"I have had a light fixed there for the benefit or the fishermen," he said, "a light which I work from my own dynamo. Between where we are sitting now and there - only a little way out to sea - is a jagged cluster of cruel rocks. You can see them if you care to swim out in calm weather. Fishermen who tried to come in by night were often trapped there and, in a rough sea, drowned. That is why I had that pillar of light built. On stormy nights it shows the exact entrance to the water causeway."
"Very kind of you indeed," Hamel remarked, "very benevolent."
Mr. Fentolin sighed.
"So few people have any real feeling for sailors," he continued.
"The fishermen around here are certainly rather a casual class. Do you know that there is scarcely one of them who can swim? There isn't one of them who isn't too lazy to learn even the ******st stroke. My brother used to say - dear Gerald - that it served them right if they were drowned. I have never been able to feel like that, Mr. Hamel. Life is such a wonderful thing. One night," he went on, dropping his voice and leaning a little forward in his carriage -" it was just before, or was it just after I had fixed that light - I was down here one dark winter night. There was a great north wind and a huge sea running. It was as black as pitch, but I heard a boat ****** for St. David's causeway strike on those rocks just hidden in front there. I heard those fishermen shriek as they went under. I heard their shouts for help, I heard their death cries. Very terrible, Mr. Hamel! Very terrible!"
Hamel looked at the speaker curiously. Mr. Fentolin seemed absorbed in his subject. He had spoken with relish, as one who loves the things he speaks about. Quite unaccountably, Hamel found himself shivering.
"It was their mother," Mr. Fentolin continued, leaning again a little forward in his chair, "their mother whom I saw pass along the beach just now - a widow, too, poor thing. She comes here often - a morbid taste. She spoke to you, I think?"
"She spoke to me strangely," Hamel admitted. "She gave me the impression of a woman whose brain had been turned with grief."
"Too true," Mr. Fentolin sighed. "The poor creature! I offered her a small pension, but she would have none of it. A superior woman in her way once, filled now with queer fancies," he went on, eyeing Hamel steadily,-" the very strangest fancies. She spends her life prowling about here. No one in the village even knows how she lives.
Did she speak of me, by-the-by?"
"She spoke of you as being a very kind-hearted man."
Mr. Fentolin sighed.
"The poor creature! Well, well, let us revert to the object of your coming here. Do you really wish to occupy this little shanty, Mr. Hamel?"
"That was my idea," Hamel confessed. "I only came back from Mexico last month, and I very soon got fed up with life in town. I am going abroad again next year. Till then, I am rather at a loose end. My father was always very keen indeed about this place, and very anxious that I should come and stay here for a little time, so I made up my mind to run down. I've got some things waiting at Norwich. I thought I might hire a woman to look after me and spend a few weeks here. They tell me that the early spring is almost the best time for this coast."
Mr. Fentolin nodded slowly. He moistened his lips for a moment.
One might have imagined that he was anxious.
"Mr. Hamel," he said softly, "you are quite right. It is the best time to visit this coast. But why make a hermit of yourself? You are a family friend. Come and stay with us at the Hall for as long as you like. It will give me the utmost pleasure to welcome you there," he went on earnestly, "and as for this little place, of what use is it to you? Let me buy it from you. You are a man of the world, I can see. You may be rich, yet money has a definite value.
To me it has none. That little place, as it stands, is probably worth - say a hundred pounds. Your father gave, if I remember rightly, a five pound note for it. I will give you a thousand for it sooner than be disturbed."
Hamel frowned slightly.
"I could not possibly think," he said, "of selling what was practically a gift to my father. You are welcome to occupy the place during my absence in any way you wish. On the other hand, I do not think that I care to part with it altogether, and I should really like to spend just a day or so here. I am used to roughing it under all sorts of conditions - much more used to roughing it than I am to staying at country houses."
Mr. Fentolin leaned a little out of his carriage. He reached the younger man's shoulder with his hand.
"Ah! Mr. Hamel," he pleaded, "don't make up your mind too suddenly.
Am I a little spoilt, I wonder? Well, you see what sort of a creature I am. I have to go through life as best I may, and people are kind to me. It is very seldom I am crossed. It is quite astonishing how often people let me have my own way. Do not make up your mind too suddenly. I have a niece and a nephew whom you must meet. There are some treasures, too, at St. David's Hall.
Look at it. There isn't another house quite like it in England.
It is worth looking over."
"It is most impressive," Hamel agreed, "and wonderfully beautiful.
It seems odd," he added, with a laugh," that you should care about this little shanty here, with all the beautiful rooms you must have of your own."
