CHAPTER XV.--WHAT THE MOON SAW.

The absence of the boat from its mooring-place was soon observed, and

surmises were rife that we must infallibly have gone seaward. But why?

It seemed unaccountable--and at such a time, too! The idea that Lady

Estelle's heart should fail her in attempting to return by the cliff

never occurred to any save Winifred, who knew more of her friend's

temperament than the rest, and for a time, with others, the ardent and

courageous girl searched the shore, and several boats were put forth

into the mist; but in vain, and ere long the strength and violence of

the wind drove even Sir Madoc and all his startled guests to the

shelter of the house. Muffled in silk cloaks and warm shawls or

otter-skin jackets, the ladies had lingered long on the terraces, on

the lawn and avenues, while the lights of the searchers were visible,

and while their hallooing could be heard at times from the rocks and

ravines, where they swung their lanterns as signals, in hopes that the

lost ones might see them.

Lord Pottersleigh snuffed and ejaculated from time to time, and ere

long had betaken himself to his room. Caradoc, Guilfoyle--who seemed

considerably bewildered by the affair--young Clavel of the 19th, and

other gentlemen, with Gwyllim the butler, Morgan Roots the gardener,

Bob Spurrit, and the whole male staff of the household, manfully

continued their search by the shore. There the scene was wild and

impressive. Before the violence of the bellowing wind, the mist was

giving place to the pall-like masses of dark clouds, which rolled

swiftly past the pale face of the new moon, imparting a weird-like

aspect to the rocky coast, against which the sea was foaming in white

and hurrying waves, while the sea-birds, scared alike by the shouts

and the light of the searchers, quite as much as by the storm,

screamed and wheeled in wild flights about their eyries. Moments there

were when Caradoc thought the search was prosecuted in the wrong

direction, and that, as there had probably been an elopement, this

prowling along the seashore was absurd.

"Can it be," said he, inaudibly, "that the little boy who cried for

the moon has made off with it bodily? If so, this will be rather a

'swell' affair for the mess of the Royal Welsh."

Slowly passed the time, and more anxious than all the rest--Lady

Naseby of course excepted--the soft-hearted Winifred was full of

dismay that any catastrophe should occur to two guests at Craigaderyn,

and she listened like a startled fawn to every passing sound.

Dora, as deeming herself the authoress of the whole calamity, was

completely crushed, and sat on a low stool with her head bowed on Lady

Naseby's knee, sobbing bitterly ever and anon, when the storm-gusts

howled among the trees of the chase, shook the oriels of the old

mansion, and made the ivy leaves patter on the panes, or shuddering as

she heard the knell-like ding-dong of the house-bell occasionally. The

masses of her golden hair had been dishevelled by the wind without;

but she forgot all about that, as well as about her two solemn

engagements made with Tom Clavell for the morrow; one, the mild

excitement of fishing for sticklebacks in the horse-pond, and the

other, a gallop to the Marine Parade of Llandudno, attended by old Bob

Spurrit; for the little sub of the 1st York North Riding was, _pro

tem_., the bondsman of a girl who was at once charming and childish,

petulant and more than pretty. Heavily and anxiously were passed the

minutes, the quarters, and the hours. Messenger after messenger to the

searchers by the shore went forth and returned. Their tidings were all

the same; nothing had been seen or heard of the boat, of Lady Estelle,

or of her companion. Nine o'clock was struck by the great old clock in

the stable court, and then every one instinctively looked at his or

her watch. Half-past nine, ten, and even midnight struck, without

tidings of the lost. By that time the mist had cleared away, the tide

had turned, and the west wind was rolling the incoming sea with

mightier fury on the rock-bound shore.

The first hours of the morning passed without intelligence, and alarm,

dismay, and grief reigned supreme among the pallid group at

Craigaderyn Court. All could but hope that with the coming day a

revelation might come for weal or woe; and as if to involve the

disappearance of the missing ones in greater mystery, if it did not

point to a terrible conclusion, the lost pleasure-boat was discovered

by a coastguardsman, high and dry, and bottom up, on a strip of sandy

beach, some miles from Craigaderyn; but of its supposed occupants not

a trace could be found, save a lace cuff, recognised as Lady

Estelle's, wedged or washed into the framework of the little craft,

thus linking her fate with it. Ours was, indeed, a perilous situation.

We were helplessly adrift on a stormy sea, off a rock-bound coast, in

a tiny boat, liable to swamping at any moment, without oars or

covering, the wind rising fast, while the darkness and the mist were

coming down together. I had no words to express my anxiety for what

one so delicately nurtured as Estelle might suffer. My annoyance at

the surmises and wonder naturally excited by our protracted absence;

quizzical, it might be equivocal, inferences drawn from it--I thought

nothing of these. I was beyond all such minor considerations, and felt

only solicitude for her safety and a terror of what her fate might be.

All other ideas, even love itself--though that very solicitude was

born of love--were merged for the time in the tenderest anxiety. If

her situation with me was perilous, what had it been if with Lord

Pottersleigh? But had she been with him, no such event as a descent to

that unlucky pleasure grotto could have been thought of. Though pale

and terrified, not a tear escaped her now; but her white and beautiful

face was turned, with a haggard aspect, to mine. A life-buoy happened

to be in the boat, and without a word I tied it to her securely.

"Is there not one for you?" she asked, piteously, laying a hand on

mine.

"Think not of me, Lady Estelle; if you are saved, what care I for

myself?"

"You swim, then?"

"A little, a very little; scarcely at all."

"You are generous and noble, Mr. Hardinge! O, if kind God permits me

to reach the land safely, I shall never be guilty of an act of folly

like this again. Mamma says--poor mamma!--that it is birth, or blood,

which carries people through great emergencies; but who could have

foreseen such a calamitous contretemps as this? And who could have

been a greater coward than I? I should have made a steady attempt at

yonder pitiful cliff; to fail was most childish, and I have involved

you in this most fatal peril."

She sobbed as she spoke, and her eyes were full of light; but her lips

were compressed, and all her soft and aristocratic loveliness seemed

for a time to grow different in expression; to gather sternness, as a

courage now possessed her, of which she had seemed deficient before,

or it might be an obstinacy born of despair; for the light boat was

swept hither and thither helplessly, by stem and stern alternately, on

each successive wave; tossed upward on the crest of one watery ridge,

or sunk downward between two that heaved up on each side as if to

engulf us; while the spoondrift, salt and bitter, torn from their

tops, flew over us, as she clung with one hand to the gunwale of the

tiny craft, and with the other to me.

That we were not being drifted landward was evident, for we could no

longer hear the voices of the sea-birds among the rocks; and to be

drifted seaward by ebb tide or current was only another phase of

peril. The voice of Lady Estelle came in painful gasps as she said,

"O, Mr. Hardinge, Mr. Hardinge, we shall perish most miserably; we

shall certainly be drowned! Mamma, my poor mamma, I shall never see

her more!"

Though striving to reassure her I was, for a time, completely

bewildered by anxiety for what she must suffer by a terror of the

sudden fate that might come upon her; and I was haunted by morbid

visions of her, the brilliant Estelle, a drowned and sodden corpse,

the sport of the waves--of myself I never thought--tossing unburied in

the deep, or, it might be, cast mutilated on the shore; and she looked

so beautiful and helpless as she clung to me now, clasping my right

arm with all her energy, her head half reclined upon my shoulder, and

the passing spray mingling with her tears upon her cheek. "The

drowning man is said to be confronted by a ghostly panorama of his

whole life." It may be so generally; but then I had only the horror of

losing Estelle, whom I loved so tenderly. We were now together and

alone, so completely, suddenly, and terribly alone, it might be for

life or for death--the former short indeed, and the latter swift and

sudden, if the boat upset, or we were washed out of it into the sea;

and yet in that time of peril she possessed more than ever for me that

wondrous and undefinable charm and allurement which every man finds in

the woman he loves, and in her only.

"God spare us and help us!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Hardinge, I am filled

with unutterable fear;" and then she added, unconsciously quoting some

poet, "I find the thought of death, to one near death, most dreadful!"

"With you, Estelle, love might make it indeed a joy to die!" I

exclaimed, with a gush of enthusiasm and tenderness that, but for the

terrible situation, had been melodramatic.

"I did not think that you loved me so," said she, after a little

pause; and my arm now encircled her waist, while something of an

invocation to heaven rose to my lips, and I repeated,

"Not think that I loved you! Do not be coquettishly unwilling to

admit what you must know, that since that last happy night in London

you have never been absent from my thoughts; and here, Estelle, dear,

dear Estelle, when menaced by a grave amid these waters, I tell you

that I loved you from the first moment that I knew you! Death stares

us in the face, but tell me truly that you--that you--"

"Love you in return? I do, indeed, dear Harry!" she sobbed, and then

her beloved face, chilled and damp with tears and spray, came close to

mine.

"God bless you, O my darling, for this avowal!" said I in a thick

voice, and even the terrors of our position could not damp the glow of

my joy.

In all my waking dreams of her had Estelle seemed beautiful; but never

so much so as now, when I seemed on the eve of losing her for ever,

and my own life, too; when each successive wave that rolled in inky

blackness towards us might tear her from my clasp! How easily under

some circumstances do we learn the language of passion! and now, while

clasping her fast with one arm, as with both of hers she clung to me,

I pressed her to my breast, and told her again and again how fondly I

loved her, while--as it were in a dream, a portion of a nightmare--our

boat, now filling fast with water, was tossed madly to and fro. And

like a dream, too, it seemed, the fact that I had her all to

myself--for life or death, as it were--this brilliant creature so

loved by many, so prized by all, and hitherto apparently so

unattainable; she who, by a look, a glance, a smile, by a flirt of her

fan, by the dropping of a glove, or the gift of a flower, selected

with point from her bouquet, had held my soul in thrall by all the

delicious trifles that make up the sum and glory of love to the lover

who is young. And where were we now? Alone on the dark, and ere long

it was the midnight, sea! Alone, and with me; I who had so long eyed

her lovingly and longingly, even as Schön Rohtrant, the German king's

daughter, was gazed at and loved by the handsome page, who dared not

to touch or kiss her till he gathered courage one day, as the ballad

tells us, when they were under a shady old oak.

"If God spares us to see her," said Lady Estelle, "what will mamma

think of this terrible _fiasco_ of ours?"

While Estelle loved me, I felt that I did not care very much for the

dowager's views of the matter, especially at that precise moment. When

on _terra firma_ there would be sufficient time to consider them.

"And you are mine, darling?" said I, tenderly.

"I am yours, Harry, and yours only."

"Never shall I weary of hearing this admission; but the rumour of an

engagement to Lord Pottersleigh?'

"Absurd! It has grown out of his dangling after me and mamma's wish,

as I won't have my cousin Naseby."

"And you do not hold yourself engaged--"

"Save to you, Harry, and you alone."

And as her head again sank upon my shoulder, her pride and my doubts

fled together; but now a half-stifled shriek escaped her, as the frail

boat was nearly overturned by a larger wave than usual, which struck

it on the counter. We were drenched and chilled, so ours was, indeed,

love-making under difficulties; and the time, even with her reclining

in my arms, passed slowly. How many a prayer and invocation, all too

deep for utterance, rose to my lips for her! The hours drew on. Would

day never dawn? With all the sweet but now terrible companionship of

love--for it was love combined with gloomy danger--this was our utmost

craving.

The new moon, as she rose pale and sharp, like a silver sickle, from

the Irish Sea, when the fog began to disperse, tipped for a little

time with light the wave-tops as they rose or sank around us; but

clouds soon enveloped her again; and when the tide turned, the sea ran

inward, and broke wildly on the tremendous headlands of the coast.

That our boat was not swamped seemed miraculous; but it was very

buoyant, being entirely lined with cork, and had air-tight

compartments under the seats. A gray streak at the far horizon had

spread across a gap of pale green, announcing that the short August

night was past, and rapidly it broadened and brightened into day,

while crimson and gold began to tip the wave-tops with a fiery hue,

the whole ocean seeming to be mottled, as it were; and I could see the

coast-line, as we were not quite a mile from it. In the distance were

plainly visible the little town of Abergele, and those hills where

Castell Cawr and the Cefn Ogo are, tinged with pink, as they rose

above the white vapour that rolled along the shore.

The more distant mountain ranges seemed blue and purple against a sky

where clouds of pearly-pink were floating. Estelle was exhausted now.

Her pallor added to my misery. So many hours of pitiless exposure had

proved too much for her strength, and with her eyes closed she lay

helpless in my arms, while wave after wave was now impelling us

shoreward, and, most happily it would seem, towards a point where the

rocks opened and the water shoaled. One enormous breaker,

white-crested and overarching, came rolling upon us. A gasp, a mutual

cry to heaven, half-stifled by the bitter spray, and then the mighty

volume of it engulfed us and our boat. We had a momentary sense of

darkness and blindness, a sound as of booming thunder mingled with the

clangour of bells in our ears, and something of the feeling of being

swept by an express train through a tunnel filled with water, for we

were fairly under the latter; but I clung to the boat with one hand

and arm, while the other went round Estelle with a death-like embrace,

that prevented her from being swept or torn from me.

For some moments I knew not whether we were on the land or in the sea;

but, though stunned by the shock, I acted mechanically. Then I

remember becoming conscious of rising through the pale-green water, of

inhaling a long breath, a gasping respiration, and of seeing the

sunshine on the waves. Another shock came, and we were flung on the

flat or sloping beach, to be there left by the receding sea. Instead

of in that place, had we been dashed against the impending rocks

elsewhere, all had then been over with us. I still felt that my right

arm was clasped around Estelle; but she was motionless, breathless,

and still; and though a terror that she was dead oppressed me, a

torpor that I could not resist spread over all my faculties, and I

sank into a state of perfect unconsciousness.