In a small Norfolk coastal village bordered by sea and salt marshes, life revolves around smugglers, poachers, a landed estate, and the rhythms of rural poverty. The treacherous marshes beyond Corston Point are a place of danger and legend, harboring quicksands and quagmires, and haunted by the reputed ghost of an old man believed murdered by relatives who coveted his savings. At the centre of the story are three young people from the labouring class. Lizzie Locke is a blind girl of quiet intelligence and deep feeling who gathers cockles and samphire from the marshes with a sureness of foot born of lifelong necessity. Her cousin Laurence Barnes, known as Larry, is a spirited groom employed at the local farm, admired for his singing and dancing but quietly tormented by an infatuation he cannot act upon. Rosa Murray is the beautiful, spoilt daughter of the farmer, accustomed to getting her way and blind in a different sense to the consequences of her vanity. Rosa has been conducting a secret flirtation with Frederick Darley, Lord Worcester's gamekeeper, a vain and socially ambitious man disliked by nearly everyone. Her brothers are suspicious of the connection, and her father, having been informed by Larry himself that Darley is already a married man, moves to end the affair. On the night of the harvest supper, Rosa manoeuvres to meet Darley secretly in the apple orchard by sending Larry away from the barn on a reckless errand. She wagers her gold watch chain against his bringing her a bunch of samphire from the top of Corston Point, a spot notorious for its dangers, flattering his courage to secure his absence. On the very same afternoon, Larry had proposed marriage to Lizzie, whose love for him had been wordless and absolute since childhood. She accepts with trembling joy. Her happiness is therefore at its highest point when Rosa's scheming sends Larry off into the night marshes alone. Larry retrieves the samphire without incident and encounters Darley on the way back, both men having separately ended up on the desolate flats. A confrontation erupts. Larry has been the one who exposed Darley's secret marriage to Rosa's father and does not conceal the fact. Darley attacks him. Though Larry is stronger, Darley is the more skilled fighter and throws him hard onto a projecting rock. Larry dies from the blow. Darley, finding the body cold and the night empty of witnesses, drags it toward the sea and flings it forward, whereupon it vanishes instantly into a quicksand and disappears from view. He escapes, only to be found dead himself the following morning at the edge of the estate, killed in circumstances that suggest an encounter with poachers. In the absence of any direct evidence, Corston assumes that Larry, having shot Darley during a poaching dispute, has fled the country. His reputation is blackened, his mother's grief is compounded by shame, and Lizzie is left with nothing. She does not believe the village version. She knows Larry went to the marshes on Rosa's errand, and she mourns him in solitude with a certainty of his innocence and his death that she cannot prove to anyone else. As the months pass and winter tightens its grip, Lizzie takes to spending her days at Corston Point, sitting beside her cockle basket, speaking aloud to the absent dead. One bitterly cold night she does not return home. A search party finds her the following morning at the Point, where the shifting sands have at last returned Larry's body to the surface, perfectly preserved by the saline ground. Lizzie, who had remained all night through frost and cold, has found him by touch and laid her cheek against his. She is dead beside him, having endured the night until she accomplished what she had unknowingly been waiting for. The bunch of samphire is still in Larry's coat. In his clenched hand is Frederick Darley's distinctive crimson silk neckcloth, seized in the final struggle. The evidence speaks plainly. Corston understands that Larry was no murderer but a victim, and his name is restored. The two are buried together in the churchyard, and the story closes with the reflection that Lizzie, having found what she had waited for, died content.
By Florence Marryat · First published 1872 · Genre: Gothic Fiction, Mystery, Adventure