A Secret of the Sea: A Novel. Vol. 3 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

"I must repeat my question," said Gerald. "If you were as rich to-day as you believed yourself to be yesterday, and I were what I am, would you in that case reject my suit as positively as you are doing now?"

"I hardly know. Perhaps not," was the whispered answer.

"Those words are enough. They tell me everything--they tell me all that I want to know!" cried Gerald. "If you would not have rejected me yesterday, you shall not reject me to-day!" and before Eleanor knew what had happened, she was folded tightly in his arms, and a rain of sweet kisses was falling on her forehead, her eyes, and her lips.

It was fully half a minute before she could free herself. "You are the most impetuous person I ever met with," she said. "And see how you have crushed my collar, and disarranged my hair. It's--it's really disgraceful." And with that she turned of her own accord, and shyly hid her face on Gerald's shoulder.

[CHAPTER IX.]

VAN DUREN'S FLIGHT.

When Max Van Duren came to his senses he found himself in darkness and alone. A low damp wind was blowing in from the sea, sighing and groaning as if burdened with messages from the dying to loved ones at home. The tide had come to its height, and was now flowing out again, with deep muttered undertones that lent solemnity to the darkness. Van Duren's first thought was that he had died and was coming to life again in another world. Presently he felt something trickling slowly and softly down his face, and his finger, following the tiny stream to its source, found that it proceeded from a huge gash in the side of his head. Then in a flash the whole circumstances of the evening came back to him--the scene in the room at the hotel, his attempt to steal the casket, the sudden apparition of Ambrose Murray, the scene in the balcony, and his own wild leap out into the darkness. Whither had that leap landed him? He was now lying on his side, and he contrived to raise himself on one elbow and look round, but only to fall back next minute with a groan. He could see the sky and he could hear the sea, and he could make out that his body seemed to be lying among some large stones or pieces of rock, but beyond that he could tell nothing. He lay very quiet for a little while, thinking with all his might. What troubled him most of all--far more than his own present condition--was the doubt as to whether the vision of Ambrose Murray, which he had seen in the room was that of a real man or was merely a spectre. He was no believer in ghosts--or he told himself that he was not, despite his strange experience of the face in the glass--but for all that, he was inclined to doubt the bodily existence of Murray. "I was weak and ill and excited," he said to himself "I had eaten nothing for four-and-twenty hours. My nerves were in a state of tension that had become almost unbearable. I was just in a condition to see or imagine anything. I had been thinking of Murray, and I imagined that I saw him there bodily before me. If my brain had only been as cool then as it is now, I should never have seen him. With the daylight these silly fancies will vanish--but will it ever be daylight again?"

Even while he was reasoning with himself, a thin streak of pallid grey was beginning to lighten in the east, though he saw it not for a little while. He was weak with long fasting and loss of blood. The calmness of despair had settled down upon him. He neither knew where he was nor cared greatly to know. Had anyone been there to whom he could have given himself up, he would have yielded himself willingly. "The game's played out and I have lost it," he muttered to himself again and again.

But little by little the dawn broadened, and the stars paled one by one, and with the slow coming of the daylight there grew upon Van Duren a restless desire to know what it was that had really befallen him. His mood changed. The wish to live, to escape, began to grow again within him. But first to ascertain where he was and what had happened to him. Bit by bit, as the daylight deepened, and first one object and then another shaped itself faintly out of the darkness, he began to realize his position. There below him was the sea, there above shone the white buildings of the hotel--there, in fact, was the very balcony over which, in his fright, he had so madly leaped. He had come down on his head and had at once been rendered insensible, and his senseless body had begun to turn over and over in its rapid progress down the steep face of the cliff to the wild waves lapping at its feet, for at that time it was nearly high water. But about two-thirds of the way down his body had been caught by two projecting boulders, and there held, and there it was now. The box for which he had risked so much had been dashed from his arms in the fall, and, rolling down the cliff, had doubtless been carried far out to sea by the refluent tide.

Van Duren did not know--he never knew--that the people of the hotel, urged on by Ambrose Murray after his return to consciousness, had come out with lanterns to search for him, but without much expectation of being able to find him. They knew well what a little chance of life anyone would have who leaped over that balcony, either by day or night. Had the tide been out, they would have gone down to the sands, in the full expectation of finding the stranger's body at the foot of the cliff. But the tide was up at the time, and, if not killed by the fall, Van Duren would undoubtedly be drowned and his body carried out to sea. It seemed useless to make any prolonged search, and they quickly took themselves and their lanterns indoors.