THE CATARACT.
In the midst of a great psalm, on the geyser column of which his spirit
was borne heavenward, young Delaware all of a sudden found the keys dumb
beneath his helpless fingers: the bellows was empty, the singing thing
dead. He called aloud, and his voice echoed through the empty chapel,
but no living response came back. Tom Fool had grown weary and forsaken
him. Disappointed and baffled, he rose and left the chapel, not
immediately from the organ loft, by a door and a few upward steps
through the wall to the minstrels' gallery, as he had entered, but by
the south door into the court, his readiest way to reach the rooms he
occupied with his father, near the marquis's study. Hardly another door
in either court was ever made fast except this one, which, merely in
self-administered flattery of his own consequence, the conceited
sacristan who assumed charge of the key, always locked at night. But
there was no reason why Delaware should pay any respect to this, or
hesitate to remove the bar securing one-half of the door, without which
the lock retained no hold.
Although Tom had indeed deserted his post, the organist was mistaken as
to the cause and mode of his desertion: oppressed like every one else
with the sultriness of the night, he had fallen fast asleep, leaning
against the organ. The thunder only waked him sufficiently to render him
capable of slipping from the stool on which he had lazily seated himself
as he worked the lever of the bellows, and stretching himself at full
length upon the floor; while the coolness that by degrees filled the air
as the rain kept pouring, made his sleep sweeter and deeper. He lay and
snored till midnight.
A bell rang in the marquis's chamber.
It was one of his lordship's smaller economic maxims that in every
house, and the larger the house the more necessary its observance, the
master thereof should have his private rooms as far apart from each
other as might, with due respect to general fitness, be arranged for, in
order that, to use his own figure, he might spread his skirts the wider
over the place, and chiefly the part occupied by his own family and
immediate attendants--thereby to give himself, without paying more
attention to such matters than he could afford, a better chance of
coming upon the trace of anything that happened to be going amiss.
'For,' he said, 'let a man have ever so many responsible persons about
him, the final responsibility of his affairs yet returns upon himself.'
Hence, while his bedroom was close to the main entrance, that is the
gate to the stone court, the room he chose for retirement and study was
over the western gate, that of the fountain-court, nearly a whole side
of the double quadrangle away from his bedroom, and still farther from
the library, which was on the other side of the main entrance--whence,
notwithstanding, he would himself, gout permitting, always fetch any
book he wanted. It was, therefore, no wonder that, being now in his
study, the marquis, although it rang loud, never heard the bell which
Caspar had hung in his bedchamber. He was, however, at the moment,
looking from a window which commanded the very spot--namely, the mouth
of the archway--towards which the bell would have drawn his attention.
The night was still, the rain was over, and although the moon was
clouded, there was light enough to recognise a known figure in any part
of the court, except the shadowed recess where the door of the chapel
and the archway faced each other, and the door of the hall stood at
right angles to both.
Came a great clang that echoed loud through the court, followed by the
roar of water. It sounded as if a captive river had broken loose, and
grown suddenly frantic with freedom. The marquis could not help starting
violently, for his nerves were a good deal shaken. The same instant, ere
there was time for a single conjecture, a torrent, visible by the light
of its foam, shot from the archway, hurled itself against the chapel
door, and vanished. Sad and startled as he was, lord Worcester,
requiring no explanation of the phenomenon now that it was completed,
laughed aloud and hurried from the room.
When he had screwed his unwieldy form to the bottom of the stair, and
came out into the court, there was Tom Fool flying across the turf in
mortal terror, his face white as another moon, and his hair standing on
end--visibly in the dull moonshine.
His terror had either deafened him, or paralysed the nerves of his
obedience, for the first call of his master was insufficient to stop
him. At the second, however, he halted, turned mechanically, went to him
trembling, and stood before him speechless. But when the marquis, to
satisfy himself that he was really as dry as he seemed, laid his hand on
his arm, the touch brought him to himself, and, assisted by his master's
questions, he was able to tell how he had fallen asleep in the chapel,
had waked but a minute ago, had left it by the minstrels' gallery, had
reached the floor of the hall, and was approaching the western door,
which was open, in order to cross the court to his lodging near the
watch-tower, when a hellish explosion, followed by the most frightful
roaring, mingled with shrieks and demoniacal laughter, arrested him; and
the same instant, through the open door, he saw, as plainly as he now
saw his noble master, a torrent rush from the archway, full of dim
figures, wallowing and shouting. The same moment they all vanished, and
the flood poured into the hall, wetting him to the knees, and almost
carrying him off his legs.
Here the marquis professed profound astonishment, remarking that the
water must indeed have been thickened with devils to be able to lay hold
of Tom's legs.
'Then,' pursued Tom, reviving a little, 'I summoned up all my courage--'
'No great feat,' said the marquis.
But Tom went on unabashed.
'I summoned up the whole of my courage,' he repeated, 'stepped out of
the hall, carefully examined the ground, looked through the archway, saw
nothing, and was walking slowly across the court to my lodging,
pondering with myself whether to call my lord governor or sir Toby
Mathews, when I heard your lordship call me.'
'Tom! Tom! thou liest,' said the marquis. 'Thou wast running as if all
the devils in hell had been at thy heels.'
Tom turned deadly pale, a fresh access of terror overcoming his new-born
hardihood.
'Who were they, thinkest thou, whom thou sawest in the water, Tom?'
resumed his master. 'For what didst thou take them?'
Tom shook his head with an awful significance, looked behind him, and
said nothing.
Perceiving there was no more to be got out of him, the marquis sent him
to bed. He went off shivering and shaking. Three times ere he reached
the watch-tower his face gleamed white over his shoulder as he went. The
next day he did not appear. He thought himself he was doomed, but his
illness was only the prostration following upon terror.
In the version of the story which he gave his fellow-servants, he
doubtless mingled the after visions of his bed with what he had when
half-awake seen and heard through the mists of his startled imagination.
His tale was this--that he saw the moat swell and rise, boil over in a
mass, and tumble into the court as full of devils as it could hold,
swimming in it, floating on it, riding it aloft as if it had been a
horse; that in a moment they had all vanished again, and that he had not
a doubt the castle was now swarming with them--in fact, he had heard
them all the night long.
The marquis walked up to the archway, saw nothing save the grim wall of
the keep, impassive as granite crag, and the ground wet a long way
towards the white horse; and never doubting he had lost his chance by
taking Tom for the culprit, contented himself with the reflection that,
whoever the night-walkers were, they had received both a fright and a
ducking, and betook himself to bed, where, falling asleep at length, he
saw little Molly in the arms of mother Mary, who, presently changing to
his own lady Anne that left him about a year before little Molly came,
held out a hand to him to help him up beside them, whereupon the bubble
sleep, unable to hold the swelling of his gladness, burst, and he woke
just as the first rays of the sun smote the gilded cock on the
bell-tower.
The noise of the falling drawbridge and the out-rushing water had roused
Dorothy also, with most of the lighter sleepers in the castle; but when
she and all the rest whose windows were to the fountain court, ran to
them and looked out, they saw nothing but the flight of Tom Fool across
the turf, its arrest by his master, and their following conference. The
moon had broken through the clouds, and there was no mistaking either of
their persons.
Meantime, inside the chapel door stood Amanda and Rowland, both
dripping, and one of them crying as well. Thither, as into a safe
harbour, the sudden flood had cast them; and it indicated no small
amount of ready faculty in Scudamore that, half-stunned as he was, he
yet had the sense, almost ere he knew where he was, to put up the long
bar that secured the door.
All the time that the marquis was drawing his story from Tom, they stood
trembling, in great bewilderment yet very sensible misery, bruised,
drenched, and horribly frightened, more even at what might be than by
what had been. There was only one question, but that was hard to answer:
what were they to do next? Amanda could contribute nothing towards its
solution, for tears and reproaches resolve no enigmas. There were many
ways of issue, whereof Rowland knew several; but their watery trail, if
soon enough followed, would be their ruin as certainly as
Hop-o'-my-Thumb's pebbles were safety to himself and his brothers. He
stood therefore the very bond slave of perplexity, 'and, like a neutral
to his will and matter, did nothing.'
Presently they heard the approaching step of the marquis, which every
one in the castle knew. It stopped within a few feet of them, and
through the thick door they could hear his short asthmatic breathing.
They kept as still as their trembling, and the mad beating of their
hearts, would permit. Amanda was nearly out of her senses, and thought
her heart was beating against the door, and not against her own ribs.
But the marquis never thought of the chapel, having at once concluded
that they had fled through the open hall. Had he not, however, been so
weary and sad and listless, he would probably have found them, for he
would at least have crossed the hall to look into the next court, and,
the moon now shining brightly, the absence of all track on the floor
where the traces of the brief inundation ceased, would have surely
indicated the direction in which they had sought refuge.
The acme of terror happily endured but a moment. The sound of his
departing footsteps took the ghoul from their hearts; they began to
breathe, and to hope that the danger was gone. But they waited long ere
at last they ventured, like wild animals overtaken by the daylight, to
creep out of their shelter and steal back like shadows--but separately,
Amanda first, and Scudamore some slow minutes after--to their different
quarters. The tracks they could not help leaving in-doors were dried up
before the morning.
Rowland had greater reason to fear discovery than any one else in the
castle, save one, would in like circumstances have had, and that one was
his bedfellow in the ante-chamber to his master's bedroom. Through this
room his lordship had to pass to reach his own; but so far was he from
suspecting Rowland, or indeed any gentleman of his retinue, that he
never glanced in the direction of his bed, and so could not discover
that he was absent from it. Had Rowland but caught a glimpse of his own
figure as he sneaked into that room five minutes after the marquis had
passed through it, believing his master was still in his study, where he
had left his candles burning, he could hardly for some time have had his
usual success in regarding himself as a fine gentleman.
Amanda Serafina did not show herself for several days. A bad cold in her
head luckily afforded sufficient pretext for the concealment of a bad
bruise upon her cheek. Other bruises she had also, but they, although
more severe, were of less consequence.
For a whole fortnight the lovers never dared exchange a word.
In the morning the marquis was in no mood to set any inquiry on foot.
His little lamb had vanished from his fold, and he was sad and lonely.
Had it been otherwise, possibly the shabby doublet in which Scudamore
stood behind his chair the next morning, might have set him thinking;
but as it was, it fell in so well with the gloom in which his own spirit
shrouded everything, that he never even marked the change, and ere long
Rowland began to feel himself safe.