Michael's Crag

Chapter 14

AT ARM'S LENGTH.

For three or four weeks Walter Tyrrel remained in town, awaiting the

result of the Wharfedale Viaduct competition. With some difficulty he

raised and paid over meanwhile to Erasmus Walker the ten thousand

pounds of blackmail--for it was little else--agreed upon between them.

The great engineer accepted the money with as little compunction as

men who earn large incomes always display in taking p*****t for doing

nothing. It is an enviable state of mind, unattainable by most of us

who work hard for our living. He pocketed his check with a smile, as

if it were quite in the nature of things that ten thousand pounds

should drop upon him from the clouds without rhyme or reason. To

Tyrrel, on the other hand, with his sensitive conscience, the man's

greed and callousness seemed simply incomprehensible. He stood aghast

at such sharp practice. But for Cleer's sake, and to ease his own

soul, he paid it all over without a single murmur.

And then the question came up in his mind, "Would it be effectual

after all? Would Walker play him false? Would he throw the weight of

his influence into somebody else's scale? Would the directors submit

as tamely as he thought to his direction or dictation?" It would be

hard on Tyrrel if, after his spending ten thousand pounds without

security of any sort, Eustace were to miss the chance, and Cleer to go

unmarried.

At the end of a month, however, as Tyrrel sat one morning in his own

room at the Metropole, which he mostly frequented, Eustace Le Neve

rushed in, full of intense excitement. Tyrrel's heart rose in his

mouth. He grew pale with agitation. The question had been decided one

way or the other he saw.

"Well; which is it?" he gasped out. "Hit or miss? Have you got it?"

"Yes; I've got it!" Eustace answered, half beside himself with

delight. "I've got it! I've got it! The chairman and Walker have just

been round to call on me, and congratulate me on my success. Walker

says my fortune's made. It's a magnificent design. And in any case

it'll mean work for me for the next four years; after which I'll not

want for occupation elsewhere. So now, of course, I can marry almost

immediately."

"Thank God!" Tyrrel murmured, falling back into his chair as he spoke,

and turning deadly white.

He was glad of it, oh, so glad; and yet, in his own heart, it would

cost him many pangs to see Cleer really married in good earnest to

Eustace.

He had worked for it with all his might to be sure; he had worked for

it and paid for it! and now he saw his wishes on the very eve of

fulfillment, the natural man within him rose up in revolt against the

complete success of his own unselfish action.

As for Mrs. Trevennack, when she heard the good news, she almost

fainted with joy. It might yet be in time. Cleer might be married now

before poor Michael broke forth in that inevitable paroxysm.

For inevitable she felt it was at last. As each day went by it grew

harder and harder for the man to contain himself. Fighting desperately

against it every hour, immersing himself as much as he could in the

petty fiddling details of the office and the Victualing Yard so as to

keep the fierce impulse under due control, Michael Trevennack yet

found the mad mood within him more and more ungovernable with each

week that went by. As he put it to his own mind he could feel his

wings growing as if they must burst through the skin; he could feel it

harder and ever harder as time went on to conceal the truth, to

pretend he was a mere man, when he knew himself to be really the

Prince of the Archangels, to busy himself about contracts for pork,

and cheese, and biscuits, when he could wing his way n boldly over sea

and land, or stand forth before the world in gorgeous gear, armed as

of yore in the adamant and gold of his celestial panoply!

So Michael Trevennack thought in his own seething soul. But that

strong, brave woman, his wife, bearing her burden unaided, and

watching him closely day and night with a keen eye of mingled love and

fear, could see that the madness was gaining on him gradually. Oftener

and oftener now did he lose himself in his imagined world; less and

less did he tread the solid earth beneath us. Mrs. Trevennack had by

this time but one anxious care left in life--to push on as fast as

possible Cleer and Eustace's marriage.

But difficulties intervened, as they always WILL intervene in this

work-a-day world of ours. First of all there were formalities about

the appointment itself. Then, even when all was arranged, Eustace

found he had to go north in person, shortly after Christmas, and set

to work with a will at putting his plan into practical shape for

contractor and workmen. And as soon as he got there he saw at once he

must stick at it for six months at least before he could venture to

take a short holiday for the sake of getting married. Engineering is a

very absorbing trade; it keeps a man day and night at the scene of his

labors.

Storm or flood at any moment may ruin everything. It would be prudent

too, Eustace thought, to have laid by a little more for household

expenses, before plunging into the unknown sea of matrimony; and

though Mrs. Trevennack, flying full in the face of all matronly

respect for foresight in young people, urged him constantly to marry,

money or no money, and never mind about a honeymoon, Eustace stuck to

his point and determined to take no decisive step till he saw how the

work was turning out in Wharfedale. It was thus full August of the

succeeding year before he could fix a date definitely; and then, to

Cleer's great joy, he named a day at last, about the beginning of

September.

It was an immense relief to Mrs. Trevennack's mind when, after one or

two alterations, she knew the third was finally fixed upon. She had

good reasons of her own for wishing it to be early; for the twenty-

ninth is Michaelmas Day, and it was always with difficulty that her

husband could be prevented from breaking out before the eyes of the

world on that namesake feast of St. Michael and All Angels. For, on

that sacred day, when in every Church in Christendom his importance as

the generalissimo of the angelic host was remembered and commemorated,

it seemed hard indeed to the seraph in disguise that he must still

guard his incognito, still go on as usual with his petty higgling over

corned beef and biscuits and the price of jute sacking. "There was war

in heaven," said the gospel for the day--that sonorous gospel Mrs.

Trevennack so cordially dreaded--for her husband would always go to

church at morning service, and hold himself more erect than was his

wont, to hear it--"There was war in heaven; Michael and his angels

fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and

prevailed not." And should he, who could thus battle against all the

powers of evil, be held in check any longer, as with a leash of straw,

by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty? No, no, he would stand

forth in his true angelic shape, and show these martinets what form

they had ignorantly taken for mere Michael Trevennack of the

Victualing Department!

One thing alone eased Mrs. Trevennack's mind through all those weary

months of waiting and watching: Walter Tyrrel had long since gone back

again to Penmorgan. Her husband had been free from that greatest of

all temptations, to a mad paroxysm of rage--the sight of the man who,

as he truly believed, had killed their Michael. And now, if only

Tyrrel would keep away from town till Cleer was married and all was

settled--Mrs. Trevennack sighed deep--she would almost count herself a

happy woman!

On the day of Cleer's wedding, however, Walter Tyrrel came to town. He

came on purpose. He couldn't resist the temptation of seeing with his

own eyes the final success of his general plan, even though it cost

him the pang of watching the marriage of the one girl he ever truly

loved to another man by his own deliberate contrivance. But he didn't

forget Eustace Le Neve's earnest warning, that he should keep out of

the way of Michael Trevennack. Even without Eustace, his own

conscience would have urged that upon him. The constant burden of his

remorse for that boyish crime weighed hard upon him every hour of

every day that he lived. He didn't dare on such a morning to face the

father of the boy he had unwittingly and half-innocently murdered.

So, very early, as soon as the church was opened, he stole in

unobserved, and took a place by himself in the farthest corner of the

gallery. A pillar concealed him from view; for further security he

held his handkerchief constantly in front of his face, or shielded

himself behind one of the big free-seat prayer-books. Cleer came in

looking beautiful in her wedding dress; Mrs. Trevennack's pathetic

face glowed radiant for once in this final realization of her dearest

wishes. A single second only, near the end of the ceremony, Tyrrel

leaned forward incautiously, anxious to see Cleer at an important

point of the proceedings. At the very same instant Trevennack raised

his face. Their eyes met in a flash. Tyrrel drew back, horrorstruck,

and penitent at his own intrusion at such a critical moment. But,

strange to say, Trevennack took no overt notice. Had his wife only

known she would have sunk in her seat in her agony of fear. But

happily she didn't know. Trevennack went through the ceremony, all

outwardly calm; he gave no sign of what he had seen, even to his wife

herself. He buried it deep in his own heart. That made it all the more

dangerous.