III Father Brent’s Tale

It was universally voted on Monday that the Englishman should follow Father Meuron, and we looked with some satisfaction on his wholesome face and steady blue eyes as he took up his tale after supper.

“Mine is a very poor story,” he began, “after the one we heard on Saturday and, what is worse, there is no explanation that I have ever heard that seemed to me adequate. Perhaps some one will supply one this evening. I feel very much like the ant in London whom Monsignor has such sympathy with.”

He drew at his cigarette, smiling, and we settled ourselves down with looks of resolute science on our features. I at least was conscious of wishing to wear one.

“After my ordination to the sub-diaconate I was in England for the summer, and went down to stay with a friend on the Fal at the beginning of October.

“My friend’s house stood on a spot of land running out into the estuary; there was a beech wood behind it and on either side. There was a small embankment on which the building actually stood, of which the sea-wall ran straight down on to the rocks, so that at high tide the water came half way up the stone-work. There was a large smoking-room looking the same way and a little paved path separated its windows from the low wall.

“We had a series of very warm days when I was there, and after dinner we would sit outside in the dark and listen to the water lapping below. There was another house on the further side of the river about half a mile away, and we could see its lights sometimes. About three miles upstream—that is, on our right—lay Truro; and Falmouth, as far as I remember, about four miles to the left. But we were entirely cut off from our neighbors by the beechwoods all round us, and, except for the house opposite, might have been clean out of civilization.”

Father Brent tossed away his cigarette and lit another.

He seemed a very sensible person, I thought, unlike the excitable Frenchman, and his manner of speaking was serene and practical.

“My friend was a widower,” he went on, “but had one boy, about eleven years old, who, I remember, was to go to school after Christmas. I asked Franklyn, my friend, why Jack had not gone before, and he told me, as parents will, that he was a peculiarly sensitive boy, a little hysterical at times and very nervous, but he was less so than he used to be, and probably, his father said, if he was allowed time, school would be the best thing for him. Up to the present, however, he had shrunk from sending him.

“‘He has extraordinary fancies,’ he said, ‘and thinks he sees things. The other day—’ and then Jack came in, and he stopped, and I clean forgot to ask him afterward what he was going to say.

“Now, if any one here has ever been to Cornwall they will know what a queer county it is. It is cram full of legends and so on. Every one who has ever been there seems to have left their mark. You get the Phœnicians in goodness knows what century; they came there for tin, and some of the mines still in work are supposed to have been opened by them. Cornish cream, too, seems to have been brought there by them, for I need not tell you, perhaps, that the stuff is originally Cornish and not Devon. Then Solomon, some think, sent ships there, though personally I believe that is nonsense; but you get some curious names—Marazion, for instance, which means the bitterness of Zion. That has made some believe that the Cornish are the lost tribes. Then you get a connection with both Ireland and Brittany in names, language, and beliefs, and so on. I could go on forever. They still talk of ‘going to England’ when they cross the border into Devonshire.

“Then the people are very odd—real Celts—with a genius for religion and the supernatural generally. They believe in pixies; they have got a hundred saints and holy wells and holy trees that no one else has ever heard of. They have the most astonishing old churches. There is one convent—at Lanherne, I think—where the Blessed Sacrament has remained with its light burning right up to the present. And lastly, all the people are furious Wesleyans.

“So the whole place is a confusion of history, a sort of palimpsest, as the Father Rector here would tell us. A cross you find in the moor may be pagan, or Catholic, or Anglican, or most likely all three together. And that is what makes an explanation of what I am going to tell you such a difficult thing.

“I did not know much about this when I went there on October 3d, but Franklyn told me a lot, and he took me about to one or two places here and there—to Truro to see the new Cathedral, to Perranzabuloe, where there is an old mystery theatre and a church in the sands, and so on. And one day we rowed down to Falmouth.

“The Fal is a lovely place when the tide is in. You find the odd combination of seaweed and beech trees growing almost together. The trees stand with their roots in saltish water, and the creeks run right up into the woods. But it is terrible when the tide is out—great sheets of mud, with wreckage sticking up, and draggled weed, and mussels, and so on.

“About the end of my first week it was high tide after dinner, and we sat out on the terrace looking across the water. We could hear it lapping below, and the moon was just coming up behind the house. I tossed over my cigarette end and heard it fizz in the water, and then I put out my hand to the box for another. There wasn’t one, and Franklyn said he would go indoors to find some. He thought he had some Nestors in his bedroom.

“So Franklyn went in and I was left alone.

“It was perfectly quiet; there was not a ripple on the water, which was about eight feet below me, as I got up from my chair and sat on the low wall. There was a sort of glimmer on the water from the moon behind, and I could see a yellow streak clean across the surface from the house opposite among the black woods. It was as warm as summer, too.”

Father Brent threw his cigarette away and sat a little forward in his chair. I began to feel more interested. He was plainly interested himself, for he clasped his hands round a knee and gave a quick look into our faces. Then he looked back again at the fire as he went on.

“Then across the streak of yellow light, and where the moon glimmered, I saw a kind of black line moving. It was coming toward me, and there seemed to be a sort of disturbance behind. I stood up and waited, wondering what it was. I could hear Franklyn pulling out a drawer in the bedroom overhead, but everything else was deadly still.

“As I stood it came nearer swiftly; it was just a high ripple in the water, and a moment later the flat surface below heaved up, and I could hear it lapping and splashing on the face of the wall.

“It was exactly as if some big ship had gone up the estuary. I strained my eyes out, but there was nothing to be seen. There was the glimmer of the moon on the water, the house lights burning half a mile away, and the black woods beyond. There was a beach, rocks, and shingle on my right, curving along toward a place called Meopas; and I could hear the wave hiss and clatter all along it as it went upstream.

“Then I sat down again.

“I cannot say I was exactly frightened; but I was very much puzzled. It surely could not be a tidal wave; there was certainly no ship; it could not be anything swimming, for the wave was like the wave of a really large vessel.

“In a minute or two Franklyn came down with the Nestors, and I told him. He laughed at me. He said it must have been a breeze, or the turn of the tide, or something. Then he said he had been in to look for Jack, and had found him in a sort of nightmare, tossing and moaning; he had not wakened him, he said, but just touched him and said a word or two, and the boy had turned over and gone to sleep.

“But I would not let him change the subject. I persisted it had been a really big wash of some kind.

“He stared at me.

“‘Take a cigarette,’ he said; ‘I found them at last under a hat.’

“But I went on at him. It had made an impression on me, and I was a little uncomfortable.

“‘It is bosh,’ he said; ‘but we will go and see if you like. The wall will be wet if there was a big wave.’

“He fetched a lantern, and we went down the steps that led round the side of the embankment into the water. I went first, until my feet were on the last step above the water. He carried the lantern.

“Then I heard him exclaim.

“‘You are standing in a pool,’ he said.

“I looked down and saw that it was so; the steps, three of them, at least, were shining with water in the light of the lantern.

“I put out my hand for the lantern, held on to a ring by my left hand, and leaned out as far as I could, looking at the face of the wall. It was wet and dripping for at least four feet above the mark of the high tide.

“I told him, and he came down and looked, too, and then we went up again to the house.

“We neither of us said very much more that evening. The only suggestion that Franklyn could make was that it must have been a very odd kind of tidal wave. For myself, I knew nothing about tidal waves; but I gathered from his tone that this certainly could not have been one.

“We sat about half an hour more, but there was no sound again.

“When we went up to bed we peeped into Jack’s room. He was lying perfectly quiet on his right side, turned away from the window, which was open, but there was a little frown, I thought, on his forehead, and his eyes seemed screwed up.”

The priest stopped again.

We were all very quiet. The story was not exciting, but it was distinctly interesting, and I could see the others were puzzled. Perhaps what impressed us most was the very matter-of-fact tone in which the story was told.

The Rector put in a word during the silence.

“How do you know it was not a tidal wave?” he asked.

“It may have been, Father,” said the young priest; “but that is not the end.”

He filled his lungs with smoke, blew it out, and went on.

“Nothing whatever happened of any interest for the next day or two, except that Franklyn asked a boatman at Meopas whether he had heard anything of a wave on the Monday night. The man looked at us and shook his head, still looking at us oddly.

“‘I was in bed early,’ he said.

“On the Thursday afternoon Franklyn got a note asking him to dine in Truro, to meet some one who had come down from town. I told him to go, of course, and he went off in his dog-cart about half-past six.

“Jack and I dined together at half-past seven, and I may say we made friends. He was less shy when his father was away. I think Franklyn laughed at him a little too much, hoping to cure him of his fancies.

“The boy told me some of them, though, that night. I don’t remember any of them particularly, but I do remember the general effect, and I was really impressed by the sort of insight he seemed to have into things. He said some curious things about trees and their characters. Perhaps you remember Macdonald’s ‘Phantastes.’ It was rather like that. He was fond of beeches, I gathered, and thought himself safe in them; he liked to climb them and to think the house was surrounded by them. And there was a lot of things like that he said. I remember, too, that he hated cypresses and cats and the twilight.

“‘But I am not afraid of the dark,’ he said. ‘I like the dark as much as the light, and I always sleep with my windows open and no curtains.’”

Monsignor Maxwell nodded abruptly. I could see he was watching.

“I know,” he said—“I knew another child like that.”

“Well,” went on Father Brent, “the boy said good-night and went to bed about nine. I sat in the smoking-room a bit, for it had turned a little cold, and about ten stepped out on to the terrace.

“It was perfectly still and cloudy. I forget whether there was a moon. At any rate, I did not see it. There was just the black gulf of water, with the line of light across it from the house opposite. Then I went indoors and shut the windows.

“I read again for a while, and finished my book. I had said my office, so I looked about for another novel. Then I remembered there had been one I wanted to read in Franklyn’s room overhead, so I took a candle and went up. Jack’s room was over the smoking-room, and his father’s was beyond it on the right, and there was a door between them. Both faced the front, remember.

“Franklyn’s room had three windows, two looking on to the river and one upstream toward Truro, over the beach I spoke of before. I went in there, and saw that the door was open between the two rooms, so I slipped off my shoes for fear of disturbing the boy and went across to the book-shelf that stood between the two front windows. All three windows were open. Franklyn was mad about fresh air.

“I was bending down to look at the backs of the books, and had my finger on the one I wanted when I heard a kind of moan from the boy’s room.

“I stood up, startled, and it came again. Why, he had had a nightmare only three days before, I remembered. As I stood there wondering whether it would be kind to wake him, I heard another sound.

“It was a noise that came through the side window that looked up the beach, and it was the noise of a breaking wave.”

The priest made a momentary pause, and as he flicked the end of his cigarette I saw his fingers tremble very slightly.

“I didn’t hesitate then, but went straight into the room next door, and as I went across the floor heard the boy moaning and tossing. It was pitch dark, and I could see nothing. I was thinking that tidal waves don’t come downstream. Then my knee struck the edge of the bed.

“‘Jack,’ I said, ‘Jack.’

“There was a rustle from the bed-clothes, and (I should have thought) long before he could have awakened I heard his feet on the floor, and then felt him brush past me. Then I saw him outlined against the pale window, with his hands on the glass over his head. Then I was by him, taking care not to touch him.

“All this took about five seconds, I suppose, from the time when I heard the wave on the beach. I stared out now over the boy’s head, but there was nothing in the world to be seen but the black water and the glimmer of the light across it.

“Jack was perfectly silent, but I could see that he was watching. He didn’t seem to know I was there.

“Then I whispered to him rather sharply.

“‘What is it, Jack? What do you see?’

“He said nothing, and I repeated my question.

“Then he answered, almost as if talking to himself.

“‘Ships,’ he said; ‘three ships.’

“Now I swear there was nothing there. I thought it was a nightmare.

“‘Nonsense,’ I said; ‘how can you see them? It’s too dark.’

“‘A light in each,’ he said; ‘in the bows—blazing!’

“As he said it I saw his head turning slowly to the left as if he was following them. Then there came the sound of the wave breaking on the stone-work just below the windows.

“‘Are you frightened?’ I said suddenly.

“‘Yes,’ said the boy.

“‘Why?’

“‘I don’t know.’

“Then I saw his hands come down from the window and cover his face, and he began to moan again.

“‘Come back to bed,’ I said; but I daren’t touch him. I could see he was sleep walking.

“Then he turned, went straight across the room, still making an odd sound, and I heard him climb into bed.

“I covered him up and went out.”

Father Brent stopped again. He had rather a curious look in his face, and I saw that his cigarette had gone out. None of us spoke or moved.

Then he went on again abruptly.

“Well, you know, I didn’t know I was frightened exactly until I came out on to the landing. There was a tall glass there on the right hand of the staircase, and just as I came opposite I thought I heard the hiss of the wave again, and I nearly screamed. It was only the wheels of Franklyn’s dog-cart coming up the drive, but as I looked in the glass I saw that my face was like paper.... We had a long talk about the Phœnicians that evening. Franklyn looked them out in the Encyclopædia; but there was nothing particularly interesting.

“Well, that’s all. Give me a match, Father. This beastly thing’s gone out. It’s a spaghetto.”

We had no theories to suggest. Monsignor alone was temerarious enough to remark that the story was an excellent illustration of his own views.