The Moon Rock by Arthur J. Rees (no david read aloud .txt) 📕

“Did you see which way she went?”

“Over by the cliffs, where she used to go.”

Thalassa repeated these last words mechanically. Anger possessed him, but apprehension stirred in his heart. Sisily had trusted him, she had come back to him, and he had failed her. That had been at six o’clock, and it was now nine. Three hours, and there had been a storm. Where was she? Had she been out in the storm?

He searched in the cupboard for a lantern, lit it, and made for the door, followed by the dog. As he flung open the door the wind rushed in with such force that it beat him back, and the candle in the lantern flickered and lengthened like a naked flame. He fought his way out furiously, slamming the door behind him.

Outside, the rocks crouched in the darkness in nameless shapes. Thalassa prowled among them, struggling desperately with the wind, telling himself that she was safe—yes, by God, she was safe. Of course she wouldn’t stay on the rocks in that storm. She would seek shelter. “Where?” asked something within him mockingly, “Where would she dare go, except to you?” He stood still to reflect. “She might go to Dr. Ravenshaw’s,” he said aloud, as though answering an unseen but real questioner. “Fool!” came the reply, “you know she would not go to Dr. Ravenshaw’s. She would not dare.” And fear gripped his heart coldly.

He stumbled on again, bruising and cutting his limbs among the rocks. As he went he kept calling her name—“Miss Sisily” at first, and then, as his fear grew stronger, “Sisily, Sisily!” The wind wailed back to him, but that was all.

He stopped again to reflect. It was useless looking for her in the darkness. He could do nothing until the moon was up. The sky was already beginning to brighten with the coming light. So he stood where he was, waiting.

In a quarter of an hour the moon showed above the horizon, slurred through the rain, like a great drowned face. Higher and higher it rose until the black curtain lifted off the moors, and the light shimmered on little pools left after the rain, made fretwork in the shadows of the rocks, and fell upon the surface of the sea. And as the moon rose the hideous uproar of wind and sea began to die away.

Thalassa threw down the lantern, and resumed his search. Carefully he explored in and out among the rude masses of rock, beating farther and farther away from the house, cautiously skirting the perpendicular edge of the cliffs, looking over, and backing away again. His wider cast brought him at length to where the Moon Rock rose from the turmoil of the sea. He crept on hands and knees to the bald face of the cliff, and looked down.

By the light of the moon something caught his eye far below—something white and small, showing distinctly against the black glistening base of the Moon Rock. He could not discern what it was, but a nameless terror seized him, and his jaw dropped as he crouched there, gazing. Then he scrambled to his feet with a wild cry, and made for the path down the cliffs to the pool. It was some distance from where he was, but there was no shorter way. He rushed recklessly along the cliff edge till he reached it, and climbed down.

It was there he found her.

She was lying limp and motionless on the edge of the pool, and the receding tide was still lapping over the shelf of the rock where the sea had flung her.

Thalassa dropped on his knees beside her. “Sisily, Sisily!” he cried hoarsely—“It’s me—Thalassa!”

He stooped over her, calling her repeatedly, but she did not reply. Her face showed still and white in the moonlight. He unfastened the front of her dress, and put his hard hand on her soft flesh, but he could not feel her heart beating. He lifted her tenderly in his arms, and she lay against his body inert and cold, her wet head resting on his shoulder. Thus he started the ascent of the cliff.

A giant’s strength still lurked in his ageing frame. It was well for him that it did. He had only his feet to depend upon in that long slippery ascent, and the wind tugged at him angrily, as if anxious to jerk him off the path into the sea. But he fought his way up with his burden, though his body was swaying and his head was dizzy when he reached the top.

He did not stop for a moment. Still holding her fast he set out, not for Flint House, but to the churchtown. Dizzy, panting, and staggering, he struggled on across the moors, and as he walked he listened anxiously for any sound from the inanimate form in his arms.

But she lay still and motionless against his breast.

On he went until he reached the churchtown, and made his way up the empty street to Dr. Ravenshaw’s house. He turned in the garden gate, and beat with his heavy boot against the closed door.

Some one stirred within, and a ray of light in the fanlight grew bright as footsteps in the passage drew near. The door opened, and showed the figure of Dr. Ravenshaw holding in his hand a lighted lamp which shone upon Thalassa and the dripping figure in his arms. The doctor looked down from the doorstep in silent surprise, then stepped quickly back from the threshold and opened the surgery door, holding the lamp high to guide Thalassa in.

“There—on the couch,” he said, placing the lamp on the table. “What has happened?”

“Miss Sisily fell over the cliffs by the Moon Rock. I found her and carried her up, and brought her straight here.”

The doctor’s quick glance was a professional tribute to the strength of a frame capable of performing such a feat. He turned his attention to Sisily, bending over her and feeling her pulse. With a sharp exclamation he dropped her wrist and tore open the front of her dress, placing his hand on her heart. With his other hand he took up his stethoscope from the table.

“Bring that lamp closer—quick!” he cried.

Thalassa lifted the lamp from the table and stood beside him. The yellow glow of the lamp enveloped the livid bluish features of Sisily and the stooping form with the stethoscope. The instrument of silver and rubber held miraculous possibilities of life and death to Thalassa. He watched it anxiously—directed the light upon it. The shape on the couch remained motionless.

Thalassa’s gaze wandered from the stethoscope to Dr. Ravenshaw. The doctor’s bent neck showed white between the top of his shirt and the grey hair above it. He was wearing no collar, so he must have been going to bed—when the knock came. Thalassa’s eyes dwelt on the exposed flesh with a steady yet wondering contemplation. The lamp in his hand wavered slightly.

Dr. Ravenshaw rose to his feet, oblivious of the man who was staring at his neck from behind. His downward glance rested on Sisily’s face, and his eyes were grave. He turned away and walked out of the room, but returned almost immediately with a small mirror.

“Hold the lamp higher,” he said to Thalassa. “I want the light to fall right on her face. Higher still—so.”

He fell on his knees by the couch and held the mirrored side of the glass to Sisily’s lips. The lamp, held aloft, illumined his face as well as hers. His features were set and rigid.

Thalassa stood still, his eyes brooding on the sharp outline of the bent mask. A vague idea, startling and terrible, was magnifying itself in his mind. Once his glance wandered to Ravenshaw’s neck, then returned with growing fixity to his face, seen at closer range than he had ever beheld it. In the vivid light the elemental lines beneath the changes of time took on a strange resemblance to a face he had known in the distant past. A spectral being seemed to rise from the dead and resume life in the kneeling body of Dr. Ravenshaw.

Involuntarily he stepped back, and the likeness vanished in the added distance. The veil of the past was dropped again. He could see nothing now but the commonplace whiskered face of an elderly Cornish doctor bending over the inanimate form on the couch. Again the lamp shook slightly.

“What are you doing with that light?” said Ravenshaw peevishly. “Cannot you hold it steady? Bring it closer, man—closer than that. Now, hold it there.”

In the nearer vision the elemental lines of a forgotten face again confronted Thalassa beneath the flabby contours of age. It was like looking at a familiar outline covered by a mask—a transparent mask. He stood stock still with uplifted lamp, like a man in a trance, but his eyes never left Dr. Ravenshaw’s face.

Some minutes passed silently before Dr. Ravenshaw withdrew the mirror from Sisily’s lips. He turned it over and looked closely at the surface of the glass. The man behind him stared over his shoulder. Their eyes met in the mirror, and held for a moment fascinated. In that brief space of time the revelation and recognition were completed. Dr. Ravenshaw’s glance was the first to break away. The hard brown eyes watching him followed the direction of his view to a pair of spectacles resting on the table. Thalassa understood the intention, and harshly forestalled it.

“No use to put on your glasses now,” he said. “I recognize ye, and I’ve seen that damned scar on your neck.”

He put the lamp back on the table, and his hand went towards his belt. Ravenshaw understood the motion and checked it with a gesture.

“No need for that, either, Thalassa. There are other things to think about.”

Thalassa’s hand dropped to his side. “You’re right,” he muttered. “Get on with your doctoring.”

“No—not now,” answered Ravenshaw sadly. “It’s no use. She is dead.”

“Dead!” Thalassa stood overwhelmed. Silently he surveyed the slight recumbent form on the couch, his moving lips seemed to be counting the drops which dripped from her clinging garments on to the carpet. “Dead, did ye say? Why, I carried her here—brought her across the moors to you.” His voice trembled. “Can’t ye do nothing?”

“No—not now. It is too late.”

Thalassa’s eyes rested attentively on the other’s face. Ravenshaw’s complete acquiescence in death as an unalterable fact stung his untutored feelings by its calmness. “Dead!” he repeated fiercely. “Then you’ve got that to pay for now—Remington.”

“Pay? Oh, yes, I’ll pay—make payment in full,” was the reply, delivered with a bitter look. “But not to you.”

“To think I shouldn’t a’ known ye!” Thalassa spoke like a man in a dream.

“After all these years? After what I suffered alone on that island—through you and Turold? You’d hardly have known me if you’d met me six months afterwards instead of thirty years. Robert Turold didn’t know me. Nobody knew me.”

Thalassa’s eyes still dwelt upon him with the unwilling look of a man compelled to gaze upon an evocation of the dead.

“Where did you get to—that night?” he quavered. “I could a’ sworn—could a’ taken Bible oath—”

“That you and that other scoundrel had killed me? I’ve no doubt. But it so happened that I was saved—miraculously and unfortunately. I fell on to a projecting spur of stone or rock not far down, which caught and held me. By the light of the moon I saw you come along the ridge to look for me. You were almost close enough for me to push you into that infernal sulphur lake where you hoped I had gone. You turned back in time—fortunately for yourself.”

Thalassa kept his gaze upon him with the meditating intentness of one trying to learn anew a face so greatly altered by the awful changes of the years. His great brown hands, hanging loosely at his sides, clenched and opened rapidly with a quickness of action which had something vaguely menacing in it.

“I know your eyes now,” he mumbled. “With the glasses on, you’re different. That’s why ye wore them, I suppose. Turold heered ye that night you killed ‘un. He knew your footstep—or thought he did. I laughed at him. A’ would to God A’mighty I’d hearkened to him, and then I might a’ catched you. How did ye get away from the island?”

Ravenshaw raised his head to reply, then stood mute, in a listening attitude. Outside the window the sound of footsteps crunched the gravel walk, and approached the house. Thalassa heard and listened too. The crunching ceased, and there was a knock at the door. Thalassa looked questioningly at Ravenshaw, who nodded in the direction of the door.

“Open it,” he said. Thalassa hesitated. His eyes sought the couch. “Yes, in here,” said Ravenshaw understandingly. “We shall want witnesses.”

Thalassa went to the door and opened it.

A man’s