IN THE WOOD PARLOUR
On the 19th of October the sky overhead was clear as sapphire, but all
round the circle of the horizon the mists of autumn blurred the
landscape. The hills stood no more in their places. Gone were the Kips,
with their waving lines. Of the Cruives, with the heather thick and
purple upon them, not a trace. Gone the graceful swirl of the Cooran
Hill, which curls over like a wave just feathering to break.
To Irma it had been a heavy and a sorrowful day. She had actually wept,
and even gone on her knees to her brother to beg him tell her what
strange thing had come between them. He would only answer, "You have
chosen your path without consulting me. Now I choose mine."
She charged him with listening to one who had always been an enemy of
all who had been good to him ever since he was a little child--of
setting himself against those on whose bounty they had lived.
He replied, "If I have lived on their bounty, they know very well that
they will not lose by it."
She mentioned Lalor Maitland's name, and told him the history of the
early attacks on the house of Marnhoul. Louis answered, "He has
explained all that. It was done to save me from these people who were
already besetting me, in order to rob me."
When she mentioned all that I had done for him, he put on an air of
frigid detachment.
"You are right, no doubt, to stand up for your husband," he said; "but,
then, I have not the same reasons. I can judge for myself."
Then she went on to show that there was no motive for the Lyons of
Heathknowes showing them any interested kindness. As for me, she had
only brought me herself and her love--no money, nor would she ever have
any money--I had married her for herself.
"So would Lalor Maitland," he retorted, "and he is a gentleman."
After this Irma discussed no more. She felt it to be useless. Naturally,
also, she was hurt to the heart that Louis, once her own little Louis,
should compare her husband to Lalor Maitland. Well, for that I do not
blame her.
All day long Louis stayed in the Wood Parlour with his books. I was busy
with an important article on the "Moors in Spain," suggested by my
recent researches into the history of the irrigation of fields and
gardens in the south of Europe.
Louis came down to dinner at twelve, or a few minutes after. He seemed
somewhat more cheerful than was usual with him, and actually spoke a
little to me, asking me lend him my grandfather's shotgun, to put it in
order for him, and that powder and ball might be placed in his chamber.
He had seen game-birds feeding quite close, and thought that by opening
the window he might manage to shoot some of them.
I did as he asked me before going back to my work. Irma smiled at me,
being well pleased. For it seemed to her that Louis's ill-temper was
wearing away. Now my grandmother and Aunt Jen were inveterate
tea-lovers, which was then not so common a drink in the country as it is
now. Irma sometimes took a cup with them for company, and, because it
also refreshed me in my labours, I also joined them. But with me it was
done chiefly for the sake of the pleasant talk, being mostly my
grandmother's reminiscences, and sometimes for a sight of my mother, who
would run across of a sunny afternoon for a look at baby.
That day we sat and talked rather longer than usual. A certain strain
seemed to have departed from the house. I think all of us believed that
the humour of Louis, execrable as it had been, was the effect of the
insinuations of a wicked man, and that after a time he would be restored
to us again the simple, pleasant-faced boy he had been in former years.
He did not come down to tea, but then he seldom did so. Indeed, none of
the men-folk except myself had taken to the habit, and I (as I say)
chiefly for the sake of the talk, which sharpened my wits and refreshed
my working vocabulary. But as I passed back to my writing-den I could
hear my brother-in-law moving restlessly about his room, and talking to
himself, which was a recently-acquired habit of his. However, I took
this as a good sign. Anything in the way of occupation was better than
his former chill indifference to all that went forward about
Heathknowes.
It was, as it chanced, a busy day at the pirn-mill. The labours of the
farm being fairly over for the year, the mill had been shut down for
hasty repairs, which Alec McQuhirr had come down from Ironmacannie to
superintend. He was, so they said, the best mill-wright in the
half-dozen counties of the south and west. He had, however, the one
fault common to all his tribe, that of dilatoriness. So my grandfather,
who had his "pirn" contracts to be shipped for England on certain days,
used to call his sons about him, and devote himself and all of them to
the service of repairing. Boyd Connoway, also, usually gave us the
benefit of his universal genius for advice, and, when he chose, for
handiness also.
After tea some provisions had been carried to the mill by my mother on
her way home. "One of the boys"--meaning my uncles--was to bring back
the basket.
That night, also, supper was somewhat later than usual. Up in the mill
men were still crawling about along the machinery with carefully
protected lanterns. Buckets of water stood handy. For a pirn-mill is no
place in which to play with fire. The sound of male voices and the thud
of wooden mallets did not cease till long after dark. Supper was,
therefore, later than usual, and the moon had risen before the sound of
their footsteps was heard coming down among the tree-roots in the
clearing which they themselves had made. The kitchen, which was also the
living-room of Heathknowes, glowed bright, and the supper-table was
a-laying. Aunt Jen bustled about. I had laid aside my writing, satisfied
with a goodly tale of sheets to my credit. My grandmother was in the
milk-house, but every now and then made darts out to the fire on which
the precious "het supper" was cooking--roast fowl, bacon, and
potatoes--traditional on occasions when the men had been "working late
at the mill and had brought home company."
It was a bright and cheerful sight. The high dresser, the kitchen pride
of Galloway, was in a state of absolute perfection. Aunt Jen despised
men, but she had a way of reproving their congenital untidiness by the
shine of her plates and the mirror-like polish of her candlesticks. She
had spent a couple of hours over the dresser that afternoon, answering
all the taunts of her mother as to her occupation, "It's true, mither,
_they_ will never ken the difference; but, then, I will!"
"Go up, Irma, and tell your brother that we are waiting," said my
grandmother. But as Irma was busy with Duncan the Second, I offered
myself instead. I remember still the long corridor, and I wondered at
the moment why no ray of light penetrated through the keyhole of Sir
Louis's door. He must be sitting in the dark, and I smiled to myself as
I thought how I had been wasting a couple of my grandmother's best
candles for an hour. The explanation was that Louis, in fear of being
spied upon, had carefully plugged up the keyhole and every crack of the
door. But this I only knew later.
I stood a moment in the passage, keeping very still. I could hear his
voice. He seemed in some way indignant. But the sound was dulled by the
thickness of the walls and the care with which the chinks of the door
had been "made up." Then I also heard--what sent the blood chill to my
heart--another voice, shorter, harsher, older. For a moment I was struck
dumb, and then--I laughed at myself. Of course the lad was simply
stage-struck. For some time he had been reading and declaiming Hamlet,
Julius Caesar, and anything he could lay his hands upon, as well as
scraps of the Greek tragedies he had learnt at school.
But as I leaned nearer, there pierced sharp as a pang to my heart the
certainty that the other voice which I heard was not that of any of the
characters of _Julius Caesar_. A trembling horror of what I had once seen
in that very room, and a memory of the great hearty Richard Poole
entering there in all his amplitude of vivid life, quickly arrested me.
I rapped and called vehemently, trying the latch and feeling that the
door resisted. I could hear a trampling beneath me. Men were on the way
to my assistance. At the door I sprang. The bolts were as old as the
door, and the nails of the lintel fastening only knocked in after its
former rough handling.
I got one waft of light as the door opened, half from the candle on the
table, half from the moonlight falling dim without. I saw something that
crouched--manlike indeed, but with bearded face and head held between
its shoulders--leap from the window into the darkness. I did not see
Louis clearly. His head was lying on the table, and immediately all the
circumstances of the former drama came back to me. But this time I
wasted no time. Something glittered on the table, hilt towards me--knife
or sword, I hardly knew which. I only knew that with it in my hand I was
armed. I sprang through the window and gave chase.
Then very loud in my ears I heard the crack of a pistol, but felt no
wound. I now think it had not even been fired at me. I pursued with the
energy of a young stag. My mornings on the hills with Eben looking for
the sheep now stood me in good stead--that is, good or bad according as
to whether the man in front of me had another loaded pistol ready or
not.
Behind me, but alas, too far to be any help, I could hear the shouting
of men. Heathknowes was alarmed. Then came the pounding of feet, but I
knew that none of them could run with me, while the thing or man in
front proved fresher, and, as I feared at first, fleeter.
But, after all, I was young, and though I panted, and had a burning pain
in my side, I held to it till I began to get my second wind. Then I made
sure that, barring accidents, I could run him down. What should happen
then I did not know. I had a vision, only for a moment but yet very
clear and distinct, of Irma in the black gown of a young widow. But
even this did not make me slacken in my stride.
Somehow the shine of the steel in my hand gave me courage, as also the
crying of the men behind, albeit they did not seem to gain but rather to
lose ground. Thirty yards ahead I could see my man running, his head
very low, his arms close to his sides, a slender figure with a certain
look of deformity. A long beard of some indeterminate colour like hay
was blown back over one shoulder. Ever and anon he glanced round as he
ran to measure my progress.
Suddenly the root of a tree tripped him and he went headlong. But he was
agile too, for before I could be upon him, he was up again, and with
something that shone like a long thin dagger in his hand, he threw
himself upon me as if to take me by surprise. Now, it is very difficult
when running hard to put oneself at once into a proper position of
defence. And so, as it happened, I was nearly done. But I had been
carrying the sword in my hand almost at arm's length. I was conscious of
no shock. Only all suddenly my assailant doubled and lay writhing, his
dagger still shining in his hand.
I stopped and kept wide circling about him, fearing a trick. The moon
was shining full on the open clearing of the glade where he had fallen.
It was the little lawyer--he who had called himself Wringham Pollixfen
Poole. Yet somehow he was different. His beard had grown to be of a
curious foreign fashion and colour--but that perhaps might be the effect
of the moonlight.
He never took his eyes off the shining steel in my hand.
"It is poisoned," he groaned, his hand clapped to his breast, "I am a
dead man--poisoned, poisoned!"
And looking more carefully at what I had simply snatched in haste, I
saw that I had in my hand the golden-hilted sword of honour which Lalor
Maitland had given to the boy Louis to seal their friendship.
But immediately a greater wonder oppressed me, and rendered speechless
those who now came panting up--my uncles and Boyd Connoway. The
hay-coloured beard and disguises came away, snatched off in the man's
death-agony. The shiny brown coat opened to show a spotless ruffled
shirt beneath. The wounded man never ceased to exclaim, "It is poisoned!
It is poisoned! I am a dead man!" The wig fell off, and as life gave
place to the stillness of death, out of the lined and twisted lineaments
of the half-deformed lawyer Poole emerged the pale, calm, clear-cut
features of Lalor Maitland.