The night was long. The night was dark. Slowly the fog closed them in. It grew rainier and more dismal. But on the summit of the crag Eustace Le Neve stood aloft, and waved his arms, and shouted. He lit a match and shaded it. The dull glare of it through the mist just faintly reached the eyes of the anxious watchers on the beach below. From a dozen lips there rose an answering shout. The pair on the crag half heard its last echoes. Eustace put his hands to his mouth and cried aloud once more, in stentorian tones, “All right. Cleer’s here. We can hold out till morning.”
Trevennack alone heard the words. But he repeated them so instantly that his wife felt sure it was true hearing, not insane hallucination. The sea was gaining on them now. It had risen almost up to the face of the cliffs. Reluctantly they turned along the path by the gully, and mounting the precipice waited and watched till morning on the tor that overlooks Michael’s Crag from the Penmorgan headland.
Every now and again, through that livelong night, Trevennack whispered in his wife’s ear, “If only I chose to spread my wings, and launch myself, I could fly across and carry her.” And each time that brave woman, holding his hand in her own and smoothing it gently, answered in her soft voice, “But then the secret would be out, and Cleer’s life would be spoiled, and they’d call you a madman. Wait till morning, dear Michael; do, do, wait till morning.”
And Trevennack, struggling hard with the mad impulse in his heart, replied with all his soul, “I will; I will; for Cleer’s sake and yours, I’ll try to keep it down. I’ll not be mad. I’ll be strong and restrain it.”
For he knew he was insane, in his inmost soul, almost as well as he knew his name was Michael the Archangel.
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. Cleer was by his side, holding his hand in hers in the dark for pure company’s sake, because she was so frightened; and as the night wore on they talked at last of many things. They were prisoners there for five mortal hours or so, alone, together; and they might as well make the best of it by being sociable with one another.
There could be no denying, however, that it was cold and damp and dark and uncomfortable. The rain came beating down upon them, as they sat there side by side on that exposed rock. The spray from the breakers blew in with the night wind; the light breeze struck chill on their wet clothes and faces. After awhile Eustace began a slow tour of inspection over the crag, seeking some cave or rock shelter, some projecting ledge of stone on the leeward side that might screen their backs at least from the driving showers. Cleer couldn’t be left alone; she clung to his hand as he felt his way about the islet, with uncertain steps, through the gloom and fog. Once he steadied himself on a jutting piece of the rock as he supposed, when to his immense surprise—wh’r’r’r—it rose from under his hand, with a shrill cry of alarm, and fluttered wildly seaward. It was some sleeping gull, no doubt, disturbed unexpectedly in its accustomed resting-place. Eustace staggered and almost fell. Cleer supported him with her arm. He accepted her aid gratefully. They stumbled on in the dark once more, lighting now and again for a minute or two one of his six precious matches—he had no more in his case—and exploring as well as they might the whole broken surface of that fissured pinnacle. “I’m so glad you smoke, Mr. Le Neve,” Cleer said, simply, as he lit one. “For if you didn’t, you know, we’d have been left here all night in utter darkness.”
At last, in a nook formed by the weathered joints, Eustace found a rugged niche, somewhat dryer than the rest, and laid Cleer gently down in it, on a natural spring seat of tufted rock-plants. Then he settled down beside her, with what cheerfulness he could muster up, and taking off his wet coat, spread it on top across the cleft, like a tent roof, to shelter them. It was no time, indeed, to stand upon ceremony. Cleer recognized as much, and nestled close to his side, like a sensible girl as she was, so as to keep warm by mere company; while Eustace, still holding her hand, just to assure her of his presence, placed himself in such an attitude, leaning before her and above her, as to protect her as far as possible from the drizzling rainfall through the gap in front of them. There they sat till morning, talking gradually of many things, and growing more and more confidential, in spite of cold and wet, as they learnt more and more, with each passing hour, of each other’s standpoint. 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. And in spite of rain and cold and fog and darkness they were almost happy—before dawn came to interrupt their strange tete-a-tete on the islet.
As soon as day broke Eustace looked out from their eyrie on the fissured peak, and down upon the troubled belt of water below. 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. Trevennack, who had sat under a tarpaulin through the livelong night, watching and waiting with anxious heart for the morning, raised an answering shout, and waved his hat in his hand frantically. 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.
“Oh, mother,” Cleer cried, in her simple girlish naivete, “Mr. Le Neve’s been so kind to me! I don’t know how I should ever have got through the night without him. It was so good of him to come. He’s been SUCH a help to me.”
The father and mother both looked into her eyes—a single searching glance—and understood perfectly. They grasped Le Neve’s hand. Tears rolled down their cheeks. Not a word was spoken, but in a certain silent way all four understood one another.
“Where’s Tyrrel?” Eustace asked.
And Mrs. Trevennack answered, “Carried home, severely hurt. He was bruised on the rocks. But we hope not dangerously. The doctor’s been to see him, we hear, and finds no bones broken. Still, he’s terribly battered about, in those fearful waves, and it must be weeks, they tell us, before he can quite recover.”
But Cleer, as was natural, thought more of the man who had struggled through and reached her than of the man who had failed in the attempt, though he suffered all the more for it. This is a world of the successful. In it, as in most other planets I have visited, people make a deal more fuss over the smallest success than over the noblest failure.
It was no moment for delay. Eustace turned on his way at once, and ran up to Penmorgan. And the Trevennacks returned, very wet and cold, in the dim gray dawn to their rooms at Gunwalloe.
As soon as they were alone—Cleer put safely to bed—Trevennack looked at his wife. “Lucy,” he said, slowly, in a disappointed tone, “after this, of course, come what may, they must marry.”
“They must,” his wife answered. “There’s no other way left. And fortunately, dear, I could see from the very first, Cleer likes him, and he likes her.”
The father paused a moment. It wasn’t quite the match he had hoped for a Trevennack of Trevennack. Then he added, very fervently, “Thank God it was HIM—not that other man, Tyrrel! Thank God, the first one fell in the water and was hurt. What should we ever have done—oh, what should we have done, Lucy, if she’d been cut off all night long on that lonely crag face to face with the man who murdered our dear boy Michael?”
Mrs. Trevennack drew a long breath. Then she spoke earnestly once more. “Dear heart,” she said, looking deep into his clear brown eyes, “now remember, more than ever, Cleer’s future is at stake. For Cleer’s sake, more than ever, keep a guard on yourself, Michael; watch word and deed, do nothing foolish.”
“You can trust me!” Trevennack answered, drawing himself up to his full height, and looking proudly before him. “Cleer’s future is at stake. Cleer has a lover now. Till Cleer is married, I’ll give you my sacred promise no living soul shall ever know in any way she’s an archangel’s daughter.”
From that day forth, by some unspoken compact, it was “Eustace” and “Cleer,” wherever they met, between them. Le Neve began it, by coming round in the afternoon of that self-same day, as soon as he’d slept off the first effects of his fatigue and chill, to inquire of Mrs. Trevennack “how Cleer was getting on” after her night’s exposure. And Mrs. Trevennack accepted the frank usurpation in very good part, as indeed was no wonder, for Cleer had wanted to know half an hour before whether “Eustace” had yet been round to ask after her. The form of speech told all. There was no formal engagement, and none of the party knew exactly how or when they began to take it for granted; but from that evening on Michael’s Crag it was a tacitly accepted fact between Le Neve and the Trevennacks that Eustace was to marry Cleer as soon as he could get a permanent appointment anywhere.
Engineering, however, is an overstocked profession. In that particular it closely resembles most other callings.
The holidays passed away, and Walter Tyrrel recovered, and the Trevennacks returned to town for the head of the house to take up his new position in the Admiralty service; but Eustace Le Neve heard of no opening anywhere for an energetic young man with South American experience. Those three years he had passed out of England, indeed, had made him lose touch with other members of his craft. People shrugged their shoulders when they heard of him, and opined, with a chilly smile, he was the sort of young man who ought to go to the colonies. That’s the easiest way of shelving all similar questions. The colonies are popularly regarded in England as the predestined dumping-ground for all the fools and failures of the mother-country. So Eustace settled down in lodgings in London, not far from the Trevennacks, and spent more of his time, it must be confessed, in going round to see Cleer than in perfecting himself in the knowledge of his chosen art. Not that he failed to try every chance that lay open to him—he had far too much energy to sit idle in his chair and let the stream of promotion flow by unattempted; but chances were few and applicants were many, and month after month passed away to his chagrin without the clever young engineer finding an appointment anywhere. Meanwhile, his little nest-egg of South-American savings was rapidly disappearing; and though Tyrrel, who had influence with railway men, exerted himself to the utmost on his friend’s behalf—partly for Cleer’s sake, and partly for Eustace’s own—Le Neve saw his balance growing daily smaller, and began to be seriously alarmed at last, not merely for his future prospects of employment and marriage, but even for his immediate chance of a modest livelihood.
Nor was Mrs. Trevennack, for her part, entirely free from sundry qualms of conscience as to her husband’s condition and the rightfulness of concealing it altogether from Cleer’s accepted lover. 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. It was only to his wife in his most confidential moments that he ever admitted the truth as to his archangelic character; to all others whom he met he was simply a distinguished English civil servant of blameless life and very solid judgment. The heads of his department placed the most implicit trust in Trevennack’s opinion; there was no man about the place who could decide a knotty point of detail off-hand like Michael Trevennack. What was his poor wife to do, then? Was it her place to warn Eustace that Cleer’s father might at any moment unexpectedly develop symptoms of dangerous insanity? Was she bound thus to wreck her own daughter’s happiness? Was she bound to speak out the very secret of her heart which she had spent her whole life in inducing Trevennack himself to bottle up with ceaseless care in his distracted bosom?
And yet ... she saw the other point of view as well—alas, all too plainly. She was a martyr to conscience, like Walter Tyrrel himself; was it right of her, then, to tie Eustace for life to a girl who was really a madman’s daughter? This hateful question was up before her often in the dead dark night, as she lay awake on her bed, tossing and turning feverishly; it tortured her in addition to her one lifelong trouble. For the silver-haired lady had borne the burden of that unknown sorrow locked up in her own bosom for fifteen years; and it had left on her face such a beauty of holiness as a great trouble often leaves indelibly stamped on women of the same brave, loving temperament.
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. And then—just think! what an inheritance to hand on to one’s innocent children!”
Trevennack took no open notice of what he said. But Mrs. Trevennack winced, grew suddenly pale, and stammered out some conventional none-committing platitude. His words entered her very soul. They stung and galled her. That night she lay awake and thought more bitterly to herself about the matter than ever. Next morning early, as soon as Trevennack had set off to catch the fast train from Waterloo to Portsmouth direct (he was frequently down there on Admiralty business), she put on her cloak and bonnet, without a word to Cleer, and set out in a hansom all alone to Harley Street.
The house to which she drove was serious-looking and professional—in point of fact, it was Dr. Yate-Westbury’s, the well-known specialist on mental diseases. She sent up no card and gave no name. On the contrary, she kept her veil down—and it was a very thick one. But Dr. Yate-Westbury made no comment on this reticence; it was a familiar occurrence with him—people are often ashamed to have it known they consult a mad-doctor.
“I want to ask you about my husband’s case,” Mrs. Trevennack began, trembling. And the great specialist, all attention, leaned forward and listened to her.
Mrs. Trevennack summoned up courage, and started from the very beginning. She described how her husband, who was a government servant, had been walking below a cliff on the seashore with their only son, some fifteen years earlier, and how a shower of stones from the top had fallen on their heads and killed their poor boy, whose injuries were the more serious. She could mention it all now with comparatively little emotion; great sorrows since had half obliterated that first and greatest one. But she laid stress upon the point that her husband had been struck, too, and was very gravely hurt—so gravely, indeed, that it was weeks before he recovered physically.
“On what part of the head?” Yate-Westbury asked, with quick medical insight.
And Mrs. Trevennack answered, “Here,” laying her small gloved hand on the center of the left temple.
The great specialist nodded. “Go on,” he said, quietly. “Fourth frontal convolution! And it was a month or two, I have no doubt, before you noticed any serious symptoms supervening?”
“Exactly so,” Mrs. Trevennack made answer, very much relieved. “It was all of a month or two. But from that day forth—from the very beginning, I mean—he had a natural horror of going BENEATH a cliff, and he liked to get as high up as he could, so as to be perfectly sure there was nobody at all anywhere above to hurt him.” And then she went on to describe in short but graphic phrase how he loved to return to the place of his son’s accident, and to stand for hours on lonely sites overlooking the spot, and especially on a crag which was dedicated to St. Michael.
The specialist caught at what was coming with the quickness, she thought, of long experience. “Till he fancied himself the archangel?” he said, promptly and curiously.
Mrs. Trevennack drew a deep breath of satisfaction and relief. “Yes,” she answered, flushing hot. “Till he fancied himself the archangel. There—there were extenuating circumstances, you see. His own name’s Michael; and his family—well, his family have a special connection with St. Michael’s Mount; their crest’s a castled crag with ‘Stand fast, St. Michael’s!’ and he knew he had to fight against this mad impulse of his own—which he felt was like a devil within him—for his daughter’s sake; and he was always standing alone on these rocky high places, dedicated to St. Michael, till the fancy took full hold upon him; and now, though he knows in a sort of a way he’s mad, he believes quite firmly he’s St. Michael the Archangel.”
Yate-Westbury nodded once more. “Precisely the development I should expect to occur,” he said, “after such an accident.”
Mrs. Trevennack almost bounded from her seat in her relief. “Then you attribute it to the accident first of all?” she asked, eagerly.
“Not a doubt about it,” the specialist answered. “The region you indicate is just the one where similar illusory ideas are apt to arise from external injuries. The bruise gave the cause, and circumstances the form. Besides, the case is normal—quite normal altogether. Does he have frequent outbreaks?”
Mrs. Trevennack explained that he never had any. Except to herself, and that but seldom, he never alluded to the subject in any way.
Yate-Westbury bit his lip. “He must have great self-control,” he answered, less confidently. “In a case like that, I’m bound to admit, my prognosis—for the final result—would be most unfavorable. The longer he bottles it up the more terrible is the outburst likely to be when it arrives. You must expect that some day he will break out irrepressibly.”
Mrs. Trevennack bowed her head with the solemn placidity of despair. “I’m quite prepared for that,” she said, quietly; “though I try hard to delay it, for a specific reason. That wasn’t the question I came to consult you about to-day. I feel sure my poor husband’s case is perfectly hopeless, as far as any possibility of cure is concerned; what I want to know is about another aspect of the case.” She leaned forward appealingly. “Oh, doctor,” she cried, clasping her hands, “I have a dear daughter at home—the one thing yet left me. She’s engaged to be married to a young man whom she loves—a young man who loves her. Am I bound to tell him she’s a madman’s child? Is there any chance of its affecting her? Is the taint hereditary?”
She spoke with deep earnestness. She rushed out with it without reserve. Yate-Westbury gazed at her compassionately. He was a kind-hearted man. “No; certainly not,” he answered, with emphasis. “Not the very slightest reason in any way to fear it. The sanest man, coming from the very sanest and healthiest stock on earth, would almost certainly be subject to delusions under such circumstances. This is accident, not disease—circumstance, not temperament. The injury to the brain is the result of a special blow. Grief for the loss of his son, and brooding over the event, no doubt contributed to the particular shape the delusion has assumed. But the injury’s the main thing. I don’t doubt there’s a clot of blood formed just here on the brain, obstructing its functions in part, and disturbing its due relations. In every other way, you say, he’s a good man of business. The very apparent rationality of the delusion—the way it’s been led up to by his habit of standing on cliffs, his name, his associations, his family, everything—is itself a good sign that the partial insanity is due to a local and purely accidental cause. It simulates reason as closely as possible. Dismiss the question altogether from your mind, as far as your daughter’s future is concerned. Its no more likely to be inherited than a broken leg or an amputated arm is.”
Mrs. Trevennack burst into a flood of joyous tears. “Then all I have to do,” she sobbed out, “is to keep him from an outbreak until after my daughter’s married.”
Dr. Yate-Westbury nodded. “That’s all you have to do,” he answered, sympathetically. “And I’m sure Mrs. Trevennack—-” he paused with a start and checked himself.
“Why, how do you know my name?” the astonished mother cried, drawing back with a little shudder of half superstitious alarm at such surprising prescience.
Dr. Yate-Westbury made a clean breast of it. “Well, to tell the truth,” he said, “Mr. Trevennack himself called round here yesterday, in the afternoon, and stated the whole case to me from his own point of view, giving his name in full—as a man would naturally do—but never describing to me the nature of his delusion. He said it was too sacred a thing for him to so much as touch upon; that he knew he wasn’t mad, but that the world would think him so; and he wanted to know, from something he’d heard said, whether madness caused by an injury of the sort would or would not be considered by medical men as inheritable. And I told him at once, as I’ve told you to-day, there was not the faintest danger of it. But I never made such a slip in my life before as blurting out the name. I could only have done it to you. Trust me, your secret is safe in my keeping. I have hundreds in my head.” He took her hand in his own as he spoke. “Dear madam,” he said, gently, “I understand; I feel for you.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Trevennack answered low, with tears standing in her eyes. “I’m—I’m so glad you’ve SEEN him. It makes your opinion so much more valuable to me. But you thought his delusion wholly due to the accident, then?”
“Wholly due to the accident, dear lady. Yes, wholly, wholly due to it. You may go home quite relieved. Your doubts and fears are groundless. Miss Trevennack may marry with a clear conscience.”
During the next ten or eleven months poor Mrs. Trevennack had but one abiding terror—that a sudden access of irrepressible insanity might attack her husband before Cleer and Eustace could manage to get married. Trevennack, however, with unvarying tenderness, did his best in every way to calm her fears. Though no word on the subject passed between them directly, he let her feel with singular tact that he meant to keep himself under proper control. Whenever a dangerous topic cropped up in conversation, he would look across at her affectionately, with a reassuring smile. “For Cleer’s sake,” he murmured often, if she was close by his side; “for Cleer’s sake, dearest!” and his wife, mutely grateful, knew at once what he meant, and smiled approval sadly.
Her heart was very full; her part was a hard one to play with fitting cheerfulness; but in his very madness itself she couldn’t help loving, admiring, and respecting that strong, grave husband who fought so hard against his own profound convictions.
Ten months passed away, however, and Eustace Le Neve didn’t seem to get much nearer any permanent appointment than ever. He began to tire at last of applying unsuccessfully for every passing vacancy. 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. It was HE who had ruined the Trevennacks’ hopes in life by his unintentional injury to their only son; the least he could do in return, he thought, and felt, was to make things as easy as possible for their daughter and her intended husband.
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. But he went, all the same. He felt it was his duty. And duty to Walter Tyrrel spoke in an imperative mood which he dared not disobey, however much he might be minded to turn a deaf ear to it.
Le Neve had little to suggest of any practical value. It wasn’t his fault, Tyrrel knew; engineering was slack, and many good men were looking out for appointments. 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. But in this commercial age, such quixotic arrangements are simply impossible. So Tyrrel set to work with fiery zeal to find out what openings were just then to be had; and first of all for that purpose he went to call on a parliamentary friend of his, Sir Edward Jones, the fat and good-natured chairman of the Great North Midland Railway. Tyrrel was a shareholder whose vote was worth considering, and he supported the Board with unwavering loyalty.
Sir Edward was therefore all attention, and listened with sympathy to Tyrrel’s glowing account of his friend’s engineering energy and talent. When he’d finished his eulogy, however, the practical railway magnate crossed his fat hands and put in, with very common-sense dryness, “If he’s so clever as all that, why doesn’t he have a shot at this Wharfedale Viaduct?”
Walter Tyrrel drew back a little surprised. The Wharfedale Viaduct was a question just then in everybody’s mouth. But what a question! Why, it was one of the great engineering works of the age; and it was informally understood that the company were prepared to receive plans and designs from any competent person. There came the rub, though. Would Eustace have a chance in such a competition as that? Much as he believed in his old school-fellow, Tyrrel hesitated and reflected. “My friend’s young, of course,” he said, after a pause. “He’s had very little experience—comparatively, I mean—to the greatness of the undertaking.”
Sir Edward pursed his fat lips. It’s a trick with your railway kings. “Well, young men are often more inventive than old ones,” he answered, slowly. “Youth has ideas; middle age has experience. In a matter like this, my own belief is, the ideas count for most. Yes, if I were you, Tyrrel, I’d ask your friend to consider it.”
“You would?” Walter cried, brightening up.
“Aye, that I would,” the great railway-man answered, still more confidently than before, rubbing his fat hands reflectively. “It’s a capital opening. Erasmus Walker’ll be in for it, of course; and Erasmus Walker’ll get it. But don’t you tell your fellow that. It’ll only discourage him. You just send him down to Yorkshire to reconnoiter the ground; and if he’s good for anything, when he’s seen the spot he’ll make a plan of his own, a great deal better than Walker’s. Not that that’ll matter, don’t you know, as far as this viaduct goes. The company’ll take Walker’s, no matter how good any other fellow’s may be, and how bad Walker’s—because Walker has a great name, and because they think they can’t go far wrong if they follow Walker. But still, if your friend’s design is a good one, it’ll attract attention—which is always something; and after they’ve accepted Walker’s, and flaws begin to be found in it—as experts can always find flaws in anything, no matter how well planned—your friend can come forward and make a fuss in the papers (or what’s better still, YOU can come forward and make it for him) to say these flaws were strikingly absent from HIS very superior and scientific conception. There’ll be flaws in your friend’s as well, of course, but they won’t be the same ones, and nobody’ll have the same interest in finding them out and exposing them. And that’ll get your man talked about in the papers and the profession. It’s better, anyhow, than wasting his time doing nothing in London here.”
“He shall do it!” Walter cried, all on fire. “I’ll take care he shall do it. And Sir Edward, I tell you, I’d give five thousand pounds down if only he could get the job away from Walker.”
“Got a grudge against Walker, then?” Sir Edward cried quickly, puckering up his small eyes.
“Oh, no,” Tyrrel answered, smiling; that was not much in his line. “But I’ve got strong reasons of my own, on the other hand, for wishing to do a good turn to Le Neve in this business.”
And he went home, reflecting in his own soul on the way that many thousands would be as dross in the pan to him if only he could make Cleer Trevennack happy.
But that very same evening Trevennack came home from the Admiralty in a most excited condition.
“Lucy!” he cried to his wife, as soon as he was alone in the room with her, “who do you think I saw to-day—there, alive in the flesh, standing smiling on the steps of Sir Edward Jones’ house?—that brute Walter Tyrrel, who killed our poor boy for us!” “Hush! hush, Michael!” his wife cried in answer. “It’s so long ago now, and he was such a boy at the time; and he repents it bitterly—I’m sure he repents it. You promised you’d try to forgive him. For Cleer’s sake, dear heart, you must keep your promise.”
Trevennack knit his brows. “What does he mean, then, by dogging my steps?” he cried. “What does he mean by coming after me up to London like this? What does he mean by tempting me? I can’t stand the sight of him. I won’t be challenged, Lucy; I don’t know whether it’s the devil or not, but when I saw the fellow to-day I had hard work to keep my hands off him. I wanted to spring at his throat. I would have liked to throttle him!”
The silver-haired lady drew still closer to the excited creature, and held his hands with a gentle pressure. “Michael,” she said, earnestly, “this IS the devil. This is the greatest temptation of all. This is what I dread most for you. Remember, it’s Satan himself that suggests such thoughts to you. Fight the devil WITHIN, dearest. Fight him within, like a man. That’s the surest place, after all, to conquer him.”
Trevennack drew himself up proudly, and held his peace for a time. Then he went on in another tone: “I shall get leave,” said he quietly, becoming pure human once more. “I shall get leave of absence. I can’t stop in town while this creature’s about. I’d HAVE to spring at him if I saw him again. I can’t keep my hands off him. I’ll fly from temptation. I must go down into the country.”
“Not to Cornwall!” Mrs. Trevennack cried, in deep distress; for she dreaded the effect of those harrowing associations for him.
Trevennack shook his head gravely. “No, not to Cornwall,” he answered. “I’ve another plan this time. I want to go to Dartmoor. It’s lonely enough there. Not a soul to distract me. You know, Lucy, when one means to fight the devil, there’s nothing for it like the wilderness; and Dartmoor’s wilderness enough for me. I shall go to Ivybridge, for the tors and the beacons.”
Mrs. Trevennack assented gladly. If he wanted to fight the devil, it was best at any rate he should be out of reach of Walter Tyrrel while he did it. And it was a good thing to get him away, too, from St. Michael’s Mount, and St. Michael’s Crag, and St. Michael’s Chair, and all the other reminders of his archangelic dignity in the Penzance neighborhood. Why, she remembered with a wan smile—the dead ghost of a smile rather—he couldn’t even pass the Angel Inn at Helston without explaining to his companions that the parish church was dedicated to St. Michael, and that the swinging sign of the old coaching house once bore a picture of the winged saint himself in mortal conflict with his Satanic enemy. It was something, at any rate, to get Trevennack away from a district so replete with memories of his past greatness, to say nothing of the spot where their poor boy had died. But Mrs. Trevennack didn’t know that one thing which led her husband to select Dartmoor this time for his summer holiday was the existence, on the wild hills a little behind Ivybridge, of a clatter-crowned peak, known to all the country-side as St. Michael’s Tor, and crowned in earlier days by a medieval chapel. It was on this sacred site of his antique cult that Trevennack wished to fight the internal devil. And he would fight it with a will, on that he was resolved; fight and, as became his angelic reputation, conquer.
It reconciled Cleer to leaving London for awhile when she learnt that Eustace Le Neve was going north to Yorkshire, with Walter Tyrrel, to inspect the site of the proposed Wharfedale viaduct. Not that she ever mentioned his companion’s name in her father’s presence. Mrs. Trevennack had warned her many times over, with tears in her eyes, but without cause assigned, never to allude to Tyrrel’s existence before her father’s face; and Cleer, though she never for one moment suspected the need for such reticence, obeyed her mother’s injunction with implicit honesty. So they parted two ways, Eustace and Tyrrel for the north, the Trevennacks for Devonshire. Cleer needed a change indeed; she’d spent the best part of a year in London. And for Cleer, that was a wild and delightful holiday. Though Eustace wasn’t there, to be sure, he wrote hopefully from the north; he was maturing his ideas; he was evolving a plan; the sense of the magnitude of his stake in this attempt had given him an unwonted outburst of inspiration. As she wandered with her father among those boggy uplands, or stood on the rocky tors that so strangely crest the low flat hill-tops of the great Devonian moor. She felt a marvelous exhilaration stir her blood—the old Cornish freedom making itself felt through all the restrictions of our modern civilization. She was to the manner born, and she loved the Celtic West Country.
But to Michael Trevennack it was life, health, vigor. He hated London. He hated officialdom. He hated the bonds of red tape that enveloped him. It’s hard to know yourself an archangel—
“One of the seven who nearest to the throneStand ready at command, and are as eyesThat run through all the heavens, or down to the earth,”
and yet to have to sit at a desk all day long, with a pen in your hand, in obedience to the orders of the First Lord of the Admiralty! It’s hard to know you can
“Bear swift errands over moist and dry,O’er sea and land,”
as his laureate Milton puts it, and yet be doomed to keep still hour after hour in a stuffy office, or to haggle over details of pork and cheese in a malodorous victualing yard. Trevennack knew his “Paradise Lost” by heart—it was there, indeed, that he had formed his main ideas of the archangelic character; and he repeated the sonorous lines to himself, over and over again, in a ringing, loud voice, as he roamed the free moor or poised light on the craggy pinnacles. This was the world that he loved, these wild rolling uplands, these tall peaks of rock, these great granite boulders; he had loved them always, from the very beginning of things; had he not poised so of old, ages and ages gone by, on that famous crag
“Of alabaster, piled up to the clouds,Conspicuous far, winding with one ascentAccessible from earth, one entrance high;The rest was craggy cliff that overhungStill as it rose, impossible to climb.”
So he had poised in old days; so he poised himself now, with Cleer by his side, an angel confessed, on those high tors of Dartmoor.
But amid all the undulations of that great stony ocean, one peak there was that delighted Trevennack’s soul more than any of the rest—a bold russet crest, bursting suddenly through the heathery waste in abrupt ascent, and scarcely to be scaled, save on one difficult side, like its Miltonic prototype. Even Cleer, who accompanied her father everywhere on his rambles, clad in stout shoes and coarse blue serge gown—. for Dartmoor is by no means a place to be approached by those who, like Agag, “walk delicately”—even Cleer didn’t know that this craggy peak, jagged and pointed like some Alpine or dolomitic aiguille, was known to all the neighboring shepherds around as St. Michael’s Tor, from its now forgotten chapel. A few wild Moorland sheep grazed now and again on the short herbage at its base; but for the most part father and daughter found themselves alone amid that gorse-clad solitude. There Michael Trevennack would stand erect, with head bare and brows knit, in the full eye of the sun, for hour after hour at a time, fighting the devil within him. And when he came back at night, tired out with his long tramp across the moor and his internal struggle, he would murmur to his wife, “I’ve conquered him to-day. It was a hard, hard fight! But I conquered! I conquered him!”
Up in the north, meanwhile, Eustace Le Neve worked away with a will at the idea for his viaduct. As he rightly wrote to Cleer, the need itself inspired him. Love is a great engineer, and Eustace learned fast from him. He was full of the fresh originality of youth; and the place took his fancy and impressed itself upon him. Gazing at it each day, there rose up slowly by degrees in his mind, like a dream, the picture of a great work on a new and startling principle—a modification of the cantilever to the necessities of the situation. Bit by bit he worked it out, and reduced his first floating conception to paper; then he explained it to Walter Tyrrel, who listened hard to his explanations, and tried his best to understand the force of the technical arguments. 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.
Eustace permitted him, somewhat reluctantly, to carry the design to the great railway king, and on the very first day of their return to London, in the beginning of October, Tyrrel took the papers round to Sir Edward’s house in Onslow Gardens. The millionaire inspected it at first with cautious reserve. He was a good business man, and he hated enthusiasm—except in money matters. But gradually, as Walter Tyrrel explained to him the various points in favor of the design, Sir Edward thawed. He looked into it carefully. Then he went over the calculations of material and expense with a critical eye. At the end he leant back in his study chair, with one finger on the elevation and one eye on the figures, while he observed with slow emphasis: “This is a very good design. Why, man, its just about twenty times better than Erasmus Walker’s.”
“Then you think it may succeed?” Tyrrel cried, with keen delight, as anxious for Cleer’s sake as if the design were his own. “You think they may take it?”
“Oh dear, no,” Sir Edward answered, confidently, with a superior smile. “Not the slightest chance in the world of that. They’d never even dream of it. It’s novel, you see, novel, while Walker’s is conventional. And they’ll take the conventional one. But its a first rate design for all that, I can tell you. I never saw a better one.”
“Well, but how do you know what Walker’s is like?” Tyrrel asked, somewhat dismayed at the practical man’s coolness.
“Oh, he showed it me last night,” Sir Edward answered, calmly. “A very decent design, on the familiar lines, but not fit to hold a candle to Le Neve’s, of course; any journeyman could have drafted it. Still, it has Walker’s name to it, don’t you see—it has Walker’s name to it; that means everything.”
“Is it cheaper than this would be,” Tyrrel asked, for Le Neve had laid stress on the point that for economy of material, combined with strength of weight-resisting power, his own plan was remarkable.
“Cheaper!” Sir Edward echoed. “Oh dear, no. By no means. Nothing could very well be cheaper than this. There’s genius in its construction, don’t you see? It’s a new idea, intelligently applied to the peculiarities and difficulties of a very unusual position, taking advantage most ingeniously of the natural support afforded by the rock and the inequalities of the situation; I should say your friend is well within the mark in the estimate he gives.” He drummed his finger and calculated mentally. “It’d save the company from a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand pounds, I fancy,” he said, ruminating, after a minute.
“And do you mean to tell me,” 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 know Walker, and they’ll be largely guided by Walker’s advice in the matter. If he saw his way to make more out of contracting for carrying out somebody else’s design, no doubt he’d do it. But failing that, he’ll palm his own off upon them, and Stillingfleet’ll accept it. You see with how little wisdom the railways of the world are governed! People think, if they get Walker to do a thing for them, they shift the responsibility upon Walker’s shoulders. And knowing nothing themselves, they feel that’s a great point; it saves them trouble and salves their consciences.”
A new idea seemed to cross Tyrrel’s mind. He leant forward suddenly.
“But as to safety,” he asked, with some anxiety, “viewed as a matter of life and death, I mean? Which of these two viaducts is likely to last longest, to be freest from danger, to give rise in the end to least and fewest accidents?”
“Why, your friend Le Neve’s, of course,” the millionaire answered, without a moment’s hesitation.
“You think so?”
“I don’t think so at all, my dear fellow, I know it. I’m sure of it. Look here,” and he pulled out a design from a pigeon-hole in his desk; “this is in confidence, you understand. I oughtn’t to show it to you; but I can trust your honor. Here’s Walker’s idea. It isn’t an idea at all, in fact, it’s just the ordinary old stone viaduct, with the ordinary dangers, and the ordinary iron girders—nothing in any way new or original. It’s respectable mediocrity. On an affair like that, and with this awkward curve, too, just behind taking-off point, the liability to accident is considerably greater than in a construction like Le Neve’s, where nothing’s left to chance, and where every source of evil, such as land-springs, or freshets, or weakening, or concussion, is considered beforehand and successfully provided against. If a company only thought of the lives and limbs of its passengers—which it never does, of course—and had a head on its shoulders, which it seldom possesses, Le Neve’s is undoubtedly the design it would adopt in the interests of security.”
Tyrrel drew a long breath. “And you know all this,” he said, “and yet you won’t say a word for Le Neve to the directors. A recommendation from YOU, you see—”
Sir Edward shrugged his shoulders. “Impossible!” he answered, at once. “It would be a great breach of confidence. Remember, Walker showed me his design as a friend, and after having looked at it I couldn’t go right off and say to Stillingfleet, ‘I’ve seen Walker’s plans, and also another fellow’s, and I advise you, for my part, not to take my friend’s.’ It wouldn’t be gentlemanly.”
Tyrrel paused and reflected. He saw the dilemma. And yet, what was the breach of confidence or of etiquette to the deadly peril to life and limb involved in choosing the worst design instead of the better one? It was a hard nut to crack. He could see no way out of it.
“Besides,” Sir Edward went on, musingly, “even if I told them they wouldn’t believe me. Whatever Walker sends in they’re sure to accept it. They’ve more confidence, I feel sure, in Walker than in anybody.”
A light broke in on Walter Tyrrel’s mind.
“Then the only way,” he said, looking up, “would be ... to work upon Walker; induce him NOT to send in, if that can be managed.”
“But it can’t be,” Sir Edward answered, with brisk promptitude. “Walker’s a money-grubbing chap. If he sees a chance of making a few thousands more anywhere, depend upon it he’ll make ‘em. He’s a martyr to money, he is. He toils and slaves for L. s. d. {money} all his life. He has no other interests.”
“What can he want with it?” Tyrrel exclaimed. “He’s a bachelor, isn’t he, without wife or child? What can a man like that want to pile up filthy lucre for?”
“Can’t say, I’m sure,” Sir Edward answered, good humoredly. “I have my quiver full of them myself, and every guinea I get I find three of my children are quarreling among themselves for ten and sixpence apiece of it. But what Walker can want with money heaven only knows. IfIwere a bachelor, now, and had an estate of my own in Cornwall, say, or Devonshire, I’m sure I don’t know what I’d do with my income.”
Tyrrel rose abruptly. The chance words had put an idea into his head.
“What’s Walker’s address?” he asked, in a very curt tone.
Sir Edward gave it him.
“You’ll find him a tough nut, though,” he added, with a smile, as he followed the enthusiastic young Cornishman to the door. “But I see you’re in earnest. Good luck go with you!”