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BECAUSE THE SUN was directly behind, sinking slowly into a dun-colored mass of cloud, Elizabeth saw his shadow sprawled upon the grass beside her before she turned to look upon Old Jerry himself. The man was scarcely less grotesque than this same shadow. He gave the impression of being all shoulders—and eyes! Childhood deformities had kept pace through the successive ages of man to leave at last a withered hulk of humanity. Shoulders; great, broad hump-backed shoulders that were almost ape-like. Eyes; queer little sparkling beads that gave a suggestion of almost uncanny intelligence, with just a softening, humanizing network of creases at the corners.

“Mornin’, Miss Garden!”

“Oh, hello, Jerry!”

Nobody ever thought to call him anything but Jerry to his face, “Old Jerry” behind his back. Somewhere in the mists of the past a mother had brought Jerry into being, his names—Christian and surname—had been inscribed carefully in church and civil records and written by love upon the tablets of a mother’s heart.

But now he was just “Old Jerry.” None knew his age; few his history beyond rumor, speculation, and tradition. He himself laid claim, with seeming authenticity, to being the oldest living inhabitant of this little resort by the sea. Nature, it seemed, having taken from him proportion and symmetry of shape, had sought to compensate with the gift of some strange vitality.

Long years, now, he had lived alone—largely upon public bounty which, with dignity, he accepted—in the little tumble-down cottage far along the cliff. Meals were moveable feasts with Jerry, which perhaps accounted for his invariable habit of accosting all his friends with a greeting designed for the period preceding the noon meal, whatever the position of nature’s timepiece, the sun.

A GREAT CALM held the ocean. A hundred and fifty feet below the cliff-top where the girl and Jerry stood lay long reaches of sand, rippled into brown ruts and hollows and ridges by the action of wave and tide. Beyond, far out, the tide ebbed in its last outward sucking before the dull surge of breaking waves, ceaseless even in such a calm as this, would begin to creep up towards the crumbling caves and grottoes of the cliff. Elizabeth stood watching the scene, Old Jerry’s eyes quizzically upon her.

“You like to watch her, miss?”

“You mean the sea? I love it, Jerry. It has so many moods—always different, changing.”

“Ah, miss, ’tis myself that knows it. Always changing, that’s it. Love it? Well, miss, folks come down like you of a summer and see her a day like this, and say how calm an’ peaceful she is, an’ what sweet songs the waves are singin’ and all. Oh, I know—I’ve heard ’em—and I just sit back and smile at ’em.”

Jerry’s mouth wrinkled into a toothless chuckle, then the smile died. He said, almost in a whisper, “Are you never afeared of her, miss?”

“Of the sea? Why, no.”

This was truthful. It rarely entered Elizabeth’s pretty, dark-haired, little head to be fearful of any created thing. Someone once characterized her as having all the wild, untamed nature of a filly without its timorousness. Life was a thing demanding tremendous vivacity, and a capacity for joy; the world a playground for youth.

JERRY chuckled again. He said: “You’re like the rest of ’em. But I know her.” A gnarled fist shot out defiantly towards the gray-blue shimmering expanse beyond. “She cheated me, she stole from me before. Look, miss!”

He pointed over the precipitous bluff to the sands below.

“See how nice it looks, like gold in the sunshine, but I know it—when she comes leapin’ and snortin’ and foamin’ in, how that sand sucks at the feet and tries to steal folks’ lives. I know too” (Jerry was very confidential), “though they laugh at old Jerry down t’ the village. I know that every day she’s eatin’ away at this cliff and some day there’ll be trouble. Some day soon.”

Elizabeth laughed, a little silvery peal, accompanied by a smile that few of the opposite sex could withstand. But Old Jerry remained unimpressed. A blaze lit his eyes.

“Just like the rest of ’em. Laugh—laugh at old Jerry! I know—because I know her. She’s gettin’ ready now to take another bite out of the cliff. Look!”

His long arm shot out, sweeping towards the west where cloud banks were obscuring the blood red disk of the sun, then to the eastward out across the sea. A peculiar mist veiled the horizon, the dead-calm expanse of water had lost its sunlit glitter. “Something goin’ to happen. I know it. Somethin’ tells me, just like it told me that time before. Harkee!—don’t ye hear her talkin’ down there for all that she looks so peaceful? Just like a woman mutterin’ when she’s sullen, and angry-like.”

Elizabeth did not answer. Old Jerry, muttering to himself still, plodded on his way along the cliff. The girl had reverted, with characteristic suddenness, to her own affairs, and was watching some pieces of white paper, fluttering on the sand below, caught in a little eddying gust of wind.

PRESENTLY, humming a queer little tune, Elizabeth went slowly along the crest towards the cottage that for two months now had been the family’s summer stamping ground—a pretty, lawn-surrounded place with an exceptional view that the jutting out of that particular bit of cliff afforded.

A man, immaculate in golfing flannels, stood on the edge of the lawn practicing imaginary drives. He waved a cheery greeting to the girl. Even a casual observer, seeing these two together, would have recognized the striking family likeness and probably classified them as brother and sister did further observation not reveal slight traces of middle life that suggested father and daughter. The same straight-limbed, decently tall figures; the same dark hair and eyes; the same look in the eyes—a careless, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, hail-fellow-well-met look that was far from being a true index of character.

“Hullo, Beth.”

“Hullo, Dad. You’re home early.”

“Too beastly sticky on the links. There’s not a breath of air.”

He made another swing with his club. A little powdery puff of dust swirled eddying away, landward.

“The wiseacres down the village promise a blow by night. Wanless sent a message for you. They’re having a little affair over at Inchcliffe Club house tonight; he wants us to run over with him. He’ll call at eight with his car. I told him yes—was that right?”

The girl’s eyes sparkled.

“Ra-ther. It’s been slow as a funeral around here the last week. Wait, though—can I?”

“Come on now, Beth, don’t be a spoil-sport. Your mother won’t mind—she’s fonder of her books than of us.”

Their eyes met suddenly, and shifted. A little twinge of conscience came to the girl. But she said:

“Mother will be all right, I suppose. It’s Lynn.”

“Lynn?”

“He’s written to say he’s arriving on the ten o’clock, and will come right up to the house unless I meet him.”

“I thought he was away on a special business trip.”

Elizabeth poked savagely at a dandelion with the toe of a well-shod foot.

“He’s—peeved about something. Oh—I suppose I shouldn’t have written him that silly letter. I jollied him about Bob Wanless—Lynn is so deliciously funny when he’s jealous. I was only fooling, of course, but he thinks I’m serious. He’s such a terribly serious person.” Elizabeth sighed.

Richard Garden threw back his shapely head and laughed.

“Do Mr. Lynnwood Forbes good,” he opined. “Doesn’t do for these young gentlemen to get too cocksure. Time enough when the clerical Amen ends the ceremony and begins married life.”

HE PICKED Up his golf-bag, replacing his driver, and started for the house. A sudden breeze from the ocean lifted his cap and carried it ahead of them in a little whirl of dust. They followed, boy and girl like in their laughter, in merry chase. Breathless, but triumphant, they reached the house. All traces of work had vanished from Elizabeth’s eyes; gone was the memory of that savage moment when she had torn Lynn’s stupidly serious letter into fragments, and tossed them down a hundred feet or more to the sands up which, already, the gray line of surf was slowly creeping.

II

THE life of Constance Garden was a thing of passive resignation rather than active struggle. And yet it was something more. Tranquillity of countenance when the heart bears a constant burden of unrest is a thing not to be gained without some sustaining power. Perhaps the woman herself had never thought to analyze it, but the power that had enabled her to take—without reserve of heart or mind—Richard Garden for “better or for worse” still held her through the years.

Of late a new source of unquiet had come to distress her. Elizabeth was no longer a girl, but a woman. Twenty-two years now since the happiness of motherhood had been Constance Garden’s—somehow the years had flown, and it seemed incredible that the merry childhood and the rollicking teen-age were past already. To see Elizabeth at work or play, to hear her speak, was sufficient to discredit her years.

“Just like her father,” Constance Garden would tell herself, and always, in the telling, feel a quick contraction of heart.

“Yes, what a carefree, light-hearted pair. I don’t know that I’d want them otherwise—and yet?” There was Lynn Forbes, for instance, whose ring Elizabeth was even now wearing. She felt a pang of sympathy for him. He never spoke to her of his troubles, but her heart understood, because it, too, had suffered.

Smiling, she watched them now race up to the house, breathlessly, demanding cold drinks and what not, in spite of her expostulations that they would spoil their appetites for the evening meal.

“We’ll just have a snack,” Richard told her, “Beth and I are going over to the Inchcliffe Club for an affair, and they’re strong on eats over there. Bob Wanless is calling for us at eight.”

“Oh!” Patient resignation triumphed again, but it took a moment or two of unnecessary adjustment of the golf-bag he had deposited in the hall to prevent a break. Sometimes Mrs. Garden felt that her nerves were not what they used to be.

“What’s the matter? You don’t seem enthusiastic. We thought you’d be quite happy as usual with your books.”

CONSTANCE turned away again. When the flood-tide of love had swept them before it they had shared these very books together; she had often wondered since how much of a trial that feature of the courtship must have been to Richard. She spoke to Elizabeth:

“I thought you said Lynn was coming?”

“He is. Tell him he can bunk in the spare room, and I’ll see him in the morning. Dad and I’ll be late.”

“Beth, dear! Do you think it just fair to Lynn—running off this way?”

“Mother—please! Every time I’m going to have a little fun you drag up Lynn like a bogey-man to spoil things.”

The blaze in the girl’s eyes was genuine. She said, tartly:

“Sometimes I think I—almost hate him!”

“Beth, my dear! How can you talk that way, even in fun, when you’re wearing his ring, and all?”

“I don’t know that it is in fun.”

Richard Garden interposed.

“Here you two, cut out that stuff. Let the girl alone, Constance, she doesn’t mean any harm. She’ll only be young once.”

CONSTANCE said nothing. Elizabeth ran upstairs to her room; the door banged behind her. Garden looked at his wife reprovingly, shrugged his shoulders, and went up to seek the refreshment of a bath. In the back of the house the library window slammed. The woman hurried out to prevent possible damage. An ominous darkness hovered over the ocean. A row of poplars that clung precariously to the cliff edge just behind the cottage turned their leaves against the hot blast of a fitful east wind.

III

WANLESS came promptly at eight, his horn honking its impatient summons in unison with the announcement of the cuckoo clock within. Constance Garden, watching them go from the doorway, waved a brave goodbye. She saw Richard pulling his cap more securely down, and Elizabeth bending gracefully toward the wind that caught her skirts and coat sail-like, flattening them against her. The sound of the surf booming below the cliff was like a muffled, heavy cannonade. A rising wind moaned across the expanse, shrieking at last around the corner in a vicious swirl, snatching the door from her grasp and banging it to, as though to shut her rudely within.

She attended first of all to the windows; one that rattled more than its fellows she secured with a wad of folded newspaper.

Her books—companions of many a lonely hour, a goodly fellowship of great souls! Yet tonight they failed her. A singular depression was upon her. She chose a volume in lighter vein, but its humor palled upon her. She went at last to a little desk, unlocked a drawer, and took out a book of red-padded leather, in which her own neat handwriting supplanted the printed page. It was quite a thick little volume, and the writing was small.

Memories—what a flock of them came tumbling out at the opening of that book. Memories that, willy-nilly, evoked laughter; memories that brought simply a tender smile; memories, too, that touched some nerve in exquisite torture; honest entries these, as every diary worthy of the name must hold!

Entries that covered her long engagement to Richard Garden; entries tremulous it seemed between rapture and fear. His courtship largely, awakening at first little response; the coming at last of a passionate sense of fear lest he should not speak. She smiled now at her recrudescing timidity when the moment had come. The record held the story of it.

And the successive entry:

Constance Garden set down the little book. A sense of tranquillity had come with the reading. It seemed to require a summoning of courage to read further. A later entry challenged her:

She put the book down again. The light of the reading lamp invested her with a soft halo. Outside, the wind howled, spindrift slashed occasionally against the windows, for the little library was at the back. The woman was absorbed with her memories. By and by she rose and went over to a picture of her husband hanging on the far wall, above the bookcase. She stood long before it.

“Sometimes I wonder, Richard”—her soft tones came as naturally as if he stood before her: more naturally perhaps because such expression in his presence had been denied her—“wonder if you thought to ask yourself the question: ‘Heart, are you great enough for a love that never tires?’ ”

She added in quick defiance: “I don’t care—I’m glad it all happened, even the suffering, because my heart has—never—tired—and some day I know he’ll find out what love really is—that a woman needs more to satisfy than clothes to cover her and food to gratify the lesser hunger.”

SHE started. A banging at the door shattered her mood of absorption, bringing a rude intrusion of present things. At first she thought it was the wind, but again the knocking sounded. Ordinarily no thought of fear troubled her mind, but tonight some vague depression—

She opened the door. The wind seemed to thrust past her into the house a grotesque figure, dripping wet with rain and spray.

“Why, it’s Old Jerry! What a night to be out, Jerry. You’ll have rheumatism tomorrow.”

A queer light was dancing in the old man’s bleary eyes.

“Listen!” he said, setting a wizened finger to his mouth. “She’s crazy tonight. Once as a little lad they took me to a circus. A child was playing too near a cage where they had a tiger. It sprang and its paw come through the bars, crushing the child’s skull. The animal roared just like she does tonight. Listen!”

He gripped her arm. More awesome than the violence of the gale was the surge and boom of the great breakers against the cliff face. A hundred feet and more below, but the spray was rattling against the rear windows.

“Hear her growl!” said Old Jerry. “Feel her shake! She’s in a bad mood. I know her, I do. Come away with me—you’re too near her. She might crush you. Oh, I know her and her ways. I’ve been along just now warnin’ all the folks on the cliff. They just laugh—but you won’t laugh at old Jerry, will you? ’Cause—you’re nearer her than any of ’em.”

His voice fell into a warning sibilance.

Constance repressed a smile. Everyone knew Old Jerry’s peculiar obsession. But she said seriously:

“Thank you for coming, Jerry. But I think I’ll be all right. Won’t you stay? I hate to have you go out again into the storm.”

Old Jerry shook his head. He had work to do. When she was biting and snarling he must be busy warning. Don’t say he hadn’t given warning. They laughed at Old Jerry—but some day—

Mumbling still, he passed out into the storm again.

CONSTANCE GARDEN went back to her diary. After a space she picked up pen and ink, and wrote:

The woman paused. A heavier boom of the storm smote the cliff; the house shook.

“I wish Lynn would come,” the woman said uneasily. “I wish he’d come.”

Then she went on with her writing.

THE Inchcliffe Club house lies snugly at the end of the sand dunes that separate, by a matter of a mile or two, the village and summer colony and the Inchcliffe Beach with its line of straggling summer hotels, and its popular attractions that draw to its smooth, surf-lapped sand crescent a mixed but gay multitude. The Club house, coming at the very end nearest the dunes, possesses a sense of aloofness that befits its moderate exclusiveness in the matter of members.

They were dancing tonight; white-flannelled males and frilly maidens—dancing to the sprightly music of a five-piece orchestra.

Perhaps because the storm made the closing of the windows necessary the place was oppressively close. Elizabeth Garden whispered in her partner’s ear:

“Bob, let’s slip out and get a breath. It’s stifling.”

He fetched her a wrap. They went out the door to leeward, and fought their way around to the side verandah. The wind nearly swept them from their feet.

“Isn’t it glorious, Bob!” She clung to his arm. “Oh!”

She gave a little shriek. An extra boisterous gust carried a drenching spray soakingly upon them.

“Highest tide I’ve seen,” declared Bob. “We’ll get drowned here. Good life, girl, you’re wet!”

She said, exultingly: “I don’t care! I love it! Feel the taste of the salt, Bob. . . . Sometimes I think there must be some old viking strain in me.”

A dim electric light fell upon her face, upraised to his. He drew her impulsively to him.

“Dear little Viking,” he said, and kissed her.

Elizabeth made no protest. It seemed that her senses were intoxicated by the moment: the seclusion, the voice of the storm, the thunder of the waves upon the narrow strip of sand beyond, the tang of the salt spray. All the senses exulted. When he found a secluded spot, sheltered, in the lee of the building, and fetched two wicker chairs, and a protecting rug, she still made no protest. Forgetful of the dance, they sat together in the alcove, regardless of the passing of time.

JAGGED clouds broke to admit a ghostly gleam of moonlight; the wrack drifted, storm-whipped, across the crescent of the moon.

Two great eyes of light rose and fell beyond them on the sandy road leading to the clubhouse.

“It’s coming here—seems in a hurry, or else they’re careless of springs and axles,” Wanless said.

The motor stopped squarely before them, its two eyes upon them, lighting up their alcove like noontide glare. Elizabeth sprang up uncertainly. A man, mackintosh clad, ran up the steps and faced them.

“Beth!”

“Lynn! You!” His eyes frightened her. “What—made you—come here?”

“Where’s your father, Beth?”

“Inside, Lynn—there’s something wrong. Tell me——”

But Lynn had gone. There was something in the manner of his leaving that set her heart throbbing poignantly. It was as though he were a stranger to her; as though no common bond existed.

She heard a chuckle behind her, and swung around.

“Funny,” gurgled Bob Wanless, “speak of the devil and all that, you know! Funny you should just have been telling me how deliciously jealous he gets. Don’t look so mad, I’m quoting, you know.”

Then he met her blazing eyes, and his smile faded.

As though fleeing from the devil, she turned and sped towards the door of the clubhouse, and ran squarely into the arms of Richard Garden. He was garbed ready for the road. His face was set and grim.

“Father—what is it?”

He met her questionings with an attempt at lightness. Some accident or other up at the village, due to the storm. She must stay and not worry; Mrs. Whitefield would look after her over night.

“I must know—all. It’s . . . mother?”

Richard Garden nodded. He spoke with difficulty:

“Part of the cliff—is gone—and part of the cottage——”

She interposed hastily.

“And—mother?”

The man turned away. She shook his arm, repeating the words: “Tell me, Dad, tell me.”

“They haven’t found her yet,” he said. “Quick, dear, you mustn’t delay us.”

“I’m coming with you——”

“You can do no good.”

Lynn’s voice spoke:

“Let her come, Mr. Garden. It’ll be easier for her than staying here.”

She ran to get on her wraps, grateful for Lynn’s interposition, almost grateful for the calmness of his voice and bearing. It gave a sense of support in a time when all props had gone.

Lynn sat beside the driver in the front seat. Elizabeth’s heart cried out for his comforting presence beside her, but her lips were sealed. The memory of the last hour or two with Bob and—vaguely, in the background, that silly letter to Lynn—was acute. Beside her, seeming not to heed the fierce grip on his arm that she maintained, sat Richard Garden. She had never seen his face like that before.

She could not stand it, after a time. She called to Lynn to tell her more of the affair. Speech was difficult, but he told her of his coming on a later train, of finding the village ablaze with excitement, of hearing the news and investigating, of trying to get telephonic connection and failing owing to the wires being down, of finally learning where they were and coming on in the hired car he had taken from the station.

THE wind threatened to lift the car from the precarious road across the sand dunes. Came at last the flashing of lights, and the village, and the faces of watchers in lighted windows, and, in the streets, clumps of women who stood aside to watch, with awesome glances, the car go hurtling by. The men were already all away up the hill to the scene of the disaster. More lights—impromptu flares—the coming of the car to a standstill—the red gleam of the flares upon oilskins of the coastguard, whose aid had been invoked—the crowds of anxious watchers. The men alighted. They left the girl in the car. She felt numbed, unable to move, scarce daring to look.

She heard someone shouting an answer to an eager questioner.

“A few yards of the cliff gone. Undermined! The authorities are to blame, they must have known it wasn’t safe. No, not much harm done, a corner of the Garden home gone. But they say it’s the library, and Mrs. Garden is missing.”

She told herself she would wake up and experience relief at the passing of a nightmare. When Lynn came to take her to a neighbor’s, she went without a word. By and by she would wake up.

It took the compassionate welcome of Mrs. Stebbins, to whose sheltering roof and care she was taken, to bring a realization that the nightmare would only end in a more terrible reality. She read the worst in the woman’s eyes.

IV

EBB TIDE! Daybreak, cold and bleak—more like November than August—and a watery yellow in the east. Slowly the grey tumble of waters retreated across the wet sands, as though reluctant to leave the work of destruction.

Pools lay upon the beach—pools, and seaweed, and wreckage, caught mostly about the little areas of jutting rock that honeycombed the sand. And in a large pile of rock where the landslide had occurred men in gleaming oilskins, with picks and crowbars, worked to release the imbedded wreckage from above. Men—and one woman! She came alone, finding her way down the jagged trail, a slight, athletic figure in her mackintosh and boyish cap.

“Beth! Dear, you should not have come!”

“I had to, Dad! No, no, I’ll not leave—Lynn, tell him I may stay. My place is here—with you.”

The men’s eyes met. Elizabeth interpreted the look. But she just said again:

“My place is here. I can face it as well as you.”

They stood aside in a little group. The workers were skilled in their task; unskilled aid would have been a handicap. But it took fortitude not to attack that ominous pile of rocks, and brick and wreckage, and still more courage not to run from the revelation that any moment might bring.

“You’re trembling, Daddy.”

“The wind’s cold, Beth,” he told her.

Both knew it was something more than the cold.

Lynn was speaking to one of the workers, helping direct operations. He came over to the father and daughter.

“Beth—could you get a large pot of coffee from Mrs. Stebbins, and two or three cups. If you want to help—that’s the way.”

BETH nodded understanding. She turned to go, welcoming action. She went along the beach, passing the jutting cliff that shut the workers from sight. It occurred to her they might like something to eat as well. She would ask Lynn. Beth retraced her steps.

And then it dawned upon her why Lynn had hurried her away for the coffee. The workers had gathered in a little ominous group upon the beach. Two of them were tenderly lifting an object, to lay it on a level stretch of sand. Lynn’s arm was around the bent shoulders of Richard Garden.

The awful horror of it all drew the girl with a strange fascination. Her progress was mechanical. They saw her coming, and Lynn ran to stay her, taking her in his arms, shielding her sight from the—the object there.

Someone had placed a piece of sail-cloth over it, but not before a glimpse of recognition came. Just a torn piece of a dress that protruded, but Beth knew it. It was the summer material her mother always wore.

A. B. Elliott

“My place is here. I can face it as well as you.”

V

LYNN it was who took Elizabeth away from the scene; who supplied such comfort as might be; who shielded her from word of the condition of the woman’s body, battered beyond recognition, had it not been for the shredded clothes.

Until the safety of the place could be determined and repairs made, the cottage was impossible of occupation, even had not associations driven them from it. To their need the vicarage was opened in kindly hospitality.

No emotional expression had been granted to the girl to help her grief; marble-faced, dry-eyed she wandered about the silent house. Tears came only after she found her father poring over a little red-covered book. Richard Garden seemed to have aged in a night. How long ago the time when they had raced across the lawn in merry chase—and yet it was only yesterday. Through the open window the sunlight streamed; out beyond the houses, the grassy lawns, and trees the sunlight sparkled upon the sea—a sea that was still running high as an aftermath of the gale. It came to Elizabeth that she hated it—as Jerry had hated it. She wondered where Jerry was all this time, but other things dismissed him from her mind.

Richard Garden spoke. His voice was tense but quiet.

“They found this,” he told her, holding up the book, “jammed in the drawer of the splintered table. It is—her diary. She must have been writing in it—then!”

He stopped to steady his voice.

“It’s almost as if she felt this thing was coming. She left a note for you, girl. Perhaps it will help you to see things—straight before it becomes—too—too—late.”

She could not bear to look upon the thing in his face. She fled, taking the book with her; fled downstairs. She felt that something inside her would burst. She saw Lynn sitting over in a shaded corner, saw him dimly because the sunlight and now the darkened room blinded her. She paused a moment as though in hesitation, but the thing within her demanded comfort. She ran to him, arms outstretched, with a little cry. An arm went around, steadying her. She looked up, drawing back, startled.

“Bob!”

“Beth, dear girl. I came to tell you—”

SHE heard no more. It came to her that Lynn had seen her distress and followed her half into the room . . . in time to see and misconstrue this. Not that anything mattered much—now! And yet she could not help running to the window and watching Lynn stride, bare-headed, across the gravel walk out into the garden. There was something brave in the way he squared his shoulders.

She dismissed Bob Wanless somehow—anyhow. But she could not face Lynn just then. Bob had awakened memories of last night; remorse and shame came in a flood. She picked up the diary and read. Especially the final entry:

Elizabeth put the book down. The last entry of all had done it. Hot tears flooded to her eyes. She flung herself, sobbing, on the sofa; her lips repeated the outcry of her heart.

VAGUELY, as from a distance, came the sound of hasty footsteps; of voices—many voices! The bell clanged an imperious summons. A trim maid hurried to obey it. Beth heard her startled cry, and then familiar voices. A sense of unreality kept her rooted to her chair, when the scene in the little hallway should have galvanized her. Old Jerry—and beside him, pale and evidently perplexed—Constance Garden.

“Beth—dear girl!”

Her voice broke the spell. The next moment Elizabeth was in her mother’s arms.

“My dear—you must leave a little of me for—your—father.”

White as a statue Richard Garden stood at the bottom of the staircase. No words were needed to give him welcome. Constance went to him, and even old Jerry knew enough to turn away, that alien eyes might not witness the meeting of one who was as dead and yet was alive again.

VII

PERHAPS it was natural that in that time of transport Lynn, who had shared the burden, should be largely excluded from the family joy. It happened, too, that Bob Wanless, learning the news on his way from his summary dismissal, took heart of grace and returned to join in the rejoicings before Lynn became aware of it at all.

Old Jerry stood in the background through the time of explanation, chuckling and mumbling to himself.

It seemed that Mrs. Garden was summoned shortly before the accident to attend a sickbed at Dibblegate, five miles inland. It was in a family in whom she had become interested because one of the daughters did her washing—a girl who was rather simple, for whom Mrs. Garden had conceived a liking. The girl had come up from the village where she boarded with the laundress, for whom she worked, to say that her mother was very sick, and could Mrs. Garden go at once. The boy was here with the rig, and could not find a doctor. Mrs. Garden had gone with her, leaving the door unlocked for Lynn, and a note of explanation on the library table. It must have been shortly before the landslide occurred.

“It was Providence,” the vicar said solemnly.

Old Jerry chuckled.

“It was me,” he declared. “I sent her. Oh, the woman was sick enough. I met Kate and the boy looking for the doctor, and I told them to get the missus here. She’s better’n two doctors. And I knew”—Old Jerry winked confidently—“I knew that ’ud fetch her away, though she’d stay there and let the sea get her for all my talk. I went out early this mornin’ I did, to fetch her in, an’ tell her old Jerry was right about the cliff. Folks won’t laugh now.”

He swung his gnarled frame around quickly, his eyes blazing, and shook his fist through the open doorway at the sea in the distance. “I beat her that time,” he chuckled. “I cheated her that time.”

IT WAS NATURAL, too, that in the excitement the body of a woman lying starkly in the little chapel nearby was nearly forgotten. Someone spoke of it. Notes were compared.

Elizabeth said, shakily: “It was mother’s dress, I’m sure. That blue one you wear so much, mother.”

Mrs. Garden paled.

“Why,” she told them, “I had that lying on a chair intending to do a little mending on it. The girl—Kate—was fascinated by it. I’ve given her other things. I said she could have this some time, perhaps. She wanted to take it with her, but I told her it was too wet a night and to come again.”

The woman stopped.

“Would you mind”—it was Jerry’s voice, a queer, quavering voice that spoke—“would you mind phonin’ the laundry place, and askin’ if Kate Connor is there?”

Bob Wanless it was who phoned. Bob had the faculty of making himself quickly at home. He reported presently:

“She went out last night with her brother from home to find a doctor. She hasn’t been back since. They thought of course she’d gone along home with him.”

OLD JERRY said nothing, but his twisted body seemed suddenly to shrink. He drew his hand across his forehead, and slipped out into the sunlight. Lynn followed him—out across the sunlit lawn, through the old-fashioned garden, and so into the little chapel where the casket lay.

Old Jerry was sitting beside it, a picture of pathetic tragedy.

“I reckon it’s Kate, right enough,” he told Lynn resignedly. “I thought I’d cheated her, but she got Kate, too. Years ago she took Kate’s sister in a storm, and sent Kate’s mother off her head, so when Kate was born she warn’t quite right either. When her mother died I had Kate adopted out to Dibblegate. Nobody but Mrs. Connor ever knew she was mine.”

Old Jerry paused, then added, shaking his grizzled head:

“I reckon I was crazy, too. I thought maybe I could cheat her.” His long arm shot out towards the direction of the ocean. “But it warn’t any use. You can’t fool her. She wanted us all. She’ll get me someday now. I reckon I’ll go on home now. I can’t do nothin’ here.”

LYNN walked over and looked out through a narrow gothic window. The first long shadows were falling across the garden. The earlier breeze had dropped. Birds sang in the trees. The peace of nature in her most tranquil mood was over all.

Old Jerry stole out of the chapel door, starting homeward. Lynn hesitated for a moment, then he caught up with the old man, linking his arm in his.

“I reckon,” said Old Jerry, “that’s good of you.”

SUNSET touched the ripples of incoming tide, but the watery waste beyond grew darker.

Lynn sat beside old Jerry outside his cottage on the cliff edge, smoking in silent comradeship. Lynn was living in the future, Jerry in the past. Lynn would go first thing in the morning; he would spend the night here with poor Jerry. He had postponed that business trip to settle the matter of the letter; well, he had seen enough to convince him that Beth had meant it. Yet he was glad he had come—to be here to serve her in her hour of need. That helped!

THE crescent of the moon grew brighter against a steel-blue sky. The night was soft as velvet.

A voice spoke in his ear.

“Lynn!”

“Beth!”

He could hardly credit it. And then he saw the form of Bob Wanless in the background, and understood. He said, rather shortly:

“Jerry’s better not to be bothered tonight. I’ll stay with him.”

“But Lynn—I didn’t come to see poor Jerry. I—I—”

She turned quickly, calling to her escort.

“Thanks, Bob, for bringing me down. Lynn will see me home.”

It did not occur to Lynn to demand much explanation. The soft dusk, the silver crescent of the moon, the dull voice of the sea made anything but the fact that they were together seem unnecessary. Little by little, though, she told him all, confessing very simply the things she had learned through the hours of suffering. Nothing would do but she must read him the lines from her mother’s diary, while he cupped a match with his hands to give light.

FROM out of the darkness behind them came Jerry’s voice. They had forgotten him.

“Would you mind, miss, reading that again?”

Beth read it. Old Jerry sighed contentedly.

After a space he said:

“For life—for death! That’s as can be, miss. I reckon, maybe, the old sea ain’t so bad a friend after all. Now my old woman she warn’t very strong—she suffered a lot; and Kate’s sister she took after her; and Kate—well she warn’t ever right in her head, you know, and yet I reckon she knowed enough to feel bad when folks called her queer; and me—why I’m a queer shapen old cuss, but I’ve had a long life an’ lots of good things in it. Now over—over there, you know”—Jerry waved a vague direction with his right arm—“over there I reckon there’ll be no sufferin’ and Kate’ll have a chance she never had here, and—why maybe I’ll stand a chance for a new body—funny, you know, even now I feel nasty when folks laugh and point at me. So I reckon when we all meet over there it’ll make a heap o’ difference. Don’t you think so, sir?”

There was no answer. Along the cliff to the right two figures were dimly discernible.

Old Jerry actually chuckled a little as of old.

“I reckon,” he said slowly, “they ain’t interested in anything much but themselves just now. And that’s as it should be. Why I mind the time when I was courtin’ my Martha—”

THE quavering voice trailed off. Old Jerry puffed steadily at his pipe. Memory—the refuge of age—had taken hold upon him. Below the cliff, the tide swished softly against the rocks. But the voice of the sea was a peaceful voice, crooning a lullaby.

THE END

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