THAT SAME NIGHT.
The wind had now risen to a hurricane--a rage of swiftness. The
house was like a rock assaulted by the waves of an ocean-tempest.
The laird had closed all the shutters, and drawn the old curtains
across them: through windows and shutters, the curtains waved in
the penetrating blasts. The sturdy old house did not shake, for
nothing under an earthquake could have made it tremble. The snow
was fast gathering in sloped heaps on the window-sills, on the
frames, on every smallest ledge where it could lie. In the midst of
the blackness and the roaring wind, the house was being covered
with spots of silent whiteness, resting on every projection, every
roughness even, of the building. In his own house as he was, a
sense of fierce desolation, of foreign invasion and siege, took
possession of the soul of the laird. He had made a huge fire, and
had heaped up beside it a great store of fuel, but, though his body
was warm and likely to be warm, his soul inside it felt the
ravaging cold outside--remorseless, and full of mock, the ghastly
power of negation and unmaking. He had got together all the screens
he could find, and with them inclosed the fireplace, so that they
sat in a citadel within a fortress. By the fire he had placed for
his lordship the antique brocade-covered sofa, that he might lie
down when he pleased, and himself occupied the great chair on the
other side. From the centre of this fire-defended heart, the room
itself outside looked cold and waste: it demanded almost courage to
leave the stockade of the screens, and venture into the campaign of
the floor beyond. And then the hell of wind and snow that raved
outside that! and the desert of air surrounding it, in which the
clouds that garnered the snow were shaken by mad winds, whirled and
tossed and buffeted, to make them yield their treasures! Lord
Mergwain heard it, and drank. The laird listened, and lifted up his
heart. Not much passed between them. The memories of the English
lord were not such as he felt it fit to share with the dull old
Scotchman beside him, who knew nothing of the world--knew neither
how pitilessly selfish, nor how meanly clever a man of this world
might be, and bate not a jot of his self admiration! Men who salute
a neighbour as a man of the world, paying him the greatest
compliment they know in acknowledging him of their kind, recoil
with a sort of fear from the man alien to their thoughts, and
impracticable for their purposes. They say “He is beyond me,” and
despise him. So is there a great world beyond them with which they
hold a frightful relationship--that of unrecognized, unattempted
duty! Lord Mergwain regarded the odd-looking laird as a fool; the
laird looked on him with something of the pity an angel must feel
for the wretch to whom he is sent to give his last chance, ere
sorer measures be taken in which angels are not the ministers.
But the wine was at last beginning to work its too oft repeated and
now nearly exhausted influence on the sagging and much frayed
nerves of the old man. A yellowish remnant of withered rose began
to smear his far-off west: he dared not look to the east; that lay
terribly cold and gray; and he smiled with a little curl of his lip
now and then, as he thought of this and that advantage he had had
in the game of life, for alas! it had never with him risen to the
dignity of a battle. He was as proud of a successful ruse, as a
hero of a well fought and well won field. “I had him there!” stood
with him for the joy of work done and salvation wrought. It was a
repulsive smile--one that might move even to hatred the onlooker
who was not yet divine enough to let the outrushing waves of pity
swamp his human judgment. It only curled the cruel-looking upper
lip, while the lower continued to hang thick, and sensual, and
drawn into a protuberance in the middle.
Gradually he seemed to himself, as he drank, to be recovering the
common sense of his self-vaunted, vigorous nature. He assured
himself that now he saw plainly the truth and fact of things--that
his present outlook and vision were the true, and the horrors of
the foregone night the weak soul-gnawing fancies bred of a
disordered stomach. He was a man once more, and beyond the sport of
a foolish imagination.
Alas for the man who draws his courage from wine! the same _alas_ for
the man whose health is its buttress! the touch of a pin on this or
that spot of his mortal house, will change him from a leader of
armies, or a hunter of tigers in the jungle, to one who shudders at
a centipede! That courage also which is mere insensibility crumbles
at once before any object of terror able to stir the sluggish
imagination. There is a fear, this for one, that for another, which
can appall the stoutest who is not one with the essential.
Lord Mergwain emerged from the influence of his imagination and his
fears, and went under that of his senses and himself. He took his
place beside the Christian in his low, common moods, when the
world, with its laws and its material insistence, presses upon him,
and he does not believe that God cares for the sparrow, or can
possibly count the hairs of his head; when the divine power, and
rule, and means to help, seem nowhere but in a passed-away fancy of
the hour of prayer. Only the Christian is then miserable, and Lord
Mergwain was relieved; for did he not then come to himself? and did
he know anything better to arrive at than just that wretched self
of his?
A glass or two more, and he laughed at the terror by night. He had
been a thorough fool not to go to bed like other people, instead of
sitting by the fire with a porridge-eating Scotchman, who regarded
him as one of the wicked, afraid of the darkness. The thought may
have passed from his mind to that of his host, for the self-same
moment the laird spoke:
“Don’t you think you had better go to bed when you have finished
your bottle, my lord?”
With the words, a cold swell, as from the returning tide of some
dead sea, so long ebbed that men had ploughed and sown and built
within its bed, stole in, swift and black, filling every cranny of
the old man’s conscious being.
“My God!” he cried; “I thought better of you than that, laird! I
took you for a man of your word! You promised to sit up with me!”
“I did, my lord, and am ready to keep my promise. I only thought
you looked as if you might have changed your mind; and in such a
night as this, beyond a doubt, bed is the best place for everybody
that has got one to go to.”
“That depends,” answered his lordship, and drank.
The laird held his peace for a time, then spoke again:
“Would your lordship think me rude if I were to take a book?”
“I don’t want a noise. It don’t go well with old wine like this:
such wine wants attention! It would spoil it. No, thank you.”
“I did not propose to read aloud, my lord--only to myself.”
“Oh! That alters the matter! That I would by no means object to. I
am but poor company!”
The laird got his “Journal,” and was soon lost in the communion of
a kindred soul.
By and by, the boat of his lordship’s brain was again drifting
towards the side of such imagination as was in him. The half-tide
restoring the physical mean was past, and intoxication was setting
in. He began to cast uneasy glances towards the book the laird was
reading. The old folio had a look of venerable significance about
it, and whether it called up some association of childhood,
concerned in some fearful fancy, or dreamfully he dreaded the
necromancer’s art, suggested by late experience, made him uneasy.
“What’s that you are reading?” he said at length. “It looks like a
book of magic.”
“On the contrary,” replied the laird, “it is a religious book of
the very best sort.”
“Oh, indeed! Ah! I have no objection to a little religion--in its
own place. There it is all right. I never was one of those
mockers--those Jacobins, those sans-culottes! Arrogant fools they
always seemed to me!”
“Would your lordship like to hear a little of the book, then?”
“No, no; by no means! Things sacred ought not to be mixed up with
things common--with such an uncommon bottle of wine, for instance.
I dictate to no one, but for my own part I keep my religion for
church. That is the proper place for it, and there you are in the
mood for it. Do not mistake me; it is out of respect I decline.”
He drank, and the laird dropt back into the depths of his volume.
The night wore on. His lordship did not drink fast. There was no
hope of another bottle, and the wine must cover the period of his
necessity: he dared not encounter the night without the sustaining
knowledge of its presence. At last he began to nod, and by slow
degrees sank on the sofa. Very softly the laird covered him, and
went back to his book.
The storm went raging on, as if it would never cease. The sense of
desolation it produced in the heart of the laird when he listened
to it was such, that with an inward shudder he closed his mind
against it, and gave all his attention to George Fox, and the
thoughts he roused. The minutes crawled slowly along. He lost all
measure of time, because he read with delight, and at last he found
himself invaded by that soft physical peace which heralds the
approach of sleep. He roused himself; he wanted to read: he was in
one of the most interesting passages he had yet come to. But
presently the sweet enemy was again within his outworks. Once more
he roused himself, heard the storm raving on--over buried graves
and curtained beds, heedless of human heeding--fell a-listening to
its shriek-broken roar, and so into a soundless and dreamless
sleep.
He woke so suddenly that for a moment he knew himself only for
somebody he knew. There lay upon him the weight of an indefinable
oppression--the horror of a darkness too vague to be combated. The
fire had burned low, and his very bones seemed to shiver. The
candle-flames were down in the sockets of the candlesticks, and the
voice of the storm was like a scream of victory. Had the cold then
won its way into the house? Was it having its deathly will of them
all? He cast his eyes on his guest. Sleeping still, he half lay,
half leaned in the corner of the sofa, breathing heavily. His face
was not to be well seen, because of the flapping and flickering of
the candle-flames, and the shadows they sent waving huge over all,
like the flaunting of a black flag. Through the flicker and the
shadow the laird was still peering at him, when suddenly, without
opening his eyes, the old man raised himself to a sitting
posture--all of a piece, like a figure of wood lifted from behind.
The laird then saw his face, and upon it the expression as of one
suffering from some horrible nightmare--so terrified was it, so
wrathful, so disgusted, all in one--and rose in haste to rouse him
from a drunken dream. But ere he reached him he opened his eyes,
and his expression changed--not to one of relief, but to utter
collapse, as if the sleep-dulled horrors of the dream had but grown
real to him as he woke. His under lip trembled like a dry yellow
leaf in a small wind; his right arm rose slowly from the shoulder
and stuck straight out in the direction of his host, while his hand
hung from the wrist; and he stared as upon one loosed from hell to
speak of horrors. But it did not seem to the laird that, although
turned straight towards him, his eyes rested on him; they did not
appear to be focused for him, but for something beyond him. It was
like the stare of one demented, and it invaded--possessed the
laird. A physical terror seized him. He felt his gaze returning
that of the man before him, like to like, as from a mirror. He felt
the skin of his head contracting; his hair was about to stand on
end! The spell must be broken! He forced himself forward a step to
lay his hand on Lord Mergwain, and bring him to himself. But his
lordship uttered a terrible cry, betwixt a scream and a yell, and
sank back on the sofa. The same instant the laird was himself
again, and sprang to him.
Lord Mergwain lay with his mouth wide open, and the same look with
which they found him the night before prostrate in the
guest-chamber. His arm stuck straight out from his body. The laird
pressed it down, but it rose again as soon as he left it. He could
not for a moment doubt the man was dead; there was that about him
that assured him of it, but what it was he could not have told.
The first thought that came to him was, that his daughter must not
see him so. He tied up his jaw, laid him straight on the sofa,
lighted fresh candles, left them burning by the dead, and went to
call Grizzie: a doctor was out of the question.
He felt his way down the dark stair, and fought it through the wind
to the kitchen, whence he climbed to Grizzie’s room. He found she
was already out of bed, and putting on her clothes. She had not
been asleep, she said, and added something obscure, which the laird
took to mean that she had been expecting a summons.
“Whan Ane’s oot, there’s nane in!” she said. “Hoo’s the auld
reprobat, laird--an’ I beg yer pardon?”
“He’s gane til ’s accoont, Grizzie,” answered the laird, in a
trembling voice.
“Say ye sae, laird?” returned Grizzie with perfect calmness. “Eh,
sirs!”
Not a single remark did she then offer. If she was cool, she was
not irreverent before the thought of the awful thing that lay
waiting her.
“Ye winna wauk the hoose, will ye, sir?” she added presently. “I
dinna think it wad be ony service to deid or livin’.”
“I’ll no du that, Grizzie; but come ye an’ luik at him,” said the
laird, “an’ tell me what ye think. I makna a doobt he’s deid, but
gien ye hae ony, we’ll du what we can; an’ we’ll sit up wi’ the
corp thegither, an’ lat yoong an’ auld tak the rist they hae mair
need o’ nor the likes o’ you an’ me.”
It was a proud moment in Grizzie’s life, one never forgotten, when
the laird addressed her thus. She was ready in a moment, and they
went together.
“The prince is haein’ his ain w’y the nicht!” she murmured to
herself, as they bored their way through the wind to the great
door.
When she came where the corpse lay, she stood for some moments
looking down upon it without uttering a sound, nor was there any
emotion in the fixed gaze of her eye. She had been brought up in a
stern and nowise pitiful school. She made neither solemn
reflection, nor uttered hope which her theology forbade her to
cherish.
“Ye think wi’ me ’at he’s deid--dinna ye, Grizzie?” said the laird,
in a voice that seemed to himself to intrude on the solemn silence.
She removed the handkerchief, and the jaw fell.
“He’s gane til ’s accoont,” she said. “It’s a great amoont; an’ mair
on ae side nor he’ll weel bide. It’s sair eneuch, laird, whan we
hae to gang at the Lord’s call, but whan the messenger comes frae
the laich yett (_low gate_), we maun jist lat gang an’ forget. But
sae lang’s he’s a man, we maun do what we can--an’ that’s what we
did last nicht; sae I’ll rin an’ get het watter.”
She did so, and they used every means they could think of for his
recovery, but at length gave it up, heaped him over with blankets,
for the last chance of spontaneous revival, and sitting down,
awaited the slow-travelling, feeble dawn.
After they had sat in silence for nearly an hour, the laird spoke:
“We’ll read a psalm thegither, Grizzie,” he said.
“Ay, du ye that, laird. It’ll haud them awa’ for the time bein’,
though it can profit but little i’ the hin’er en’.”
The laird drew from his pocket a small, much worn Bible which had
been his Marion’s, and by the body of the dead sinner, in the heart
of the howling storm and the waste of the night, his voice,
trembling with a strange emotion, rose upborne upon the glorious
words of the ninety-first psalm.
When he ended, they were aware that the storm had begun to yield,
and by slow degrees it sank as the morning came on. Till the first
faintest glimmer of dawn began to appear, nothing more was said
between them. But then Grizzie rose in haste, like one that had
overslept herself, and said:
“I maun to my wark, laird--what think ye?”
The laird rose also, and by a common impulse they went and looked
at the corpse--for corpse it now was, beyond all question, cold as
the snow without. After a brief, low-voiced conference, they
proceeded to carry it to the guest-chamber, where they laid it upon
the bed, and when Grizzie had done all that custom required, left
it covered with a sheet, dead in the room where it dared not sleep,
a mound cold and white as any snow-wreath outside. It looked as if
Winter had forced his way into the house, and left this one drift,
in signal of his capture. Grizzie went about her duties, and the
laird back to his book.
A great awe fell upon Cosmo when he heard what visit and what
departure had taken place in the midst of the storm and darkness.
Lady Joan turned white as the dead, and spoke not a word. A few
tears rolled from the luminous dark of her eyes, like the dew
slow-gathering in a night of stars, but she was very still. The
bond between her and her father had not been a pleasant one; she
had not towards him that reverence which so grandly heightens love.
She had loved him pitifully--perhaps, dreadful thought! a little
contemptuously. The laird persuaded her not to see the body; taking
every charge concerning it.
All that day things went on in the house much as usual, with a
little more silence where had been much. The wind lay moveless on
the frozen earth; the sun shone cold as a diamond; and the fresh
snow glittered and gleamed and sparkled like a dead sea of
lightning.
The laird was just thinking which of his men to send to the
village, when the door opened and in came Agnes. Grannie had sent
her, she said, to enquire after them. Grannie had had a troubled
night, and the moment she woke began to talk about the laird, and
his visitors, and what the storm must have been round lonely Castle
Warlock. The drifts were tremendous, she said, but she had made her
way without much difficulty. So the laird, partly to send Cosmo
from the house of death into the world of life, told him to go with
Aggie, and give directions to the carpenter, for the making of a
coffin.
How long the body might have to lie with them, no one could tell,
for the storm had ceased in a hard frost, and there could be no
postal communication for many days. The laird judged it better,
therefore, as soon as the shell arrived, to place the body in a
death-chapel prepared for it by nature herself. With their spades
he and Cosmo fashioned the mound, already hollowed in sport, into
the shape of a huge sarcophagus, then opened wide the side of it,
to receive the coffin as into a sepulchre in a rock. The men
brought it, laid it in, and closed the entrance again with snow.
Where Cosmo’s hollow man of light had shone, lay the body of the
wicked old nobleman.