CHAPTER THIRTY.

"AYONT THE ISLE OF SKYE."

"Cleverley Rectory.

"August 3rd.

"My dear Syl,--

"I found your letter very good reading. Thinking of you far away in Ultima Thule, in the scenes of that dearest of books to my youth, _The Pirate_, quite stirs my blood, and the Fitful Head and the Stones of Stennis come vividly into my mind. By the way, I hope you have `read' The Pirate. If not, I will send you a shilling copy, that you and Lucian may remedy the defects of your education. Here we have been seeing a great deal of the four Haredale girls, and lately something of their mother, who joined them a few days ago. Lady Haredale is a wonderful woman. She has nearly made me believe her to be the most unselfish of people by the cheerful, matter-of-course way in which she accepts their ruined condition. Lord Haredale is abroad. She and the two elder girls are to pay some visits, and then join him. Kattern and Tory are to be sent to their aunt at Silverfold. Miss Carisbrooke is still with her, and her part in all the strange story I don't understand. The girls are to go to classes at Saint Etheldred's School. Tory has brains; but I am afraid she will be a fish out of water. I should not myself like to have charge of Miss Kattern; nor indeed of Una, though she is an interesting creature, and might do well in good hands. Poor child, she is likely to be in very bad ones, I fear. She has taken a great fancy to Miss Waterhouse, my old friend, who has been having a holiday here from her work among the East London wild girls and women. Una seems never to tire of hearing of them, and has undertaken to sew for them. I hope she may keep up with anything so practical. As for Amethyst, your father calls her a fine, brave, _growing_ creature; but what a life lies before her! She has not half lived out her girlhood, in spite of all her troubles, and would be ready for all the wholesome interests and natural ambitions of clever, thoughtful girls. I have put her in the way of some correspondence-lessons in Latin and mathematics, and supplied her with the books. She means to work, when she can, with a view to a possible future. She is anxious to show that she is not all society beauty. But, dear me, how beautiful she is! I don't see how her mind is to rival her face, and how she will be thrown away!

"I could find it in my heart to wish she had married the rich baronet; but your father shakes his head, and says `No.' I believe the whole family are to meet in the south of France in the winter. Lady Haredale smiles, and says she can't think what they are going to live on.

"My love to Lucian. How long do you stay with him?

"Your loving aunt,--

"Margaret Riddell."

Sylvester read this letter as he and Lucian lay on the short fine turf of a bluff headland in the Isle of Orkney, not far from Kirkwall, looking over the northern sea, now blue and dancing in summer sunshine. The air was sweet, clear, and bracing; white sea-birds floated over the sparkling waves; a lark sang high in the pure sharp air; the charm of spring had hardly yet departed from the far advanced summer; tiny flowers sprinkled the down, and the little hardy black-faced lambs that cropped them, were still in the prettiest stage of their youth.

"My education is in advance of the shilling copy," said Sylvester, reading the first sentence of his letter aloud; and then, after a moment's hesitation, passing it to his companion.

When he had answered Lucian's letter of invitation to join him at Oban, he had briefly acknowledged the truth of the guess indicated by the return of the photograph; but since then no word on the subject, so near the hearts of both, had passed between them.

Lucian had regained much of his usual look and manner, and did not appear to be occupied with anything but the business of his yacht and with the places that he had come to look at.

Now he put down his pipe, which he was preparing to re-light, and, leaning on his elbow, read the letter through, more than once perhaps, for he was a long time silent. Then he looked up at Sylvester.

"I was a fool," he said, "a fool to be gulled by any evidence against her denial. I ought to have known her better. I wasn't man enough to trust her. That's why she has forgotten me."

Though Sylvester had often said as much to himself, the avowal was startling, in Lucian's slow, clear voice, the accents hardly varying from those in which a few minutes before he had asked his companion to give him a light.

"You were so young," he said. "But how--"

"How do I know it now? I don't know. I found it out by seeing her again. _You_ understand her better."

"I'd give my right hand never to have been forced to meddle with the matter," said Syl.

"I want to say," said Lucian, "that I'm not a dog in the manger. If you could get her--I--I--I think it would be the best thing for her. I-- hope you'll try."

"I have no reason to think she could care for me," said Sylvester hurriedly; "but--well, Lucy--of course you know I shall try--some day. And thank you."

There was silence again, and then Lucian said--

"I'm going, as I told you, to try Toppings. That's what I have to look to. My mother will be glad my chance is over."

"She wishes you to settle down?"

"Yes, of course. I could never have anything said about the past--and _her_, from my mother's point of view; and knowing that she felt so strongly, has made a sort of separation. But I shall ask her if she likes to bring the girls to Toppings. The life there would suit her."

"But, Lucy," said Sylvester, "why should you give up the white bears that you had set your heart on? Two years hence, as you said, is quite time enough for you to settle down at Toppings."

Lucian was silent for a minute, then he said--

"I don't care much about the bears, so it's better to do what suits other people. Besides, I had rather know what happens to her, and I couldn't hear if I was in the Arctic regions." Sylvester sat up and looked at him. It had never occurred to him to think that Lucian suffered from solitude or want of sympathy, or indeed to think that his life had been permanently saddened by his disappointment. He had always believed the interests which he picturesquely symbolised as "white bears" to be enough for the strong, healthy, active youth; and even his faithfulness to Amethyst had seemed to Sylvester to spring more from a sense of what was due to himself, than from involuntary yearning for her.

"I suppose," Lucian went on, before he could speak, "that you meant-- her--in that poem of yours all the time."

"Well, yes," said Syl, half laughing, "I suppose I did."

"Its quite true," said Lucian, "I couldn't say all that; but there seems nothing else to think of, and icebergs would make no difference at all."

"I didn't think, Lucy, that you would spend your life in looking for the rainbow's end."

"I shall not. There are plenty of things to do. But, since I misjudged her so, there can be no peace till she is happy. You see, at first, I felt as if I could never get over knowing that I had been wrong, when all the comfort I'd ever had in the matter, had been thinking that giving her up was the only right thing to do. I went once that wretched afternoon--right up to the Hall--and then I turned back, and thought I wouldn't be made a fool of--when all the while I was making a fool of myself."

"We were all infernal fools," said Sylvester. "Then," said Lucian, "I remembered that it didn't matter so much about me, since I had found out that she was--what I'd always thought her. I'm glad now it was all my fault and not hers. Something in your poem put that into my head."

He gave a little smile as he spoke, and Sylvester noticed for the first time how grave his face had grown. It had never been exactly lively, but surely the weight on the straight, clearly-marked brows was new.

"I suppose I hadn't given her up really," he went on after a minute, "because I seem to have to begin quite new. It's odd how hard it is to believe that I'm going to settle down at Toppings. I feel as if something must happen to prevent it. But it won't now. It will be all right if she is happy--and good. So I mean what I said, Syl; I hope you'll get her. I think I always knew you did love her, and that made me shy off when you meant to be kind to me. Then it will be all right-- for her."

He sat up and looked out over the sunny sea. The ache at his heart was hard to bear, all the harder perhaps that even now he had hardly found the right words for it. There seemed so little to look forward to. Sylvester, full of hopes and fears, interests and longings, with a future from which Amethyst was not shut out, and able to rejoice even in the suffering which brought to him so intense a life, could hardly realise the passion that only made itself felt as want and loss.

"Let's walk on," said Lucian presently. "We had better look up some of the _Pirate_ places by and by. We might get down to the beach now, perhaps."

There was a little rough path, a mere sheep-track, leading off the headland down a steep descent to the shore. The turf gave place to jagged rocks and loose stones. Lucian went on with rapid, practised tread, and presently turned off from the descent and followed the track along the cliff side. The rocks grew more precipitous, and the track narrower, the sea dashed up at their feet in great breakers of foam.

"You don't get dizzy, do you, Syl?" he called back; "this is rather a nasty corner."

"No," said Syl. "I can look at the soap-suds."

"All right. Here's a splendid great wash-tub."

He turned round the rock, there was a little crash. Sylvester hurried forward, but the path and Lucian had alike disappeared.

"All right, only a slip," he shouted from below, and, looking down, Syl saw that he had caught by the rough projections of the rock, and was holding himself on by hands and feet, above the jagged rocks and the boiling sea. Sylvester threw himself on his face, and stretching out his hand, caught Lucian's wrist.

"Can you pull yourself up a little nearer?" he said.

The sea roared in his ears, and foamed under his eyes, beneath Lucian's upturned face.

"Let go; give me your hand," said Lucian.

Sylvester obeyed, and Lucian loosened the hold of his right hand from the rock, and grasped Sylvester's, holding on to a firmer projection with his left. Then he cautiously raised himself, not a very difficult feat for so active a person--another moment, and he would be safe; but, as he moved and strained upwards, to his horror Sylvester saw the face beneath him whiten and change.

"I--can't--I'm hurt. Don't pull me," gasped Lucian.

Sylvester grasped the straining hand with all his strength, but his own position was cramped and insecure, he could do no more than hold on. If Lucian fainted! Lucian shut his eyes and moved his hand till it grasped Sylvester's wrist, and gave him a firmer hold. Then he made another attempt to lift himself up, and then--. He opened his eyes, his whole face drawn with agony, and looked up at Sylvester. Sylvester held himself firm with every force of body and soul, but the forces were beginning to fail, the ground was slipping beneath him. Then--Lucian unclasped his fingers, and slipped slowly down the rough face of the rock, and fell backwards, not into the sea, but on to the rough, slippery rocks, just above the foaming water, where he lay motionless on his back.

Then Sylvester staggered up on to his feet, and, leaning his back against the rock, steadied his limbs, which trembled with the strain he had put upon them. Another moment, and, a pace or two further back, he had let himself down from the path, and with risk and difficulty reached the ledge of rock on which Lucian lay. It was so narrow and unsafe that he could not get beside him, could not see his face, only his fair hair shining in the sun, could but just reach forward and touch his lips and brow. He called to him, but found his voice was only a sob, inaudible to himself. Lucian lay motionless, and Sylvester looked round for any chance of help. He saw that the tide was going down, and leaving more and more rocks bare beneath him. The sea was smooth enough, the foaming eddy was only caused by the hollowing of the rocks. The sky was blue and bright; he could, as his nerves stilled a little, hear the lambs bleat above his head. Then Lucian's head quivered under his hand, there was a movement, and then a sharp cry of agonising pain--a sound which, in a grown man's voice, Sylvester, a homebred man of peace, had never heard before.

"Lucy--dear boy, I can't reach you. I am here. You are terribly hurt."

There was no answer, except that the cry was stifled into a moan, and Lucian turned his face a little towards Sylvester's hand, pressing his cold cheek against it.

Then Sylvester, clinging on to the shelving rock, shouted with all his strength; and his shout was answered from the down above. What he uttered in his outcry of hope he never knew; but there was an answer back.

"All right! Hold on--we're coming round."

There was a dreadful pause, and then on the lower rocks, now bared by the ebbing tide, three young men, in tourist garb, appeared, scrambling round from behind, and came near enough for speech.

"What is it? A fall--are you both hurt? Good heavens! It's Riddell of Cuthbert's! There's footing now--the tide's going out."

And in another minute Sylvester was pulled down from his dangerous perch and held up, as he staggered for a moment with cramp and stiffness, by the strong hands of three of his own scholars--youths whose faces at lecture had never greatly interested him, but who seemed now very angels of deliverance.

"Are you hurt, sir? Lean on me, Mr Riddell. We can soon get a boat up to the rocks."

"Can we reach him? He fell over the cliff."

The footing was much less secure beneath the spot where Lucian lay, but beneath again was a broad slab of rock now laid bare; and between them all they managed to lift Lucian, now quite senseless, and lay him down with his head on Sylvester's knee. Then two of the lads went off to get a boat which could be brought up to a little strip of sand below at low tide, and the other remained to give what help he could.

Lucian moved a little again presently, when some whiskey, which the young men were carrying on their walking tour, had been put upon his lips and temples. He knew Sylvester's voice and whispered--

"Are you safe, Syl?"

"Oh, yes. But you--can you say where you are hurt?"

"I'm glad I let go," murmured Lucian; while it came over Sylvester with a flash of certainty that the clasping hand had not given way from faintness, but had loosed its hold rather than risk pulling him over. "I am--done for," gasped Lucian. "I am hurt--inside--I can't speak-- Mother--my love--and _her_."

He sank again into unconsciousness, and Howard, the young undergraduate, put his arm round Sylvester to support him as he held Lucian's weight, and put the whiskey-flask to his lips.

"Is he your brother?" he whispered.

"No; my friend, and he has given his life for mine. Oh, my God! Can the boat get there?"

It came at last, and as they lifted Lucian into it, there was a sob of pain that showed life at least. And life, Sylvester tried to feel, meant hope.