A. E. W. Mason

“ But the others waited in a sort of paralysis of horror and amazement. Even these hardened men were struck with a cold fear. The suggestions of the place, too, had their effect. Above them was a black roof of leaves, the close air was foul with the odour of things decaying and things decayed, and everywhere about them was perpetually heard the crawling and pattering of the obscene things which lived in the mud.
Peter Tortue stirred in his sleep, and Cullen held up the face of his watch in the light of the lantern so that all in the boat might see. ”

“ There had been no one watching on the Castle Down. There was no one anywhere upon the watch to-day. The significance of this omission struck me then for the first time.
"What if already we are quit of them!" I cried. "What if that one tiny word Royal Fortune has sent them at a scamper into hiding?"
Helen caught something of my excitement.
"Oh! if it only could be so!" she exclaimed.
"Most like it is so," I returned. "No man cutting ore-weed upon Norwithel! No man lounging on the Castle Down! It must be so!" ”

“ I was running a race with Cullen Mayle, and I was beginning to think that it was not after all only on account of his peril that it was needful for me to reach Tresco before he did. These last two days I had been entirely occupied with the stimulation of that race and the inspiriting companionship of the sea. The waves foaming away from the bows and bubbling and hissing under the lee of the boat, the flaws of wind blistering the surface of the water as they came off the land towards us, making visible their invisible approach ”

“ I could not tell in which corner Adam Mayle was buried, so Roper was sent forward with the lantern to look amongst the headstones. For half an hour he searched; the flame of the candle danced from grave to grave as though it were the restless soul of some sinner buried there. The men who remained with me grew impatient, for opposite to us, across the road, lay St. Mary's and the harbour of Hugh Town; and on this clear night the speck of light in the Abbey grounds would be visible at a great distance. ”

“ Tortue threw himself on the ground and chewed at a stalk of grass.
"I saved your life last night," said he.
"I know. Why did you do it? Why did you cover my mistakes in that shed? Why did you cut the rope?"
"Because you could serve my turn. The cross!" he exclaimed, with a flourish. "I do not want the cross." He looked at me steadily for an instant with his shrewd eyes. "I want a man to nail on the cross, and you can help me to him. Where is Cullen Mayle?"
The words startled me all the more because there was no violence in the voice which spoke them--only a cold, deliberate resolution. ”

“ It is true that the men all scattered from about me, but a voice a few yards to my right thundered, "Stand!" and I stood stock-still, obedient as a charity-school boy.
For Peter Tortue was standing stock still too, with his right arm stretched out in a line with his shoulder and the palm of his hand upturned. On the palm of that hand was balanced a long knife with an open blade, and the moonlight streaked along that blade in flame, just as it had burned upon my shoe-buckle.
George Glen rubbed his hands together.
"You will lie down, Mr. Berkeley," said he, with his most insinuating smile. ”

“ I have seen them sitting side by side on the settle in the kitchen of the 'Palace Inn' at Tresco. Adam, an old bulky fellow, with a mulberry face and yellow angry eyes, and his great hands and feet twisted out of all belief. His stories were all of wild doings on the Guinea coast. Cullen, on the other hand, was a stripling with a soft face like a girl's, exquisite in his dress, urbane in his manners. He had a gentle word and an attentive ear for each newcomer to the fire, and a white protesting hand for the oaths with which Adam salted his speech. ”

“ 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 passed 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 old buccaneer Adam Mayle, and his soft-voiced son Cullen, whom he had turned adrift, seemed the figures of a dream and my adventure in Cullen's room--a hideous nightmare.
And yet even as I looked footsteps brushed through the grass behind me, and turning I saw a sailor with a brass telescope under one arm and a black patch over one eye; who politely passed me the time of day and went by. He was a big man, with a great beard and hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils. ”

“ Cullen's need might be immediate; it might be a matter of crime; it might be a matter of life and death. The gloom deepened into horror, and Helen and her few servants, and Dick, who was much in the house, fell into so lively an apprehension that the mere creaking of a door would make them start, a foot crunching on the sand outside sent them flying to the window. So for a month, until Dick Parmiter, coming over the hill from New Grimsby harbour at night, had a lantern flashed in his face, and when close to the house saw a man spring up from the gorse and watch him as he passed. ”

“ But I got no further in my offer of help; for he turned upon me suddenly, and anger at last had got the upper hand with him.
"Money, is it not?" he cried, staring down at me with his eyes ablaze. "Ay, that's the way with gentlefolk! You would give me as much as a guinea no doubt--a whole round gold guinea. Yes, I am in need," and with a violent movement he clasped his hands together. "Virgin Mary, but I am in need of Cullen Mayle, and you offer me a guinea!" and then hunching his shoulders he strode off over the hill.
So Helen Mayle's instinct was right. ”

“ Come with me now.'
"His voice rang out dominant like the clang of a trumpet, and to the consternation of us all, Helen crossed the floor towards him. I tried to detain her. 'Helen,' I cried, 'you do not know what you are doing. He will drag you into the gutter.'
"'Lieutenant Clutterbuck,' said Cullen, 'you are very red in the face. You cannot expect she will listen to you, for you do not look well when you are red in the face.'
"I paid no heed to his gibes.
"'Helen,' I cried, again. She paid no more heed to my prayers. 'What will you do? Where will you go?' I asked. ”

“ I just saw it for an instant as it flitted past, and then the darkness swallowed it up.
Dick blurted out this fable: the souls of dead drowned sailormen kept nightly tryst on Castle Down.
"That was no spirit," said I. "Play the man, Dick. Did you ever meet a spirit that trod with the weight of a body?"
I could hear the sound of feet rustling the grass beneath us. Dick listened with his hand to his ear.
"The tread is very light," said he.
"That is because it is a woman who treads."
"No woman would be abroad here in this fog at this time," he protested. ”

“ I noticed that George Glen, as he took down the lantern from time to time and held it over the trench, would flash it towards me; and he, too, would smile and perhaps wink at Roper in the trench. The winks and smiles were easy as print to read. They were agreeing between themselves: the unspoken word was going round; they did not mean to keep their part of the bargain, and when they left the Abbey grounds the mound upon Adam's grave would be a foot higher than when they entered them. ”

“ It was, as Cullen Mayle had said, at the inn near Axminster, most discouraging. And I turned over in bed and tried to go to sleep, that I might drive them from my mind. I should have succeeded too, but just as I was in a doze there came a loud rapping at the door, and Dick Parmiter danced into the room.
"They are gone, Mr. Berkeley," he cried.
"I know," I grumbled; "I saw them go," and stretched out my arms and yawned.
"Why, you have hurt your wrist," Dick exclaimed.
"No," said I, "it was George Glen's shake of the hand." ”

“ Would the world shiver if I died? Would even a tavern-keeper draw down his blinds? Perhaps some drunkard in his cups would wish I lived, that he might take my measure in a drinking-bout. There's my epitaph for you! Good Lord, Clutterbuck, but I would dearly love to die a clean death! There's that boy Parmiter tramping down his road. He does a far better thing than I have ever done. You know! Why talk of it? You know the life I have lived, and since that boy flung his example in my eyes, upon my word I sicken to think of it. ”

“ It was at New Grimsby that Dick Parmiter lived, Clutterbuck had told me, and the first thing I had to do was to find Dick Parmiter without arousing any attention.
Now on an island like Tresco, sparsely inhabited and with no commerce, the mere presence of a stranger would assuredly provoke comment. I walked, therefore, very warily towards the village. One house I saw with great windows all lighted up, and that I took to be the Palace Inn, where Adam Mayle and Cullen used to sit side by side on the settle and surprise the visitors by their unlikeness to one another. ”

“ It was to Cullen that she always came in the end, and with such excuses as a girl might make who was loyal to a man whom she must know not to be worth her loyalty. The house in which she lived, the money which she owned were his by right. She dreaded what story these men, if captured, might have to tell of Cullen--she could not be persuaded that Glen and his friends had not a motive of vengeance as well as of gain,--and that story, whatever it was, would never have been enacted, had not Cullen been driven penniless from Tresco. ”

“ Parmiter that it was my fault Dick had kept away all day, and I made a bargain with her that I should have the lad as my servant while I stayed upon the island. Dick shouldered my valise in a state of considerable indignation.
"What should I steal the key for?" said he. "It only stands in the door for show. No one locks his door in Tresco. What should I steal the key for?" and he was within an ace of whimpering.
"Come, Dick," said I, "you mustn't mind a trifle of a scolding. Why, you are a hero to everybody in these parts, and to one man at all events outside them." ”

“ The negro opened his eyes. Never in my life had I seen anything so melancholy as their expression. The conviction of his helplessness was written upon them and I think too an appeal for forgiveness that he had not discharged his mission.
"Speak to him," said Helen. "Perhaps a stranger's voice may rouse him if only to speak two words."
I spoke to him as she bade me; a look of intelligence came into the negro's face; I put a question to him.
"Why does George Glen watch for Cullen Mayle?"--and before I had completed the sentence his eyelids closed languidly over his eyes and he was asleep. ”

“ Everything stands as it did yesterday--this chair in this corner, that table just upon that pattern of the carpet, but it is all very strange and unfamiliar. It was against that board in the partition that I leaned my back; there sat George Glen with his evil smile, here Tortue polished his knife.
"Let us go out into the sunlight, for God's sake!" said I, and my foot struck against a piece of iron, which went tinkling across the stone floor. I picked it up. "They are gone," said I, with a shiver, "and there's an end of them. But this shed is a nightmarish sort of place for me. ”

“ How can men speak such lies? Lieutenant Clutterbuck! I know--he told me the same story. It would have been much easier, so much franker, had he said outright he was tired of his--friendship for me and wished an end to it. I should have liked him the better had he been so frank. But that he should tell you the same story. Oh! it is despicable--and you believe it?" she challenged me. "You believe that story. You believe, too, I went to a trysting with Cullen on Castle Down, the night you came, and kept it secret from you and let you run the peril of your life. ”

“ He tore himself away from the contemplation of the map. "The thing's magical!" he cried. "It has bewitched you, Steve, and by the Lord it has come near to bewitching me!"
"I thought the horseman was yourself. Why don't you go?" said I, pointing to the map.
Lieutenant Clutterbuck rose impatiently from his chair.
"There must be an end of this. Once for all I will not go. There is no reason I should. There is reason why I should not. You do not know in what you are meddling. You are taken like a schoolboy by an old wife's tale of a lonely girl trapped in a net. You are too old for such follies." ”

“ I repeated my question:
"How do I come to have that scarf?"
"I can but guess," she said; "I did not know that Lieutenant Clutterbuck possessed it. But it could be no one else. You asked it of Lieutenant Clutterbuck in London."
For a moment I could not believe that I had heard a right. I stared at her. It was impossible that any woman could carry effrontery to so high a pitch. But she repeated her words.
"Lieutenant Clutterbuck gave it to you no doubt in London, and--will you tell me?--I should like to know. Did you ask him for it?"
Should I strip away this pretence? ”

“ The boy slipped off the table and began to search on the ground. His cap had fallen from his hand when he fell down in his swoon. He picked it up from beneath a chair. He did not look any more at Clutterbuck; he made no appeal to anyone in the room; but though his legs still faltered from weakness, he walked silently out of the door, and in a little we heard his footsteps upon the stone stairs and the banisters creaking, as though he clung to them, while he descended, for support.
"Good God, Clutterbuck!" cried Macfarlane "he's but a boy." ”

“ Cullen walked along the passage and through the hall.
"Lock the door," Helen said to me, and I did lock it. "Now drop the bar."
When that was done we walked together into the hall, where she stopped.
"Look at me," she said, "please!" and I obeyed her.
"You have come back," she repeated. "You do not, then, any longer believe that I deceived you?"
"There is a reason why I have come back," I answered. It was a reason which I could not give to her. I was resolved not to suffer her to lie at the mercy of Cullen Mayle. Fortunately, she did not think to ask me to be particular about the reason. ”