The Project Gutenberg EBook of Michael’s Crag, by Grant Allen This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Michael’s Crag Author: Grant Allen Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5869] First Posted: September 15, 2002 Last Updated: September 10, 2018 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHAEL’S CRAG *** Etext produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team HTML file produced by David Widger
‘The fable of Bellerus old, Where the Great Vision of the guarded mount Looks towards Namancos and Bayona’s hold; Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth.’”“Yes, I KNOW them, of course,” Eustace answered with ingenuous shyness; “but as so often happens with poetry, to say the truth, I’m afraid I attached no very definite idea to them. The music so easily obscures the sense; though the moment you suggest it, I see they can’t possibly mean anyone but St. Michael.” “My father’s very much interested in the antiquities of Cornwall,” the girl Cleer put in, looking up at him somewhat timidly; “so he naturally knows all these things, and perhaps he expects others to know them unreasonably.” “We’ve every ground for knowing them,” the father went on, glancing down at her with tender affection. “We’re Cornish to the backbone—Cornish born and bred, if ever there were Cornishmen. Every man of my ancestors was a Tre, Pol, or Pen, to the tenth generation backward; and I’m descended from the Bassets, too—the Bassets of Tehidy. You must have heard of the Bassets in Cornish history. They owned St. Michael’s Mount before these new-fangled St. Aubyn people.” “It’s Lord St. Levan’s now, isn’t it?” Le Neve put in, anxious to show off his knowledge of the local aristocracy. “Yes, they’ve made him Lord St. Levan,” the dignified stranger answered, with an almost imperceptible curl of his delicate lower lip. “They’ve made him Lord St. Levan. The queen can make one anything. He was plain Sir John St. Aubyn before that, you know; his family bought the Mount from my ancestors—the Bassets of Tehidy. They’re new people at Marazion—new people altogether. They’ve only been there since 1660.” Le Neve smiled a quiet smile. That seemed to him in his innocence a fairly decent antiquity as things go nowadays. But the dignified stranger appeared to think so little of it that his new acquaintance abstained from making note or comment on it. He waited half a moment to see whether Cleer would speak again; he wanted to hear that pleasant voice once more; but as she held her peace, he merely raised his hat, and accepting the dismissal, continued his walk round the cliffs alone. Yet, somehow, the rest of the way, the figure of that statuesque stranger haunted him. He looked back once or twice. The descendant of the Bassets of Tehidy had now resumed his high pedestal upon the airy tor, and was gazing away seaward, like the mystic Great Vision of his own Miltonic quotation, toward the Spanish coast, wrapped round in a loose cloak of most poetic dimensions. Le Neve wondered who he was, and what errand could have brought him there. At the point called the Rill, he diverged from the path a bit, to get that beautiful glimpse down into the rock-strewn cove and smooth white sands at Kynance. A coastguard with brush and pail was busy as he passed by renewing the whitewash on the landmark boulders that point the path on dark nights to the stumbling wayfarer. Le Neve paused and spoke to him. “That’s a fine-looking man, my friend, the gentleman on the tor there,” he said, after a few commonplaces. “Do you happen to know his name? Is he spending the summer about here?” The man stopped in his work and looked up. His eye lighted with pleasure on the dignified stranger. “Yes; he’s one of the right sort, sir,” he answered, with a sort of proprietary pride in the distinguished figure. “A real old Cornish gentleman of the good old days, he is, if ever you see one. That’s Trevennack of Trevennack; and Miss Cleer’s his daughter. Fine old crusted Cornish names, every one of them; I’m a Cornishman myself, and I know them well, the whole grand lot of them. The Trevennacks and the Bassets, they was all one, time gone by; they owned St. Michael’s Mount, and Penzance, and Marazion, and Mullion here. They owned Penmorgan, too, afore the Tyrrels bought it up. Michael Basset Trevennack, that’s the gentleman’s full name; the eldest son of the eldest son is always a Michael, to keep up the memory of the times gone by, when they was Guardians of the Mount and St. Michael’s Constables. And the lady’s Miss Cleer, after St. Cleer of Cornwall—her that gives her name still to St. Cleer by Liskeard.” “And do they live here?” Le Neve asked, much interested in the intelligent local tone of the man’s conversation. “Lord bless you, no, sir. They don’t live nowhere. They’re in the service, don’t you see. They lives in Malta or Gibraltar, or wherever the Admiralty sends him. He’s an Admiralty man, he is, connected with the Vittling Yard. I was in the navy myself, on the good old Billy Ruffun, afore I was put in the Coastguards, and I knowed him well when we was both together on the Mediterranean Station. Always the same grand old Cornish gentleman, with them gracious manners, so haughty like, an’ yet so condescending, wherever they put him. A gentleman born. No gentleman on earth more THE gentleman all round than Trevennack of Trevennack.” “Then he’s staying down here on a visit?” Le Neve went on, curiously, peering over the edge of the cliffs, as he spoke, to observe the cormorants. “Don’t you go too nigh, sir,” the coastguard put in, warningly. “She’s slippery just there. Yes, they’re staying down in Oliver’s lodgings at Gunwalloe. He’s on leave, that’s where it is. Every three or four years he gets leave from the Vittling and comes home to England; and then he always ups and runs down to the Lizard, and wanders about on the cliffs by himself like this, with Miss Cleer to keep him company. He’s a chip of the old rock, he is—Cornish granite to the core, as the saying goes; and he can’t be happy away from it. You’ll see him any day standing like that on the very edge of the cliff, looking across over the water, as if he was a coastguard hisself, and always sort o’ perched on the highest bit of rock he can come nigh anywhere.” “He looks an able man,” Le Neve went on, still regarding the stranger, poised now as before on the very summit of the tor, with his cloak wrapped around him. “Able? I believe you! Why, he’s the very heart and soul, the brains and senses of the Vittling Department. The navy’d starve if it wasn’t for him. He’s a Companion of St. Michael and St. George, Mr. Trevennack is. ‘Tain’t every one as is a Companion of St. Michael and St. George. The queen made him that herself for his management of the Vittling.” “It’s a strange place for a man in his position to spend his holiday,” Le Neve went on, reflectively. “You’d think, coming back so seldom, he’d want to see something of London, Brighton, Scarborough, Scotland.” The coastguard looked up, and held his brush idle in one hand with a mysterious air. “Not when you come to know his history,” he answered, gazing hard at him. “Oh, there’s a history to him, is there?” Le Neve answered, not surprised. “Well, he certainly has the look of it.” The coastguard nodded his head and dropped his voice still lower. “Yes, there’s a history to him,” he replied. “And that’s why you’ll always see Trevennack of Trevennack on the top of the cliff, and never at the bottom.—Thank’ee very kindly, sir; it ain’t often we gets a chance of a good cigar at Kynance.—Well, it must be fifteen year now—or maybe sixteen—I don’t mind the right time—Trevennack came down in old Squire Tyrrel’s days, him as is buried at Mullion Church town, and stopped at Gunwalloe, same as he might be stopping there in his lodgings nowadays. He had his only son with him, too, a fine-looking young gentleman, they say, for his age, for I wasn’t here then—I was serving my time under Admiral De Horsey on the good old Billy Ruffun—the very picture of Miss Cleer, and twelve year old or thereabouts; and they called him Master Michael, the same as they always call the eldest boy of the Trevennacks of Trevennack. Aye, and one day they two, father and son, were a-strolling on the beach under the cliffs by Penmorgan—mind them stones on the edge, sir; they’re powerful loose—don’t you drop none over—when, just as you might loosen them pebbles there with your foot, over came a shower o’ small bits from the cliff on top, and as sure as you’re livin’, hit the two on ‘em right so, sir. Mr. Trevennack himself, he wasn’t much hurt—just bruised a bit on the forehead, for he was wearing a Scotch cap; but Master Michael, well, it caught him right on the top of the head, and afore they knowed what it was, it smashed his skull in. Aye, that it did, sir, just so; it smashed the boy’s skull in. They carried him home, and cut the bone out, and trepanned him; but bless you, it wa’n’t no good; he lingered on for a night, and then, afore morning, he died, insensible.” “What a terrible story!” Le Neve exclaimed, with a face of horror, recoiling instinctively from the edge of the cliff that had wrought this evil. “Aye, you may well say so. It was rough on him,” the coastguard went on, with the calm criticism of his kind. “His only son—and all in a minute like, as you may term it—such a promising young gentleman! It was rough, terrible rough on him. So from that day to this, whenever Trevennack has a holiday, down he comes here to Gunwalloe, and walks about the cliffs, and looks across upon the rocks by Penmorgan Point, or stands on the top of Michael’s Crag, just over against the spot where his boy was hurted. An’ he never wants to go nowhere else in all England, but just to stand like that on the very edge of the cliff, and look over from atop, and brood, and think about it.” As the man spoke, it flashed across Le Neve’s mind at once that Trevennack’s voice had quivered with a strange thrill of emotion as he uttered that line, no doubt pregnant with meaning for him. “Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.” He was thinking of his own boy, most likely, not of the poet’s feigned Lycidas. “He’ll stand like that for hours,” the coastguard went on confidentially, “musing like to himself, with Miss Cleer by his side, reading in her book or doing her knitting or something. But you couldn’t get him, for love or money, to go BELOW the cliffs, no, not if you was to kill him. He’s AFRAID of going below—that’s where it is; he always thinks something’s sure to tumble from the top on him. Natural enough, too, after all that’s been. He likes to get as high as ever he can in the air, where he can see all around him, and be certain there ain’t anyone above to let anything drop as might hurt him. Michael’s Crag’s where he likes best to stand, on the top there by the Horse; he always chooses them spots. In Malta it was San Mickayly; and in Gibraltar it was the summit of Europa Point, by the edge of the Twelve Apostles’ battery.” “How curious!” Le Neve exclaimed. “It’s just the other way on now, with my friend Mr. Tyrrel. I’m stopping at Penmorgan, but Mr. Tyrrel won’t go on TOP of the cliffs for anything. He says he’s afraid he might let something drop by accident on the people below him.” The coastguard grew suddenly graver. “Like enough,” he said, stroking his chin. “Like enough; and right, too, for him, sir. You see, he’s a Tyrrel, and he’s bound to be cautious.’ “Why so?” Le Neve asked, somewhat puzzled. “Why a Tyrrel more than the rest of us?” The man hesitated and stared hard at him. “Well, it’s like this, sir,” he answered at last, with the shamefaced air of the intelligent laboring man who confesses to a superstition. “We Cornish are old-fashioned, and we has our ideas. The Tyrrels are new people like, in Cornwall, as we say; they came in only with Cromwell’s folk, when he fought the Grenvilles; but it’s well beknown in the county bad luck goes with them. You see, they’re descended from that Sir Walter Tyrrel you’ll read about in the history books, him as killed King William Rufious in the New Forest. You’ll hear all about it at Rufious’ Stone, where the king was killed; Sir Walter, he drew, and he aimed at a deer, and the king was standing by; and the bullet, it glanced aside—or maybe it was afore bullets, and then it’d be an arrow; but anyhow, one or t’other, it hit the king, and he fell, and died there. The stone’s standing to this day on the place where he fell, and I’ve seen it, and read of it when I was in hospital at Netley. But Sir Walter, he got clear away, and ran across to France; and ever since that time they’ve called the eldest son of the Tyrrels Walter, same as they’ve called the eldest son of the Trevennacks Michael. But they say every Walter Tyrrel that’s born into the world is bound, sooner or later, to kill his man unintentional. So he do right to avoid going too near the cliffs, I say. We shouldn’t tempt Providence. And the Tyrrels is all a conscientious people.”
“One of the seven who nearest to the throne Stand ready at command, and are as eyes That run through all the heavens, or down to the earth,”and yet to have to sit at a desk all day long, with a pen in your hand, in obedience to the orders of the First Lord of the Admiralty! It’s hard to know you can
“Bear swift errands over moist and dry, O’er sea and land,”as his laureate Milton puts it, and yet be doomed to keep still hour after hour in a stuffy office, or to haggle over details of pork and cheese in a malodorous victualing yard. Trevennack knew his “Paradise Lost” by heart—it was there, indeed, that he had formed his main ideas of the archangelic character; and he repeated the sonorous lines to himself, over and over again, in a ringing, loud voice, as he roamed the free moor or poised light on the craggy pinnacles. This was the world that he loved, these wild rolling uplands, these tall peaks of rock, these great granite boulders; he had loved them always, from the very beginning of things; had he not poised so of old, ages and ages gone by, on that famous crag
“Of alabaster, piled up to the clouds, Conspicuous far, winding with one ascent Accessible from earth, one entrance high; The rest was craggy cliff that overhung Still as it rose, impossible to climb.”So he had poised in old days; so he poised himself now, with Cleer by his side, an angel confessed, on those high tors of Dartmoor. But amid all the undulations of that great stony ocean, one peak there was that delighted Trevennack’s soul more than any of the rest—a bold russet crest, bursting suddenly through the heathery waste in abrupt ascent, and scarcely to be scaled, save on one difficult side, like its Miltonic prototype. Even Cleer, who accompanied her father everywhere on his rambles, clad in stout shoes and coarse blue serge gown—. for Dartmoor is by no means a place to be approached by those who, like Agag, “walk delicately”—even Cleer didn’t know that this craggy peak, jagged and pointed like some Alpine or dolomitic aiguille, was known to all the neighboring shepherds around as St. Michael’s Tor, from its now forgotten chapel. A few wild Moorland sheep grazed now and again on the short herbage at its base; but for the most part father and daughter found themselves alone amid that gorse-clad solitude. There Michael Trevennack would stand erect, with head bare and brows knit, in the full eye of the sun, for hour after hour at a time, fighting the devil within him. And when he came back at night, tired out with his long tramp across the moor and his internal struggle, he would murmur to his wife, “I’ve conquered him to-day. It was a hard, hard fight! But I conquered! I conquered him!” Up in the north, meanwhile, Eustace Le Neve worked away with a will at the idea for his viaduct. As he rightly wrote to Cleer, the need itself inspired him. Love is a great engineer, and Eustace learned fast from him. He was full of the fresh originality of youth; and the place took his fancy and impressed itself upon him. Gazing at it each day, there rose up slowly by degrees in his mind, like a dream, the picture of a great work on a new and startling principle—a modification of the cantilever to the necessities of the situation. Bit by bit he worked it out, and reduced his first floating conception to paper; then he explained it to Walter Tyrrel, who listened hard to his explanations, and tried his best to understand the force of the technical arguments. Enthusiasm is catching; and Le Neve was enthusiastic about his imaginary viaduct, till Walter Tyrrel in turn grew almost as enthusiastic as the designer himself over its beauty and utility. So charmed was he with the idea, indeed, that when Le Neve had at last committed it all to paper, he couldn’t resist the temptation of asking leave to show it to Sir Edward Jones, whom he had already consulted as to Eustace’s prospects. Eustace permitted him, somewhat reluctantly, to carry the design to the great railway king, and on the very first day of their return to London, in the beginning of October, Tyrrel took the papers round to Sir Edward’s house in Onslow Gardens. The millionaire inspected it at first with cautious reserve. He was a good business man, and he hated enthusiasm—except in money matters. But gradually, as Walter Tyrrel explained to him the various points in favor of the design, Sir Edward thawed. He looked into it carefully. Then he went over the calculations of material and expense with a critical eye. At the end he leant back in his study chair, with one finger on the elevation and one eye on the figures, while he observed with slow emphasis: “This is a very good design. Why, man, its just about twenty times better than Erasmus Walker’s.” “Then you think it may succeed?” Tyrrel cried, with keen delight, as anxious for Cleer’s sake as if the design were his own. “You think they may take it?” “Oh dear, no,” Sir Edward answered, confidently, with a superior smile. “Not the slightest chance in the world of that. They’d never even dream of it. It’s novel, you see, novel, while Walker’s is conventional. And they’ll take the conventional one. But its a first rate design for all that, I can tell you. I never saw a better one.” “Well, but how do you know what Walker’s is like?” Tyrrel asked, somewhat dismayed at the practical man’s coolness. “Oh, he showed it me last night,” Sir Edward answered, calmly. “A very decent design, on the familiar lines, but not fit to hold a candle to Le Neve’s, of course; any journeyman could have drafted it. Still, it has Walker’s name to it, don’t you see—it has Walker’s name to it; that means everything.” “Is it cheaper than this would be,” Tyrrel asked, for Le Neve had laid stress on the point that for economy of material, combined with strength of weight-resisting power, his own plan was remarkable. “Cheaper!” Sir Edward echoed. “Oh dear, no. By no means. Nothing could very well be cheaper than this. There’s genius in its construction, don’t you see? It’s a new idea, intelligently applied to the peculiarities and difficulties of a very unusual position, taking advantage most ingeniously of the natural support afforded by the rock and the inequalities of the situation; I should say your friend is well within the mark in the estimate he gives.” He drummed his finger and calculated mentally. “It’d save the company from a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand pounds, I fancy,” he said, ruminating, after a minute. “And do you mean to tell me,” Tyrrel exclaimed, taken aback, “men of business like the directors of the Great North Midland will fling away two hundred thousand pounds of the shareholder’s money as if it were dirt, by accepting Walker’s plan when they might accept this one?” Sir Edward opened his palms, like a Frenchman, in front of him. It was a trick he had picked up on foreign bourses. “My dear fellow,” he answered, compassionately, “directors are men, and to err is human. These great North Midland people are mere flesh and blood, and none of them very brilliant. They know Walker, and they’ll be largely guided by Walker’s advice in the matter. If he saw his way to make more out of contracting for carrying out somebody else’s design, no doubt he’d do it. But failing that, he’ll palm his own off upon them, and Stillingfleet’ll accept it. You see with how little wisdom the railways of the world are governed! People think, if they get Walker to do a thing for them, they shift the responsibility upon Walker’s shoulders. And knowing nothing themselves, they feel that’s a great point; it saves them trouble and salves their consciences.” A new idea seemed to cross Tyrrel’s mind. He leant forward suddenly. “But as to safety,” he asked, with some anxiety, “viewed as a matter of life and death, I mean? Which of these two viaducts is likely to last longest, to be freest from danger, to give rise in the end to least and fewest accidents?” “Why, your friend Le Neve’s, of course,” the millionaire answered, without a moment’s hesitation. “You think so?” “I don’t think so at all, my dear fellow, I know it. I’m sure of it. Look here,” and he pulled out a design from a pigeon-hole in his desk; “this is in confidence, you understand. I oughtn’t to show it to you; but I can trust your honor. Here’s Walker’s idea. It isn’t an idea at all, in fact, it’s just the ordinary old stone viaduct, with the ordinary dangers, and the ordinary iron girders—nothing in any way new or original. It’s respectable mediocrity. On an affair like that, and with this awkward curve, too, just behind taking-off point, the liability to accident is considerably greater than in a construction like Le Neve’s, where nothing’s left to chance, and where every source of evil, such as land-springs, or freshets, or weakening, or concussion, is considered beforehand and successfully provided against. If a company only thought of the lives and limbs of its passengers—which it never does, of course—and had a head on its shoulders, which it seldom possesses, Le Neve’s is undoubtedly the design it would adopt in the interests of security.” Tyrrel drew a long breath. “And you know all this,” he said, “and yet you won’t say a word for Le Neve to the directors. A recommendation from YOU, you see—” Sir Edward shrugged his shoulders. “Impossible!” he answered, at once. “It would be a great breach of confidence. Remember, Walker showed me his design as a friend, and after having looked at it I couldn’t go right off and say to Stillingfleet, ‘I’ve seen Walker’s plans, and also another fellow’s, and I advise you, for my part, not to take my friend’s.’ It wouldn’t be gentlemanly.” Tyrrel paused and reflected. He saw the dilemma. And yet, what was the breach of confidence or of etiquette to the deadly peril to life and limb involved in choosing the worst design instead of the better one? It was a hard nut to crack. He could see no way out of it. “Besides,” Sir Edward went on, musingly, “even if I told them they wouldn’t believe me. Whatever Walker sends in they’re sure to accept it. They’ve more confidence, I feel sure, in Walker than in anybody.” A light broke in on Walter Tyrrel’s mind. “Then the only way,” he said, looking up, “would be ... to work upon Walker; induce him NOT to send in, if that can be managed.” “But it can’t be,” Sir Edward answered, with brisk promptitude. “Walker’s a money-grubbing chap. If he sees a chance of making a few thousands more anywhere, depend upon it he’ll make ‘em. He’s a martyr to money, he is. He toils and slaves for L. s. d. {money} all his life. He has no other interests.” “What can he want with it?” Tyrrel exclaimed. “He’s a bachelor, isn’t he, without wife or child? What can a man like that want to pile up filthy lucre for?” “Can’t say, I’m sure,” Sir Edward answered, good humoredly. “I have my quiver full of them myself, and every guinea I get I find three of my children are quarreling among themselves for ten and sixpence apiece of it. But what Walker can want with money heaven only knows. If Iwere a bachelor, now, and had an estate of my own in Cornwall, say, or Devonshire, I’m sure I don’t know what I’d do with my income.” Tyrrel rose abruptly. The chance words had put an idea into his head. “What’s Walker’s address?” he asked, in a very curt tone. Sir Edward gave it him. “You’ll find him a tough nut, though,” he added, with a smile, as he followed the enthusiastic young Cornishman to the door. “But I see you’re in earnest. Good luck go with you!”
“... to his proper shape returned A seraph winged: six wings he wore, to shade His lineaments divine; the pair that clad Each shoulder broad, came mantling o’er his breast With regal ornament; the middle pair Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round Skirted his loins and thighs, the third his feet Shadowed from either heel with feathered mail.”And then they talked to HIM about the difficulties of building a few hundred yards of iron bridge across a miserable valley! Why, was it not he and his kind of whom it was written that they came
“Gliding through the even On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star In autumn thwarts the night?”A viaduct indeed! a paltry human viaduct! What need, with such as him, to talk of bridges or viaducts? As Eustace left that evening, Mrs. Trevennack followed him out, and beckoned him mysteriously into the dining-room at the side for a minute’s conversation. The young man followed her, much wondering what this strange move could mean. Mrs. Trevennack fell back, half faint, into a chair, and gazed at him with a frightened look very rare on that brave face of hers. “Oh, Eustace,” she said, hurriedly, “do you know what’s happened? Mr. Tyrrel’s in town. Michael saw him to-day. He was driving near Paddington. Now do you think... you could do anything to keep him out of Michael’s way? I dread their meeting. I don’t know whether you know it, but Michael has some grudge against him. For Cleer’s sake and for yours, do keep them apart, I beg of you. If they meet, I can’t answer for what harm may come of it.” Eustace was taken aback at her unexpected words. Not even to Cleer had he ever hinted in any way at the strange disclosure Walter Tyrrel made to him that first day at Penmorgan. He hesitated how to answer her without betraying his friend’s secret. At last he said, as calmly as he could, “I guessed, to tell you the truth, there was some cause of quarrel. I’ll do my very best to keep Tyrrel out of the way, Mrs. Trevennack, as you wish it. But I’m afraid he won’t be going down from town for some time to come, for he told me only to-day he had business at his lawyer’s, in Victoria Street, Westminster, which might keep him here a fortnight. Indeed, I rather doubt whether he’ll care to go down again until he knows for certain, one way or the other, about the Wharfedale Viaduct.” Mrs. Trevennack sank back in her chair, very pale and wan. “Oh, what shall we do if they meet?” she cried, wringing her hands in despair. “What shall we do if they meet? This is more than I can endure. Eustace, Eustace, I shall break down. My burden’s too heavy for me!” The young man leant over her like a son. “Mrs. Trevennack,” he said, gently, smoothing her silvery white hair with sympathetic fingers, “I think I can keep them apart. I’ll speak seriously to Tyrrel about it. He’s a very good fellow, and he’ll do anything I ask of him. I’m sure he’ll try to avoid falling in with your husband. He’s my kindest of friends; and he’d cut off his hand to serve me.” One word of sympathy brought tears into Mrs. Trevennack’s eyes. She looked up through them, and took the young man’s hand in hers. “It was HE who spoke to Erasmus Walker, I suppose,” she murmured, slowly. And Eustace, nodding assent, answered in a low voice, “It was he, Mrs. Trevennack. He’s a dear good fellow.” The orphaned mother clasped her hands. This was too, too much. And Michael, if the fit came upon him, would strangle that young man, who was doing his best after all for Cleer and Eustace! But that night in his bed Trevennack lay awake, chuckling grimly to himself in an access of mad triumph. He fancied he was fighting his familiar foe, on a tall Cornish peak, in archangelic fashion; and he had vanquished his enemy, and was trampling on him furiously. But the face of the fallen seraph was not the face of Michael Angelo’s Satan, as he oftenest figured it—for Michael Angelo, his namesake, was one of Trevennack’s very chiefest admirations;—it was the face of Walter Tyrrel, who killed his dear boy, writhing horribly in the dust, and crying for mercy beneath him.
“Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air Made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields Blazed opposite, while expectation stood In horror.”He mouthed out the lines in a perfect ecstasy of madness. It was delightful to be alone. He could give his soul full vent. He knew he was mad. He knew he was an archangel. And all the way down he repeated to himself, many times over, that he would trample under foot that base fiend Walter Tyrrel. Satan has many disguises; squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, he sat in Paradise; for
“...spirits as they please Can limb themselves, and color, or size assume As likes them best, condense or rare.”If he himself, Michael, prince of celestial hosts, could fit his angelic majesty to the likeness of a man, Trevennack—could not Satan meet him on his own ground, and try to thwart him as of old in the likeness of a man, Walter Tyrrel—his dear boy’s murderer. As far as Exeter this was his one train of thought. But from there to Plymouth new passengers got in. They turned the current. Trevennack changed his mind rapidly. Another mood came over him. His wife’s words struck him vaguely in some tenderer place. “Fight the devil WITHIN you, Michael. Fight him there, and conquer him.” That surely was fitter far for an angelic nature. That foeman was worthier his celestial steel. “Turn homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth!” Not his to do vengeance on the man Walter Tyrrel. Not his to play the divine part of vindicator. In his madness even Trevennack was magnanimous. Leave the creature to the torment of his own guilty soul. Do angels care for thrusts of such as he? Tantaene animis coelestibus irae? At Ivybridge station the train slowed, and then stopped. Trevennack, accustomed to the Cornish express, noted the stoppage with surprise. “We’re not down to pull up here!” he said, quickly, to the guard. “No sir,” the guard answered, touching his hat with marked respect, for he knew the Admiralty official well. “Signals are against us. Line’s blocked as far as Plymouth.” “I’ll get out here, then,” Trevennack said, in haste; and the guard opened the door. A new idea had rushed suddenly into the madman’s head. This was St. Michael’s Day—his own day; and there was St. Michael’s Tor—his own tor—full in sight before him. He would go up there this very evening, and before the eyes of all the world, in his celestial armor, taking Lucy’s advice, do battle with and quell this fierce devil within him. No sooner thought than done. Fiery hot within, he turned out of the gate, and as the shades of autumn evening began to fall, walked swiftly up the moor toward the tor and the uplands. As he walked his heart beat to a lilting rhythm within him. “Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince!—Go, Michael!—Go, Michael! Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince—Go, Michael!—Go, Michael!” The moor was draped in fog. It was a still, damp evening. Swirling clouds rose slowly up, and lifted at times and disclosed the peaty hollows, the high tors, the dusky heather. But Trevennack stumbled on, o’er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, as chance might lead him, clambering ever toward his goal, now seen, now invisible—the great stack of wild rock that crowned the gray undulating moor to northward. Often he missed his way; often he floundered for awhile in deep ochreous bottoms, up to his knees in soft slush, but with some strange mad instinct he wandered on nevertheless, and slowly drew near the high point he was aiming at. By this time it was pitch dark. The sun had set and fog obscured the starlight. But Trevennack, all on fire, wandered madly forward and scaled the rocky tor by the well-known path, guided not by sight, but by pure instinctive groping. In his present exalted state, indeed, he had no need of eyes. What matters earthly darkness to angelic feet? He could pick his own way through the gloom, though all the fiends from hell in serried phalanx broke loose to thwart him. He would reach the top at last; reach the top; reach the top, and there fight that old serpent who lay in wait to destroy him. At last he gained the peak, and stood with feet firmly planted on the little rocky platform. Now, Satan, come on! Ha, traitor, come, if you dare! Your antagonist is ready for you! Cr’r’r’k! as he stood there, waiting, a terrible shock brought him to himself all at once with startling suddenness. Trevennack drew back aghast and appalled. Even in his mad exaltation this strange assault astonished him. He had expected a struggle, indeed; he had expected a conflict, but with a spiritual foe; to meet his adversary in so bodily a form as this, wholly startled and surprised him. For it was a fierce earthly shock he received upon his right leg as he mounted the rocky platform. Satan had been lying in wait for him then, expecting him, waylaying him, and in corporeal presence too. For this was a spear of good steel! This was a solid Thing that assaulted him as he rose—assaulted him with frantic rage and uncontrollable fury! For a moment Trevennack was stunned—the sharpness of the pain and the suddenness of the attack took both breath and sense away from him. He stood there one instant, irresolute, before he knew how to comport himself. But before he could make up his mind—cr’r’k, a second time—the Presence had assailed him again, fighting with deadly force, and in a white heat of frenzy. Trevennack had no leisure to think what this portent might mean. Man or fiend, it was a life-and-death struggle now between them. He stood face to face at last in mortal conflict with his materialized enemy. What form the Evil Thing had assumed to suit his present purpose Trevennack knew not, nor did he even care. Stung with pain and terror he rushed forward blindly upon his enraged assailant, and closed with him at once, tooth and nail, in a deadly grapple. A more terrible battle man and brute never fought. Trevennack had no sword, no celestial panoply. But he could wrestle like a Cornishman. He must trample his foe under foot, then, in this final struggle, by sheer force of strong thews and strained muscles alone. He fought the Creature as it stood, flinging his arms round it wildly. The Thing seemed to rear itself as if on cloven hoofs. Trevennack seized it round the waist, and grasping it hard in an iron grip, clung to it with all the wild energy of madness. Yield, Satan, yield! But still the Creature eluded him. Once more it drew back a pace—he felt its hot breath, he smelt its hateful smell—and prepared to rush again at him. Trevennack bent down to receive its attack, crouching. The Creature burst full tilt on him—it almost threw him over. Trevennack caught it in his horror and awe—caught it bodily by the horns—for horned it seemed to be, as well as cloven-footed—and by sheer force of arm held it off from him an elbow’s length one minute. The Thing struggled and reared again. Yes, yes, it was Satan—he felt him all over now—a devil undisguised—but Satan rather in medieval than in Miltonic fashion. His skin was rough and hairy as a satyr’s; his odor was foul; his feet were cleft; his horns sharp and terrible. He flung him from him horrified. Quick as lightning the demon rose again, and tilted fiercely at him once more. It was a death fight between those two for that rocky platform. Should Satan thus usurp St. Michael’s Tor? Ten thousand times, no! Yield, yield! No surrender! Each knew the ground well, and even in the dark and in the mad heat of the conflict, each carefully avoided the steep edge of the precipice. But the fiend knew it best, apparently. He had been lying in a snug nook, under lee of a big rock, sharpening his sword on its side, before Trevennack came up there. Against this rock he took his stand, firm as a rock himself, and seemed to defy his enemy’s arms to dislodge him from his position. Trevennack’s hands and legs were streaming now with blood. His left arm was sorely wounded. His thumb hung useless. But with the strange energy of madness he continued the desperate conflict against his unseen foe. Never should Michael turn and yield to the deadly assaults of the Evil One! He rushed on blindly once more, and the Adversary stooped to oppose him. Again, a terrible shock, it almost broke both his knees; but by sheer strength of nerve he withstood it, still struggling. Then they closed in a final grapple. It was a tooth-and-nail conflict. They fought one another with every weapon they possessed; each hugged each in their fury; they tilted, and tore, and wrestled, and bit, and butted. Trevennack’s coat was in ribbons, his arm was ripped and bleeding; but he grasped the Adversary still, he fought blindly to the end. Down, Satan, I defy thee! It was a long, fierce fight! At last, bit by bit, the Enemy began to yield. Trevennack had dashed him against the crag time after time like a log, till he too was torn and hurt and bleeding. His flesh was like pulp. He could endure the unequal fight no longer. He staggered and gave way. A great joy rose up tremulous in Trevennack’s heart. Even without his celestial sword, then, he had vanquished his enemy. He seized the Creature round the middle, dragged it, a dead weight, in his weary arms, to the edge of the precipice, and dropped it, feebly resisting, on to the bare rock beneath him. Victory! Victory! Once more, a great victory! He stood on the brink of the tor, and poised himself, as if for flight, in his accustomed attitude. But he was faint from loss of blood, and his limbs shook under him. A light seemed to break before his blinded eyes. Victory! Victory! It was the light from heaven! He stared forward to welcome it. The brink of the precipice? What was THAT to such as he? He would spread his wings—for once—at last—thus! thus! and fly forward on full pinions to his expected triumph! He raised both arms above his head, and spread them out as if for flight. His knees trembled fearfully. His fingers quivered. Then he launched himself on the air and fell. His eyes closed half-way. He lost consciousness. He fainted. Before he had reached the bottom he was wholly insensible. Next day it was known before noon in London that a strange and inexplicable accident had befallen Mr. Michael Trevennack C.M.G., the well-known Admiralty official, on the moor near Ivybridge. Mr. Trevennack, it seemed, had started by the Cornish express for Falmouth, on official business; but the line being blocked between Ivybridge and Plymouth, he had changed his plans and set out to walk, as was conjectured, by a devious path across the moor to Tavistock. Deceased knew the neighborhood well, and was an enthusiastic admirer of its tors and uplands. But fog coming on, the unfortunate gentleman, it was believed, had lost his way, and tried to shelter himself for a time behind a tall peak of rock which he used frequently to visit during his summer holidays. There he was apparently attacked by a savage moorland ram—one of that wild breed of mountain sheep peculiar to Dartmoor, and famous for the strength and ferocity often displayed by the fathers of the flock. Mr. Trevennack was unarmed, and a terrible fight appeared to have taken place between these ill-matched antagonists on the summit of the rocks, full details of which, the Telegram said in its curt business-like way, were too ghastly for publication. After a long and exhausting struggle, however, the combatants must either have slipped on the wet surface and tumbled over the edge of the rocks together in a deadly grapple, or else, as seemed more probable from the positions in which the bodies were found, the unhappy gentleman had just succeeded in flinging his assailant over, and then, faint from loss of blood, had missed his footing and fallen beside his dead antagonist. At any rate, when the corpse was discovered life had been extinct for several hours; and it was the opinion of the medical authorities who conducted the post-mortem that death was due not so much to the injuries themselves as to asphyxiation in the act of falling.
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