A Secret Inheritance. Volume 2 of 3. Farjeon Benjamin Leopold

it. The crisis you have dreaded for many years has come, and if you wish me to stop with you a day or two I will willingly do so. It may be-I do not know how-that I can be of service to you. The boatmen are waiting in the boat below. I will write a letter to my wife, and they shall post it, informing her that I shall be absent from home perhaps until the end of the week, by which time I hope the cloud will have passed away. No thanks, Silvain; friendship would be a poor and valueless thing if one shrank from a sacrifice so slight.'

      "I wrote my letter, and despatched it by the boatmen. Then we waited for events; it was all that it was in our power to do.

      "Avicia was very glad when she heard of my intention to remain with them a while.

      "'Your companionship will do him good,' she said. 'He has no one but me to talk to, and he speaks of but one subject. If this continues long he will lose his reason.'

      "The day passed, and night came on. There was but scanty living accommodation in the lighthouse, but a mattress was spread for me upon the floor of the tiny kitchen; and there I was to sleep. Avicia and Silvain wished me to occupy their bed, but I would not have it so. Before retiring to rest, Silvain and I passed two or three hours in converse; I purposely led the conversation into foreign channels, and when I wished him good-night I was rejoiced to perceive that I had succeeded for a brief space in diverting his mind from the fears which weighed so heavily upon him.

      "Nothing occurred during the night to disturb us; I awoke early, and lay waiting for sunrise; but no light came, and when, aroused by Silvain, I left my bed and went to the outer gallery, I was surprised to see that all surrounding space was wrapt in a thick mist.

      "'A great storm will soon be upon us,' said Silvain.

      "He was right; before noon the storm burst, and the sea was lashed into fury. It was a relief to see the play of lightning upon the angry waters, but it was terrible too, and I thought how awful and joyless a lone life must be when spent in such a home. This second day seemed as if it would never end, and it was only by my watch that I knew of the approach of night. With the sounds of the storm in my ears I lay down upon my mattress and fell asleep.

      "I know not at what time of the night I awoke, but with black darkness upon and around me, I found myself sitting up, listening to sounds without which did not proceed from the conflict of the elements. At first I could not decide whether they were real or but the refrain of a dream by which I had been disturbed; soon, however, I received indisputable evidence that they were not the creations of my fancy.

      "'Kristel! For God's sake, listen to me!'

      "The voice was Silvain's, and the words were uttered in outer space. When I retired to rest I had lain down in my clothes, removing only my coat, and using it as a covering. I quickly put it on, and lit a lamp, to which a chain was attached, by which means it could be held over the walls of the lighthouse. The lamp was scarcely lighted, when Avicia, but half dressed, rushed into the little room.

      "'Silvain!' she cried. 'Where is Silvain?'

      "Her eyes wandered round the room, seeking him. At that moment the voice from without pierced the air.

      "'Kristel! Oh, my brother, listen to me!'

      "I threw my arms round Avicia, and held her fast.

      "'Why do you hold me?' she screamed. 'Are you, too, leagued against us? Silvain! Silvain!'

      "It needed all my strength to restrain her from rushing out in her wild delirium, perhaps to her destruction. I whispered to her hurriedly that I intended to go to the outer gallery, and that she should accompany me; and also that if she truly wished to be of assistance to her husband she must be calm. She ceased instantly to struggle, and said in a tone of suppressed excitement,

      "'Come, then.'

      "I did not quit my hold of her, but I used now only one hand, which I clasped firmly round her wrist, my other being required for the lantern. The next moment we were standing upon the gallery, bending over. It was pitch dark, and we could see nothing; even the white spray of the waves, as they dashed against the stone walls, was not visible to us; but we heard Silvain's voice, at intervals, appealing in frenzied tones to Kristel, who, it needed not the evidence of sight to know, was holding on to the chains and struggling with his brother. How the two came into that awful position was never discovered, and I could only judge by inference that Kristel, in the dead of this deadly night, had made his way by some means to the lighthouse, and was endeavouring to effect an entrance, when Silvain, awakened by his attempts, had gone out to him, and was instantly seized and dragged down.

      "So fearful and confused were the minutes that immediately followed that I have but an indistinct impression of the occurrences of the time, which will live ever within me as the most awful in my life. I know that I never lost my grasp of Avicia, and that but for me she would have flung herself over the walls; I know that the brothers were engaged in a struggle for life and death, and that Silvain continued to make the most pathetic appeals to Kristel to listen to him, and not to stain his soul with blood; I know that in those appeals there were the tenderest references to their boyhood's days, to the love which had existed between them, each for the other, to trivial incidents in their childhood, to their mother who worshipped them and was now looking down upon them, to the hopes in which they had indulged of a life of harmony and affection; I know that it struck me then as most terrible that during the whole of the struggle no word issued from Kristel's lips; I know that there were heartrending appeals from Avicia to Kristel to spare her husband, and that there were tender cries from her to Silvain, and from Silvain to her; I know that, finding a loose chain on the gallery, I lowered it to the combatants, and called out to Silvain-foolishly enough, in so far as he could avail himself of it-to release himself from his brother's arms and seize it, and that I and Avicia would draw him up to safety; I know that in one vivid flash of lightning I saw the struggling forms and the beautiful white spray of the waves; I know that Silvain's voice grew fainter and fainter until it was heard no more; I know that there was the sound of a heavy body or bodies falling into the sea, that a shriek of woe and despair clove my heart like a knife, and that Avicia lay in my arms moaning and trembling. I bore her tenderly into her room, and laid her on her bed.

      "The storm ceased; no sound was heard without. The rising sun filled the eastern horizon with loveliest hues of saffron and crimson. The sea was calm; there was no trace of tempest and human agony. By that time Avicia was a mother, and lay with her babes pressed to her bosom. Silvain's fear was realised: he was the dead father of twin brothers.

      "The assistant whom Avicia's father had engaged rowed me to the village, and there I enlisted the services of a woman, who accompanied me back to the lighthouse, and attended to Avicia. The mother lived but two days after the birth of her babes. Until her last hour she was delirious, but then she recovered her senses and recognised me.

      "'My dear Silvain told me,' she said, in a weak, faint voice, 'that you would be a friend to our children. Bless the few moments remaining to me by assuring me that you will not desert them.'

      "I gave her the assurance for which she yearned, and she desired me to call them by the names of Eric and Emilius. It rejoiced me that she passed away in peace; strange as it may seem, it was an inexpressible relief to her bruised heart that the long agony was over. Her last words were,

      "'I trust you. God will reward you!'

      "And so, with her nerveless hand in mine, her spirit went out to her lover and husband.

      "We buried her in the village churchyard, and the day was observed as a day of mourning in that village by the sea.

      "I thought I could not do better than leave the twin babes for a time in the charge of the woman I had engaged, and it occurred to me that it might not be unprofitable to have some inquiries and investigation made with respect to the inheritance left by their grandfather to his sons Kristel and Silvain. I placed the matter in the hands of a shrewd lawyer, and he was enabled to recover a portion of what was due to their father. This was a great satisfaction to me, as it to some extent provided for the future of Eric and Emilius, and supplied the wherewithal for their education. It was my intention, when they arrived at a certain age, to bring them to my home in Nerac, and treat them as children of my own, but a difficulty cropped up for which I was not prepared and which I could not surmount. Avicia's father, learning that