Hearts of Gold and Hearts of Steel

Front matter

HEARTS OF GOLD AND HEARTS OF STEEL. BY HENRY HERMAN. Author of " Eagle Joe," "A Leading Lady," "Scarlet Fortune," &*c, Gr>c. Joint Author of " The Bishop's Bible," "He Fell Among Thieves," " One Traveller Returns" " Wild Darrie," " The Silver King," " Claudian," &*c. ILonfron : GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED, 8, 9, io, AND II, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, AND EXETER STREET, STRAND, W.C. 1893- CONTENTS. PAGE Chapter I i Chapter II 16 Chapter III 32 Chapter IV 48 Chapter V 67 Chapter VI 83 Chapter VII. 102 Chapter VIII CONTENTS. PAGF Chapter IX 140 Chapter X 158 Chapter XI 179 Chapter XII. 196 Chapter XIII 211 Chapter XIV. . .... 231 Chapter XV 246 Chapter XVI. . . ... AND HEARTS OF STEEL.

Chapter I

" If you darken this door again, by Heaven, I'll murder you ! " The young man who spoke the words had risen from his chair, and stood in the dim light of the cottage gnashing his teeth and with flashing eyes. " Get out of this place," he hissed, " or I might forget myself." His hand was on the haft of his fisherman's knife. A pretty, pale-faced, dark-eyed girl of about twenty stayed his arm and gently took his knife from its sheath, and laid it out of his reach on the table. " Let him go, let him go, Dave," she whispered i; softly-. " His words can have no effect upon me. I have paid no attention to them, and never will." The threatened man was standing on the threshold of the fisherman's cottage, and his tall figure stood out black in the panel of grey light framed by the door. He was a wiry man, grey-headed and grey-bearded, with a long, sharp face and cold grey eyes.

His clean-shaven upper lip was covered by the lower one, which had been drawn up over it, and he blinked from beneath his bushy grey eyebrows at the young fellow who had been addressing him. He was dressed in the garb of a well-to-do farmer — corduroy coat, breeches and gaiters. For a second or two he frowned at the fisherman, and then, turning to another young man who was standing by his side : — " You've heard him threatening me, Harold," he said, with a savage look, " and you'll take care you remember the words, won't you ? It'll all go to swell his score. And as for you, Carrie, I'll be as good as my word whenever you like." The girl kept a feverish hold upon the arm of the young fisherman, and restrained his impulse to spring at the elderly man's throat. " I'll marry you, Carrie," the elderly man continued, " though you haven't got a penny, whenever you like to come to the Grange.

And I do say it again, that good-for-nothing there ain't fit company for a young girl of twenty ; and it's a scandal to the neighbourhood that you should live here with him, unmarried, and only a doddering old woman to look after you and protect you against him!" This time the young fisherman broke away from the feeble retaining clutch and flew towards the door. But the other young man intercepted him before he could reach the man who had aroused his wrath, and pinioned him. " Get away, uncle," the young man cried to the elderly one. " He is half mad." And then, turning to the fisherman, he went on, soothingly : " Don't make a fool of yourself, Dave. You know what my uncle is like. Heaven and earth couldn't move him when he's made up his mind. Come now, sit down." By a series of gentle tugs he managed to get the young fisherman to sit down in a big wooden armchair.

The grey-bearded man was still standing in the mellow light of the open door, and his nephew stepped to him and pulled him away outside. " Come away, uncle," he said ; " you've had your say, and they both know what you mean. What is the good of wasting time ? You'll have all the job in the world to get home while there's yet moonlight, and I suppose you don't want to break your neck on the road." The old man grunted with a fierce resentment, and, shaking his stooping shoulders, stamped his feet for a few moments, and went out into the evening twilight. The young fisherman was sitting with his elbow resting upon the table and his head upon his hand. He was a fine, brawny young fellow of about twenty-four or twenty-five, broad chested and broad shouldered, and straight as an arrow. His crisp brown beard framed an open, manly face, though it was momentarily distorted by the tremor of his passion.

The dark brown eyes still flashed fiercely, and the teeth were hard set, whilst his fist tapped the table in front of him in a disordered tattoo. The girl crept to his side and put her soft arm around his neck. " Don't take it to heart, Dave," she whispered. "We'll be able to live, if he does take your boat. You can go away and find work, and I can work. I am handy with my needle, or I can go into service. There's old mother well, we shall have to get somebody to take care of her. And as for me, he may say what he likes, as long as he likes. You know I would take no more notice of him than of a dog." o He turned his face upwards towards her and looked into her eyes. " I do love you so, Carrie," he whispered. " I love you more than myself, though I know I'm not worthy of you — not fit to kiss the ground you walk upon.

But I've tried hard, worked day and night, and I've struggled — all no use — luck's against me — all gone — land, cottage, all — that little boat was the only thing left to me. And now he is going to take it from me because I owe him nine pounds. I wouldn't mind that so much, but he dared to speak to you — he's trying to take you from me, my only life, my only hope. For you have promised to be mine, darling, when I can keep a home over our heads, and I live in that promise. And he is trying to part us. I cannot bear it. When I think of it, it drives me mad." He arose and gently pushed her from him, and walked up and down the room forward and backward like some caged wild creature. His broad chest heaved with the anger that seethed within him, and his eyes glittered more wrathfully than before.

" He has taken all he could from me," he went on, crossing his arms over his chest. " And now he wants to take you. I'm stifling. I want air. I'll be even with him ; by Heaven, I'll be even with him ! " With that he rushed from the cottage before the girl could stretch out an arm or say a word to stay him. The girl flew to the door and her eager eyes followed the young fisherman as he walked along the cliff-side, until his figure disappeared in the gloom of a small plantation of shrubs and evergreens a little distance beyond. Then she returned and, going into an inner room, she took a candle from a shelf and struck a light. An old woman was sitting in an armchair, supported by cushions, wrapped in a shawl, and with her lower limbs covered by a big blanket. Her white face was a map of wrinkles, and she looked at the girl curiously.

" They've been having words," she said, in a shrill, senile pipe. " I always said so. Clifford Frankton never brought no man no good. There's ill behind the door his shadow darkens." " It's all right, mother," Carrie replied, stroking the white hair from the old woman's forehead and stooping to kiss the pale cheek. " Mr. Frankton's gone home, and Dave has gone out to get some fresh air. He'll be back soon." With that she took up the lighted candle and went back to the outer room. Her first glance fell on the table upon which she had laid David's fisherman's knife. The knife was gone ! She cast a hurried glance about the place. She was sure she had placed the weapon there and had not moved it. The room, during the quarrel, had been hidden in the gloom of the closing evening, and that part especially had been shrouded nearly in darkness.

She felt about the table and the shelves with out stretched fingers, but the knife was nowhere. She had not seen David take it up again, but who could have possessed himself of it, if not he ? What did it mean ? If he had gone out so armed, and came across Mr. Fiankton, there might be murder done. She sank down on a chair. " Be good to us, merciful Father in Heaven," she prayed, with uplifted hands, while the tears rolled down her cheeks, " and save my love. Keep him from crime — save him, Father, save him ! " Carrie Sturmer was David Martock's cousin and his betrothed sweetheart. Old Mrs. Sturmer — an invalid these many years past, and unable to leave her room — was the sister of David's dead father. The elder Martock and Mrs. Sturmer's husband had together fallen victims to the treacherous sea, having owned the same fishing boat and gone down in her.

During their lifetimes they had both been considered tolerably well-to-do, but after their deaths it appeared that their affairs were sadly involved, and that they were deeply indebted to Clifford Frankton, a distant relative and the moneyed man of those parts. Whoever owed money in or near Hawley was sure to owe it to Clifford Frankton, of the Grange, and the two old fishermen proved to be no exception to the rule. After that, the fields first and the meadows, then the houses and the stock — all went under Frankton's foreclosing grasp. When David had grown to man's estate, and Carrie had become as winsome a lass as any in that neighbourhood, there was nothing left to the little family but the tiny cottage half-way up Hawley Cliff, and there sheltered against the wind and the tide, and an old fishing boat in which David sailed the sea and gained his livelihood.

But Frank ton seemed insatiable. Though poor David paid and kept on paying, the interest was never paid. There was always something owing. The conviction that he would never be able to wipe off the score — never to clear himself from the clutch of the money-lender — drove the young fisherman into the tap-room much oftener than he would otherwise have gone, and he thus earned a reputation for looseness of habits which he didn't really deserve. There was one man in the village, however, who always seemed to stand David's friend and to defend him against slanderous tongues, both with Clifford Frankton and other people. This was the rich man's nephew, Harold. Harold, David and Carrie had grown up together. The two boys and the girl had played on the sands when they were still in their teens, and when the years had advanced, and it had come to be understood that Carrie was, some day or other, to be David's wife, Harold had seemed to accept the girl's choice with resignation, and had still stood the young couple's defender.

Now and then, it was true, his eyes lit up with an irate glow* when he saw David and Carrie seated hand-in-hand, but it all passed like the cloud of a moment, and directly afterwards he would be gay and merry again. Harold was Clifford Frankton's heir, and for the greater part of the year lived with his uncle at the Grange. About four months annually he spent in London, and reports reached even the quiet Devonshire fishing village that in that great hive he followed the giddy round of gaieties like most young men of the time. There were even whispers of racing, gambling, and so forth — of heavy losses on the turf, and, at one time, of a threat of a prosecution for fraud, which was eventually hushed up ; but, as Harold was always in funds when he came to Hawley — always prepared to stand drinks at the " Walrus " or the " Green Dragon," always read)- with his sixpences for the children and the old women — he was " Hail fellow, well met !

" with young and old among that fishing population, and even the more staid members of the commur.it)' admitted that the breath of scandal touched him venlightly indeed. When old Frankton on a sudden took it into his head to lay his hand and fortune at the feet of pretty, unwilling Carrie Sturmer, the young man at first resented the proposal as a blight upon his pros pects and an injury against himself; but he soon calmed down, and seemed to make up his mind to put up with the inevitable. We have seen that he even accompanied his uncle on his expedition when the brilliant offer was made, and refused. Hawley was a straggling village that meandered for at least a mile from the beach — where a cluster of fishermen's cottages, together with the old "Walrus Inn," assumed the style and title of " Hawley Sands " — along the steep street that wound around the cliff corner, up to the church and the little parsonage, and thence on again for a good mile or so till the top of the cliff-side was reached, and there the more substantial and more thriving portion was called " Hawley Cliff."

The long winding road was the only way by which horses and cattle could travel up or down, but there was a steeper and narrower path cut out of the cliff, which led from the back of the "Walrus Inn" to the top, and saved a good mile of the distance. Here and there the roadside was dotted with little cottages, and about half-way up the hill, in a niche in the rock barely twenty-five yards broad and twenty yards deep, stood the little red tiled homestead that sheltered David and Carrie. A tiny garden at the back and side of the cottage was planted with vegetables and a few easily-grown flowers. The towering red rocks afforded protection against the onslaught of the wind on two sides, and as it faced the south it was as cosy a nook as could be found on that cliff-side. Clifford Frankton, when he had left David Martock's cottage behind him, strode on with a rapid step towards the cliff top.

The road was steep, and loose stones impeded his progress. The old man went on with body forward bent and stooping shoulders, leaning heavily on his stick with each step he took, and barely casting a glance now and then towards his nephew. " He's threatened me," the old man muttered. " He is the sort of fellow who means what he says, and he looks the kind of man that might be dangerous if roused too much. Bah ! threatened men live long and I'll find a way to get rid of him. He'd murder me, would he ? Well, that is a threat about which I can call in the protection of the law. I'll have Master David laid by the heels, and show him that he can't play with me." Each phrase was emphasised by a vicious stamp of the big stick against the red clay of the rocky road, and now and then by a savage swish against the low shrubs and creepers that grew between the rocks.

The sun had sunk behind the horizon line, and a broad band of red gold was the only sign of the departed king of day. The edge of the sea, far out, was aglow with it, and the vast canopy of the firmament above took from that fiery sheen the colours of amethyst, sapphire, and topaz. High up overhead the sky was a cold blue, and the faint sickle of the moon hung in the eastern heavens, now and then hidden by a few scudding clouds. The wind was high, and the fleecy skirmishers raced before it, land ward. Out, just near the horizon line on the west, a wall of opal mist was rising on the sea. It broadened and then became denser, as it swelled towards the shore, and the swishing of the wind among the stunted foliage became more sonorous. " You had better get on homeward, uncle," said the younger man.

" There won't be much moon to-night to light you on your way. There's going to be a storm or something of that kind." The old man turned round. " Maybe you're right, boy," he said. The wind is high, and it's blowing from due south-west. There will be rain, and there ma)- be a storm. I think we'll get on." They were standing on the cliff-top then, and there the narrow road branched, one prong of the fork towards the single street of Hawley Cliff, the other along the cliff-side towards the Grange, and a small congeries of gentlemen's residences that stood near the high road. A grove of elms, firs, and oaks loomed darkly in the distance, and the uneven lines of the trees stood out, black as coal, against the soft topaz-tinted sky. The way to the Grange lay through that little grove and quite close to the cliff.

Clifford Frankton turned towards his nephew as the latter stood still at the fork of the roads. "Are you coming with me, Harold?" he asked. " No, uncle, thank you," replied the young man. " I'm going to have a look in at the parsonage. I'll be home in a couple of hours at most." The old man looked at him scowlingly for a moment. He remembered the threat, and he was about to sa)-, " You are going to let me go home by myself, alone ! " when his yeoman's pride rebelled at the thought that his nephew might imagine that he was afraid. " All right, boy," he said. " I'll go on. You go to AND HEARTS OF SI EEL. 13 the parsonage." With that he turned upon his heel and strode on without looking back. For nearly half a mile his way lay along the open cliff, where his figure stood out like a black silhouette to those who, from the beach below, saw him march ing on steadily.

Then he disappeared in the gloom of the firs and the oaks. On the south-west masses of dark clouds had rolled up and wiped out the golden sheen left by the waning sun. They sped landwards on the wings of nearly half a gale. Soon the heavens above the cliff were dark with them, and the dim silver crescent was sponged out. The wind howled among the trees, and in that grove the road became dark as pitch, save where a dim, greenish-blue light between the trees still faintly showed the distant sea, that had begun to murmur with its own savage music. " I shall be glad when I get home," Clifford Frankton muttered to himself, feeling his way with outstretched stick. " This is the devil's road, and no mistake. I wish I was through it." At that moment his foot struck against the root of a tree, and he prevented himself from falling only by clutching the big trunk.

The rough contact had hurt his shoulder, and, holding his stick with his left hand, he rubbed himself with the right when a footstep near by startled him, in spite of the wailing swish of the wind. He turned, but saw nothing. He thought of David Martock, who had threatened to murder him. He fancied he saw a pair of gleaming eyes glare at him in the darkness, and he uttered a little shriek in spite of himself. " You are a fool, Clifford," he muttered at last. " It is nothing. Get thee home." And he proceeded on his road for the space of half a score yards. Again a muffled footfall among the dead leaves struck his ear. Again he turned and saw nothing, and went on again, listening with his heart in his ears. Deeper and more savagely the wind played among the leaflets, and, in spite of it, that rustling again among the underbrush !

The old man was sure — it was quite near that time. Again he turned, and this time he found himself face to face with a dark figure. An arm was uplifted high and a knife struck him, cutting through sinew and bone to his breast. The dark figure started back as the old man staggered and reeled ; then it rushed at him again : another blow from the uplifted knife ; this time it struck the breast-bone and stuck there. A savage push, and the mortal remains of Clifford Frankton fell over the sheer cliff-side, a fall of one hundred yards or more, on to the bare rocks below, and crashed themselves to pieces there. For a moment or two the dark figure stood at the edge of the cliff. The wind was howling more fiercely than before, when, on a sudden, a low, long, rumbling growl sounded from the very bosom of the earth !

The man at the cliffs edge started, and flew back into the gloom as if shot. The rumbling increased and became thunder, and the rocks of the hillside began to shake ; and the trees swayed and tottered, and the whole face of that cliff fell in with a terrible crash and roar, raining boulder stones, rocks, trees, and earth on to the beach below, and hiding, with myriads upon myriads of tons, the proofs of the crime that had just been committed. All that remained of Clifford Frankton lay beneath tne avalanche of a Devonshire landslip.

Chapter II

Some forty or fifty yards on the land side of the road that led from Hawley Cliff towards the Grange, and thence to another village a couple of miles farther on, and about the same distance to the east of the grove of elms and oaks, there stood a rambling erection. It was composed of at least three irregular cottages, and it boasted of the high-sounding name, " His Majesty's Larder." Years ago — how many years few of the villagers knew — one of the Georges, who was journeying in those parts, not having found entertainment to his liking at the " Green Dragon " at Hawley Cliff, had stopped at the house, and had obtained food and shelter there, From that time forward the owners of the place had used the building as an inn, and there was still kept in the parlour, framed and glazed, a sheet of paper covered with writing, nearly invisible through age, which was the Royal sign manual and warrant for the assumption of the name, " His Majesty's Larder."

A thriving trade had been done in the place in days gone by, but " His Majesty's Larder " was no longer even counted one of the village inns. Tim Dramore, the present owner, was nigh on a hundred years old. He had served his country faith, fully throughout all the French wars, and had sought at the Nile and at Trafalgar. He had been a coast guardsman, and had been pensioned after many years of service ; and he had all a Jack tar's idiosyncrasies. He had not only never added to the stock of drink ables sold in the place, but, saying that he did not see any fun in having to pay for liquor when he was proprietor of a public-house, had in a great measure helped to get rid of the ardent spirits in stock by drinking them himself. The cellar accommodation of " His Majesty's Larder " being limited, and previous owners having only been able to stock it to the extent of its size, the ardent spirits at the disposal of Mr. Tim Dramore finally came to an end, and Tim had to content himself, like the travellers who called at the place, with the home-brewed or cider of the neighbourhood.

Travellers might come and travellers might go, but not a penny would Tim Dramore spend upon supply-ing his inn with the ordinary necessaries of such an establishment. It can be readily imagined, there fore, that the place was not frequented by many thirsty mortals, and this in spite of the fact that about the prettiest girl in the neighbourhood was waitress there. Nelly Dramore was old Tim's grand-daughter, being the only child of one of Tim's four sons, only one of whom remained alive. She was a red-haired, c blue-eyed, freckled minx of seventeen, lithe and shapely in spite of the rough cotton gown in which she was dressed. She and a lank, ungainly lad of twenty or so, named Simeon Formby, did all the work of the house, whilst old Tim lay in bed till about ten or eleven in the morning, then rose to drink, to eat, and to smoke until about nine in the evening, when he went to bed again, vowing that he was the most ill-used of men.

Ill-used he certainly was not, for he had a bountiful pension from a grateful country. He had earned it in the days when prize and other moneys were still paid, and he had, in addition to this, some how or other, managed to creep into a snug little sinecure, the very use and appellation of which he barely knew, and which, together with his coastguard's and naval pension, brought him in something like thirty shillings a week, and did not for one moment necessitate his absence from " His Majesty's Larder." He was a burly, bald-headed old Jack tar, with a round, Jack tar's face, ruddy and wrinkled, a clean shaven upper lip, and a white ring of beard. He was broadly built and thick-hipped, and in days gone by must have been a very powerful man indeed. Though he walked stiffly with a stick, he was quite able to take care of himself even then, in spite of his ninety odd years.

Rheumatism was his principal plague, and that especially during atmospheric disturbances. At the time of this our present history he was seated in his parlour, lying back against a cushion that had been flung into the big oak armchair, with his legs stretched to the empty hearth, a long churchwarden in one hand and a glass of purling old ale in the other — as fit as a fiddler, except for the twinge in his knee and the dull pain at the back of the hip. Opposite him sat his only remaining son, a lad of fifty-five or fifty-six, whom Tim had never ceased to consider as his baby, and whom he treated in accord ance with that view, as a person totally unable to take care of himself. Martin Dramore was taller than his father, and even more sturdily built. His face resembled his father's mightily, and would have done even more so but for the big brownish-grey moustache and beard that shaded it.

The old man had not seen his son for twenty odd years, Martin having gone to America and been lost sight of for all that while. He had turned up on the previous day, like a bad penny, as the old man said, but, to Tim's amazement and glad surprise, had given proofs that he was not likely to become a burden on " His Majesty's Larder." He was going back on the following day to the Far West, where, so he said, he intended to dig for gold. " I tell thee what, father," Martin was saying. " There's heaps and heaps of gold out there, and I know where to find it." " Then why didn't you bring a sackful ? I always like to hear people talk of gold and diamonds, and all that balderdash. Them as talks about it generally hasn't a copper. There was old Ben Sole, who knew where the Spanish galleons la)-, with millions upon millions of dollars in gold in them, down at the bottom of the waters, and he got a lot of divers to work, and spent a couple of thousand pounds.

And what do you think was all they got ? " " And what did they get ? " asked Martin. " They got wet," replied the old man, with a chuckle, taking an extra pull at his pipe and an extra sip at his glass of old ale, whilst the younger man twitched uneasily on his chair and sat upright. You may talk, father," he said ; " I know you of old." " And I know you of old, Martin," replied the father. " I've known you longer than you have known me, and I know more about you than you know about me. You were always of a believing disposition, Martin. I've known the time when you would open your mouth and shut your eyes at any stupid boy's bidding, and take a bite of a candle thinking it was an apple." " It's there, father, right enough," Martin went on, " only no man living can get it by himself; and if he should get it, it would be all taken away from him in a day, and his bones left to bleach and his carcass to rot in the mountains.