THE THIRD SHIP.
We return to Ruan church, whence this history started. The parson was
there in his surplice, by the altar; the bride was there in her white
frock, by the chancel rails; her father, by her side, was looking at his
watch; and the parishioners thronged the nave, shuffling their feet and
loudly speculating. For the bridegroom had not appeared.
Ruby's face was white as her frock. Parson Babbage kept picking up the
heavy Prayer-book, opening it, and laying it down impatiently.
Occasionally, as one of the congregation scraped an impatient foot, a
metallic sound made itself heard, and the buzz of conversation would
sink for a moment, as if by magic.
For beneath the seats, and behind the women's gowns, the whole pavement
of the church was covered with a fairly representative collection of
cast-off kitchen utensils--old kettles, broken cake-tins, frying-pans,
saucepans--all calculated to emit dismal sounds under percussion.
Scattered among these were ox-bells, rook-rattles, a fog-horn or two,
and a tin trumpet from Liskeard fair. Explanation is simple: the
outraged feelings of the parish were to be avenged by a shal-lal as
bride and bridegroom left the church. Ruby knew nothing of the storm
brewing for her, but Mary Jane, whose ears had been twice boxed that
morning, had heard a whisper of it on her way down to the church, and
was confirmed in her fears by observing the few members of the
congregation who entered after her. Men and women alike suffered from
an unwonted corpulence and tightness of raiment that morning, and each
and all seemed to have cast the affliction off as they arose from their
knees. It was too late to interfere, so she sat still and trembled.
Still the bridegroom did not come.
"A more onpresidented feat I don't recall," remarked Uncle Issy to a
group that stood at the west end under the gallery, "not since 'Melia
Spry's buryin', when the devil, i' the shape of a black pig, followed us
all the way to the porch."
"That was a brave while ago, Uncle."
"Iss, iss; but I mind to this hour how we bearers perspired--an' she
such a light-weight corpse. But plague seize my old emotions!--we'm
come to marry, not to bury."
"By the look o't 'tis' neither marry nor bury, Nim nor Doll," observed
Old Zeb, who had sacrificed his paternal feelings and come to church in
order to keep abreast with the age; "'tis more like Boscastle Fair,
begin at twelve o'clock an' end at noon. Why tarry the wheels of his
chariot?"
"'Tis possible Young Zeb an' he have a-met 'pon the road hither,"
hazarded Calvin Oke by a wonderful imaginative effort; "an' 'tis
possible that feelings have broke loose an' one o' the twain be
swelterin' in his own bloodshed, or vicey-versey."
"I heard tell of a man once," said Uncle Issy, "that committed murder
upon another for love; but, save my life, I can't think 'pon his name,
nor where 't befell."
"What an old store-house 'tis!" ejaculated Elias Sweetland, bending a
contemplative gaze on Uncle Issy.
"Mark her pale face, naybours," put in a woman; "an' Tresidder, he looks
like a man that's neither got nor lost."
"Trew, trew."
"Quarter past the hour, I make it," said Old Zeb, pulling out his
timepiece.
Still the bridegroom tarried.
Higher up the church, in the front pew but one, Modesty Prowse said
aloud to Sarah Ann Nan Julian--
"If he doesn' look sharp, we'll be married before she after all."
Ruby heard the sneer, and answered it with a look of concentrated spite.
Probably she would have risked her dignity to retort, had not Parson
Babbage advanced down the chancel at this juncture.
"Has anyone seen the bridegroom to-day?" he inquired of Tresidder.
"Or will you send some one to hurry him?"
"Be danged if I know," the farmer began testily, mopping his bald head,
and then he broke off, catching sound of a stir among the folk behind.
"Here he be--here he be at last!" cried somebody. And with that a hush
of bewilderment fell on the congregation.
In the doorway, flushed with running and glorious in bridal attire,
stood Young Zeb.
It took everybody's breath away, and he walked up the nave between
silent men and women. His eyes were fastened on Ruby, and she in turn
stared at him as a rabbit at a snake, shrinking slightly on her father's
arm. Tresidder's jaw dropped, and his eyes began to protrude.
"What's the meanin' o' this?" he stammered.
"I've come to marry your daughter," answered Zeb, very slow and
distinct. "She was to wed Zebedee Minards to-day, an' I'm Zebedee
Minards."
"But--"
"I've a note to hand to each of 'ee. Better save your breath till
you've read 'em."
He delivered the two notes, and stood, tapping a toe on the tiles, in
the bridegroom's place on the right of the chancel-rails.
"Damnation!"
"Mr. Tresidder," interrupted the parson, "I like a man to swear off his
rage if he's upset, but I can't allow it in the church."
"I don't care if you do or you don't."
"Then do it, and I'll kick you out with this very boot."
The farmer's face was purple, and big veins stood out by his temples.
"I've been cheated," he growled. Zeb, who had kept his eyes on Ruby,
stepped quickly towards her. First picking up the paper that had
drifted to the pavement, he crushed it into his pocket. He then took
her hand. It was cold and damp.
"Parson, will 'ee marry us up, please?"
"You haven't asked if she'll have you."
"No, an' I don't mean to. I didn't come to ax questions--that's your
business--but to answer."
"Will you marry this man?" demanded the parson, turning to Ruby.
Zeb's hand still enclosed hers, and she felt she was caught and held for
life. Her eyes fluttered up to her lover's face, and found it
inexorable.
"Yes," she gasped out, as if the word had been suffocating her.
And with the word came a rush of tears--helpless, but not altogether
unhappy.
"Dry your eyes," said Parson Babbage, after waiting a minute; "we must
be quick about it."
So it happened that the threatened shal-lal came to nothing.
Susan Jago, the old woman who swept the church, discovered its forgotten
apparatus scattered beneath the pews on the following Saturday, and
cleared it out, to the amount (she averred) of two cart-loads.
She tossed it, bit by bit, over the west wall of the churchyard, where
in time it became a mound, covered high with sting-nettles. If you poke
among these nettles with your walking-stick, the odds are that you turn
up a scrap of rusty iron. But there exists more explicit testimony to
Zeb's wedding within the church--and within the churchyard, too, where
he and Ruby have rested this many a year.
Though the bubble of Farmer Tresidder's dreams was pricked that day,
there was feasting at Sheba until late in the evening. Nor until eleven
did the bride and bridegroom start off, arm in arm, to walk to their new
home. Before them, at a considerable distance, went the players and
singers--a black blur on the moonlit road; and very crisply their music
rang out beneath a sky scattered with cloud and stars. All their songs
were simple carols of the country, and the burden of them was but the
joy of man at Christ's nativity; but the young man and maid who walked
behind were well pleased.
"Now then," cried the voice of Old Zeb, "lads an' lasses all together
an' wi' a will--"
All under the leaves, an the leaves o' life,
I met wi' virgins seven,
An' one o' them was Mary mild,
Our Lord's mother of Heaven.
'O what are 'ee seekin', you seven fair maids,
All under the leaves o life;
Come tell, come tell, what seek ye
All under the leaves o' life?'
'We're seekin' for no leaves, Thomas,
But for a friend o' thine,
We're seekin' for sweet Jesus Christ
To be our guide an' thine.'
'Go down, go down, to yonder town
An' sit in the gallery,
An there you'll see sweet Jesus Christ
Nailed to a big yew-tree.'
So down they went to yonder town
As fast as foot could fall,
An' many a grievous bitter tear
From the Virgin's eye did fall.
'O peace, Mother--O peace, Mother,
Your weepin' doth me grieve;
I must suffer this,' he said,
'For Adam an' for Eve.
'O Mother, take John Evangelist
All for to be your son,
An' he will comfort you sometimes
Mother, as I've a-done.'
'O come, thou John Evangelist,
Thou'rt welcome unto me,
But more welcome my own dear Son
Whom I nursed on my knee.'
Then he laid his head 'pon his right shoulder
Seein death it struck him nigh;
'The holy Mother be with your soul--
I die, Mother, I die.'
O the rose, the gentle rose,
An the fennel that grows so green!
God gi'e us grace in every place
To pray for our king an' queen.
Furthermore, for our enemies all
Our prayers they should be strong;
Amen, good Lord; your charity
Is the endin' of my song!
In the midst of this carol Ruby, with a light pull on Zeb's arm, brought
him to a halt.
"How lovely it all is, Zeb!" She looked upwards at the flying moon,
then dropped her gaze over the frosty sea, and sighed gently.
"Just now I feel as if I'd been tossin' out yonder through many fierce
days an' nights an' were bein' taken at last to a safe haven.
You'll have to make a good wife of me, Zeb. I wonder if you'll do 't."
Zeb followed the direction of her eyes, and seemed to discern off
Bradden Point a dot of white, as of a ship in sail. He pressed her arm
to his side, but said nothing.
"Clear your throats, friends," shouted his father, up the road,
"an' let fly--"
As I sat on a sunny bank,
--A sunny bank, a sunny bank,
As I sat on a sunny bank
On Chris'mas day i' the mornin,
I saw dree ships come sailin' by,
--A-sailin' by, a-sailin' by,
I saw dree ships come sailin' by
On Chris'mas day i' the mornin'.
Now who shud be i' these dree ships--
And to this measure Zeb and Ruby stepped home.
At the cottage door Zeb thanked the singers, who went their way and
flung back shouts and joyful wishes as they went. Before making all
fast for the night, he stood a minute or so, listening to their voices
as they died away down the road. As he barred the door, he turned and
saw that Ruby had lit the lamp, and was already engaged in setting the
kitchen to rights; for, of course, no such home-coming had been dreamt
of in the morning, and all was in disorder. He stood and watched her
for a while, then turned to the window.
After a minute or two, finding that he did not speak, she too came to
the window. He bent and kissed her.
For he had seen, on the patch of sea beyond the haven, a white frigate
steal up Channel like a ghost. She had passed out of his sight by this
time, but he was still thinking of one man that she bore.
THE HAUNTED DRAGOON.
Beside the Plymouth road, as it plunges down-hill past Ruan Lanihale
church towards Ruan Cove, and ten paces beyond the lych-gate--where the
graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their
inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck--the base of the
churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, festooned with toad-flax
and fringed with the hart's-tongue fern. Within the archway bubbles a
well, the water of which was once used for all baptisms in the parish,
for no child sprinkled with it could ever be hanged with hemp. But this
belief is discredited now, and the well neglected: and the events which
led to this are still a winter's tale in the neighbourhood. I set them
down as they were told me, across the blue glow of a wreck-wood fire, by
Sam Tregear, the parish bedman. Sam himself had borne an inconspicuous
share in them; and because of them Sam's father had carried a white face
to his grave.
My father and mother (said Sam) married late in life, for his trade was
what mine is, and 'twasn't till her fortieth year that my mother could
bring herself to kiss a gravedigger. That accounts, maybe, for my being
born rickety and with other drawbacks that only made father the fonder.
Weather permitting, he'd carry me off to churchyard, set me upon a flat
stone, with his coat folded under, and talk to me while he delved.
I can mind, now, the way he'd settle lower and lower, till his head
played hidey-peep with me over the grave's edge, and at last he'd be
clean swallowed up, but still discoursing or calling up how he'd come
upon wonderful towns and kingdoms down underground, and how all the
kings and queens there, in dyed garments, was offering him meat for his
dinner every day of the week if he'd only stop and hobbynob with them--
and all such gammut. He prettily doted on me--the poor old ancient!
But there came a day--a dry afternoon in the late wheat harvest--when we
were up in the churchyard together, and though father had his tools
beside him, not a tint did he work, but kept travishing back and forth,
one time shading his eyes and gazing out to sea, and then looking far
along the Plymouth road for minutes at a time. Out by Bradden Point
there stood a little dandy-rigged craft, tacking lazily to and fro, with
her mains'le all shiny-yellow in the sunset. Though I didn't know it
then, she was the Preventive boat, and her business was to watch the
Hauen: for there had been a brush between her and the _Unity_ lugger, a
fortnight back, and a Preventive man shot through the breast-bone, and
my mother's brother Philip was hiding down in the town. I minded,
later, how that the men across the vale, in Farmer Tresidder's
wheat-field, paused every now and then, as they pitched the sheaves, to
give a look up towards the churchyard, and the gleaners moved about in
small knots, causeying and glancing over their shoulders at the cutter
out in the bay; and how, when all the field was carried, they waited
round the last load, no man offering to cry the _Neck_, as the fashion
was, but lingering till sun was near down behind the slope and the long
shadows stretching across the stubble.
"Sha'n't thee go underground to-day, father?" says I, at last.
He turned slowly round, and says he, "No, sonny. 'Reckon us'll climb
skywards for a change."
And with that, he took my hand, and pushing abroad the belfry door began
to climb the stairway. Up and up, round and round we went, in a sort of
blind-man's-holiday full of little glints of light and whiff's of wind
where the open windows came; and at last stepped out upon the leads of
the tower and drew breath.
"There's two-an'-twenty parishes to be witnessed from where we're
standin', sonny--if ye've got eyes," says my father.
Well, first I looked down towards the harvesters and laughed to see them
so small: and then I fell to counting the church-towers dotted across
the high-lands, and seeing if I could make out two-and-twenty.
'Twas the prettiest sight--all the country round looking as if 'twas
dusted with gold, and the Plymouth road winding away over the hills like
a long white tape. I had counted thirteen churches, when my father
pointed his hand out along this road and called to me--
"Look'ee out yonder, honey, an' say what ye see!"
"I see dust," says I.
"Nothin' else? Sonny boy, use your eyes, for mine be dim."
"I see dust," says I again, "an' suthin' twinklin' in it, like a tin
can--"
"Dragooners!" shouts my father; and then, running to the side of the
tower facing the harvest-field, he put both hands to his mouth and
called:
"_What have 'ee? What have 'ee?_"--very loud and long.
"_A neck--a neck!_" came back from the field, like as if all shouted at
once--dear, the sweet sound! And then a gun was fired, and craning
forward over the coping I saw a dozen men running across the stubble and
out into the road towards the Hauen; and they called as they ran, "_A
neck--a neck!_"
"Iss," says my father, "'tis a neck, sure 'nuff. Pray God they save en!
Come, sonny--"
But we dallied up there till the horsemen were plain to see, and their
scarlet coats and armour blazing in the dust as they came. And when
they drew near within a mile, and our limbs ached with crouching--for
fear they should spy us against the sky--father took me by the hand and
pulled hot foot down the stairs. Before they rode by he had picked up
his shovel and was shovelling out a grave for his life.
Forty valiant horsemen they were, riding two-and-two (by reason of the
narrowness of the road) and a captain beside them--men broad and long,
with hairy top-lips, and all clad in scarlet jackets and white breeches
that showed bravely against their black war-horses and jet-black
holsters, thick as they were wi' dust. Each man had a golden helmet,
and a scabbard flapping by his side, and a piece of metal like a
half-moon jingling from his horse's cheek-strap. 12 D was the numbering
on every saddle, meaning the Twelfth Dragoons.
Tramp, tramp! they rode by, talking and joking, and taking no more heed
of me--that sat upon the wall with my heels dangling above them--than if
I'd been a sprig of stonecrop. But the captain, who carried a drawn
sword and mopped his face with a handkerchief so that the dust ran
across it in streaks, drew rein, and looked over my shoulder to where
father was digging.
"Sergeant!" he calls back, turning with a hand upon his crupper;
"didn't we see a figger like this a-top o' the tower, some way back?"
The sergeant pricked his horse forward and saluted. He was the tallest,
straightest man in the troop, and the muscles on his arm filled out his
sleeve with the three stripes upon it--a handsome red-faced fellow, with
curly black hair.
Says he, "That we did, sir--a man with sloping shoulders and a boy with
a goose neck." Saying this, he looked up at me with a grin.
"I'll bear it in mind," answered the officer, and the troop rode on in a
cloud of dust, the sergeant looking back and smiling, as if 'twas a joke
that he shared with us. Well, to be short, they rode down into the town
as night fell. But 'twas too late, Uncle Philip having had fair warning
and plenty of time to flee up towards the little secret hold under Mabel
Down, where none but two families knew how to find him. All the town,
though, knew he was safe, and lashins of women and children turned out
to see the comely soldiers hunt in vain till ten o'clock at night.
The next thing was to billet the warriors. The captain of the troop, by
this, was pesky cross-tempered, and flounced off to the "Jolly
Pilchards" in a huff. "Sergeant," says he, "here's an inn, though a
damned bad 'un, an' here I means to stop. Somewheres about there's a
farm called Constantine, where I'm told the men can be accommodated.
Find out the place, if you can, an' do your best: an' don't let me see
yer face till to-morra," says he.
So Sergeant Basket--that was his name--gave the salute, and rode his
troop up the street, where--for his manners were mighty winning,
notwithstanding the dirty nature of his errand--he soon found plenty to
direct him to Farmer Noy's, of Constantine; and up the coombe they rode
into the darkness, a dozen or more going along with them to show the
way, being won by their martial bearing as well as the sergeant's very
friendly way of speech.
Farmer Noy was in bed--a pock-marked, lantern-jawed old gaffer of
sixty-five; and the most remarkable point about him was the wife he had
married two years before--a young slip of a girl but just husband-high.
Money did it, I reckon; but if so, 'twas a bad bargain for her.
He was noted for stinginess to such a degree that they said his wife
wore a brass wedding-ring, weekdays, to save the genuine article from
wearing out. She was a Ruan woman, too, and therefore ought to have
known all about him. But woman's ways be past finding out.
Hearing the hoofs in his yard and the sergeant's _stram-a-ram_ upon the
door, down comes the old curmudgeon with a candle held high above his
head.
"What the devil's here?" he calls out. Sergeant Basket looks over the
old man's shoulder; and there, halfway up the stairs, stood Madam Noy in
her night rail--a high-coloured ripe girl, languishing for love, her red
lips parted and neck all lily-white against a loosened pile of
dark-brown hair.
"Be cussed if I turn back!" said the sergeant to himself; and added out
loud--
"Forty souldjers, in the King's name!"
"Forty devils!" says old Noy.
"They're devils to eat," answered the sergeant, in the most friendly
manner; "an', begad, ye must feed an' bed 'em this night--or else I'll
search your cellars. Ye are a loyal man--eh, farmer? An' your cellars
are big, I'm told."
"Sarah," calls out the old man, following the sergeant's bold glance,
"go back an' dress yersel' dacently this instant! These here honest
souldjers--forty damned honest gormandisin' souldjers--be come in his
Majesty's name, forty strong, to protect honest folks' rights in the
intervals of eatin' 'em out o' house an' home. Sergeant, ye be very
welcome i' the King's name. Cheese an' cider ye shall have, an' I pray
the mixture may turn your forty stomachs."
In a dozen minutes he had fetched out his stable-boys and farm-hands,
and, lantern in hand, was helping the sergeant to picket the horses and
stow the men about on clean straw in the outhouses. They were turning
back to the house, and the old man was turning over in his mind that the
sergeant hadn't yet said a word about where he was to sleep, when by the
door they found Madam Noy waiting, in her wedding gown, and with her
hair freshly braided.
Now, the farmer was mortally afraid of the sergeant, knowing he had
thirty ankers and more of contraband liquor in his cellars, and minding
the sergeant's threat. None the less his jealousy got the upper hand.
"Woman," he cries out, "to thy bed!"
"I was waiting," said she, "to say the Cap'n's bed--"
"Sergeant's," says the dragoon, correcting her.
"--Was laid i' the spare room."
"Madam," replies Sergeant Basket, looking into her eyes and bowing,
"a soldier with my responsibility sleeps but little. In the first
place, I must see that my men sup."
"The maids be now cuttin' the bread an' cheese and drawin' the cider."
"Then, Madam, leave me but possession of the parlour, and let me have a
chair to sleep in."
By this they were in the passage together, and her gaze devouring his
regimentals. The old man stood a pace off, looking sourly.
The sergeant fed his eyes upon her, and Satan got hold of him.
"Now if only," said he, "one of you could play cards!"
"But I must go to bed," she answered; "though I can play cribbage, if
only you stay another night."
For she saw the glint in the farmer's eye; and so Sergeant Basket slept
bolt upright that night in an arm-chair by the parlour fender. Next day
the dragooners searched the town again, and were billeted all about
among the cottages. But the sergeant returned to Constantine, and
before going to bed--this time in the spare room--played a game of
cribbage with Madam Noy, the farmer smoking sulkily in his arm-chair.
"Two for his heels!" said the rosy woman suddenly, halfway through the
game. "Sergeant, you're cheatin' yoursel' an' forgettin' to mark.
Gi'e me the board; I'll mark for both."
She put out her hand upon the board, and Sergeant Basket's closed upon
it. 'Tis true he had forgot to mark; and feeling the hot pulse in her
wrist, and beholding the hunger in her eyes, 'tis to be supposed he'd
have forgot his own soul.
He rode away next day with his troop: but my uncle Philip not being
caught yet, and the Government set on making an example of him, we
hadn't seen the last of these dragoons. 'Twas a time of fear down in
the town. At dead of night or at noonday they came on us--six times in
all: and for two months the crew of the _Unity_ couldn't call their
souls their own, but lived from day to day in secret closets and
wandered the country by night, hiding in hedges and straw-houses.
All that time the revenue men watched the Hauen, night and day, like
dogs before a rat-hole.
But one November morning 'twas whispered abroad that Uncle Philip had
made his way to Falmouth, and slipped across to Guernsey. Time passed
on, and the dragooners were seen no more, nor the handsome
devil-may-care face of Sergeant Basket. Up at Constantine, where he had
always contrived to billet himself, 'tis to be thought pretty Madam Noy
pined to see him again, kicking his spurs in the porch and smiling out
of his gay brown eyes; for her face fell away from its plump condition,
and the hunger in her eyes grew and grew. But a more remarkable fact
was that her old husband--who wouldn't have yearned after the dragoon,
ye'd have thought--began to dwindle and fall away too. By the New Year
he was a dying man, and carried his doom on his face. And on New Year's
Day he straddled his mare for the last time, and rode over to Looe, to
Doctor Gale's.
"Goody-losh!" cried the doctor, taken aback by his appearance--
"What's come to ye, Noy?"
"Death!" says Noy. "Doctor, I hain't come for advice, for before this
day week I'll be a clay-cold corpse. I come to ax a favour. When they
summon ye, before lookin' at my body--that'll be past help--go you to
the little left-top corner drawer o' my wife's bureau, an' there ye'll
find a packet. You're my executor," says he, "and I leaves ye to deal
wi' that packet as ye thinks fit."
With that, the farmer rode away home-along, and the very day week he
went dead.
The doctor, when called over, minded what the old chap had said, and
sending Madam Noy on some pretence to the kitchen, went over and
unlocked the little drawer with a duplicate key, that the farmer had
unhitched from his watch-chain and given him. There was no parcel of
letters, as he looked to find, but only a small packet crumpled away in
the corner. He pulled it out and gave a look, and a sniff, and another
look: then shut the drawer, locked it, strode straight down-stairs to
his horse and galloped away.
In three hours' time, pretty Madam Noy was in the constables' hands upon
the charge of murdering her husband by poison.
They tried her, next Spring Assize, at Bodmin, before the Lord Chief
Justice. There wasn't evidence enough to put Sergeant Basket in the
dock alongside of her--though 'twas freely guessed he knew more than
anyone (saving the prisoner herself) about the arsenic that was found in
the little drawer and inside the old man's body. He was subpoena'd from
Plymouth, and cross-examined by a great hulking King's Counsel for
three-quarters of an hour. But they got nothing out of him.
All through the examination the prisoner looked at him and nodded her
white face, every now and then, at his answers, as much as to say,
"That's right--that's right: they shan't harm thee, my dear." And the
love-light shone in her eyes for all the court to see. But the sergeant
never let his look meet it. When he stepped down at last she gave a sob
of joy, and fainted bang-off.
They roused her up, after this, to hear the verdict of _Guilty_ and her
doom spoken by the judge. "Pris'ner at the bar," said the Clerk of
Arraigns, "have ye anything to say why this court should not pass
sentence o' death?"
She held tight of the rail before her, and spoke out loud and clear--
"My Lord and gentlemen all, I be a guilty woman; an' I be ready to die
at once for my sin. But if ye kill me now, ye kill the child in my
body--an' he is innocent."
Well, 'twas found she spoke truth; and the hanging was put off till
after the time of her delivery. She was led back to prison, and there,
about the end of June, her child was born, and died before he was six
hours old. But the mother recovered, and quietly abode the time of her
hanging.
I can mind her execution very well; for father and mother had determined
it would be an excellent thing for my rickets to take me into Bodmin
that day, and get a touch of the dead woman's hand, which in those times
was considered an unfailing remedy. So we borrowed the parson's
manure-cart, and cleaned it thoroughly, and drove in together.
The place of the hangings, then, was a little door in the prison-wall,
looking over the bank where the railway now goes, and a dismal piece of
water called Jail-pool, where the townsfolk drowned most of the dogs and
cats they'd no further use for. All the bank under the gallows was that
thick with people you could almost walk upon their heads; and my ribs
were squeezed by the crowd so that I couldn't breathe freely for a month
after. Back across the pool, the fields along the side of the valley
were lined with booths and sweet-stalls and standings--a perfect
Whitsun-fair; and a din going up that cracked your ears.
But there was the stillness of death when the woman came forth, with the
sheriff and the chaplain reading in his book, and the unnamed man
behind--all from the little door. She wore a strait black gown, and a
white kerchief about her neck--a lovely woman, young and white and
tearless.
She ran her eye over the crowd and stepped forward a pace, as if to
speak; but lifted a finger and beckoned instead: and out of the people a
man fought his way to the foot of the scaffold. 'Twas the dashing
sergeant, that was here upon sick-leave. Sick he was, I believe.
His face above his shining regimentals was grey as a slate; for he had
committed perjury to save his skin, and on the face of the perjured no
sun will ever shine.
"Have you got it?" the doomed woman said, many hearing the words.
He tried to reach, but the scaffold was too high, so he tossed up what
was in his hand, and the woman caught it--a little screw of
tissue-paper.
"I must see that, please!" said the sheriff, laying a hand upon her arm.
"'Tis but a weddin'-ring, sir"--and she slipped it over her finger.
Then she kissed it once, under the beam, and, lookin' into the dragoon's
eyes, spoke very slow--
"_Husband, our child shall go wi' you; an' when I want you he shall
fetch you._"
--and with that turned to the sheriff, saying:
"I be ready, sir."
The sheriff wouldn't give father and mother leave for me to touch the
dead woman's hand; so they drove back that evening grumbling a good bit.
'Tis a sixteen-mile drive, and the ostler in at Bodmin had swindled the
poor old horse out of his feed, I believe; for he crawled like a slug.
But they were so taken up with discussing the day's doings, and what a
mort of people had been present, and how the sheriff might have used
milder language in refusing my father, that they forgot to use the whip.
The moon was up before we got halfway home, and a star to be seen here
and there; and still we never mended our pace.
'Twas in the middle of the lane leading down to Hendra Bottom, where for
more than a mile two carts can't pass each other, that my father pricks
up his ears and looks back.
"Hullo!" says he; "there's somebody gallopin' behind us."
Far back in the night we heard the noise of a horse's hoofs, pounding
furiously on the road and drawing nearer and nearer.
"Save us!" cries father; "whoever 'tis, he's comin' down th' lane!"
And in a minute's time the clatter was close on us and someone shouting
behind.
"Hurry that crawlin' worm o' yourn--or draw aside in God's name, an' let
me by!" the rider yelled.
"What's up?" asked my father, quartering as well as he could.
"Why! Hullo! Farmer Hugo, be that you?"
"There's a mad devil o' a man behind, ridin' down all he comes across.
A's blazin' drunk, I reckon--but 'tisn' _that_--'tis the horrible voice
that goes wi' en--Hark! Lord protect us, he's turn'd into the lane!"
Sure enough, the clatter of a second horse was coming down upon us, out
of the night--and with it the most ghastly sounds that ever creamed a
man's flesh. Farmer Hugo pushed past us and sent a shower of mud in our
faces as his horse leapt off again, and 'way-to-go down the hill. My
father stood up and lashed our old grey with the reins, and down we went
too, bumpity-bump for our lives, the poor beast being taken suddenly
like one possessed. For the screaming behind was like nothing on earth
but the wailing and sobbing of a little child--only tenfold louder.
'Twas just as you'd fancy a baby might wail if his little limbs was
being twisted to death.
At the hill's foot, as you know, a stream crosses the lane--that widens
out there a bit, and narrows again as it goes up t'other side of the
valley. Knowing we must be overtaken further on--for the screams and
clatter seemed at our very backs by this--father jumped out here into
the stream and backed the cart well to one side; and not a second too
soon.
The next moment, like a wind, this thing went by us in the moonlight--
a man upon a black horse that splashed the stream all over us as he
dashed through it and up the hill. 'Twas the scarlet dragoon with his
ashen face; and behind him, holding to his cross-belt, rode a little
shape that tugged and wailed and raved. As I stand here, sir, 'twas the
shape of a naked babe!
Well, I won't go on to tell how my father dropped upon his knees in the
water, or how my mother fainted off. The thing was gone, and from that
moment for eight years nothing was seen or heard of Sergeant Basket.
The fright killed my mother. Before next spring she fell into a
decline, and early next fall the old man--for he was an old man now--had
to delve her grave. After this he went feebly about his work, but held
on, being wishful for me to step into his shoon, which I began to do as
soon as I was fourteen, having outgrown the rickets by that time.
But one cool evening in September month, father was up digging in the
yard alone: for 'twas a small child's grave, and in the loosest soil,
and I was off on a day's work, thatching Farmer Tresidder's stacks.
He was digging away slowly when he heard a rattle at the lych-gate, and
looking over the edge of the grave, saw in the dusk a man hitching his
horse there by the bridle.
'Twas a coal-black horse, and the man wore a scarlet coat all powdered
with pilm; and as he opened the gate and came over the graves, father
saw that 'twas the dashing dragoon. His face was still a slaty-grey,
and clammy with sweat; and when he spoke, his voice was all of a
whisper, with a shiver therein.
"Bedman," says he, "go to the hedge and look down the road, and tell me
what you see."
My father went, with his knees shaking, and came back again.
"I see a woman," says he, "not fifty yards down the road. She is
dressed in black, an' has a veil over her face; an' she's comin' this
way."
"Bedman," answers the dragoon, "go to the gate an' look back along the
Plymouth road, an' tell me what you see."
"I see," says my father, coming back with his teeth chattering, "I see,
twenty yards back, a naked child comin'. He looks to be callin', but he
makes no sound."
"Because his voice is wearied out," says the dragoon. And with that he
faced about, and walked to the gate slowly.
"Bedman, come wi' me an' see the rest," he says, over his shoulder.
He opened the gate, unhitched the bridle and swung himself heavily up in
the saddle.
Now from the gate the bank goes down pretty steep into the road, and at
the foot of the bank my father saw two figures waiting. 'Twas the woman
and the child, hand in hand; and their eyes burned up like coals: and
the woman's veil was lifted, and her throat bare.
As the horse went down the bank towards these two, they reached out and
took each a stirrup and climbed upon his back, the child before the
dragoon and the woman behind. The man's face was set like a stone.
Not a word did either speak, and in this fashion they rode down the hill
towards Ruan sands. All that my father could mind, beyond, was that the
woman's hands were passed round the man's neck, where the rope had
passed round her own.
No more could he tell, being a stricken man from that hour. But Aunt
Polgrain, the house-keeper up to Constantine, saw them, an hour later,
go along the road below the town-place; and Jacobs, the smith, saw them
pass his forge towards Bodmin about midnight. So the tale's true
enough. But since that night no man has set eyes on horse or riders.
A BLUE PANTOMIME.
I.
HOW I DINED AT THE "INDIAN QUEENS."
The sensation was odd; for I could have made affidavit I had never
visited the place in my life, nor come within fifty miles of it.
Yet every furlong of the drive was earmarked for me, as it were, by some
detail perfectly familiar. The high-road ran straight ahead to a notch
in the long chine of Huel Tor; and this notch was filled with the yellow
ball of the westering sun. Whenever I turned my head and blinked, red
simulacra of this ball hopped up and down over the brown moors. Miles
of wasteland, dotted with peat-ricks and cropping ponies, stretched to
the northern horizon: on our left three long coombes radiated seaward,
and in the gorge of the midmost was a building stuck like a fish-bone,
its twisted Jacobean chimneys overtopping a plantation of ash-trees that
now, in November, allowed a glimpse, and no more, of the grey facade. I
had looked down that coombe as we drove by; and catching sight of these
chimneys felt something like reassurance, as if I had been counting, all
the way, to find them there.
But here let me explain who I am and what brought me to these parts.
My name is Samuel Wraxall--the Reverend Samuel Wraxall, to be precise:
I was born a Cockney and educated at Rugby and Oxford. On leaving the
University I had taken orders; but, for reasons impertinent to this
narrative, was led, after five years of parochial work in Surrey, to
accept an Inspectorship of Schools. Just now I was bound for Pitt's
Scawens, a desolate village among the Cornish clay-moors, there to
examine and report upon the Board School. Pitt's Scawens lies some nine
miles off the railway, and six from the nearest market-town;
consequently, on hearing there was a comfortable inn near the village, I
had determined to make that my resting-place for the night and do my
business early on the morrow.
"Who lives down yonder?" I asked my driver.
"Squire Parkyn," he answered, not troubling to follow my gaze.
"Old family?"
"May be: Belonged to these parts before I can mind."
"What's the place called?"
"Tremenhuel."
I had certainly never heard the name before, nevertheless my lips were
forming the syllables almost before he spoke. As he flicked up his grey
horse and the gig began to oscillate in more business-like fashion, I
put him a fourth question--a question at once involuntary and absurd.
"Are you sure the people who live there are called Parkyn?"
He turned his head at this, and treated me quite excusably to a stare of
amazement.
"Well--considerin' I've lived in these parts five-an'-forty year, man
and boy, I reckon I _ought_ to be sure."
The reproof was just, and I apologised. Nevertheless Parkyn was not the
name I wanted. What was the name? And why did I want it? I had not
the least idea. For the next mile I continued to hunt my brain for the
right combination of syllables. I only knew that somewhere, now at the
back of my head, now on my tongue-tip, there hung a word I desired to
utter, but could not. I was still searching for it when the gig climbed
over the summit of a gentle rise, and the "Indian Queens" hove in sight.
It is not usual for a village to lie a full mile beyond its inn: yet I
never doubted this must be the case with Pitt's Scawens. Nor was I in
the least surprised by the appearance of this lonely tavern, with the
black peat-pool behind it and the high-road in front, along which its
end windows stare for miles, as if on the look-out for the ghosts of
departed coaches full of disembodied travellers for the Land's End.
I knew the sign-board over the porch: I knew--though now in the twilight
it was impossible to distinguish colours--that upon either side of it
was painted an Indian Queen in a scarlet turban and blue robe, taking
two black children with scarlet parasols to see a blue palm-tree.
I recognised the hepping-stock and granite drinking-trough beside the
porch; as well as the eight front windows, four on either side of the
door, and the dummy window immediately over it. Only the landlord was
unfamiliar. He appeared as the gig drew up--a loose-fleshed, heavy man,
something over six feet in height--and welcomed me with an air of
anxious hospitality, as if I were the first guest he had entertained for
many years.
"You received my letter, then?" I asked.
"Yes, surely. The Rev. S. Wraxall, I suppose. Your bed's aired, sir,
and a fire in the Blue Room, and the cloth laid. My wife didn't like to
risk cooking the fowl till you were really come. 'Railways be that
uncertain,' she said. 'Something may happen to the train and he'll be
done to death and all in pieces.'"
It took me a couple of seconds to discover that these gloomy
anticipations referred not to me but to the fowl.
"But if you can wait half an hour--" he went on.
"Certainly," said I. "In the meanwhile, if you'll show me up to my
bedroom, I'll have a wash and change my clothes, for I've been
travelling since ten this morning."
I was standing in the passage by this time, and examined it in the dusk
while the landlord was fetching a candle. Yes, again: I had felt sure
the staircase lay to the right. I knew by heart the Ionic pattern of
its broad balusters; the tick of the tall clock, standing at the first
turn of the stairs; the vista down the glazed door opening on the
stable-yard. When the landlord returned with my portmanteau and a
candle and I followed him up-stairs, I was asking myself for the
twentieth time--'When--in what stage of my soul's history--had I been
doing all this before? And what on earth was that tune that kept
humming in my head?'
I dismissed these speculations as I entered the bedroom and began to
fling off my dusty clothes. I had almost forgotten about them by the
time I began to wash away my travel-stains, and rinse the coal-dust out
of my hair. My spirits revived, and I began mentally to arrange my
plans for the next day. The prospect of dinner, too, after my cold
drive was wonderfully comforting. Perhaps (thought I), there is good
wine in this inn; it is just the house wherein travellers find, or boast
that they find, forgotten bins of Burgundy or Teneriffe. When my
landlord returned to conduct me to the Blue Room, I followed him down to
the first landing in the lightest of spirits.
Therefore, I was startled when, as the landlord threw open the door and
stood aside to let me pass, _it_ came upon me again--and this time not
as a merely vague sensation, but as a sharp and sudden fear taking me
like a cold hand by the throat. I shivered as I crossed the threshold
and began to look about me. The landlord observed it, and said--
"It's chilly weather for travelling, to be sure. Maybe you'd be better
down-stairs in the coffee-room, after all."
I felt that this was probable enough. But it seemed a pity to have put
him to the pains of lighting this fire for nothing. So I promised him I
should be comfortable enough.
He appeared to be relieved, and asked me what I would drink with my
dinner. "There's beer--I brew it myself; and sherry--"
I said I would try his beer.
"And a bottle of sound port to follow?"
Port upon home-brewed beer! But I had dared it often enough in my
Oxford days, and a long evening lay before me, with a snug armchair, and
a fire fit to roast a sheep. I assented.
He withdrew to fetch up the meal, and I looked about me with curiosity.
The room was a long one--perhaps fifty feet from end to end, and not
less than ten paces broad. It was wainscotted to the height of four
feet from the ground, probably with oak, but the wood had been so larded
with dark blue paint that its texture could not be discovered.
Above this wainscot the walls were covered with a fascinating paper.
The background of this was a greenish-blue, and upon it a party of
red-coated riders in three-cornered hats blew large horns while they
hunted a stag. This pattern, striking enough in itself, became
immeasurably more so when repeated a dozen times; for the stag of one
hunt chased the riders of the next, and the riders chased the hounds,
and so on in an unbroken procession right round the room. The window at
the bottom of the room stood high in the wall, with short blue curtains
and a blue-cushioned seat beneath. In the corner to the right of it
stood a tall clock, and by the clock an old spinet, decorated with two
plated cruets, a toy cottage constructed of shells and gum, and an
ormolu clock under glass--the sort of ornament that an Agricultural
Society presents to the tenant of the best-cultivated farm within thirty
miles of somewhere or other. The floor was un-carpeted save for one
small oasis opposite the fire. Here stood my table, cleanly spread,
with two plated candlesticks, each holding three candles. Along the
wainscot extended a regiment of dark, leather-cushioned chairs, so
straight in the back that they seemed to be standing at attention.
There was but one easy-chair in the room, and this was drawn close to
the fire. I turned towards it.
As I sat down I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror above the
fireplace. It was an unflattering glass, with a wave across the surface
that divided my face into two ill-fitting halves, and a film upon it,
due, I suppose, to the smoke of the wood-fire below. But the setting of
this mirror and the fireplace itself were by far the most noteworthy
objects in the whole room. I set myself idly to examine them.
It was an open hearth, and the blazing faggot lay on the stone itself.
The andirons were of indifferently polished steel, and on either side of
the fireplace two Ionic pilasters of dark oak supported a narrow
mantel-ledge. Above this rested the mirror, flanked by a couple of
naked, flat-cheeked boys, who appeared to be lowering it over the fire
by a complicated system of pulleys, festoons, and flowers.
These flowers and festoons, as well as the frame of the mirror, were of
some light wood--lime, I fancy--and reminded me of Grinling Gibbons'
work; and the glass tilted forward at a surprising angle, as if about to
tumble on the hearth-rug. The carving was exceedingly delicate.
I rose to examine it more narrowly. As I did so, my eyes fell on three
letters, cut in flowing italic capitals upon a plain boss of wood
immediately over the frame, and I spelt out the word _FVI_.
_Fui_--the word was simple enough; but what of its associations?
Why should it begin to stir up again those memories which were memories
of nothing? _Fui_--"I have been"; but what the dickens have I been?
The landlord came in with my dinner.
"Ah!" said he, "you're looking at our masterpiece, I see."
"Tell me," I asked; "do you know why this word is written here, over the
mirror?"
"I've heard my wife say, sir, it was the motto of the Cardinnocks that
used to own this house. Ralph Cardinnock, father to the last squire,
built it. You'll see his initials up there, in the top corners of the
frame--R. C.--one letter in each corner."
As he spoke it, I knew this name--Cardinnock--for that which had been
haunting me. I seated myself at table, saying--
"They lived at Tremenhuel, I suppose. Is the family gone?--died out?"
"Why yes; and the way of it was a bit curious, too."
"You might sit down and tell me about it," I said, "while I begin my
dinner."
"There's not much to tell," he answered, taking a chair; "and I'm not
the man to tell it properly. My wife is a better hand at it, but"--
here he looked at me doubtfully--"it always makes her cry."
"Then I'd rather hear it from you. How did Tremenhuel come into the
hands of the Parkyns?--that's the present owner's name, is it not?"
The landlord nodded. "The answer to that is part of the story.
Old Parkyn, great-great-grandfather to the one that lives there now,
took Tremenhuel on lease from the last Cardinnock--Squire Philip
Cardinnock, as he was called. Squire Philip came into the property when
he was twenty-three: and before he reached twenty-seven, he was forced
to let the old place. He was wild, they say--thundering wild; a
drinking, dicing, cock-fighting, horse-racing young man; poured out his
money like water through a sieve. That was bad enough: but when it came
to carrying off a young lady and putting a sword through her father and
running the country, I put it to you it's worse."
"Did he disappear?"
"That's part of the story, too. When matters got desperate and he was
forced to let Tremenhuel, he took what money he could raise and cleared
out of the neighbourhood for a time; went off to Tregarrick when the
militia was embodied, he being an officer; and there he cast his
affections upon old Sir Felix Williams's daughter. Miss Cicely--"
I was expecting it: nevertheless I dropped my fork clumsily as I heard
the name, and for a few seconds the landlord's voice sounded like that
of a distant river as it ran on--
"And as Sir Felix wouldn't consent--for which nobody blamed him--
Squire Philip and Miss Cicely agreed to go off together one dark night.
But the old man found them out and stopped them in the nick of time and
got six inches of cold steel for his pains. However, he kept his girl,
and Squire Philip had to fly the country. He went off that same night,
they say: and wherever he went, he never came back."
"What became of him?"
"Ne'er a soul knows; for ne'er a soul saw his face again. Year after
year, old Parkyn, his tenant, took the rent of Tremenhuel out of his
right pocket and paid it into his left: and in time, there being no
heir, he just took over the property and stepped into Cardinnock's shoes
with a 'by your leave' to nobody, and there his grandson is to this
day."
"What became of the young lady--of Miss Cicely Williams?" I asked.
"Died an old maid. There was something curious between her and her only
brother who had helped to stop the runaway match. Nobody knows what it
was: but when Sir Felix died--as he did about ten years after--
she packed up and went somewhere to the North of England and settled.
They say she and her brother never spoke: which was carrying her anger
at his interference rather far, 'specially as she remained good friends
with her father."
He broke off here to fetch up the second course. We talked no more, for
I was pondering his tale and disinclined to be diverted to other topics.
Nor can I tell whether the rest of the meal was good or ill. I suppose
I ate: but it was only when the landlord swept the cloth, and produced a
bottle of port, with a plate of biscuits and another of dried raisins,
that I woke out of my musing. While I drew the arm-chair nearer the
fire, he pushed forward the table with the wine to my elbow.
After this, he poured me out a glass and fell to dusting a high-backed
chair with vigour, as though he had caught it standing at ease and were
giving it a round dozen for insubordination in the ranks. "Was there
anything more?" "Nothing, thank you." He withdrew.
I drank a couple of glasses and began meditatively to light my pipe.
I was trying to piece together these words "Philip Cardinnock--
Cicely Williams--_fui_," and to fit them into the tune that kept running
in my head.
My pipe went out. I pulled out my pouch and was filling it afresh when
a puff of wind came down the chimney and blew a cloud of blue smoke out
into the room.
The smoke curled up and spread itself over the face of the mirror
confronting me. I followed it lazily with my eyes. Then suddenly I
bent forward, staring up. Something very curious was happening to the
glass.
II.
WHAT I SAW IN THE MIRROR.
The smoke that had dimmed the mirror's face for a moment was rolling off
its surface and upwards to the ceiling. But some of it still lingered
in filmy, slowly revolving eddies. The glass itself, too, was stirring
beneath this film and running across its breadth in horizontal waves
which broke themselves silently, one after another, against the dark
frame, while the circles of smoke kept widening, as the ripples widen
when a stone is tossed into still water.
I rubbed my eyes. The motion on the mirror's surface was quickening
perceptibly, while the glass itself was steadily becoming more opaque,
the film deepening to a milky colour and lying over the surface in heavy
folds. I was about to start up and touch the glass with my hand, when
beneath this milky colour and from the heart of the whirling film, there
began to gleam an underlying brilliance after the fashion of the light
in an opal, but with this difference, that the light here was blue--
a steel blue so vivid that the pain of it forced me to shut my eyes.
When I opened them again, this light had increased in intensity.
The disturbance in the glass began to abate; the eddies revolved more
slowly; the smoke-wreaths faded: and as they died wholly out, the blue
light went out on a sudden and the mirror looked down upon me as before.
That is to say, I thought so for a moment. But the next, I found that
though its face reflected the room in which I sat, there was one
omission.
_I_ was that omission. My arm-chair was there, but no one sat in it.
I was surprised; but, as well as I can recollect, not in the least
frightened. I continued, at any rate, to gaze steadily into the glass,
and now took note of two particulars that had escaped me. The table I
saw was laid for two. Forks, knives and glasses gleamed at either end,
and a couple of decanters caught the sparkle of the candles in the
centre. This was my first observation. The second was that the colours
of the hearth-rug had gained in freshness, and that a dark spot just
beyond it--a spot which in my first exploration I had half-amusedly
taken for a blood-stain--was not reflected in the glass.
As I leant back and gazed, with my hands in my lap, I remember there was
some difficulty in determining whether the tune by which I was still
haunted ran in my head or was tinkling from within the old spinet by the
window. But after a while the music, whencesoever it came, faded away
and ceased. A dead silence held everything for about thirty seconds.
And then, still looking in the mirror, I saw the door behind me open
slowly.
The next moment, two persons noiselessly entered the room--a young man
and a girl. They wore the dress of the early Georgian days, as well as
I could see; for the girl was wrapped in a cloak with a hood that almost
concealed her face, while the man wore a heavy riding-coat. He was
booted and spurred, and the backs of his top-boots were splashed with
mud. I say the backs of his boots, for he stood with his back to me
while he held open the door for the girl to pass, and at first I could
not see his face.
The lady advanced into the light of the candles and threw back her hood.
Her eyes were dark and frightened: her cheeks damp with rain and
slightly reddened by the wind. A curl of brown hair had broken loose
from its knot and hung, heavy with wet, across her brow. It was a
beautiful face; and I recognised its owner. She was Cicely Williams.
With that, I knew well enough what I was to see next. I knew it even
while the man at the door was turning, and I dug the nails of my right
hand into the palm of my left, to repress the fear that swelled up as a
wave as I looked straight into his face and saw--_my own self_.
But I had expected it, as I say: and when the wave of fear had passed
over me and gone, I could observe these two figures steadfastly enough.
The girl dropped into a chair beside the table, and stretching her arms
along the white cloth, bowed her head over them and wept. I saw her
shoulders heave and her twined fingers work as she struggled with her
grief. The young Squire advanced and, with a hand on her shoulder,
endeavoured by many endearments to comfort her. His lips moved
vehemently, and gradually her shoulders ceased to rise and fall.
By-and-by she raised her head and looked up into his face with wet,
gleaming eyes. It was very pitiful to see. The young man took her face
between his hands, kissed it, and pouring out a glass of wine, held it
to her lips. She put it aside with her hand and glanced up towards the
tall clock in the corner. My eyes, following hers, saw that the hands
pointed to a quarter to twelve.
The young Squire set down the glass hastily, stepped to the window and,
drawing aside the blue curtain, gazed out upon the night. Twice he
looked back at Cicely, over his shoulder, and after a minute returned to
the table. He drained the glass which the girl had declined, poured out
another, still keeping his eyes on her, and began to walk impatiently up
and down the room. And all the time Cicely's soft eyes never ceased to
follow him. Clearly there was need for hurry, for they had not laid
aside their travelling-cloaks, and once or twice the young man paused in
his walk to listen. At length he pulled out his watch, glanced from it
to the clock in the corner, put it away with a frown and, striding up to
the hearth, flung himself down in the arm-chair--the very arm-chair in
which I was seated.
As he sat there, tapping the hearth-rug with the toe of his thick
riding-boot and moving his lips now and then in answer to some
question from the young girl, I had time to examine his every feature.
Line by line they reproduced my own--nay, looking straight into his eyes
I could see through them into the soul of him and recognised that soul
for my own. Of all the passions there I knew that myself contained the
germs. Vices repressed in youth, tendencies to sin starved in my own
nature by lack of opportunity--these flourished in a rank growth.
I saw virtues, too, that I had once possessed but had lost by degrees in
my respectable journey through life--courage, generosity, tenderness of
heart. I was discovering these with envy, one by one, when he raised
his head higher and listened for a moment, with a hand on either arm of
the chair.
The next instant he sprang up and faced the door. Glancing at Cicely, I
saw her cowering down in her chair.
The young Squire had hardly gained his feet when the door flew open and
the figures of two men appeared on the threshold--Sir Felix Williams and
his only son, the father and brother of Cicely.
There, in the doorway, the intruders halted; but for an instant only.
Almost before the Squire could draw, his sweetheart's brother had sprung
forward. Like two serpents their rapiers engaged in the candle-light.
The soundless blades crossed and glittered. Then one of them flickered
in a narrow circle, and the brother's rapier went spinning from his hand
across the room.
Young Cardinnock lowered his point at once, and his adversary stepped
back a couple of paces. While a man might count twenty the pair looked
each other in the face, and then the old man, Sir Felix, stepped slowly
forward.
But before he could thrust--for the young Squire still kept his point
lowered--Cicely sprang forward and threw herself across her lover's
breast. There, for all the gentle efforts his left hand made to
disengage her, she clung. She had made her choice. There was no sign
of faltering in her soft eyes, and her father had perforce to hold his
hand.
The old man began to speak. I saw his face distorted with passion and
his lips working. I saw the deep red gather on Cicely's cheeks and the
anger in her lover's eyes. There was a pause as Sir Felix ceased to
speak, and then the young Squire replied. But his sentence stopped
midway: for once more the old man rushed upon him.
This time young Cardinnock's rapier was raised. Girdling Cicely with
his left arm he parried her father's lunge and smote his blade aside.
But such was the old man's passion that he followed the lunge with all
his body, and before his opponent could prevent it, was wounded high in
the chest, beneath the collar-bone.
He reeled back and fell against the table. Cicely ran forward and
caught his hand; but he pushed her away savagely and, with another
clutch at the table's edge, dropped upon the hearth-rug. The young man,
meanwhile, white and aghast, rushed to the table, filled a glass with
wine, and held it to the lips of the wounded man. So the two lovers
knelt.
It was at this point that I who sat and witnessed the tragedy was
assailed by a horror entirely new. Hitherto I had, indeed, seen myself
in Squire Philip Cardinnock; but now I began also to possess his soul
and feel with his feelings, while at the same time I continued to sit
before the glass, a helpless onlooker. I was two men at once; the man
who knelt all unaware of what was coming and the man who waited in the
arm-chair, incapable of word or movement, yet gifted with a torturing
prescience. And as I sat this was what I saw:--
The brother, as I knelt there oblivious of all but the wounded man,
stepped across the room to the corner where his rapier lay, picked it up
softly and as softly stole up behind me. I tried to shout, to warn
myself; but my tongue was tied. The brother's arm was lifted. The
candlelight ran along the blade. Still the kneeling figure never
turned.
And as my heart stiffened and awaited it, there came a flash of pain--
one red-hot stroke of anguish.
III.
WHAT I SAW IN THE TARN.
As the steel entered my back, cutting all the cords that bound me to
life, I suffered anguish too exquisite for words to reach, too deep for
memory to dive after. My eyes closed and teeth shut on the taste of
death; and as they shut a merciful oblivion wrapped me round.
When I awoke, the room was dark, and I was standing on my feet. A cold
wind was blowing on my face, as from an open door. I staggered to meet
this wind and found myself groping along a passage and down a staircase
filled with Egyptian darkness. Then the wind increased suddenly and
shook the black curtain around my senses. A murky light broke in on me.
I had a body. That I felt; but where it was I knew not. And so I felt
my way forward in the direction where the twilight showed least dimly.
Slowly the curtain shook and its folds dissolved as I moved against the
wind. The clouds lifted; and by degrees I grew aware that I was
standing on the barren moor. Night was stretched around to the horizon,
where straight ahead a grey bar shone across the gloom. I pressed on
towards it. The heath was uneven under my feet, and now and then I
stumbled heavily; but still I held on. For it seemed that I must get to
this grey bar or die a second time. All my muscles, all my will, were
strained upon this purpose.
Drawing nearer, I observed that a wave-like motion kept passing over
this brighter space, as it had passed over the mirror. The glimmer
would be obscured for a moment, and then re-appear. At length a gentle
acclivity of the moor hid it for a while. My legs positively raced up
this slope, and upon the summit I hardly dared to look for a moment,
knowing that if the light were an illusion all my hope must die with it.
But it was no illusion. There was the light, and there, before my feet,
lay a sable sheet of water, over the surface of which the light was
playing. There was no moon, no star in heaven; yet over this desolate
tarn hovered a pale radiance that ceased again where the edge of its
waves lapped the further bank of peat. Their monotonous wash hardly
broke the stillness of the place.
The formless longing was now pulling at me with an attraction I could
not deny, though within me there rose and fought against it a horror
only less strong. Here, as in the Blue Room, two souls were struggling
for me. It was the soul of Philip Cardinnock that drew me towards the
tarn and the soul of Samuel Wraxall that resisted. Only, what was the
thing towards which I was being pulled?
I must have stood at least a minute on the brink before I descried a
black object floating at the far end of the tarn. What this object was
I could not make out; but I knew it on the instant to be that for which
I longed, and all my will grew suddenly intent on drawing it nearer.
Even as my volition centred upon it, the black spot began to move slowly
out into the pale radiance towards me. Silently, surely, as though my
wish drew it by a rope, it floated nearer and nearer over the bosom of
the tarn; and while it was still some twenty yards from me I saw it to
be a long black box, shaped somewhat like a coffin.
There was no doubt about it. I could hear the water now sucking at its
dark sides. I stepped down the bank, and waded up to my knees in the
icy water to meet it. It was a plain box, with no writing upon the lid,
nor any speck of metal to relieve the dead black: and it moved with the
same even speed straight up to where I stood.
As it came, I laid my hand upon it and touched wood. But with the touch
came a further sensation that made me fling both arms around the box and
begin frantically to haul it towards the shore.
It was a feeling of suffocation; of a weight that pressed in upon my
ribs and choked the lungs' action. I felt that I must open that box or
die horribly; that until I had it upon the bank and had forced the lid
up I should know no pause from the labour and torture of dying.
This put a wild strength into me. As the box grated upon the few
pebbles by the shore, I bent over it, caught it once more by the sides,
and with infinite effort dragged it up out of the water. It was heavy,
and the weight upon my chest was heavier yet: but straining, panting,
gasping, I hauled it up the bank, dropped it on the turf, and knelt over
it, tugging furiously at the lid.