THAT NIGHT.
Cosmo’s temporary quarters were in one of two or three chambers
above his own, formerly occupied by domestics, when there were many
more of them about the place. He went to bed, but, after about
three hours, woke very cold--so cold that he could not go to sleep
again. He got up, heaped on his bed everything protective he could
find, and tried again. But it was of no avail. Cosmo could keep
himself warm enough in the open air, or if he could not, he did not
mind; but to be cold in bed was more than he would willingly
endure. He got up again--with an idea. Why should he not amuse
himself, rather than lie shivering on couch inhospitable? When
anything disturbed him of a summer night, as a matter of course he
got up and went out; and although naturally he was less inclined on
such a night as this, when the rooks would be tumbling dead from
the boughs of the fir-trees, he yet would, rather than lie
sleepless with cold.
On the opposite side of the court, in a gap between the stable and
the byre, the men had heaped up the snow from the rest of the yard,
and in the heap Cosmo had been excavating. For snow-balling he had
little inclination, but the snow as a plastic substance, a thing
that could be compelled into shapes, was an endless delight to him,
and in connection with this mound he had conceived a new fancy,
which, this very night, but for the interruption of their visitors,
he would already have put to the test.
Into the middle of the mound he had bored a tunnel, and then
hollowed out what I may call a negative human shape--the mould, as
it were, of a man, of life-size, with his arms thrown out, and his
feet stretched straight, like one that had fallen, and lay in
weariness. His object was to illuminate it, in the hope of “a man
all light, a seraph man,” shining through the snow. That very night
he had intended, on his return from Muir of Warlock, to light him
up; and now that he was driven out by the cold, he would brave, in his
own den, in the heart of the snow, the enemy that had roused
him, and make his experiment.
He dressed himself, crept softly out, and, for a preparation, would
have a good run. He trotted down the hill, beating his feet hard,
until he reached the more level road, where he set out at full
speed, and soon was warm as any boy need care to be.
About three o’clock in the morning, the laird woke suddenly,
without knowing why. But he was not long without knowing why he
should not go to sleep again. From a distance, as it seemed,
through the stillness of the night, in rapid succession, came three
distinct shrieks, one close on the other, as from the throat of a
human being in mortal terror. Never had such shrieks invaded his
ears. Whether or not they came from some part of his own house, he
could not tell. He sprung upon the floor, thinking first of his
boy, and next of the old man whom he had left drunk in his bed, and
dressed as fast as he could, expecting every moment a fresh assault
of horrible sound. But all he heard was the hasty running of far
off feet. He hurried down, passing carefully his mother’s door, but
listening as he passed, in the hope of finding she had not been
disturbed. He heard nothing, and went on. But in truth the old lady
lay trembling, too terrified to move or utter a sound. In the next
room he heard Grizzie moving, as if, like himself, getting up with
all speed. Down to the kitchen he ran, in haste to get out and
reach the great door. But when he opened the kitchen door, a
strange sight met his eyes, and for a moment arrested him.
The night was dark as pitch, for, though the snow had ceased to
fall, great clouds of it yet filled the vault of the sky, and
behind them was no moon from which any smallest glimmer might come
soaking through. But, on the opposite side of the court, the heap
of snow familiar to his eyes was shining with an unknown, a faint,
phosphorescent radiance. The whole heap was illuminated, and was
plainly visible: but the strangest thing was, that the core of the
light had a vague _shadowy_ resemblance--if one may use the word of a
shape of _light_--to the form of a man. There were the body and
out-stretched limbs of one who had cast himself supine in sorest
weariness, ready for the grave which had found him. The vision
flickered, and faded and revived, and faded again, while, in his
wonder forgetting for one brief moment the cries that had roused
him, the laird stood and gazed. It was the strangest, ghostliest
thing he had ever seen! Surely he was on the point of discovering
some phenomenon hitherto unknown! What Grizzie would have taken it
for, unhappily we do not know, for, just as the laird heard her
footsteps on the stair, and he was himself starting to cross the
frozen space between, the light, which had been gradually paling,
suddenly went out. With its disappearance he bethought himself, and
hurried towards the great door, with Grizzie now at his heels.
He opened it. All was still. Feeling his way in the thick darkness, he
went softly up the stair.
Cosmo had but just left the last remnants of his candle-ends
burning, and climbed glowing to his room, delighted with the
success of his experiment, when those quick-following, hideous
sounds rent the night, like flashes from some cloud of hellish
torture. His heart seemed to stand still. Without knowing why,
involuntarily he associated them with what he had been last about,
and for a moment felt like a murderer. The next he caught up his
light, and rushed from the room, to seek, like his father, that of
their guest.
As he reached the bottom of the first stair, the door of his own
room opened, and out came Lady Joan, with a cloak thrown over her
night-gown, and looking like marble, with wide eyes. But Cosmo felt it
was not she who had shrieked, and passing her without a second
look, led the way down, and she followed.
When the laird opened the door of the guest-chamber, there was his
boy in his clothes, with a candle in his hand, and the lady in her
night-gown, standing in the middle of the floor, and looking down
with dismayed countenances. There lay Lord Mergwain!--or was it but
a thing of nought--the deserted house, of a living soul? The face
was drawn a little to one side, and had a mingled expression, of
horror--which came from within, and of ludicrousness, which had an
outside formal cause. Upon closer investigation, the laird almost
concluded he was dead; but on the merest chance something must be
done. Cosmo seemed dazed, and Lady Joan stood staring with lost
look, more of fright than of sorrow, but there was Grizzie, peeping
through between them, with bright searching eyes! On her
countenance was neither dismay, anxiety, nor distraction. She
nodded her head now and then as she gazed, looking as if she had
expected it all, and here it was.
“Rin an’ fess het watter as fest ’s ye can, Grizzie,” said the
laird. “My dear Lady Joan, go and dress, or you will be frozen to
death. We will do all we can. Cosmo, get the fire up as quickly as
possible--it is not quite out. But first you and I must get him
into bed, and cover him up warm, and I will rub his hands and feet
till the hot water comes.”
As the laird said, everyone did. A pail of hot water was soon
brought, the fire was soon lighted, and the lady soon returned more
warmly clad. He made Grizzie put the pail on a chair by the
bed-side, and they got his feet in without raising him, or taking
him out of the blankets. Before long he gave a deep sigh, and
presently showed other signs of revival. When at length he opened
his eyes, he stared around him wildly, and for a moment it seemed
to all of them he had lost his reason. But the laird said he might
not yet have got over the drink he had taken, and if he could be
got to sleep, he would probably wake better. They therefore removed
some more of his clothes, laid him down again, and made him as
comfortable as they could, with hot bottles about him. The laird
said he would sit with him, and call Lady Joan if needful. To judge
by her behaviour, he conjectured such a catastrophe was not
altogether strange to her. She went away readily, more like one
relieved than anxious.
But there had arisen in the mind of the laird a fear: might not
Cosmo unwittingly have had some share in the frightful event? When
first he entered the room, there was Cosmo, dressed, and with a
light in his hand: the seeming phosphorescence in the snow must
have been one of his _ploys_, and might not that have been the source
of the shock to the dazed brain of the drinker?
His lordship was breathing more softly and regularly, though every
now and then half waking with a cry--a dreadful thing to hear from
a sleeping _old man_. They drew their chairs close to the fire and to
each other, and Cosmo, as was usual with him, laid his hand on his
father’s knee.
“Did you observe that peculiar appearance in the snow-heap, on the
other side of the court, Cosmo?” asked the laird.
“Yes, papa,” replied the boy: “I made it myself.” And therewith he
told him all about it. “You’re not vexed with me, are you, papa?”
he added, seeing the laird look grave.
“No, my son,” answered his father; “I am only uneasy lest that
should have had anything to do with this sad affair.”
“How could that be, papa?” asked Cosmo.
“He may have looked out of the window and seen it, and, in the
half-foolish state he was in, taken it for something supernatural.”
“But why should that have done him any harm?”
“It may have terrified him.”
“Why should it terrify him?” said Cosmo.
“There may be things we know nothing of,” replied his father, “to
answer that question. I cannot help feeling rather uneasy about
it.”
“Did _you_ see anything frightful about my man of light, papa?”
inquired Cosmo.
“No,” answered his father, thoughtfully; “but the thing, you see,
was in the shape of a man--a man lying at full length as if he were
dead, and indeed in his grave: he might take it for his wraith--an
omen of his coming end.”
“But he is an Englishman, papa, and the English don’t believe in
the second sight.”
“That does make it less likely.--Few lowlanders do.”
“Do you believe in it, papa?”
“Well, you see,” returned the laird, with a small smile, “I, like
yourself, am neither pure highlander nor pure lowlander, and the
natural consequence is, I am not very sure whether I believe in it
or not. I have heard stories difficult to explain.”
“Still,” said Cosmo, “my lord would be more to blame than me, for
no man with a good conscience would have been so frightened as that,
even if it had been his wraith.”
“That may be true;--still, a man cannot help being especially sorry
anything should happen to a stranger in his house. You and I,
Cosmo, would have our house a place of refuge.--But you had better
go to bed now. There is no reason in tiring two people, when one is
enough.”
“But, papa, I got up because I was so cold I could not sleep. If
you will let me, I would much rather sit with you. I shall be much
more comfortable here.”
That his son should have been cold in the night distressed the
laird. He felt as if, for the sake of strangers, he had neglected
his own--the specially sent. He would have persuaded Cosmo to go to
his father’s bed, which was in a warmer room, but the boy begged so
to be allowed to remain that he yielded.
They had talked in a low voice for fear of disturbing the sleeper,
and now were silent. Cosmo rolled himself in his plaid, lay down at
his father’s feet, and was soon fast asleep: with his father there,
the chamber had lost all its terrors, and was just like any other
home-feeling room of the house. Many a time in after years did that
night, that room, that fire, and the feeling of his father over his
head, while the bad lord lay snoring within the dark curtains, rise
before him; and from the memory he would try to teach himself,
that, if he were towards his great Father in his house as he was
then towards his earthly father in his, he would never fear
anything.
To know one’s-self as safe amid storm and darkness, amid fire and
water, amid disease and pain, even during the felt approach of
death, is to be a Christian, for that is how the Master felt in the
hour of darkness, because he knew it a fact.
All night long, at intervals, the old man moaned, and every now and
then would mutter sentences unintelligible to the laird, but sown
with ugly, sometimes fearful words. In the gray of the morning he
woke.
“Bring me brandy,” he cried in a voice of discontent.
The laird rose and went to him. When he saw the face above him, a
horror came upon his--a look like that they found frozen on it.
“Who are you?” he gasped. “Where am I?”
“You came here in the storm last night, my lord,” said the laird.
“Cursed place! I never had such horrible dreams in my life. Where
am I--do you hear? Why don’t you answer me?”
“You are at Castle Warlock, my lord,” replied the laird.
At this he shrieked, and, throwing off the clothes, sprung from the
bed.
“I entreat you, my lord, to lie down again. You were very ill in
the night,” expostulated the laird.
“I don’t stop another hour in the blasted hole!” roared his guest,
in a fierce quaver. “Out of my way you fool! Where’s Joan? Tell her
to get up and come directly. I’m off, tell her. I’d as soon go to
bed in the drifts as stop another hour in this abominable old
lime-kiln.”
The laird let him rave on: it was useless to oppose him. He flew at
his clothes to dress himself, but his poor old hands trembled with
rage, fear, drink, and eagerness. The laird did his best to help
him, but he seemed nowise recognizant.
“I will get you some hot water, my lord,” he said at length, and
was moving towards the door.
“No,--you!--everybody!” shrieked the old man. “If you go out of
that door, I will throw myself out of this window.”
The laird turned at once, and in silence waited on him like a
servant. “He must be in a fit of delirium tremens!” he said to
himself. He poured him out some cold water, but he would not use
it. He would neither eat nor drink nor wash till he was out of the
horrible dungeon, he said. The next moment he cried for water,
drank three mouthfuls eagerly, threw the tumbler from him, and
broke it on the hearth.
The instant he was dressed, he dropped into the great chair and
closed his eyes.
“Your lordship must allow me to fetch some fuel,” said the laird;
“the room is growing cold.”
“No, I tell you!” cried Lord Mergwain, opening his eyes and sitting
up. “When I’m cold I’ll go to--. If you attempt to leave the room,
I’ll send a bullet after you.--God have mercy! what’s that at my
feet?”
“It is only my son,” replied the laird gently. “We have been with
you all night--since you were taken ill, that is.”
“When was that? What do you mean by that?” he said, looking up
sharply, with a face of more intelligence than he had yet shown.
“Your lordship had some sort of fit in the night, and if you do not
compose yourself, I dread a return of it.”
“You well may, if I stop here,” he returned--then, after a pause,
“Did I talk?” he asked.
“Yes, my lord--a good deal.”
“What did I say?”
“Nothing I could understand, my lord.”
“And you did your best, I don’t doubt!” rejoined his lordship with
a sneer. “But you know nothing is to be made of what a man says in
a fit.”
“I have told your lordship I heard nothing.”
“No matter; I don’t sleep another night under your roof.”
“That will be as it may, my lord.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the weather, my lord.--Cosmo!”
The boy was still asleep, but at the sound of his name from his
father’s lips, he started at once to his feet.
“Go and wake Grizzie,” said the laird, “and tell her to get
breakfast ready as fast as she can. Then bring some peat for the
fire, and some hot water for his lordship.”
Cosmo ran to obey. Grizzie had been up for more than an hour, and
was going about with the look of one absorbed in a tale of magic
and devilry. Her mouth was pursed up close, as if worlds should not
make her speak, but her eyes were wide and flashing, and now and
then she would nod her head, as for the Q. E. D. to some unheard
argument. Whatever Cosmo required, she attended to at once, but not
one solitary word did she utter.
He went back with the fuel, and they made up the fire. Lord
Mergwain was again lying back exhausted in his chair, with his eyes
closed.
“Why don’t you give me my brandy--do you hear?” all at once he
cried. “--Oh, I thought it was my own rascal! Get me some brandy,
will you?”
“There is none in the house, my lord,” said his host.
“What a miserable sort of public to keep! No brandy!”
“My lord, you are at Castle Warlock--not so good a place for your
lordship’s needs.”
“Oh, that’s it, yes! I remember! I knew your father, or your
grandfather, or your grandson, or somebody--the more’s my curse!
Out of this I must be gone, and that at once! Tell them to put the
horses to. Little I thought when I left Cairntod where I was going
to find myself! I would rather be in--and have done with it! Lord!
Lord! to think of a trifle like that not being forgotten yet! Are
there no doors out? Give me brandy, I say. There’s some in my
pocket somewhere. Look you! I don’t know what coat I had on
yesterday! or where it is!”
He threw himself back in his chair. The laird set about looking if
he had brought the brandy of which he spoke; it might be well to
let him have some. Not finding it, he would have gone to search the
outer garments his lordship had put off in the kitchen; but he
burst out afresh:
“I tell you--and confound you, I see that you have to be told
twice--I will not be left alone with that child! He’s as good as
nobody! What could _he_ do if--” Here he left the sentence
unfinished.
“Very well, my lord,” responded the laird, “I will not leave you.
Cosmo shall go and look for the brandy-flask in your lordship’s
greatcoat.”
“Yes, yes, good boy! you go and look for it. You’re all Cosmos, are
you? Will the line never come to an end! A cursed line for me--if
it shouldn’t be a rope-line! But I had the best of the game after
all!--though I did lose my two rings. Confounded old cheating son
of a porpus! It was doing the world a good turn, and Glenwarlock a
better to--Look you! what are you listening there for!--Ha! ha! ha!
I say, now--would you hang a man, laird--I mean, when you could get
no good out of it--not a ha’p’orth for yourself or your family?”
“I’ve never had occasion to consider the question,” answered the
laird.
“Ho! ho! haven’t you? Let me tell you it’s quite time you
considered it. It’s no joke when a man has to decide without time
to think. He’s pretty sure to decide wrong.”
“That depends, I should think, my lord, on the way in which he has
been in the habit of deciding.”
“Come now! none of your Scotch sermons to me! You Scotch always
were a set of down-brown hypocrites! Confound the whole nation!”
“To judge by your last speech, my lord,--”
“Oh, by my last speech, eh? By my dying declaration? Then I tell
you ’tis fairer to judge a man by anything sooner than his speech.
That only serves to hide what he’s thinking. I wish I might be
judged by mine, though, and not by my deeds. I’ve done a good many
things in my time I would rather forget, now age has clawed me in
his clutch. So have you; so has everybody. I don’t see why I should
fare worse than the rest.”
Here Cosmo returned with the brandy-flask, which he had found in
his greatcoat. His lordship stretched out both hands to it, more
eagerly even than when he welcomed the cob-webbed magnum of
claret--hands trembling with feebleness and hunger for strength.
Heedless of his host’s offer of water and a glass, he put it to his
mouth, and swallowed three great gulps hurriedly. Then he breathed
a deep breath, seemed to say with Macbeth, “Ourselves again!” drew
himself up in a chair, and glanced around him with a look of
gathering arrogance. A kind of truculent question was in his
eyes--as much as to say, “Now then, what do you make of it all?
What’s your candid notion about me and my extraordinary behaviour?”
After a moment’s silence,--
“What puzzles me is this,” he said, “how the deuce I came, of all
places, to come just here! I don’t believe, in all my wicked
life, I ever made such a fool of myself before--and I’ve made many
a fool of myself too!”
Receiving no answer, he took another pull at his flask. The laird
stood a little behind and watched him, harking back upon old
stories, putting this and that together, and resolving to have a
talk with old Grannie.
A minute or two more, and his lordship got up, and proceeded to
wash his face and hands, ordering Cosmo about after the things he
wanted, as if he had been his valet.
“Richard’s himself again!” he said in a would-be jaunty voice, the
moment he had finished his toilet, and looked in a crow-cocky kind
of a way at the laird. But the latter thought he saw trouble still
underneath the look.
“Now, then, Mr. Warlock, where’s this breakfast of yours?” he said.
“For that, my lord,” replied the laird, “I must beg you to come to
the kitchen. The dining-room in this weather would freeze the very
marrow of your bones.”
“And look you! it don’t want freezing,” said his lordship, with a
shudder. “The kitchen to be sure!--I don’t desire a better place.
I’ll be hanged if I enter this room again!” he muttered to
himself--not too low to be heard. “My tastes are quite as simple as
yours, Mr. Warlock, though I have not had the same opportunity of
indulging them.”
He seemed rapidly returning to the semblance of what he would have
called a gentleman.
He rose, and the laird led the way. Lord Mergwain followed; and
Cosmo, coming immediately behind, heard him muttering to himself
all down the stairs: “Mere confounded nonsense! Nothing whatever
but the drink!--I must say I prefer the day-light after all.--Yes!
that’s the drawing-room.--What’s done’s done--and more than done,
for it can’t be done again!”
It was a nipping and an eager air into which they stepped from the
great door. The storm had ceased, but the snow lay much deeper, and
all the world seemed folded in a lucent death, of which the white
mounds were the graves. All the morning it had been snowing busily,
for no footsteps were between the two doors but those of Cosmo.
When they reached the kitchen, there was a grand fire on the
hearth, and a great pot on the fire, in which the porridge Grizzie
had just made was swelling in huge bubbles that burst in sighs. Old
Grizzie was bright as the new day, bustling and deedy. Her sense of
the awful was nowise to be measured by the degree of her dread: she
believed and did not fear--much. She had an instinctive
consciousness that a woman ought to be, and might be, and was a
match for the devil.
“I am sorry we have no coffee for your lordship,” said the laird,
“To tell the truth, we seldom take anything more than our country’s
porridge. I hope you can take tea? Our Grizzie’s scons are good,
with plenty of butter.”
His lordship had in the meantime taken another pull at the
brandy-flask, and was growing more and more polite.
“The man would be hard to please,” he said, “who would not be
enticed to eat by such a display of good victuals. Tea for me,
before everything!--How am I to pretend to swallow the stuff?” he
murmured, rather than muttered, to himself.--“But,” he went on
aloud, “didn’t that cheating rascal leave you--”
He stopped abruptly, and the laird saw his eyes fixed upon
something on the table, and following their look, saw it was a
certain pepper-pot, of odd device--a piece of old china, in the
shape of a clumsily made horse, with holes between the ears for the
issue of the pepper.
“I see, my lord,” he said, “you are amused with the pepper-pot. It
is a curious utensil, is it not? It has been in the house a long
time--longer than anybody knows. Which of my great-grandmothers let
it take her fancy, it is impossible to say; but I suppose the
reason for its purchase, if not its manufacture, was, that a horse
passant has been the crest of our family from time immemorial.”
“Curse the crest, and the horse too!” said his lordship.
The laird started. His guest had for the last few minutes been
behaving so much like a civilized being, that he was not prepared
for such a sudden relapse into barbarity. But the entrance of Lady
Joan, looking radiant, diverted the current of things.
The fact was, that, like not a few old people, Lord Mergwain had
fallen into such a habit of speaking in his worse moods without the
least restraint, that in his better moods, which were indeed only
good by comparison, he spoke in the same way, without being aware
of it, and of himself seldom discovering that he had spoken.
The rest of the breakfast passed in peace. The visitors had tea,
oatcake, and scons, with fresh butter and jam; and Lady Joan, for
all the frost and snow, had yet a new-laid egg--the only one; while
the laird and Cosmo ate their porridge and milk--the latter very
scanty at this season of the year, and tasting not a little of
turnip--and Grizzie, seated on a stool at some distance from the
table, took her porridge with treacle. Mrs. Warlock had not yet
left her room.
When the meal was over, Lord Mergwain turned to his host, and said,
“Will you oblige me, Mr. Warlock, by sending orders to my coachman
to have the horses put to as quickly as possible: we must not
trespass more on your hospitality.--Confound me if I stop an hour
longer in this hole of a place, though it be daylight!”
“Papa!” cried Lady Joan.
His lordship understood, looked a little confused, and with much
readiness sought to put the best face on his blunder.
“Pardon me, Mr. Warlock,” he said; “I have always had a bad habit
of speech, and now that I am an old man, I don’t improve on it.”
“Don’t mention it, my lord,” returned the laird. “I will go and see
about the carriage; but I am more than doubtful.”
He left the kitchen, and Cosmo followed him. Lord Mergwain turned
to his daughter and said,
“What does the man mean? I tell you, Joan, I am going at once. So
don’t you side with him if he wants us to stop. He may have his
reasons. I knew this confounded place before you were born, and I
hate it.”
“Very good, papa!” replied Lady Joan, with a slight curl of her
lip. “I don’t see why you should fancy I should like to stop.”
They had spoken aloud, regardless of the presence of Grizzie.
“May it be lang afore ye’re in a waur an’ a warmer place, my lord
an’ my lady,” said the old woman, with the greatest politeness of
manner she knew how to assume. When people were rude, she thought
she had a right to be rude in return. But they took no more notice
than if they had not heard.