A REAPPEARANCE.
On the day following that of our adventure Harry was due at
Yokestone. I had arranged to walk part of the way with him, for we had
much and momentous matter to discuss--our discovery, and the
responsibility, moral and legal, which it entailed upon us, to wit.
But, to my disturbance, the morning found Uncle Jenico knocked up with
a chill; and the dear soul’s hope that I would stay to keep him
company was so patent, that I had not the heart to disoblige him. I
just took an opportunity to run out and tell Harry I could not come,
and to re-decide with him upon postponing all action until we could
consider the matter in its every bearing; and then returned, very much
depressed, I must own, to my duty.
I don’t know if any suspicion of the past, any premonition as to the
future was operating in the old man’s mind. Pure spirits, one must
think, must be strangely sensitive to any disturbance in their moral
atmosphere. He was certainly oddly solicitous about me, wistfully
attentive, loth that I should leave him, and for my sake, not his own.
But after dinner, as luck would have it, he fell asleep in his chair,
and, restless beyond endurance, I took the chance to go for a stroll.
Once outside the door, I hesitated. I had not yet slept soundly or
exhaustively enough to shake off all the horror of our late
experience. I dreaded to go by the hill; I dreaded to go by the beach;
but at last the prospective quiet of the latter drew me, and I turned
my face seawards.
I had expected to find the shore deserted, and so, reaching the cliff
edge, was put out a little to see a figure, that of a stranger,
already down there before me. It went to and fro, this figure, on the
fringe of the surf, thoughtfully, its head bent, its hands clasped
behind its back--a lean, small old man, it seemed. But I observed it
with unspeculative eyes, because of my pondering all the time,
abstractedly and rather dismally, on the events of yesterday.
We had not canvassed our adventure much as yet, Harry and I. The shock
and the shame of it, the body and brain-weariness, had disinclined us,
during our walk home, to comment on a very frightening experience, out
of the reach of whose shadow we could not escape, for all our
hurrying. Morning, indeed, found it still with us, like a motionless
fog, which, however, we should have endeavoured to dissipate by the
breath of frank discussion, had not Uncle Jenico’s illness supervened.
In consequence of which I had to face the rather depressing prospect
of enduring for a whole day and night the burden of unrelieved
silence. Still, about one thing we had been agreed: that we must weigh
all the pros and cons before deciding to suppress or confess our
discovery. At first, I had been for telling Mr. Sant everything the
moment he returned; for he was away in London, as it chanced, on a
short visit. But Harry had at once vetoed the idea.
“It wouldn’t be fair to foist all the responsibility on him,” he had
said, emphatically. “Being a parson, he’d be bound to call in the law,
and if he did that, his influence here would be lost, and you might
burst your cheeks trying to whistle it back. Who knows who’d be found
to be mixed up in the business, if once we talked? Most of the
village, likely. And we’re not going to do anything to force him into
becoming unpopular, and losing what he’s been years in getting.”
“But, Mrs. Puddephatt,” I had complained feebly, “said the village had
nothing to do with it.”
“Nonsense!” Harry had answered. “She didn’t neither. She said that
Dunberry and the Dutchmen worked separate, with Rampick for
go-between.”
“Well,” I had still protested, “isn’t that much the same?”
“Much the same, you gaby!” he had cried. “O yes, of course! Much the
same as if two engine wheels connected by a rod turned up their noses
about knowing one another.”
The technical inspiration of his simile had thereupon surprised him
into a grin, and me, even, into a dismally funny attempt at a
retort:--
“Well, they _would_ move in different circles, you know. But we’ll
sleep on it--that’s the best; and thrash it out between us to-morrow.”
That, however, as I have explained, we were debarred from doing; and
now there was nothing for me but to possess my troubled soul in
patience until Harry’s return. In Uncle Jenico, we had neither of us
thought for a moment of confiding. Some instinctive sense of his lack
of grasp, of his unpractical weakness prevented us. We would not
confound or agitate the dear old fellow; and so here, in the result, I
was solitarily and tragically cogitating our problem on the cliff
edge.
We had, indeed, already come to one conclusion too obvious for
dispute. The secret entrance to the smugglers’ lair had been patently
near the spot whence we had emerged, and the significance of the now
obliterated cliff-path was thus revealed. Those, however, were points
which only concerned indirectly the main sources of our confusion,
which sources were necessarily the nature of the tragedy and Rampick’s
presumptive connection with it. There lay the deep core of the
shadow--the stress of the moral obligations our reckless adventure had
imposed upon us. We had opened the forbidden chamber, and our fingers
were bloody.
Was it murder, in short? And, if so, was Rampick an accessory? And, if
so, were we also become accessories?
I started at the thought, and went hurriedly down the Gap impelled by
a sudden vision, It took the form of a tax-cart, and a handcuffed man
in it being carried off to Ipswich Gaol. I felt the cold grip of the
iron on my own wrists, and had to thrust my hands deep into my
breeches’ pockets for some familiar reassurance of warmth. The
stranger still paced the sands, a mechanic irritating figure. Now
noticing my advent, he stopped to regard me, his hands behind his
back, the wind gently undulating his coat-tails. Going northwards, I
should come under the rake of his eyes. My nerves were on the jump. I
flounced peevishly, and went down the coast, till, come opposite the
scene of our yesterday’s escapade, I stopped involuntarily and stared
up.
I had not intended to. I could master the inclination no more than I
could the morbid concentration of my thoughts. They were drawn like
smoke into that black gash high up in the cliff.
It was not very noticeable even now. Another storm, any hurricane of
rain, might seal it once more, and close the evidence of our passage
thereby. Why let any thought of our responsibility to it vex us? Our
enterprise had been a purely private one, and----
Like a blow came the memory of Rampick’s cognisance of it, of my
vision of him hurrying agitated for the Gap as I was drawn in. He had
seen us enter; possibly, emerge. He must at least suspect us of having
made some sort of discovery, and his knowledge of our knowledge was
the terror.
I still stared up. If it was really murder, then, and this man an
accessory?
He might have been, and yet none know the truth of his guilt but
himself. Grant it a fact that the local and foreign gangs had worked
apart. Had he not been, according to the same authority, their
connecting link? What more likely then that he alone of all alive
should be informed of the real nature of the act which at a stroke had
shattered his connection? It would account for his eternal haunting of
the neighbourhood, for his terror lest some one, exploring too far,
should unearth his secret--if guilty secret it were. And what proof of
that? Why, none that was direct--no proof of anything; not of murder,
certainly. And yet I was as sure as if my soul had witnessed it that
murder, in deed or intention, had been committed. It was the position,
the _settlement_ of the bodies, flung down with all that atmosphere of
deadly suggestion. I felt that I could restore the scene, as sculptors
restore a statue from a few significant fragments. That the man under
the stone had been attacked, and had fired in a desperate
self-defence, accidentally sending all to perdition, I had no doubt.
He might have been a spy, a deposed chief--his clothing seemed to
pronounce him above the order of the rest--he might have been one of,
or other than themselves; he had precipitated a greater tragedy in
trying to avert a lesser, of that I was sure. And Rampick?
It all resolved upon him, this doubt, this haunting stress of
conscience--all concentrated itself upon the wretched, degraded
creature in the tissue of whose story our destiny had entangled us. I
stirred, and gave a little groan.
“Ha!” exclaimed a voice at my elbow.
With a shock I jerked round; and there was the stranger of the sands
come softly up, and intently scrutinising me.
I felt unreasoningly ashamed, as if caught in some self-soliloquy. My
face went like fire. “What do you----” I was beginning loud enough;
and on the instant bit my teeth on the cry, and stood gaping. I could
feel my jaw slackening idiotically. Minute by minute, it seemed to me,
we stood silent there, regarding one another.
“Mr. Pilbrow!” I whispered at last.
It all came back to me across that shining gulf of years. I had forded
the valley in the mean time, descending into deep glens and
unremembering woods, distancing for ever, as I had supposed, the
landmarks of childhood. And, lo! climbing the further side, and
looking back, here was the past quite close; for the valley had been
but a little fairy cleft after all, and all the time the memory of old
things had been waiting there for me to resume them. Six years, with
their fulness of growth and interest, stood between me and this man;
yet I saw and knew him as if the interval were but a span. The story
of him, the tragedy of my own connection with it, became in this
moment the instant thing with me, bridging the abysmal lapse between.
He was not much changed, it is true. The face was the same haunting
unearthly mask which had hung up before me in the court. A gurgoyle, I
had called it; and still the stony inhumanity of it was the first
thing to impress me. It was older only, and more scarred by wind and
weather. The drench of unhealing waters had streaked its forehead and
darkened the pits of its eyes; but with no other result than to
emphasize the fire in them, and intensify the loneliness of the lost
soul they windowed. I gave a little foolish fluttering laugh.
“So you remember me?” he said.
“Yes,” I answered. “But how do you know me?”
That was the wonder, indeed. Medusa might not change to Perseus as
Perseus to Medusa.
“Were you looking for me?” I asked. “Did you know I was living here?”
He shook his head slightly.
“No more, young sir, than I know the ultimate goal of my destiny.”
It suddenly occurred to me that, after all, he had said nothing to
associate me with any memory of his own. I blushed like a fool, and
stammered out--
“I suppose you aren’t mistaking----”
He put up his hand to interrupt me.
“Your father gave his life for me, sir. Not a shadowed feature, not a
transmitted gesture of his, but I should feel myself cursed for
failing to identify, if I lived to the age of Methuselah. You are
Master Richard Bowen. You will hardly deny it, I think.”
I giggled again, more foolish than ever.
“No, I won’t,” I said. “And have you yet found Abel, Mr. Pilbrow?”
Now, in a wonderful way, my ingenuous question wrought a sudden
transformation in the man. As once before, his hand swept the hard
evil from his eyes, and when those looked at me again, they were as
soft as a weary woman’s. The change was infinitely pathetic,
illuminating; and in the light of it, I seemed to see for the first
time how worn was this poor creature, how tired and woeful, and how,
perhaps, he wore his outlawry for a mask.
“If I doubted before, could I doubt now!” he cried. “Staunch, and
unspoiled by the years! And how could it be otherwise with _his_ son!”
He had seized my hands in his; and, embarrassed as I was, his words
moved me to a strange understanding.
“Mr. Pilbrow,” I cried, as I had cried those long years before, “he
said you did not do it.”
He gazed at me rapturously a moment, then fell to urging me to walk
with him.
“Come,” he cried. “I must move, or I shall be a woman. Ask me, ask me
everything. This accident--this destiny--this heart-filling spring in
the desert! No, I have not found Abel, my friend, my dear friend,
though I have never ceased to seek him, like the spectral dog I am.”
I thought of the werewolf of Mr. Sant’s story. So damned, so
abhorrent, so pitiful appeared this grey shadow moving at my side. He
put his arm within mine, and hurried me up and down the desolate
beach. The grinding of the sea seemed to hush itself, the drooping
pall of sky to rise aloof from us. I was full of excitement and
agitation, carried altogether without the oppression of the thoughts
which had been vexing me.
“Ask,” he cried, feverishly pressing my arm. “Give me the chance to
unburden my heart to my one true friend, I do believe, God help me, in
all the world! I have not found Abel, Richard--ah! may I call you
Richard?--I have not found Abel, though through these long years I
have never ceased to hunt him--his shadow, some sound of his voice,
some track of his footsteps.”
“To right yourself with the world?” I asked.
“Let it fall from me--the vampire!” he cried, contemptuously. “You are
all the world I care, as your father was before you. It is not Abel I
want, Richard; it is the secret he carried away with him--the secret,
or the clue to it, which I have maddened after, pursuing it, the
wicket friar’s-lantern, down the long mire of these coasts.”
“Secret?” I said, wondering. “What secret?”
“The book,” he answered--snapped, rather.
I turned and stared at him as we walked.
“You mean the book that--that you fought about?”
He nodded.
“Why,” I sniggered, incredulous, “was it worth all this?”
He did not resent my youthful irony--met it with a solemn
self-deprecation, in fact.
“God knows, dear boy!” he said. “This, and more, I thought once. Now,
Richard, forbear to indulge a lust till it masters you. I have damned
myself like the wandering Jew. I have no rest in rest. The quest has
become an obsession, a craze, which not even the discovery of the
treasure itself could, I believe, appease.”
“Phew!” I whistled, soft and amazed. “A treasure, was it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And somewhere on these coasts, I think you said?”
“Somewhere on these east coasts.”
I stopped in sheer excitement.
“I don’t wonder. They are choke full of--of things. And have you been
tramping them ever since I saw you last?”
“On and off; up and down; to and fro.”
“It must have been tiring, and--and a bit expensive.”
He smacked his hand to his breast.
“There is a hundred or two left here yet. ‘Equity’--you remember your
friend’s words?--‘equity is justice.’”
“You got your thousand pounds?”
“I got my thousand pounds.”
A longish silence fell between us.
“Mr. Pilbrow,” I said at last, “what has brought you here?”
“Destiny,” he answered at once; “yours and mine.”
“It was quite accidental, this meeting?”
“As the world would consider it--quite.”
“Well,” I said, after a pause, “it is very wonderful; and most of all
your knowing me again. I--I hope you will be here a day or two. I must
be going home.”
He looked at me with his strange wolf’s eyes.
“I only arrived last night,” he said. “You live here?--but, of
course.”
“I live here--have lived, ever since that time, with my guardian.”
He started back with a gesture of repulsion.
“Not that man, that crow, that Quayle?”
I laughed. He had no sense of humour. In all my knowledge of him I
never knew him even to smile.
“O dear no!” I said. “A very different person; my uncle, Mr. Paxton.”
“He could not be too different to satisfy me as your guardian,” he
responded grimly. Then his face softened, and he took my hands in his.
“So long as I stay,” he said sorrowfully, “you will let me see you
sometimes?”
Now, at that, my heart melted to him. He was so fierce, so vicious to
the rest of the world, it was a certain glory to be his chosen.
“Won’t you come and see my uncle?” I said. “He is at home, not very
well. He knows all about that trial, Mr. Pilbrow, and--and he loved my
father dearly.”
I believe there were tears sprung to his eyes. I turned away abashed.
“Does he love _you_?” he asked low.
“He lives for me, I think.”
“Then,” he said, “we shall have that sympathy in common, and I will
risk it.”
All the way back I chattered to him of my life since we had last met.
He had been so associated with my father’s end, I could not shake off
the impression that we were old friends. He listened intently, sharing
in all my sympathies, grinding his teeth over my little local
misfortunes. And when we reached our door, he took my hand again
before entering, and said in a full voice, “Thy people shall be my
people, and thy God my God.”