Portrait of a Man with Red Hair/Part 3

by Hugh Walpole

Layout 2

 

PART III: SEA-FOG

 

Sections (not listed in original)

I — II — III — IV — V — VI — VII — VIII — IX

 

 

PART III

SEA-FOG

I

In the garden the silence was like a warning, as though the night had her finger to her lips holding back a multitude of breathing, deeply interested spectators.

Harkness, slipping from the path on to the lawn, felt a relief, as though with the touch of his foot on the cool turf there had come a freedom from imprisonment.

The garden was so friendly, so safe, so homely in its welcome. The scent of roses that had seemed to follow him throughout the adventures of that queer evening came to him now as though crowding up to reassure him. The night sky pierced with stars, but they were thick and dim seen through a veil of mist. The trees of the garden, like serried ranks of giants in black armour, seemed to stand, in silent attention, on every side of him, awaiting his orders. The voice of all this world was the sea stirring, with a sigh and a whisper, below the wall of rock.

His first impulse as he stood on the lawn was to go away as far as he could from that house. Yes, as far as ever he could—miles and miles and miles—China if you like. Ah, no! That was just where that man would be!

He was trembling and shaking and wiping his forehead with his handkerchief; the breeze stroked him with cool fingers. He must run for ever to be clear of that house—and then suddenly remembered that he must not run because he had his duty to do—and even as he remembered that a figure stepped up to him out of the trees. He would have called out—so wild and trembling were his nerves—had he not at once recognized from his great size that this was Jabez the fisherman.

He might have been an incarnation of the night with his deep black beard, his grave kindly face, and his simple, natural quiet. He was dressed in his fisherman's jersey and blue trousers and had no covering on his head.

"Good evening, sir," he said. "Mr. Dunbar told me as how you'd be wanting to be back in the house for a moment to fetch something you'd forgotten.

"We'd best be just stepping off the lawn, sir, if you don't mind. They foreigners are always nosing around."

They turned quietly off the grass and stood closely together under the dark shadow of the house.

"I must go back at once," said Harkness. "There's no time to lose. It struck half-past twelve some time ago."

"I don't know nothing about that, sir," said Jabez; "I only know as how you must be going back into the house for something you'd forgotten and I was to let you in."

"Yes," said Harkness, his teeth chattering, "that's right."

He wasn't made, in any kind of way at all, for this sort of adventure. He had never before realised how utterly inefficient he was. And of all absurdities to go back into the house when he was now safely out of it I Of all Dunbar's mad plan this was the maddest part. What could he do but be seen or heard and then rouse suspicion when it might so easily have been undisturbed?

Let Crispin find him groping among those dark passages and what was his fate likely to be? There flashed into his consciousness then a sudden suspicion of Dunbar. It might suit the boy's plans only too well that he should be found, and so turn attention to aonther part of the house, leaving the girl free. But no! There was Dunbar's own steady clear gaze to answer him, and beyond that the certainty that Crispin's suspicions, roused by the discovery of himself, would proceed immediately to the girl.

No, did he return at once, the plan was quite feasible. Seeing him there so soon after his departure, they could do nothing but accept his reasons, and that especially if he returned quite openly with no thought of concealment.

But oh how he hated to go back! He put his hand on the rough stuff of Jabez's jersey, listened for a moment to the regular, consoling breathing of the sea, sniffed the roses and the cool, gentle night air, then said:

"Well, come along, Jabez; show me how to get back."

As they moved round to the door the thought came to him as to whether he had given the elder Crispin and his two nasty servants time enough to retire up to their part of the house. A difficult thing that, to hit the precise medium between too lengthy a wait and too short. He could not remember exactly what Dunbar had said as to that.

"Do you think I've waited long enough Jabez?" he asked.

"Well, if you'd forgotten something, sir," said Jabez, "you'd want to be sure of finding it before the house is sleeping. They don't bolt this door, sir," he continued in a whisper, "because Mr. Crispin don't like to be bolted in. His fancy. After half-past one or so one of they Japs is around. It's just their hour like from half-past twelve to half-past one that I have to watch this part of the house extra careful. Yes, sir," he added as he turned the key in the lock and pushed the door quietly open.

II

The hall was very dark. From half-way up the staircase some of the starlit evening scattered mistily through a narrow window, splintering the boards with spars of pale milky shadow.

A clock chattered cluck-cluck-spin-spin-cluck close to Harkness's ear. Otherwise there was not a sound anywhere. He reflected that several things had been forgotten in his talk with Dunbar; one that there would, in all probability, be no light in the upper passage. How was he then to find the younger Crispin's door, or to see whether or no there were that piece of paper under Mrs. Crispin's? Secondly, it would be in the room on the ground floor where he had had his strange interview with the elder Crispin that he must see the younger, because, of course, that gloomy creature, dumb though he appeared to be, would be at least aware that Harkness had never ventured into the upper floor at all and could not therefore have left his gold match-box there. On the whole, this would be the better for Dunbar's plan, because it would lead the younger Crispin all the farther from his wife's door. But there were, at this point, so many dangers and difficulties, so many opportunities of disaster, that in absolute desperation he must perforce go forward.

He was aware that for himself now the easiest fashion would be to persuade himself that he had indeed lost his match-box and was returning to secure it. He hesitated on the bottom step of the stairs as though he were wondering what he ought to do, how he might find the tiresome thing without rousing the whole house.

He climbed the staircase slowly, walking softly, but not too softly, accompanied all the way by the clock that attended him like a faithful coughing dog. At the turn of the stairs he found the passage that Dunbar had described to him, and he was instantly relieved to find that a wide and deep window at the far end had no curtain, and that through it the long stretch was suffused with a pale ghostly light turning the heavy old frames, the faded green paper, into shadow opaque.

He hesitated, looking about him, then clearly saw the two doors that must be those of Crispin and his wife; from under one of them, quite clearly, a small piece of white paper obtruded.

He waited an instant, then moved boldly forward, not trying to walk softly, and knocked on the nearer of the two doors. There was a moment's pause, during which the wild beating of his own heart and the friendly chatter of the clock from downstairs seemed to strive together to break the silence.

The door opened abruptly, and the younger Crispin, his white horse-face unmoved above his dark evening clothes, appeared there.

"I really must beg your pardon," Harkness said, smiling. "A most ridiculous thing has happened. I left the house some ten minutes ago after wishing your father good-night, and it was only after going a little way that I discovered that I had lost a gold match-box of mine that was of very great value to me. I hesitated as to what I ought to do. I guess I should have gone straight back to my hotel, but it worried me to think of losing it. It has some very intimate connections for me. And I knew, you see, that you were leaving early to-morrow morning—or this morning as it is by this time, I fancy. So that it was now or never for my match-box. I came back very reluctantly, I can assure you, Mr. Crispin. I do feel this to be an intrusion. I had hoped that your father would still be about, and that I should simply ask him to give me a light in the room where we were sitting. In a moment I am sure that we would find the thing. Your night porter very kindly let me in, but although I had only been gone ten minutes the house was dark and there was no one about. I would have left again, but I tell you frankly I couldn't bear to leave the thing. I saw a light behind your door, and knew that some one at any rate had not gone to bed. The whole thing has been unpardonable. But just lend me a candle, and in five minutes I shall have found it."

"I will go down with you myself," said Crispin, staring at Harkness as though he had never seen him before.

"That's mighty fine of you. Thank you."

But still Crispin did not move, his eyes fixed on Harkness's face. The eyes moved. They fell, and it seemed to Harkness that they were staring at the small piece of paper underneath the next door. Crispin looked, then without another word went back into his room, closing the door behind him.

Harkness's heart stopped; the floor pitched and heaved beneath his feet. It was all over already, then: young Crispin was now in his wife's room, had discovered her, in all probability, in the very act of escaping. In another moment the house would be aroused.

He prepared himself for what might come, standing back against the wall, his hands spread palm-wise against the paper as though he would hold himself up.

Truly he was shaking at the knees: he could see nothing, only that possibility of being once again in the presence of the elder Crispin, of hearing again that sweet voice, of feeling once more the touch of those boneless fingers, of seeing for another time those mad beseeching eyes. His tongue was dry in his throat. Yes, he was afraid, more utterly afraid than he would have fancied it possible for a grown man ever to be....

The door opened. Crispin appeared holding in his hand a lighted candle.

"Now, let us go down," he said quietly.

The relief was so great that Harkness began to babble, "You have no idea... the trouble I am causing you.... At this late hour.... What must you think...?"

The young man said nothing. Harkness meekly followed, the candle-light splashing the walls and floor with its wavering shadows. Their heads were gigantic on the faded wall-paper, and Harkness had a sudden fancy that the shadows here were the realities and he a mist. The younger Crispin gave that sense of unreality.

A kind of weariness went with him as though he were the personification of a strangled yawn. And yet beneath the weariness and indifference there was a flame burning. One realised it in that strange absorbed stare of the eyes, in a kind of determination in the movements, in a concentrated indifference to any motive of life but the intended one. Harkness was to realise this with a start of alarmed surprise when, once more in the long shabby room lit only by the light of one uncertain candle, young Crispin turned upon him and shot out at him in his harsh rasping voice:

"What are you here for?"

They were standing one on either side of the table, and between them on the floor were the white scattered fragments of the torn "Orvieto."

"I told you," said Harkness. "I left my match-box. I won't keep you a moment if you'll allow me to take that candle——"

"No, no," said the other impatiently, "I don't mean that. What do I care for your match-box? You are worrying my father. I must beg you, very seriously, never to come near him again."

"Indeed," said Harkness, laughing, "I don't understand you. How could I worry your father? I have never seen him in my life before this evening. He invited me out here for an hour's chat. I am going now. He is leaving for abroad to-morrow. I don't suppose that we shall ever meet again. Please allow me just to find my match-box and go."

But Crispin had apparently heard nothing. He stood, his hand tapping the table.

"I don't wish to appear rude, Mr.—Mr.——"

"Harkness is my name," Harkness said.

"I beg your pardon. I didn't catch it when my father introduced me this evening. I don't want to seem offensive in any way. I simply thought this a good opportunity for a few words that may help you to understand the situation.

"My father is my chief care, Mr. Harkness. He is everything to me in the world. He has no one to look after him but myself. He is, as you must have seen, very nervous and susceptible to different personalities. I could see at once to-night that your personality is one that would have a very disturbing effect on him. He does not recognise these things himself, and so I have to protect him. I beg you to leave him alone."

"But really," Harkness cried, "the boot's on the other leg. Your father has been very charming in showing me his lovely things, but it was he who sought me out, not I him. I haven't the least desire to push my acquaintance with him, or indeed with yourself, any further."

Crispin's cold eyes regarded Harkness steadily, then he moved round the table until he was close beside him.

"I will tell you something, Mr.—ah—Harkness—something that probably you do not know. There have been one or two persons as foolish and interfering as to suggest that my father is not in complete control of his faculties, even that he is dangerous to the public peace. My father is an original mind. There is no one like him in this whole world, no one who has the good of the human race at heart as he has. He goes his own way, and at times has pursued certain experiments that were necessary for the development of his general plan. He was the judge of their true necessity and he has had the courage of his opinions—hence the inquisitive meddlesomeness of certain people." He paused, then added:

"If you have come here with any idea, Mr.—Mr.—Harkness, of interfering with my father's liberty, I warn you that one visit is enough. It will be dangerous for you to make another."

Harkness's temper, so seldom at his command when he needed it, now happily flamed up.

"Are you trying to insult me, Mr. Crispin?" he asked. "It looks mighty like it. Let me tell you once again, and really now for the last time, that I am an American travelling for pleasure in Cornwall, that I had never heard of your father before this evening, that he spoke to me first and asked me to dine with him, and that he invited me here. I am not in the habit of spying on anybody. I would be greatly obliged if you would allow me to look for my match-box and depart. I am not likely to disturb you again."

But this show of force did not disturb young Crispin in the least. He stood there as though he were a wax model for evening clothes in a tailor's window, his black hair had just that wig-like sleekness, his face that waxen pallor, his body that wooden patience.

"My father is everything to me," he said simply. "If my father died I should die too. Life would simply come to an end for me. I am of no importance to my father. He is frequently irritated by my stupidity. That is natural—but I am there to protect him, and protect him I will. We have been really driven from place to place, Mr. Harkness, during the last year by the ridiculous ignorant superstitions of local gossip. Great men always seem odd to their inferiors, and my father seems odd to a number of people, but I warn them all that any spying, asking of questions, and the like, is dangerous. We know how to protect ourselves."

His eyes suddenly fell on the fragments of the "Orvieto." He bent down and picked some of them up. A look of true human anxiety and distress crept into his queer fish-like eyes that gave him a new air and colour.

"Oh dear! oh dear!" he said. "Did he do this while you were with him?"

"Yes," said Harkness, "he did."

"Ah! it was one of his favourites. He must have been in great distress. This only confirms what I said to you just now about disturbing him. I beg you to go—now, at once, immediately—and never, never return. It is so bad for my father to be disturbed. He has so excitable a temperament. Please, please leave at once——"

"But my match-box," said Harkness.

"Give me your London address. I promise you that it shall be forwarded to you." He held the candle high and swept the room with it, the sudden shadows playing on the walls, like a troop of dancing scarecrows. "You don't see it anywhere?"

Harkness looked about him, then up. at the face of the chattering clock. Time enough had elapsed. She was safe away by now.

"Very well, then," he said. "I will give you my address. Here is my card."

Young Crispin, who seemed in great agitation and, under this emotion, a new and different human being from anything that Harkness had believed to be possible, took the card, and with the candle moved into the hall.

He turned the key, opened the door, and the night air rushed in blowing the flame.

"I wish you good-night," he said, holding out his hand.

Harkness touched it—it was cold and hard—bowed, said: "I must apologise again for disturbing you. I would only reassure you that it is for the last time."

Both bowed. The door closed, and Harkness was once again in the garden.

III

Jabez was waiting for him. They were both in the shadow; beyond them the lawn was scattered with star-dust mist as though sewn with immortal daisies; the stars above were veiled. The world was so still that it seemed to march forward with the rhythm of the sea, that could be heard stamping now like a whole army of marching men.

"They are waiting for you, sir," Jabez whispered. "I was terrible feared you'd be too long in there."

They moved, keeping to the shadows, and reached the path that led to the door in the wall. Here their feet crunched on the gravel, and every step was an agony of anticipated alarm. It seemed to Harkness that the house sprang into life, that lights jumped in the windows, figures passed to and fro, but he dared not look back, and then Jabez's hand was on the door, he was through and out safely in the wide free road.

Then, for an instant, he did look back, and there the house was, dark, motionless, rising out of the trees like part of the rock on which it was built, the high tower climbing pale in the mist above it.

Only an instant's glimpse, because there was the jingle, the pony, Dunbar and the girl. An absurd emotion took possession of him at the sight of them. He had been through a good deal that evening, and the picture of them, safe, honest, sane, after the house and the company that he had left, came with the breeze from the sea reassuring him of normality and youth.

Jabez, too, standing over them like a protective deity. His whole heart warmed to the man, and he vowed that in the morning he would do something for him that would give him security for the rest of his days. There was something in the patient, statuesque simplicity of that giant figure that he was never afterwards to forget.

But he had little time to think of anything. He had climbed into the jingle, and without a word exchanged between any of them they were off, turning at once away from the road to the right over a turfy path that led to the Downs.

Dunbar, who had the reins, spoke at last.

"My God," he said, "I thought you were never coming."

"I had a queer time," Harkness answered, whispering because he was still under the obsession of his escape from the house. "You must remember that I'm not accustomed to such adventures. I've never had such an odd two hours before, and I shouldn't think that I'm ever likely to have such another again."

They all clustered together as though to assure one another of their happiness at their escape. The strong tang now of the sea in their faces, the freshness of the wide open sky, the spring of the turf beneath the jingle's wheels, all spoke to them of their freedom. They were so happy that, had they dared, they would have sung aloud.

But Harkness now was conscious only of one thing, that Hesther Crispin, a black shawl over her head, only the outline of her figure to be seen against the blue night, was pressed close to him. Her hand touched his knee, the strands of her hair, escaping the shawl, blew close to his face, he could feel the beating of her heart. An ecstasy seized him at the sense of her closeness. Whatever was to come of that night, at least this he had—his perfect hour. The elder Crispin and his madness, the younger and his strangeness, the dim faded house, the jewels and the torn "Orvieto," the mad talk, all these vanished into unreality, and, curiously, this ride was joined directly to the dance around the town as though no other events had intervened.

Then he had won his freedom, this sanctified it. Then he had felt his common humanity with all, life, now he knew his own passionate share of it.

He wanted nothing for himself but this, that, like Browning's strong peasant, he might serve his duchess, at the last receiving his white rose and watching her vanish into her own magical kingdom. A romantic, idealistic American, as has been already declared in this history; but ten hours ago both romance and idealism were theoretic, now they were pulsing, living things.

"Hesther's the one for my money," Dunbar said, some of his happiness at their safety ringing through his voice. "You should have seen her climb out of that window. She landed on the roof of that tool-house so lightly that not a mouse could have heard her. And then she swung down the pipe like a monkey. Tell me how you managed with friend Crispin."

"It wasn't difficult," Harkness answered. "He went with me to that long room downstairs like a lamb. He told me that he had been wanting to speak with me to tell me that I was bothering his father and must keep away."

"That you were bothering his father"

"Yes. He—— Wait. Do you hear any one coming?"

They listened. The ramp-ramp of the sea was now very loud. They had come nearly two miles on the soft track across the Downs. They stayed listening, staring into the distance. There was no sound but the sea. Then a bell ringing mournfully, regretfully, through the air.

"That's the Liddon," said Dunbar. "We must be nearly at our cottage. But I don't hear anything. Unless they saw the jingle they never would think of this. Our only danger was the younger Crispin going into Hesther's room after he left you. I believe we're safe."

They stayed there listening. Very strange in that wide expanse, with only the bell for their company. They drove on a little way, and a building loomed up. This was a deserted cottage, simply the four walls standing.

"I'm to tie the pony to this," Dunbar said. "Jabez will fetch it in the morning."

They climbed out of the jingle and waited while the pony was tied. Having done it, Dunbar raised his head sniffing the air.

"I say, don't you think the mist's coming up a bit? It won't do if it gets too thick. We'll have difficulty in finding the Cove."

It was true. The mist was spreading like very thin smoky glass. The pony was etherealised, the cottage a ghostly cottage.

"Well, come on," Dunbar said. "We haven't a great deal of time, but the Cove's only a step of the way. Along here to the right."

He led, the others followed. Hesther had hitherto said nothing. Now she looked up at Harkness. "Thank you for helping us. It was generous of you."

He couldn't see her face. He touched her hand with his for a moment.

"I guess that was the least any one could do," he said.

"Oh, I'm so glad it's over!" She gave a little shiver. "To be out here free after those weeks, after that house—you don't know, you don't know what that was."

"I can pretty well imagine," Harkness answered grimly, "from the hour or two I spent in your father-in-law's company. But don't let's talk about it just now. Afterwards we'll tell each other all our adventures."

"Isn't it strange," she said simply, "we've only exchanged a word or two, we never knew one another before this evening, and yet we're like old friends? Isn't it pleasant?"

"Very pleasant," he answered. "We must always be friends."

"Yes, always," she said.

They were standing close to the broken wall of the cottage. It had a wonderfully romantic air in the night air. It was so lonely, and so independent as well. The storms that must beat around it on wild nights, the screams of the birds, the battering roar of the waves, and then to sink into that silence with only the voice of the bell for its company. But Dunbar was no poet—a ruined cottage was a ruined cottage to him.

"I don't like this mist," he said. "It's made me a little uncertain of my bearings. I wonder if you'd mind, Hesther, waiting here for five minutes while I go and see——"

"Oh no, we'll all stick together," she interrupted. "Why should we separate? Why, I'm more sure-footed than you are, David. You're trying to mother me again."

"No, I'm not," he answered doggedly; "but I'm really not quite sure of the way down, and if we got in a mess half way it would be much worse your being there. Really these paths can be awfully nasty. I want to be sure of my way before you come—really Hesther——"

She saw that it was important to him. She laughed.

"It's stupid, when I'm a better climber than you are. But if you like it—you're the commander of this expedition."

She seated herself on a stone near the pony. The two men walked off. The sea mist was very faint, blowing in little wisps like tattered lawn, not obscuring anything but rendering the whole scene ethereal and unreal.

Suddenly, however, as though out of friendly interest, the stars, that had been quite obscured, again appeared, twinkling, humorous eyes looking down over the wall of heaven.

"We should be all right," Dunbar said as the two men set off; "we are up to time. The boat is bound to be there. It's lucky the fog hasn't come. That's a contingency I never thought of. The path down to the Cove is off here, to the right of the cottage somewhere. I've studied every inch of the country round here."

The path appeared. "Tell me, did you have a queer time with Crispin—the elder one, I mean?"

"I've never had so strange a conversation with any one," said Harkness. "Madness is a queer thing when you are in actual contact with it, because we have, every one of us, enough madness in ourselves to wonder whether some one else is so mad after all. He talked the most awful nonsense, and dangerous nonsense too, but there was a kind of theory behind it, something that almost held it all together. A sort of pathos too, so that you felt, in spite of yourself, sorry for the man."

But Dunbar was no analyser of human motives. He despised fine shades, and was a man of action. "Sorry for him! Just about as sorry as you are for a spider that is spinning a nest in your clothes cupboard. Sorry! He wants crushing under foot like a white slug, and that he'll get before I've finished with him. Why, man, he's murderous! He loves torture and slow fire like the old Spaniards in the Inquisition. There's so little to catch on to—that's the trouble; but I bet that if he had caught us helping Hesther out of that house to-night there would be something to catch on to! Why, if we were to fall into his hands now! Ugh! it doesn't bear thinking of!"

"Oh yes, of course," Harkness agreed. "He's dangerously mad. He'll be in an asylum before many days are out. If ever I have been justified in any action of my life it has been this, in helping that poor girl out of the hands of those two men. All the same ... oh! it's sad, Dunbar! There is something so tragic in madness, whether it's dangerous or no—something captive, like a bird in a cage, and something common to us all...."

"Well, if you think that the kind of things that Crispin senior is after are common to us all you must have a pretty low view of humanity. The beastly swine! Something pathetic? Why, you're a curious fellow, Harkness, to feel pathos in that situation."

"You may hate it and detest it, you must confine it because it's dangerous to the community, but you can pity it all the same. His eyes—that longing to escape."

But Dunbar had found the cleft. They were now right above the sea. Although there was so slight a wind, the waves were breaking noisily on the shore. The stars had gone again, but the edge of the cliff was clear, and far below it a thin line of ragged white leapt to the eye, vanished, and leapt again.

"Here's the path down," said Dunbar. "There isn't much light, but enough, I fancy. We'll both go down so that we can be sure of our way when we come back with Hesther, and we may be both needed to help her. The path's all right, though. It's slippery after wet weather, but there's been no rain for days. Can you make it out clearly enough?"

"Yes," Harkness said, but he felt anything but happy. Of all the things that he had done that evening this was the one that he liked least. He had a very poor head for heights, growing dizzy under any provocation; the angry snarl of the sea bewildered him, and little breaths of vapour curled about him changing from moment to moment the form and shape of the scene. He would have liked to suggest to Dunbar that there was no need for him to go down this first time, but, coward though he might be, he had come down to Treliss to beat that cowardice.

Certainly the adventures of that night were giving him every opportunity. He went to the edge and looked over. The sea banged up to him, and the grey curved shadow of the Cove seemed to be miles below him. The little path ran on the edge of the cliff between two precipitous slopes, and its downward curve was sharp.

He pulled himself together, thinking of Hesther waiting there by the cottage alone. Dunbar had already started; he followed.

When he had gone a little way his knees began to wobble, his legs taking on a strange life of their own. His imagination had all his days been dangerous for him in any crisis, because he always saw more than was truly there: now the sea breeze blew on either side of him, the path was so narrow that there was not room to plant his two feet at the same time, the dim shadow light confused his eyes and the roar of the sea leapt at him like a wild animal.

However he pressed forward, looking neither to right nor to left, and, with what thankfulness, he felt the wet sand yield beneath him and saw the boat drawn up under an overhanging rock only a few feet away from him!

"There it is," said Dunbar, eyeing the boat with intense satisfaction. "Now I think we're all right. I don't see what's going to stop us. We'll be across there in half an hour and then have a good hour before the train." He held out his hand.

"Harkness, I simply can't tell you what I think of your doing all this for us. Coming down here just to have a holiday, and then taking all these risks for people you'd never seen before. It's fine of you and I'll never forget it."

"It's nothing at all," said Harkness, blushing, as he always did when himself was at all in discussion. "As a matter of fact, I've had what has been, I suppose, the most interesting evening of my life, and I daresay it isn't all over yet."

"There's not much fear of their catching us now," said Dunbar; "but you've been in more real actual danger than you imagine. As I said just now, anything might have happened to us if he had caught us. You don't know how remote that house is. He could do what he pleased without any one being the wiser, and be off in the morning leaving our corpses behind him. The only servants in that house are those two Japs."

"There's Jabez," said Harkness.

"Jabez is outside and is only temporary. He wouldn't have stayed after tomorrow anyway. He hates the man. Fine fellow, Jabez. I don't know how I would have managed this affair without him. He fell in love with Hesther. He'd do anything for her. And then like the rest of the neighbourhood he detested the Japanese.

"They are funny conservative people these Cornishmen. Whatever they may pretend, they've no use for foreigners and especially foreigners like Crispin."

They stood a moment listening to the sea.

"The tide's going out," said Dunbar. "I was a little anxious lest I'd pulled the boat up high enough this afternoon, and then, of course, some one might have come along and taken a fancy to it. However, I was pretty safe. No one ever comes down into this cove. But we've taken a lot of chances to-night and everything's come off. The Lord's on our side—as He well may be considering the kind of characters the Crispins have."

He looked at Harkness. "Hullo, you're shivering. Are you cold?"

"No," said Harkness, "I suddenly got the creeps. Some one walking over my grave, I suppose. I feel as though Crispin had followed us and was listening to every word we were saying. I could swear I could see his horrid red head poking over that rock now. However, to tell you the exact truth, Dunbar, I didn't care overmuch for coming down that bit of rock just now. I'm not much at heights."

"What! that path!" cried Dunbar. "That's nothing. However, there's no need for both of us to go back. You can stay by the boat."

But a sudden determination flamed up in Harkness that it should be he, and none other, that should fetch Hesther Crispin.

"No, I'll go. There's no need for you to come though. We'll be back here in ten minutes. I'll see that she gets down all right."

"Very well," said Dunbar. "But look after her. She's not so good a climber as she thinks she is."

So Harkness started off. He waved his hand to Dunbar who was now busied with the boat, and began his climb. He stumbled over the wet rocks, nearly fell once or twice, and then came to the little path. His thought now was all of Hesther. He played with his imagination, picturing to himself that he was going right out of the world to some unknown heights where she awaited him, having chosen him out of all the world, and there they would live together, alone, happy always in one another's company....

What a fool he was when she was married, and, even if she freed herself from that horrid encumbrance, had that boy down there in the Cove waiting for her. But he could not help his own state. It did no harm. He told no one. It was so new for him, this rich thrilling tingle of emotion at the thought of some other human being, something so different from his love for his sisters and his admiration for his friends. And to-night from first to last there had been all the time this same tingling of experience. From his first getting into the train until now he had seemed to be in direct contact with life, contact with all the wrappers off, with nothing in between him and it!

That he must never lose again. After this night he must never slip back to that old half-life with its dilettante pleasures, its mild disappointments, its vague sense of exile. He could not have Hesther for himself, but, at least, he could live the full life that she and her country had shown to him.

"Ours is a great wild country...." Never back to the level plains again!

Full of these fine brave exulting thoughts he had climbed a very considerable way when—suddenly the path was gone. There was no path, no rocks, no hillside, no Cove, no sea, no stars—nothing. He was standing on air. The fog in one second had crept upon him. Not the thin glassy mist of twenty minutes ago but a thick, dense, blinding fog that hemmed in like walls of wadding on every side. In the sudden panic his legs gave way and he fell on to his knees and hands, clutching both sides of the narrow path, staring desperately before him. He heard the Liddon bell, as it seemed, quite close to his side, ringing down upon him.

IV

His first thought was of Hesther—then of Dunbar. Here they were all three of them, separated. The fog might last for hours.

He called, "Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!"

The bell echoed him, mocking him, "Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!"

Very cautiously he climbed upon his feet, steadying himself. The wind seemed completely to have died, and the sea sent up now only a faint rustle, like the mysterious movement of some hidden woman's dress, but the fog was so thick that it seemed to embrace Harkness ever more tightly—and it was cold with a bitter piercing chill. Harkness called again, "Dunbar! Dunbar!" listened, and then, as there was no kind of answer, began to move slowly forward.

Once, many years before, when a small boy at his private school, there had been an hour that every week he had feared beforehand with a panic dread. This had been the time of the fire-escape practice, when the boys, from some second-floor window, were pushed down, feet foremost, into a long canvas funnel through which they slipped safely to the ground. The passing through this funnel was only of a moment's duration, but that moment to Harkness had been terrible in its nightmare stifling sense, pressing blinding confinement. Something of that he felt now. He seemed to be compelled to push against blankets of cold damp obstruction. The Fog assumed a personality, and it was a personality strangely connected in Harkness's confused brain with that little red-headed man who seemed now always to be pursuing him. He was somewhere there in the fog; it was part of his game that he was playing with Harkness, and he could hear that sweet melodious voice whispering: "Fain, you know. Pain. That's the thing to teach you what life really means. You'll be thankful to me before I've done with you. You shouldn't have interfered with my plans, you know. I warned you not to."

He tried to drive down his fancies and to control his body. That was his trouble—that every limb, every nerve, every muscle, seemed to be asserting its own independent life. His legs now—they belonged to him, but never would you have supposed it. His arms tugged away from him as though striving to be free. He was not trained for this kind of thing—a cultured American gentleman with two sisters who read papers to women's clubs in Oregon.

He beat down his imagination. He had been crawling on his hands and his knees, and now he put out one hand and touched space. His heart gave a sickening bound and lay still. Which way went the path, to right or to left? He tried to throw his memory back and recapture the shape of it. There had been a sharp curve somewhere as it bent out towards the sea, but he did not know how far now he had gone. He strained with his eyes but could see nothing but the wall of grey. Should he wait there until the fog cleared or Dunbar came to him: but the fog might be there for hours, and Dunbar might never come. No, he must not wait. The thought of Hesther alone in the fog, fearing every moment recapture by the Crispins, filled with every terror that her loneliness could breed in her, spurred him on. He must reach her, whatever the risk.

Stretching his arm at full length he touched the path again, but there was an interval. Had there been any break in the path when he came down it? He could not remember any. He felt backwards with his hand and found the curve, crept forward, then his foot slipt and his leg slid over the edge. He waited to stop the hammering of his heart, then, balancing himself, pulled it back then forward again.

Lucky for him that there was no wind, but again not lucky because had there been wind the fog might have been blown out of its course: as it was, with every instant it seemed to grow thicker and thicker.

Then he grew calmer. He must soon now be reaching the top, and happiness came to him when he thought that for a time at least he would be Hesther's only protection. On him, until Dunbar reached them, she would have absolutely to rely. She would be cold and he must shelter her, and at the thought of her proximity to him, he with his arm around her, wrapping her with his coat, holding perhaps her hand in his, he was, himself, suddenly warm, and his body pulled together and was taut and strong.

He fancied that he might walk now. Very carefully he pulled himself up, stood on his feet, stepped forward—and fell.

V

He screamed, and as he did so the Fog seemed to put its clammy hand against his mouth, filling it with boneless fingers. This was the end—this death. All space was about him and a roar of air sweeping up to meet him.

Then dimly there came to his brain the message, thrown to him like a life-line, that he was not falling in space but was slipping down a slope. He lurched out with his hands, caught some thick tufts of grass, and held. His legs slid forward and then dangled. With all his forces—and the muscles of his arms were but weak—he pulled himself upward and then held himself there, his legs hanging over space.

While the tufts held, and so long as his arms had the strength, he could stay. How long might that be? Sickness attacked him, a kind of seasickness. Tears were in his eyes, and an intense self-pity seized him. What a shame that such an end should come to a man who had meant no harm to any one, whose life had yet such possibilities. He thought of his sisters. How they would miss him! He had been tiresome sometimes, and been restless at home, and pulled them up sharply when they had said things that he thought stupid, but now only his good points would be remembered. He had been kind to them; he had a warm heart. He—and here his brain, working it seemed through his aching, straining arms, began suddenly to whirl like a top, flinging in front of his eyes a succession of the most absurd pictures—days in spring woods gathering flowers, his mother and father laughing at something childish that he had said, a bar of music from some musical comedy, Erda appearing before Wotan in Siegfried a night when he had come to a dinner party and had forgotten to wear a dress tie, the moment when once before an operation he had been wheeled into the operating theatre, the day when he had plucked up his courage and decided that he could buy the Whistler "Little Mast," the grave, anxious, kindly eyes of Strang as he leant across the etching table, a morning when he had run for an omnibus up Shaftesbury Avenue and missed it, and the conductor had laughed, that hour with Maradick at the club, lights, scents, the cold fog drowning his mouth, his nose, his eyes—then chill space, a roaring wind and silence....

How strange after that—and hours afterwards it seemed although it must have been seconds—to find that he was still living, that his arms were aching as though they were one extended toothache, and that he was still holding to those tufts of grass. He had a kind of marvel at his endurance, and now, suddenly, a wonder as to why he was doing this. Was it worth while? How stupid this energy! How much better to let himself go and to sleep, to sleep. How delicious to sleep and be rid of the ache, the cold, the clammy fog!

With that, one of the grass tufts to which he was clinging lurched slightly, and his whole soul was active in its energy to preserve that life that but now he had thought to throw away. With a struggle to which he would have supposed he could not have risen he drew his body up against the slope so that the earth to which he was clinging might the better restrain his weight. Then resting there, his fingers digging deep into the soil of the cliff, his head pressed against the rock, he uttered a prayer:

"O Lord, help me now. I have a life that has been of little use to the world, but I have, in this very day, seen better the uses to which I may put it. Help me from this, give me strength to live and I will try to leave my idleness and my selfishness and meanness and be a worthier man. O Lord, I know not whether Thou dost exist or not, but, if Thou art near me, help me at least now to bear my death worthily, if it must be that, and to live my life to some real purpose if I am to have it back again. Amen." Then he repeated the Lord's Prayer. After that he seemed to be quieted; a great comfort came to him so that he no longer had any anxiety, his heart beat tranquilly, and he only rested there, passive for the issue. "If death comes," he thought to himself, "I believe that it will be very swift. I shall feel no more than I felt just now when I first tumbled. I shall not have so much pain as with a toothache. I am leaving no one in the whole world whose existence will be empty because I have gone. Hesther after to-night I shall never, in any case, see again, and I am fortunate because, before I die, I have been able to feel the reality of life, what love is, and caring for others more than myself." He was quite tranquil. The tuft of grass tugged again. His legs were numb, and he had the curious fancy that one of his boots had slipped off, and that one foot, as light as a feather, was blowing loosely in the air.

Then it seemed to him—and now it was as though he were half asleep, working in a dream—that some one was, very gently, pushing him upwards. At least he was rising. His hands, one by one, left their tufts of grass and caught higher refuge, first a projecting rock, then a thick hummock of soil, then a bunch of sea-pinks. In another while, his heart now beating again with a new excited anticipation, his head lurched forward on the earth into space. With a last frantic urge he pulled all his body together and lay huddled on the path safe once more.

He had now a new trouble because his body refused to move. He had no body, nothing that he could count upon for action. He tried to find his connection with it, endeavoured to rest upon his knees, but it was as though he had been all dissipated into the fog and was turned, himself now, into mist and vapour. Then this passed, and once more he crawled forward.

He turned a corner and met again the Liddon bell. It was strange how deeply this voice reassured him. He had been all alone in a world utterly dead. He had not had, like Hardy's hero, the sight of the crustacean to connect him with eternal life. But this sudden, melancholy, lowing sound like a creature deserted, crying for its mate, brought him once more into reality. The bell was insistent and very loud. It swung through the fog up to him, ringing in his ear, then fading away again into distance. He spoke aloud as men do when they are in desperate straits: "Well, old bell," he cried, "I'm not beaten yet, you see. They've done what they can to finish me, but I'm back again. You don't get rid of me so easily as that, you know. You can come and look, if you like. Here I am, company for you after all."

There was a little breeze blowing now in his eyes and this cheered him. If only the wind rose the fog would move and all might yet be well. His clothes were torn, his hands bleeding, his hat gone. He crawled into a sitting position, shook his fist in the air, and cried:

"You old devil, you're there, are you! It's your game all this. You're seeing whether you can finish me. But I'll be even with you yet." And it did indeed seem to him that he could see through the mist that red head sticking out like a furze bush on fire. The hair, the damp pale face, the melancholy eyes, and then the voice:

"It's only a theory, of course, Mr. Harkness. My father, who was a most remarkable man...."

The thought of Crispin enraged him, and the rage drove him on to his feet. He was standing up and moving forward quite briskly. He moved like a blind man, his hands before him as though he were expecting at every moment to strike some hard, sharp substance, but whereas before the fog had seemed to envelope him, strangling him, penetrating into his very heart and vitals, now it retreated from before him like a moving wall. The incline was now less sharp, and now less sharp again. Little pebbles rolled from beneath his feet, and he could hear them fall over down into distant space, but he had no longer any fear. He was on level ground. He knew that the down was spreading about him. He called out, "Hesther! Hesther!" not realising that this was the first time he had spoken her name. He called it again, "Hesther! Hesther!" and again and again, always moving as he fancied forward.

Then, as though it had been hurled at him out of some gigantic distance, the rugged wall of the cottage pierced the sky. He saw it, then herself patiently seated beneath it. In another moment he was kneeling beside her, both her hands in his, his voice murmuring unintelligible words.

VI

She was so happy to see him. His face was close to hers and for the first time he could really see her, her large, grave, questioning eyes, her child's face, half developed, nothing very beautiful in her features, but to him something inexpressibly lovely for which all his life he had been waiting.

She was damp with the fog, and the first thing he did was to take off his coat and try to put it around her. But she stood up resisting him.

"Oh no, I'm not cold. I'm not really. And do you think I'll let you? Why, you! What have you done? Your hands are all torn and your face!"

She was very close to him. She put up her hand and touched his face. It needed to muster everything that he had in him not to put his arms around her. He conquered himself. "That's nothing," he said; "I had some trouble climbing up from the cliff. I was just half-way up when the fog came on. It wasn't much of a path in any case."

She stood with her hand on his arm. "Oh, what shall we do? We shall never find the boat now. The fog will clear and we will be caught. We can't move from here while it lasts."

"No," he said firmly, "we can't move. This is the place where Dunbar will expect us. He'll turn up here at any moment. Meanwhile, we must just wait for him. Is the pony all right?"

"I don't know what I'd have done without the pony," she said. "When the fog came up I was terrified. I didn't know what I'd better do. I called your names, but, of course, you didn't hear. And then it got colder and colder and I kept thinking that I was seeing Them. His red hair...."

She suddenly, shivering, put her hand on his arm. "Oh, don't let them find us," she said; "I couldn't go back to that. I would rather kill myself. I would kill myself if I went back. What they are—oh! you don't know!"

He took her hand and held it firmly. "Now see here, we don't know how long Dunbar will be, or how long the fog will last, or anything. We can't do anything but stay here, and it's no good if we stay here and think of all the terrible things that may happen. The fog can't last for ever. Dunbar may come any minute. What we have to do is to sit down on this stone here and imagine we are sit- ting in front of our fire at home talking like old friends about—oh well, anything you like—whatever old friends do talk about. Can your imagination help you that far?"

He saw that she was at the very edge of her nerves; a step further and she would topple over into wild hysteria; he knew enough already about her character to be sure that nothing would cause her such self-scorn and regret as that loss of self-control. He was not very sure of his own control; everything had piled up upon him pretty heavily during the last hour; but she was such a child that he had an immense sense of responsibility as though he had been fifteen years older at least.

"I haven't very much imagination," she said, in a voice hovering between laughter and tears. "Father always used to tell me that that was my chief lack. And we are old friends, as we said a while ago, even though we have just met."

"That's right," he said. "Now we will have to sit rather close together. There's only one stone and the grass is most awfully wet. Every three minutes or so I'll get up and shout Dunbar's name in case he is wandering about quite close to us."

He stood up and, putting his hands to his mouth, shouted with all his might: "Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!"

He waited. There was no answer. Only the fog seemed to grow closer. He turned to her and said:

"Don't you think the fog's clearing a little?"

She shook her head. There was still a little quaver in her voice: "I'm afraid not. You're saying that to cheer me up. You needn't. I'm not frightened. Think how lucky I am to have you with me. You mightn't have come back. You might have missed your way for hours."

When he thought of how nearly he had missed his way for ever and ever he trembled. He mustn't let his thoughts wander in those paths; he was here to make her feel happy and safe until Dunbar came. They sat down on the stone together, and he put his arm around her to hold her there and to keep her warm.

"Now what shall we talk about?" she asked him.

"Ourselves," he answered her. "We have a splendid opportunity. Here we are, cut off by the fog, away from every one in the world. We know nothing about one another, or almost nothing. We can scarcely see one another's faces. It is a wonderful opportunity."

"Well, you tell me about yourself first."

"Ah! there's the trouble. I'm so terribly dull. I've never been or thought or said anything interesting. I'm like thousands and thousands of people in this world who are simply shadows to everybody else."

"Remember we're to tell the truth," she said. "No one ever honestly thinks that about themselves—that they are just shadows of somebody else. Every one has their own secret importance for themselves—at least, every one in our village had. People you would have supposed had nothing in them, yet if you talked to them you soon saw that they fancied that the world would end if they weren't in it to make it go round."

"Well, honestly, that isn't my opinion of myself," Harkness answered. "I don't think that I help the world to go round at all. Of course, I think that there have to be all the ordinary people in it like myself to appreciate all the doings and sayings of the others, the geniuses—to make the audience. There are so many things I don't care for."

"What do you care for?"

"Oh, different things at different times—not permanently for much. Pictures—especially etchings—music, travel. But never very deeply or urgently, except for the etchings.... Until to-night," he suddenly added, lowering his voice.

"Until to-night?"

"Yes, ever since I left Paddington—let me see—how many hours ago? It's now about two o'clock, I suppose." He looked at his watch. "Ten minutes to two. Nearly nine hours. Ever since nine hours ago, I've felt a new kind of energy, a new spirit, the thrill, the excitement that all my life I've wanted to have but that never came until now. Being really in life instead of just watching it like a spectator."

She put her hand on his. "I am so glad you're here. Do you know I used to boast that I never could be frightened by anything? But these last weeks—all my courage has gone. Oh, why has this fog come? We were getting on so well, everything was all right—and now I know they'll find us, I know they'll find us. I'm sure he's just behind there, somewhere, hiding in the fog, listening to us. And perhaps David is killed. I can't bear it. I can't bear it!"

She suddenly clung to him, hiding her face in his coat. He soothed her just as he would his own child, as though she had been his child all her life. "Hesther! Hesther! You mustn't. You mustn't break down. Think how brave you've been all this time. The fog can clear in a moment and then we'll still have time to catch the train. Anyway the fog's a protection. If Crispin were after us he'd never find us in this. Don't cry, Hesther. Don't be unhappy. Let's just go on talking as though we were at home. You're quite safe here. No one can touch you."

"Yes, I'm safe," she whispered, "so long as you're here." His heart leapt up. He forced himself to speak very quietly:

"Now I'll tell you about myself. It will be soon over. I grew up in a place called Baker in Oregon in the United States. It is a long way from anywhere, but all the big trains go through it on the way out to the Pacific coast. I grew up there with my two sisters and my father. I lost my mother when I was very young. We had a funny ramshackle old house under the mountains, full of books. We had very long winters and very hot summers. I went to a place called Andover to school. Then my father died and left me some money, and since then—oh I since then I dare not tell you what a waste I have made of my life, never settling anywhere, longing for Europe and the old beautiful things when I was in America and longing for the energy and vitality of America when I was in Europe. That's what it is to be really cosmopolitan—to have no home anywhere.

"The only intimate friends I have are the etchings, and I sometimes think that they also despise me for the idle life I lead."

He could see that she was interested. She was quietly sitting, her head against his shoulder, her hand in his just as a little girl might listen to her elder brother.

"And that's all?" she asked.

"Yes. Absolutely all. I'm ashamed to let you look at so miserable a picture. I have been like so many people in the world, especially since the war. Modern cleverness has taken one's beliefs away, modern stupidity has deprived one of the possibility of hero-worship. No God, no heroes any more. Only one's disappointing self. What is left to make life worth while? So you think while you are on the bank watching the stream of life pass by. It is different if some one or something pushes you in. Then you must fight for existence for your own self or, better still, for some one else. They who care for something or some one more than themselves—some cause, some idea, some prophecy, some beauty, some person—they are the happy ones." He laughed. "Here I am sitting in the middle of this fog, a useless selfish creature who has suddenly discovered the meaning of life. Congratulate me."

He felt that she was looking up at him. He looked down at her. Their eyes stared at one another. His heart beat riotously, and behind the beating there was a strange pain, a poignant longing, a deep deep tenderness.

"I don't understand everything you say," she replied at last. "Except that I am sure you are doing an injustice to yourself when you give such an account. But what you say about unselfishness I don't agree with. How is one unselfish if one is doing things for people one loves? I wasn't unselfish because I worked for the boys. I had to. They needed it."

"Tell me about your home," he said.

She sighed, then drew herself a little away from him, as though she were suddenly determined to be independent, to owe no man anything.

"Mother died when I was very young," she said. "I only remember her as some one who was always tired, but very very kind. But she liked the boys better. I remember I used to be silly and feel hurt because she liked them better. But the day before she died she told me to look after them, and I was so proud, and promised. And I have tried."

"Were they younger than you?"

"Yes. One was three years younger and the other five. I think they cared for me, but never as much as I did for them."

She stopped as though she were listening. The fog was now terribly thick and was in their eyes, their nostrils, their mouths. They could see nothing at all, and when he jumped to his feet and called again, "Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!" he knew that he vanished from her sight. He could feel from the way that she caught his hand and held it when he sat down again how, for a moment, she had lost him.

"It's always that way, isn't it?" she went on, and he could tell from an undertone in her voice that this talking was an immense relief to her. She had, he supposed, not talked to any one for weeks.

"Always what way?" he asked.

"That if you love some one very much they don't love you so much. And then the same the other way."

"Very often," he agreed.

"I'm sure that's what I did wrong at home. Showed them that I cared for them too much. The boys were very good, but they were boys, you know, and took everything for granted as men do." She said this with a very old world-wise air. "They were dear boys—they were and are. But it was better before they went to school, when they needed me always. Afterwards when they had been to school they despised girls and thought it silly to let girls do things for them. And then they didn't like being at home—because father drank."

She dropped her voice here and came very close to him.

"Do you know what it is to hate and love the same person? I was like that with father. When he had drunk too much and broke all the things—when we had so few anyway—and hit the boys, and did things—oh, dreadful things that men do when they're drunk, then I hated him. I didn't love him. I didn't want to help him—I just wanted to get away. And before—before he drank so much he was so good and so sweet and so clever. Do you know that my father was one of the cleverest doctors in the whole of England? He was. If he hadn't drunk he might have been anywhere and done anything. But sometimes when he was drunk and the boys were away at school, and the house was in such a mess, and the servant wouldn't stay because of father, I felt I couldn't go on—I couldn't!—and that I'd run down the road leaving everything as it was, into the town and hide so that they'd never find me.... And now," she suddenly broke out, "I have run away—and see what I've made of it!"

"It isn't over yet," he said to her quietly. "Life's just beginning for you."

"Well, anyway," she answered, with a sudden resolute calm that made her seem ever so much older and more mature, "I've helped the boys to start in life, and I won't have to go back to all that again—that's something. It's fine to love some one and work for them as you said just now, but if it's always dirty, and there's never enough money, and the servants are always in a bad temper, and you never have enough clothes, and all the people in the village laugh at you because your father drinks, then you want to stop loving for a little while and to escape anywhere, anywhere to anybody where it isn't dirty. Love isn't enough—no, it isn't—if you're so tired with work that you haven't any energy to think whether you love or not."

She hesitated there, looking away from him, and said so softly that he with difficulty caught her words: "I will tell you one thing that you won't believe, but it's true. I wanted to go to Crispin."

He turned to look at her in amazement.

"You wanted to go?"

"Yes. I know you thought that I went for the boys and father. I know that David thinks that too. Of course that was true a little. He promised me that they should have everything. It was a relief to me that I needn't think of them any more. But it wasn't only that. I wanted to go. I wanted to be free."

"To be free!" Harkness cried. "My God! what freedom! I can understand your wanting to escape, but with such men...."

She turned round upon him eagerly. "You don't know what he can be like—the elder Crispin, I mean. And to a girl, an ignorant, conceited girl. Yes, I was conceited, that was the cause of everything. Father had all sorts of books in his room, I used to read everything I could see—French and German in a kind of way, and secretly I was very proud of myself. I thought that I was more learned than any one I knew, and I used to smile to myself secretly when I overheard people saying how good I was to the boys, and how unselfish, and I would think, 'That's not what I am at all. If you only knew how much I know, and the kind of things, you'd be surprised.'

"I was always thinking of the day when I would escape and marry. I fancied I knew everything about marriage from the books that I had read and from the things that father said when he was drunk. I hadn't a nice idea of marriage at all. I thought it was old-fashioned to fall in love, but through marriage I could reach some fine position where I could do great things in the world, and always in my mind I saw myself coming one day back to my village and every one saying: 'Why, I had not an idea she was like that. Fancy all the time she was with us we never knew she was clever like this.'"

She laughed like a child, a little maliciously, very simply and confidingly. He saw that she had for the moment forgotten her danger, and was sitting there in the middle of a dense fog on a lonely moor at a quarter-past two in the morning with an almost complete stranger as though she were giving him afternoon tea in the placid security of a London suburb. He was glad; he did not wish to bring back her earlier terror, but for himself now, with every moment that passed, he was increasingly anxious. Time was flying; now they could never catch that train. And above all, what could have happened to Dunbar? He must surely have found them by now had some accident not come to him. Perhaps he had slipped as Harkness had done and was now lying smashed to pieces at the bottom of that cliff. But what could he, Harkness, do better than this? While the fog was so dense it was madness to move off in search of any one. And if the fog lasted were they to sit there until morning and be caught like mice in a kitchen?

And beneath his anxiety, as his arm held the child at his side, there was that strange mixture of triumph and pain, of some odd piercing loneliness and a deep burning satisfaction. Meanwhile her hand rested in his, soft and warm like the touch of a bird's breast.

"When Mr. Crispin came—the elder, the father—and talked to me I was flattered. No one before had ever talked to me as he did about his travels and his collections and the grand people he knew, just as though I were as old as he was. And then David—Mr. Dunbar—was always asking me to marry him. I'd known him all my life, and I liked him better than any one else in the whole world; but just because I'd always known him he wasn't exciting. He was the last person I wanted to marry. Then Mr. Crispin made father drink and I hated him for that, and I hated father for letting him do it. I went up to Mr. Crispin's house and told him what I thought of him, and he talked and talked and talked, all about having power over people for their good and hurting them first and loving them all afterwards. I didn't understand most of it, but the end of it was that he said that if I would marry his son he would leave father alone and would give me everything. I should see the world and all life, and that his son loved me and would be kind to me.

"After that it was the strangest thing. I don't say that he hypnotised me. I knew that he was bad. Every one in the place was speaking about him. He had done some cruel thing to a horse, and there was a story, too, about some woman in the village. But I thought that I knew better than all of them, that I would save father and the boys and be grand myself—and then I would show David that he wasn't the only one who cared for me.

"And so—I consented. From the moment I promised I was terrified. I knew that I had done a terrible thing. But it was too late. I was already a prisoner. That is a hysterical thing to say, but it is true. They never let me out of their sight. I was married very quickly after that. I won't say anything about the first week of my marriage except that I didn't need books any more to teach me. I knew the sin I'd committed. But I was proud—I was as proud as I was frightened. I wasn't going to let any one know what a terrible position I was in—and especially David. When we went to Treliss, David came too and waited. In my heart I was so glad he was there.

"You don't know what went on in that house. The younger Crispin wasn't unkind. He was simply indifferent. He thought of nothing and nobody but his father. His father mocked him, despised him, scorned him, but he didn't care. He follows his father like a dog. At first you know I thought I could make a job of it, carrying it through. And then I began to understand.

"First one little thing, then another. The elder Crispin was always talking, floods of it. He was always looking at me and smiling at me. After two days in the house with him I hated him as I hadn't known I could hate any one. When he touched me I trembled all over. It became a kind of duel between us. He was always talking nonsense about making me love him through pain—and his eyes never said what his mouth said. They were like the eyes of another person caught there by mistake.

"Then one day I came into the library upstairs and found him with a dog. A little fox-terrier. He had tied it to the leg of the table and was flicking it with a whip. He would give it a flick, then stand back and look at it, then give it another flick. The awful thing was that the dog was too frightened to howl, too terrified to know that it was being hurt at all. He was smiling, watching the dog very carefully, but his eyes were sad and unhappy. After that there were many signs. I knew then two things, that he was raving crazy mad and that I was a prisoner in that house. They watched me night and day. I had no money. My only hope of escape was through David who was always getting word to me, begging me to let him help me. But I still had my pride, although it was nearly beaten. I wouldn't yield until—until the night before you came, then something happened, something he tried to do; the younger Crispin stopped him that time, but another time—well, there mightn't be any one there. That settled it all. I let David know through you that I would go. I had to go. I couldn't risk another moment. I couldn't risk another moment, I tell you." She suddenly sprang up, caught at Harkness's hands in an agony, crying:

"Don't stay here! Don't stay here! They can find us here! We're going to be caught again. Oh, please come! Please! Please!"

She was suddenly crazy with terror. Had he not held her with all his force she would have rushed off into the fog. She struggled in his arms, pulling and straining, crying, not knowing what she said. Then suddenly she relaxed, would have tumbled had he not held her, and murmuring, "I can't any more—oh, I can't any more!" collapsed, so that he knew she had fainted.

VII

He sat down on the stone, laying her in his arms as though she were his child. He was, himself, not strongly built, but she was so slight in his hold that he could not believe that she was a woman. He murmured words to her, stroked her forehead with his hand; she stirred, turning towards him, and resting her head more securely on his breast. Then her hand moved to his cheek and lay against it.

At last after a long while she raised her head, looked about her, stared up at him as though she had just awoken, turned and kissed him on the cheek. She murmured something—he could not catch the words—then nestled down into his arms as though she would sleep.

There began for him then, sitting there, staring out into the unblinking fog, his hardest test. As surely as never before in his life had he known what love truly was, so did he know it now. This child in her ignorance, her courage, her hard history, her contact with the worst elements in human nature, her purity, had found her way into the innermost recesses of his heart. He saw as he sat there, with a strange almost divine clarity of vision, both into her soul and into his own. He knew that when she faced life again he would be the first to whom she would turn. He knew that with one word, one look, he could win her love. He knew that she had also never felt what love was. He knew that the circumstances of this night had turned her towards him as she would never have been turned in ordinary conditions. Yes, he knew this too—that had they met in everyday life she would never have loved him, would not indeed have thought of him twice.

He was not a man about whom any one thought twice. With the exception of his sisters no woman had ever loved him; this child, driven to terrified desperation by the horrors of the last weeks had been wakened to full womanhood by those same horrors, and he had happened to be there at the awakening. That was all. And yet he knew that so honest was she, and good and true, that did she once go to him she would stay with him. He saw steadily into the future. He saw her freedom from the madman to whom she was married, then her union with himself. His happiness, and her gradual discovery of the kind of man that he was. Not bad—oh no—but older, far older than herself in many other ways than years, tired so easily, caring nothing for all the young things in life, above all a man in the middle state, solitary from some elemental loneliness of soul. It was true that to-night had shown him a new energy of living, a new happiness, a new vigour, and he would perhaps after to-night never be the same man as he was before. But it was not enough. No, not enough for this young girl just beginning life, so ignorant of it, so trustful of him that she would follow the path that he pointed out. And for himself! How often he had felt like Nejdanov in Virgin Soil that "everything that he had said or done during the day seemed to him so utterly false, such useless nonsense, and the thing that ought to be done was nowhere to be found ... unattainablen... in the depths of a bottomless pit." Well, of to-night that was not true. What he had done was useful, was well done. But to-morrow how would he regard it? Would it not seem like senseless melodrama, the mad Crispins, his fall from the cliff, this eternal fog? How like his history that the most conclusive and eternal acts of his life should take place in a fog! And this girl whom he loved so dearly, if he married her and kept her for himself would not his conscience, that eternal tiresome conscience of his, would it not for ever reproach him, telling him that he had spoilt her life, and would not he be for ever watching to catch that moment when she would realize how dull, how old, how negative he was? No, he could not... he could not...

Then there swept over him all the fire of the other impulse. Why should he not, at long last, be happy? Could any man in the world be better to her than he would be? After all he was not so old. Had he not known when he shared in that dance round the town that he could be part of life, could feel with the common pulse of humanity? Did young Dunbar know life better than he? With him she had lived always and yet did not love him.

And then he knew with a flash like lightning through the fog that at this moment, when she was waking to life and was trusting him, he could by only a few words, lead her to love Dunbar. She had always seen him in a commonplace, homely, familiar light, but he, Harkness, if he liked, could show her quite another light, could turn all this fresh romantic impulse that was now flowing towards himself into another channel.

But why should he? Was that not simply sentimental idealism? Dunbar was no friend of his, he had never seen him before yesterday, why should he give up to him the only real thing that his life had yet known?

But it was not sentimental, it was not false. Youth to youth. In years he was not so old, but in his hesitating, Quixotic, undetermined character there were elements of analysis, self-questioning, regret, that would make any human being with whom he was intimately related unhappy.

Sitting there, staring out into the fog, he knew the truth—that he was a man doomed to be alone all his days. That did not mean that he could not make much of his life, have many friends, much good fortune—but in the last intimacy he could go to no one and no one could go to him.

He bent down and kissed her forehead. She stirred, moved, sat up, resting back against him, her feet on the ground.

"Where am I?" she whispered. "Oh yes." She clung to his arm. "No one has come? We are still alone?"

"No," he answered her gently, "no one has come. We are still alone."

VIII

"What time is it?" she asked.

He looked at his watch. "Half-past two."

"We have missed that train now."

"I don't know. And anyway there's probably another."

"And David?"

"He's lost his way in the fog. He'll turn up at any moment." He stood up and shouted once again:

"Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!"

No answer.

He stood over her looking down at her as she sat with drooping head. She looked up at him. "I'm ashamed at the way I've behaved," she said, "fainting and crying. But you needn't be afraid any more. I shan't give in again."

Indeed, he seemed to see in her altogether a new spirit, something finer and more secure. She put out her hand to him.

"Come and sit down on the stone again as we were before. It's better for us to talk and then we don't frighten ourselves with possibilities. After all, we can't do anything, can we, so long as this horrid fog lasts? We must just sit here and wait for David."

He sat down, put his arm around her as he had done before. The moment had come. He had only now to speak and the result was certain—the whole of his future life and hers. He knew so exactly what he would say. The words were forming on his lips.

"Hesther dear, I've known you so short a time, but nevertheless I love you with all my heart and being. When you are rid of this horrible man will you marry me? I will spend all my life in making you happy——"

And she, oh, without an instant's doubt, would say "Yes," would hide in his arms, and rest there as though secure, yes, utterly secure for life. But the battle was over. He would not begin it again. He clipped the words back and sat silent, one hand clenched on his knee.

It was as though she were waiting for him to speak. Their silence was packed with anticipation. At last she said:

"What is the matter? Is there something you're afraid of that you don't like to tell me? You needn't mind. I'm through my fear."

"No, there's nothing," he answered. At last he said: "There is one thing I'd like to say to you. I suppose I've no right to speak of it seeing how recently I've known you, but I guess this night has made us friends as months of ordinary living never would have made us."

"Yes, you're right in that," she answered. He knew what she was expecting him to say.

"Well, it's about Dunbar." He could feel her hand jump in his. "He loves you so much—so terribly. He isn't a man, I should think, to say very much about his feelings. I've only known him for an hour or two, and he wouldn't have said anything to me if he hadn't had to. But from the little he did say I could see what he feels. You're in luck to have a man like that in love with you."

She took her hand out of his, then, very quietly but very stiffly, answered:

"But I've known him all my life, you know."

"That's just why I'm speaking about him," Harkness answered.

"It's rather strange to have the friend of your life explained to you by some one who has known him only for an hour or two." She laughed a little angrily.

"But that's just why I'm speaking," he answered. "When you've known some one all your life you can't see them clearly. That's why one's own family always knows so little about one. You can't see the wood for the trees. In the first minutes a stranger sees more. I don't say that I know Dunbar as well as you do—I only say that I probably see things in him that you don't see."

They had been so close to one another during this last hour that he felt as though he could see, as through clear water, deep into her mind.

He knew that, during those last minutes, she had been struggling desperately. She came up to him victorious and, smiling and putting her hand into his, said:

"Tell me what you think about him."

"Simply that he seems to me a wonderful fellow. He seems to you, I expect, a little dull. You've always laughed at him a bit, and for that very reason, and because he's loved you for so long, he's tongue-tied when you're there and shy of showing you what he really thinks about things. He has immense qualities of character—fidelity, honesty, devotion, courage—things simply beyond price, and if you loved him and showed him that you did you'd probably see quite new things—fun and spontaneity and imagination—things that he had always been afraid to show you until now."

Her hand trembled in his.

"You speak," she said, "as though you thought that you were so much older than both of us. I don't feel that you are. Can't you——" she broke off. He knew what she would say.

"My dear," and his voice was eloquently paternal, "I am older than both of you—years and years older. Not physically, perhaps, so much, but in every other kind of way. I am an old fogey, nothing else. You've both of you been kind to me to-night, but in the morning, when ordinary life begins again, you'll soon see what a stuffy old thing I am. No, no. Think of me as your uncle. But don't miss—oh, don't miss!—the love of a man like Dunbar. There's so little of that unselfish devoted love in the world, and when it comes to you it's a crime to miss it."

"But you can't force yourself to love any one!" she cried, sharply.

"No, you can't force yourself, but it's strange what seeing new qualities in some one, looking at some one from another angle, will do. Try and look at him as though you'd met him for the first time, forget that you've known him always. I tell you that he's one in a million!"

"Yes, he's good," she answered softly. "He's been wonderful to me always. If he'd been less wonderful perhaps—I don't know, perhaps I'd have loved him more. But why are we talking about it? Aren't I married as it is?"

"Oh that!" He made a little gesture of repulsion. "We must get rid of that at once."

"It won't be very difficult," she answered, dropping her voice to a whisper. "He hasn't been faithful to me—even during these weeks."

He put his arm round her and held her close as though he were truly her father. "Poor child!" he said, "poor child!"

She trembled in his arms.

"You——" she began. "You——? Don't you——?" She could say no more.

"I'm your friend," he answered, "to the end of life. Your old avuncular friend. That's my job. Think of your young friend freshly. See what a fellow he is. I tell you that's a man!"

She did not answer him, but stayed there hiding her head in his coat.

There was a long silence, then, stroking her hair, he said:

"Hesther dear, I'm going to try once again." He got up and, putting his hands trumpetwise to his mouth, shouted through the fog:

"Dunbar! Dunbar! Dunbar!"

This time there was an answer, clear and definite. "Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!" He turned excitedly to her. She also sprang to his feet. "He's there! I can hear him!"

"Dunbar! Dunbar!"

The answer came more clearly: "Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!"

They continued to exchange cries. Sometimes the reply was faint. Once it seemed to be lost altogether. Then suddenly it was close at hand. A ghostly figure was shadowed.

Dunbar came running.

 

IX

He caught their hands in his. He was breathless. He sank down on the stone beside them:

"Give me a minute.... I'm done. Lord! this filthy fog.... Where haven't I been" He panted, staring up at them with wide distracted eyes.

"Do you realized I've failed. It's no use our crossing in that boat now even if we could find it. We've missed that train. We're done."

"Nonsense," Harkness broke in. "Why, man, what's happened to you? This isn't like you to lose your courage. We're not done or anything like it. In the first place we're all together again. That's something in a fog like this. Besides so long as we stick together we're out of their power. They can't force us, all of us, back into that house again. So long as we're out of that house we're safe."

"Oh, are we" said Dunbar. "Little you know that man. I tell you we're not safe—or Hesther's not safe—until we're at least a hundred miles away. But forgive me," he looked up at them both, smiling, "you're quite right, Harkness. I haven't any right to talk like this. But you don't know what a time I've had in that fog."

"I had a little bit of a time myself," said Harkness.

"Well in the first place," went on Dunbar, "I was terrified about you. I knew that you didn't know these cliffs well. When the fog started I called to you to come back, but you didn't hear me, of course. I was an idiot to let you start out at all.

"And then, when it came to myself climbing them I wasn't very successful. I was nearly over the edge fifty times at least. But at last when I did get to the top the ridiculous thing was that I started off in the wrong direction. There I was only five minutes from the cottage and the pony and Hesther; I know the place like my own hand, and yet I went in the wrong direction.

"God knows where I got to. I was nearly over into the sea twice at least. I kept calling your names, but the only thing I heard in answer was that beastly bell. I never went very far, I imagine, because when I heard your voice at last, Harkness, I was quite close to it. But just to think of it! Every other emergency in the world I'd considered except just this one! It simply never entered my head."

"Well now," said Harkness, "let's face the facts. It's too late for that train. Is there any other that we can catch?"

"There's one at six, but I don't see ourselves hanging about here for another three hours, nor, if the fog doesn't lift, can Hesther get down into that cove. I'm not especially anxious to try it myself as a matter of fact."

"No, nor I," said Harkness, smiling. "Then we count the boat out. There aren't many other things we can do. We can take the pony and follow him. He'll lead us straight back to Treliss to whatever stables he came from—a little too close to the Crispin family, I fancy. Secondly, we can wait here until the fog clears; that may be in three minutes time, it may be to-morrow. You both know more about these sea-fogs down here than I do, but, from the look of it, it's solid till Christmas."

"A heat fog this time of year," said Dunbar, "within three miles of the sea can last for twenty-four hours or longer—not as thick as this though— this is one of the thickest I've ever seen."

"Well then," continued Harkness, "it isn't much good to wait until it clears. The only thing remaining for us is to walk off somewhere. The question is, where? Is there any garage within a mile or two or any friend with a car? It isn't three o'clock yet. We still have time."

"Yes," said Dunbar, "there is. I've had it in my mind all along as an alternative. Indeed it was the first thing of all that I thought of. Three miles from here there's a village, Cranach. The rector of Cranach is a sporting old man called Banting. During the last week or two we've made friends. He's sixty or so, a bachelor, and he's got a car. Not much of a car, but still it's something. I believe if we go and appeal to him—we'll have to wake him up, of course—he'll help us. I know that he disapproves strongly of the Crispins. I thought of him before, as I say, but I didn't want to involve him in a row with Crispin. However, now, as things have gone, it's got to be. I can think of no other alternative."

"Good," said Harkness, "that settles it. Our only remaining difficulty is to find our way there through this fog."

"I can start straight," said Dunbar. "Left from the cottage and then straight ahead. Soon we ought to leave the Downs and strike some trees. After that it's across the fields. I don't think I can miss it."

"What about the pony?" asked Hesther.

"We'll have to leave him. He must be there for Jabez in the morning or Jabez will have to pay for both the pony and the cart."

They started off. The character of the fog seemed now slightly to have changed. It was certainly thicker in some places than in others. Here it was an impenetrable wall, but there it seemed to be only a gauze covering hanging before a multitude of changing scenes and persons. Now it was a multitude of armed men advancing, and you could be sure that you heard the clang of shield on shield and a thousand muffled steps. Now it was horses wheeling, their manes tossing, their tails flying, now secret furtive figures that moved and peered, stopped, bending forward and listening, then moved on again.

All the world was stirring. A breeze ran along the ground, rustling the short thin grass. Sea-gulls were circling the mist crying. A ship at sea was sounding its horn. Figures seemed to press in on every side.

They linked arms as they went, stumbling over the tussocks at every step. It was strange how the sudden vanishing of the cottage left them forlorn. It had been their one sure substantial hold on life. They were in their own world while they could touch those ruined stones, but now they walked in air.

Nevertheless Dunbar walked forward confidently. He thought that he recognised this landmark and that. "Now we veer a bit to the left," he said. "We should be off the moor in another step."

They walked forward. Suddenly Hesther pulled back, crying. "Look out I Look out!" Another instant and they would have walked forward into space. The mist here twisted up into thinning spirals as though to show them what they had escaped; they could just see the sharp black line of the cliff. Far, far beneath them the sea purred like a cat.

They stopped where they were as though fixed like images into the wall of the fog.

Dunbar whispered: "That's awful. Another moment...."

It was Hesther who pulled them together again. "Let's turn sharp about," she said, "and walk straight in front of us. At least we escape the sea."

They turned as she had said and then walked forward, but in the minds of all of them there was the same thought. Some one was playing with them, some one like an evil Will-o'-the-Wisp was leading them, now here, now there. Almost they could see his red poll gleaming through the fog and could hear his silvery voice running like music up and down the scale of the mist.

They were, three of them, worn with the events of the night. They were beginning to walk somnambulistically. Harkness found in himself now a strange kind of intimacy with the Fog.

Yes, spell it with a capital letter. The Fog. The FOG. Some emanation of himself, rolling out of him, friendly and also hostile. He and Crispin were of the Fog together. They had both created it, and as they were the good and evil of the Fog so was all Life, shapeless, rolling hither and thither, but having in its elements Good and Evil in eternal friendship and eternal enmity.

Every part of his body was aching. His legs were so weary that they dragged with him, protesting; his eyes were for ever closing, his head nodding. He stumbled as he walked, and at his side, step by step in time the Fog accompanied him, a mountainous grey-swathed giant.

He was talking, words were for ever pouring from him, words mixed with fog, so that they were damp and thick before ever they were free. "In life there are not, you know, enough moments of clear understanding. Between nations, between individuals, those moments are too often confused by winds that, blowing from nowhere in particular, ruffle the clear water where peace of mind and love of soul for soul are reflected.... Now the waters are clear. Let us look down."

Yes, he had read that somewhere. In one of Galleon's books perhaps? No matter. It meant nothing. "A fine sentiment. What it means.... Well, no matter. Don't you smell roses? Roses out here on the moor. If it wasn't for the fog you'd smell them—ever so many. And so he tore the 'Orvieto' into shreds. Little scraps flying in the air like goose feathers. What a pity! Such a beautiful thing..."

"Hold up," cried Dunbar. "You're asleep, Harkness. You'll have us all down."

He pulled together with a start, and opening his eyes wide and staring about him saw only the disgusting fog.

"This fog is too much of a good thing. Don't you think so? I guess we could blow it away if we all tried hard enough? You think Americans always say 'I guess,' don't you? The English books always make them. But don't you believe it. We only do it to please the English. They like it. It satisfies their vanity."

He seemed to be climbing an enormous endless staircase. He mounted another step, two, and suddenly was wide awake.

"What nonsense I'm talking! I've been half asleep. This fog gets into your brain." He felt Hesther's arm within his. He patted her hand encouragingly. "It's all right, Hesther. We'll be out of this soon. Just another minute or two."

"By Jove, you're right," Dunbar cried; "these are trees."

And they were. A whole row of them. Crusoe was not more glad to see the footprint on the sand than were those three to see those trees. "Now I know where we are!" Dunbar cried triumphantly. "Here's the bridge and here's the lane. What luck to have found it!"

The trees seemed to step forward and greet them, each one tall and dignified, welcoming them to a happier country. They were on a road and had no longer the turf beneath their feet. The fog here was truly thinner so that very dimly they could see the mark of the hedge like a clothes-line in mid-air.

They moved now much more rapidly, and in their hearts was an intense, an eager relief. The fog thinned until it was a wall of silver. Nothing was distant, but it was a world of tangible reality. They could kick pebbles with their feet, could hear sheep moving on the farther side of the hedge.

"This is better." said Dunbar. "We'll get out of this yet. Cranach is only a mile or so from here. I know this lane well. And the fog's going to lift at last."

Even as he spoke it swept up, thick and grey deeper than before. The trees disappeared, the hedges. They had once more to grope for one another's hands and walk close.

Harkness could feel from the way that Hesther leaned against him, and the drag of her feet, that she was near the end of her endurance. She said nothing. Only walked on and on.

They were all now silent. They must have walked it seemed to them, for miles. An endless walk that had no beginning and no end. And then Harkness was strangely aware—how, he never knew—that Dunbar and Hesther were drawing closer together.

He felt that new relation that he had in a way created beginning to grow between them. She drew away from Harkness ever so slightly. Then suddenly he knew that Dunbar had put his arm round her and was holding her up. She was so weary that she did not know what she was doing—but for that quiet, resolute, determined boy it must have been a moment of great triumph, the first time in their two lives that she had in any way surrendered to him or allowed him to care for her. Harkness was once more alone.

They walked and walked and walked. They did not know where they were walking, but in their minds they were sure it was straight to Cranach.

Suddenly, after, as it seemed, hours of silence in a dead world, Dunbar cried:

"We're there. Oh, thank God! we're there. This is the rectory wall."

A wall was before them and an open gate. They walked through the gate, only dimly seen, stumbled where the lawn rose from the gravel, then forward again, down on to the gravel again. The door was open.

Like somnambulists they walked forward. The door closed behind them.

Like somnambulists awakened they saw lights, a dim hall where flags waved.

For Harkness there was something familiar—quite close to him, the chatter-chatter of a clock, like a coughing dog. Familiar? He stared.

Some one was standing, looking at him and smiling.

With sudden agony in his voice, as a man cries in a terrible dream, Harkness shouted:

"Out, Dunbar! Back! Back! Run for your life!"

But it was too late.

That voice of exquisite melody greeted them:

"I had no idea that of your own free will you would return. My son only a quarter of an hour ago departed in search of you. I welcome you back."