Grant Allen

“ So Michael Trevennack thought in his own seething soul. But that strong, brave woman, his wife, bearing her burden unaided, and watching him closely day and night with a keen eye of mingled love and fear, could see that the madness was gaining on him gradually. Oftener and oftener now did he lose himself in his imagined world; less and less did he tread the solid earth beneath us. Mrs. Trevennack had by this time but one anxious care left in life—to push on as fast as possible Cleer and Eustace’s marriage. ”

“ There are some situations where you get to know people better in a few half-hours together than you could get to know them in months upon months of mere drawing-room acquaintance. And this was one of them. Before morning dawned, Eustace Le Neve and Cleer Trevennack felt just as if they had known one another quite well for years. They were old and trusted friends already. Old friends—and even something more than that. Though no word of love was spoken between them, each knew of what the other was thinking. Eustace felt Cleer loved him; Cleer felt Eustace loved her. ”

“ The sea was now ebbing, and the passage between the rock and the mainland though still full (for it was never dry even at spring-tide low water) was fairly passable by this time over the natural bridge of stepping-stones. He clambered down the side, giving his hand to Cleer from ledge to ledge as he went. The fog had lifted a little, and on the opposite headland they could just dimly descry the weary watchers looking eagerly out for them. Eustace put his hands to his mouth, and gave a loud halloo. The sound of the breakers was less deafening now; his voice carried to the mainland. ”

“ On the island, meanwhile, Eustace Le Neve and Cleer Trevennack sat watching out the weary night, and longing for the dawn to make the way back possible. At least, Cleer did, for as to Eustace, in spite of rain and fog and cold and darkness, he was by no means insensible to the unwonted pleasure of so long a tete-a-tete, in such romantic circumstances, with the beautiful Cornish girl. To be sure the waves roared, and the drizzle dripped, and the seabirds flapped all round them. But many waters will not quench love. ”

“ The face of the crag was wet with spray in places; but Cleer didn’t mind spray; she was accustomed to the sea in all its moods and tempers. She clambered up the steep side—a sheer wall of bare rock, lightly clad here and there with sparse drapery of green sapphire, or clumps of purple sea-aster, rooted firm in the crannies. Its front was yellow with great patches of lichen, and on the peaks, overhead, the gulls perched, chattering, or launched themselves in long curves upon the evening air. Cleer paused half way up to draw breath and admire the familiar scene. ”

“ For miles, as far as the eye could reach, on either side, nothing was to be seen but one vast heather-clad upland, just varied at the dip by bare ledges of dark rock and a single gray glimpse of tossing sea between them. A little farther on, to be sure, winding round the cliff path, one could open up a glorious prospect on either hand over the rocky islets of Kynance and Mullion Cove, with Mounts Bay and Penzance and the Land’s End in the distance. ”

“ A handsome young man, Walter Tyrrel, of the true Cornish type—tall, dark, poetical-looking, with pensive eyes and a thick black mustache, which gave dignity and character to his otherwise almost too delicately feminine features. And he stood on the open moor just a hundred yards outside his own front door at Penmorgan, on the Lizard peninsula, looking westward down a great wedge-shaped gap in the solid serpentine rock to a broad belt of sea beyond without a ship or a sail on it. The view was indeed, as Eustace Le Neve admitted, a somewhat bleak and dreary one. ”

“ On the day of Cleer’s wedding, however, Walter Tyrrel came to town. He came on purpose. He couldn’t resist the temptation of seeing with his own eyes the final success of his general plan, even though it cost him the pang of watching the marriage of the one girl he ever truly loved to another man by his own deliberate contrivance. But he didn’t forget Eustace Le Neve’s earnest warning, that he should keep out of the way of Michael Trevennack. Even without Eustace, his own conscience would have urged that upon him. ”

“ Trevennack himself was so perfectly sane in every ordinary relation of life, so able a business head, so dignified and courtly an English gentleman, that Eustace never even for a moment suspected any undercurrent of madness in that sound practical intelligence. Indeed, no man could talk with more absolute common sense about his daughter’s future, or the duties and functions of an Admiralty official, than Michael Trevennack. ”

“ From the foot of the crag you can’t see the summit. Its own shoulders and the loose rocks of the foreground hide it. But Cleer was pretty certain her father must be there; for he was mostly to be found, when tide permitted it, perched up on the highest pinnacle of his namesake skerry, looking out upon the waters with a pre-occupied glance from that airy citadel. The waves in the narrow channel that separate the crag from the opposite mainland were running high and boisterous, but Cleer had a sure foot, and could leap, light as a gazelle, from rock to rock. ”

“ Then, before the men could seize him or prevent the rash attempt, he had dashed into the great waves that curled and thundered on the beach, and was struggling hard with the sea in a life and death contest. Eustace Le Neve held the rope, and tried to aid him in his endeavors. He had meant to plunge in himself, but Walter Tyrrel was beforehand with him. He was no match in a race against time for the fiery and impetuous Cornish temperament. It wasn’t long, however, before the breakers proved themselves more than equal foes for Walter Tyrrel. ”

“ As each day went by it grew harder and harder for the man to contain himself. Fighting desperately against it every hour, immersing himself as much as he could in the petty fiddling details of the office and the Victualing Yard so as to keep the fierce impulse under due control, Michael Trevennack yet found the mad mood within him more and more ungovernable with each week that went by. ”

“ They threaded their way through the gully, for it was little more—a great water-worn rent in the dark serpentine rocks, with the sea at its lower end—picking their path as they went along huge granite boulders or across fallen stones, till they reached a small beach of firm white sand, on whose even floor the waves were rolling in and curling over magnificently. It was a curious place, Eustace thought, rather dreary than beautiful. On either side rose black cliffs, towering sheer into the air, and shutting out overhead all but a narrow cleft of murky sky. ”

“ One day, about three months later, in their drawing-room at Bayswater, Eustace Le Neve happened to let drop a casual remark which cut poor Mrs. Trevennack to the quick, like a knife at her heart. He was talking of some friend of his who had lately got engaged. “It’s a terrible thing,” he said, seriously. “There’s insanity in the family. I wouldn’t marry into such a family as that—no, not if I loved a girl to distraction, Mrs. Trevennack. The father’s in a mad-house, you know; and the girl’s very nice now, but one never can tell when the tendency may break out. ”

“ Trevennack bent down to receive its attack, crouching. The Creature burst full tilt on him—it almost threw him over. Trevennack caught it in his horror and awe—caught it bodily by the horns—for horned it seemed to be, as well as cloven-footed—and by sheer force of arm held it off from him an elbow’s length one minute. The Thing struggled and reared again. Yes, yes, it was Satan—he felt him all over now—a devil undisguised—but Satan rather in medieval than in Miltonic fashion. His skin was rough and hairy as a satyr’s; his odor was foul; his feet were cleft; his horns sharp and terrible. ”

“ Tyrrel exclaimed, taken aback, “men of business like the directors of the Great North Midland will fling away two hundred thousand pounds of the shareholder’s money as if it were dirt, by accepting Walker’s plan when they might accept this one?”
Sir Edward opened his palms, like a Frenchman, in front of him. It was a trick he had picked up on foreign bourses.
“My dear fellow,” he answered, compassionately, “directors are men, and to err is human. These great North Midland people are mere flesh and blood, and none of them very brilliant. ”

“ They laid him down on the beach, while the fishermen crowded round him, admiring his pluck, though they deprecated his foolhardiness, for they “knowed the squire couldn’t never live ag’in it.” But Le Neve, still full of the reckless courage of youth, and health, and strength, and manhood, keenly alive now to the peril of Cleer’s lonely situation, never heeded their forebodings. He dashed in once more, just as he stood, clothes and all, in the wild and desperate attempt to stem that fierce flood and swim across to the island. ”

“ Then for the first time the truth was borne in upon her with a sudden rush that she couldn’t get back—she was imprisoned on the island. She had crossed over at almost the last moment possible. The sea now quite covered two or three of her stepping-stones; fierce surf broke over the rest with each advancing billow, and rendered the task of jumping from one to the other impracticable even for a strong and sure-footed man, far more for a slight girl of Cleer’s height and figure. ”

“ He said it so energetically, and with such strange earnestness in his voice, that Eustace Le Neve, scanning his face as he spoke, felt sure there must be some good reason for his friend’s dislike of his ancestral home, and forebore (like a man) to question him further. Perhaps, he thought, it was connected in Tyrrel’s mind with some painful memory, some episode in his history he would gladly forget; though, to be sure, when one comes to think of it, at thirteen such episodes are rare and improbable. A man doesn’t, as a rule, get crossed in love at that early age ”

“ Enthusiasm is catching; and Le Neve was enthusiastic about his imaginary viaduct, till Walter Tyrrel in turn grew almost as enthusiastic as the designer himself over its beauty and utility. So charmed was he with the idea, indeed, that when Le Neve had at last committed it all to paper, he couldn’t resist the temptation of asking leave to show it to Sir Edward Jones, whom he had already consulted as to Eustace’s prospects. ”

“ By July, however, things were looking so black for the engineer’s prospects that Tyrrel made up his mind to run up to town and talk things over seriously with Eustace Le Neve himself in person. He hated going up there, for he hardly knew how he could see much of Eustace without running some risk of knocking up accidentally against Michael Trevennack; and there was nothing on earth that sensitive young squire dreaded so much as an unexpected meeting with the man he had so deeply, though no doubt so unintentionally and unwittingly, injured. ”

“ St. Michael’s Crag had not betrayed its trust. That was the motto of the Trevennacks—“Stand fast, St. Michael’s!”—under the crest of the rocky islet, castled and mured, flamboyant. Eustace reached the bottom of the rock, and, wading in the water himself, or jumping into the deepest parts, helped Cleer across the stepping-stones. Meanwhile, the party on the cliff had hurried down by the gully path; and a minute later Cleer was in her mother’s arms, while Trevennack held her hand, inarticulate with joy, and bent over her eagerly. ”

“ He mouthed out the lines in a perfect ecstasy of madness. It was delightful to be alone. He could give his soul full vent. He knew he was mad. He knew he was an archangel.
And all the way down he repeated to himself, many times over, that he would trample under foot that base fiend Walter Tyrrel. ”

“ Trevennack sank back in her chair, very pale and wan. “Oh, what shall we do if they meet?” she cried, wringing her hands in despair. “What shall we do if they meet? This is more than I can endure. Eustace, Eustace, I shall break down. My burden’s too heavy for me!”
The young man leant over her like a son. “Mrs. Trevennack,” he said, gently, smoothing her silvery white hair with sympathetic fingers, “I think I can keep them apart. I’ll speak seriously to Tyrrel about it. He’s a very good fellow, and he’ll do anything I ask of him. I’m sure he’ll try to avoid falling in with your husband. ”

“ Now and then he got odd jobs, to be sure; but odd jobs won’t do for a man to marry upon; and serious work seemed always to elude him. Walter Tyrrel did his best, no doubt, to hunt up all the directors of all the companies he knew; but no posts fell vacant on any line they were connected with. It grieved Walter to the heart, for he had always had the sincerest friendship for Eustace Le Neve; and now that Eustace was going to marry Cleer Trevennack, Walter felt himself doubly bound in honor to assist him. ”

“ In these crowded days, it’s a foolish mistake to suppose that energy, industry, ability, and integrity are necessarily successful. To insure success you must have influence, opportunity, and good luck as well, to back them. Without these, not even the invaluable quality of unscrupulousness itself is secure from failure.
If only Walter Tyrrel could have got his friend to accept such terms, indeed, he would gladly, for Cleer’s sake, have asked Le Neve to marry on an allowance of half the Penmorgan rent-roll. ”

“ Tyrrel replied, in an unconcerned voice, like one who retails vague hearsay evidence. “I haven’t seen it myself since I was a boy of thirteen. I never go along the top of the cliffs on any account.”
Le Neve gazed down on him, astonished. “You BELIEVE it is!” he exclaimed, unable to conceal his surprise and wonder. “You never go up there! Why, Walter, how odd of you! I was reading up the Guidebook this morning before breakfast, and it says the walk from this point on the Penmorgan estate to Kynance Cove is the most magnificent bit of wild cliff scenery anywhere in Cornwall.” ”

“ It seems ridiculous for a landowner not to know a bit of scenery on his own estate that’s celebrated and talked about all over England.”
“I’m not afraid of tumbling over, for myself,” Tyrrel answered, a little nettled by his friend’s frank tone of amusement. “I don’t feel myself so useful to my queen and country that I rate my own life at too high a figure. It’s the people below I’m chiefly concerned about. There’s always someone wandering and scrambling about these cliffs, don’t you see?—fishermen, tourists, geologists. If you let a loose stone go, it may fall upon them and crush them.” ”