“Thalassa,” he said, “you should have told this story before. You have done wrong in keeping it back.”
“‘Twould a’ been breaking of my word to Miss Sisily.”
“It was of more importance to clear her. You could have done that if you had come forward and told the police, as you’ve just told me, that she left the house with you before nine o’clock on that night.”
“‘Twouldn’t a’ helped if I had. I found out next day that the wagonette didn’t get to the cross-roads that night till nearly ten o’clock. ‘Twas after half-past nine when it left the inn.”
“What made you find out that?”
“Do you think I didn’t put my wits to work when the damned detective was trying to put me into it as well as her? I thought it all out then—about telling the truth. But I saw ‘twould a’ been no good for her, but only made matters worse. Who’d a’ believed me? There be times when a man can say too much, so I kept my mouth shut.”
There was so much sense in this that Charles had nothing to say in reply. In silence they tramped along till they reached the dip of the sea in which the Moon Rock lay. Here they paused, as if with the mutual feeling that the time had come for the interview to end. Behind them towered the cliffs, with Flint House hanging crazily on the summit far above where they stood. The eye of Charles ranged along the shore to the spot where he had said good-bye to Sisily not so very long ago, then returned to rest doubtingly on Thalassa. The old man stood with his hand resting on a giant rock, his dark eyes fixed on the rim of the waste of grey water where a weak declining sun hung irresolutely, as though fearing the inevitable plunge.
“I’d a’ given my right arm to have saved her from this,” Charles heard him mutter.
Charles found himself looking down at Thalassa’s brown muscular arm, corded with veins, stretched out on the rock by which he stood. It was as though it had been bared for his inspection, which was not, indeed, the case. If that arm could save Sisily, it was at her service. But what was the good of that? What was the good of his own efforts to help her? Charles had a suffocating feeling of the futility of human effort when opposed by the malignity of Fate. He asked himself with aching heart what was to be the outcome of it all? He had failed. What then? It was not until that moment that he realized how strongly he had been buoyed up by the false optimism of hope. His consciousness, as though directed by the power of a devil, was forced to look for the first time upon the hideous inevitability of the appointed end.
“No, no! Not that—not that,” he shudderingly whispered to himself.