Next morning Rees rose with a violent headache and a feeling that
the whole world was out of joint. He was ashamed to meet Deborah,
ashamed to meet his mother, and not in the mood to bear with Hervey’s
sententiousness. So he had a hurried breakfast alone, in a ground
floor apartment, which was still, in memory of past glories, called
the “housekeeper’s room,” and slipping out by the back garden door to
avoid the rest of the household, he started for a walk by himself,
full of remorse, full of great resolutions, and a determination that
never again--no, never, for the sake of gold or for any other cause,
would he consort with the satyr-like librarian, who seemed able, by a
look, a word, to throw a taint upon all things fair and good.
Rees crossed the bridge, and sauntered along the banks of the river,
instinctively choosing the direction which brought him face to face
with the grey-walled ruins which had lately been the centre of all his
dreams. At the first sight of the castle, in the hot morning sun, he
felt that he hated it, connected as it was with all the disturbing
forces which had been agitating his formerly happy life. But as he
walked he began to feel that, whichever way he wished to look, those
broken towers, those huge piles of rough stone, were the one point in
the landscape to which his eyes must turn. They fascinated him: he
watched the new and fantastic shapes which the jagged walls formed
from every fresh bend in the river’s banks with a sense that they now
formed part of his life, and if that crumbling ruin were to disappear
from the face of the earth the world would be empty for him.
He began to live over again, in spite of himself, the adventure of the
night before; the descent of the two flights of steps, the cliff, the
groping along the passage, the glassy stare of the dead man’s eyes.
Then suddenly he was struck with the idea that down under the ground,
perhaps at that very moment underneath his feet, the dead messenger of
a dead king was still keeping watch and ward over his master’s gold.
Out here in the staring sunshine, with the hot haze dancing over the
narrow river, and the clang of the workmen’s hammers coming to his
ears from the shipbuilders’ yards, all those experiences of the
darkness seemed like a dream to him.
And yet he had seen it all with his own eyes, so he had to assure
himself; and the old louis d’or which he had picked up among the dust
of hundreds of years was still in his pocket. He drew it out and
looked at it, and the coin seemed, by its incontrovertible reality, to
put more practical thoughts into his head. That underground passage
must have an end, an opening; and that opening would probably be on
this side of the river. Slowly, thoughtfully, he retraced his steps,
until he was exactly opposite the perpendicular cliff on which the
castle, its foundations deep in the solid rock, stood.
The ground on which Rees was standing, on the opposite bank, was an
open and very undulating meadow, under the numerous hillocks of which
the imaginative could fancy the graves of the besieging Puritans to
have been made. It was so open, indeed, so fully exposed, not only to
passers by, but to occupants of the cattle lodge and of a couple of
adjacent cottages, that Amos Goodhare, in his exhaustive scourings of
the neighborhood, had never dared to carry on his researches there
except at night.
Now Rees, less cautious, found himself strolling very slowly along
with eyes fixed intently on the thick grass, which, cropped close by
cattle on the higher ground, grew thick and lush at the water’s edge.
At last he sat down immediately opposite the window in the rock which
gave light to the vaulted apartment in which his adventures had begun.
His feet were only just above the sedge, and the grassy ground on
which he was sitting was so soft from the heavy rains that he found a
great slab of earth giving way under his weight, and sliding gently
down with him towards the water. He scrambled up hastily, but in
regaining his feet he caused the displaced earth to come down still
faster, so that he fell down on his hands and knees and cut his left
wrist against a stone. This stone proved to be the upper edge of a
great slab of rock, which the freshly-moved turf had grown over and
hidden. Rees drew a long breath. Was this the other entrance to the
underground passage?
It was impossible to ascertain this now, in broad daylight, exposed to
curious eyes. With a wildly beating heart, every thought but of the
lost treasure again forgotten, Rees walked quickly away in the
direction of the town library. He felt that he was bursting with this
new discovery, that he must confide it to some one. Goodhare received
him, seated in the library, surrounded by a pile of books of
reference, the leaves of which he was busily turning for a pale,
spectacled young man, who was taking notes by his side. Rees watched
the librarian in amazement. It seemed scarcely conceivable that this
grave, reverend-looking man, absorbed in intellectual work, and taking
deep delight in it, could be the same creature whose eyes last night
had shone with evil passions and almost ghoulish greed. In another
moment, however, the spell was broken; Amos looked up, and there
passed over his face the strange change which was like the peeping out
of the spirit of evil through a hermit’s eyes. He finished his work,
however, after only a brief, respectful request to Rees to wait.
As soon as the spectacled young man had left them together, Rees,
boiling with impatience, dashed across the room and communicated his
discovery. Then they formed their plans for prosecuting the search,
but, in their dread of prying eyes, decided to put off the execution
of it until the next moonless night.
During the four following days, in the course of which they thought it
prudent not to revisit the castle, all three of the conspirators lived
in a state of intermittent fever, haunted by fears that some accident
would lay bare to others the secret which the earth had so long
hidden. These fears, however, proved unfounded. On the night when they
all groped their way to the river bank with no other light than a dark
lantern, they found the stone slab and the loosened earth exactly as
Rees had left them.
Then began a task much heavier than they had expected. The stone was
not far above high-water mark, and was situated near a bend in the
river, so that the earth had accumulated upon it, especially at its
base, during the ages which had elapsed since it was last displaced.
The three men dug alternately for more than two hours and a half
before there was any possibility of moving the stone. When they at
last got clear of the surmounting obstructions, however, the task of
raising the stone was comparatively an easy one. For, buried in the
sand beside it, was a rusty iron bar, which they used, as it had
evidently been used before, as a lever. The only thing which caused
them still to doubt whether this was indeed the entrance to the
passage was its extreme nearness to the water. However, all doubts on
this point were soon set at rest; for, on raising the stone, they
found that it covered the entrance to a narrow passage, not high
enough even for a short man to stand upright in, which sloped rapidly
down to the left, then, with a sharp curve, dipped more suddenly still
to the right.
These facts Rees, who, armed with the miner’s lantern, entered first,
ascertained after a very few minutes’ exploration. But at the bend the
air grew so foul and heavy that he retreated, and again had recourse
to his rope and his air tube. Thus equipped, he went on with his
researches, and proceeding cautiously down the second incline, which
was steep and exceedingly rough under the tread, he soon came to a
third abrupt bend, after which the passage, now grown so much steeper
that notches had been cut in the ground to help the passenger, turned
again sharply in the opposite direction. When he had gone a few steps
Rees stepped upon something, the sound of which set his heart beating
violently and caused him to come to a dead stop. The incline was so
abrupt that he had been walking with his head well back, feeling for
each notch with careful feet. Stooping down he now saw that the ground
was strewn with coins, grown dingy in the dust, but the reddish
glitter of which, when he picked some up and rubbed them on his
coat-sleeve, proclaimed them to be gold.
It was true then--the story of the lost treasure was true!
Rees climbed down the remaining steps, the nails in his boots clanking
at almost every tread against more of the scattered coins. At last he
was again on level ground. Stumbling against something, he heard the
surging sound of a sea of gold pieces, and discovered at his feet a
small clumsily fashioned chest, made of wood, covered with leather,
and strengthened by metal bands. The lid was open, and the coins with
which it had been filled were pouring from it. Rees scarcely noticed
it.
For, not a yard from where he stood, was the dead Lord Hugh of Thirsk,
the wide cavalier cloak still hanging in dusty folds from his
fleshless shoulders, the low-crowned hat, with its ragged shred of
feather, still lying at his feet.
Rees shuddered. This man, dying nobly in the execution of his
desperate duty, reproached him--stung him with a half-acknowledged
sense of a great difference. He stole closer, and by the lantern’s
weak light examined the motionless figure. The face was grey and
shrivelled, the dry lips had fallen apart, and the glassy eyes stared
out of cavernous sockets. Yet Rees fancied he saw the remains of a
noble and handsome countenance in the wreck death had made. The hair
fell, dark and lank and powdered with dust, upon the shoulders. The
withered hands still rigidly clasped the thighs, as if their owner had
determined with resolute strength of will to wait for death quietly.
The low seat on which his body rested was formed of two small chests,
of similar shape and size to that one against which Rees had stumbled.
Rough conjectures as to the events which had immediately preceded Lord
Hugh’s death flashed through Rees Pennant’s mind as he made his way
rapidly back to his companions, without disturbing by so much as a
touch the solemn peace of the dead man.
No man, Rees supposed, could have carried more than one of those
chests at a time. Small as they were, not more than twelve inches
high, by ten wide, and eight deep, the weight of each when full of
gold must have been great. Lord Hugh must have brought them down from
the castle one by one when he resolved to try to escape by risking the
unknown dangers of the disused subterranean passage. Rees pictured to
himself that he must then have found his way to the other entrance,
and either finding the stone impossible to raise, or discovering that
he was in the midst of the Puritan camp, he had crept back, perhaps
dashing to the ground in his despair the chest he had brought with
him, and having failed in his enterprise, rather than fall either
within or without the walls into the enemy’s hands, he had sat down
and calmly waited for death in the poisonous air.
This was the last of the romantic side of the adventure which Rees was
allowed to see. With his return to Goodhare and Sep came the greedy,
the base, the commonplace. When the opening of the entrance for some
hours had allowed fresh air to mingle with the poisonous gases in the
passage, which Rees’s intrusion had moreover helped to disperse, in
the cold grey light of the early morning Goodhare himself ventured to
go down, followed by Sep, and, pushing aside the body with avaricious,
ruthless hands, began to drag up one of the chests with long, lean,
clutching fingers. Lord Hugh’s dead body fell to the ground with very
little noise, his long cloak in a moment losing its shroud-like
dignity and splitting into ragged strips. Goodhare did not heed it;
Sep glanced at it with a shudder; only Rees felt still the influence
of the sentiment with which the sight of the poor cavalier had
impressed him. Then back again they all went into the chilly morning
air, carrying one of the chests with them. They worked all through the
hours of early morning, until not a single coin was left in the
cavernous passage of all the treasure which Lord Hugh had guarded so
long. They did not attempt to carry it away then, as the daylight was
growing strong, and at any moment they might be espied by some laborer
on his way to work. Leaving the chests just within the entrance to the
passage, they replaced the stone, and covered that over carefully with
the clods of turf. Then, forced to trust to chance the safety of their
fortune, they parted and returned as quickly as they could to their
homes.
On the following night they removed the whole of the gold to
Goodhare’s lodging, where Amos made a rough calculation that the value
of the gold, though much greater at the time it was first buried than
now, would prove to be about fifteen thousand pounds. Rees made some
faint suggestions about making known the discovery to Lord St.
Austell; but Goodhare, while listening gravely, said it would be
better for them first to take the gold up to London, and have the
value decided by experts. To which Rees with little persuasion, and
Sep without any, agreed.
They had made their plans for going to London, and Rees was, under the
auspices of the two other men, looking forward to this new experience
with vague delight, when Goodhare, who constantly affected to
depreciate Deborah’s charms, found an opportunity of meeting her alone
as she was returning from some trifling errand for Mrs. Pennant.
Deborah had never tried to hide her dislike and fear of the librarian
except by the barest show of civility, and therefore her surprise was
unbounded when she suddenly found that he was making her an offer of
marriage. When, not heeding her prompt refusal, he proceeded to tell
her that he had just had a large sum of money left him, and could make
her rich and independent, she drew herself up with much indignation.
“I don’t think you understand women very well, Mr. Goodhare,” she said
coldly and proudly. “The first step towards marrying a man that I
shall take will be to like him. That step, in your case, I have not
taken.”
Goodhare’s face turned the ugly grey color to which any strong feeling
brought it, and his eyes flashed.
“You are wasting your time waiting for Rees Pennant, Miss Audaer,” he
said, coolly; “he has other aims in view. In fact, perhaps I may say
you have seen the last of him. If he does ever see you again, however,
don’t be surprised if he makes you proposals less honorable than those
you have so very prettily rejected to-day.”
Deborah broke away from him with an exclamation of disgust, and ran
home as fast as she could, humiliated beyond expression by the man’s
offensive words and manner. She could not quite, try as hard as she
might, dismiss some of his words about Rees as idle ones. The young
fellow had gone out very early that morning, and had not yet returned,
although it was past dinner-time. Tea-time passed, and still he did
not come.
Then, overpowered by a dreadful presentiment, Deborah crept upstairs
to the open door of his room, and finding it empty, went in. On the
dressing-table was a note directed hastily in pencil to his mother.
She carried it with a heavy heart to Mrs. Pennant.
It was as follows:--
“My dearest old mother,
“I am off; gone, not for long, but still gone. I have got a situation
in London, and shall send you money every week, and come and see you
very soon, be sure. I couldn’t bear to say good-bye.--With all love,
your ever affectionate son,
“Rees.”
Mrs. Pennant burst into tears.
“My brave, darling boy,” she said, not willing to own she was hurt at
this leave-taking, “he was quite right, as he always is. I could not
have borne his going.”
Deborah did not answer. A great fear blanched her cheeks. Goodhare had
had money left him, and Rees had gone. After the words the librarian
had used, she could not fail to connect the two facts. Was it in
Goodhare’s service that Rees was to be employed?
If so, the one being evil and the other weak, what power could save
the man she loved from ruin?