CHAPTER IV
Sisily first opened her eyes on a grey day by a grim coast, and life hadalways been grim and grey to her. Her memory was a blurred record ofwanderings from place to place in pursuit of something which was never tobe found. Her earliest recollection was of a bleak eastern coast, whereRobert Turold had spent long years in a losing game of patience with thesea. He had gone there in the belief that some of his ancestors wereburied in a forgotten churchyard on the cliffs, and he spent his timeattempting to decipher inscriptions which had been obliterated almost aseffectually as the dead whose remains they extolled.
The old churchyard had been called "The Garden of Rest" by somesentimental versifier, but there was no rest for the dead who tried tosleep within its broken walls. The sea kept undermining the crumblingcliffs upon which it stood, carrying away earth, and tombstones, andbones. Nor was it a garden. Nothing grew in the dank air but crawlingthings which were horrible to the eye. There were great rank growths oftoadstools, yellow, blue, livid white, or spotted like adders, whichsquirmed and squelched underfoot to send up a sickly odour of decay. Theonly green thing was some ivy, a parasitic vampire which drew itslifeblood from the mouldering corpse of an old church.
It was in this desolate place that the girl conceived her first impressionof her father as a stern and silent man who burrowed among old graves likea mole. Robert Turold had fought a stout battle for the secret containedin those forgotten graves on a bleak headland, but the sea had beaten himin the long run, carrying off the stones piecemeal until only oneremained, a sturdy pillar of granite which marked the bones of one who,some hundred and fifty years before had been "An English Gentleman and aChristian"--so much of the epitaph remained. Robert Turold hoped that itwas an ancestor, but he was not destined to know. One night the stone wascarried off with a great splash which was heard far, and left a ragged gapin the cliffside, like a tooth plucked from a giant's mouth.
When Sisily first saw the cliffs of Cornwall she was reminded of thoseearly days, with the difference that the Cornish granite rocks stood firm,as though saying to the sea, "Here rises England."
The house Robert Turold had taken looked down on the sea from the summit.It was a strange place to build a house, on the brink of a broken Cornishcliffline, above the grey surges of the Atlantic, among a wilderness ofdark rocks, facing black moors, which rolled away from the cliffs aslonely and desolate as eternity. The place had been built by a Londonartist, long since dead, who had lived there and painted seascapes from anupstairs studio which overlooked the sea.
The house had remained empty for years until Robert Turold had taken itsix months before. It was too isolated and lonely to gain a permanenttenant, and it stood in the teeth of Atlantic gales. The few scatteredhouses and farms of the moors cringed from the wind in sheltereddepressions, but Flint House faced its everlasting fury on the top of thecliffs, a rugged edifice of grey stone, a landmark visible for many miles.
The house suited Robert Turold well enough, because it was near thechurchtown in which he was conducting his final investigations. It neveroccurred to him to consider whether it suited his wife and daughter. Itwas a house, and it was furnished; what more was necessary? It was nothingto him if his wife and daughter were unhappy. It was nothing to him if thesea roared and the house shook as he sat poring at nights over hisparchments in the dead artist's studio. He had other things to occupy hismind than Nature's brutality or the feelings of womanhood.
Sisily had climbed down to the foot of the rocks. She was sitting in herfavourite spot, a spur of rock overhanging a green nook in the brokenugliness of the cliffs, sheltered from the sea by an encircling arm ofrock, and reached by a steep path down the cliff. Around her towered anamphitheatre of vast cliffs in which the sea sang loud music to the spiritof solitude. In the moaning waters in front of the cove a jagged rock rosefrom the incomparable green, tilted backward and fantastically shaped,like a great grave face watching the house on the summit of the cliff.
The rock had fascinated the girl from the first moment she had seen it. Inthe summer months, tourists came from afar to gaze on its fanciedresemblance to one of the illustrious dead. But to Sisily there was asecret brooding consciousness in the dark mask. It seemed to her to bewatching and waiting for something. For what? Its glance seemed to followher like the eyes of a picture. And it conveyed a menace by its mereproximity, even when she could not see it. When she looked out of herwindow at night, and saw only the shadow of the rock with the face veiledin darkness, she seemed to hear the whisper of its words: "I am here. Donot think to escape. I will have you yet."
Among the fisher-folk of that part of the coast it was known as the MoonRock. The old Cornish women had a tradition that when a fishing-boatfailed to return to that bay of storms, the spirit of the drowned manwould rise to the surface and answer his wife if she hailed him from theshore. It was a rite and solemn ceremony, now fallen into decay. There wasa story of one young wife who, getting no answer, left her desolatecottage at midnight and swam out to the Moon Rock at high tide. She hadscrambled up its slippery sides and called her husband from the summit.She had called and called his name until he came. In the morning they werefound--the wife, and the husband who had been called from the depth of thesea, floating together in one of the sea caverns at the base of the MoonRock, their white faces tangled in the red seaweed which streaked thegreen surging water like blood.
Sisily knew this story, and believed it to be true. Sometimes, when themoon lingered on the black glistening surface of the Moon Rock, shefancied she could see a misty fluttering figure on the rock, and hear itcalling ... calling. She would sit motionless at her window, straining herears for the reply. After a time the response would come faintly from thesea, at first far out, then sounding louder and clearer as the spirit ofthe husband guided his drowned body back to his wife's arms. When itsounded close to the rock the evanescent figure on the summit would vanishto join the spirit of her husband in the churning waters at the base. Thenthe face of the Moon Rock seemed to smile, and the smile was so cruel thatSisily would turn from the window with a shudder, covering her face withher hands.
Her strange upbringing may have contributed to such morbid fancies. In hismonstrous preoccupation with a single idea Robert Turold had neglected hisduty to his daughter. She counted for nothing in his scheme of life, andthere were periods when he seemed to be unconscious of her existence. Shehad been allowed to grow up with very little education or training. Shehad passed her childhood and girlhood in remote parts of England, withoutcompanions, and nobody to talk to except her mother and Thalassa, whoaccompanied the family everywhere. She loved her mother, but her love wasembittered by her helplessness to mitigate her mother's unhappy lot.Thalassa was a savage old pagan whose habitual watchful secretivenessrelaxed into roaring melody in his occasional cups; in neither aspectcould he be considered a suitable companion for the budding mind of agirl, but he loomed in her thoughts as a figure of greater import than herfather or mother. Her father was a gloomy recluse, her mother was crushedand broken in spirit. Thalassa had been the practical head of the houseever since Sisily could remember anything, an autocrat who managed thedomestic economy of their strange household in his own way, and brooked nointerference. "Ask Thalassa--Thalassa will know," was Robert Turold'sunvarying formula when anybody attempted to fix upon him hisresponsibility as head of the house. Sometimes Sisily was under theimpression that her father for some reason or other, feared Thalassa. Shecould recall a chance collision, witnessed unseen, through a half-opendoor. There had been loud voices, and she had seen a fiery threateningeye--Thalassa's--and her; father's moody averted face.
From a child she had developed in her own way, as wild and wayward as thegulls which swooped around the rocks where she was sitting. Naturerevealed her heart to her in long solitary walks by sea and fen. But ofthe world of men and women Sisily knew nothing whatever. The secrets ofthe huddle of civilization are not to be gathered from books or solitude.Sisily was completely unsophisticated in t
he ways of the world, and herdeep passionate temperament was full of latent capacity for good or evil,for her soul's salvation or shipwreck. Because of her upbringing andtemperament she was not the girl to count the cost in anything she did.She was a being of impulse who had never learnt restraint, who would actfirst and think afterwards.
Her dislike of her father was instinctive, almost impersonal, being based,indeed, on his treatment of her mother rather than on any resentment ofhis neglect of herself. But Robert Turold had never been able tointimidate his daughter or tame her fearless spirit. She had inherited toomuch of his own nature for that.
At that moment she was sitting motionless, immersed in thought, her chinon her hand, looking across the water to the horizon, where the ScillyIslands shimmered and disappeared in a grey, melting mist. She did nothear the sound of Charles Turold's footsteps, descending the cliff path insearch of her.
The young man stood still for a moment admiring her exquisite features intheir soft contour and delicate colouring. He pictured her to himself as awhite wildflower in a grey wilderness. He could not see himself as anexotic growth in that rugged setting--a rather dandified young man in awell-cut suit, with an expression at once restless and bored on hisgood-looking face.
He scrambled down the last few slippery yards of the path and had almostreached her side before she saw him.
"I have been sent for you," he explained. "I knew I should find you here."
She got up immediately from the rock where she had been sitting, and theystood for a moment in silence. She thought by his look that he hadsomething to say to her, but as he did not speak she commenced the ascentof the stiff cliff path. He started after her, but the climb took all hisattention, and she was soon far ahead. When he reached the top she wasstanding near the edge looking around her.
"This is my last look," she said as he reached her side. Her handindicated the line of savage cliffs, the tossing sea, the screaming birds,the moors beyond the rocks.
"Perhaps you will come back here again some day," he replied.
She made no answer. He drew closer, so close that she shrank back andturned away.
"I must go now," she hurriedly said.
"Stay, Sisily," he said. "I want to speak to you. It may be the finalopportunity--the last time we shall be alone together here."
She hesitated, walking with slower steps and then stopping. As he did notspeak she broke the silence in a low tone--
"What do you wish to say to me?"
"Are you sorry you are leaving Cornwall?" he hesitatingly began.
She made a slight indifferent gesture. "Yes, but it does not matter.Mother is dead, and my father does not care for me." She flushed a deepred and hastily added, "No one will miss me. I am so alone."
"You are not alone!" he impetuously exclaimed--"I love you, Sisily--thatis what I wished to say. I came here to tell you."
He caught a swift fleeting glance from her dark eyes, immediately veiled.
"Do you really mean what you say?" she replied, a little unsteadily.
"Yes, Sisily. I have loved you ever since I first met you," he replied."And, since then, I have loved you more and more."
"Oh, why have you told me this now?" she exclaimed. "You think I amlonely, and you are sorry for me. I cannot stay longer. Aunt will bewaiting for me."
He sprang before her in the narrow path.
"You must hear what I have to say before you go," he said curtly. "We arenot likely to meet again for some time if we part now. I intend to leaveEngland."
She looked at him at those words, but he was at a loss to divine themeaning of the look.
"You are leaving England?" A quick ear would have caught a strange note inher soft voice. "Oh, but you cannot--you have responsibilities."
"Are you thinking of the title, and your father's money?" he observed,glancing at her curiously. "What do you know about it, Sisily?"
"I have heard of nothing but the title ever since I can remember," shereplied.
"I learnt for the first time this afternoon that I was brought down hereto rob you," he said gloomily.
"I am glad for your sake if you are to have it--the money," she simplyreplied.
He answered with a bitter, almost vengeful aspect.
"I would not take the money or the title, if they ever came to me. Theyshould be yours. I will show them. I will let them know that they cannotdo what they like with me." He brought out this obscure threat in a savagevoice. "If I had only known--if I had guessed that your father--" Heceased abruptly, with a covert glance, like one fearing he had said toomuch.
She kept her eyes fixed on the lengthening shadows around the rocks.
"Do not take it so much to heart," she timidly counselled. "It is nothingto me--the title or the money. They made my mother's life a misery. Myfather was always cruel to her because of them, I do not know why. It isin his nature to be cruel, I think. He has a heart of granite, like theserocks. I hate him!" She brought out the last words in a sudden burst ofpassion which startled him.
"What nonsense it all is!" he exclaimed, suddenly changing his tone. "Allthis talk about a title which may never be revived. Let them have itbetween them, and the money too. Sisily, I love you, dear, love you betterthan all the titles and money in the world. I am not worthy of you, but Iwill try to be. Let us go Sway and start life ... just our two selves."
"I cannot." She stood in front of him with downcast gaze, and then raisedher eyes to his.
Had he been as experienced in the ways of her sex as he believed himselfto be, he would have read more in her elusive glance than her words.
"You may be sorry if you do not," he said, with a sudden access of malebrutality. "There are reasons--reasons I cannot explain to you--"
"Even if there are I cannot do what you ask," she replied. Her face wasstill averted, but her voice was steady.
"Then do you want to go with Aunt to London?" he persisted, trying tocatch a glimpse of her hidden face.
She shook her head.
"Or to stay with your father?"
"No!" There was a strange intense note in the brief word.
"Then come with me, Sisily. I love you more than all the world. We havenobody to please except our two selves."
"You have your duty to your father to consider."
"Let us leave him out of the question," said the young man hurriedly. "Heis as selfish and heartless as--his brother. I tell you again, I'll havenothing to do with this title or your father's money. I will make my ownway with you by my side. I have a friend in London who would be only tooglad to receive you until we could be married. You are leaving your hometo-night, and you are as free as air to choose. Will you come?"
"Of course," he began again, in a different tone, as she still keptsilent, "it may be that I have misunderstood. I thought that you hadlearnt to care for me. But if you dislike me--"
"Do not say that," she replied, turning a deeply wounded face towards him."It is not that--do not think so. You have been kind and good to me, andI--I shall never forget you. But I--I have a contempt for myself."
"I have a contempt for myself also after this afternoon," he retorted."Come, Sisily--"
"No, it is impossible. Hark, what was that?" The girl spoke with a suddenuplifting of her head. Above them, from the direction of the house, thesound of a voice was heard.
"It is Aunt calling me," she said, "I must go. Good-bye."
"Is it good-bye, then?"
"It must be. But I shall often think of you."
He had the unforgettable sensation of two soft burning lips touching thehand which hung at his side, and turned swiftly--but too late. She wasspeeding along the rocky pathway which led to the house.
"Wait, Sisily!" he cried.
A seabird's mournful cry was the only answer. He glanced irresolutelytowards the path, and then retraced his steps towards the edge of thecliffs.
A cold sun dipped suddenly, as though pulled down by a stealthy invisiblehand. The twilight deepened, and in the lengthening sh
adows the rocksassumed crouching menacing shapes which seemed to watch the solitaryfigure standing near the edge, lost in thought.