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 By the Gate of the Sea 
 i.
 
 LONDON" : PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET
 
 By the Gate of the Sea 
 
 by 
 
 DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY 
 
 AUTHOR OF JOSEPHS COAT *A LIFE S ATONEMENT COALS OF FIRE ETC. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 fsmbon 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1883 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/bygateofseaintwo01chri
 
 l/J 
 
 TO 
 
 WALTER BESANT, M.A. 
 
 There was once a time — unless many boohs do lie — 
 when old artists met young ones without jealousy and 
 young ones sought their elders without fear, because 
 the bond of a common hope was strong, and all 
 workers in art were brothers. Nature brings not 
 bach the mastodon, nor we those times; yet in giving 
 this booh to the public I am impelled to dedicate it 
 to a delightful elder brother whom I have never seen, 
 but whose manly, genial, and helpful voice has been 
 long familiar to me. 
 
 I). CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 St. Leonards : 
 
 May 1883. 
 
 *1 

 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was in the days of the ]ast dynasty of the 
 dandies, and anybody nnder the age of thirty 
 who spoke with the accent of Christian, 
 pagan, or man could scarcely be accounted 
 a gentleman. 
 
 ' She is a faine creachaw,' said the Cap- 
 tain ; ' a dayvilish faine creachaw — an ex- 
 ceptionally faine creachaw.' 
 
 The Lieutenant echoed the Captain's 
 encomium, and the pair struck into for- 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 mid able attitudes at the porch of the theatre. 
 Little knots of the country people gathered 
 on the other side of the road and surveyed 
 the two gentlemen, who were attired in 
 evening dress, and knew themselves to be 
 objects of interest and admiration. M. 
 Gibus had just given to the world his famous 
 invention, and the two military gentlemen , 
 who were in the van and foremost of fashion, 
 had adopted it. The Captain was fully self- 
 possessed under the admiring gaze of the 
 yokels, but the Lieutenant so far yielded to a 
 natural weakness as to take off his hat and 
 flatten it against his breast. It was done with 
 an admirable air of absent-minded habit, and 
 it amazed the bystanders. The Lieutenant 
 felt that he made a telling figure, but when 
 he released the springs and the hat fled back
 
 into its former shape he was betrayed into a 
 smile of triumph at the sensation he created, 
 and from that moment he became self- 
 conscious and embarrassed, insomuch that 
 his legs — which were commonly his strong 
 point — became a trouble to him. The 
 passing by of a friend at such a moment 
 seemed almost providential, and the Lieu- 
 tenant sprang into the gaslit street with 
 renewed composure. 
 
 4 Hollo, Tregarthen ! How d'ye do ? 
 Quite an age since we saw you, old fellow. 
 Here's Harcourt. Have you seen Miss 
 Churchill? She's a faine creachaw, an 
 exceptionally faine creachaw, 'pon my 
 word.' 
 
 The Captain smiled at this echo of his 
 own conversational felicities. The Lieu- 
 
 B 2
 
 4 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 tenant, as he knew, was a fellow of no 
 originality. 
 
 4 No,' said Tregarthen ; 6 1 haven't seen 
 her. Who is she ? ' 
 
 c Actress,' replied the Lieutenant, success- 
 fully imitating the Captain's drawl. c Play- 
 ing here now. Dayvilish fame creachaw, 
 *pon m'honour. Come in and look at her. 
 Harcourt and I have a box here. No ladies 
 with us. Doesn't matter that yaw not 
 dressed. Come along, there's a good fellow.' 
 
 The new-comer allowed himself to be 
 persuaded, and the three entered the theatre 
 together. It was a small house, but too 
 large for its audience, and all its tinsel was 
 shabby as well as tawdry, and most of the 
 gas globes around the dress circle were 
 chipped and broken. An impossible old
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA 5 
 
 Adam doddered and dithered off the stage, 
 thumping the boards with a staff like the 
 prop of a clothes-line, and a burly Orlando 
 followed him with his calves in his ankles. 
 Then the scene shifted, and on came a 
 dissipated Touchstone in second-hand 
 garments, and a dowdy Celia, and between 
 them Eosalind in doublet and hose. 'Oh, 
 Jupiter I ' sighed Eosalind ; ' how weary 
 are my spirits ! ' Something knocked at 
 the heart of Cornet Tregarthen. He had 
 never before listened to such a voice, and its 
 tones went through him like a delicate fire. 
 Touchstone jarred in with his answer, and 
 Rosalind spoke again : ' I could find it in 
 my heart to disgrace my man's apparel, and to 
 cry like a woman.' It was downright pitiful, 
 and yet there was a touch of comedy in it. £ But
 
 6 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 I must comfort the weaker vessel, as doublet 
 and hose ought to show itself courageous to 
 petticoat.' The comedy shone out there 
 with tender brilliance. 'Therefore, courage, 
 good Aliena ! ' To one listener there was 
 such a womanly courage, solicitude, and 
 friendship in the phrase and in the lovely 
 voice that spoke it, that his eyes dimmed 
 and his heart stuck in his throat. Cornet 
 Tregarthen was but two-and-twenty, and 
 youth is sometimes impressionable. 
 
 Eosalind, in spite of the fatigue which 
 evidently sat upon her, was as straight and 
 lithe as the stalk of a lily, and she had a 
 voice like a silver bell. The Cornet was 
 short-sighted, and her features were dimly 
 seen, but he fancied them lovely. An 
 older and more experienced man might
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 7 
 
 have been excused for the fancy, with 
 such a voice and such a figure on which to 
 base it. 
 
 His companions expressed their admira- 
 tion for the actress in their own way, but 
 he scarcely heard them. Even when Eosa- 
 lind was absent from the stage he had but 
 inattentive ears for the Captain and the 
 Lieutenant, and he answered them when 
 they addressed him with an absent ' Yes ' or 
 ' No,' or a dreamy nod. 
 
 ' Tregarthen,' said the Captain, 'has gone 
 spoons on the Churchill. ' 
 
 The Lieutenant nodded and booked 
 the statement for future use. Its chaste 
 simplicity and directness charmed him, and 
 he resolved to repeat it to Eylands at head- 
 quarters if he saw him before Harcourt did.
 
 8 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 The play was over, the curtain was 
 down, and the sweet voice dwelt in Tregar- 
 then's ears. ' Bid me farewell,' said the 
 sweet voice, in the last words of the 
 epilogue. It sounded personal to him, and 
 there was a pleasant gentle sadness in it. 
 
 ' When do you join us at headquarters, 
 Tregarthen ? ' asked the Captain. ' You 
 must find it most intollably dull where yaw 
 staying, eh?' 
 
 ' I am ordered to rejoin to-morrow,' 
 said Tregarthen. ; Hazel tells me that 
 Colonel Pollard will be there. I have not 
 seen him yet.' 
 
 1 No,' said the Captain, ' Old Polly's been 
 on sick leave at Etretat — cursed little village 
 somewhere on the Continent. You'll like 
 him. Jolly old bird is Polly. Tells
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 9 
 
 thunderin' good yarn, Polly does. Mostly 
 'bout himself, y' know — self an' ladies, y' 
 koow — that sort thing, but thunderin' good 
 they are. Sly old dayvl Polly is, un- 
 common.' 
 
 6 1 shall meet him to-morrow,' said 
 Tregarthen, somewhat absently. 
 
 ' He's a bit of a crib-biter, too, Polly is,' 
 said the Lieutenant, ' bit of a martinet, y' 
 know ; but everybody gets on with him in 
 the long run, don't they, Harcourt ? ' 
 
 ' He's a cursed good old sort, is Polly,' 
 the Captain replied with emphasis. ' You'll 
 like him no end, Tregarthen. Night-night, 
 my boy. Glad to have met you.' 
 
 Tregarthen took train and reached his 
 own quarters, and his thoughts dwelt a good 
 deal about Miss Churchill by the way. To
 
 io BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 his mind she was the first real artist he had 
 seen upon the stage, and for the time at 
 least her voice had taken him captive. 
 Shakespeare for once had found an actress 
 worthy to interpret him, and surely no other 
 man who had ever lived could have created 
 a part sweet and bright enough for so ex- 
 quisite a creature to play in. He smoked a 
 cigar in company with his own agreeably 
 fluttered fancies, and then he went to bed 
 and slept soundly and forgot them. He was 
 not nearly so much impressed with Miss 
 Churchill in the morning, and though she 
 touched his thoughts pleasantly once or twice 
 he got through the day's business with no 
 great hindrance from her. 
 
 Late afternoon found him at headquarters 
 with little more than time to dress for dinner.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA, n 
 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Pollard had resumed the 
 active command of the corps and took the 
 head place at the mess-table. Tregarthen 
 was presented, and formed a poor opinion of 
 the bloated old warrior, who met him with 
 a disreputable jest, and told straightway an 
 objectionable story which grated on the 
 Cornet's ears. When the real business of 
 the dinner began the manners of the officer 
 in command were not at all to the taste of 
 the young gentleman, who was possibly 
 fastidious. The Colonel's eyes goggled and 
 his face crimsoned as he strained over the 
 table to get at his soup, and his wicked 
 speech was half choked by wheezings and 
 pantings. He gobbled as a gentleman 
 ought not to gobble, and he drank as a 
 gentleman ought not to drink. When
 
 12 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 dinner was over the naughty old man told 
 shameless tales of his youth and manhood, 
 and Tregarthen, who had been bred to 
 reverence old age and to think purity as de- 
 sirable and lovely in a man as in a woman, 
 found the evening almost insupportable. 
 
 ' Somebody ought to put a stop to all 
 that,' he told Captain Harcourt, after dinner, 
 to that gallant officer's great astonishment. 
 ' In a society of gentlemen the thing is in- 
 tolerable. We serve a Lady,' he added, 
 with the generous pomposity of youth, ' and 
 that of itself might teach us better manners.' 
 
 The Captain stared at him with an 
 amazement he took no pains to disguise. A 
 touch of contempt was discernible even in 
 his wonder. 
 
 ' Shouldn't advaise yah talk laike that,'
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 13 
 
 lie said. l Cursed inconvienient have yang 
 fellahs ofFerin' that sort opinion in the army.' 
 
 1 1 shall make it my business,' re- 
 turned Tregarthen in some heat at the 
 Captain's contemptuous wonder, ' to represent 
 to Colonel Pollard that at least one of his 
 officers finds his style of conversation irk- 
 some, and thinks it unbecoming.' 
 
 ' Don't be an ass, Tregarthen,' said 
 Captain Harcourt. Tregarthen inclined his 
 liead stiffly, and marched away. The 
 Captain told one or two of his closest friends 
 the story of the youngster's unaccountable 
 craze, and they all agreed that he was a prig 
 and a greenhorn. ' Polly,' said Harcourt, ' is 
 about the best sort in the service. Idea of 
 young fool like thaat pretending dictate 
 officers old enough be his father.'
 
 14 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 Captain Harcourt's friends concurred 
 with him, and the story of Tregarthen's pre- 
 sumption spread rapidly throughout the 
 regiment. Next day he was treated with 
 evident coldness, and some of his brother 
 officers who had hitherto been on friendly 
 terms with him took pains to avoid him. 
 He was not unpopular to begin with, but it 
 was the general sense of the corps that the 
 sort of insolence he had shown deserved 
 rebuke. He must be made to see at once 
 that this was not the tone to take. 
 
 That evening there came a time when 
 the conversation at the head of the table 
 was animated and loud. The youngsters at 
 the lower end smoked and listened and got 
 little good by listening. It was nothing less 
 than the reputation of a lady which so ex-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 15 
 
 cited the seniors. One man held out against 
 the rest and avowed his belief that the lady 
 was chaste as ice and pure as snow. The 
 others naturally laughed at him, for the 
 woman he defended was an actress, and in 
 those days — it may be better now — an 
 actress was anybody's fair game at a mess- 
 table. 
 
 4 Wait a bit,' said the Colonel, with his 
 wicked bronchial old chuckle. 4 I'll tell you 
 a story a propos.' 
 
 Everybody listened and the Colonel told 
 his story. It redounded infinitely to his 
 own credit as a man of gallantry and infi- 
 nitely to the discredit of the lady, whose 
 personal charms he sung and whose character 
 he stole. 
 
 ; Xow, who do vou think that was ? *
 
 16 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 asked the Colonel. Nobody answered, and 
 the fat old roue re-lit his cigar and gazed 
 about him with a look of twinkling triumph. 
 ' None other,' he said, after this pause, ' than 
 our chaste young friend, Miss Churchill. 
 What do you say to that ? ' 
 
 It happened at this moment that the 
 Colonel's twinkling eyes looked full into the 
 eyes of Tregarthen, who was bending forward 
 a little at the bottom end of the table and 
 watching his commanding officer with an 
 expression of saturnine disdain. The black- 
 browed Cornet half rose in his place. 
 
 6 I beg your pardon, sir,' he said, slowly 
 and distinctly. 4 You seemed to address 
 your question to me. If you press me for 
 an answer I must give you one.' 
 
 It was generally felt that the hour had
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 17 
 
 come, and the assembled gentlemen braced 
 themselves to support authority. If the 
 Colonel had understood the situation he 
 would probably have snubbed the querist by 
 leaving him unseen and unanswered. But, 
 being taken by surprise, he rapped out 
 1 Well, sir ? ' and stared at the intruder with 
 a look half surprise, half anger. 
 
 ' X am to answer your question, sir ? : 
 said Tregarthen. c I think then, sir, that no 
 gentleman could have told such a story, and 
 that no assemblage of gentlemen could 
 hear it without marking their sense of 
 its cowardice, its brutality, and its general 
 ofFensiveness.' 
 
 The Colonel bounced to his feet, and 
 sent a dozen wineglasses flying. Major, 
 adjutant, captains, lieutenants, and cornets 
 vol. 1. c 
 
 'J-
 
 18 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 all leapt up wildly. Tregarthen resumed 
 his seat, and was calm amidst this tempest 
 of his own raising. 
 
 6 Eetire to your quarters, sir,' stormed 
 the Colonel. ' Consider yourself under 
 arrest, sir.' He stood puffing and snorting 
 for a moment whilst the offender arose, 
 saluted, and left the mess-room. ' Eesume 
 your seats, gentlemen,' he said then, and all 
 sat down in awkward silence. 
 
 A general sense of relief was felt five 
 minutes later when, after a muttered word 
 or two to his neighbours at right and left, 
 the Colonel arose and withdrew, followed 
 by Major Eykin and Captain Harcourt. 
 Clamour ensued, and nothing was talked of 
 but the awful and unheard-of incident of the 
 evening.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 19 
 
 Tregarthen in the meantime walked to 
 bis quarters, and returned the salutes offered 
 him by barrack loungers and sentries on the 
 way. It was summer time, and the twilight 
 lingered softly. An odour of mignonette 
 stole pleasantly through the open casement 
 of his chamber, and he seated himself on a 
 couch near the window, and looked at the 
 darkening zenith as he smoked. If he were 
 not altogether as placid as he seemed — and 
 he made it a point of honour to be out- 
 wardly tranquil even in his own sole 
 company — he was less disturbed than might 
 have been predicted of a man so young after 
 his share in such a scene. 
 
 4 The man's a blackguard,' he said quietly. 
 w Perhaps I was an ass to tell him so — and 
 yet I don't know. That sort of thing ought
 
 20 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 not to be allowed to go on amongst gentle- 
 men, and if it does it is clearly some one's 
 duty to put a foot upon it.' 
 
 He threw away the stump of his cigar, 
 lit a new one, and stretched himself along 
 the couch. In that position he smoked until 
 he could see nothing in the gathering dark- 
 ness but the little point of light an inch or 
 two from his nose. 
 
 Then steps sounded on the stairs and 
 there was a knock at the door. He called 
 to the knocker to enter, and two men 
 came in and looked about them uncertainly 
 in the gloom. There w T as a light upon 
 the stairs without, and he recognised his 
 visitors. 
 
 1 Mr. Tregarthen ? ' said one. 
 
 ' kt your service, sir,' he answered
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 21 
 
 gravely. ' Be seated, gentlemen. Allow 
 me to light the lamp.' 
 
 He moved quietly about the room, found 
 his lamp, set it upon the table, and, having 
 lighted it, resumed his place. But seeing 
 that his visitors remained standing, he arose 
 again and faced them. 
 
 ' Colonel Pollard,' began Major E} r kin, 
 with great solemnity, c having consulted 
 Captain Harcourt and myself, has decided to 
 meet the unusual occurrence of this evening 
 by a step which is at least as unusual, but 
 which seems to be called for by the circum- 
 stances of the case.' 
 
 ' 'Cisely. Quaite so,' said Captain Har- 
 court. 
 
 1 The result of that decision is,' pursued 
 the Major, ' that we are here to ' demand a
 
 22 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 meeting. Colonel Pollard entirely waives 
 the question of rank, feeling as he does that 
 nothing short of the course he proposes can 
 vindicate his honour.' 
 
 ' And you concur ? ' inquired the Cornet. 
 
 ' 'Zactly,' said Captain Harcourt. ' We 
 concur.' 
 
 ' I must ask you to allow me to differ 
 from you, gentlemen,' said Tregarthen. ' I 
 do not see how it is in any way possible for 
 Colonel Pollard to vindicate his honour.' 
 
 'We will not trouble you, Mr. Tre- 
 garthen,' said the Major, 'for any expression 
 of your opinion.' He spoke with infinite 
 dryness. ' We will merely ask you to 
 nominate an hour for the meeting and to 
 name your friend.' 
 
 ' I cannot oblige you, gentlemen,' re-
 
 turned Tregarthen. ' Colonel Pollard has 
 wantonly and publicly defamed the character 
 of a lady, and I do not see how even a 
 public apology and withdrawal could help 
 him.' 
 
 The Colonel's emissaries looked at each 
 other with uplifted eyebrows. 
 
 1 Are we to understand,' asked the 
 Major, 'that you decline to meet Colonel 
 Pollard?' 
 
 'I do not see how the breach of law 
 which Colonel Pollard proposes can console 
 him for a former misdemeanour.' 
 
 4 Bay Jove, y'know,' cried Harcourt, ' the 
 fellow's mad's a March hare.' 
 
 ' I am not mad, most noble Festus,' said 
 Tregarthen, bowing. 
 
 The two military gentlemen were
 
 24 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 strangers to the volume from which he 
 quoted, and they looked at each other again 
 with a glance that said plainly that the mark 
 had been hit. 
 
 6 1 will fight in the (Queen's cause,' said 
 the Cornet, 'but in no other. 7 Here was 
 another touch of the bombast natural to 
 ardent youth, but TrjJPrthen's aspect- was 
 calm, and it was not difficult to see that he 
 meant what he said and was likely to abide 
 by it. 
 
 ' I do not think, sir/ said Major Eykin, 
 ' that you properly appreciate the situation, 
 or the alternative that lies before you.' 
 
 6 May I so far trespass on your kindness,' 
 asked the imperturbable young man, ' as to 
 beg you to instruct me ? ' 
 
 6 You have offered to the virtual head of
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA, 25 
 
 your regiment a public and most shameful 
 insult,' returned the Major in considerable 
 heat. 'He waives all consideration of his 
 rank, and stoops to demand a personal 
 encounter in vindication of his outraged 
 honour. Stoops, sir ! — understand me, sir — 
 I say — stoops to demand a personal 
 encounter. That encounter you refuse. 
 Do you know what construction gentlemen 
 will put upon your refusal ? ' 
 
 'I await instruction, sir,' answered 
 Tregarthen. 
 
 'Very well,' said the Major, grown 
 sardonic on a sudden, 'you shall have it. 
 It is open for you to offer an abject apology 
 and to exchange — if you are still inclined to 
 ornament the service.' 
 
 ' Is that the only alternative course you
 
 26 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 see ? ' inquired the Cornet. ' Pardon me, 
 gentlemen. We are all naturally a little 
 heated by the events of the evening. May 
 I suggest that we attempt a milder humour ? ' 
 
 'The thing, sir,' declared the Major, 
 6 stands beyond discussion. You aggravate 
 an original offence by the tone you choose 
 to take. 5 
 
 6 Permit me,' said this amazing subaltern. 
 ' Is it not at least equally open to Colonel 
 Pollard, with myself, to offer an apology 
 and to exchange — if he is still inclined to 
 ornament the service ? ' 
 
 Major Eykin swung round upon his 
 heel and marched to the door. There he 
 turned abruptly. 
 
 ' One more chance, sir ! Do you 
 apologise or fight ? ' 
 
 'Neither, sir/ returned Tregarthen.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 27 
 
 The Major tore the door open and dis- 
 appeared. Tregarthen ran forward and 
 held the door whilst Harcourt left the room . 
 Their steps died off into silence, and the 
 presumptuous young man was left to his 
 own reflections, which began to be dis- 
 turbed and bitter. He found little fault 
 with himself as yet, but he had learned in 
 what light his conduct was likely to be 
 regarded by the men amongst whom he 
 had desired to live. He had acted deliber- 
 ately, and was not in the least disposed to 
 be ashamed of himself. Men of middle 
 age can sometimes school themselves to 
 hold a candle to the devil. They learn the 
 wisdom of the world and are not greatly 
 inclined to champion their own notions. 
 They feel no dishonour in toleration. But
 
 28 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 with two-ancl-twenty all this may be different, 
 and happily it sometimes is. Quixote grows 
 into Sancho Panza, as often as not, before 
 he comes to forty year. That may or may 
 not be sorrowful, but to be born Sancho 
 would surely seem something of a pity. 
 
 Contrary to Tregarthen's expectation, no 
 immediate action followed upon his refusal 
 of the Major's ultimatum. A day or two 
 went by and he was simply disregarded. 
 No brother officer came near him ; he heard 
 nothing about the continuance of his arrest 
 or its discontinuance, and after waiting in 
 his own quarters until the sense of tedium 
 became too marked to be easily endured, he 
 wrote a careful little missive to the Colonel 
 requesting to know what form the charge 
 against him would take and when it would
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 29 
 
 be preferred. In response to these inquiries 
 came a letter from the Adjutant informing 
 him that the character of the charge was 
 under consideration, that he would receive 
 ample warning of the date on which it would 
 be preferred, and that he was in the mean- 
 time to regard himself as being released from 
 active participation in regimental duties. 
 Following on this came another letter (signed 
 by every officer of the regiment with the 
 exception of the Colonel, the names following 
 each other in order of seniority) urging upon 
 him the extreme desirableness of a with- 
 drawal from the regiment, and suggesting in 
 terms of studied politeness that even the 
 service at large might manage to get along 
 without him. 
 
 This second epistle Tregarthen left un-
 
 30 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 answered, but he appealed to the Adjutant 
 to know whether he might regard himself as 
 being provisionally at liberty, and being 
 answered in the affirmative he set out for 
 London. He found his story there before 
 him, garbled, as such stories are. He had 
 drunkenly insulted his Colonel, had thrown 
 a wineglass at him — in milder versions had 
 only thrown the contents of the glass — in 
 versions even stronger had used a decanter 
 as a missile. 
 
 He suffered much heart-burning before 
 the court-martial summoned to decide his 
 case was appointed, and if he had expecta- 
 tions of support from any court of honour 
 they were dashed to pieces. The assem- 
 blage of officers and gentlemen who investi- 
 gated the history of the quarrel were unani-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 31 
 
 mously agaiost him. They were also 
 unanimous in their recommendation that he 
 should quit the service. This, with the 
 obstinacy natural to him, he utterly declined 
 to do, and the upshot of the whole matter 
 was that, when all due formalities had been 
 accomplished, the contumacious youth was 
 deprived of his commission, and was returned 
 to the world with a character more damaged 
 than it deserved to be. Discipline must be 
 maintained, and there is no doubt that if 
 cornets were accustomed publicly to rebuke 
 their colonels for breaches of good-breeding 
 the British military service would enter on 
 a phase of some novelty. 
 
 Tregarthen went home disgusted and 
 embittered. The only career he cared for 
 was closed to him for good and all, and
 
 32 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 even in later years, when experience brought 
 him more wisdom than two-and- twenty 
 can commonly boast of, he believed himself 
 to have been unjustly used. 
 
 It seemed necessary to relate this epi- 
 sode of his career for two reasons. It 
 strikes a keynote of character, and it fur- 
 nishes an explanation for his after- mode of 
 life.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 33 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 It was about the time of the events just 
 recorded that Mr. Eonald Marsh dawned 
 upon London. There are various ways of 
 dawning : the grey way is perhaps esteemed 
 the most prosperous, but Mr. Marsh dawned 
 in vivid splendours, and his glories at the 
 beginning were inclined to be tempestuous. 
 London is a biggish place to dawn upon, 
 and the luminary whose rays pierce every 
 cranny and corner of it must rise high and 
 shine bright indeed. Now Mr. Marsh made 
 no pretence (though he knew himself a sun 
 vol. r. D
 
 34 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 of the first magnitude) to shine upon the 
 vulgar. The fog of their understanding 
 was obvousliy .too dense for him. He did 
 not even count upon illuming the whole 
 of the polite world, as yet. There are men 
 and women in the highest circles who never 
 get a thrill of warmth or a ray of conscious 
 light out of iEschylus or Shakespeare. Not 
 that Mr. Marsh thought much of iEschylus 
 or Shakespeare, but they had passed, up till 
 now, as amongst the earth's greatest, and 
 they were well enough in the way of parallel 
 or illustration. He was content for the 
 present to be seen and known of few. He 
 would have been content, in a way, not to 
 be seen or known at all — at least, he had the 
 modesty to say so — to shine unheeded, and 
 to rejoice in his own strength and radiance.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 35 
 
 He dawned, then, in fitful splendours, 
 and his signs and portents were first noted 
 in the house of Lady Marguerite Capucine, 
 where he appeared in unstarched linen and 
 apparel of strange device, and with a head 
 of hair like a disorderly halo. He had no 
 actual companions, but two or three satel- 
 lites accompanied him, rising at his risings 
 and setting at his settings. Their merely 
 physical aspect was like his own ; they wore 
 their hair at as great a length and in as 
 picturesque disorder ; their sombreros and 
 their cloaks were as brigandish as their 
 leader's. They thought great things of 
 themselves and of each other; but they 
 swore by the Leader and proclaimed him 
 the Emancipator of Human Thought. They 
 used to say, with every evidence of sincerity, 
 D 2
 
 36 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 that when the Leader gave his poems to the 
 world the pillars of a woro-out system would 
 be shaken. 
 
 The Leader could occasionally be pre- 
 vailed upon to repeat or read a mere frag- 
 mentary extract from his work, and the 
 appetite of his followers grew with what it fed 
 on. In these excerpts the world was called 
 upon to break its fetters — not particularised 
 with clearness — and there were mightily 
 sonorous passages about the Degraded Gods 
 and the need for their complete abolition. 
 
 Nobody can live always at extremest 
 high pressure, and Mr. Eonald Marsh went 
 about sometimes quite like an ordinary 
 person. At these times he consorted for the 
 most part with people who were literary, 
 artistic, and theatrical. Bohemia is a
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 37 
 
 sparsely-peopled country now. One or two 
 men who really knew its crowded haunts 
 and its few solitudes, its cheerful highways 
 and sad byways, wrote about it and made 
 it familiar to the world. Then came the 
 inevitable cloud of imitators and pretenders, 
 and made poor old Bohemia an impossible 
 place to live in any longer. Its name is so 
 cheapened that the very mention of it has a 
 ring of sham sentiment and sham mirth ; 
 even its tried gold has been so lacquered 
 that it looks like pinchbeck. But there was 
 a Bohemia worth knowing even so late as 
 Eonald Marsh's day, and the great young 
 man sometimes strayed into it and tried to 
 feel as if he were native there. 
 
 There was, and is, a dingy back room in 
 one of the oldest houses in the Strand, a
 
 38 BY THE GATE OF THE SE/x 
 
 mere box of an apartment, in which, by 
 crowding themselves uncomfortably, ten 
 men of average breadth of beam can sit 
 around the clumsy centre table. Half one 
 side of the room is occupied by a window, 
 but the smoke-encrusted wall of a neigh- 
 bouring building rises within two yards of 
 it, and a gruesome twilight reigns within 
 the apartment even at noontide. There, 
 once a week, in the days of which I write, 
 spectral-looking figures sat and held high 
 converse on books and pictures and. the 
 drama, and on the men and women who 
 wrote, or painted, or played. The air was 
 heavy with tobacco-smoke and the scent of 
 strong potables, and a new comer, entering 
 from the fresher air of the Strand, had some 
 ado to make out the inmates of the room.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 39 
 
 The spectral nine welcomed the poet with 
 grave voices, and wedged themselves closer 
 to make room for him. The Leader took 
 his seat with an air of modesty, and the 
 spectral nine began to chaff him. 
 
 6 1 am sorry to tell you, Mr. Marsh,' 
 said one, speaking from the cloudiest 
 corner, 'that the petition yet awaits a 
 signature.' 
 
 ' What petition ? ' asked the poet, re- 
 moving his sombrero, and passing a hand 
 of unusual whiteness through his auburn 
 locks. 
 
 ' The petition,' responded the other, 
 bending forward to be more impressive, and 
 waving the smoke' aside with one hand. 
 ' Signed by the crowned heads of Europe, 
 the Pope of Borne, and the English Arch-
 
 4 o BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 bishops, and now awaiting the signature 
 of the Metropolitan of the Greek Church at 
 Moscow/ 
 
 8 1 do not read the newspapers,' said the 
 poet, daintily lighting a cigar. ' What is the 
 object of the petition ? ' 
 
 ' Gentlemen ! ' cried the man in the 
 corner. ' I appeal to you : Is it not unfair 
 for Mr. Marsh to feign ignorance on such a 
 topic ? ' 
 
 ' Unfair in the extreme,' said eight 
 solemn voices. ' Disingenuous,' one added, 
 when the grave murmurs had died away. 
 They all echoed — ' Disingenuous.' 
 
 'The distinguished personages already 
 enumerated,' said the man in the corner, 
 4 address their petition to you, sir, and 
 entreat you not to smash things. They
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 41 
 
 dread the advent of your coming volume. 
 They beseech you to spare the Christian 
 faith, and to allow monarchical institutions a 
 final chance.' 
 
 The poet smiled and caressed his shaven 
 cheek with the tips of his fingers. Many a 
 true word is spoken in jest, and the man in 
 the corner was nearer the mark than he 
 fancied. 
 
 4 If the prayers of the great cannot move 
 you,' pursued the man in the corner, ' you 
 are a man, for you are poet — the greater 
 includes the less — and you may be moved 
 by the petitions of the lowly. I have a 
 maiden aunt, a harmless creature who 
 resides hard by, and clear-starches for a 
 bishop. If you destroy the Church you take 
 away her means of livelihood. Smite the
 
 42 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 lofty if you will, but spare the humble. 
 Spare my maiden aunt.' 
 
 All the solemn voices murmured, led by 
 a man in another corner, ' Spare, oh, spare 
 his maiden aunt ! ' 
 
 ' A special fund shall be set apart, out 
 of the* publisher's profits,' said the poet, 
 6 and your maiden aunt shall be provided 
 for.' 
 
 6 He unbends,' said one. ' He is human 
 after all. He can gleek upon occasion, like 
 the Athenian weaver.' 
 
 ' Let us take him to the collective 
 bosom,' said the man in the corner. ' Let 
 us stand him drinks. Lorrimer, when the 
 glad child of the sun broke in upon us you 
 were in possession of the ear of the house. 
 Continue. Poet, be silent. A harp less
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 43 
 
 varied than thine own awakes in praise of 
 beauty.' 
 
 4 Gentlemen,' said Mr. Lorrimer, who 
 beamed rubicund and jovial through the 
 smoke, ' she is a stunner. I do not speak 
 inadvisedly or as one who has no knowledge. 
 It was I who found her. She has the 
 grace of Venus and the voice and figure of 
 a what's-his-name. I have no pretence to 
 classical attainments, gentlemen, and I wish 
 that our gifted young friend could describe 
 her for me.' 
 
 4 We shall judge for ourselves when she 
 makes her debut, said the man in the 
 corner. ' But in the meantime, who is she ? 
 Where does she come from ? ' 
 
 4 You shall know all I know,' said Mr. 
 Lorrimer, with a superfluous appearance of
 
 44 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 candour. ' Burnley has bought a bit of 
 fishing at a place called Lickey, down in 
 Berkshire. Little bit of a place with little 
 bit of a theatre, and the worst company 1 
 ever saw. Burnley asked me down, and of 
 course, with nothing doing at the end of 
 May, down I went. Went to the theatre 
 first night. Play was, " As You Like It." 
 As / liked it, it was the most fearful rubbish 
 ever staged. Even Shakespeare couldn't live 
 through that interpretation. But, begad, 
 gentlemen, in walks Eosalind, and I thought 
 I must be dreaming. Such a figure, such a 
 voice, such a stage presence, such a style. 
 Face not particularly pretty, but sweet and 
 expressive, and all that sort of thing. Made 
 me laugh, begad ; made me cry ; did what 
 she wanted with me. I've been in the pro-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 45 
 
 fession now for forty years, and I am not 
 easily moved.' 
 
 ' Wrong, Lorrimer ! You are more 
 easily moved than ever,' said the man in the 
 'corner. 'We all are. We cultivate the 
 emotions until they master us more readily 
 than they used. Gin unsweetened is the 
 next best thing to the pursuit of an artistic 
 calling. Take them both together and 
 you are blest indeed. You can weep 
 at any moment. Will you ring the bell, 
 Lorrimer? Thank you. Waiter — gin un- 
 sweetened.' 
 
 4 Well,' said Mr. Lorrimer, ' I've seen 
 'em all for forty years, and played to most 
 of 'em ; and, only give the new one a bit of 
 practice, gentlemen, and she'll beat the lot 
 of 'em. Into sticks,' he concluded, beatiug
 
 46 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 the table two or three times with the palm 
 of his hand — ' into sticks ! ' 
 
 ' What is this wonder's name? ' asked the 
 poet. 
 
 6 Her name is Churchill,' said Mr. 
 Lorrimer — ' Miss Churchill. And when the 
 Siddonses and the Bracegirdles and the Old- 
 fields and the Kellys and the Keeleys are 
 forgotten, she will be remembered. She's 
 unequalled. There never was anything like 
 her.' 
 
 ' The puff preliminary,' said the man in 
 the corner, ' requires an art which only 
 Lorrimer has mastered. Dramatic critics, 
 hold up your hands. Five ; and all big 
 fish.' 
 
 c I don't want to puff this time,' cried 
 Lorrimer. ' Wait till you see the lady,
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 47 
 
 gentlemen, and you'll say with me that no 
 adverse criticism can get near her. I defy 
 the crowd of you. And now, though I 
 grieve to leave you, dear boys all, I must be 
 off to rehearsal.' 
 
 Two men rose to allow him to unwedge 
 himself from between the table and the walL 
 As he passed the poet he touched him on 
 the shoulder and gave him an inviting back- 
 ward nod. Mr. Marsh arose and followed 
 him. 
 
 6 Now you're a judge of acting,' said Mr, 
 Lorrimer, when they were in the Strand. 
 4 You're a judge of female beauty too. First 
 dress rehearsal this afternoon. You shall 
 just take a seat in the circle, my boy, and 
 then you shall give me an opinion.' 
 
 The theatrical manager had not nearly
 
 48 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 so high an opinion of Mr. Marsh's critical 
 powers as the young gentleman himself en- 
 joyed, nor had he, perhaps, even so high an 
 opinion as he expressed, but he reverenced 
 c a nob,' and Mr. Marsh was undoubtedly a 
 nob of the most influential order. The 
 poet was hand-in-glove with Lady Marguerite 
 Capucine, his sister-in-law, who had a good 
 deal to do with artistic opinion in the upper 
 circles. Neither she nor any other lady, 
 however distinguished, could make or break 
 the fortunes of any production of Mr. 
 Lorrimer's, but the manager had an exalted 
 idea of her usefulness, and the poet had the 
 run of the house ; and was young enough to 
 enjoy the satisfaction of taking off the glamour 
 of theatrical performance by getting behind 
 the scenes.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 49 
 
 There were, perhaps, a dozen men and 
 women sprinkled about the dusky house — 
 two or three in the pit and the rest scattered 
 over the dress circle — when the curtain rose 
 and discovered Adam and Orlando. For 
 those days, the revival was to be unusually 
 magnificent and complete. The acting was 
 competent, though a little old-fashioned and 
 sombre till Rosalind came upon the stage. 
 Miss Churchill bewitched the poet as she 
 had bewitched the Cornet in the little 
 country town, only, when he was charmed 
 the poet felt it was his duty to be somewhat 
 more charmed than a commonplace person 
 could dream of being. He coined strange 
 epithets wherewith to describe her to his 
 friends, and at the fall of the curtain on 
 the third act he made his way round to the 
 vol. 1. E
 
 50 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 back of the stage. There he met Lorrimer, 
 and fell on him with praises, tooth and 
 nail. 
 
 ' My dear Lorrimer, a supernal perform- 
 ance ! There's something in it — a je ne 
 sais quoi — a tenderness in chiding, a dignity 
 in repose, a courtliness in badinage — one 
 seeks in vain for words of enough aptness 
 and delicacy and descriptive amplitude : 
 but one is delighted — one is borne away. 
 I must really make a pcint of being allowed 
 to do the notice in The Scourge. They 
 praise so rarely there that one will have a 
 chance of making an impression. My dear 
 Lorrimer, you have discovered a jewel. I 
 must really make a point of asking to be 
 presented. You must present me, Lorrimer, 
 you must really.'
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 51 
 
 Lorrinier, consenting, led the way. 
 Rosalind, in a fur cloak which reached to 
 her toes, was standing, with a somewhat 
 embarrassed air, looking up at a picture on 
 the greenroom wall. 
 
 'Permit me, Miss Churchill,' said Lor- 
 rinier. ' Mr. Eonald Marsh, the most charm 
 ing of London's poets.' 
 
 There are few things less pleasant, as 
 every modest man knows, than to be praised 
 effusively, and yet below one's obvious 
 merits. 
 
 ' Mr. Lorrimer flatters me,' said the 
 poet bowing. 
 
 ' Not at all.' cried the manager, ' not 
 at all.' 
 
 The tall and stately Eosalind vouchsafed 
 one glance to Mr. Eonald Marsh, offered 
 
 UNJVERSruu- ig»
 
 52 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 him something between a nod and a mutilated 
 curtsey, and resumed the study of the 
 picture on the wall. However much at her 
 ease she might be on the stage, she had at 
 present but a poor imitation of self-possession 
 when off it. But the gentle flattery of 
 ladies was the poet's social strong point, or 
 so he fancied. Somebody called Lorrimer 
 aside, and Mr. Marsh saw nothing better 
 than to repeat the speech he had so recently 
 spoken. 
 
 ' A supernal performance, Miss Churchill 
 Eeally, believe me, quite a supernal per- 
 formance. So sweet a tenderness in chiding 
 — such a dignity in repose — such courtliness 
 in badinage it has never been my happy lot 
 to meet upon the English boards. I assure 
 you, Miss Churchill, that one seeks in vain
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 53 
 
 for words of enough aptness and delicacy 
 and descriptive amplitude. One is delighted, 
 one is borne away.' 
 
 Before Mr Marsh had got more than 
 half way through this speech Lorrimer had 
 returned unheard, and stood with a broad 
 grin at his elbow. The poet, encountering 
 the manager's smile, read its meaning and 
 blushed at detection. Miss Churchill, who 
 had kept her eyes upon the picture whilst 
 he spoke, looked round at him like a dis- 
 guised lady in an old play. 
 
 ' I am obliged to you, sir,' she said, with 
 something of the accent of the stage, 
 ' Excuse me, sir. My call.' 
 
 She walked to the greenroom door, at 
 which the call-boy had indeed at that 
 moment bawled her name. The call, how-
 
 54 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA, 
 
 ever, was not for the stage. The boy 
 handed her a letter, a formal-looking 
 document, in a large blue cover, with a 
 splashed seal of red wax. The actress, 
 seeming, by a slight inclination of her head, 
 to demand leave of the manager and the 
 poet, broke the seal and, opening the letter, 
 began to read. The poet watched her 
 the while, and saw a blush rise beyond the 
 line of necessary rouge upon her cheek. 
 Looking up, she caught him in the act of 
 staring at her, and with a curtsey she swept 
 from the room. 
 
 Mr. Marsh felt that he had fared but 
 poorly, and stood sucking at the nob of his 
 walking-cane with a more vacuous aspect 
 than a great man often wears. By-and-by, 
 finding that Eosalind did not reappear, he
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 55 
 
 strolled back to the dress circle, where he 
 lounged with upward glance and rested his 
 auburn head upon his hand in the most 
 approved poetic manner. He was so 
 absorbed in thinking of what the other 
 people in the dress circle were likely to 
 think of him, that for awhile he did not 
 notice that the curtain still lay between him 
 and the long-since exploited and exploded 
 fairyland of the stage. By-and-by the 
 scattered denizens of the dress circle drew 
 near each other and laid their heads 
 together. Then Lorrimer appeared between 
 the curtain and the floats as if in act to 
 address the limited audience, but he retired 
 without saying a word. In the front of the 
 house arose a whisper — something was going 
 wrong. Aroused by this conjecture, the
 
 56 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 poet once more availed himself of the 
 freedom his intimacy with the manager 
 gave him, and sauntered behind the scenes. 
 The florid Lorrimer was swearing like a 
 Bedlamite. The ducal usurper, the 
 banished duke, Jaques, Celia, Phoebe, and 
 Orlando, stood about him, all in attitudes of 
 more or less amazement. 
 
 'What's the matter, Lorrimer?' asked 
 the poet. 
 
 'Matter?' cried Lorrimer. 'The jade's 
 off at the last minute, and this is all she 
 leaves behind her.' 
 
 The poet took from the manager's 
 outstretched hand a note, and read this : — 
 
 'Sir, — Circumstances have arisen which 
 make it impossible that I should continue
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 57 
 
 my career upon the stage. I shall be happy 
 
 to repay you for all expenses you may have 
 
 incurred in my behalf. Pray communicate 
 
 in respect to that matter with my lawyers, 
 
 Messrs. Lowe and Carter, of Clement's 
 
 Inn. 
 
 1 Yours very truly, 
 
 4 Clara Churchill.' 
 
 4 She can't mean it ! ' cried Lorrimer, 
 actually gasping. ■ I've spent three hundred 
 pounds in money, and three thousand pounds 
 in wit in advertising her. She wants more 
 salary. That's what it is — she wants more 
 salary. But, begad, since she's tried it on in 
 this way ' (he mastered his rage so far as to 
 be able to embroider it, as it were, with a 
 touch of mock-heroics), 4 if that her jesses
 
 5 8 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 were my dear heart-strings, I'd whistle her 
 off and let her down the wind to prey at 
 fortune.' 
 
 Mr. Konald Marsh sighed audibly. 
 
 1 Shakespeare crowds us all from the field 
 of popular quotation,' he said inwardly. 
 ' Had Lorrimer known it he might have 
 found a passage far more appropriate in my 
 Epithalamium.'
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 59 
 
 CHAPTEE ni. 
 
 When Tregarthen found that his zeal for 
 the reformation of mess-room manners had 
 wrecked his military fortunes, he went 
 home, and there buried himself among his 
 books. Many, many years ago the Tregar- 
 thens, his forbears, had built for themselves 
 a fortress for a dwelling-place, and the 
 house had wasted away bit by bit like the 
 other belongings of its owners, but had been 
 modernised and added to every here and 
 there, until it had grown and fallen into one 
 of the oddest and most heterogeneous piles
 
 60 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 in England. A man must be curiously 
 moulded indeed if his character is in no way- 
 affected by the character of the house in 
 which he is bred, and a good deal of the 
 sentiment of the frowning, rambling, stately, 
 yet half-ruined old house had found its way 
 into Tregarthen. 
 
 His ancestors, for reasons of their own, 
 had built their house upon an island, and 
 this island faced the Cornish mainland on the 
 one hand and the melancholy Atlantic on 
 the other. The house stood high and bare 
 for winter storms to rave at, and in the 
 rougher months of the year it had constantly 
 to be provisioned for a siege of stormy 
 weather, since for weeks at a time it was 
 dangerous if not impossible to approach the 
 island. The one harbour faced the main-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 6t 
 
 land with two prodigious walls of rock, and 
 a narrow belt of smooth sand between, 
 which ran upward towards hardy grasses, 
 and was directly overlooked by the mansion. 
 Those vast walls of rock and the narrow 
 space between them were known to the local 
 folk as the Gate of the Sea. So old a house 
 as that of the Tregarthens could scarcely fail 
 to have been shot at by the local bards and 
 soothsayers — shoot bolts enough and some 
 of them are sure to stick — and one of many 
 prophecies and mottoes clung, It set forth, 
 that whatsoever good or evil the Tregarthens 
 endured should come to them by the Gate 
 of the Sea — a conclusion somewhat obvious, 
 since, unless by balloon or earthquake there 
 was no other way of approaching their 
 dwelling-place. If the Cornish couplet be
 
 62 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 faithfully translated, it prophesies as much 
 for character as for fortune — 
 
 What evil or good ye have or be 
 
 Shall come to you all by the Gate of the Sea. 
 
 Now, in the days when a full cellar, a 
 roughly generous larder, and a chance of 
 hard knocks and loot could tempt ad- 
 venturous souls to follow a freebooting 
 gentleman, Tregarthen's house might have 
 been a pleasurable place to live in for those 
 whose fancy lay that way. But for an 
 almost companionless youngster, who had 
 just learned one of the world's bitterest 
 lessons, it was as unwholesome a residence 
 as might anywhere have been found. Tre- 
 ^arthen needed home influences and cheerful 
 companionship, but he had long been an 
 orphan, and he had neither brother nor
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 63 
 
 sister. He was not absolutely wealthy, but 
 he had more money than he wanted, and 
 there were few things which would have 
 been of more use to him than the spur of 
 poverty. 
 
 It is easy in the hot days of youth for 
 the mind to persuade itself to anything. Tre- 
 garthen persuaded himself that he had done 
 with the world for good and all, that it should 
 occupy him no more, and that he would live 
 for his studies and no other earthly thing. 
 His studies began to lead him in a direction 
 which it was somewhat odd that a young 
 gentleman of the nineteenth century should 
 take. Some ancestor of his had collected all 
 the works of that crowd of impostors, quacks, 
 self-deceivers, enthusiasts, and martyrs to 
 science who have written on the transmuta-
 
 64 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 tioo of metals, the diviinDg rod, the elixir 
 vitas, the powers and properties of the stars, 
 and so forth — all the works, that is to say, that 
 he could in one short lifetime lay hands on. 
 Tregarthen began to grope amongst the dark 
 sayings of these gentry, at first with an amused 
 interest and then with a singular growth of 
 doubt. There might be something in the 
 doctrine of transmutation after all. 
 
 When a man begins even to doubt on a 
 question like that he is pretty far gone on a 
 road which has led oftener than not to mere 
 madness. Tregarthen saw the danger, but 
 the study drew him and absorbed him more 
 and more, until he began to find in it a com- 
 pensation for all tilings. If a man could 
 find the philosopher's stone ! Let any man 
 in his sane and sober senses surrender him-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 65 
 
 self to the fancy for a moment, and where 
 are the glories of the cave into which the 
 magician dropped Aladdin, or the valley 
 into which the roc carried Sinbad ? They 
 are no more than a billiard ball in com- 
 parison with Saturn. But be touched with 
 doubt as to the bare possibility of its actual 
 discovery, and the poor mind is dazzled, 
 staggered, overawed, by the magnificence of 
 its own fancies. Tregarthen began to dream 
 these dreams. 
 
 He lived almost alone through the wild 
 winter and the blustering spring. Early 
 summer found him more and more ready to 
 surrender himself to the intoxication of this 
 singular madness. Perhaps it needs that a 
 certain strain of greatness shall lie in a man's 
 nature before he can go mad in that particular 
 
 vol. 1. F
 
 66 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 way. The compact small creature whose 
 faculties are all of a size is as safe as the 
 compact great creature whose powers are 
 equally well balanced. 
 
 Happily for most of us, the world is too 
 much with us to allow us to develop to 
 complete fulness of eccentricity. Trans- 
 planted to Jupiter the human race might 
 find elbow room enough to grow into a 
 huge asylum of crazy humourists, but our 
 crowded civilisation acts upon us as close 
 shelter acts on the trees in a plantation — the 
 outer lines grow a little twisted, perhaps, 
 but in the middle of the wood the stems are 
 straight and uniform. Tregarthen in his 
 island castle off the Cornish coast was still a 
 little sheltered. By-and-by a shelter he had 
 not hoped for began to grow about him.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 67 
 
 The blustering spring had passed, and 
 here was a lovely day in mid-June, with a 
 sky of sapphire, a sea of sapphire and pearl, 
 and a breeze of warm spice and balm. 
 Tregarthen wandered, smoking and lost in 
 idle meditation, to the cliffs on the right side 
 of the sea-gate, and there cast himself full 
 length on the warm and scented herbage. 
 The splendour of the day was nothing to 
 him just then, and though his bodily eyes 
 took cognisance of one of the finest reaches 
 of rock-bound coast England can show, he 
 had no conscious pleasure in it. He pulled 
 his soft hat over his eyes and surrendered 
 himself to his pipe and his dreams. Every- 
 thing was wonderfully still. He could hear 
 the plash of the waves on the rocks below, 
 though he gave no heed to it, and the in- 
 p 2
 
 68 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 tricate murmurs of many insects mingled 
 drowsily with the voice of the sea, as though 
 they were of equal volume with it. Tre- 
 garthen's dreams, under these conditions, 
 grew more and more dreamy ; his fancies, 
 like the sounds about him, became dim and 
 diffused. Anything was welcome to the 
 domination of his mind at such a moment, 
 and a certain idle rhythm in the fall and rise ■ 
 of the waters down below did well enough 
 to think about. 
 
 He was certainly not quite wide awake, 
 and he was just as certainly not quite asleep 
 when a vision dawned upon him. Two or 
 three vilely-painted trees fluttered on a 
 ragged canvas and libelled the forest of 
 Arden. A dowdy female, and a melancholy 
 male in a fool's coxcomb walked before the
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 69 
 
 painted cloth and libelled Celia and Touch- 
 stone. Then suddenly came into sight a 
 radiant creature, and a voice spoke in tones 
 which blended resignation and fatigue with 
 something almost jesting — ' Oh, Jupiter, how 
 weary are my spirits ! ' This voice was so 
 near and clear that it awoke him and brought 
 him bolt upright, sitting in the bracken. 
 There was a sound of laughter and voices 
 on the little strip of sand below, and, 
 moving to the edge of the cliff, he looked 
 over. 
 
 In fine summer weather it was a com- 
 mon thing for people to row across from the 
 mainland and picnic on the island. Tre- 
 garthen's forbears had permitted this, and 
 Tregarthen himself had never felt an objection 
 to it until now. It may be allowed that, at
 
 70 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 the moment at which he found . himself in- 
 terrupted, his studies were not of the most 
 exigent sort, yet his first thought was that 
 the presence of these intruders and their like 
 would be inimical to study. Then he re- 
 gretted the loss of his dream, and blamed 
 the intruders for breaking it, though the 
 dream itself had awakened him. 
 
 His half slumber had lasted for so short ' 
 a space of time that the pipe he held between 
 his finger and thumb still sent up a streak 
 of faint blue smoke. He stuck it between 
 his lips again, and had turned to ramble 
 homewards when the voice of his dream 
 spoke in his waking ear, and stayed his 
 footsteps. 
 
 ' That is Miss Churchill, the actress/ he 
 said to himself. ' There is not another voice
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 71 
 
 like that in the world, I should fancy. I 
 should know it amongst a thousand.' 
 
 Since the night on which he had earned 
 his own ruin by rebuking Colonel Pollard 
 for his story of the actress he had scarcely 
 thought about her, but he felt a curious 
 pleasure and interest now in the belief that 
 she was near. In spite of his shortsighted- 
 ness he had a very definite idea of what she 
 was like. It seemed to him that he could 
 summon her face before his mind's eye quite 
 clearly, and, as he saw it, it was worthy of 
 her figure and her voice. He confessed to 
 himself that he would like to see her nearer 
 at hand, and to know how far her mind 
 corresponded to his own impressions of her 
 genius as an actress. It could not be difficult 
 to devise a means of seeing her or even of
 
 72 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 speaking to her, seeing that she was actually 
 a trespasser upon his ground. He thought, 
 however, of a score of devices, none of 
 which commended themselves to him, and 
 as he thought he strolled towards the spot 
 where the gradual rise of the sands and the 
 more precipitous fall of the cliff brought the 
 two upon a level. This spot was about 
 midway between high-water line and the 
 gates of the old mansion, and he reached it 
 almost at the same moment with the visitors 
 to the island. He heard the sweet voice 
 talking again, and was more than ever per- 
 suaded that it belonged to Miss Churchill. 
 
 He polished his eyeglass in readiness to 
 observe, and before he himself was seen he 
 had secured a good look at every person in 
 the little party. The lady with the sweet
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 71 
 
 voice was tall and graceful, but her face was 
 not the face of his memory. Compared 
 with that memory the face was plain, though 
 few people would have expressed so un- 
 favourable a judgment had they but looked 
 at it by itself. The eyes, of no particular 
 colour, were large, intelligent, and sympa- 
 thetic ; the lips were beautiful alike in form 
 and expression ; the brow was broad and 
 white. The skin was pallid, and the hair, 
 like the eyes, was of no particular colour. 
 Perhaps the want of definite colouring was 
 the chief fault of the face ; but, be that as 
 it may, it was thrown back, for whatever 
 beauty or charm it claimed, upon expression. 
 There was no chance of finding out all these 
 things at a look, and Tregarthen was only 
 conscious of a disappointment. The face
 
 74 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 was not the one he remembered, nor any- 
 thing like it ; and there might be two voices 
 alike in the world after all. 
 
 He was a little embarrassed for a 
 moment, even though he stood on his own 
 ground and the new-comers were strangers 
 and intruders, for the lady looked at him 
 when once she had felt his glance, and re- 
 garded him with a curiously candid and un- 
 affected gaze, much more like that of a child 
 than a woman. Before Tregarthen's sense 
 of embarrassment became overwhelming, one 
 of the lady's male companions stepped 
 forward, with a somewhat overwrought 
 flourish of politeness. 
 
 1 I believe I have the pleasure of address- 
 ing Mr. Tregarthen ? ' Tregarthen bowed, 
 and the stranger flourished his hat to his
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 75 
 
 head and flourished his handkerchief out of 
 his pocket. 'I have not the honour of 
 being personally known to you, sir, but my 
 father was your respected father's solicitor — 
 Mr. Penruth of Gorbay. I have dared to 
 trespass in order to oblige these ladies and 
 gentlemen with a sight of Tregarthen 
 Castle.' 
 
 ' I remember your father, sir,' said Tre- 
 garthen, a little confusedly, ' and you are 
 quite welcome here.' It was strange, he 
 thought, that in so little a while his absence 
 from the common haunts of men should 
 have cost him so much in savoir-faire. ' If 
 your friends would care to see the interior 
 of the house I shall be happy to admit them. 
 Pray introduce me.' 
 
 Mr. Penruth was obviously delighted,
 
 7 G BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 and was honoured by Tregarthen's affability. 
 The last representative of the great local 
 family was not rich, as the times go, but he 
 had a background : a fact to which people 
 who have no background are apt to attach a 
 superstitious value. The solicitor flourished 
 through the introductions, and Tregarthen 
 caught no name until he faced the lady he 
 had supposed to be Miss Churchill. 
 
 ' Miss Farmer,' said Mr. Penruth ; 
 ' Gorbay's chief ornament. — Mr. Tregar- 
 then.' 
 
 The girl flushed at this for a moment 
 with a look of anger, but she bowed to Tre- 
 garthen as if he had been a squire of low 
 degree and she a princess. It crossed him 
 that she was not so plain as he had fancied. 
 Mr. Penruth was persuaded that he had said
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 77 
 
 the right thing in the right way, and got 
 through the remaining introductions with in- 
 creased ease and glibness. 
 
 1 If we may have your permission to visit 
 the castle,' he began, when the ceremony 
 was over Tregarthen cut him short with a 
 dry ' Certainly ; ' and fell into talk with the 
 lady of the voice. She seemed chary at first 
 of letting the voice be heard, but by-and-by, 
 at the sight of the picturesque old ruins and 
 remnants of Tregarthen's house, she warmed. 
 The dim family portraits, the arms and 
 armour, the black oak of walls, ceilings, and 
 furniture delighted her, and she took no less 
 interest in the grey walls from which trees 
 sprang, the broken arches and window spaces 
 opening on blue air, in what had once been 
 the family stronghold. In a case like this it
 
 7 8 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA, 
 
 is perhaps less important to note what a 
 charming woman says than how she says 
 it. Her commonplaces were commonplace 
 enough, but they dropped on Tregarthen's 
 ears so pleasantly that he would rather have 
 listened to them than to much learning and 
 wisdom. 
 
 She was charmingly dressed in a fashion 
 which is now deservedly stigmatised as ugly. 
 Tregarthen thought he had rarely seen any- 
 thing so dignified, yet so gentle, as her 
 carriage, and the singular, soft fascination of 
 her voice grew upon him more and more. 
 
 When the rounds were finished the host 
 proffered to his guests some slight refresh- 
 ment, which the Gorbay solicitor, in behalf 
 of self and friends, declined with many 
 flourishes of humility and gratitude. Tre-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 79 
 
 garthen saw nothing for it but to permit 
 them to retire, though he would willingly 
 have detained one of them a little longer. 
 When they had gone, the young gentleman 
 was guilty of what he felt to be a meanness. 
 He stationed himself at his bedroom window, 
 and thence, by means of a single-barrelled 
 opera-glass which had belonged to his 
 mother, he kept the lady of the voice in 
 sight until she and her companions had 
 entered the boat in which they had arrived, 
 and the little vessel, being pushed off, dis- 
 appeared behind the cliffs. 
 
 Tregarthen did not resume his studies 
 that evening with anything like his customary 
 gusto. A commoner malady than the old 
 one had clapped him on the shoulder. His 
 books lay spread about his library table, and
 
 80 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 now and then he fingered the leaves of one 
 or another of them, and even read a passage 
 in which he found no meaning. That was 
 not at all an uncommon thing at the best of 
 times, but it generally arose from the fact 
 that there was no meaning to be found, 
 whereas now the main reason was that he 
 brought no understanding to his reading.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The plain English of the matter was that 
 Tregarthen had fallen in love, though only 
 in an experimental fashion, He was not yet 
 beyond all chance — nobody ever was, as the 
 result of a single interview — but a lonoqno- 
 was upon him to see more of the woman 
 who had so much interested him, and he 
 walked into bondage with his eyes open. 
 Even thus early he guessed what was the 
 matter with him. 
 
 ( I must know more of her,' he said. 
 4 A man must be a poor creature who allows 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA, 
 
 himself to go down before a pair of expressive 
 eyes before he can guess whether there is a 
 soul behind them or not.' 
 
 The young man set forth deliberately in 
 quest of Miss Farmer's soul with intent to 
 examine and appraise it. He found the 
 slightest difficulty in obtaining a second in- 
 troduction to the lady, and it was managed 
 to look accidental and unsought. Gorbay 
 was not a big place, nor had it many people 
 of importance within its boundaries. The 
 importance of people is not determined, to 
 themselves, by the estimation in which they 
 are held by others, and the inhabitants of 
 Gorbay were as much interested in their 
 own affairs as if they had all been dukes and 
 duchesses — a provision of nature without 
 whcse operation things would be extremely
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. S3 
 
 dull for most of us. When Tregarthen, 
 whose seclusion had been a good deal talked 
 about, began to make visits to the mainland 
 and to cultivate the small gentry of the 
 town, the unfavourable opinions which had 
 been formed of him melted and disappeared. 
 The Tregarthens had always been so far 
 above the professional people and the small 
 retired capitalists of Gorbay that the con- 
 descension displayed by this latest scion of 
 the house was the more remarkable and the 
 more valued. 
 
 There were people who could tell him 
 all about Miss Farmer's simple and unevent- 
 ful history. He learned that she was the 
 daughter of the Vicar, and, except for the 
 time she had spent at school and a term of 
 eighteen months passed in London, was bred 
 
 G 2
 
 84 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 in Gorbay. She passed there as being 
 learned beyond the rights of women, but 
 that was the only fault that anybody found 
 with her. The Vicar nearly three years 
 ago, about the time when Tregarthen had 
 been awaiting his commission, had departed 
 this life, leaving two daughters very ill 
 provided for. Miss Farmer had thereupon 
 gone to London and had there made a living 
 for herself and her young sister, it was 
 believed by writing for the magazines. 
 Certain poems and stories bearing her name 
 had reached even to Gorbay, and there was 
 a general belief there that in the outer world 
 she was famous. But an uncle in the north 
 — the Farmers were northern people, it 
 appeared — had died two years later than his 
 brother the Vicar, and had left to Miss
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 85 
 
 Farmer funded moneys to the value of some 
 five hundred a year. On this she kept 
 house in modest and elegant comfort, and the 
 return of the elder girl had been welcomed 
 by all who knew her. The younger had been 
 put to school during her sister's absence and 
 was now finishing her education at home. 
 
 There is not much out of the common in 
 this narrative to anybody who does not 
 happen to be in love with Miss Farmer, or 
 strongly inclined that way. But to Tregar- 
 then the story seemed one of heroism and 
 sorrow, and he thought he could see already 
 some of those inward qualities of which he 
 desired to assure himself. The daughter of 
 a clergyman is conventionally a gentle- 
 woman, and he was already persuaded that 
 Miss Farmer possessed all desirable womanly
 
 86 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 qualities when he met her for the second 
 time. They had talked commonplaces at 
 their first meeting and had been aware of 
 the fact. They talked commonplaces now 
 and did not know it, because they spoke of 
 books and art, and nobody believes that he 
 or she can talk commonplaces upon those 
 inspiring themes. Miss Farmer's soul 
 declared itself more and more freely to 
 Tregarthen's attentive observation, and he 
 was more and more convinced that it was of 
 the right quality and pattern. 
 
 The young man had taken apartments 
 for the rest of the summer season at ' The 
 George,' and Gorbay knew by this time in 
 what pursuit he was engaged. Mr. Tre- 
 garthen rambled much in the pleasant fields 
 beyond the town, and Miss Farmer, who
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 87 
 
 had a taste for botany and some little know- 
 ledge of the science, was indefatigable in 
 exercise., The two young people met on 
 most days, and the little sister was old 
 enough to play propriety, and — which was 
 perhaps of more importance — was old 
 enough to know when she was not wanted. 
 Any wandering butterfly was reason enough 
 for a race which at least took this sensible 
 child round a corner of the lane in which 
 her elders strolled. 
 
 The searcher after the philosopher's stone 
 had found it, but not where he expected. 
 Everything had grown golden for him. The 
 simile is poverty-stricken, but there is no 
 simile which will express the spiritual wealth 
 of a heart which for the first time has given 
 away all its substance.
 
 88 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 It was time for lover's confidences, and 
 they were exchanged, The sensible child 
 had gone full tilt round a leafy corner, and 
 the young man and his sweetheart lingered 
 at a stile. The child carolled with a wonder- 
 fully sweet shrill voice fifty yards away and 
 the elders talked. 
 
 I You remember/ said Tregarthen, ' the 
 day on which we first met ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' she answered with a delicious 
 shyness. His ardent eyes — she thought she 
 had never seen anything so tender, ardent as 
 they were — and her bashful glance met for a 
 moment, and she blushed a little. 
 
 I I was lying on the grass,' he said, ' on 
 the top of the cliff, above the landing-place, 
 when I heard your voice, and it awoke 
 me.'
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 89 
 
 ; Was I so boisterous ? ' she asked, 
 smiling, with her eyes upon the ground. 
 
 'No,' he answered, with a little tender 
 laugh, which of itself was a lover's flattery, 
 4 but it awoke me. From a curious dream,' 
 he added, with an air of odd reluctance. 
 
 ' Indeed ? ' she said questioningly. 
 
 Tre^arthen began to wish in a va^ue 
 way that he had not mentioned this. His 
 goddess might not care to know that one of 
 her rarest charms had reminded him of an 
 actress. But, having begun, he felt bound 
 to go on, so he spoke with a feigned light- 
 ness, and looked anywhere rather than at his 
 sweetheart's face. 
 
 1 1 suppose you don't know,' he began, 
 ' what a lovely voice you have ? ' She made 
 no reply to this, but still looked demurely
 
 90 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 on the ground at her feet. ' When I first 
 heard it I was dreaming, and I distinctly- 
 heard the words, " Oh, Jupiter, how weary- 
 are my spirits ! " ' 
 
 ' That was not strange/ she answered, 
 looking up at him, 'I spoke them.' 
 
 6 Did you ? ' he asked, with some confu- 
 sion. All this seemed to have been said and 
 done aforetime, and to have led to some un- 
 happiness which now again threatened from 
 the near future. Everybody has experienced 
 that curious sensation. 
 
 fc What was your dream ? ' 
 
 4 Oh, my dream ? ' he answered. ' It 
 was nothing. I dreamed I was at the play, 
 and I saw Eosalind upon the stage.' 
 
 She looked up at him swiftly, with a 
 hint of fear and half a hint of resolution in
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 91 
 
 her face. He struck out with a transparent 
 pretence of being perfectly at his ease, and 
 cut down a nettle with his walking-cane. 
 
 ' Your voice reminded me,' he said, after 
 a little pause, ' of the most beautiful voice 
 I had ever heard till then. I even thought 
 I recognised it, and I walked down to meet 
 you and found that I had made a blunder.' 
 
 ' In meeting me ? ' she asked. 
 
 He laughed again, and their eyes met. 
 In hers there was a tender triumph and 
 gaiety which answered her own question 
 fairly w y ell, even without the aid of his, 
 which beamed with admiration. 
 
 1 No,' he answered, ' but in dreaming 
 that that lovely voice had ever sounded from 
 the stage.' He went on more at ease. 
 8 And yet the fancy haunted me all day.'
 
 92 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 She was looking on the ground once more, 
 and with the point of her parasol was turning 
 a little pebble over and over. She stooped 
 so that her face was hidden from him by the 
 wide-brimmed summer hat she wore. If 
 this were coquetry, the fashion of the day 
 favoured it, for at the drooping edge of the 
 width of plaited straw was a fringe of fine 
 black lace some two or three inches deep, 
 and he would have had to fall upon his 
 knees to see her face. Could he have seen 
 it he could not have failed to notice how 
 flushed she was, and what a look of fear and 
 shame was in her eyes. 
 
 1 Who was the lady,' she asked, ' whose 
 voice so resembled mine ? ' 
 
 ' A Miss Churchill,' said Tregarthen. 
 * A delightful actress. The most charming
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 93 
 
 actress I ever saw.' It seemed necessary to 
 make as much as might reasonably be made 
 of Miss Churchill's perfections to excuse any 
 comparison, however trivial, between her 
 and the woman of his heart, who not only 
 was not an actress and was a gentlewoman, 
 but was also and of course beyond comparison 
 with anybody. ' I saw her play Eosalind,' 
 he hurried on, c and since the first words I 
 heard you speak were the first words I heard 
 her speak the resemblance of the voices was 
 accidentally heightened.' 
 
 ' Did you wish very much to see Miss 
 Churchill ? ' asked the young lady. ' Were 
 you very much interested in her ? ' 
 
 'Not at all,' cried Tregarthen eagerly. 
 4 1 had forgotten her — until I heard the 
 
 voice.
 
 94 
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 ' Were you disappointed when you found 
 that it was only — me ? ' 
 
 6 Only you ! ' said the lover, and would 
 not condescend to add to that simple but 
 sufficient disclaimer, except by possessing 
 himself first of her hand and then of her 
 waist. For a while she bent her head and 
 refused to allow him to steal the merest 
 glance at her face, but by-and-by she turned 
 upon him gently and gazed full in his eyes 
 for a moment, whilst her figure yielded itself 
 more freely to his embrace, and no longer 
 repulsed him by its rigidity. 
 
 ' If I had turned out to be Miss Churchill,' 
 
 she asked him, ' should you ? She 
 
 paused, but the very silence was eloquent. 
 
 1 Have loved you ? ' said Tregarthen. 
 £ No. I could not have fallen in love with
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 95 
 
 an actress.' It seemed to him that there 
 might be a touch of jealousy in the appeal, 
 and he was in the mood to be tender to all 
 love's fancies, however shadowy and unreal 
 they might be. 
 
 6 Why not ? ' she asked. ' There are 
 many good women who are actresses, 
 surely.' 
 
 ' No doubt,' he answered lightly. ' Many, 
 But you rub the bloom from the peach if 
 you handle it ever so gently. An actress 
 gains something more than most women 
 hope for or care for, but she must be con- 
 tent to lose something — a delicacy, a fine- 
 ness, which is not easy to describe, but 
 means much to a man with any refinement 
 of mind.' 
 
 He was far from being actually dishonest
 
 96 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 in saying this, and yet he was not precisely 
 honest. Left to himself and his own judg- 
 ment he would not have thought these 
 thoughts at all, but the fancy that his be- 
 trothed had that visionary jealousy of the 
 actress moved him to make the jealousy im- 
 possible. 
 
 ' But if you had met her and had fallen 
 in love with her,' said the girl, ' and had 
 then found that she was an actress — that 
 would have made no difference to you ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' he said gravely, and as if con- 
 sidering the matter, ' a serious difference.' 
 
 ' I fancied men thought differently,' she 
 said, with some little heat of scorn. ; I 
 fancied that they did not altogether care so 
 much for those of us who live along in the 
 one little groove of household cares and
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 97 
 
 small accomplishments and silly joys and 
 sorrows.' 
 
 'I shall ask you to achieve no out- 
 of-doors greatness,' Tregarthen answered 
 fondly ; ' though you are more fit to shine 
 in the world's eye than any other woman 
 now alive.' The young man was not a fine 
 judge of verse, and it was natural to think 
 the Laureate's outpourings inferior to those 
 of the woman he himself was in love with. 
 4 Be as great as you will, but shine at home, 
 my dear, and let me worship you.' 
 
 That was a pretty programme, and the 
 girl found no fault with it as it applied to 
 her own prospects. But she had rather — 
 how much rather ! — that her future husband 
 should have thought better of Miss Churchill's 
 profession. It was clear that he suspected 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 nothing, imagined nothing, but it was a pain 
 to have a secret, though it were as harmless 
 as her own. For Miss Churchill, though an 
 actress, was as pure as a daisy, and nobody- 
 knew better than Miss Farmer how little 
 evil the stage had taught her, though there 
 are millions who know infinitely better how 
 much evil it has the power to teach. 
 
 One unavoidable result came out of this- 
 conversation. Miss Farmer buried Miss 
 Churchill, and resolved that the actress 
 should know no resurrection. But then (as 
 people unfairly or secretly entombed with 
 fears and suspicions hanging about them 
 have a prescriptive right to do) Miss 
 Churchill assumed ghost-like airs and 
 revisited the upper world and peopled the 
 sexton's life with unreal terrors. Tregarthen
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 99 
 
 had taught the girl to love hirn. She had 
 been an apt and willing pupil, and had 
 learned to love him well. She was of a 
 laro-e and generous nature, affectionate 
 rather than passionate, but inclined to cling 
 to the object of her affection with life-long 
 tenacity. There are few women who would 
 not have kept her innocent secret rather 
 than run the risk of losing a lover. And 
 Tregarthen was the one man in the world to 
 her, as a woman's first love always is — the 
 one possible idol. The mere thought of 
 losing him was cruel beyond expression; 
 the mere fancy that she might risk his loss 
 was scarcely bearable. She so honoured 
 and reverenced and loved him, that she was 
 forced to deceive him. That is not good 
 morality, but it is admirable feminine logic.
 
 ioo BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 The courtship went on. and Gorbay and 
 the county beyond the limits of Gorbay 
 discussed it, and on the whole were content 
 with it. Tregarthen might have looked 
 higher in spite of those regimental escapades 
 of his, for the last scion of one of the oldest 
 houses in that part of England, where houses 
 are so amazingly old, might think himself 
 almost any man's equal. He was not a 
 millionaire, but he had enough, and he 
 was unusually personable. Everybody was 
 persuaded that the match, from Miss 
 Farmer's point of view, was all that could 
 be desired. 
 
 Within nine months of their first speech 
 with each other the young pair became man 
 and wife, and set up housekeeping in 
 Gorbay. They had an exquisitely ap-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 101 
 
 pointed house, standing in the midst of 
 some eight acres of well-timbered ground 
 and surrounded by trim gardens. Whilst 
 they lived here the old mansion on 
 Tregarthen island was to be restored to 
 something of its former grandeur, and 
 Mrs. Tregarthen insisted upon having a 
 hand in this. She insisted on having so in- 
 fluential a hand in it that she placed the 
 whole of her own modest fortune in her 
 husband's hands and bade him make that 
 suffice. 
 
 'You bring me the grandeur of an old 
 name,' she said, ' and I claim to have my 
 share in its honours. If you refuse me this 
 I only half divide them.' 
 
 Tregarthen, after many affectionate 
 disputes, took the money.
 
 102 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 'Whatever is mine is yours,' he said, 
 ' and whatever is yours is mine. It is like 
 the right hand giving to the left.' 
 
 'Precisely,' said his wife, well pleased, 
 and the architect was busy at once. By the 
 beginning of July the builders were at work, 
 and the young couple had great joy in 
 crossing from Gorbay Head to Tregarthen 
 and watching the slow growth of the old 
 place to a new being. Tregarthen's funds 
 were snugly invested, and there were ample 
 means to keep the reglorified house in 
 reasonable state. Meantime, in other 
 matters they were content to retrench, and 
 Mrs. Tregarthen wrote industriously at a 
 romance on a large scale, determined not 
 to cost her husband a penny in dresses, and 
 to win an anonymous fame, of which he,
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 103 
 
 who alone should have the secret, should be 
 as proud as she was of him. 
 
 Visitors came thickly to Tregarthen that 
 
 summer; some, who had archaeological 
 
 tastes, from afar, bent on seeing the house 
 
 once before it assumed its new form. It 
 
 was no matter for surprise, therefore, when 
 
 a couple of sturdy boatmen pulled over a 
 
 party of ladies and gentlemen with a fat 
 
 and spectacled savant at their head, and the 
 
 fat and spectacled one began to wander 
 
 about amongst the stones and the mortar, 
 
 delivering a little lecture to his following as 
 
 he went. The married pair were in the 
 
 habitable part of the house, and at the 
 
 moment when the boat grounded at the 
 
 Sea- Gate Mrs. Tregarthen was receiving a 
 
 confession from her husband. He was
 
 104 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA 
 
 standing at the window from which he had 
 watched her on her first visit to the island 
 and was telling her, with no shamefacedness, 
 how he had kept her in sight after he parted 
 from her. It was not from any standpoint 
 but her own a deed to be rewarded, but 
 she kissed him for it with all her heart, 
 and they went gaily out together for a 
 ramble on the cliffs. Before they started, 
 Tregarthen took a look at the approaching 
 party through the single-barrelled opera- 
 glass. 
 
 ' We can go out with a clear conscience, 
 my dear,' he said ; ' there is no one we 
 know amongst them.' 
 
 They had not left the house long when 
 an architect's clerk came racing after 
 them, and asked Tregarthen's presence.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 105 
 
 The architect himself was on the ground, 
 and desired his opinion on some question or 
 another which could only be decided on the 
 spot. 
 
 1 Walk on,' said Tregarthen to his wife, 
 1 1 shall overtake you.' 
 
 She answered with a smile and a nod, 
 and rambled slowly over the verdurous 
 slopes, and enjoyed the fresh sea-breeze. 
 In a while she looked back, and, seeing no 
 sign of her husband, she sate in the shelter 
 of an overhanging boulder, and sinking 
 down in the soft mosses, surrendered her- 
 self to happy broodings upon her husband, 
 her home, his love and her own, and the 
 cloudless sky that overhung their sweet 
 domestic life. She was so deep sunk in 
 reverie, and the mosses hereabout were so
 
 io6 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 soft and thick that a wandering footstep 
 near at hand failed to reach her ear, and she 
 was a little startled to find a picturesque 
 young man baring his head before her with 
 an almost theatrical air of homage. 
 
 1 Miss Churchill ! ' said the picturesque 
 young man in accents of delighted surprise. 
 ' I was assured the world was not robbed of 
 you, but I am amazed to find you here. 
 Amazed and charmed.' 
 
 She did not recognise him, and arose 
 with some indignation at the familiarity of 
 his tone. She was startled by his sudden 
 coming, too, and at the first flash she saw 
 danger in the presence of any man who had 
 known Miss Churchill. 
 
 ' I am Mrs. Tregarthen, sir,' she said 
 haughtily and coldly.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 107 
 
 'I beg pardon,' said the picturesque 
 young man, still standing, hat in hand, 
 before her. 4 I cannot be mistaken. I had 
 the honour to meet you at the " Mirror." 
 My name is Marsh — Eonald Marsh. I owed 
 the pleasure to Mr. Lorrimer.' 
 
 4 1 have no recollection of the circum 
 stance,' she said, even more coldly than 
 before. 
 
 Mr. Eonald Marsh smiled with no touch 
 of embarrassment. It was a little odd that 
 there were people in the world who did 
 not leap at the chance of talking to him, but 
 the fact was indisputable, and he was used 
 to it. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon again,' he said, with 
 a graceful wave of his sombrero. ' At least 
 I may have the gratification of being assured
 
 108 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 that I am not in error in assuming you to be 
 Miss Churchill.' 
 
 Training tells in all things, and there 
 was a little ring of the stage in her lovely 
 voice as she answered him — 
 
 ' I was Miss Churchill, sir ; but I have no 
 desire to resume acquaintance with any 
 person who knew me by that name.' 
 
 Mr. Eonald Marsh flushed to the roots of 
 his hair, and donned his sombrero, with a 
 final bow. She moved past him, with flash- 
 ing eyes and head erect, and sweeping thus 
 round the edge of the great boulder, met 
 Tregarthen face to face.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 109 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Husbahd and wife looked at each other for 
 a moment, and then the wife's eyes drooped 
 guiltily. It is characteristic of people at large 
 to be wiser about other people's affairs than 
 they are about their own — being freed, in 
 the one case, of egotism's glasses — and 
 almost anybody can see that although there 
 was sufficient occasion for a domestic scene, 
 there was no reason to regard the position of 
 things as being essentially tragic. You must 
 endure a good deal before you tear yourself 
 from your dearer half in your sober senses.
 
 no BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 But the one thing that stared each of these 
 people in the face was a lifelong and inevit- 
 able separation. 
 
 ' I have deceived him,' said the wife, 
 with such a cold anguish of repentance as 
 could only come of detection. ' He will 
 never believe me nor love me again.' 
 
 4 Is this thing true ? ' asked Tregarthen 
 coldly. Her aspect was enough to convict 
 her, and he turned away. Icy as he was to 
 look at, he was afraid of himself, and felt 
 that he was not to be trusted with many 
 words. He would go away therefore, and 
 would think how best to bear himself in this 
 terrible and unsuspected condition of affairs. 
 He had not gone far when it came into his 
 mind that the condition of affairs — however 
 unexpected it might be — was scarcely so
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. m 
 
 terrible as it had seemed at first. He began 
 to think how strongly he had spoken, when 
 — as it now appeared — his wife had wished 
 to take him into her confidence. After all 
 there was no sin or shame in having been an 
 actress. Colonel Pollard had said things 
 of that very Miss Churchill with whom his 
 wife was now identified which were hideous 
 if true or possible, but he knew them to be 
 false. The more he thought about it the 
 more he was persuaded anew of what he had 
 always known as only a lover knows any- 
 thing — the purity of his wife's mind and 
 history. She had deceived him in one 
 matter, but then he had forced deception 
 upon her. And after all they were man and 
 wife, and he loved her as he had never loved 
 anybody in his life before or could hope to
 
 112 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 love a second time. The revelation lie had 
 surprised was a thing to be made the best of, 
 to be understood and accepted once for all, 
 and then buried and forgotten. 
 
 This resolution was not arrived at in a 
 hurry, and it took him an hour or two to 
 put himself into the new mental attitude 
 necessary to its acceptance. When he had 
 succeeded he went home and awaited Mrs. 
 Tregarthen's return, intending a serious con- 
 ference and a perfect understanding. When 
 he took her back to confidence there should 
 be no lingering doubt in his mind. She 
 should know all that had been charged 
 against Miss Churchill, and she should 
 deny it, and there should be an end of the 
 episode. He was not shaken in his belief 
 in his wife's honour, and if she had not given
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 113 
 
 him all her confidence it was because she 
 had thought it would imperil his love for 
 her. 
 
 ' Has Mrs. Tregarthen returned ? ' he 
 asked the servant who admitted him. 
 
 4 Xo, sir.' 
 
 1 Let me know when she does so.' 
 
 ' Yes, sir.' 
 
 He sat a long time silent and alone, 
 and there came into his mind the not too 
 delicate commendations bestowed upon Miss 
 Churchill by the Captain and his echo the 
 Lieutenant. He went with them into the 
 theatre, and the magic of the beautiful voice 
 touched him again. He went anew through 
 his pleasant fancies of her, and his defence 
 of her against Pollard, and his first meeting 
 with her, and his second, and his thud — all 
 
 vol. 1. 1
 
 H4 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 the story of his courtship floated through his 
 mind — and he would have sworn to her 
 immaculate purity, or would have died to 
 prove his faith in it. 
 
 It grew dusk, and the early summer 
 moon was already shining with a ghostly 
 silver gleam in the darkening violet of the 
 sky. Fears began to rise in his mind, and 
 he pictured the delicate sensitive thing in" 
 shame and soreness of heart over this par- 
 donable secrecy of hers, hiding herself and 
 fearing to approach him. He remembered 
 how he had asked his question, 'Is this thing 
 true ? ' and how without a word from her in 
 answer he had turned away and left her. 
 His fears began to rise higher and to take 
 one or two horrible forms which presented 
 themselves persistently.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 115 
 
 It neither increased nor dissipated these 
 fears when he had run down to the Gate of 
 the Sea and had learnt that she had left the 
 island two or three hours ago, and had re- 
 turned to the mainland, sending the boatmen 
 back to await his pleasure. He took his 
 seat in the boat at once and bade the men 
 give way. Before they were half across 
 the narrow waters he could see his own 
 house on Gorbay Head, and could make out 
 that the one light which twinkled in it came 
 from his wife's room. His heart seemed 
 almost to fly from his body as he sent before 
 him his message of forgiveness and affection ; 
 and when the nose of the boat ground 
 against the shingle he left the little vessel 
 with a leap and ran to the house in haste. 
 A man servant met him with an uninterested
 
 n6 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 face, and handed him a letter on a 
 salver. 
 
 'Mrs. Tregarthen ordered this to be 
 given to you, sir, on your return,' he 
 said. 
 
 6 Where is Mrs. Tregarthen ? ' asked the 
 husband. 
 
 8 She went up to town, sir, by the seven 
 -express,' returned the servant. 
 
 ' Alone ? ' inquired his master, turning 
 away to hide his face and trifling with the 
 letter in his hands. 
 
 ' Took Miss Farmer with her, sir — and 
 the maid.' 
 
 The servant followed him into the room 
 he entered, and there turned up the lamps 
 and laid hands upon a trifle or two upon the 
 sideboard and the table.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 117 
 
 1 You may go,' said his master quietly. 
 
 The man retired, and Tregarthen sat 
 down by the centre table, drew the lamp 
 closer, and opened the envelope. For a 
 time the slender letters danced before his 
 eyes, and he could not make out a word, 
 but in a while he mastered himself and began 
 to read. What he read was incoherent and 
 agonised. It was written in haste, with 
 blots and erasures, and there were blisters 
 upon the paper where the writer's tears had 
 fallen. She had known her own un worthi- 
 ness in keeping her secret all along, she 
 wrote, but she had never dared to tell him 
 what her past life had been. And now he 
 had discovered her duplicity and wickedness, 
 and she could not bear to face him. She 
 had gone away, and she begged him to
 
 n8 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 forget her. But she loved him, and she 
 prayed heaven to bless him. 
 
 There was much more to this effect, and, 
 whilst he read, the shadow of a horrible 
 doubt fell closer and darker round his heart. 
 What was there in the mere discovery, taken 
 by itself, to excite such anguish as the letter 
 displayed ? What lay behind the discovery? 
 Was it likely that a wife would run away 
 from her husband and her home on a provo- 
 cation so trivial as the discovery of itself 
 afforded ? Then all his heart rose up to 
 defend her, and he was torn between doubt 
 and trust, and love and fear, and the little 
 mild passions that had dwelt within him 
 dilated to giant size on a sudden, and took 
 his soul for a battle-ground, and shook it 
 with their conflict.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 119 
 
 There was no sleep for hiin that night, 
 and all next day he wandered vaguely, 
 trying to make up his mind to some course 
 of action. His wife had given him no 
 address, but it did not seem to him at first 
 that it would be difficult to discover her in 
 London. But was her flight in itself a con- 
 fession of worse than he knew, or could he 
 bear to hear that confession if it had to be 
 made, or to hear her denial of it and to have 
 to doubt her still ? 
 
 If people always did the plain common- 
 sense thing, always spoke the plain truth, 
 and always looked circumstances in the face, 
 the world would be improved out of know- 
 ledge. Mrs. Tregarthen had taken perhaps 
 the most foolish of possible steps, had 
 disguised the truth, and now ran away from
 
 i2o BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 the circumstances she had herself created ; and 
 yet you shall not despise her if I can help it. 
 It was an innocent courage which had led 
 her — more for her sister's sake than her own 
 — to the stage. It was a pardonable fear 
 which had kept her silent as to that episode 
 in her life. It is one of the ways of women 
 to look their best in the eyes of the people 
 they love, and this leads them to reservations 
 and pretences. A weakness characteristic 
 of a whole half of humanity must not be 
 judged too severely. When she ran away 
 she did so because a tender conscience, 
 hitherto void of great offence, exaggerated 
 her little folly into a crime. She made up 
 her innocent mind that she was one of the 
 wickedest women in the world. She had 
 married her husband under false pretences !
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 121 
 
 When Tregarthen turned his back upon 
 her she read a final renunciation in the act, 
 and was persuaded that she had lost him for 
 ever. She had no blame for him then or 
 afterwards, and she recognised the justice of 
 the imagined sentence even at the moment 
 when its weight first crushed her. The 
 perfect trust which love should have in love 
 is a flower of slow growth indeed. Often 
 enough life is over before it has reached to 
 its full bloom, though there is this compensa- 
 tion for its laggard coming, that when once 
 it blossoms it can know no decay. 
 
 Mrs. Tregarthen went to London, and 
 naturally enough sought the one place there 
 which she had known before — a respectable, 
 if somewhat dingy, boarding-house off the 
 Strand. The stout landlady had not
 
 122 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 forgotten her, and received her kindly. 
 There was a faint flavour of home in the 
 stuffy bedroom, and at least it was better to 
 be there than to find a nest altogether 
 strange. But the foolish fugitive had run 
 away without any prevision, and had made 
 no arrangements for those bodily needs 
 which continue their claim in spite of sins 
 or repentances. She had twenty pounds in 
 money, and her maid, being bidden to pack 
 for London, had naturally foreseen festivity, 
 and had put up all the hapless lady's jewelry. 
 There was no fear of immediate starvation 
 therefore, but none the less that terror loomed 
 from the future. She was sure that she was 
 for ever parted from her husband, and when 
 the first agony of that certainty had settled 
 down into a dull pain, she had to think of
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 123 
 
 ways and means for her sister's sake, and in 
 a little while (for a reason she had not 
 hitherto dreamed of) for her own. 
 
 The maid, who was for the first time in 
 London, was but poorly impressed with 
 town life, as may be fancied. The stuffy 
 lodging-house was not the sort of place in 
 which Mrs. Tregarthen's position gave her a 
 right to bestow herself, and the maid knew 
 it. Once or twice she had surprised her 
 mistress in tears, and she had found out very 
 early in the history of the expedition that 
 there were no ideas of festivity in Mrs. 
 Tregarthen's mind. She began to put two 
 and two together, and after a week she 
 spoke. 
 
 1 1 beg your pardoD, ma'am, but it is my 
 wish to leave.'
 
 124 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 4 How is that, Mary ? ' inquired the 
 mistress with a sinking heart. The heart 
 had sunk low enough already in all con- 
 science, but it fell lower yet when the maid 
 spoke of leaving. Tregarthen had himself 
 engaged this woman to serve his wife, and 
 the exile was ready to cling to anything that 
 bound her, however slightly, to her home 
 and him. 
 
 ' Well, ma'am,' returned the maid, ' since 
 you ask me, I don't understand things, and 
 I'd rather go.' 
 
 There would be one mouth the less to 
 fill, but that was little. The maid received 
 her wages and went away, though she kept 
 an eye on Mrs. Tregarthen, having fancies 
 of her own concerning the reasons for this 
 curious escapade. The expected gallant
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 125 
 
 never appeared, however, and when Mrs. 
 Tregarthen went abroad, she took the child 
 with her, and, after a purposeless walk, re- 
 turned without having spoken to a single 
 creature. In these circumstances the maid's 
 interest in her late mistress declined, and 
 she found another place and went her way, 
 content to leave a mystery unsolved. 
 
 The poor lady set aside all her gayer 
 dresses and attired herself in sombre raiment 
 as typifying mourning, and when one day 
 Mr. Lorrimer caught sight of her in the 
 street by accident, he took her for a 
 widow. 
 
 1 Ran away from the stage to be married, 
 did she, poor thing ! ' said Lorrimer to him- 
 self, not unkindly. ' Well, if love's young 
 dream is over, she'll be back again. I'm a
 
 126 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 business man, and I can't afford to miss a 
 chance like Miss Churchill a second 
 time.' 
 
 So Mr. Lorrimer, without particularly 
 violating his conscience, lit a new cigar, 
 cocked his hat a little, and dogged Mrs. 
 Tregarthen home. 
 
 ' Boarding-house. Mrs. Barnley. Ee- 
 spectable poverty. Married a widower. 
 Widow left hard up. Encumbered with 
 little girl. Poor thing ! poor thing ! Get 
 her now on easy terms.' 
 
 Mr. Lorrimer cocked his hat anew, bit 
 off the end of a second cigar, struck a 
 brown-paper fusee on his trousers, lit the 
 cigar with an air of victory, and walked 
 homewards. Shortly before nine o'clock, 
 being by that time in the full glory of
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 127 
 
 evening-dress, he strolled past the house a 
 dozen times or so, and had begun to examine 
 the windows with some impatience, when a 
 servant girl came up the area steps bearing 
 half-a-dozen jugs of different sizes, and made 
 her way towards the corner public house. 
 Mr. Lorrimer intercepted her. 
 
 4 Good evening, my dear. Don't be 
 frightened.' The girl had pranced into the 
 middle of the roadway. ' I only want to 
 ask you a question — quite a harmless 
 question. Half-a-crown, my dear.' The 
 coin rattled into one of the jugs. ' There's 
 a lady staying at Mrs. Barnley's — a young 
 lady, dressed in mourning — goes about with 
 a little girl. I want to call upon her — quite 
 honourable and correct — I know of some- 
 thing to her advantage. I used to know
 
 128 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 her maiden name — Miss Churchill. What 
 is her name now ? ' 
 
 ' Mrs. Tregarthen,' said the girl. ' That's 
 her sister she's got with her.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Tregarthen,' said Mr. Lorrimer. 
 1 Thank you. I've got the name all right, 
 have I ? Tre — gar — then ? ' 
 
 ' That's right, sir,' responded the servant, 
 polishing her nose with the bottom of a 
 beer-jug. ' Tregarthen. Thank you, sir.' 
 
 ' She's at home now, I think?' said 
 Lorrimer. 
 
 The maid nodded, and he marched at 
 once to the door of the house and knocked. 
 Mrs. Tregartheu, sitting in her own room, 
 heard the knock and felt her heart so leap 
 at it that she was fain to rise and open her 
 chamber door to listen. But that was a
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 129 
 
 common experience. Not a knock had 
 come to the door of Mrs. Barnley's establish- 
 ment, since the unhappy lady had entered 
 it, without shaking her heart and fluttering 
 her nerves in this way. She heard the door 
 flung open, and then came the murmur of a 
 male voice, indistinct and low. The maid's 
 voice cackled shrill and clear in answer. 
 
 4 Mrs. Tregarthen, sir ? Yes, sir. Walk 
 in, sir. What name shall I say, sir ? ' 
 
 It had been in Mrs. Tregarthen's mind 
 from the first, or almost from the first, that 
 Arthur might love her so well that, in spite 
 of her wickedness, he would seek her out 
 and forgive her, and this hope had buoyed 
 her up and weighed her down as such things 
 will. Xow she believed that he really had 
 traced her, and her knees were so weakened 
 
 vol. 1. K
 
 i 3 o BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 that she could scarce let go the door and 
 creep back to her chair to be in readiness 
 for the servant's coming. Lodging-house 
 maids are not more observant or sympathetic 
 than their neighbours as a rule, but even by 
 the light of the one pale candle on the table 
 Mrs. Tregarthen's face had so much trouble 
 and terror in it that the girl, when she 
 entered with Lorrimer's card, caught fright, 
 and begged to know what was the matter. 
 
 ' Nothing,' said the poor creature, with 
 her eyes wide open, and her face as white 
 as the lace about her throat. ' Is that for 
 me ? ' 
 
 She stretched out her hand for the card, 
 and when she had read the name upon it 
 she dropped it with a little moan of escape 
 and disappointment, and one or two half-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 131 
 
 hysterical tears ran down her cheeks. The 
 servant bustled about the room and got her 
 a glass of water after much unnecessary 
 clatter. Lorrimer, waiting in the room 
 below, had undefined notions of a cavalry 
 skirmish floating through his mind. A 
 moment later the servant, a petticoated 
 avalanche, precipitated herself downstairs. 
 
 ' The lady can't see you, sir. She's took 
 quite ill.' 
 
 ' Indeed ? ' said Lorrimer, politely regret- 
 ful. ' Xothing serious, I trust.' 
 
 1 I ain't so sure o' that,' returned the 
 maid. ' She's like a ghost, and she can't 
 scarcely sit in her chair, sir.' 
 
 Lorrimer opened his eyes with unfeigned 
 fear. He saw thousands of pounds in Mrs. 
 Tregarthen, and, being a sanguine man, as 
 
 K 2
 
 i 3 2 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 theatrical managers nearly always are, he had 
 already arranged terms with the lady and 
 had her enthusiastically trumpeted, and con- 
 ducted her first performance with prodigious 
 eclat. At the very moment when the 
 cavalry skirmish began overhead he had 
 been returning thanks for a piece of plate 
 publicly presented to him (in recognition of 
 his having made a fortune out of her) by 
 the celebrated actress herself. The servant 
 was really frightened, and looked so, and 
 Lorrimer himself caught the infection. 
 
 'Back as soon as possible,' he murmured. 
 w Gone for a doctor.' And he shot from the 
 room to save his thousands and the lady 
 who was to make them. 
 
 He had noticed in the course of his pere- 
 grinations to and fro before the house that a
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 133 
 
 doctor lived next door, and he rang a 
 startling peal at the medico's bell. The 
 professional gentleman ran wildly into the 
 boarding-honse without his hat, and was 
 ushered into the presence of a lady who 
 received him with perfect self-possession and 
 assured him that she had no need for his 
 services. He was not to be got rid of, how- 
 ever, until he had felt her pulse and asked 
 a question or two, and prescribed a tonic. 
 
 Before Lorrimer called next day the 
 servant had told Mrs. Tregarthen of the 
 interest he had displayed. The actress re- 
 membered the manager kindly, but she had 
 no mind to renew their old acquaintance. 
 She sent word down to him in answer to his 
 inquiries that she was very much better and 
 was very much obliged to him for his kind
 
 i 3 4 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 inquiries. Some people would have ac- 
 cepted this as an intimation of polite dis- 
 missal, but Lorrimer was not one of them. 
 
 ' That's right,' he said cheerfully. ' I'm 
 glad to hear it. Just say I should like to see 
 her — will you ? — if it's quite convenient to 
 her. If it isn't, ask when I can call again.' 
 
 ; Show Mr. Lorrimer into the visitors' 
 room,' she said in answer to this message. 
 It might be as well, she thought, to get Mr. 
 Lorrimer over at once. If it were impossible 
 to avoid recognition, it was still possible to 
 let those who recognised her know that she 
 desired privacy, and it was not likely that all 
 who had known her would care to make 
 pursuit of her. She touched her hair and 
 the lace about her throat and wrists with 
 delicate fingers as she stood before her
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 135 
 
 mirror, with no result perceptible to man, 
 and having thus made herself fit to be seen, 
 she descended the stairs and found Lorrimer 
 awaiting her in the visitors' room — a car- 
 peted box with an odour of dry rot. 
 
 A stage manager who could feel any 
 sense oi gaudier ie in approaching an actress 
 must have had the practice of his profession 
 wasted upon him. With Lorrimer any sign 
 of dignified reserve, which expressed itself 
 without the pronounced standoffishness of a 
 stage attitude and gesture, was lost. He had 
 played many parts in his time, and to him 
 the saying of the melancholy Jaques was 
 literal — all the world was a stage. He took 
 out the confidential-family-adviser stop, and 
 addressed Mrs. Tregarthen in tones of genial 
 sympathy.
 
 136 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 ' You left us, madam, in a somewhat 
 sudden and unconventional way, but it was 
 impossible for that or anything else to miti- 
 gate the pleasure and advantage of having 
 known you. You have our profoundest 
 sympathy in the calamity which has brought 
 you back to us, but that is tempered by the 
 hope that you may ultimately discover that 
 the profession, of which you might have 
 been the brightest ornament, has still an 
 attraction for you, and that its triumphs 
 offer a consolation not to be despised.' 
 
 This was spoken with the air natural to 
 a master of the art of conversation. Lorri- 
 mer was one of those people who take their 
 theories so to heart that they make facts of 
 them. His theory was that Mrs. Tregarthen 
 was a widow, and in reduced circumstances.
 
 He was quite certain that she left the stage 
 to be married, and was equally sure that she 
 would now return to it. 
 
 4 Do you mean,' she asked, ' that I shall 
 go back to the stage, Mr. Lorrimer ? ' He 
 spread his hands abroad, and bowed, with a 
 sweeping gesture of assent. ' No, I shall 
 never go back to the stage.' 
 
 The wrinkles of his smile remained for a 
 second or two, but the light went out of his 
 eyes at once, and the wrinkles faded slowly 
 after it. 
 
 ' Not go back to the stage, madam ? ' he 
 cried. 'Waste the superb talents God has 
 given you on the mere desert air of private 
 life ? Cast away the splendid fortune which 
 only needs an extended hand to grasp it ? 
 Impossible, madam — impossible.'
 
 138 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 Mr. Lorrimer spoke with so evident an 
 amazement that he impressed the listener in 
 spite of herself. She had gone upon the 
 stage simply and purely to make bread for 
 herself and to find an education for her 
 sister. Few of the triumphs or joys of stage 
 life had come home to her, and even when 
 they seemed all to lie waiting for her, she 
 had been able to surrender their promise for 
 the quiet routine of domesticity in Gorbay. 
 They could scarcely have seemed very valu- 
 able to her since she had left them so easily. 
 But Lorrimer put the case strongly, if 
 grotesquely, and there could be no doubt of 
 his sincerity. 
 
 She was but a simple-minded creature 
 in spite of the talents of which Lorrimer 
 spoke so highly, and she had a way of speak-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 139 
 
 ing straight out the thing that was in her 
 mind. 
 
 6 My husband ' she began, but there 
 
 she stopped with a sudden sense of heart- 
 ache at the vast emptiness of the world. 
 There is no pain the human heart can feel 
 which is heavier to bear than that. 
 
 'Your husband, madam?' said Lor- 
 rimer, prompting her with a tone of respect- 
 ful sympathy. 
 
 6 My husband,' she began again, ' had a 
 profound dislike for the stage, and I must 
 respect his opinion.' 
 
 'That is natural and commendable, 
 madam,' returned Lorrimer with the family- 
 adviser air more strongly marked than ever. 
 1 But when — in the course of a week or two 
 — the healing hand of time has softened the
 
 Ho BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 sense of loss, you may find yourself less 
 inclined to elevate his scruples into absolute 
 commandments.' 
 
 She shook her head with an expression 
 so mournful and so resolute that Lorrimer 
 felt it necessary to clear his throat before he 
 spoke again. 
 
 'Well, madam, well, 5 he said rather 
 hastily. ' If you should change your mind, 
 you will know where I am. Fortune lies at 
 your feet. You have only to stoop to pick 
 up wealth and fame. And — as I say — if 
 you should change your mind you will find 
 nobody so devoted to your interests as 
 myself. I have 'made the fortune of a nin- 
 compoop before to-day, madam, and genius 
 is the lever Archimedes wanted. With such 
 genius as you possess I could move the
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 141 
 
 world. I ask nothing but my poor share of 
 the glory, and half profits. But I will not 
 further intrude upon you now. Good day, 
 madam, good day.' 
 
 He was gone, but he left a seed 
 behind him, and though it fell on ground 
 unwilling to receive it, it took root and 
 grew. 
 
 To have done a thing, with ninety-nine 
 people in a hundred, is the best of all 
 possible reasons for continuing to do it, 
 especially if the thing is to be done passively. 
 We like or dislike our everyday acquaint- 
 ances on this principle, and it guides us in 
 more matters than we often care to think of. 
 The runaway wife had never written to her 
 husband to apprise him of her whereabouts, 
 and silence, which at first was hard, had
 
 142 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 grown into such a habit that by this time 
 nothing could have forced her to break it. 
 She suffered, and she told herself that she 
 deserved to suffer. She trained the thorns 
 of remorse with a hand of constant care, 
 and cultivated unhappiness as only a peni- 
 tent and a woman could. And all the time 
 she waited in a sort of hopeless hope for 
 her husband to make some effort to recover 
 her. Had he found her he . could have 
 taken home, not merely a wife, but a lover 
 so full of love and penitence that she would 
 have been his lifelong slave for no more 
 than the privilege of seeing him. But he 
 also waited with a heart that grew bitterer 
 and heavier day by day, until at last the 
 true masculine impatience of the slow suf- 
 fering which women bear until they learn to
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 143 
 
 cherish it, bade him throw the burden 
 away. He seemed to cast his heart away 
 with it, but it had to go, and he went back 
 to his mad-brained books again. 
 
 That so fine a triviality as that which 
 separated these two hearts and lives should 
 breed a day's coldness might surprise a 
 lover. But there is no measurement for 
 human folly, and the fools, as often as not, 
 are lovable, pitiable, admirable. If only the 
 people who are objectionable all round made 
 fools of themselves, what a charming world 
 we should live in !
 
 [44 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 Mr. Eonald Marsh gave his poems to the 
 world, and they made almost as much noise 
 as he had hoped. But when one goes forth 
 to make a noise in the world, the character 
 of the clamour which arises is as important 
 as the volume of it, and the public reception 
 of Mr. Marsh's muse, though loud enough to 
 satisfy anybody, aroused the bitterest scorn 
 in the poet's heart. Such a charivari of 
 chaff, such a Jovian roll and peal of laughter 
 arose from the great reviewers, and was 
 taken up by the little ones, as has rarely
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 145 
 
 rung in any poet's tingling ears since review- 
 ing came into fashion. The Times set him 
 down to roast at a whole column, the 'Tiser 
 branded him with one red-hot paragraph, 
 and from every point of the compass the 
 critics big and little heaved the coals of fire 
 of friendless criticism at him by the shovel- 
 ful. But the poet, as Mr, Tennyson had 
 already written, is at the moment of his 
 birth 'dowered with the hate of hate — the 
 scorn of scorn,' and Mr. Marsh was not 
 easily to be discomfited. He bought som- 
 breros of a wider brim than he had ever 
 worn until then, he vowed in his inmost 
 heart that the shears of the barber should 
 invade his rolling locks no more, and he 
 ordered his tailors to add an inch or two to 
 the poetical cloak in which he comix 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 went about London. The faithless few who 
 had worn his livery and gone about in his 
 likeness fled from their colours. They had 
 their hair cut in the normal way, and began 
 to attire themselves in the conventional garb 
 of gentlemen. When friends talked about 
 the Leader they made a weak pretence of 
 having been in the secret all along, and tried 
 to make it appear that they had been hugely 
 tickled by the fustian which had thrilled 
 their simple souls. The Leader had lost his 
 following, as most leaders do when they 
 lead to ridicule, but he faced the world 
 alone and meditated fresh poems with an 
 undaunted heart. 
 
 He abandoned none of his old haunts, 
 but he found many of his old friends pitiless. 
 There are few men who need sympathy
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 147 
 
 more than the man whose book is a failure. 
 Within it, tangible and visible, lie the nerves 
 of his soul, if he has one ; he has put into it 
 his acutest discernment, his sweetest fancies, 
 his loftiest thoughts, his most cunning inven- 
 tion ; he has glowed with hope and gone 
 cold with fear about it ; he has loved it 
 tenderly and admiringly, as a good wife 
 loves her husband, and with a growth of joy 
 in its strength and beauty, as a father loves 
 his child. Then comes the grim reviewer 
 (born surely, with bowels of brass and heart 
 of adamant), and slays this darling of the 
 author's heart, scalps it, slits its dear little 
 nose and tender ears, wreaks on it all his 
 barbarous humour of wicked invention, and 
 throws its remains aside without even the 
 poor satisfaction of a Christian burial. Who 
 
 L 2
 
 148 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 can need sympathy more than an author in 
 such a case ? But there is no more mercy 
 in the world for him than there is milk in a 
 male toer. 
 
 Yet in the conclave of ten which met in 
 the cramped back parlour in the Strand, the 
 murdered poet found men who had suffered 
 aforetime, and had known the joy of resur- 
 rection. The man in the corner tossed the 
 light quillets of the brain hither and thither, 
 but he aimed them not at the unsuccessful. 
 He had himself tried to stay the tempest, 
 and had written that the book was not so 
 bad after all. Had the poet known him as 
 the dealer of that unkindest cut of all, he 
 would have slain him in his corner before 
 the spectral nine. When he entered and 
 took his seat amongst them, they greeted
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 149 
 
 him more kindly than of old, and made 
 more of a comrade of him. Lorriiner, who 
 was talking, made a point of addressing him 
 personally, so as to make a feature of him. 
 
 ' Your worship was the last man in our 
 mouths. You remember being here one 
 day, long ago now, when I sang the praises 
 ofMissChurchiU?' 
 
 ' Perfectly,' replied the poet. ' I went 
 with you to the final dress rehearsal, and 
 you put into my hands the letter she left 
 behind her.' 
 
 1 1 was saying so as you came in. That 
 brings the history up to the end of her con- 
 nection with the stage. Well, everybody 
 knows what a mystery that looked. Xot a 
 soul had an idea where she disappeared to.' 
 
 ' I know,' said the poet. ' I met her
 
 i 5 o BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 afterwards. She married a fellow named 
 Tregarthen — disreputable fellow who was 
 dismissed the army ; insisted on using such 
 fearful language at the mess-table that the 
 other men wouldn't stand him. Well- 
 connected fellow — I believe he's the last of 
 one of the oldest families in Cornwall — but 
 an awful blackguard, so I'm told.' 
 
 8 Well, upon my word,' said Lorrimer, 
 1 that's a pretty sort of cove to forbid his 
 wife with his dying breath to go upon the 
 stage.' 
 
 Mr. Lorrimer's theory carried him that 
 length. 
 
 c Dead ? ' said the poet. ' Is he dead ? 
 Well, she's very attractive and quite young. 
 With such a fortune as he could leave her 
 she won't be long without a husband.'
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 151 
 
 I Fortune ! ' echoed Lorriiner. ' She 
 hasn't any fortune. Bless your soul, she's 
 as poor as a church mouse. Living in a 
 boarding-house — and a dam seedy boarding- 
 house it is, I can tell you — -just off the 
 Strand.' 
 
 I I suppose he made ducks and drakes of 
 everything,' said the poet. ' My father had 
 a place at Gorbay years ago, and they had a 
 good deal of land in those days — the Tre- 
 garthens. Poor thing ! ' 
 
 The poet held no malice, except for his 
 reviewers. Outside his verses he was a 
 harmless man, and had not the least desire 
 to hurt anybody. He had long ago been able 
 to forgive Mrs. Tregarthen for snubbing him, 
 and he was sensitive to a tale of beauty in 
 distress — as a poet ought to be.
 
 152 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 Lorrimer told his story of the interview 
 between himself and the lost star of the 
 stage, and everybody agreed that the dead 
 Tregarthen of Mr. Lorrimer's imagination 
 was the last sort of person who had a right 
 to have his dying wishes gratified. When 
 the conclave parted and the poet walked 
 into the Strand, he dived into the street 
 Lorrimer had mentioned and read the door- 
 plates with some little trouble in the gather- 
 ing dusk until he came upon the boarding- 
 house. He remembered the brilliant and 
 stately creature who had swept so haughtily 
 away from his impertinent presence at Tre- 
 garthen, and felt unhappy to think that she 
 was housed in this frowsy caravanserai. 
 He had but seen her twice, and she had 
 certainly ill-treated him, and yet he felt such
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 153 
 
 an interest in her as few women had inspired 
 him with. She was poor and in grief and a 
 widow. Mr. Eonald Marsh left the street 
 slowly and sadly, and thought how full of 
 trouble was the world, and mused on Death 
 and the Keviewers, and such grisly themes. 
 
 It was no business of any man's, but two 
 or three people who knew him caught the 
 poet at odd times in the act of leaving that 
 street after dark, with a certain marked air 
 of furtive adventure. II any hope of seeing 
 Mrs. Tregarthen again drew him that way, 
 or if he merely went to moon in the 
 neighbourhood because it induced that 
 curious sense of the abolition of moral re- 
 sponsibilities with regard to language which 
 is so valuable to poets, would seem to be 
 uncertain. When you relax your brains for
 
 154 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 the manufacture of verses, and allow them 
 to flow out where they will, diffuse and 
 devious, a remembrance of some person of 
 the opposite sex serves as a sort of centre for 
 the tides, dissipating or rallying them quite 
 apart from the will of the patient. 
 
 It had grown into winter time, and the 
 rainy night had fallen upon London, and the 
 streets had a fungous odour in the rain, and 
 were inch-deep in mud, when the poet, 
 bearing his demon with him, slashed past 
 the lodging-house — top-booted, with his 
 sombrero picturesquely flapping and his long 
 cloak picturesquely flying in the wet wind 
 which blew up from the river. He was 
 scathing a reviewer, and would have thrown 
 his annual income into Thames to have 
 secured a stately rhyme to ' viper ; ' but just as
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 155 
 
 he passed the boarding-house door it opened, 
 and the merest glance assured him that Mrs. 
 Tregarthen stood there attired for the street, 
 A second or two later the wind caught the 
 door, and it slammed noisily. The poet 
 moderated his headlong pace, paused and 
 turned. Mrs. Tregarthen's tall and graceful 
 figure went fluttering Strandwards. 
 
 Eonald Marsh knew perfectly well that it 
 is not counted a gentlemanly thing to follow 
 a lady without her knowledge and consent, 
 and he piqued himself on being a gentleman 
 almost more than on being a poet. He did 
 not think it honourable to dog a lady's foot- 
 steps, and it was no affair of his to know 
 whither she was bound on foot on a night so 
 inclement. Whilst he thought thus he 
 followed Mrs. Tregarthen, regulating his
 
 156 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 own pace to hers. This was shameful, and 
 he turned away, but only for a second. 
 When he looked again the fluttering figure 
 was gone, though there was no opening on 
 the street to right or left, and he had seen 
 her outlined like a wavering silhouette 
 against the Strand lights a mere fraction of 
 time ago. A special puddle lay abreast of 
 where he had last seen her, noticeable 
 because it caught the lights of the bright 
 street beyond and reflected them like a 
 mirror laid aslant. He kept his eyes upon 
 this landmark, and, though as he grew closer 
 the light faded from it, he knew that he had 
 not lost the place. He was sure — with a 
 keener pang than anything but the reviews 
 had hitherto caused him — that he had not 
 lost the place ; for where the wind-beaten
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 157 
 
 figure had disappeared stood a swinging door, 
 and above it the triune globes of gold. 
 Poverty's storm drum is mast-high all the 
 year round. 
 
 The young man drew into the shadow 
 of a corner, and watched the door, with no 
 memory of his scruples of half a minute 
 back. It was not the business of the 
 moment to analyse the motives which 
 moved him, but they were nine-tenths made 
 up of pity and a helpless wish to be of 
 service. He had to wait in the wind and 
 rain for full five minutes before the swinging 
 door opened, and Mrs. Tregarthen reap- 
 peared, heavily veiled, and ran against the 
 beating wind to the door of the boarding- 
 house, where she paused to use a latch-key, 
 and then disappeared swiftly.
 
 158 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 At the thought of youth, aud grace, and 
 crenius brought to such a pass as this, the 
 poet was grieved, and he walked miserably 
 away, not seeing how to be of use, but 
 burdened with a heavy sense of the necessity 
 for doing something. A man may be brimful 
 of conceit and may write bad verses, and 
 yet have a good heart. He walked home 
 and dressed for dinner, and dined moodily 
 with people who laughed at him for being 
 moody. Then he went, at a late hour, to 
 the theatre, and there encountered Lorrimer. 
 He had something of a struggle with him- 
 self before he could take the manager into 
 confidence ; but at length he did it, swear- 
 in or him to secrecy. Lorrimer heard him 
 through with an expression of face bordering 
 on the distracted.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 5? 
 
 8 If I don't find out something about this 
 by and by,' said the manager, ' I shall go 
 mad. Come here, into the box-office. 
 Look at this advertisement in the Times. 
 Where are we? Oh, here it is. Eead 
 that.' 
 
 The poet read — 
 
 1 Miss Churchill is requested to claim her 
 private fortune at the hands of Messrs. Lowe 
 & Carter, of Clement's Inn. — A. T.' 
 
 'Now,' said Lorrimer, when Eonald 
 Marsh looked wonderingly up at him, ' what 
 the Moses is it all about ? These people, 
 Lowe and Carter, were the lawyers who 
 paid me my claim against Miss Churchill. 
 She had money then, or the means of getting 
 money, or she couldn't have left the stage 
 and have paid my claim. Now, here she is
 
 160 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 in financial difficulties, running to the pawn- 
 broker's — and I'll swear she's a lady, born 
 and bred — and all the while she's asked in 
 the newspapers to go and claim her private 
 fortune ! Because you know it's as plain as 
 the nose on your face that it's the same 
 woman.' 
 
 ' Who said Tregarthen was dead ? ' said 
 the poet. ' These are his initials.' 
 
 ' / said he was dead,' returned Lorrimer. 
 4 She told me so.' He was quite persuaded 
 that she had done so. ' It must be the same 
 woman. Anyway, I'll tell you what I can 
 do. I can go and see the lawyers and tell 
 'em her address. We have done business 
 together already. Since I saw this ad- 
 vertisement I've had the curiosity to turn 
 over the file of the Times, and I find that
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 161 
 
 it's been published every day for nearly four 
 months. I wish I could persuade her to 
 come back to the boards. Unless her 
 private fortune is a precious big one, I'd 
 guarantee to double it for her. She's a 
 perfect gold mine. There never was such 
 a Kosalind, and I don't believe there ever 
 will be such another.' 
 
 The sense of romance and mystery which 
 seemed to grow up about Mrs. Tregarthen 
 helped to keep her in Eonald Marsh's mind, 
 and he began to haunt the street she lived 
 in, and, during hours of darkness, to prowl 
 about its neighbourhood, until the police set 
 watchful eyes upon him and booked him in 
 their own minds as a person with an unlaw- 
 ful purpose. 
 
 Lorrimer wrote to the lawyers, asking if 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 1 62 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 the Miss Churchill advertised was identical 
 with the Miss Churchill in whose behalf 
 they had done business aforetime. Eeceiv- 
 ing an answer in the affirmative, he sup- 
 plied them with her address, and waited to 
 hear more. No news reached him until 
 the poet turned up one evening, with greatly 
 disturbed aspect, and announced that Mrs. 
 Tregarthen and the little girl who lived' 
 with her had left the boarding-house and 
 had taken new lodgings in a street off the 
 Tottenham Court Eoad — that both she and 
 the child were poorly and scantily dressed, 
 and that the house in which she now lived 
 was fit only for the occupation of the very 
 poor. Lorrimer went to the lawyers, beg- 
 ging to be enlightened. They, inquiring 
 courteously into his right to claim enlighten-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 163 
 
 ment and finding it to be non-existent, 
 respectfully declined to satisfy him. He 
 retreated, and had new conferences with the 
 poet, who was melodramatically gloomy, 
 and let fall deadly hints about villany, and 
 betrayal, and the wild justice of revenge, 
 perplexing Lorrimer still more. At last, 
 spurred by his lofty hopes of the actress's 
 possible future and his own, and moved at 
 least in part by the promptings of good 
 nature, and haled towards a solution of the 
 mystery by a very cable of curiosity, 
 he leaped impatiently into a hackney car- 
 riage, and set out in search of Mrs. Tre- 
 garthen. He had her address from the 
 poet. 
 
 Sun-blistered paint, years old, upon the 
 door ; thick veils of dust upon the windows ;
 
 j64 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 a mere well of an area, with rusted railings 
 round it : doorsteps cracked and sunken at 
 the centre. 
 
 ' She might have had a house in Park 
 Lane by this time,' thought Lorrimer, as he 
 scanned the place, ' and yet she lives here. 
 What was her private fortune, I wonder ? 
 The last curse of a dying mother-in-law ? 
 It looks like it.' 
 
 When he tugged at the bell-pull, a long 
 piece of rusted iron came out from the door- 
 post with a reluctant creak. He pushed it 
 back again, and tapped the blistered door 
 with his gloved knuckles. A slatternly 
 woman came into the well of an area, 
 wiping her hands upon a dirty apron, and, 
 having inspected him, went leisurely into 
 the house again, and after a pause which
 
 seemed long to his impatience, opened the 
 front door an inch or two, and regarded 
 him afresh in unpromising silence. 
 
 'Good morning,' said Lorrimer, with 
 smooth politeness. ' You have a lady 
 staying here, ma'am, I believe, and I should 
 be extremely obliged if I might be allowed 
 to see her. We are old friends, and I have 
 been informed that she is in some distress.' 
 Lorrimer was gorgeous as to his attire, and 
 his manner was almost monarchical.* As he 
 spoke he drew a half-crown from his waist- 
 coat pocket, aud holding it delicately between 
 his finger and thumb, like a duke performing 
 a playful conjuring trick, dropped it into 
 the woman's palm, which came automatically 
 to receive it. The woman opened the door 
 a little wider.
 
 1 66 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 ' Do you mean Mrs. Tregarthen, sir ? * 
 she asked. 
 
 ' That,' said Mr. Lorrimer, ' is the lady's 
 name.' 
 
 The woman opened the door still wider, 
 and permitted him to enter. A ragged oil- 
 cloth clung somehow to the floor, but the 
 unwashed stairs were carpetless. 
 
 ' What name shall I say, sir? ' asked the 
 landlady. 
 
 c Say Mr. Lorrimer,' returned the 
 manager ; but he followed closely on her 
 heels as she mounted the stairs, and was 
 resolved to present himself before he could 
 be refused an audience. He could not have 
 told then or afterwards whether pity, curi- 
 osity, or managerial enterprise drew him 
 on more strongly. Either the first or last
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 167 
 
 would have been in itself enough, and the 
 three together were irresistible. 
 
 The woman paused on a dark landing, 
 and knocked at a door invisible to Lor- 
 rimer. 
 
 1 Come in,' said a voice in reply ; and 
 the knocker entered. 
 
 4 A gentleman to see you, ma'am,' she 
 said, in a voice for which Lorrimer could 
 have thrown her down the stairs. He knew 
 one side of the world and of human nature 
 pretty well, and he read the hypocrisy and 
 propitiation of the carneying tone. He 
 could have sworn that the woman habitually 
 bullied her lodger. 
 
 4 Tell him,' said Mrs. Tregarthen in a 
 frightened voice, 'that I cannot see him.
 
 i6S BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 Lorrimer was in the room already, and 
 had taken in half its sordid details at a 
 glance. A bed in a corner, with a little 
 bundle lying on it ; a chair ; a table ; a few 
 dresses hanging on a wall from which the 
 paper dripped in moist festoons ; a rusty 
 grate, empty. 
 
 6 Madam,' said the manager advancing, 
 4 you must not decline to see me. I come 
 as a friend.' 
 
 Pity had the better of managerial enter- 
 prise for a moment at least, and the room 
 went dim to Lorrimer's eyes. Mrs. Tre- 
 garthen, in a shabby black dress which 
 made her pale face look paler than it was, 
 stood (in the attitude in which she had arisen 
 from her seat on the side of the bed) with 
 both hands on the table, her whole figure
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 169 
 
 shrinking like that of any weak wild creature 
 when suddenly alarmed. 
 
 ' Oblige me by leaving us, if you please,' 
 said Lorrimer to the landlady. The woman 
 reluctantly withdrew, and Lorrimer held the 
 door open to watch her down the stairs. 
 He could not help being stagey, for use is 
 second nature, but he was thoroughly in 
 earnest when he turned: 'My poor dear 
 creature— don't mind me talking to you in 
 tills way — I'm old enough to be your father 
 — my poor dear creature, what on earth do 
 you mean by living in a place like this ? ' 
 She had only moved to breathe since his 
 first entrance to the room, and her eyes 
 said, ' Leave me for pity's sake ! ' if ever 
 eyes said anything. But, as he paused, the 
 bundle on the bed began to move, and a
 
 170 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 feeble cry came from it. She darted to it, 
 peeled from it, swiftly and delicate! 3 r , the 
 shawl which enfolded it, and took it to her 
 arms. A baby. ' Oh, Lord ! ' groaned the 
 manager, with the tears in his eyes again, 
 ' how can yon have the heart to throw away 
 such prospects as you have, when you've got 
 such claims upon you ? ' 
 
 She looked at him almost wildly, and 
 walked up and down the room rocking the 
 crying child in her arms. He thought the 
 look defiant, and broke out anew. 
 
 ' Any grown-up creature has a right to 
 starve and be wretched, but, by God ! 
 ma'am, nobody has a right to ill-treat a 
 baby. It's criminal, Mrs. Tregarthen ; it's 
 nothing less than monstrous. How dare 
 you throw away that child's chances in the
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA 171 
 
 world ? ' Lorriraer trod the boards with 
 the air of amazed virtue. 
 
 1 How dare you speak so to me ? ' she 
 demanded, pausing suddenly in her agitated 
 walk about the room. ' What right have 
 you here ? ' 
 
 'For God's sake, don't be angry with 
 me ! ' said Lorrimer, descending from his 
 place of moral pride. 'I'm the best friend 
 you have in the world ; I am indeed.' He 
 was no longer the representative of virtue 
 amazed, but had become the attached old 
 family servitor, and pleaded with the last 
 wilful descendant of the race he loved. 
 
 At this moment there came a rap at the 
 door, and the landlady appeared, bearing a 
 bulky parcel and a letter. 
 
 i This is underpaid, ma'am,' said the
 
 172 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 landlady, laying the parcel on the table, ' and 
 the postman says there's tenpence on it.' 
 
 Lorrimer drew a shilling from his waist- 
 coat pocket. 
 
 ' There, there, my good woman ; don't 
 interrupt us again, if you please.' He walked 
 to the window and looked out upon the 
 street. ' Pray look at your letters, Mrs. Tre- 
 garthen, and excuse me for being here at all.' 
 
 He saw that she had glanced anxiously 
 at the parcel, which looked as if it enclosed 
 a box of some sort. She obeyed him 
 without a word, and he heard every move- 
 ment she made as she uncorded the packet. 
 Then he heard the tearing of the envelope 
 about the letter, and the rustle of the paper, 
 as it shook in her hand. There was nothing 
 to look at in the street except a mangy cat
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 173 
 
 who stalked a town sparrow, and missed the 
 bird by a hair's breadth when she made her 
 final spring. It began to strike Lorrimer 
 that Mrs. Tresjarthen was a long while silent, 
 and when, at last, he turned round, he 
 raised a yell of dismay, for the poor lady 
 had fallen back upon the bed, and lay there 
 in a dead faint, with the baby still in her 
 lap. She looked so thin and pale and quiet 
 as she lay there, that the manager, who was 
 a bachelor, and knew nothing of women 
 and their weaknesses, took her for dead, 
 and rushed to the door with a tremulous 
 call for the landlady. That good creature 
 despatched him for brandy, and, he being 
 gone, she proceeded very calmly to examine 
 the contents of the packet and the letter. 
 The packet contained a prodigious quantity
 
 174 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 of manuscript and nothing else. From the 
 letter the landlady -gathered (she could just 
 read) that Messrs. Bilge and Barker regretted 
 that they could not see their way to the 
 
 publication of . A step on the stair 
 
 warned her of the visitor's return. 
 
 ' Look up, there's a dear creatur',' said 
 the landlady in audible solicitude. 'Ah, 
 that's it, my pore darlin'. You'll be nicely 
 by and by.' 
 
 Lorrimer sweated with anxiety whilst 
 the landlady poured a few drops of brandy 
 through the patient's lips, but in a few 
 minutes Mrs. Tregarthen began to move and 
 moan, and to click her teeth together, and 
 then he was ordered from the room, and 
 paced to and fro upon the fragmentary oil- 
 cloth in the hall for the space of half an hour.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 175 
 
 1 How is she ? ' he asked, in a whisper, 
 when the woman at last came down stairs. 
 
 4 She's had a good cry, pore dear,' said 
 the landlady, breathing neat brandy at him ; 
 1 and now I've persuaded her to lie down. 
 She'd better not be disturbed again for a 
 hour or two.' 
 
 • Of course not. Of course not,' said 
 Lorrimer, ndgetting with his watch-chain. 
 ' She has been very hard up, I'm afraid ? ' 
 
 4 Owes me three pound thirteen shillin" 
 and sixpence for rent,' returned the landlady, 
 ' and being but a pore woman myself, though 
 wdth a feeling heart, I coidd not deny her 
 nothing, and candles of a night extravagant." 
 
 Lorrimer was unhinged by the events of 
 the morning, and for the moment he was 
 half inclined to satisfy the landlady's claim
 
 i 7 6 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 upon the spot ; but, not having taken a final 
 leave of his business senses, he decided 
 against that course. 
 
 ' Whatever the lady owes,' he said, ' shall 
 be paid.' He drew his purse from his 
 pocket, and the landlady's eyes glistened. 
 ' Get her,' he said, slowly and thoughtfully, 
 with a half-sovereign between his thumb 
 and finger, ' get her something nice and 
 tempting and nourishing against the time she 
 wakes. No. Never mind, I won't trouble 
 you. I'll get it myself, and bring it round 
 in two hours' time.' 
 
 He was gone, and the landlady was 
 staring after him with the look the lean cat 
 had cast after the plump escaping sparrow a 
 while before. 
 
 Lorrimer was driven to Oxford Street,
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 177 
 
 and 011 the way he used much terrible 
 language without particular application. He 
 had pity enough to fill him to the brim, and 
 curious bewilderment enough, and (when it 
 could beat out the others) managerial enter- 
 prise inflated him. For each of these profane 
 language seemed to furnish the only escape- 
 pipe, and the manager's speech would have 
 been appropriate to a deep-dyed villain bent 
 on murder. He halted the carriage at a 
 shop door, alighted, entered, and bought 
 jellies and preserves, drove further and 
 bought wine, drove further and bought fruit, 
 a goodly pile, and a double handful of sweet- 
 smelling country blossoms. 
 
 1 Damme ! ' said Lorrimer, as he sat in 
 the hackney carriage and surveyed these 
 purchases. ' I'll win the jade's heart. I'll 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 make her act. I'll make her so grateful 
 that she can't refuse me.' 
 
 A brilliant idea struck him, and he 
 arrested the coach once more. He entered 
 a shop, and when, after the lapse of some 
 two or three minutes, he came once more 
 upon the street, he wore the smile of a man 
 who has just said checkmate to opposition. 
 He unfolded the tissue paper which wrapped 
 his latest purchase. 
 
 4 That ought to touch a mother's heart,' 
 he said, surveying it admiringly. ' Eeal 
 coral. Eeal silver bells, and the finest india- 
 rubber to be had for love or money.' 
 
 He took all his purchases to the shabby 
 house in the street off the Tottenham Court 
 Koad, and he waited with such patience as 
 he could command until Mrs. Tregarthen was
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 179 
 
 reported to be awake, and he could be again 
 admitted to her room. 
 
 ' A little trifle of jelly,' said Lorrimer, 
 balancing the preparation. l Calves-foot jelly, 
 my dear .madam — a most nourishing article. 
 Pray try a little. A glass of port. I am 
 never to be taken at a disadvantage. I 
 carry a pocket corkscrew. Try that, madam. 
 I o-uarantee it excellent. A little trifle for 
 the baby, Mrs. Tregarthen. I am a bachelor 
 myself, but I am told that children value 
 such gauds.' 
 
 The baby stretched out her hand for the 
 bauble, and Lorrimer surrendered it. The 
 sense of his own goodness of heart was too 
 much for him, and his eyes became so moist 
 that he had to retire to the window, where 
 he blew his nose and waved his pockei- 
 n 2
 
 i So BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 handkerchief with an air of great nonchalance. 
 But Mrs. Tregarthen knew why he had 
 retired, and she herself began to cry out of 
 weakness and despair and gratitude, and 
 Lorrimer blew his nose with violence, as if 
 he were aggravated with it, and had a spite 
 to wreak upon it. His emotion and his 
 friendliness won upon the lonely woman's 
 heart and by and by he began to pour out 
 golden promises upon her. She was silent 
 for a long time, but at last he grew so warm 
 that he asked her the one question in his 
 mind. 
 
 ' How do you hope to live at all unless 
 you take the chances you have ? ' 
 
 ' I thought,' she said, 'that I could make 
 a living by writing.' 
 
 The gesture she used sent his glance to
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 181 
 
 the table. He approached and picked up 
 the letter which lay there, and then turned 
 over a folio or two of the great pile of 
 manuscript. 
 
 8 Ah ! he said. c And you find you 
 can't? Well, my dear madam, here lies 
 El Dorado before you. You have only to 
 say Yes to my proposal, and you can leave 
 this wretched hole at once, and go to the 
 best hotel in London. You can dress like 
 a princess, and you can command comfort 
 and refinement for your child. Oh, madam, 
 madam,' cried the manager, with tears in his 
 voice, ' for your child's sake do not let me 
 plead with you in vain.' 
 
 If Lorrimer were half a humbug, she at 
 least was all in earnest in her thoughts. 
 
 ' Yes,' she answered ; ' I will do what
 
 i82 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 you wish. I will go back to the stage again. 
 For the child's sake.' 
 
 Next day saw her once more attired like 
 a lady, and located in sumptuous private 
 apartments. Lorrimer was here, there, and 
 everywhere, spreading the glorious news.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 183 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Whilst Mrs. Tregarthen was afflicting her- 
 self with unnecessary miseries, her husband 
 was suffering from griefs less easily to be 
 avoided. The copy-books say that Inno- 
 cence is Bold, and it is one of the con- 
 ventional arguments against a Suspect that 
 he runs away. As a matter of course the 
 running away is merely an indication of 
 character, and has nothing to do with guilt 
 or innocence. The shrug of surprised pity 
 at the benighted accuser, the placid mien of 
 assured innocence, the martyr's resignation
 
 184 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 and the saint's forgiveness, are things 
 familiar in our courts of justice, and are 
 displayed there, never by the innocent, but 
 daily by the branded rascals who use them 
 as a part of stock in trade. But it takes 
 much experience to kill a phrase, and 
 Innocence is still Bold in the copy-books 
 and the apprehension of the unworldly. 
 
 Mrs. Tregarthen's flight, her foolish 
 innocent letter, and her continued silence 
 were enough to prejudice the most trusting 
 of men against her. The real motive for 
 flight was absurdly inadequate to anybody 
 who could survey the case dispassionately. 
 To Tregarthen its inadequacy seemed ex- 
 aggerated, because he, better than any out- 
 sider could have known it, knew his own 
 readiness to forget and forgive the small
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 185 
 
 deceit of which his wife had been guilty — if 
 that were all. The agonised letter, with its 
 talk about ' guilty deceit ' and c unknown 
 past,' seemed to point to more than the 
 wickedness of a month or two upon the 
 stage ; and when week after week dragged 
 by, and brought no news from the runaway, 
 Tregarthen's first suspicions and fears were 
 bit by bit confirmed, until they settled into 
 dreadful certainty. 
 
 He dismissed and paid the architect and 
 the builder, and brought the works at Tre- 
 garthen to a close. Blocks of stone, rough 
 or trimmed, balks of timber, mounds of 
 mortar, and tracts of trodden lime defaced 
 the grass before the old mansion, and were 
 left there unheeded, a visible sign of hopes 
 abandoned. A new unfinished wall or two
 
 1 86 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 mocked the ruins, and the whole place was 
 desolate with the signs of raw repair. 
 Tregarthen left the house in which he had 
 resided during his brief married life, and 
 went back to the home of his fathers. 
 
 As may be guessed, the whole country- 
 side was alive with speculation. Where 
 everybody was equally ignorant, it was 
 natural that there should be many who- 
 were the sole repositories of truth ; and it 
 was equally natural that all the versions set 
 about by these enlightened people should 
 differ. But howsoever they differed in 
 detail, it was remarkable to notice how they 
 agreed in the main point. The old story 
 against Tregarthen revived and took addi- 
 tions to itself, and it was settled by common 
 consent that he had done something dread-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 187 
 
 ful, and that Mrs. Tregarthen had been 
 compelled to desert him. Some of the 
 hungrier after melodrama found shivery 
 hints of murder in the story, and dropped 
 dark sayings about convenient caves on 
 Tregarthen Island. 
 
 In Tregarthen's mind his wife's flight 
 was a thing of long ago before a somewhat 
 obvious reflection occurred to him. She had 
 given him her fortune to pay for the repairs 
 of the old house, and he had no right to re- 
 tain it. From the moment when he thought 
 of this the money seemed to burn him, and 
 he went off in hot haste to London. Messrs. 
 Lowe and Carter, of Clement's Inn, had 
 been his wife's solicitors, and he naturally 
 applied to them. The senior partner was 
 a man of genial aspect, not at all legal in
 
 1 88 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 his looks ; an elderly man, with a boyish 
 frankness of manner and a smiling eye. 
 
 Tregarthen told his story with a savage 
 brevity. 
 
 'My wife for reasons of her own has 
 left me. You know that she made over to 
 me the whole of her own fortune.' 
 
 'In spite of my advice,' said the 
 lawyer. 
 
 ' Precisely. I am here to return it, If 
 you have no present knowledge of her 
 whereabouts ' 
 
 ' None in the world.' 
 
 ' You may advertise, requesting her to 
 apply to you, and saying that her fortune 
 lies in your hands. If you will execute the 
 necessary instruments, I will sign them 
 before leaving town.'
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 189 
 
 1 You wish the transfer to be absolute 
 and unconditional ? ' 
 
 ' Absolute and unconditional. Be good 
 enough not to mention my name in the 
 advertisement. She will respond to the 
 name of Miss Churchill.' 
 
 8 Her stage name,' said the lawyer, 
 1 before she married.' 
 
 4 You knew that ? ' said Tree: art hen, 
 looking darkly at him. 
 
 'We knew that. Certainly. We 
 arranged her father's affairs, and were in 
 occasional communication with her until 
 a few months ago. Excuse me, Mr. Tre- 
 garthen. Men in my profession sometimes 
 hear a good deal of domestic discomforts, 
 and sometimes succeed in patching up a 
 difficulty.'
 
 i go BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 ' I shall not ask your mediation in this 
 case, sir,' Tregarthen answered. ' I shall be 
 obliged if you will delay me as little as pos- 
 sible. I have no other business in London.' 
 
 He did not leave a pleasant impression 
 on the lawyer's mind ; and if he had known 
 it or had cared to know it, he had a dis- 
 agreeable impression to clear away to begin 
 with. The lawyer had heard Tregarthen's 
 unfortunate regimental story from the one 
 quarter in which it was likely to be reviewed 
 with the least mercy. Colonel Pollard was 
 a client of Messrs. Lowe and Carter's, and 
 when the Colonel told a story he had a 
 knack of telling it to his own credit. In his 
 narrative Tregarthen shone as a rowdy and 
 a traducer of the sex, a roue, a boaster, and 
 a blackguard.
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 191 
 
 The necessary documents were drawn 
 up and signed, the advertisement was pre- 
 pared and inserted, and Tregarthen went 
 back to his island. Before he left town he 
 was asked one question by the lawyer. 
 
 8 Do you desire to entrust me with any 
 message to Mrs. Tregarthen in case the 
 advertisement should reach her, and she 
 should apply to us ? ' 
 
 ' None,' said Tregarthen. His heart was 
 sore, and he was weary of the world. There 
 was no man in England more unhappy, and 
 the very necessity of the case forbade him 
 to repose confidence in any man. 
 
 He went back and lived almost alone, 
 and loathed the world. There was no 
 honour in man and no truth in woman, and 
 he had learned this bitter creed by ex-
 
 192 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 perience. To uplift a voice for Honour was 
 to call down ruin; to love was to be be- 
 trayed ; to be blameless meant that the 
 human rarity who dared it should be 
 shunned and hated. 
 
 For a long time his books were charm- 
 less, and day by day his heart's auditor 
 added Despite to Hatred, and found the sum 
 total to be Misery. After a pause he learned" 
 that the lawyers had by chance discovered 
 Mrs. Tregarthen, and that she had refused 
 to touch a penny of the money from his 
 hands. This might have puzzled him if he 
 had been in the humour to be puzzled by 
 anything. As it was, he wrote icily back 
 that the money was none of his, but hers, 
 and that she might please herself about 
 accepting or refusing it. He at least had no
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 193 
 
 claim upon it. The men of law wrote once 
 more, saying that Mrs. Tregarthen had again 
 disappeared, and asking for instructions. 
 He had none to give, and Miss Farmer's 
 fortune lay at interest therefore and re- 
 mained unclaimed. 
 
 The blustering spring was back again, 
 and March was wilder than it had been for 
 many a year. For three days one tremen- 
 dous gale blew from the west, and, gathering 
 strength in the great ocean spaces, poured 
 such a tide upon the coast as had scarcely 
 been matched within the memory of living 
 men. Storms of sleet and rain swept over 
 the island, and communication with the 
 mainland was impossible. It pleased Tre- 
 garthen to be thus shut out from the world, 
 and the savage isolation the tempest brought 
 vol. 1.
 
 i 9 4 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 him was in rare consonance with his mood. 
 The milder aspects of nature had ceased to 
 attract him, but this mad mingling of the 
 elements drew him continuously abroad, and 
 lie spent hours upon the western rocks when 
 he could hardly stand against the wind, and 
 could not look to windward for an instant. 
 
 On the last night of this prolonged 
 tempest the Atlantic rollers fell with such 
 force and volume that they cast stones as 
 large as a man's head forty or fifty yards 
 inland. The east was as black as ink 
 already, and the west was a gruesome grey, 
 when Tregarthen (clinging with both hands 
 to the wet surface of a boulder which lay 
 three hundred paces from the tidal line, and 
 taking his last look at the sea-race as it 
 went foaming back from the crags upon his
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 195 
 
 right) saw a sudden tongue of -light flash 
 out from the darkness, and heard, or 
 thought he heard, a second or two later, the 
 heavy boom of a gun. Crouching behind 
 the boulder, and so sheltering his eyes from 
 the wind, he could dimly make out the form 
 of a great vessel, and just as he was sure of 
 her he saw a second tongue of light flame 
 out from her, but this time, though lie 
 listened with all his soul, the gun was dumb 
 in the prodigious noises of the sea. Next, 
 he lost her for a minute in the gloom, and 
 found her again by a third tongue of flame. 
 Every second of that dreadful minute had 
 brought the fancied sound of the gun's 
 voice to his ears. 
 
 Each flash was nearer than the last, and 
 he could see that the ship was sweeping 
 2
 
 196 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 helplessly on shore. He made his difficult 
 and dangerous way towards her, sometimes 
 sheltered by the broken ground, but oftener 
 so beaten by the wind that he could but 
 crawl upon his hands and knees. All the 
 time, at intervals which seemed incredibly 
 apart from each other, the noiseless lightning 
 shot from the vessel's side. Whenever the 
 inequalities of the ground hid her from him 
 he fancied he could hear the gun boom and 
 boom and boom, but whenever he saw the flash 
 the gun was dumb. He came breathless and 
 panting upon the northern rocks and could 
 make out the lines of the hapless ship more 
 clearly. There was no shelter for her on 
 the leeside of the island, for, as Tregarthen 
 knew, the sea was running there like a mill 
 race magnified a myriad times. She drifted
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 197 
 
 with huge lurches towards this chaunel, and 
 Tregarthen raging with pity and helplessness 
 tore along the rocks. If he could he would 
 have cast himself upon the ground and have 
 seen no more until all was over, but the 
 fascination of horror was upon him, and he 
 was as powerless to resist it as he was to 
 save a life aboard the vessel. She was in 
 sight now continually, and he ran down the 
 broad grass platform with the wind at his back, 
 and kept alongside at a distance of little more 
 than three hundred yards. What with the 
 dashing spray and the wind and the gloom, he 
 could not make out a soul on board, but the 
 flash spoke twice more to his helpless heart, 
 and then the great craft seemed resigned to die 
 in darkness, and even to leap at her doom, as 
 despairing men have been known to do.
 
 i 9 8 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 The score of men, women, and children 
 who, apart from Tregarthen's household, 
 made up the sole population of the island, 
 were clustered on the northern rock above 
 the Sea Gate. Tregarthen's housekeeper, 
 maid, and man-servant were there also, and 
 when he came amongst them they were all 
 staring at the fated ship. Against the 
 opposite rocks she scarcely showed at all", 
 and she was as often fancied as seen ; but 
 now, in a strange way, the gloom began to 
 lighten, as gauze after gauze of cloud was 
 torn from the higher skies, and the moon 
 showed through, at first in a mere broadly- 
 dispersed but feeble gleam, but finally 
 shining through a clear rift with a star or 
 two about her. 
 
 ' There's where she'll break ! ' said one
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 199 
 
 old sea-clog, pointing to the southern wall of 
 the Sea Gate. He roared the words, but 
 only one man heard him in the howling of 
 the wind and sea. 
 
 'You'm right,' said the neighbour to 
 whom he spoke. ' The race sets terrible off 
 Gorbay Head.' 
 
 'See her acomm now,' cried a third, 
 seizing Tregarthen by the arm. 
 
 The whole force of the main tide set 
 westward. To the north-west of the island 
 juts out a promontory four miles long and 
 as many broad, and when a west wind 
 blows upon this coast the chief force of the 
 current makes for the narrow passage 
 between Gorbay Head and Tregarthen. 
 Gorbay forms an irregular semicircle almost 
 due east of the island, and the tide, sweeping
 
 200 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 past the southern end of Tregarthen, raves 
 round this arc until the narrower current 
 meets it, when it turns and the two break 
 together upon the southern Sea Gate wall. 
 The engines were never built which could 
 fight a ship's way against that awful race 
 when the Atlantic swells it with a storm 
 from the west, though at other times Gorbay 
 is a sheltered harbour. 
 
 Between the Head and the island the 
 opposing currents caught the ship, and spun 
 her twice or thrice in a wild circle, and then 
 she came bowling down, swift and steady, 
 as if there were a breeze abeam and every 
 stitch of canvas had been set. 
 
 Everybody with one consent ran for the 
 mouth of the Sea Gate, though they turned 
 their backs upon the ship to do it, and, after
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 201 
 
 a hurried clamber down the wet rocks, they 
 stood upon the sand and watched the 
 channel, and waited for the end. In spite 
 of her broken masts, and the tangle of spars 
 and cordage which encumbered her deck, 
 she looked stately as she swept into sight 
 and made for death almost at the watchers' 
 feet. No ear on shore heard her when she 
 struck. She touched the rock, and it seemed 
 to have power to melt her. She fell back 
 from the climbing seas and flying foam, and 
 her ponderous bows had vanished. She 
 drove forward again, and retired again, and 
 again drove forward, and fell to pieces softly, 
 melted away, dissolved, as if no force were 
 used at all. The shriek and groan of 
 severing timbers were no more heard than 
 the cry of severing soul and body.
 
 202 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 Those on shore who had the heart to 
 look saw two or three wretches leap from 
 the deck into the boiling waters, and two or 
 three others clinging here and there, until 
 the ship had broken on the rock like a cloud 
 upon a cloud. 
 
 As the vessel first touched the rock the 
 moon was shrouded, and as she melted away 
 the light grew again. Whilst the watchers 
 stood with aching hearts, a sudden volume 
 of water poured into the narrow gate and 
 drove them back. When it fell again, re- 
 luctantly, as if its liquid fingers clutched at 
 the sand, it left a fragment of a spar behind 
 it, and almost before the quickest eye had 
 seen this, another wave fell and hid it. 
 When that wave retired it dragged the spar 
 with it, and rolled it over and over. Tre-
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 203 
 
 garthen shrieked like a woman ; for there, 
 plain to sight, was a child lashed to the 
 rolling spar. None heard the cry, but all 
 saw the forward dash he made, and all 
 realised the double hope and fear. He had 
 reached the spar, and had wound the fingers 
 of his right hand among the coils of rope 
 which bound the child, when the next wave 
 swept up, and tossed him high, as if he had 
 been a straw. But he held on, and, when 
 the wave cast him to the beach, he dug his 
 left fingers in the sand and tried for a grip 
 with his toes. Hercules would have had no 
 more chance against that raging backwash 
 than a baby, and Tregarthen went dragging 
 down the sandy slope until the advancing 
 wave swept up again, lifted him, rolled him 
 over, and cast him and the spar down to-
 
 204 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 getlier. The spar fell uppermost, and struck 
 Tregarthen so heavily on the head that, with 
 a great crackle and sparkle of lights before 
 his eyes, he swooned and lay like a stone. 
 
 The spar came end-on this time, and one 
 Cornish sea-dog fell on it and gripped it 
 with his might, and a second, falling on his 
 knees behind the first, took him round the 
 loins with knitted fingers, and a third seized 
 the second by the leather belt he wore. 
 The next wave came howling up ; but 
 before it had them fairly in its grasp, a 
 fourth had seized the third by the hand, and 
 a fifth the fourth, and when the great 
 monster went grinding back with its re- 
 luctant fingers clutching at the sand, the line 
 was sound. Before the sea came again, 
 Tregarthen and the child were out of its
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 205 
 
 reach ; for the rope had miraculously tangled 
 itself about the rescuer's arm, and when the 
 men dragged at the spar he came with 
 it. 
 
 There was no memory of the storm in 
 the mild spring air when Tregarihen next 
 awoke to a knowledge of the world. He 
 was lying in bed in his own room, and the 
 window, which faced to the south, was open, 
 so that he could just hear the gentle chiding 
 of the sea. He lay for a time without a 
 care to remember anything ; but when he 
 tried to move he found head, hands, and 
 limbs marvellously heavy, and he began to 
 be aware that he ached all over. Then he 
 remembered the storm, the shipwreck, and 
 the rescue he had attempted.
 
 206 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 4 Is anybody here ? ' he asked, in a voice 
 so feeble that he was surprised at it. 
 
 His housekeeper's voice responded with 
 an ejaculation of pious joy, and the old 
 woman was at the bedside in a moment. 
 
 6 You know me, sir ? ' she said. 
 
 1 Yes,' he answered. ' I have been ill ? 
 Who saved me ? Did they save the child ? ' 
 
 ' It was Eeuben Pollarth,' said the 
 housekeeper, ' went in after you first, sir. 
 But they all helped.' 
 
 6 Did they save the child ? ' he asked again. 
 
 ' The child's quite safe, sir. Don't you 
 talk no more now, Mr. Arthur, there's a dear.' 
 
 4 Where is the child ? In the house ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, sir, yes,' returned the old lady. 
 ' But don't you talk, dear heart, or you'll do 
 yourself a mischief.'
 
 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 207 
 
 1 It was a boy, I think,' said Tregarthen. 
 
 8 Yes. yes, sir, yes,' said the housekeeper. 
 ' Here's your sleepin' draught, Mr. Arthur.' 
 
 1 Bring him here,' said Tregarthen. ' No, 
 no ! ' moving his eyebrows impatiently at 
 the draught. ' The boy. Let me see him. 
 Bring him here at once.' 
 
 The old lady rustled softly from the 
 room, afraid to deny him longer. 
 
 ' The Tregarthens "11 have their way if 
 they are dying,' she said to herself. ' It was 
 their manner always.' She returned in a 
 moment. ' I have sent for him, sir.' 
 
 Tregarthen made a response with his 
 eyes, and lay still. By and by there was a 
 knock at the door, and the housekeeper, 
 answering it, led into the room a little fellow 
 of six or seven years of age, and set him
 
 2 o8 BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. 
 
 where her master could see him. The child 
 was pale, and his cheeks were hollow. He 
 had a profusion of light hair, a shy but 
 pleasant aspect, and large grey eyes. 
 
 ' Let him be taken care of,' said Tre- 
 garthen, in his feeble voice. ' Bring him to 
 me again to-morrow. A pretty child. Any 
 one else ? ' 
 
 ' No, sir,' said the housekeeper, with a 
 downward glance at the child. 
 
 « Bring him again to-morrow,' said Tre- 
 garthen. ' I am tired.' 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 SpottUwoode a; Co. Printers, New-street Square, London,
 
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