with her, had been warned by her, had left the island since. Why had she kept up this pretence of anxiety on his account, of fear that he was in distress, of dread lest he return unwitting of his peril and fall into Glen's hand? Clutterbuck's word "duplicity" came stinging back to me.

I sent d.i.c.k away to sail the boat back to Merchant's Point, and lay for a long while on the open hillside, while the sun sank and evening came. It was only yesterday that she had played in her garden upon the violin. I had felt that I knew her really for the first time as she sat with her pale face gleaming purely through the darkness. Why could she not have been frank to me? The question a.s.sailed me; I cried it out. Surely there was some answer, an answer which would preserve my picture of her in her tangled garden, untarnished within my memories.

Surely, surely! And how could such deep love mate with duplicity?

I put the scarf into my pocket, and crossed the hill again and came down to Merchant's Point. I could not make up my mind to go in. How could I speak of that night when I slept in Cullen Mayle's bedroom? I lay now upon the gorse watching the bright windows. Now I went down to the sea and its kindly murmurings. And at last, about ten o'clock of the night, a white figure came slowly from the porch and stood beside me.

"You have been here--how long?--I have watched you," she said very gently. "What is it? Why didn't you come in?"

I took both her hands in mine and looked into her eyes.

"Will you be frank with me if I do?"

"Why, yes," she said, and her face was all wonder and all concern.

"You hurt me--no, not your hands, but your distrust."

CHAPTER XVI

AN UNSATISFACTORY EXPLANATION

We went into the house, but no farther than the hall. For the moment we were come there she placed herself in front of me. I remember that the door of the house was never shut, and through the opening I could see a shoulder of the hill and the stars above it, and hear the long roar of the waves upon the beach.

"We are good friends, I hope, you and I," she said. "Plain speech is the privilege of such friends.h.i.+p. Speak, then, as though you were speaking to a man. Wherein have I not been frank with you?"

There must be, I thought, some explanation which would free her from all suspicion of deceit. Else, how could she speak with so earnest a tongue or look with eyes so steady?

"As man to man, then," I answered, "I am grieved I was not told that Cullen Mayle had come secretly to Tresco and had thence escaped."

"Cullen!" she said, in a wondering voice. "He was on Tresco! Where?"

I constrained myself to answer patiently.

"In the Abbey grounds, on St. Helen's Island, and--" I paused, thinking, nay hoping, that even at this eleventh hour she would speak, she would explain. But she kept silence, nor did her eyes ever waver from my face.

--"And," I continued, "on Castle Down."

"There!" she exclaimed, and added, thoughtfully, "Yes, there he would be safe. But when was Cullen upon Tresco? When?"

So the deception was to be kept up.

"On the night," I answered, "when I first came to Merchant's Point."

She looked at me for a little without a word, and I could imagine that it was difficult for her to hit upon an opportune rejoinder. There was one question, however, which might defer her acknowledgments of her concealments, and, to be sure, she asked it:

"How do you know that?" and before I could answer, she added another, which astonished me by its a.s.surance. "When did you find out?"

I told her, I trust with patience, of the key and the various steps by which I had found out. "And as to when," I said, "it was this afternoon."

At that she gave a startled cry, and held out a trembling hand towards me.

"Had you known," she cried, "had you known only yesterday that Cullen had come and had safely got him back, you would have been spared all you went through last night!"

"What I went through last night!" I exclaimed, pa.s.sionately. "Oh, that is of small account to me, and I beg you not to suffer it to trouble your peace. But--I do not say had I known yesterday, I say had I been _told_ yesterday--I should have been spared a very bitter disappointment."

"I do not understand," she said, and again she put out her hand towards me and drew it in and stretched it out again with an appearance of distress to which even at that moment I felt myself softening. However, I took no heed of the hand. "In some way you blame me, but I do not understand."

"You would, perhaps, find it easier to understand if you were at the pains to remember that on the night I landed upon Tresco, I came over Castle Down and past the shed to Merchant's Point."

"Well?" and she spoke with more coldness, as though her pride made her stubborn in defiance. No doubt she was unaware that I was close to her that night. It remained for me to reveal that, and G.o.d knows I did it with no sense of triumph, but only a great sadness.