THE SHED RAZED.
Closing the door upon them, the surgeon went off on other business, and
Lord Hartledon entered and bent over the bed; a more comfortable bed than
it once had been. It was the Willy Gum of other days; the boy he had
played with when they were boys together. White, wan, wasted, with the
dying hectic on his cheek, the glitter already in his eye, he lay there;
and Val's eyelashes shone as he took the worn hand.
"I am so sorry, Willy. I had no suspicion it was you. Why did you not
confide in me?"
The invalid shook his head. "There might have been danger in it."
"Never from me," was the emphatic answer.
"Ah, my lord, you don't know. I haven't dared to make myself known to a
soul. Mr. Hillary found it out, and I couldn't help myself."
Lord Hartledon glanced round at the strange place: the rafters, the rude
walls. A fire was burning on the hearth, and the appliances brought to
bear were more comfortable than might have been imagined; but still--
"Surely you will allow yourself to be removed to a better place, Willy?"
he said.
"Call me Pike," came the feverish interruption. "Never that other name
again, my lord; I've done with it for ever. As to a better place--I shall
have that soon enough."
"You wanted to say something to me, Mr. Hillary said."
"I've wanted to say it some time now, and to beg your lordship's pardon.
It's about the late earl's death."
"My brother's?"
"Yes. I was on the wrong scent a long time. And I can tell you what
nobody else will."
Lord Hartledon lifted his head quickly; thoughts were crowding
impulsively into his mind, and he spoke in the moment's haste.
"Surely you had not anything to do with that!"
"No; but I thought your lordship had."
"What do you mean?" asked Lord Hartledon, quietly.
"It's for my foolish and wicked and mistaken thought that I would crave
pardon before I go. I thought your lordship had killed the late lord,
either by accident or maliciously."
"You must be dreaming, Pike!"
"No; but I was no better than dreaming then. I had been living amidst
lawless scenes, over the seas and on the seas, where a life's not of much
account, and the fancy was easy enough. I happened to overhear a quarrel
between you and the earl just before his death; I saw you going towards
the spot at the time the accident happened, as you may remember--"
"I did not go so far," interrupted Hartledon, wondering still whether
this might not be the wanderings of a dying man. "I turned back into the
trees at once, and walked slowly home. Many a time have I wished I had
gone on!"
"Yes, yes; I was on the wrong scent. And there was that blow on his
temple to keep up the error, which I know now must have been done against
the estrade. I did suspect at the time, and your lordship will perhaps
not forgive me for it. I let drop a word that I suspected something
before that man Gorton, and he asked me what I meant; and I explained
it away, and said I was chaffing him. And I have been all this time, up
to a few weeks ago, learning the true particulars of how his lordship
died."
Lord Hartledon decided that the man's mind was undoubtedly wandering.
But Pike was not wandering. And he told the story of the boy Ripper
having been locked up in the mill. Mr. Ripper was almost a match for Pike
himself in deceit; and Pike had only learned the facts by dint of long
patience and perseverance and many threats. The boy had seen the whole
accident; had watched it from the window where he was enclosed, unable to
get out, unless he had torn away the grating. Lord Hartledon had lost all
command of the little skiff, his arm being utterly disabled; and it came
drifting down towards the mill, and struck against the estrade. The skiff
righted itself at once, but not its owner: there was a slight struggle, a
few cries, and he lay motionless, drifting later to the place where he
was found. Mr. Ripper's opinion was that he had lost his senses with the
blow on the temple, and fell an easy prey to death. Had that gentleman
only sacrificed the grating and his own reputation, he might have saved
him easily; and that fact had since been upon his conscience, making him
fear all sorts of things, not the least of which was that he might be
hanged as a murderer.
This story he had told Pike at the time, with one reserve--he persisted
that he had not _seen_, only heard. Pike saw that the boy was still
not telling the whole truth, and suspected he was screening Lord
Hartledon--he who now stood before him. Mr. Ripper's logic tended to the
belief that he could not be punished if he stuck to the avowal of having
seen nothing. He had only heard the cries; and when Pike asked if they
were cries as if he were being assaulted, the boy evasively answered
"happen they were." Another little item he suppressed: that he found the
purse at the bottom of the skiff, after he got out of the mill, and
appropriated it to himself; and when he had fairly done that, he grew
more afraid of having done it than of all the rest. The money he
secreted, using it when he dared, a sixpence at a time; the case, with
its papers, he buried in the spot where his master afterwards found it.
With all this upon the young man's conscience, no wonder he was a little
confused and contradictory in his statements to Pike: no wonder he
fancied the ghost of the man he could have saved and did not, might now
and then be hovering about him. Pike learned the real truth at last; and
a compunction had come over him, now that he was dying, for having
doubted Lord Hartledon.
"My lord, I can only ask you to forgive me. I ought to have known you
better. But things seemed to corroborate it so: I've heard people say the
new lord was as a man who had some great care upon him. Oh, I was a
fool!"
"At any rate it was not _that_ care, Pike; I would have saved my
brother's life with my own, had I been at hand to do it. As to
Ripper--I shall never bear to look upon him again."
"He's gone away," said Pike.
"Where has he gone?"
"The miller turned him off for idleness, and he's gone away, nobody knows
where, to get work: I don't suppose he'll ever come back again. This is
the real truth of the matter as it occurred, my lord; and there's no more
behind it. Ripper has now told all he knows, just as fully as if he had
been put to torture."
Lord Hartledon remained with Pike some time longer, soothing the man as
much as it was in his power and kindly nature to soothe. He whispered a
word of the clergyman, Dr. Ashton.
"Father says he shall bring him to-night," was the answer. "It's all a
farce."
"I am sorry to hear you say that," returned Lord Hartledon, gravely.
"If I had never said a worse thing than that, my lord, I shouldn't hurt.
Unless the accounts are made up beforehand, parsons can't avail much at
the twelfth hour. Mother's lessons to me when a child, and her reading
the Bible as she sits here in the night, are worth more than Dr. Ashton
could do. But for those old lessons' having come home to me now, I might
not have cared to ask your forgiveness. Dr. Ashton! what is he? For an
awful sinner--and it's what I've been--there's only Christ. At times I
think I've been too bad even for Him. I've only my sins to take to Him:
never were worse in this world."
Lord Hartledon went out rather bewildered with the occurrences of the
morning. Thinking it might be only kind to step into the clerk's, he
crossed the stile and went in without ceremony by the open back-door.
Mrs. Gum was alone in the kitchen, crying bitterly. She dried her eyes
in confusion, as she curtsied to her visitor.
"I know all," he interrupted, in low, considerate tones, to the poor
suffering woman. "I have been to see him. Never mind explanations: let
us think what we can best do to lighten his last hours."
Mrs. Gum burst into deeper tears. It was a relief, no doubt: but she
wondered how much Lord Hartledon knew.
"I say that he ought to be got away from that place, Mrs. Gum. It's not
fit for a man to die in. You might have him here. Calne! Surely my
protection will sufficiently screen him against tattling Calne!"
She shook her head, saying it was of no use talking to Willy about
removal; he wouldn't have it; and she thought herself it might be better
not. Jabez, too; if this ever came out in Calne, it would just kill him;
his lordship knew what he was, and how he had cared for appearances all
his life. No; it would not be for many more hours now, and Willy must die
in the shed where he had lived.
Lord Hartledon sat down on the ironing-board, the white table underneath
the window, in the old familiar manner of former days; many and many a
time had he perched himself there to talk to her when he was young Val
Elster.
"Only fancy what my life has been, my lord," she said. "People have
called me nervous and timid; but look at the cause I've had! I was just
beginning to get over the grief for his death, when he came here; and to
the last hour of my life I shan't get the night out of my mind! I and
Jabez were together in this very kitchen. I had come in to wash up the
tea-things, and Jabez followed me. It was a cold, dark evening, and the
parlour fire had got low. By token, my lord, we were talking of you; you
had just gone away to be an ambassador, or something, and then we spoke
of the wild, strange, black man who had crept into the shed; and Jabez,
I remember, said he should acquaint Mr. Marris, if the fellow did not
take himself off. I had seen him that very evening, at dusk, for the
first time, when his great black face rose up against mine, nearly
frightening me to death. Jabez was angry at such a man's being there, and
said he should go up to Hartledon in the morning and see the steward.
Just then there came a tap at the kitchen door, and Jabez went to it.
It was the man; he had watched the servant out, and knew we were alone;
and he came into the kitchen, and asked if we did not know him. Jabez
did; he had seen Willy later than I had, and he recognized him; and the
man took off his black hair and great black whiskers, and I saw it was
Willy, and nearly fainted dead away."
There was a pause. Lord Hartledon did not speak, and she resumed, after a
little indulgence in her grief.
"And since then all our aim has been to hide the truth, to screen him,
and keep up the tale that we were afraid of the wild man. How it has
been done I know not: but I do know that it has nearly killed me. What
a night it was! When Jabez heard his story and forced him to answer all
questions, I thought he would have given Willy up to the law there and
then. My lord, we have just lived since with a sword over our heads!"
Lord Hartledon remembered the sword that had been over his own head, and
sympathized with them from the depths of his heart.
"Tell me all," he said. "You are quite safe with me, Mrs. Gum."
"I don't know that there's much more to tell," she sighed. "We took the
best precautions we could, in a quiet way, having the holes in the
shutters filled up, and new locks put on the doors, lest people might
look in or step in, while he sat here of a night, which he took to do.
Jabez didn't like it, but I'm afraid I encouraged it. It was so lonely
for him, that shed, and so unhealthy! We sent away the regular servant,
and engaged one by day, so as to have the house to ourselves at night. If
a knock came to the door, Willy would slip out to the wood-house before
we opened it, lest it might be anybody coming in. He did not come in
every night--two or three times a-week; and it never was pleasant; for
Jabez would hardly open his mouth, unless it was to reproach him. Heaven
alone knows what I've had to bear!"
"But, Mrs. Gum, I cannot understand. Why could not Willy have declared
himself openly to the world?"
It was evidently a most painful question. Her eyes fell; the crimson
of shame flushed into her cheeks; and he felt sorry to have asked it.
"Spare me, my lord, for I _cannot_ tell you. Perhaps Jabez will: or Mr.
Hillary; he knows. It doesn't much matter, now death's so near; but I
think it would kill me to have to tell it."
"And no one except the doctor has ever known that it was Willy?"
"One more, my lord: Mirrable. We told her at once. I have had to hear all
sorts of cruel things said of him," continued Mrs. Gum. "That he thieved
and poached, and did I know not what; and we could only encourage the
fancy, for it put people off the truth as to how he really lived."
"Amidst other things, they said, I believe, that he was out with the
poachers the night my brother George was shot!"
"And that night, my lord, he sat over this kitchen fire, and never
stirred from it. He was ill: it was rheumatism, caught in Australia,
that took such a hold upon him; and I had him here by the fire till near
daylight in the morning, so as to keep him out of the damp shed. What
with fearing one thing and another, I grew into a state of perpetual
terror."
"Then you will not have him in here now," said Lord Hartledon, rising.
"I cannot," she said, her tears falling silently.
"Well, Mrs. Gum, I came in just to say a word of true sympathy. You have
it heartily, and my services also, if necessary. Tell Jabez so."
He quitted the house by the front-door, as if he had been honouring the
clerk's wife with a morning-call, should any curious person happen to be
passing, and went across through the snow to the surgeon's. Mr. Hillary,
an old bachelor, was at his early dinner, and Lord Hartledon sat down and
talked to him.
"It's only rump steak; but few cooks can beat mine, and it's very good.
Won't your lordship take a mouthful by way of luncheon?"
"My curiosity is too strong for luncheon just now," said Val. "I have
come over to know the rights and wrongs of this story. What has Willy Gum
been doing in the past years that it cannot be told?"
"I am not sure that it would be safe to say while he's living."
"Not safe! with me! Was it safe with you?"
"But I don't consider myself obliged to give up to justice any poor
criminal who comes in my way," said the surgeon; and Val felt a little
vexed, although he saw that he was joking.
"Come, Hillary!"
"Well, then, Willy Gum was coming home in the _Morning Star_; and a
mutiny broke out--mutiny and murder, and everything else that's bad; and
one George Gordon was the ringleader."
"Yes. Well?"
"Willy Gum was George Gordon."
"What!" exclaimed Hartledon, not knowing how to accept the words. "How
could he be George Gordon?"
"Because the real George Gordon never sailed at all; and this fellow Gum
went on board in his name, calling himself Gordon."
Lord Hartledon leaned back in his chair and listened to the explanation.
A very simple one, after all. Gum, one of the wildest and most careless
characters possible when in Australia, gambled away, before sailing,
the money he had acquired. Accident made him acquainted with George
Gordon, also going home in the same ship and with money. Gordon was
killed the night before sailing--(Mr. Carr had well described it as
a drunken brawl)--killed accidentally. Gum was present; he saw his
opportunity, went on board as Gordon, and claimed the luggage--some
of it gold--already on board. How the mutiny broke out was less clear;
but one of the other passengers knew Gum, and threatened to expose him;
and perhaps this led to it. Gum, at any rate, was the ringleader, and
this passenger was one of the first killed. Gum--Gordon as he was
called--contrived to escape in the open boat, and found his way to land;
thence, disguised, to England and to Calne; and at Calne he had since
lived, with the price offered for George Gordon on his head.
It was a strange and awful story: and Lord Hartledon felt a shiver run
through him as he listened. In truth, that shed was the safest and
fittest place for him to die in!
As die he did ere the third day was over. And was buried as Pike, the
wild man, without a mourner. Clerk Gum stood over the grave in his
official capacity; and Dr. Ashton, who had visited the sick man, himself
read the service, which caused some wonder in Calne.
And the following week Lord Hartledon caused the shed to be cleared
away, and the waste land ploughed; saying he would have no more tramps
encamping next door to Mr. and Mrs. Gum.