The White Virgin

by George Manville Fenn

At first he did not know why it was that his father’s death and the discovery of Janet’s weakness had grown to seem so far back in the past. When he first came down to the ruined mine, he felt old and careworn; he walked with his head bent, his eyes fixed upon the ground, but their mental gaze turned inward upon the misery in his heart. Now, after these few months, he was himself again, and Janet, his brother, and all that agony and despair, were misty and fading fast away.

“It’s the work,” he used to say, “the work. Nothing like action for a diseased mind.” Then by slow degrees after his brother’s visit the truth began to dawn upon him. At first he doubted, and ridiculed the idea; then he began to wonder, and lastly to ask himself what manner of man he really was. He had believed himself to be strong and determined of purpose, and now he told himself that he must be weak as water, and that, in spite of the past, he had never thoroughly felt a strong man’s genuine love.

“Yes,” he said, as he walked slowly along that narrow shelf-like path towards the Major’s house, “it is the truth—the simple truth.”

The evening was closing in, and the darkness gathered fast in the shadowy valley where the river rippled, so that by the time he reached the spot where the perpendicular side of the mountain had been cut away, forming the sides of a tunnel, with here and there a gap forming a cavernous niche, it was quite obscure for some fifty yards. But the thoughtful man was so wrapped up in the mission he had on hand, that he did not notice the faint odour of a cigar, as if some one had lately passed there smoking; neither did he turn his head to the right and look up when a small stone came rattling down from above; but, as if Fate was leading him into a temptation, he suddenly stopped and stood gazing off to his left at where, in the south-east, a bright star was rising out of the mists.

Had he turned and looked up, he would have seen a man’s face peering over a rugged block of stone which effectually hid the watcher’s body, and that between the face and him a piece of rock was balanced and held by two hands, either occupied in retaining it, or ready to send it crashing down.

It would have been a perilous position for a man to have walked close under that stone where the track was most worn, for the other part skirted the edge of the precipice, which fell sheer two hundred feet, and hence was bad for those who had not a steady nerve.

But Clive Reed’s nerve was once again steady, and he had chosen to walk to the edge and then to stop and gaze down into the gathering darkness.

For a few moments he did think of how easily any one might fall there, and what a fate it would be if the stones which had been left roof-like by the old workers who had made that path should come crumbling down. But the thought passed away, thrust out by others, some pleasant and full of delight, others serious of import, and connected with the purpose of that night.

He passed on directly after, and a faint rustling sound was heard from the narrow rift which led upward behind the loosened stone. The face had disappeared, but a bright light flashed up from behind the rock, and once more the odour of tobacco began to be diffused in the cavernous gloom of the place.

But it was bright and clear where Clive Reed walked on, and his mind too was quite clear, his purpose determined, as he strode on now at a rapid pace till he reached the path down by the river, and then turned up suddenly in front of the cottage, where he stopped short once more to look up at the light shining out of the little drawing-room window.