Tongues of Conscience Part 7

"Yes. Somebody--a man--I suppose it must have been the Skipper--came out from the shadow of this house soon after I went to my bedroom, and stole to that grave by the churchyard wall."

"Really," said Uniacke. "Did he stay there?"

"For some time, bending down. It seemed to me as if he were at some work, some task--or perhaps he was only praying in his mad way, poor fellow!"

"Praying--yes, yes, very likely. A little more coffee?"

"No, thank you. The odd thing was that after a while he ceased and returned to this house. One might have thought it was his home."

"You could not see if it was the Skipper?"

"No, the figure was too vague in the faint stormy light. But it must have been he. Who else would be out at such a time in such a night?"

"He never heeds the weather," said Uniacke.

His pale face had suddenly flushed scarlet, and he felt a p.r.i.c.king as of needles in his body. It seemed to him that he was transparent like a thing of gla.s.s, and that his guest must be able to see not merely the trouble of his soul, but the fact that was its cause. And the painter did now begin to observe his host's unusual agitation.

"And you--your night?" he asked.

"I did not sleep at all," said Uniacke quickly, telling the truth with a childish sense of relief, "I was excited."

"Excited!" said Sir Graham.

"The unwonted exercise of conversation. You forget that I am generally a lonely man," said the clergyman, once more drawn into the sin of subterfuge, and scorching in it almost like a soul in h.e.l.l.

He got up from the breakfast-table, feeling strangely unhappy and weighed down with guilt. Yet, as he looked at the painter's worn face and hollow eyes, his heart murmured, perhaps deceitfully, "You are justified."

"I must go out. I must go into the village," he said.

"In this weather?"

"We islanders think nothing of it. We pursue our business though the heavens crack and the sea touches the clouds."

He went out hurriedly and with the air of a man painfully abashed. Once beyond the churchyard, in the plough-land of the island road, he continued his tormented reverie of the night. Never before had he done evil that good might come. He had never supposed that good could come out of evil, but had deemed the supposition a monstrous and a deadly fallacy, to be combated, to be struck down to the dust. Even now he was chiefly conscious of a mental weakness in himself which had caused him to act as he had acted. He saw himself as one of those puny creatures whose so-called kind hearts lead them into follies, into crimes. Like many young men of virtuous life and ascetic habit, Uniacke was disposed to worship that which was uncompromising in human nature, the slight hardness which sometimes lurks, like a kernel, in the saint. But he was emotional. He was full of pity. He desired to bandage the wounded world, to hush its cries of pain, to rock it to rest, even though he believed that suffering was its desert. And to the individual, more especially, he was very tender. Like a foolish woman, perhaps, he told himself to-day as he walked on heavily in the wild wind, debating his deed of the night and its consequences.

He had erased the name of Pringle from the stone that covered little Jack, the wonder-child. And he felt like a criminal. Yet he dreaded the sequel of a discovery by the painter, that his fears were well founded, that his sea urchin had indeed been claimed by the hunger of the sea.

Uniacke had worked in cities and had seen much of sad men. He had learnt to read them truly for the most part, and to foresee clearly in many instances the end of their journeys. And his ministrations had taught him to comprehend the tragedies that arise from the terrible intimacy which exists between the body and its occupant the soul. He could not tell, as a doctor might have been able to tell, whether the morbid condition into which Sir Graham had come was primarily due to ill-health of the mind acting upon the body or the reverse. But he felt nearly sure that if the painter's fears were proved suddenly to him to be well founded, he might not improbably fall into a condition of permanent melancholia, or even of active despair. Despite his apparent hopelessness, he was at present sustained by ignorance of the fate of little Jack. He did not actually know him dead. The knowledge would knock a prop from under him. He would fall into some dreadful abyss. The young clergyman's deceit alone held him back. But it might be discovered at any moment. One of the islanders might chance to observe the defacement of the tomb. A gossiping woman might mention to Sir Graham the name that had vanished. Yet these chances were remote. A drowned stranger boy is naught to such folk as these, bred up in familiarity with violent death. Long ago they had ceased to talk of the schooner "Flying Fish," despite the presence of the mad Skipper, despite the sound of church bells in the night. Fresh joys, or tragedies, absorbed them. For even the island world has its record. Time plants his footsteps upon the loneliest land. And the dwellers note his onward tour.

Uniacke reckoned the chances for and against the discovery of his furtive act of mercy and its revelation to his guest. The latter outnumbered the former. Yet Uniacke walked nervously as one on the verge of disaster. In the Island cottages that morning he bore himself uneasily in the presence of his simple-minded parishioners. Sitting beside an invalid, whose transparent mind was dimly, but with ardent faith, set on Heaven, he felt hideously unfitted to point the way to that place into which no liar shall ever come. He was troubled, and prayed at random for the dying--thinking of the dead. At the same time he felt himself the chief of sinners and knew that there was a devil in him capable of repeating his nocturnal act. Never before had he gathered so vital a knowledge of the complexity of man. He saw the threads of him all ravelled up. When he finished his prayers at the bedside, the invalid watched him with the critical amazement of illness.

He went out trembling and conscience-stricken. When he reached the churchyard on his way homewards, he saw Sir Graham moving among the graves. He had apparently just come out from the Rectory and was making his way to the low stone wall, over which shreds of foam were being blown by the wind. Uniacke hastened his steps, and hailed Sir Graham in a loud and harsh voice. He paused, and shading his eyes with his arched hands, gazed towards the road.

Uniacke hurried through the narrow gate and joined his guest, who looked like a man startled out of some heavy reverie.

"Oh, it is you," he said. "Well, I--"

"You were going to watch the sea, I know. It is worth watching to-day.

Come with me. I'll take you to the point--to the n.i.g.g.e.r."

"The n.i.g.g.e.r?"

"The fishermen call the great black rock at the north end of the Island by that name. The sea must be breaking magnificently."

Uniacke took Sir Graham's arm and led him away, compelling him almost as if he were a child. They left the churchyard behind them, and were soon in solitary country alone with the roar of wind and sea. Branching presently from the road they came into a narrow, scarcely perceptible, track, winding downward over short gra.s.s drenched with moisture. The dull sheep scattered slowly from them on either side of the way.

Presently the gra.s.s ceased at the edge of an immense blunt rock, like a disfigured head, that contemplated fixedly the white turmoil of the sea.

"A place for shipwreck," said Sir Graham. "A place of death."

Uniacke nodded. The painter swept an arm towards the sea.

"What a graveyard! One would say the time had come for it to give up its dead and it was pa.s.sionately fighting against the immutable decree. Is Jack somewhere out there?"

He turned and fixed his eyes upon Uniacke's face. Uniacke's eyes fell.

"Is he?" repeated Sir Graham.

"How can I tell?" exclaimed Uniacke, almost with a sudden anger. "Let us go back."

Towards evening the storm suddenly abated. A pale yellow light broke along the horizon, almost as the primroses break out along the horizon of winter. The thin black spars of a hurrying vessel pointed to the illumination and vanished, leaving the memory of a tortured gesture from some sea-thing. And as the yellow deepened to gold, the Skipper set the church bells ringing. Sir Graham opened the parlour window wide and listened, leaning out towards the graves. Uniacke was behind him in the room. Vapour streamed up from the buffeted earth, which seemed panting for a repose it had no strength to gain. Ding dong! Ding dong! The wild and far-away light grew to flame and faded to darkness. In the darkness the bells seemed clearer, for light deafens the imagination. Uniacke felt a strange irritability coming upon him. He moved uneasily in his chair, watching the motionless, stretched figure of his guest. Presently he said:

"Sir Graham!"

There was no reply.

"Sir Graham!"

He got up, crossed the little room and touched the shoulder of the dreamer. Sir Graham started sharply and turned a frowning face.

"What is it?"

"The atmosphere is very cold and damp after the storm."

"You wish me to shut the window? I beg your pardon."

He drew in and shut it, then moved to the door.

"You are going out?" said Uniacke uneasily.

"Yes."

"I--I would not speak to the Skipper, if I were you. He is happier when he is let quite alone."

"I want to see him. I want him to sit for me."

"To sit!" Uniacke repeated, with an accent almost of horror.

"Yes," said Sir Graham doggedly. "I have a great picture in my mind."

"But--"