Michael's Crag

"I have the designs here all ready," Walter Tyrrel replied, holding them out. "Plans, elevations, specifications, estimates, sections, figures, everything. Will you do me the favor to look at them? Then, perhaps, you'll be able to see whether or not the offer's genuine."

The great engineer took the roll with a smile. He opened it hastily, in a most skeptical humor. Walter Tyrrel leant over him, and tried just at first to put in a word or two of explanation, such as Le Neve had made to himself; but an occasionally testy "Yes, yes; I see," was all the thanks he got for his pains and trouble. After a minute or two he found out it was better to let the engineer alone. That practiced eye picked out in a moment the strong and weak points of the whole conception. Gradually, however, as Walker went on, Walter Tyrrel could see he paid more and more attention to every tiny detail. His whole manner altered. The skeptical smile faded away, little by little, from those thick, sensuous lips, and a look of keen interest took its place by degrees on the man's eager features. "That's good!" he murmured more than once, as he examined more closely some section or enlargement. "That's good! very good! knows what he's about, this Eustace Le Neve man!" Now and again he turned back, to re-examine some special point. "Clever dodge!" he murmured, half to himself. "Clever dodge, undoubtedly. Make an engineer in time—no doubt at all about that—if only they'll give him his head, and not try to thwart him."

Tyrrel waited till he'd finished. Then he leant forward once more. "Well, what do you think of it now?" he asked, flushing hot. "Is this business—or otherwise?"

"Oh, business, business," the great engineer murmured, musically, regarding the papers before him with a certain professional affection. "It's a devilish clever plan—I won't deny that—and it's devilish well carried out in every detail."

Tyrrel seized his opportunity. "And if you were to withdraw your own design," he asked, somewhat nervously, hardly knowing how best to frame his delicate question, "do you think … the directors … would be likely to accept this one?"

Erasmus Walker hummed and hawed. He twirled his fat thumbs round one another in doubt. Then he answered oracularly, "They might, of course; and yet, again, they mightn't."

"Upon whom would the decision rest?" Tyrrel inquired, looking hard at him.

"Upon me, almost entirely," the great engineer responded at once, with cheerful frankness. "To say the plain truth, they've no minds of their own, these men. They'd ask my advice, and accept it implicitly."

"So Jones told me," Tyrrel answered.

"So Jones told you—quite right," the engineer echoed, with a complacent nod. "They've no minds of their own, you see. They'll do just as I tell them."

"And you think this design of Le Neve's a good one, both mechanically and financially, and also exceptionally safe as regards the lives and limbs of passengers and employees?" Tyrrel inquired once more, with anxious particularity. His tender conscience made him afraid to do anything in the matter unless he was quite sure in his own mind he was doing no wrong in any way either to shareholders, competitors, or the public generally.

"My dear sir," Mr. Walker replied, fingering the papers lovingly, "it's an admirable design—sound, cheap, and practical. It's as good as it can be. To tell you the truth, I admire it immensely."

"Well, then," Tyrrel said at last, all his scruples removed—"let's come to business. I put it plainly. How much will you take to withdraw your own design, and to throw your weight into the scale in favor of my friend's here?"

Erasmus Walker closed one eye, and rewarded his visitor fixedly out of the other for a minute or two in silence, as if taking his bearings. It was a trick he had acquired from frequent use of a theodolite. Then he answered at last, after a long, deep pause, "It's YOUR deal, Mr. Tyrrel. Make me an offer, won't you?"

"Five thousand pounds?" tremblingly suggested Walter Tyrrel.

Erasmus Walker opened his eye slowly, and never allowed his surprise to be visible on his face. Why, to him, a job like that, entailing loss of time in personal supervision, was hardly worth three. The plans were perfunctory, and as far as there was anything in them, could be used again elsewhere. He could employ his precious days meanwhile to better purpose in some more showy and profitable work than this half-hatched viaduct. But this was an upset price. "Not enough," he murmured, slowly, shaking his bullet head. "It's a fortune to the young man. You must make a better offer."

Walter Tyrrel's lip quivered. "Six thousand," he said, promptly.

The engineer judged from the promptitude of the reply that the Cornish landlord must still be well squeezable. He shook his head gain. "No, no; not enough," he answered short. "Not enough—by a long way."

"Eight," Tyrrel suggested, drawing a deep breath of suspense. It was a big sum, indeed, for a modest estate like Penmorgan.

The engineer shook his head once more. That rush up two thousand at once was a very good feature. The man who could mount by two thousand at a time might surely be squeezed to the even figure.

"I'm afraid," Walter said, quivering, after a brief mental calculation—mortgage at four per cent—and agricultural depression running down the current value of land in the market—"I couldn't by any possibility go beyond ten thousand. But to save my friend—and to get the young lady married—I wouldn't mind going as far as that to meet you."

The engineer saw at once, with true business instinct, his man had reached the end of his tether. He struck while the iron was hot and clinched the bargain. "Well,—as there's a lady in the case"—he said, gallantly,—"and to serve a young man of undoubted talent, who'll do honor to the profession, I don't mind closing with you. I'll take ten thousand, money down, to back out of it myself, and I'll say what I can—honestly—to the Midland Board in your friend's favor."

"Very good," Tyrrel answered, drawing a deep breath of relief. "I ask no more than that. Say what you can honestly. The money shall be paid you before the end of a fortnight."

"Only, mind," Mr. Walker added in an impressive afterthought, "I can't, of course, ENGAGE that the Great North Midland people will take my advice. You mustn't come down upon me for restitution and all that if your friend don't succeed and they take some other fellow. All I guarantee for certain is to withdraw my own plans—not to send in anything myself for the competition."

"I fully understand," Tyrrel answered. "And I'm content to risk it.

But, mind, if any other design is submitted of superior excellence to

Le Neve's, I wouldn't wish you on any account to—to do or say anything

that goes against your conscience."

Erasmus Walker stared at him. "What—after paying ten thousand pounds?" he said, "to secure the job?"

Tyrrel nodded a solemn nod. "Especially," he added, "if you think it safer to life and limb. I should never forgive myself if an accident were to occur on Eustace Le Neve's viaduct."

CHAPTER XIII

ANGEL AND DEVIL.

Tyrrel left Erasmus Walker's house that morning in a turmoil of mingled exultation and fear. At least he had done his best to atone for the awful results of his boyish act of criminal thoughtlessness. He had tried to make it possible for Cleer to marry Eustace, and thereby to render the Trevennacks happier in their sonless old age; and what was more satisfactory still, he had crippled himself in doing it. There was comfort even in that. Expiation, reparation! He wouldn't have cared for the sacrifice so much if it had cost him less. But it would cost him dear indeed. He must set to work at once now and raise the needful sum by mortgaging Penmorgan up to the hilt to do it.

After all, of course, the directors might choose some other design than Eustace's. But he had done what he could. And he would hope for the best, at any rate. For Cleer's sake, if the worst came, he would have risked and lost much. While if Cleer's life was made happy, he would be happy in the thought of it.

He hailed another hansom, and drove off, still on fire, to his lawyer's in Victoria Street. On the way, he had to go near Paddington Station. He didn't observe, as he did so, a four-wheel cab that passed him with luggage on top, from Ivybridge to London. It was the Trevennacks, just returned from their holiday on Dartmoor. But Michael Trevennack had seen him; and his brow grew suddenly dark. He pinched his nails into his palm at sight of that hateful creature, though not a sound escaped him; for Cleer was in the carriage, and the man was Eustace's friend. Trevennack accepted Eustace perforce, after that night on Michael's Crag; for he knew it was politic; and indeed, he liked the young man himself well enough—there was nothing against him after all, beyond his friendship with Tyrrel; but had it not been for the need for avoiding scandal after the adventure on the rock, he would never have allowed Cleer to speak one word to any friend or acquaintance of her brother's murderer.

As it was, however, he never alluded to Tyrrel in any way before Cleer. He had learnt to hold his tongue. Madman though he was, he knew when to be silent.

That evening at home, Cleer had a visit from Eustace, who came round to tell her how Tyrrel had been to see the great engineer, Erasmus Walker; and how it was all a mistake that Walker was going to send in plans for the Wharfedale Viaduct—nay, how the big man had approved of his own design, and promised to give it all the support in his power. For Tyrrel was really an awfully kind friend, who had pushed things for him like a brick, and deserved the very best they could both of them say about him.

But of course Eustace hadn't the faintest idea himself by what manner of persuasion Walter Tyrrel had commended his friend's designs to Erasmus Walker. If he had, needless to say, he would never have accepted the strange arrangement.

"And now, Cleer," Eustace cried, jubilant and radiant with the easy confidence of youth and love, "I do believe I shall carry the field at last, and spring at a bound into a first-rate position among engineers in England."

"And then?" Cleer asked, nestling close to his side.

"And then," Eustace went on, smiling tacitly at her native simplicity, "as it would mean permanent work in superintending and so forth, I see no reason why—we shouldn't get married immediately."

They were alone in the breakfast room, where Mrs. Trevennack had left them. They were alone, like lovers. But in the drawing-room hard by, Trevennack himself was saying to his wife with a face of suppressed excitement, "I saw him again to-day, Lucy. I saw him again, that devil—in a hansom near Paddington. If he stops in town, I'm sure I don't know what I'm ever to do. I came back from Devonshire, having fought the devil hard, as I thought, and conquered him. I felt I'd got him under. I felt he was no match for me. But when I see that man's face the devil springs up at me again in full force, and grapples with me. Is he Satan himself? I believe he must be. For I feel I must rush at him and trample him under foot, as I trampled him long ago on the summit of Niphates."

In a tremor of alarm Mrs. Trevennack held his hand. Oh, what would she ever do if the outbreak came … before Cleer was married! She could see the constant strain of holding himself back was growing daily more and more difficult for her unhappy husband. Indeed, she couldn't bear it herself much longer. If Cleer didn't marry soon, Michael would break out openly—perhaps would try to murder that poor man Tyrrel—and then Eustace would be afraid, and all would be up with them.

By and by, Eustace came in to tell them the good news. He said nothing about Tyrrel, at least by name, lest he should hurt Trevennack; he merely mentioned that a friend of his had seen Erasmus Walker that day, and that Walker had held out great hopes of success for him in this Wharfedale Viaduct business. Trevennack listened with a strange mixture of interest and contempt. He was glad the young man was likely to get on in his chosen profession—for Cleer's sake, if it would enable them to marry. But, oh, what a fuss it seemed to him to make about such a trifle as a mere bit of a valley that one could fly across in a second—to him who could become

"… to his proper shape returnedA seraph winged: six wings he wore, to shadeHis lineaments divine; the pair that cladEach shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breastWith regal ornament; the middle pairGirt like a starry zone his waist, and roundSkirted his loins and thighs, the third his feetShadowed 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 evenOn a sunbeam, swift as a shooting starIn 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.

CHAPTER XIV

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 payment 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 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.