Varney sat at the old-fashioned, oval gate-legged table with an air of placid contentment, listening to and joining in the rather disconnected talk (for hungry people are poor conversationalists) with quiet geniality but with a certain remoteness and abstraction. From where he sat he could see out through the open window the great ocean stretching away to the south and west, the glittering horizon and the gorgeous evening sky. With quiet pleasure he had watched the changing scene; the crimson disc of the setting sun, the flaming gold softening down into the sober tints of the afterglow, and now, as the grey herald of the night spread upwards, his eye dwelt steadily on one spot away in the south-west. At first faintly visible, then waxing as the daylight waned, a momentary spark flashed in the heart of the twilight grey; now white like the sparkle of a diamond, now crimson like the flash of a ruby. It was the light on the Wolf Rock.
He watched it thoughtfully as he talked: white—red—white—red—diamond—ruby; so it would go on every fifteen seconds through the short summer night; to mariners a warning and a guide; to him, a message of release; for another, a memorial.
As he looked at the changing lights, he thought of his enemy lying out there in the chilly depths on the bed of the sea. It was strange how often he thought of Purcell. For the man was dead; had gone out of his life utterly. And yet, in the two days that had passed, every trivial incident had seemed to connect itself and him with the man who was gone. And so it was now. All roads seemed to lead to Purcell. If he looked out seaward, there was the lighthouse flashing its secret message, as if it should say, “We know, you and I; he is down here.” If he looked around the table, still everything spoke of the dead man. There was Phillip Rodney—Purcell and he had talked of him on the yacht. There was Jack Rodney who had waited on the pier for the man who had not come. There, at the hostess’s right hand, was the quiet, keen-faced stranger whom Purcell, for some reason, had not wished to meet; and there, at the head of the table, was Margaret herself, the determining cause of it all. Even the very lobsters on the table (lobsters are plentiful at the Land’s End) set him thinking of dark, crawling shapes down in that dim underworld, groping around a larger shape tethered to an iron weight.
He turned his face resolutely away from the sea. He would think no more of Purcell. The fellow had dogged him through life, but now he was gone. Enough of Purcell. Let him think of something more pleasant.
The most agreeable object of contemplation within his field of vision was the woman who sat at the head of the table—his hostess. And, in fact, Margaret Purcell was very pleasant to look upon, not only for her comeliness, though she was undoubtedly a pretty, almost a beautiful, woman, but because she was sweet-faced and gracious and what men compliment the sex by calling “womanly.” She was evidently under thirty, though she carried a certain matronly sedateness and an air of being older than she either looked or was; which was accentuated by the fashion in which she wore her hair, primly parted in the middle—a rather big woman, quiet and reposeful, as big women often are.
Varney looked at her with a kind of wonder. He had always thought her lovely and now she seemed lovelier than ever. And she was a widow, little as she suspected it; little as any one but he suspected it. But it was a fact. She was free to marry, if she only knew it.
He hugged himself at the thought and listened dreamily to the mellow tones of her voice. She was talking to her guest and the elder Rodney, but he had only a dim idea of what she was saying; he was enjoying the music of her speech rather than attending to the matter. Suddenly she turned to him and asked:
“Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Varney?”
He pulled himself together, and, after a momentarily vacant look, answered:
“I always agree with you, Mrs. Purcell.”