On hearing Lady Marion’s voice, Rees felt his heart stand still. It
was by this time quite dark in the cavernous chamber, so that he could
only guess that she must have been watching, unseen by him, for an
hour or more. He had a few moments to consider what he should do, for
at the first sound of her voice he had stepped back hastily into the
black shadow of one of the corners of the chamber, from whence he
could observe her figure as long as she remained with her back to the
faint light at the entrance.
“I know you are here, Rees. What are you doing?” she repeated.
And she passed with careful feet through the doorway, and began to
advance towards the middle of the vaulted room.
Rees, interrupted thus, as he believed, on the brink of an important
discovery, and afraid every moment that Lady Marion’s feet would touch
the iron grating he had just partly unearthed, felt that he could have
killed her. But there was no time to be lost in explosions of
resentment. The intruder had to be treated with, and at once. Throwing
himself on his hands and knees, he crept hastily towards the doorway
by which she had entered, while the slight noise he made in gliding
over the rocky floor and the smooth-trodden earth which had in course
of time accumulated over great part of it, was drowned by her own
constant and excited calls to him by name. He slipped through the
opening quickly, and ran up the rickety wooden steps which now
connected these lower chambers of the ruins with those above.
A dozen steps more brought him to the open air, in the inner courtyard
of the castle. Thence a little hazardous climbing enabled him to reach
the outer wall, at a point immediately above the chamber in which he
had been at work. Leaning over the ruined stonework so that his voice
might penetrate through the embrasure of the great window below, he at
last answered her repeated calls.
“Hallo!” he cried. “Hallo! Who’s that down there? Is it you, Mrs.
Crow? Do you want to shut up early to-night, eh?”
“It is I, Lady Marion Cenarth,” answered a voice from the window
below, tartly.
“You, Lady Marion, you!” cried Rees with well-acted astonishment.
“Why, are you down in those dungeons? You’ll catch your death of
cold.”
Rees would not have believed, ten minutes before, that he, the
open-hearted, the recklessly sincere, could have assumed a sentiment
he did not feel. But the hunger for hidden gold, the desire to keep
his fancied discovery secret, had already done their work upon him.
“Can’t you find your way out? Shall I come down and help you out?”
No answer at first. But she had evidently heard him, for her cries
ceased. Rees climbed down much more slowly than he had come up, went
to the top of the wooden steps, and called again.
“Lady Marion, Lady Marion, are you still there? Shall I come down and
help you?”
She was stumbling towards him over the uneven floor. He leapt down and
offered the assistance of his hand. There was only just light enough
for her to see it, and for the first moment she refused haughtily,
shrinking back as if the very offer had been an insult. The next, she
characteristically tried to atone for this conduct by excessive
humility, and seized his arm with pathetic eagerness. Rees, impatient
and annoyed, helped her up the shaking steps without another word,
while she muttered lame apologies for troubling him to come to her.
When they reached the open air, however, and she was able to see his
face, the suspicions which had brought her to the castle returned in
full force.
“Rees,” she said, assuming an air of searching penetration, “it is of
no use trying to deceive me. What makes you come here night after
night? You do, I know, for I have just found it out from Mrs. Crow,
and she says you never miss a single evening. And who is there about
besides you? When I got down to that dungeon I distinctly heard
somebody digging. The sound left off as soon as I called you, so I am
certain there was some one.”
“Really, Lady Marion, I don’t think I am responsible for every noise
heard in this old ruin, and don’t know why I should be put through a
long catechism about my movements here, when the place is free to
every rat and bird in the country!”
In her usual blundering, tactless way the girl continued:
“The rats and birds only come to find a shelter. I don’t see what a
man should come here for late at night, unless he’s a thief.”
Of course this speech, according a little, as it did, with the feeling
in his own conscience, maddened Rees.
“And, pray, is that the category in which you place me, your ladyship?
Do you think I have formed a design for carrying off the castle, stone
by stone, and building it up somewhere else?”
“No,” answered she, “of course not. But how about the treasure lost in
the Civil War?”
“Treasure!” echoed Rees, with a long, loud laugh of scornful
amusement, which his intense excitement enabled him to simulate quite
naturally. “Oh, if you believe that story, of course you can believe
anything. If you were to hear I was a murderer, you would take it for
granted. I think you will feel easier if I relieve you of my presence.
It’s not pleasant for a lady to be alone with a rogue so late in the
evening.”
He raised his cap, and was hurrying in the direction of the principal
gate, and had reached the outer court of the castle, when Lady Marion,
always weak when she ought to have been strong, ran after him in the
humblest of moods.
“Rees! Rees!” she cried, “I didn’t mean what I said. Come back! I’m
going to Mrs. Crow for a candle, and I’m going to hunt through those
rooms that we call the dungeons, for I’m sure I heard some one there.
Won’t you help me?”
Rees grew hot with fright. How on earth was he to keep her from
carrying out this fatal intention? Unluckily for him, she noticed his
hesitation, and putting a shrewd interpretation upon it, she ran on
past him, and had burst open the door of the custodian’s room before
he could stop her.
Rees was beside himself. In his rage, impatience, and confusion, no
plan for stopping her occurred to him, and he stood by the great
gateway of the castle, kicking his heels against its huge beams in
blank despair. As he did so, the gate, which alone was used now,
creaked and slowly gave way behind him. He turned, and perceived that
the big key of the gate had been left in the lock by Mrs. Crow when
she admitted Lady Marion. He thrust it open, putting his shoulder
against it impatiently, and found himself face to face with Amos
Goodhare.
Rees uttered an exclamation of relief and joy. Here was advice and
help.
“What am I to do?” he whispered hurriedly. “Lady Marion is here,
suspects something, and insists on searching the place.”
“Make up to her, of course,” said Amos, who had very nearly added “you
fool.” “Let her think you are crazy about her, and she’ll hold her
tongue safe enough. Just the kind of girl--mad as a hatter and not too
handsome; nothing like that sort to keep a man’s secret. Go in.”
Rees obeyed; indeed, Amos emphasized his injunction by a push which
sent him staggering. But as the door was drawn softly to behind him,
he felt his spirit rising in resentment at this change in the
librarian’s manner towards him. For Amos had suddenly dropped his
pedantic respectfulness, his gentle movements, had looked at him with
fierce impatience, and had been both rough and rude.
“I shall just wash my hands of the whole thing, and go home,” he said
to himself. But he hesitated, with his hand upon the gate. At that
moment Lady Marion appeared at the door of the lodge, candle in hand,
and with just a glance at him, made swiftly across the courtyard in
the direction of the “dungeons,” as the vaulted apartments overlooking
the river were called.
“You needn’t come with me, Mrs. Crow,” he heard her call out as she
ran. Rees followed her, all his anxiety about the safety of his secret
alive again. She flew over the grass, a great sparrow-legged girl, not
yet grown out of immature gawkiness, and got down the wooden steps
somehow in a wonderfully short space of time. But in her haste she let
the candle fall, and the light went out. Rees, at the top of the
steps, looked down into the black vault, where he heard her groping
about, and conceived the project of passing her again in the darkness,
finding his way into the next and lower apartment, in which he had
discovered the grating, and flattening down the earth to cover the
traces of his work.
At the doorway, however, were two steps; stumbling on the damp and
slippery surface of the second, he made enough noise for her to find
him.
“Rees,” she cried, “don’t go away. This is a horrid place; something
flapped past me. I feel quite frightened. It is you there, isn’t it?”
Thinking that, by not answering, he should alarm her still more and
induce her to find her way to the upper air, he was silent; and
creeping away into a huge arched recess in the lower apartment, he
leaned back and waited.
But Lady Marion, though susceptible to feminine fears, had some
courage and more curiosity. She hunted about on her hands and knees in
the outer room until she found her box of matches, struck one,
discovered her candle, and relighting it, prepared for an exhaustive
search.
He heard her manly footsteps--she and her sisters all wore
flat-footed, “sensible” boots--tramping over the stones and the hard
earth. He had just time to seize his pickaxe and spade, thrust them
into a heap of loose rubble that filled one corner of the recess, and
to kick a few spadefuls of earth over the uncovered grating, when she
reappeared at the doorway.
Holding her candle high, she looked round the walls suspiciously,
without condescending to take any notice of the young fellow’s
presence. Then she advanced slowly into the middle of the floor,
peering curiously at the ground beneath her feet as she did so.
Rees held his breath. The next moment, making up his mind that there
was nothing else to be done, he sprang forward and flung his arms
around her.
“Marion, Marion,” he cried, “it can’t be true that you care for me if
you won’t so much as look at me.”
The ruse succeeded. Lady Marion, who, in spite of her affectation of
mannishness, was at heart rather a limp, pliable, and easily dominated
young woman, was taken aback.
“Oh!” she exclaimed faintly, with a feeble feint of disengaging
herself.
“I suppose you don’t know--the earl won’t have let you know--that I
proposed to him for you, and that he rejected me almost as if I had
been a groom.”
“Don’t, don’t, Rees, I can’t bear it. I’ve been miserable ever since.”
“He told you then?”
“No, I guessed it from his manner, and when I found you didn’t come to
Llancader, and then I spoke to mamma, and she told me, and said it was
no use hoping. Oh, but Rees, I don’t think you can care as much as I
do! You--you think more about getting this treasure than about me. I
know you do. I know you were angry at my interrupting you. Yes, and I
believe you _were_ at work in here, and that it’s only to prevent my
finding out something that you are so nice to me now.”
She thrust him away from her, noticed the roughness of the fresh-dug
earth at her feet, and looked up at him with triumphant suspicion.
“Ah!” she cried in a whisper.
Rees was seized with a bold idea.
“Yes,” he said, “I have been digging here; I have been trying to find
the treasure. For if I could show him the way to a little fortune, the
earl could scarcely refuse to let me marry you.”
Lady Marion, fond of him as she was, had the sense to look doubtful.
“And Deborah? They say you like Deborah better than me!”
Rees was not past blushing, and he blushed now.
“Nonsense!” he said. “Look here, Marion.”
Stooping down, he scraped away the loose earth and discovered the
grating on which he had built such high hopes.
“This is what I found to-night,” said he. “It may be only the covering
of an old drain. But it may be something more. At any rate, that is my
secret, which I have confided to nobody but you. Is that confidence
enough? Now do you believe I care for you?”
It was a bold stroke, and he watched the effect in desperate
excitement. Lady Marion’s sallow face lighted up with eagerness as
great as his own as she looked down at the rusty grating, which,
slightly displaced during Rees’s labours, shook under the tread.
“But did you do it for me, Rees--really for me?” she asked still
half-doubtfully.
“If I had not, why should I confide in you? I did not want you to know
my aims yet, certainly; I was too much humiliated by your father. But
you have found me out, so you may as well know everything. Now,
Marion, if ever I get your father to accept me for a son-in-law, will
you have me?”
The poor affectionate girl was overjoyed. She hung about him, kissed
his hands and his hair, and assured him that she would wait ten years
for him if a prince were to woo her. She begged him to see her home as
far as the park gates, as a compensation for the fact that they would
have to be circumspect and content to see each other seldom. It was
Rees who, impatient at her demonstrativeness, impressed this upon her.
“But I can come and see you at the same place to-morrow evening,” said
she. “Mademoiselle de Laval always leaves us quite undisturbed in the
evening, and thinks we are busy over our Greek. I can slip out without
the least danger. I shall come; don’t be afraid.”
Rees was already wishing her or himself at the bottom of the sea.
Overwhelmed with shame and anger at his own conduct, he bade her as
hasty a farewell as she would allow, returning her passionate kisses
with embraces so reluctant and perfunctory that if she had not been so
infatuated they must have chilled her own warmth.
Then, when she had left him and disappeared through a little side-gate
into the park, he crept, with slow feet and hanging head, towards
Goodhare’s lodging.
The librarian was enjoying a frugal supper of a couple of poached
eggs, a slice of bread and butter, and a glass of milk; and as he ate
he studied a heavy, much-used volume of Cicero.
The young man shut up the book impetuously and flung himself into a
chair opposite to Amos.
“I’ve found the entrance to the passage, I believe,” said he, “a wide
grating under two feet of earth, with a couple of stone steps to be
seen underneath.”
Amos started up with an exclamation of triumph.
“And I ought to be able to take full advantage of it, for I’m on my
way to become a very finished scoundrel.”
He related the incidents of his discovery and of his interview with
Lady Marion. Goodhare listened with the ugly look of covetousness in
his eyes which had sometimes shocked Rees before now. When he had
finished, Amos burst out into a laugh of hideous, satyr-like raillery.
“Don’t pretend to be ashamed of your conquest; that sort of modesty
doesn’t deceive me. And I won’t distress you by asking for any details
of the interview.”
Rees started up, his face flushed, his hair disordered, his whole
bearing speaking of shame for himself, but also of indignation against
his companion.
“You are making me a thief, Amos; you are making me a rascal; but you
have not yet made me forget that I was born a gentleman,” said he.
The next moment, Amos meanwhile going on quietly with his poached eggs
and bread and butter, the poor lad seemed to realize what an empty
boast it was that he had uttered so proudly, and he sank down again in
his chair and buried his face in his hands. But the fascination of the
hidden treasure soon came over him again, driving out all other
thoughts and feelings. Springing up once more, and leaning across the
table to make his words more emphatic, he whispered:
“Goodhare, it’s all up with us. I left the grating exposed, and forgot
to fill up the hole in the earth above it!”
Amos had the wit to hide part of what he felt; but he betrayed enough
to show Rees a little more of the demoniacal side of his character.
The two men parted that night with hearts and minds burdened with the
deepest anxiety. The poking about with a stick of a couple of Mrs.
Crow’s children might reveal enough to set the neighborhood talking
and prying, and then good-bye to visions of a golden independence.