Dorrien of Cranston

“Have you lost your way?” she began gently, striving hard to repress the apprehensive tremor in her voice.

“Olive! Don’t you know me?”

With a low cry she sank down on the rock, and sat gazing wildly at him with a white, scared face.

“It is his voice – Roland!”

The spell was broken. He was beside her, and his arms were round her while he poured into her ears passionate words of tender reassurance. And it would be difficult to determine which of the two was most startled by the unexpected meeting.

“My love – my love! Why did you leave me all this long time?” she murmured at last.

Not an intonation of reproach towards himself on her account, only on his own, as if she had said, “Why did you leave me – your haven of refuge when the storm came upon you? Why did you leave me, who would have cleaved to you in adversity – who would have clung to you through evil report a hundred times closer than through good?”

“Yes – why did I?”

He had removed his glasses, and stood before her his old self – but such a shadow of it! She was horrified.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” she said. “Have you been trying to die?”

Then he laughed – a harsh, bitter laugh. It rang back from the cliffs in weird, mocking echo.

“Oh, no. The Fates are not so kind. Why did I leave you, you say? Everything was against us. Your father would not listen to me, even when I had my head above water – how could I expect him to when it was below, with no prospect of ever rising to the surface again? You, yourself, would never have acted contrary to his wishes, even if I had been in a position to urge you to – and for this I should be the last to blame you, understand that, well. But for me, an utterly ruined man, to hold you bound to me for life, was just the one thing I could not do.”

“Go on.”

“Well, we never saw each other again after that informal parting in Wandsborough street,” he went on. “I hoped – I mean I tried to hope – you would forget me and be happy again. After all, why should you not? Only three or four short months – a summer dream.”

His voice was harsh and grating. At times it seemed that he would choke.

“A summer dream! My whole life was lived within that summer dream,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “Roland, you will not leave me again!”

His haggard eyes devoured the sweet face which was bent down upon his hands, and he felt that if hell itself opened to receive him its torments would be rest compared with what he was undergoing at that moment. The pleading voice, the little hands imprisoning his own as she leant upon him, giving herself to him as it were in all the rich fulness of her love – this for which he had hungered and agonised, sleeping and waking, during the long weary period of his hopeless exile, and which, now that he had obtained it, he must deliberately forego. In one short hour, in fact, he would be apart from her, in bitter loneliness once more. No – there was no hope. His pride was a part of himself. Penniless and an outcast, how could he keep for himself and wear this priceless jewel? And now he was something more – he bore a burden that not all the untold wealth of ages could take from him. And yet at this moment he felt as if he could imbrue his hands in the most pitiless of crimes, to obtain the wealth which should save them both.

“My darling, you will not leave me again!”

Not the scud in the dark, lowering sky above – not the wild waves plunging and careering before the shrieking wind, to hurl themselves madly upon yonder sharp rocks – not the whirl of air and water and vaporous cloud, was more storm-tossed and chaotic than the thoughts which surged through the man’s soul, and flashed with well-nigh the fires of mania in his overwrought brain. His reply came – hoarse and labouring.

“I must.”

The sweet, sad face sank down upon his hands, which her own were grasping with an almost convulsive clutch, and a shiver like a great choking sob ran through her. She had found him – the wanderer whom everybody else had lost sight of. She had found him, as was her right, for he belonged to her. She had found him – how then could she let him wander from her again, away into the outer darkness of the cold, wide world! All too lightly had she valued those days in the by-gone past, until they had fled, never to return.

O fairest summer, with thy many-hued glories of rich verdure, and heathery-crimson and golden-tinted hills keeping watch above an azure sea! O halcyon time, of vows whispered amid the radiance of a passing glow from Heaven’s bright plains, as the westering sun drove his great amber-wheeled chariot down to his rest, shedding back an ethereal lustre upon a love-dawn which should lend a hundredfold more of beauty to a beauteous world – where are you now? Gone. And you – leaden waves, tossing wildly to the misty wrack above – storm-blast howling o’er the watery waste – cliffs spectral and grey, throwing back with hollow echo the surges’ tone – to you it is given, in mocking fitness, to behold the anguish of two breaking hearts, here on the lone seashore!

“It was never intended we should part again,” she murmured without looking up. “Oh! why should you have been brought here to-day? I never visit this place now, and to-day it must have been something more than chance that made me do so.”

“I don’t believe in your Heaven, or why should it delight to torture any living creature as it is torturing us, here, to-day,” broke jerkily from his set, dry lips. “Listen, Olive – darling, and you will understand why I must leave you again. I am destitute at this moment, utterly destitute; one who has gone down beneath the weight of what some might call a curse – but I don’t believe in such things. And above and beside all this there is – there is – a barrier between us – a barrier of my own raising, and with its shadow I would never cloud your dear life.”

“Oh, Roland. What is it?”

“Ah! If I were to tell you, you would shrink from me, now and for ever. You would even rush into yonder sea to escape from the horror wherewith my presence would inspire you. Why, even your love would turn to repugnance. Yet why should it? – except that the trammelled imagination of a canting world reads crime into what is no crime at all.”

“You are quite wrong. I would do none of all this,” she answered bravely. A horrid suspicion that the rumours she had heard about him might be true flashed through her mind. What if he had done in a moment of weak desperation that which nothing but death could undo?

“I had never expected to look upon your dear face again,” he went on in the same tones of heart-wrung misery. “I set out this day to visit for the last time the scenes we had looked upon together, and to break my heart over the memories that they would evoke. Then, as I trod these stones which your feet had trodden, as on holy ground, I invoked the aid of the demon who rules the universe – offering my life and limitless future of eternity, if such there be – for one glimpse of you. And I was answered. I looked up and there you stood. Now I care nothing for what may happen. I can face it without fear – for my prayer was answered.”

Her tears were falling like rain, and for some time she could not speak – could only cling to him all the firmer.

“You shall not go,” she said at length. “You belong to me. A hundred times more than when all things went well with you. Oh, my darling, do not leave me. I claim you now, for you belong to me!” she reiterated passionately.

It may be that to some lives comes a period such as that which these two had to undergo at this moment; it cannot be that it comes to many. But even while she spoke, another had claimed them both – ay, and had already made good his claim. With swift, remorseless subtlety the dark waves came sweeping in. The King of Terrors was about to exact the fulfilment of his awful bargain – and to exact it with interest.

“Olive, come. We must go, and go quickly.”

She gazed at him in surprise. His tone had changed to one of calmness, almost indifference, except for a quick anxiety, which her ear detected.

“It will be all we can do to turn the corner over there before the water is even knee-deep.”

She followed his glance, and her face paled slightly. Nearly a mile of beach lay between them and the jutting headland, whose base even now was all but hidden by the inflowing tide. As the waves receded, a few yards of ground were left visible, but the next roller or two swept over it completely, breaking into angry foam against the rock. Full well she knew – full well both of them knew – the perilous nature of the coast, for every year added its quota to the list of victims of the treacherous tides.

“We shall never do it, Roland.”

“We must try. Come along.”

He hurried her forward, and, with the aid of his strong right arm, she had no difficulty in keeping pace with him. But the beach was pebbly and yielding, and before they had gone a hundred yards the consciousness broke upon them that the desired point would be ten or twelve feet under water by the time they should reach it.

“Can’t be done. We must give it up,” he said anxiously, coming to a halt. “Our only chance is to try back. The beach is not so narrow on the Battisford side. We must look sharp, too, or the point behind us will be covered.”

The treacherous waves were creeping up to the promontory he had come round. To remain where they were was hopeless, for in less than an hour the whole of the bay would be completely swept by the sea, which would be breaking against the cliffs many feet higher than their heads as they then stood.

“Now, Olive! It is our only chance.”

Breathless and panting from the pace at which she had come over the heavy yielding ground, Olive resigned herself with a shiver to be half dragged, half carried through the belt of milky surf which barred their passage round the rocky promontory, and it was all her companion could do to support her and keep his own footing amid the powerful wash and swirl of the receding waves, for he had been obliged to watch his opportunity and make a dash through between the inflowing waves, and, being knee-deep in water, with the pebbly ground beneath his feet, uncertain and shifting in the treacherous “undertow,” the wonder is that both were not carried away there and then. Yet it was only putting off the evil hour. Two minutes later and they stood within the next bay.

A quick, despairing ejaculation escaped Roland’s lips. He had miscalculated his distance, and now the strip of beach by which he had reckoned they would be able to effect their escape was a mass of great rolling breakers. To retrace their steps was impossible, even were it of any use. There was no more means of exit from this bay than from the one they had just left. They had but exchanged one death-trap for another.

Then they stood still and stole a furtive look at each other, and all hope died away within their hearts. To the mind of each there came the same thought. The man’s wild prayer and desperate vow had been heard and answered. The King of Terrors was about to exact the fulfilment of the awful bargain – and to exact it with interest – and the great, cruel sea, which alone had witnessed and registered the reckless vow, was now lending itself and its rage a willing instrument for the pitiless fulfilment of that vow.

Chapter Thirty Two.

In the Valley of the Shadow

“Olive, it is I who have brought you to your death!”

His face was ghastly with the horror of his self-reproach and desperation. The two were standing now, locked in each other’s embrace, beneath the cliff, watching the narrow strip of beach rapidly disappear as the fierce tide came pouring in. Nothing could be seen immediately above, for the rock beetled overhead as though about to topple upon them, but running out on each side of the bay rose a crescent of frowning wall. And from thence no succour need be expected, for its summit was lost in the gathering mist. The winter twilight was fast descending, the chill blast howled and shrieked over the heaving, storm-lashed main, and a chaos of driving, leaping billows, whose great leaden backs and white rearing crests rose hideous and spectral in the gloaming as they dashed the one upon the other in their tumultuous rush, flinging themselves high against the adamantine walls and falling back with a roar and a hiss. The grim coastline was enveloped in wreathe of white spray, and the surf-lashed base of the heights rang again as it repelled the onset of each watery monster, while in showers of milky foam the sea ran from the black, slippery rocks. A scene of wild grandeur, unparalleled in its tremendous loneliness – a terrible scene, even when viewed from a point of safety. What must it then have been to the two who stood there awaiting an inevitable death!

“It is I who have brought you to this!” She looked up at him and nestled more closely in his embrace. In the midst of her bodily fear – the natural fear of a weak woman suddenly brought face to face with a horrible death – she was able to smile. And it was a smile of unselfish reassurance.

“No, dearest. It is not your doing,” she said. “If it had not been for finding me here, you would have gone your way in safety. Roland – it is I who have destroyed you.”

“By heaven – no!” he broke in passionately. “I would sooner die with you than live without you. But nothing can get rid of the fact that it is owing to me that you are here at all. You, for whom I would have given five hundred lives – would have lost the salvation of a thousand souls to see in safety now. Oh, my darling – my heart’s sweet love – will not your God again take me at my word and work a miracle to save only you!” he added with a despairing, bitter cry, as he sank upon his knees at her feet, still clasping her with both his arms.

She bent her face down till it rested against his, and her soft, caressing hands were round his neck.

“Hush – my own!” she said. “Do not talk in that desperate way. A very little while, and we shall be united to part no more. We – you especially – have been terribly tried; now we are about to pass through the waters of death, but our sweet Saviour is very merciful. He will not part us again.”

Her calm courage and the solemn conviction of her tender tones seemed to breathe a halo of peace amid that jarring scene of storm and chaos. Their faces were wet with the showers of salt spray, and the girl’s soft hair, partially unfastened, was tossed rudely about by the cutting wind. The thunder of the surf upon the shore and the shrieking of the fierce gale drowned all other sound, yet in an interval in the turmoil, her voice could be heard fervently praying. She pleaded that if it was agreeable to the Divine Will they might be rescued from their imminent peril, but if not, and it was appointed to them now to pass through the awful waters of death, that grace might be given them both patiently to undergo whatever period of penance might be necessary to their purification, so that they might at last be united, never again to part, safe in the Heavenly Country. Then, with her head upon her lover’s shoulder, his arms around her, and her hands in his, it seemed to Olive Ingelow that the world was very far away, and she could await with perfect resignation the short but terrible struggle which should set them both free.

Rolling in, huge and awful in the dim gloaming, the mighty billows roared nearer and nearer, hurling great masses of milky foam at their very feet. They could hardly see each other’s face in the weird, sepulchral light.

“Roland, we are close to Smugglers’ Ladder, are we not?”

He started at the sound of her voice, in which there was a ring of hope.

“Quite close. Why?”

“Is there no chance of escape that way?”

He shook his head sadly.

“None whatever. I had thought of that, but it seemed better to – to face the worst here in the open than to be drowned like rats in a hole. Why, the tide runs up it like a mill-race.”

He had thought of it, and now her suggestion revived the ghastliness of the idea. What a terrible revenge of Fate! Come what might there could be no hope. Had the awful Shape been seen upon The Skegs again? Would not men be discussing the apparition with bated breath the next morning as the chill dawn revealed to the eyes of the devoted searchers two drowned corpses? Could this legion of leaping, hungry billows be the same blue, smiling, peaceful sea, on whose shore they two had sat together, when from Olive’s lips he first heard about the drear tale of violence and revenge which overshadowed the spot as with a curse. If he were to meet his end in that place of all others? Then another idea struck him. They might by singular good luck find some ledge that would place them above the reach of the waters. He himself had no such hope, but it was just barely possible.

“It is our only chance,” he continued, “and the very poorest of poor ones. But come; we will try it.”

On they sped, straining every nerve to reach the great jagged rent in the cliff, which they could see not far ahead. Farther than they thought, though, for as they stood within its dismal portals, the advance-guard of the tide already swirled knee-deep around them.

Gloomy and terrible in the extreme was the aspect of the chasm. The last faint light from without, straggling through, here and there fell upon the black, slippery rock, and the bellowing of the surf as it came dashing in, white and seething, was echoed in hollow clamour up the sides of the abyss. No light was visible above, and the atmosphere within this hideous cave hung cold and dank as the breaths of the grave. And upon the man who knew the grisly secret which these slimy walls had witnessed and had kept so well, the horrors of the place weighed an hundredfold. The outer darkness; the roaring and hissing of the great surges; the shriek of the gale and the flapping of the long wisps of seaweed against the face of the rock; all were as accusing voices – the exultant gibbering of demons come to claim their just due – and it seemed to his overtaxed brain that ghostly hands were stretched forth to drag him to his everlasting woe. A cold sweat was on his brow and his knees trembled under him. Were it not that a most precious life depended on his exertions, he would have yielded up the struggle then and there, and have plunged headlong into the boiling surf.

It was of no avail. They had immured themselves in their living tomb. A dozen great seas came sweeping in one after the other, and the chasm was a mass of white, churning water dashing backwards and forwards with resistless velocity. They had retreated as far as they could go, and now stood up to the waist in water. The very next wave would carry them off their feet – and then —

It came – crashing high against the cliff overhead, and whirling back with lightning speed. Then another and another, and Roland Dorrien was struggling in the surge – alone.

Oh, the agony of that moment! Even while battling wildly for a minute more of dear life, the awful, aching void of separation was the only consciousness he retained – that he was not to be allowed even to die with her hand clasped in his. We know that a man can dream the events of hours in as many seconds. In this fleeting moment this man endured an eternity of everlasting woe. He was separated from her in death – he would be separated from her in the future life – and his lot would be among the lost for ever.

Then his senses began to fail. He was hurled to and fro, there was a roaring in his ears; he was sinking – down, down, down – then up again into black space. Then he struck against hard rock – his footing was firm. Instinctively he threw out his hands and grasped something long and trailing; the waters fell back, and with a mighty effort he resisted their suction. He was on a ledge.

But Olive? Had the Eternal Vengeance spared him and taken her life? Was she drowned and dead in that hell-cave while he wae doomed to live? No – a thousand times no!

And then a cry, so awful and blood-curdling in its unspeakable agony, rang out above the thundrous turmoil in that grisly cave, as surely was never emitted from human breast before. It rose above the bellowing of the mighty surges, it rang upward through the black sides of the chasm, with many a weird echo – upward into the outer air – upward, till assuredly it must have mounted to the very throne of high Heaven.

“Great God! Great God! Spare her and take me!” But a grim spectre stood at his side – only a voice from the pit of the grave answered in his ear:

“Life for life. Blood for blood. Live on, accursed one, but her thou shalt never behold again in this world or in that which is to come. Never – never!”

The survivor stood for a moment on the edge of the black, slippery rock, straining his haggard eyes as he strove to pierce the gloom through which the white, seething foam was dimly rushing.

“Never – never!” he shouted, with a maniacal laugh, and poising himself he leaped headlong into the surf.

What was that? As he rose, something came in contact with him. It was a human body, limp, lifeless. A thrill of the most exquisite relief shot through his heart. He had found her. And now he felt that he had the strength of a hundred men. Half-a-dozen powerful, yet judicious strokes – for to be dashed against the rock would be fatal – and he was again grasping the ledge. A wave swept up, lifting them high in the air, but he clung to his hold with the tenacity of despair, and then, before he knew how it was done, he was crouching on the ledge, holding the girl’s insensible form in his arms.

Was she dead? Ah, no. He could hear her faint, regular breathing as he pressed his lips to hers. Wave after wave swept their precarious refuge, but now he was filled with a new hope. They had been spared for a purpose. Even if they were to die they would die together, and this reflection was sufficient to fill him with the keenest bliss after the awful agony of that moment of separation.

With one foot planted firmly against a projection in the rock, and grasping with both hands the slender and precarious hold which the seaweed and rock afforded above, Roland Dorrien crouched there for two long hours in the pitchy darkness, supporting the girl’s unconscious form. Waves surged over them, and more than once it was all he could do to avoid being swept from the slanting ledge, and his muscles cracked as he strained every nerve to resist the potent suction of the receding seas. For two long hours he dared not move a finger or alter his position by a hair’s breadth, and his laboured breathing was loud and stertorous in the intervals between the howling of the waves in the cavernous gloom and the hollow, metallic echoes, like the booming toll of a great bell, which thundered from the overhanging rocks. At length, when his exhausted strength threatened to bear no more, he suddenly realised that the onslaughts of the waves were becoming less frequent, and their force when they did come was weaker. Surely the tide had turned.

Chapter Thirty Three.

Cain

“Are you here, Roland?”

The tone was the faintest of whispers, but the voice was as if the silvern echoes of heavenly harps had suddenly been wafted to the listener’s anxious ear. He could hardly murmur a reply.

“Where are we? How dark it is!” continued she, in an awed whisper.

“We are safe.”

“Safe? – Oh, I remember.”

“Don’t talk yet, my darling. Lie still and let yourself be perfectly at rest, as much so as you can, that is, in this uncomfortable attitude. We shall have to hold on here for some time longer.”

“But you?”

“Never mind me. Wait. That’s better now,” shifting his position. And, indeed, it was a real relief – so great had been the strain upon his powers.

“Now try to sleep,” he continued. “We shall have to stay here for some time; in fact, it will be difficult to get down in the dark. We were literally washed up here – and here we had better stay.”

Though the seas no longer reached their place of refuge they still surged angrily through the chasm. Olive shivered.

“How cold it is!” she said faintly.

“Yes. Take a ‘nip’ of this. It is absolutely necessary!” he said, unscrewing the top of a small brandy flask.

She obeyed, for she felt very faint and exhausted. The potent cordial restored her a little and sent the blood coursing through her veins with renewed life.