CHAPTER I.

The Merry Men

and

Other Tales and Fables

by

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

tenth edition

LONDON

CHATTO & WINDUS

1904

Three of the following Tales have appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_;

one in _Longman’s_; one in Mr. Henry Norman’s Christmas Annual; and one

in the _Court and Society Review_. The Author desires to make proper

acknowledgements to the Publishers concerned.

Dedication

_My dear Lady Taylor_,

_To your name_, _if I wrote on brass_, _I could add nothing_; _it has

been already written higher than I could dream to reach_, _by a strong

and dear hand_; _and if I now dedicate to you these tales_, _it is not

as the writer who brings you his work_, _but as the friend who would

remind you of his affection_.

_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON_

Skerryvore, Bournemouth.

Contents

THE MERRY MEN

CHAPTER 1. EILEAN AROS

CHAPTER 2. WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS

CHAPTER 3. LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY

CHAPTER 4. THE GALE

CHAPTER 5. A MAN OUT OF THE SEA

WILL O’ THE MILL

CHAPTER 1. THE PLAIN AND THE STARS

CHAPTER 2. THE PARSON’S MARJORY

CHAPTER 3. DEATH

MARKHEIM

THRAWN JANET

OLALLA

THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD

CHAPTER 1. BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK

CHAPTER 2. MORNING TALK

CHAPTER 3. THE ADOPTION

CHAPTER 4. THE EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER

CHAPTER 5. TREASURE TROVE

CHAPTER 6. A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, IN TWO PARTS

CHAPTER 7. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF DESPREZ

CHAPTER 8. THE WAGES OF PHILOSOPHY

THE MERRY MEN

CHAPTER I.

EILEAN AROS.

It was a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on foot

for the last time for Aros. A boat had put me ashore the night before

at Grisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn afforded, and,

leaving all my baggage till I had an occasion to come round for it by

sea, struck right across the promontory with a cheerful heart.

I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did, from

an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, Gordon Darnaway, after

a poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had married a young wife in

the islands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her family; and

when she died in giving birth to a daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm,

had remained in his possession. It brought him in nothing but the means

of life, as I was well aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had

pursued; he feared, cumbered as he was with the young child, to make a

fresh adventure upon life; and remained in Aros, biting his nails at

destiny. Years passed over his head in that isolation, and brought

neither help nor contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in the

lowlands; there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my

father was the luckiest of all, for not only was he one of the last to

die, but he left a son to his name and a little money to support it. I

was a student of Edinburgh University, living well enough at my own

charges, but without kith or kin; when some news of me found its way to

Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was a man who held

blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he heard of my existence,

and taught me to count Aros as my home. Thus it was that I came to

spend my vacations in that part of the country, so far from all society

and comfort, between the codfish and the moorcocks; and thus it was

that now, when I had done with my classes, I was returning thither with

so light a heart that July day.

The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide nor high, but as

rough as God made it to this day; the deep sea on either hand of it,

full of rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen—all overlooked

from the eastward by some very high cliffs and the great peals of Ben

Kyaw. _The Mountain of the Mist_, they say the words signify in the

Gaelic tongue; and it is well named. For that hill-top, which is more

than three thousand feet in height, catches all the clouds that come

blowing from the seaward; and, indeed, I used often to think that it

must make them for itself; since when all heaven was clear to the sea

level, there would ever be a streamer on Ben Kyaw. It brought water,

too, and was mossy[5] to the top in consequence. I have seen us sitting

in broad sunshine on the Ross, and the rain falling black like crape

upon the mountain. But the wetness of it made it often appear more

beautiful to my eyes; for when the sun struck upon the hill sides,

there were many wet rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even

as far as Aros, fifteen miles away.

The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted so as nearly to

double the length of my journey; it went over rough boulders so that a

man had to leap from one to another, and through soft bottoms where the

moss came nearly to the knee. There was no cultivation anywhere, and

not one house in the ten miles from Grisapol to Aros. Houses of course

there were—three at least; but they lay so far on the one side or the

other that no stranger could have found them from the track. A large

part of the Ross is covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger

than a two-roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather

in between them where the vipers breed. Anyway the wind was, it was

always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as

moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little, your

eye would kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the very midst of

the land, on a day of wind and a high spring, I have heard the Roost

roaring, like a battle where it runs by Aros, and the great and fearful

voices of the breakers that we call the Merry Men.

Aros itself—Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call it, and they say it

means _the House of God_—Aros itself was not properly a piece of the

Ross, nor was it quite an islet. It formed the south-west corner of the

land, fitted close to it, and was in one place only separated from the

coast by a little gut of the sea, not forty feet across the narrowest.

When the tide was full, this was clear and still, like a pool on a land

river; only there was a difference in the weeds and fishes, and the

water itself was green instead of brown; but when the tide went out, in

the bottom of the ebb, there was a day or two in every month when you

could pass dryshod from Aros to the mainland. There was some good

pasture, where my uncle fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps the feed was

better because the ground rose higher on the islet than the main level

of the Ross, but this I am not skilled enough to settle. The house was

a good one for that country, two storeys high. It looked westward over

a bay, with a pier hard by for a boat, and from the door you could

watch the vapours blowing on Ben Kyaw.

On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros, these great

granite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in troops into the

sea, like cattle on a summer’s day. There they stand, for all the world

like their neighbours ashore; only the salt water sobbing between them

instead of the quiet earth, and clots of sea-pink blooming on their

sides instead of heather; and the great sea conger to wreathe about the

base of them instead of the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days

you can go wandering between them in a boat for hours, echoes following

you about the labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man

that hears that cauldron boiling.

Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are very many, and much

greater in size. Indeed, they must grow monstrously bigger out to sea,

for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them as thick

as a country place with houses, some standing thirty feet above the

tides, some covered, but all perilous to ships; so that on a clear,

westerly blowing day, I have counted, from the top of Aros, the great

rollers breaking white and heavy over as many as six-and-forty buried

reefs. But it is nearer in shore that the danger is worst; for the

tide, here running like a mill race, makes a long belt of broken

water—a _Roost_ we call it—at the tail of the land. I have often been

out there in a dead calm at the slack of the tide; and a strange place

it is, with the sea swirling and combing up and boiling like the

cauldrons of a linn, and now and again a little dancing mutter of sound

as though the _Roost_ were talking to itself. But when the tide begins

to run again, and above all in heavy weather, there is no man could

take a boat within half a mile of it, nor a ship afloat that could

either steer or live in such a place. You can hear the roaring of it

six miles away. At the seaward end there comes the strongest of the

bubble; and it’s here that these big breakers dance together—the dance

of death, it may be called—that have got the name, in these parts, of

the Merry Men. I have heard it said that they run fifty feet high; but

that must be the green water only, for the spray runs twice as high as

that. Whether they got the name from their movements, which are swift

and antic, or from the shouting they make about the turn of the tide,

so that all Aros shakes with it, is more than I can tell.

The truth is, that in a south-westerly wind, that part of our

archipelago is no better than a trap. If a ship got through the reefs,

and weathered the Merry Men, it would be to come ashore on the south

coast of Aros, in Sandag Bay, where so many dismal things befell our

family, as I propose to tell. The thought of all these dangers, in the

place I knew so long, makes me particularly welcome the works now going

forward to set lights upon the headlands and buoys along the channels

of our iron-bound, inhospitable islands.

The country people had many a story about Aros, as I used to hear from

my uncle’s man, Rorie, an old servant of the Macleans, who had

transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of the

marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-kelpie,

that dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his own among the

boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once met a piper on Sandag

beach, and there sang to him a long, bright midsummer’s night, so that

in the morning he was found stricken crazy, and from thenceforward,

till the day he died, said only one form of words; what they were in

the original Gaelic I cannot tell, but they were thus translated: “Ah,

the sweet singing out of the sea.” Seals that haunted on that coast

have been known to speak to man in his own tongue, presaging great

disasters. It was here that a certain saint first landed on his voyage

out of Ireland to convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed, I think he had

some claim to be called saint; for, with the boats of that past age, to

make so rough a passage, and land on such a ticklish coast, was surely

not far short of the miraculous. It was to him, or to some of his

monkish underlings who had a cell there, that the islet owes its holy

and beautiful name, the House of God.

Among these old wives’ stories there was one which I was inclined to

hear with more credulity. As I was told, in that tempest which

scattered the ships of the Invincible Armada over all the north and

west of Scotland, one great vessel came ashore on Aros, and before the

eyes of some solitary people on a hill-top, went down in a moment with

all hands, her colours flying even as she sank. There was some

likelihood in this tale; for another of that fleet lay sunk on the

north side, twenty miles from Grisapol. It was told, I thought, with

more detail and gravity than its companion stories, and there was one

particularity which went far to convince me of its truth: the name,

that is, of the ship was still remembered, and sounded, in my ears,

Spanishly. The _Espirito Santo_ they called it, a great ship of many

decks of guns, laden with treasure and grandees of Spain, and fierce

soldadoes, that now lay fathom deep to all eternity, done with her wars

and voyages, in Sandag bay, upon the west of Aros. No more salvos of

ordnance for that tall ship, the “Holy Spirit,” no more fair winds or

happy ventures; only to rot there deep in the sea-tangle and hear the

shoutings of the Merry Men as the tide ran high about the island. It

was a strange thought to me first and last, and only grew stranger as I

learned the more of Spain, from which she had set sail with so proud a

company, and King Philip, the wealthy king, that sent her on that

voyage.

And now I must tell you, as I walked from Grisapol that day, the

_Espirito Santo_ was very much in my reflections. I had been favourably

remarked by our then Principal in Edinburgh College, that famous

writer, Dr. Robertson, and by him had been set to work on some papers

of an ancient date to rearrange and sift of what was worthless; and in

one of these, to my great wonder, I found a note of this very ship, the

_Espirito Santo_, with her captain’s name, and how she carried a great

part of the Spaniard’s treasure, and had been lost upon the Ross of

Grisapol; but in what particular spot, the wild tribes of that place

and period would give no information to the king’s inquiries. Putting

one thing with another, and taking our island tradition together with

this note of old King Jamie’s perquisitions after wealth, it had come

strongly on my mind that the spot for which he sought in vain could be

no other than the small bay of Sandag on my uncle’s land; and being a

fellow of a mechanical turn, I had ever since been plotting how to

weigh that good ship up again with all her ingots, ounces, and

doubloons, and bring back our house of Darnaway to its long-forgotten

dignity and wealth.

This was a design of which I soon had reason to repent. My mind was

sharply turned on different reflections; and since I became the witness

of a strange judgment of God’s, the thought of dead men’s treasures has

been intolerable to my conscience. But even at that time I must acquit

myself of sordid greed; for if I desired riches, it was not for their

own sake, but for the sake of a person who was dear to my heart—my

uncle’s daughter, Mary Ellen. She had been educated well, and had been

a time to school upon the mainland; which, poor girl, she would have

been happier without. For Aros was no place for her, with old Rorie the

servant, and her father, who was one of the unhappiest men in Scotland,

plainly bred up in a country place among Cameronians, long a skipper

sailing out of the Clyde about the islands, and now, with infinite

discontent, managing his sheep and a little “long shore fishing for the

necessary bread. If it was sometimes weariful to me, who was there but

a month or two, you may fancy what it was to her who dwelt in that same

desert all the year round, with the sheep and flying sea-gulls, and the

Merry Men singing and dancing in the Roost!

CHAPTER II.

WHAT THE WRECK HAD BROUGHT TO AROS.

It was half-flood when I got the length of Aros; and there was nothing

for it but to stand on the far shore and whistle for Rorie with the

boat. I had no need to repeat the signal. At the first sound, Mary was

at the door flying a handkerchief by way of answer, and the old

long-legged serving-man was shambling down the gravel to the pier. For

all his hurry, it took him a long while to pull across the bay; and I

observed him several times to pause, go into the stern, and look over

curiously into the wake. As he came nearer, he seemed to me aged and

haggard, and I thought he avoided my eye. The coble had been repaired,

with two new thwarts and several patches of some rare and beautiful

foreign wood, the name of it unknown to me.

“Why, Rorie,” said I, as we began the return voyage, “this is fine

wood. How came you by that?”

“It will be hard to cheesel,” Rorie opined reluctantly; and just then,

dropping the oars, he made another of those dives into the stern which

I had remarked as he came across to fetch me, and, leaning his hand on

my shoulder, stared with an awful look into the waters of the bay.

“What is wrong?” I asked, a good deal startled.

“It will be a great feesh,” said the old man, returning to his oars;

and nothing more could I get out of him, but strange glances and an

ominous nodding of the head. In spite of myself, I was infected with a

measure of uneasiness; I turned also, and studied the wake. The water

was still and transparent, but, out here in the middle of the bay,

exceeding deep. For some time I could see naught; but at last it did

seem to me as if something dark—a great fish, or perhaps only a

shadow—followed studiously in the track of the moving coble. And then I

remembered one of Rorie’s superstitions: how in a ferry in Morven, in

some great, exterminating feud among the clans; a fish, the like of it

unknown in all our waters, followed for some years the passage of the

ferry-boat, until no man dared to make the crossing.

“He will be waiting for the right man,” said Rorie.

Mary met me on the beach, and led me up the brae and into the house of

Aros. Outside and inside there were many changes. The garden was fenced

with the same wood that I had noted in the boat; there were chairs in

the kitchen covered with strange brocade; curtains of brocade hung from

the window; a clock stood silent on the dresser; a lamp of brass was

swinging from the roof; the table was set for dinner with the finest of

linen and silver; and all these new riches were displayed in the plain

old kitchen that I knew so well, with the high-backed settle, and the

stools, and the closet bed for Rorie; with the wide chimney the sun

shone into, and the clear-smouldering peats; with the pipes on the

mantelshelf and the three-cornered spittoons, filled with sea-shells

instead of sand, on the floor; with the bare stone walls and the bare

wooden floor, and the three patchwork rugs that were of yore its sole

adornment—poor man’s patchwork, the like of it unknown in cities, woven

with homespun, and Sunday black, and sea-cloth polished on the bench of

rowing. The room, like the house, had been a sort of wonder in that

country-side, it was so neat and habitable; and to see it now, shamed

by these incongruous additions, filled me with indignation and a kind

of anger. In view of the errand I had come upon to Aros, the feeling

was baseless and unjust; but it burned high, at the first moment, in my

heart.

“Mary, girl,” said I, “this is the place I had learned to call my home,

and I do not know it.”

“It is my home by nature, not by the learning,” she replied; “the place

I was born and the place I’m like to die in; and I neither like these

changes, nor the way they came, nor that which came with them. I would

have liked better, under God’s pleasure, they had gone down into the

sea, and the Merry Men were dancing on them now.”

Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only trait that she shared

with her father; but the tone with which she uttered these words was

even graver than of custom.

“Ay,” said I, “I feared it came by wreck, and that’s by death; yet when

my father died, I took his goods without remorse.”

“Your father died a clean strae death, as the folk say,” said Mary.

“True,” I returned; “and a wreck is like a judgment. What was she

called?”

“They ca’d her the _Christ-Anna_,” said a voice behind me; and, turning

round, I saw my uncle standing in the doorway.

He was a sour, small, bilious man, with a long face and very dark eyes;

fifty-six years old, sound and active in body, and with an air somewhat

between that of a shepherd and that of a man following the sea. He

never laughed, that I heard; read long at the Bible; prayed much, like

the Cameronians he had been brought up among; and indeed, in many ways,

used to remind me of one of the hill-preachers in the killing times

before the Revolution. But he never got much comfort, nor even, as I

used to think, much guidance, by his piety. He had his black fits when

he was afraid of hell; but he had led a rough life, to which he would

look back with envy, and was still a rough, cold, gloomy man.

As he came in at the door out of the sunlight, with his bonnet on his

head and a pipe hanging in his button-hole, he seemed, like Rorie, to

have grown older and paler, the lines were deeplier ploughed upon his

face, and the whites of his eyes were yellow, like old stained ivory,

or the bones of the dead.

“Ay” he repeated, dwelling upon the first part of the word, “the

_Christ-Anna_. It’s an awfu’ name.”

I made him my salutations, and complimented him upon his look of

health; for I feared he had perhaps been ill.

“I’m in the body,” he replied, ungraciously enough; “aye in the body

and the sins of the body, like yoursel’. Denner,” he said abruptly to

Mary, and then ran on to me: “They’re grand braws, thir that we hae

gotten, are they no? Yon’s a bonny knock[15], but it’ll no gang; and

the napery’s by ordnar. Bonny, bairnly braws; it’s for the like o’ them

folk sells the peace of God that passeth understanding; it’s for the

like o’ them, an’ maybe no even sae muckle worth, folk daunton God to

His face and burn in muckle hell; and it’s for that reason the

Scripture ca’s them, as I read the passage, the accursed thing. Mary,

ye girzie,” he interrupted himself to cry with some asperity, “what for

hae ye no put out the twa candlesticks?”

“Why should we need them at high noon?” she asked.

But my uncle was not to be turned from his idea. “We’ll bruik[16] them

while we may,” he said; and so two massive candlesticks of wrought

silver were added to the table equipage, already so unsuited to that

rough sea-side farm.

“She cam’ ashore Februar’ 10, about ten at nicht,” he went on to me.

“There was nae wind, and a sair run o’ sea; and she was in the sook o’

the Roost, as I jaloose. We had seen her a’ day, Rorie and me, beating

to the wind. She wasnae a handy craft, I’m thinking, that

_Christ-Anna_; for she would neither steer nor stey wi’ them. A sair

day they had of it; their hands was never aff the sheets, and it

perishin’ cauld—ower cauld to snaw; and aye they would get a bit nip o’

wind, and awa’ again, to pit the emp’y hope into them. Eh, man! but

they had a sair day for the last o’t! He would have had a prood, prood

heart that won ashore upon the back o’ that.”

“And were all lost?” I cried. “God held them!”

“Wheesht!” he said sternly. “Nane shall pray for the deid on my

hearth-stane.”

I disclaimed a Popish sense for my ejaculation; and he seemed to accept

my disclaimer with unusual facility, and ran on once more upon what had

evidently become a favourite subject.

“We fand her in Sandag Bay, Rorie an’ me, and a’ thae braws in the

inside of her. There’s a kittle bit, ye see, about Sandag; whiles the

sook rins strong for the Merry Men; an’ whiles again, when the tide’s

makin’ hard an’ ye can hear the Roost blawin’ at the far-end of Aros,

there comes a back-spang of current straucht into Sandag Bay. Weel,

there’s the thing that got the grip on the _Christ-Anna_. She but to

have come in ram-stam an’ stern forrit; for the bows of her are aften

under, and the back-side of her is clear at hie-water o’ neaps. But,

man! the dunt that she cam doon wi’ when she struck! Lord save us a’!

but it’s an unco life to be a sailor—a cauld, wanchancy life. Mony’s

the gliff I got mysel’ in the great deep; and why the Lord should hae

made yon unco water is mair than ever I could win to understand. He

made the vales and the pastures, the bonny green yaird, the halesome,

canty land—

And now they shout and sing to Thee,

For Thou hast made them glad,

as the Psalms say in the metrical version. No that I would preen my

faith to that clink neither; but it’s bonny, and easier to mind. ‘Who

go to sea in ships,’ they hae’t again—

And in

Great waters trading be,

Within the deep these men God’s works

And His great wonders see.

Weel, it’s easy sayin’ sae. Maybe Dauvit wasnae very weel acquant wi’

the sea. But, troth, if it wasnae prentit in the Bible, I wad whiles be

temp’it to think it wasnae the Lord, but the muckle, black deil that

made the sea. There’s naething good comes oot o’t but the fish; an’ the

spentacle o’ God riding on the tempest, to be shure, whilk would be

what Dauvit was likely ettling at. But, man, they were sair wonders

that God showed to the _Christ-Anna_—wonders, do I ca’ them? Judgments,

rather: judgments in the mirk nicht among the draygons o’ the deep. And

their souls—to think o’ that—their souls, man, maybe no prepared! The

sea—a muckle yett to hell!”

I observed, as my uncle spoke, that his voice was unnaturally moved and

his manner unwontedly demonstrative. He leaned forward at these last

words, for example, and touched me on the knee with his spread fingers,

looking up into my face with a certain pallor, and I could see that his

eyes shone with a deep-seated fire, and that the lines about his mouth

were drawn and tremulous.

Even the entrance of Rorie, and the beginning of our meal, did not

detach him from his train of thought beyond a moment. He condescended,

indeed, to ask me some questions as to my success at college, but I

thought it was with half his mind; and even in his extempore grace,

which was, as usual, long and wandering, I could find the trace of his

preoccupation, praying, as he did, that God would “remember in mercy

fower puir, feckless, fiddling, sinful creatures here by their lee-lane

beside the great and dowie waters.”

Soon there came an interchange of speeches between him and Rorie.

“Was it there?” asked my uncle.

“Ou, ay!” said Rorie.

I observed that they both spoke in a manner of aside, and with some

show of embarrassment, and that Mary herself appeared to colour, and

looked down on her plate. Partly to show my knowledge, and so relieve

the party from an awkward strain, partly because I was curious, I

pursued the subject.

“You mean the fish?” I asked.

“Whatten fish?” cried my uncle. “Fish, quo’ he! Fish! Your een are fu’

o’ fatness, man; your heid dozened wi’ carnal leir. Fish! it’s a

bogle!”

He spoke with great vehemence, as though angry; and perhaps I was not

very willing to be put down so shortly, for young men are disputatious.

At least I remember I retorted hotly, crying out upon childish

superstitions.

“And ye come frae the College!” sneered Uncle Gordon. “Gude kens what

they learn folk there; it’s no muckle service onyway. Do ye think, man,

that there’s naething in a’ yon saut wilderness o’ a world oot wast

there, wi’ the sea grasses growin’, an’ the sea beasts fechtin’, an’

the sun glintin’ down into it, day by day? Na; the sea’s like the land,

but fearsomer. If there’s folk ashore, there’s folk in the sea—deid

they may be, but they’re folk whatever; and as for deils, there’s nane

that’s like the sea deils. There’s no sae muckle harm in the land

deils, when a’s said and done. Lang syne, when I was a callant in the

south country, I mind there was an auld, bald bogle in the Peewie Moss.

I got a glisk o’ him mysel’, sittin’ on his hunkers in a hag, as gray’s

a tombstane. An’, troth, he was a fearsome-like taed. But he steered

naebody. Nae doobt, if ane that was a reprobate, ane the Lord hated,

had gane by there wi’ his sin still upon his stamach, nae doobt the

creature would hae lowped upo’ the likes o’ him. But there’s deils in

the deep sea would yoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane doon

wi’ the puir lads in the _Christ-Anna_, ye would ken by now the mercy

o’ the seas. If ye had sailed it for as lang as me, ye would hate the

thocht of it as I do. If ye had but used the een God gave ye, ye would

hae learned the wickedness o’ that fause, saut, cauld, bullering

creature, and of a’ that’s in it by the Lord’s permission: labsters an’

partans, an’ sic like, howking in the deid; muckle, gutsy, blawing

whales; an’ fish—the hale clan o’ them—cauld-wamed, blind-eed uncanny

ferlies. O, sirs,” he cried, “the horror—the horror o’ the sea!”

We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst; and the speaker

himself, after that last hoarse apostrophe, appeared to sink gloomily

into his own thoughts. But Rorie, who was greedy of superstitious lore,

recalled him to the subject by a question.

“You will not ever have seen a teevil of the sea?” he asked.

“No clearly,” replied the other. “I misdoobt if a mere man could see

ane clearly and conteenue in the body. I hae sailed wi’ a lad—they ca’d

him Sandy Gabart; he saw ane, shure eneueh, an’ shure eneueh it was the

end of him. We were seeven days oot frae the Clyde—a sair wark we had

had—gaun north wi’ seeds an’ braws an’ things for the Macleod. We had

got in ower near under the Cutchull’ns, an’ had just gane about by soa,

an’ were off on a lang tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far’s

Copnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune smoored wi’ mist; a fine gaun

breeze upon the water, but no steedy; an’—what nane o’ us likit to

hear—anither wund gurlin’ owerheid, amang thae fearsome, auld stane

craigs o’ the Cutchull’ns. Weel, Sandy was forrit wi’ the jib sheet; we

couldnae see him for the mains’l, that had just begude to draw, when a’

at ance he gied a skirl. I luffed for my life, for I thocht we were

ower near Soa; but na, it wasnae that, it was puir Sandy Gabart’s deid

skreigh, or near hand, for he was deid in half an hour. A’t he could

tell was that a sea deil, or sea bogle, or sea spenster, or sic-like,

had clum up by the bowsprit, an’ gi’en him ae cauld, uncanny look. An’,

or the life was oot o’ Sandy’s body, we kent weel what the thing

betokened, and why the wund gurled in the taps o’ the Cutchull’ns; for

doon it cam’—a wund do I ca’ it! it was the wund o’ the Lord’s

anger—an’ a’ that nicht we foucht like men dementit, and the niest that

we kenned we were ashore in Loch Uskevagh, an’ the cocks were crawin’

in Benbecula.”

“It will have been a merman,” Rorie said.

“A merman!” screamed my uncle with immeasurable scorn. “Auld wives’

clavers! There’s nae sic things as mermen.”

“But what was the creature like?” I asked.

“What like was it? Gude forbid that we suld ken what like it was! It

had a kind of a heid upon it—man could say nae mair.”

Then Rorie, smarting under the affront, told several tales of mermen,

mermaids, and sea-horses that had come ashore upon the islands and

attacked the crews of boats upon the sea; and my uncle, in spite of his

incredulity, listened with uneasy interest.

“Aweel, aweel,” he said, “it may be sae; I may be wrang; but I find nae

word o’ mermen in the Scriptures.”

“And you will find nae word of Aros Roost, maybe,” objected Rorie, and

his argument appeared to carry weight.

When dinner was over, my uncle carried me forth with him to a bank

behind the house. It was a very hot and quiet afternoon; scarce a

ripple anywhere upon the sea, nor any voice but the familiar voice of

sheep and gulls; and perhaps in consequence of this repose in nature,

my kinsman showed himself more rational and tranquil than before. He

spoke evenly and almost cheerfully of my career, with every now and

then a reference to the lost ship or the treasures it had brought to

Aros. For my part, I listened to him in a sort of trance, gazing with

all my heart on that remembered scene, and drinking gladly the sea-air

and the smoke of peats that had been lit by Mary.

Perhaps an hour had passed when my uncle, who had all the while been

covertly gazing on the surface of the little bay, rose to his feet and

bade me follow his example. Now I should say that the great run of tide

at the south-west end of Aros exercises a perturbing influence round

all the coast. In Sandag Bay, to the south, a strong current runs at

certain periods of the flood and ebb respectively; but in this northern

bay—Aros Bay, as it is called—where the house stands and on which my

uncle was now gazing, the only sign of disturbance is towards the end

of the ebb, and even then it is too slight to be remarkable. When there

is any swell, nothing can be seen at all; but when it is calm, as it

often is, there appear certain strange, undecipherable marks—sea-runes,

as we may name them—on the glassy surface of the bay. The like is

common in a thousand places on the coast; and many a boy must have

amused himself as I did, seeking to read in them some reference to

himself or those he loved. It was to these marks that my uncle now

directed my attention, struggling, as he did so, with an evident

reluctance.

“Do ye see yon scart upo’ the water?” he inquired; “yon ane wast the

gray stane? Ay? Weel, it’ll no be like a letter, wull it?”

“Certainly it is,” I replied. “I have often remarked it. It is like a

C.”

He heaved a sigh as if heavily disappointed with my answer, and then

added below his breath: “Ay, for the _Christ-Anna_.”

“I used to suppose, sir, it was for myself,” said I; “for my name is

Charles.”

“And so ye saw’t afore?”, he ran on, not heeding my remark. “Weel,

weel, but that’s unco strange. Maybe, it’s been there waitin’, as a man

wad say, through a’ the weary ages. Man, but that’s awfu’.” And then,

breaking off: “Ye’ll no see anither, will ye?” he asked.

“Yes,” said I. “I see another very plainly, near the Ross side, where

the road comes down—an M.”

“An M,” he repeated very low; and then, again after another pause: “An’

what wad ye make o’ that?” he inquired.

“I had always thought it to mean Mary, sir,” I answered, growing

somewhat red, convinced as I was in my own mind that I was on the

threshold of a decisive explanation.

But we were each following his own train of thought to the exclusion of

the other’s. My uncle once more paid no attention to my words; only

hung his head and held his peace; and I might have been led to fancy

that he had not heard me, if his next speech had not contained a kind

of echo from my own.

“I would say naething o’ thae clavers to Mary,” he observed, and began

to walk forward.

There is a belt of turf along the side of Aros Bay, where walking is

easy; and it was along this that I silently followed my silent kinsman.

I was perhaps a little disappointed at having lost so good an

opportunity to declare my love; but I was at the same time far more

deeply exercised at the change that had befallen my uncle. He was never

an ordinary, never, in the strict sense, an amiable, man; but there was

nothing in even the worst that I had known of him before, to prepare me

for so strange a transformation. It was impossible to close the eyes

against one fact; that he had, as the saying goes, something on his

mind; and as I mentally ran over the different words which might be

represented by the letter M—misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the

like—I was arrested with a sort of start by the word murder. I was

still considering the ugly sound and fatal meaning of the word, when

the direction of our walk brought us to a point from which a view was

to be had to either side, back towards Aros Bay and homestead, and

forward on the ocean, dotted to the north with isles, and lying to the

southward blue and open to the sky. There my guide came to a halt, and

stood staring for awhile on that expanse. Then he turned to me and laid

a hand on my arm.

“Ye think there’s naething there?” he said, pointing with his pipe; and

then cried out aloud, with a kind of exultation: “I’ll tell ye, man!

The deid are down there—thick like rattons!”

He turned at once, and, without another word, we retraced our steps to

the house of Aros.

I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till after supper,

and then but for a short while, that I could have a word with her. I

lost no time beating about the bush, but spoke out plainly what was on

my mind.

“Mary,” I said, “I have not come to Aros without a hope. If that should

prove well founded, we may all leave and go somewhere else, secure of

daily bread and comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that,

which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But there’s a hope

that lies nearer to my heart than money.” And at that I paused. “You

can guess fine what that is, Mary,” I said. She looked away from me in

silence, and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be put off.

“All my days I have thought the world of you,” I continued; “the time

goes on and I think always the more of you; I could not think to be

happy or hearty in my life without you: you are the apple of my eye.”

Still she looked away, and said never a word; but I thought I saw that

her hands shook. “Mary,” I cried in fear, “do ye no like me?”

“O, Charlie man,” she said, “is this a time to speak of it? Let me be,

a while; let me be the way I am; it’ll not be you that loses by the

waiting!”

I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping, and this put me

out of any thought but to compose her. “Mary Ellen,” I said, “say no

more; I did not come to trouble you: your way shall be mine, and your

time too; and you have told me all I wanted. Only just this one thing

more: what ails you?”

She owned it was her father, but would enter into no particulars, only

shook her head, and said he was not well and not like himself, and it

was a great pity. She knew nothing of the wreck. “I havenae been near

it,” said she. “What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor

souls are gone to their account long syne; and I would just have wished

they had ta’en their gear with them—poor souls!”

This was scarcely any great encouragement for me to tell her of the

_Espirito Santo_; yet I did so, and at the very first word she cried

out in surprise. “There was a man at Grisapol,” she said, “in the month

of May—a little, yellow, black-avised body, they tell me, with gold

rings upon his fingers, and a beard; and he was speiring high and low

for that same ship.”

It was towards the end of April that I had been given these papers to

sort out by Dr. Robertson: and it came suddenly back upon my mind that

they were thus prepared for a Spanish historian, or a man calling

himself such, who had come with high recommendations to the Principal,

on a mission of inquiry as to the dispersion of the great Armada.

Putting one thing with another, I fancied that the visitor “with the

gold rings upon his fingers” might be the same with Dr. Robertson’s

historian from Madrid. If that were so, he would be more likely after

treasure for himself than information for a learned society. I made up

my mind, I should lose no time over my undertaking; and if the ship lay

sunk in Sandag Bay, as perhaps both he and I supposed, it should not be

for the advantage of this ringed adventurer, but for Mary and myself,

and for the good, old, honest, kindly family of the Darnaways.

CHAPTER III.

LAND AND SEA IN SANDAG BAY.

I was early afoot next morning; and as soon as I had a bite to eat, set

forth upon a tour of exploration. Something in my heart distinctly told

me that I should find the ship of the Armada; and although I did not

give way entirely to such hopeful thoughts, I was still very light in

spirits and walked upon air. Aros is a very rough islet, its surface

strewn with great rocks and shaggy with fernland heather; and my way

lay almost north and south across the highest knoll; and though the

whole distance was inside of two miles it took more time and exertion

than four upon a level road. Upon the summit, I paused. Although not

very high—not three hundred feet, as I think—it yet outtops all the

neighbouring lowlands of the Ross, and commands a great view of sea and

islands. The sun, which had been up some time, was already hot upon my

neck; the air was listless and thundery, although purely clear; away

over the north-west, where the isles lie thickliest congregated, some

half-a-dozen small and ragged clouds hung together in a covey; and the

head of Ben Kyaw wore, not merely a few streamers, but a solid hood of

vapour. There was a threat in the weather. The sea, it is true, was

smooth like glass: even the Roost was but a seam on that wide mirror,

and the Merry Men no more than caps of foam; but to my eye and ear, so

long familiar with these places, the sea also seemed to lie uneasily; a

sound of it, like a long sigh, mounted to me where I stood; and, quiet

as it was, the Roost itself appeared to be revolving mischief. For I

ought to say that all we dwellers in these parts attributed, if not

prescience, at least a quality of warning, to that strange and

dangerous creature of the tides.

I hurried on, then, with the greater speed, and had soon descended the

slope of Aros to the part that we call Sandag Bay. It is a pretty large

piece of water compared with the size of the isle; well sheltered from

all but the prevailing wind; sandy and shoal and bounded by low

sand-hills to the west, but to the eastward lying several fathoms deep

along a ledge of rocks. It is upon that side that, at a certain time

each flood, the current mentioned by my uncle sets so strong into the

bay; a little later, when the Roost begins to work higher, an undertow

runs still more strongly in the reverse direction; and it is the action

of this last, as I suppose, that has scoured that part so deep. Nothing

is to be seen out of Sandag Bay, but one small segment of the horizon

and, in heavy weather, the breakers flying high over a deep sea reef.

From half-way down the hill, I had perceived the wreck of February

last, a brig of considerable tonnage, lying, with her back broken, high

and dry on the east corner of the sands; and I was making directly

towards it, and already almost on the margin of the turf, when my eyes

were suddenly arrested by a spot, cleared of fern and heather, and

marked by one of those long, low, and almost human-looking mounds that

we see so commonly in graveyards. I stopped like a man shot. Nothing

had been said to me of any dead man or interment on the island; Rorie,

Mary, and my uncle had all equally held their peace; of her at least, I

was certain that she must be ignorant; and yet here, before my eyes,

was proof indubitable of the fact. Here was a grave; and I had to ask

myself, with a chill, what manner of man lay there in his last sleep,

awaiting the signal of the Lord in that solitary, sea-beat

resting-place? My mind supplied no answer but what I feared to

entertain. Shipwrecked, at least, he must have been; perhaps, like the

old Armada mariners, from some far and rich land over-sea; or perhaps

one of my own race, perishing within eyesight of the smoke of home. I

stood awhile uncovered by his side, and I could have desired that it

had lain in our religion to put up some prayer for that unhappy

stranger, or, in the old classic way, outwardly to honour his

misfortune. I knew, although his bones lay there, a part of Aros, till

the trumpet sounded, his imperishable soul was forth and far away,

among the raptures of the everlasting Sabbath or the pangs of hell; and

yet my mind misgave me even with a fear, that perhaps he was near me

where I stood, guarding his sepulchre, and lingering on the scene of

his unhappy fate.

Certainly it was with a spirit somewhat over-shadowed that I turned

away from the grave to the hardly less melancholy spectacle of the

wreck. Her stem was above the first arc of the flood; she was broken in

two a little abaft the foremast—though indeed she had none, both masts

having broken short in her disaster; and as the pitch of the beach was

very sharp and sudden, and the bows lay many feet below the stern, the

fracture gaped widely open, and you could see right through her poor

hull upon the farther side. Her name was much defaced, and I could not

make out clearly whether she was called _Christiania_, after the

Norwegian city, or _Christiana_, after the good woman, Christian’s

wife, in that old book the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” By her build she was a

foreign ship, but I was not certain of her nationality. She had been

painted green, but the colour was faded and weathered, and the paint

peeling off in strips. The wreck of the mainmast lay alongside, half

buried in sand. She was a forlorn sight, indeed, and I could not look

without emotion at the bits of rope that still hung about her, so often

handled of yore by shouting seamen; or the little scuttle where they

had passed up and down to their affairs; or that poor noseless angel of

a figure-head that had dipped into so many running billows.

I do not know whether it came most from the ship or from the grave, but

I fell into some melancholy scruples, as I stood there, leaning with

one hand against the battered timbers. The homelessness of men and even

of inanimate vessels, cast away upon strange shores, came strongly in

upon my mind. To make a profit of such pitiful misadventures seemed an

unmanly and a sordid act; and I began to think of my then quest as of

something sacrilegious in its nature. But when I remembered Mary, I

took heart again. My uncle would never consent to an imprudent

marriage, nor would she, as I was persuaded, wed without his full

approval. It behoved me, then, to be up and doing for my wife; and I

thought with a laugh how long it was since that great sea-castle, the

_Espirito Santo_, had left her bones in Sandag Bay, and how weak it

would be to consider rights so long extinguished and misfortunes so

long forgotten in the process of time.

I had my theory of where to seek for her remains. The set of the

current and the soundings both pointed to the east side of the bay

under the ledge of rocks. If she had been lost in Sandag Bay, and if,

after these centuries, any portion of her held together, it was there

that I should find it. The water deepens, as I have said, with great

rapidity, and even close along-side the rocks several fathoms may be

found. As I walked upon the edge I could see far and wide over the

sandy bottom of the bay; the sun shone clear and green and steady in

the deeps; the bay seemed rather like a great transparent crystal, as

one sees them in a lapidary’s shop; there was naught to show that it

was water but an internal trembling, a hovering within of sun-glints

and netted shadows, and now and then a faint lap and a dying bubble

round the edge. The shadows of the rocks lay out for some distance at

their feet, so that my own shadow, moving, pausing, and stooping on the

top of that, reached sometimes half across the bay. It was above all in

this belt of shadows that I hunted for the _Espirito Santo_; since it

was there the undertow ran strongest, whether in or out. Cool as the

whole water seemed this broiling day, it looked, in that part, yet

cooler, and had a mysterious invitation for the eyes. Peer as I

pleased, however, I could see nothing but a few fishes or a bush of

sea-tangle, and here and there a lump of rock that had fallen from

above and now lay separate on the sandy floor. Twice did I pass from

one end to the other of the rocks, and in the whole distance I could

see nothing of the wreck, nor any place but one where it was possible

for it to be. This was a large terrace in five fathoms of water, raised

off the surface of the sand to a considerable height, and looking from

above like a mere outgrowth of the rocks on which I walked. It was one

mass of great sea-tangles like a grove, which prevented me judging of

its nature, but in shape and size it bore some likeness to a vessel’s

hull. At least it was my best chance. If the _Espirito Santo_ lay not

there under the tangles, it lay nowhere at all in Sandag Bay; and I

prepared to put the question to the proof, once and for all, and either

go back to Aros a rich man or cured for ever of my dreams of wealth.

I stripped to the skin, and stood on the extreme margin with my hands

clasped, irresolute. The bay at that time was utterly quiet; there was

no sound but from a school of porpoises somewhere out of sight behind

the point; yet a certain fear withheld me on the threshold of my

venture. Sad sea-feelings, scraps of my uncle’s superstitions, thoughts

of the dead, of the grave, of the old broken ships, drifted through my

mind. But the strong sun upon my shoulders warmed me to the heart, and

I stooped forward and plunged into the sea.

It was all that I could do to catch a trail of the sea-tangle that grew

so thickly on the terrace; but once so far anchored I secured myself by

grasping a whole armful of these thick and slimy stalks, and, planting

my feet against the edge, I looked around me. On all sides the clear

sand stretched forth unbroken; it came to the foot of the rocks,

scoured into the likeness of an alley in a garden by the action of the

tides; and before me, for as far as I could see, nothing was visible

but the same many-folded sand upon the sun-bright bottom of the bay.

Yet the terrace to which I was then holding was as thick with strong

sea-growths as a tuft of heather, and the cliff from which it bulged

hung draped below the water-line with brown lianas. In this complexity

of forms, all swaying together in the current, things were hard to be

distinguished; and I was still uncertain whether my feet were pressed

upon the natural rock or upon the timbers of the Armada treasure-ship,

when the whole tuft of tangle came away in my hand, and in an instant I

was on the surface, and the shores of the bay and the bright water swam

before my eyes in a glory of crimson.

I clambered back upon the rocks, and threw the plant of tangle at my

feet. Something at the same moment rang sharply, like a falling coin. I

stooped, and there, sure enough, crusted with the red rust, there lay

an iron shoe-buckle. The sight of this poor human relic thrilled me to

the heart, but not with hope nor fear, only with a desolate melancholy.

I held it in my hand, and the thought of its owner appeared before me

like the presence of an actual man. His weather-beaten face, his

sailor’s hands, his sea-voice hoarse with singing at the capstan, the

very foot that had once worn that buckle and trod so much along the

swerving decks—the whole human fact of him, as a creature like myself,

with hair and blood and seeing eyes, haunted me in that sunny, solitary

place, not like a spectre, but like some friend whom I had basely

injured. Was the great treasure ship indeed below there, with her guns

and chain and treasure, as she had sailed from Spain; her decks a

garden for the seaweed, her cabin a breeding place for fish, soundless

but for the dredging water, motionless but for the waving of the tangle

upon her battlements—that old, populous, sea-riding castle, now a reef

in Sandag Bay? Or, as I thought it likelier, was this a waif from the

disaster of the foreign brig—was this shoe-buckle bought but the other

day and worn by a man of my own period in the world’s history, hearing

the same news from day to day, thinking the same thoughts, praying,

perhaps, in the same temple with myself? However it was, I was assailed

with dreary thoughts; my uncle’s words, “the dead are down there,”

echoed in my ears; and though I determined to dive once more, it was

with a strong repugnance that I stepped forward to the margin of the

rocks.

A great change passed at that moment over the appearance of the bay. It

was no more that clear, visible interior, like a house roofed with

glass, where the green, submarine sunshine slept so stilly. A breeze, I

suppose, had flawed the surface, and a sort of trouble and blackness

filled its bosom, where flashes of light and clouds of shadow tossed

confusedly together. Even the terrace below obscurely rocked and

quivered. It seemed a graver thing to venture on this place of

ambushes; and when I leaped into the sea the second time it was with a

quaking in my soul.

I secured myself as at first, and groped among the waving tangle. All

that met my touch was cold and soft and gluey. The thicket was alive

with crabs and lobsters, trundling to and fro lopsidedly, and I had to

harden my heart against the horror of their carrion neighbourhood. On

all sides I could feel the grain and the clefts of hard, living stone;

no planks, no iron, not a sign of any wreck; the _Espirito Santo_ was

not there. I remember I had almost a sense of relief in my

disappointment, and I was about ready to leave go, when something

happened that sent me to the surface with my heart in my mouth. I had

already stayed somewhat late over my explorations; the current was

freshening with the change of the tide, and Sandag Bay was no longer a

safe place for a single swimmer. Well, just at the last moment there

came a sudden flush of current, dredging through the tangles like a

wave. I lost one hold, was flung sprawling on my side, and,

instinctively grasping for a fresh support, my fingers closed on

something hard and cold. I think I knew at that moment what it was. At

least I instantly left hold of the tangle, leaped for the surface, and

clambered out next moment on the friendly rocks with the bone of a

man’s leg in my grasp.

Mankind is a material creature, slow to think and dull to perceive

connections. The grave, the wreck of the brig, and the rusty

shoe-buckle were surely plain advertisements. A child might have read

their dismal story, and yet it was not until I touched that actual

piece of mankind that the full horror of the charnel ocean burst upon

my spirit. I laid the bone beside the buckle, picked up my clothes, and

ran as I was along the rocks towards the human shore. I could not be

far enough from the spot; no fortune was vast enough to tempt me back

again. The bones of the drowned dead should henceforth roll undisturbed

by me, whether on tangle or minted gold. But as soon as I trod the good

earth again, and had covered my nakedness against the sun, I knelt down

over against the ruins of the brig, and out of the fulness of my heart

prayed long and passionately for all poor souls upon the sea. A

generous prayer is never presented in vain; the petition may be

refused, but the petitioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some

gracious visitation. The horror, at least, was lifted from my mind; I

could look with calm of spirit on that great bright creature, God’s

ocean; and as I set off homeward up the rough sides of Aros, nothing

remained of my concern beyond a deep determination to meddle no more

with the spoils of wrecked vessels or the treasures of the dead.

I was already some way up the hill before I paused to breathe and look

behind me. The sight that met my eyes was doubly strange.

For, first, the storm that I had foreseen was now advancing with almost

tropical rapidity. The whole surface of the sea had been dulled from

its conspicuous brightness to an ugly hue of corrugated lead; already

in the distance the white waves, the “skipper’s daughters,” had begun

to flee before a breeze that was still insensible on Aros; and already

along the curve of Sandag Bay there was a splashing run of sea that I

could hear from where I stood. The change upon the sky was even more

remarkable. There had begun to arise out of the south-west a huge and

solid continent of scowling cloud; here and there, through rents in its

contexture, the sun still poured a sheaf of spreading rays; and here

and there, from all its edges, vast inky streamers lay forth along the

yet unclouded sky. The menace was express and imminent. Even as I

gazed, the sun was blotted out. At any moment the tempest might fall

upon Aros in its might.

The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed my eyes on heaven

that it was some seconds before they alighted on the bay, mapped out

below my feet, and robbed a moment later of the sun. The knoll which I

had just surmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of lower hillocks

sloping towards the sea, and beyond that the yellow arc of beach and

the whole extent of Sandag Bay. It was a scene on which I had often

looked down, but where I had never before beheld a human figure. I had

but just turned my back upon it and left it empty, and my wonder may be

fancied when I saw a boat and several men in that deserted spot. The

boat was lying by the rocks. A pair of fellows, bareheaded, with their

sleeves rolled up, and one with a boathook, kept her with difficulty to

her moorings for the current was growing brisker every moment. A little

way off upon the ledge two men in black clothes, whom I judged to be

superior in rank, laid their heads together over some task which at

first I did not understand, but a second after I had made it out—they

were taking bearings with the compass; and just then I saw one of them

unroll a sheet of paper and lay his finger down, as though identifying

features in a map. Meanwhile a third was walking to and fro, polling

among the rocks and peering over the edge into the water. While I was

still watching them with the stupefaction of surprise, my mind hardly

yet able to work on what my eyes reported, this third person suddenly

stooped and summoned his companions with a cry so loud that it reached

my ears upon the hill. The others ran to him, even dropping the compass

in their hurry, and I could see the bone and the shoe-buckle going from

hand to hand, causing the most unusual gesticulations of surprise and

interest. Just then I could hear the seamen crying from the boat, and

saw them point westward to that cloud continent which was ever the more

rapidly unfurling its blackness over heaven. The others seemed to

consult; but the danger was too pressing to be braved, and they bundled

into the boat carrying my relies with them, and set forth out of the

bay with all speed of oars.

I made no more ado about the matter, but turned and ran for the house.

Whoever these men were, it was fit my uncle should be instantly

informed. It was not then altogether too late in the day for a descent

of the Jacobites; and may be Prince Charlie, whom I knew my uncle to

detest, was one of the three superiors whom I had seen upon the rock.

Yet as I ran, leaping from rock to rock, and turned the matter loosely

in my mind, this theory grew ever the longer the less welcome to my

reason. The compass, the map, the interest awakened by the buckle, and

the conduct of that one among the strangers who had looked so often

below him in the water, all seemed to point to a different explanation

of their presence on that outlying, obscure islet of the western sea.

The Madrid historian, the search instituted by Dr. Robertson, the

bearded stranger with the rings, my own fruitless search that very

morning in the deep water of Sandag Bay, ran together, piece by piece,

in my memory, and I made sure that these strangers must be Spaniards in

quest of ancient treasure and the lost ship of the Armada. But the

people living in outlying islands, such as Aros, are answerable for

their own security; there is none near by to protect or even to help

them; and the presence in such a spot of a crew of foreign

adventurers—poor, greedy, and most likely lawless—filled me with

apprehensions for my uncle’s money, and even for the safety of his

daughter. I was still wondering how we were to get rid of them when I

came, all breathless, to the top of Aros. The whole world was shadowed

over; only in the extreme east, on a hill of the mainland, one last

gleam of sunshine lingered like a jewel; rain had begun to fall, not

heavily, but in great drops; the sea was rising with each moment, and

already a band of white encircled Aros and the nearer coasts of

Grisapol. The boat was still pulling seaward, but I now became aware of

what had been hidden from me lower down—a large, heavily sparred,

handsome schooner, lying to at the south end of Aros. Since I had not

seen her in the morning when I had looked around so closely at the

signs of the weather, and upon these lone waters where a sail was

rarely visible, it was clear she must have lain last night behind the

uninhabited Eilean Gour, and this proved conclusively that she was

manned by strangers to our coast, for that anchorage, though good

enough to look at, is little better than a trap for ships. With such

ignorant sailors upon so wild a coast, the coming gale was not unlikely

to bring death upon its wings.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GALE.

I found my uncle at the gable end, watching the signs of the weather,

with a pipe in his fingers.

“Uncle,” said I, “there were men ashore at Sandag Bay—”

I had no time to go further; indeed, I not only forgot my words, but

even my weariness, so strange was the effect on Uncle Gordon. He

dropped his pipe and fell back against the end of the house with his

jaw fallen, his eyes staring, and his long face as white as paper. We

must have looked at one another silently for a quarter of a minute,

before he made answer in this extraordinary fashion: “Had he a hair kep

on?”

I knew as well as if I had been there that the man who now lay buried

at Sandag had worn a hairy cap, and that he had come ashore alive. For

the first and only time I lost toleration for the man who was my

benefactor and the father of the woman I hoped to call my wife.

“These were living men,” said I, “perhaps Jacobites, perhaps the

French, perhaps pirates, perhaps adventurers come here to seek the

Spanish treasure ship; but, whatever they may be, dangerous at least to

your daughter and my cousin. As for your own guilty terrors, man, the

dead sleeps well where you have laid him. I stood this morning by his

grave; he will not wake before the trump of doom.”

My kinsman looked upon me, blinking, while I spoke; then he fixed his

eyes for a little on the ground, and pulled his fingers foolishly; but

it was plain that he was past the power of speech.

“Come,” said I. “You must think for others. You must come up the hill

with me, and see this ship.”

He obeyed without a word or a look, following slowly after my impatient

strides. The spring seemed to have gone out of his body, and he

scrambled heavily up and down the rocks, instead of leaping, as he was

wont, from one to another. Nor could I, for all my cries, induce him to

make better haste. Only once he replied to me complainingly, and like

one in bodily pain: “Ay, ay, man, I’m coming.” Long before we had

reached the top, I had no other thought for him but pity. If the crime

had been monstrous the punishment was in proportion.

At last we emerged above the sky-line of the hill, and could see around

us. All was black and stormy to the eye; the last gleam of sun had

vanished; a wind had sprung up, not yet high, but gusty and unsteady to

the point; the rain, on the other hand, had ceased. Short as was the

interval, the sea already ran vastly higher than when I had stood there

last; already it had begun to break over some of the outward reefs, and

already it moaned aloud in the sea-caves of Aros. I looked, at first,

in vain for the schooner.

“There she is,” I said at last. But her new position, and the course

she was now lying, puzzled me. “They cannot mean to beat to sea,” I

cried.

“That’s what they mean,” said my uncle, with something like joy; and

just then the schooner went about and stood upon another tack, which

put the question beyond the reach of doubt. These strangers, seeing a

gale on hand, had thought first of sea-room. With the wind that

threatened, in these reef-sown waters and contending against so violent

a stream of tide, their course was certain death.

“Good God!” said I, “they are all lost.”

“Ay,” returned my uncle, “a’—a’ lost. They hadnae a chance but to rin

for Kyle Dona. The gate they’re gaun the noo, they couldnae win through

an the muckle deil were there to pilot them. Eh, man,” he continued,

touching me on the sleeve, “it’s a braw nicht for a shipwreck! Twa in

ae twalmonth! Eh, but the Merry Men’ll dance bonny!”

I looked at him, and it was then that I began to fancy him no longer in

his right mind. He was peering up to me, as if for sympathy, a timid

joy in his eyes. All that had passed between us was already forgotten

in the prospect of this fresh disaster.

“If it were not too late,” I cried with indignation, “I would take the

coble and go out to warn them.”

“Na, na,” he protested, “ye maunnae interfere; ye maunnae meddle wi’

the like o’ that. It’s His”—doffing his bonnet—“His wull. And, eh, man!

but it’s a braw nicht for’t!”

Something like fear began to creep into my soul and, reminding him that

I had not yet dined, I proposed we should return to the house. But no;

nothing would tear him from his place of outlook.

“I maun see the hail thing, man, Cherlie,” he explained—and then as the

schooner went about a second time, “Eh, but they han’le her bonny!” he

cried. “The _Christ-Anna_ was naething to this.”

Already the men on board the schooner must have begun to realise some

part, but not yet the twentieth, of the dangers that environed their

doomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen

how fast the current swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, as

they saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the rising swell began

to boom and foam upon another sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker

would fall in sounding ruin under the very bows of her, and the brown

reef and streaming tangle appear in the hollow of the wave. I tell you,

they had to stand to their tackle: there was no idle men aboard that

ship, God knows. It was upon the progress of a scene so horrible to any

human-hearted man that my misguided uncle now pored and gloated like a

connoisseur. As I turned to go down the hill, he was lying on his belly

on the summit, with his hands stretched forth and clutching in the

heather. He seemed rejuvenated, mind and body.

When I got back to the house already dismally affected, I was still

more sadly downcast at the sight of Mary. She had her sleeves rolled up

over her strong arms, and was quietly making bread. I got a bannock

from the dresser and sat down to eat it in silence.

“Are ye wearied, lad?” she asked after a while.

“I am not so much wearied, Mary,” I replied, getting on my feet, “as I

am weary of delay, and perhaps of Aros too. You know me well enough to

judge me fairly, say what I like. Well, Mary, you may be sure of this:

you had better be anywhere but here.”

“I’ll be sure of one thing,” she returned: “I’ll be where my duty is.”

“You forget, you have a duty to yourself,” I said.

“Ay, man?” she replied, pounding at the dough; “will you have found

that in the Bible, now?”

“Mary,” I said solemnly, “you must not laugh at me just now. God knows

I am in no heart for laughing. If we could get your father with us, it

would be best; but with him or without him, I want you far away from

here, my girl; for your own sake, and for mine, ay, and for your

father’s too, I want you far—far away from here. I came with other

thoughts; I came here as a man comes home; now it is all changed, and I

have no desire nor hope but to flee—for that’s the word—flee, like a

bird out of the fowler’s snare, from this accursed island.”

She had stopped her work by this time.

“And do you think, now,” said she, “do you think, now, I have neither

eyes nor ears? Do ye think I havenae broken my heart to have these

braws (as he calls them, God forgive him!) thrown into the sea? Do ye

think I have lived with him, day in, day out, and not seen what you saw

in an hour or two? No,” she said, “I know there’s wrong in it; what

wrong, I neither know nor want to know. There was never an ill thing

made better by meddling, that I could hear of. But, my lad, you must

never ask me to leave my father. While the breath is in his body, I’ll

be with him. And he’s not long for here, either: that I can tell you,

Charlie—he’s not long for here. The mark is on his brow; and better

so—maybe better so.”

I was a while silent, not knowing what to say; and when I roused my

head at last to speak, she got before me.

“Charlie,” she said, “what’s right for me, neednae be right for you.

There’s sin upon this house and trouble; you are a stranger; take your

things upon your back and go your ways to better places and to better

folk, and if you were ever minded to come back, though it were twenty

years syne, you would find me aye waiting.”

“Mary Ellen,” I said, “I asked you to be my wife, and you said as good

as yes. That’s done for good. Wherever you are, I am; as I shall answer

to my God.”

As I said the words, the wind suddenly burst out raving, and then

seemed to stand still and shudder round the house of Aros. It was the

first squall, or prologue, of the coming tempest, and as we started and

looked about us, we found that a gloom, like the approach of evening,

had settled round the house.

“God pity all poor folks at sea!” she said. “We’ll see no more of my

father till the morrow’s morning.”

And then she told me, as we sat by the fire and hearkened to the rising

gusts, of how this change had fallen upon my uncle. All last winter he

had been dark and fitful in his mind. Whenever the Roost ran high, or,

as Mary said, whenever the Merry Men were dancing, he would lie out for

hours together on the Head, if it were at night, or on the top of Aros

by day, watching the tumult of the sea, and sweeping the horizon for a

sail. After February the tenth, when the wealth-bringing wreck was cast

ashore at Sandag, he had been at first unnaturally gay, and his

excitement had never fallen in degree, but only changed in kind from

dark to darker. He neglected his work, and kept Rorie idle. They two

would speak together by the hour at the gable end, in guarded tones and

with an air of secrecy and almost of guilt; and if she questioned

either, as at first she sometimes did, her inquiries were put aside

with confusion. Since Rorie had first remarked the fish that hung about

the ferry, his master had never set foot but once upon the mainland of

the Ross. That once—it was in the height of the springs—he had passed

dryshod while the tide was out; but, having lingered overlong on the

far side, found himself cut off from Aros by the returning waters. It

was with a shriek of agony that he had leaped across the gut, and he

had reached home thereafter in a fever-fit of fear. A fear of the sea,

a constant haunting thought of the sea, appeared in his talk and

devotions, and even in his looks when he was silent.

Rorie alone came in to supper; but a little later my uncle appeared,

took a bottle under his arm, put some bread in his pocket, and set

forth again to his outlook, followed this time by Rorie. I heard that

the schooner was losing ground, but the crew were still fighting every

inch with hopeless ingenuity and course; and the news filled my mind

with blackness.

A little after sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, such a

gale as I have never seen in summer, nor, seeing how swiftly it had

come, even in winter. Mary and I sat in silence, the house quaking

overhead, the tempest howling without, the fire between us sputtering

with raindrops. Our thoughts were far away with the poor fellows on the

schooner, or my not less unhappy uncle, houseless on the promontory;

and yet ever and again we were startled back to ourselves, when the

wind would rise and strike the gable like a solid body, or suddenly

fall and draw away, so that the fire leaped into flame and our hearts

bounded in our sides. Now the storm in its might would seize and shake

the four corners of the roof, roaring like Leviathan in anger. Anon, in

a lull, cold eddies of tempest moved shudderingly in the room, lifting

the hair upon our heads and passing between us as we sat. And again the

wind would break forth in a chorus of melancholy sounds, hooting low in

the chimney, wailing with flutelike softness round the house.

It was perhaps eight o’clock when Rorie came in and pulled me

mysteriously to the door. My uncle, it appeared, had frightened even

his constant comrade; and Rorie, uneasy at his extravagance, prayed me

to come out and share the watch. I hastened to do as I was asked; the

more readily as, what with fear and horror, and the electrical tension

of the night, I was myself restless and disposed for action. I told

Mary to be under no alarm, for I should be a safeguard on her father;

and wrapping myself warmly in a plaid, I followed Rorie into the open

air.

The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was as dark as

January. Intervals of a groping twilight alternated with spells of

utter blackness; and it was impossible to trace the reason of these

changes in the flying horror of the sky. The wind blew the breath out

of a man’s nostrils; all heaven seemed to thunder overhead like one

huge sail; and when there fell a momentary lull on Aros, we could hear

the gusts dismally sweeping in the distance. Over all the lowlands of

the Ross, the wind must have blown as fierce as on the open sea; and

God only knows the uproar that was raging around the head of Ben Kyaw.

Sheets of mingled spray and rain were driven in our faces. All round

the isle of Aros the surf, with an incessant, hammering thunder, beat

upon the reefs and beaches. Now louder in one place, now lower in

another, like the combinations of orchestral music, the constant mass

of sound was hardly varied for a moment. And loud above all this

hurly-burly I could hear the changeful voices of the Roost and the

intermittent roaring of the Merry Men. At that hour, there flashed into

my mind the reason of the name that they were called. For the noise of

them seemed almost mirthful, as it out-topped the other noises of the

night; or if not mirthful, yet instinct with a portentous joviality.

Nay, and it seemed even human. As when savage men have drunk away their

reason, and, discarding speech, bawl together in their madness by the

hour; so, to my ears, these deadly breakers shouted by Aros in the

night.

Arm in arm, and staggering against the wind, Rorie and I won every yard

of ground with conscious effort. We slipped on the wet sod, we fell

together sprawling on the rocks. Bruised, drenched, beaten, and

breathless, it must have taken us near half an hour to get from the

house down to the Head that overlooks the Roost. There, it seemed, was

my uncle’s favourite observatory. Right in the face of it, where the

cliff is highest and most sheer, a hump of earth, like a parapet, makes

a place of shelter from the common winds, where a man may sit in quiet

and see the tide and the mad billows contending at his feet. As he

might look down from the window of a house upon some street

disturbance, so, from this post, he looks down upon the tumbling of the

Merry Men. On such a night, of course, he peers upon a world of

blackness, where the waters wheel and boil, where the waves joust

together with the noise of an explosion, and the foam towers and

vanishes in the twinkling of an eye. Never before had I seen the Merry

Men thus violent. The fury, height, and transiency of their spoutings

was a thing to be seen and not recounted. High over our heads on the

cliff rose their white columns in the darkness; and the same instant,

like phantoms, they were gone. Sometimes three at a time would thus

aspire and vanish; sometimes a gust took them, and the spray would fall

about us, heavy as a wave. And yet the spectacle was rather maddening

in its levity than impressive by its force. Thought was beaten down by

the confounding uproar—a gleeful vacancy possessed the brains of men, a

state akin to madness; and I found myself at times following the dance

of the Merry Men as it were a tune upon a jigging instrument.

I first caught sight of my uncle when we were still some yards away in

one of the flying glimpses of twilight that chequered the pitch

darkness of the night. He was standing up behind the parapet, his head

thrown back and the bottle to his mouth. As he put it down, he saw and

recognised us with a toss of one hand fleeringly above his head.

“Has he been drinking?” shouted I to Rorie.

“He will aye be drunk when the wind blaws,” returned Rorie in the same

high key, and it was all that I could do to hear him.

“Then—was he so—in February?” I inquired.

Rorie’s “Ay” was a cause of joy to me. The murder, then, had not sprung

in cold blood from calculation; it was an act of madness no more to be

condemned than to be pardoned. My uncle was a dangerous madman, if you

will, but he was not cruel and base as I had feared. Yet what a scene

for a carouse, what an incredible vice, was this that the poor man had

chosen! I have always thought drunkenness a wild and almost fearful

pleasure, rather demoniacal than human; but drunkenness, out here in

the roaring blackness, on the edge of a cliff above that hell of

waters, the man’s head spinning like the Roost, his foot tottering on

the edge of death, his ear watching for the signs of ship-wreck, surely

that, if it were credible in any one, was morally impossible in a man

like my uncle, whose mind was set upon a damnatory creed and haunted by

the darkest superstitions. Yet so it was; and, as we reached the bight

of shelter and could breathe again, I saw the man’s eyes shining in the

night with an unholy glimmer.

“Eh, Charlie, man, it’s grand!” he cried. “See to them!” he continued,

dragging me to the edge of the abyss from whence arose that deafening

clamour and those clouds of spray; “see to them dancin’, man! Is that

no wicked?”

He pronounced the word with gusto, and I thought it suited with the

scene.

“They’re yowlin’ for thon schooner,” he went on, his thin, insane voice

clearly audible in the shelter of the bank, “an’ she’s comin’ aye

nearer, aye nearer, aye nearer an’ nearer an’ nearer; an’ they ken’t,

the folk kens it, they ken wool it’s by wi’ them. Charlie, lad, they’re

a’ drunk in yon schooner, a’ dozened wi’ drink. They were a’ drunk in

the _Christ-Anna_, at the hinder end. There’s nane could droon at sea

wantin’ the brandy. Hoot awa, what do you ken?” with a sudden blast of

anger. “I tell ye, it cannae be; they droon withoot it. Ha’e,” holding

out the bottle, “tak’ a sowp.”

I was about to refuse, but Rorie touched me as if in warning; and

indeed I had already thought better of the movement. I took the bottle,

therefore, and not only drank freely myself, but contrived to spill

even more as I was doing so. It was pure spirit, and almost strangled

me to swallow. My kinsman did not observe the loss, but, once more

throwing back his head, drained the remainder to the dregs. Then, with

a loud laugh, he cast the bottle forth among the Merry Men, who seemed

to leap up, shouting to receive it.

“Ha’e, bairns!” he cried, “there’s your han’sel. Ye’ll get bonnier nor

that, or morning.”

Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred yards

away, we heard, at a moment when the wind was silent, the clear note of

a human voice. Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head, and

the Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with a new fury. But we had

heard the sound, and we knew, with agony, that this was the doomed ship

now close on ruin, and that what we had heard was the voice of her

master issuing his last command. Crouching together on the edge, we

waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable end. It was long,

however, and to us it seemed like ages, ere the schooner suddenly

appeared for one brief instant, relieved against a tower of glimmering

foam. I still see her reefed mainsail flapping loose, as the boom fell

heavily across the deck; I still see the black outline of the hull, and

still think I can distinguish the figure of a man stretched upon the

tiller. Yet the whole sight we had of her passed swifter than

lightning; the very wave that disclosed her fell burying her for ever;

the mingled cry of many voices at the point of death rose and was

quenched in the roaring of the Merry Men. And with that the tragedy was

at an end. The strong ship, with all her gear, and the lamp perhaps

still burning in the cabin, the lives of so many men, precious surely

to others, dear, at least, as heaven to themselves, had all, in that

one moment, gone down into the surging waters. They were gone like a

dream. And the wind still ran and shouted, and the senseless waters in

the Roost still leaped and tumbled as before.

How long we lay there together, we three, speechless and motionless, is

more than I can tell, but it must have been for long. At length, one by

one, and almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of the

bank. As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched and not entirely

master of my mind, I could hear my kinsman maundering to himself in an

altered and melancholy mood. Now he would repeat to himself with

maudlin iteration, “Sic a fecht as they had—sic a sair fecht as they

had, puir lads, puir lads!” and anon he would bewail that “a’ the gear

was as gude’s tint,” because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men

instead of stranding on the shore; and throughout, the name—the

_Christ-Anna_—would come and go in his divagations, pronounced with

shuddering awe. The storm all this time was rapidly abating. In half an

hour the wind had fallen to a breeze, and the change was accompanied or

caused by a heavy, cold, and plumping rain. I must then have fallen

asleep, and when I came to myself, drenched, stiff, and unrefreshed,

day had already broken, grey, wet, discomfortable day; the wind blew in

faint and shifting capfuls, the tide was out, the Roost was at its

lowest, and only the strong beating surf round all the coasts of Aros

remained to witness of the furies of the night.

CHAPTER V.

A MAN OUT OF THE SEA.

Rorie set out for the house in search of warmth and breakfast; but my

uncle was bent upon examining the shores of Aros, and I felt it a part

of duty to accompany him throughout. He was now docile and quiet, but

tremulous and weak in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a

child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon the

rocks; on the beaches, he pursued the retreating breakers. The merest

broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured

at the peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumbling

footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and

pitfalls of the weedy rock, kept me in a perpetual terror. My arm was

ready to support him, my hand clutched him by the skirt, I helped him

to draw his pitiful discoveries beyond the reach of the returning wave;

a nurse accompanying a child of seven would have had no different

experience.

Yet, weakened as he was by the reaction from his madness of the night

before, the passions that smouldered in his nature were those of a

strong man. His terror of the sea, although conquered for the moment,

was still undiminished; had the sea been a lake of living flames, he

could not have shrunk more panically from its touch; and once, when his

foot slipped and he plunged to the midleg into a pool of water, the

shriek that came up out of his soul was like the cry of death. He sat

still for a while, panting like a dog, after that; but his desire for

the spoils of shipwreck triumphed once more over his fears; once more

he tottered among the curded foam; once more he crawled upon the rocks

among the bursting bubbles; once more his whole heart seemed to be set

on driftwood, fit, if it was fit for anything, to throw upon the fire.

Pleased as he was with what he found, he still incessantly grumbled at

his ill-fortune.

“Aros,” he said, “is no a place for wrecks ava’—no ava’. A’ the years

I’ve dwalt here, this ane maks the second; and the best o’ the gear

clean tint!”

“Uncle,” said I, for we were now on a stretch of open sand, where there

was nothing to divert his mind, “I saw you last night, as I never

thought to see you—you were drunk.”

“Na, na,” he said, “no as bad as that. I had been drinking, though. And

to tell ye the God’s truth, it’s a thing I cannae mend. There’s nae

soberer man than me in my ordnar; but when I hear the wind blaw in my

lug, it’s my belief that I gang gyte.”

“You are a religious man,” I replied, “and this is sin’.

“Ou,” he returned, “if it wasnae sin, I dinnae ken that I would care

for’t. Ye see, man, it’s defiance. There’s a sair spang o’ the auld sin

o’ the warld in you sea; it’s an unchristian business at the best o’t;

an’ whiles when it gets up, an’ the wind skreights—the wind an’ her are

a kind of sib, I’m thinkin’—an’ thae Merry Men, the daft callants,

blawin’ and lauchin’, and puir souls in the deid thraws warstlin’ the

leelang nicht wi’ their bit ships—weel, it comes ower me like a

glamour. I’m a deil, I ken’t. But I think naething o’ the puir sailor

lads; I’m wi’ the sea, I’m just like ane o’ her ain Merry Men.”

I thought I should touch him in a joint of his harness. I turned me

towards the sea; the surf was running gaily, wave after wave, with

their manes blowing behind them, riding one after another up the beach,

towering, curving, falling one upon another on the trampled sand.

Without, the salt air, the scared gulls, the widespread army of the

sea-chargers, neighing to each other, as they gathered together to the

assault of Aros; and close before us, that line on the flat sands that,

with all their number and their fury, they might never pass.

“Thus far shalt thou go,” said I, “and no farther.” And then I quoted

as solemnly as I was able a verse that I had often before fitted to the

chorus of the breakers:—

But yet the Lord that is on high,

Is more of might by far,

Than noise of many waters is,

As great sea billows are.

“Ay,” said my kinsinan, “at the hinder end, the Lord will triumph; I

dinnae misdoobt that. But here on earth, even silly men-folk daur Him

to His face. It is nae wise; I am nae sayin’ that it’s wise; but it’s

the pride of the eye, and it’s the lust o’ life, an’ it’s the wale o’

pleesures.”

I said no more, for we had now begun to cross a neck of land that lay

between us and Sandag; and I withheld my last appeal to the man’s

better reason till we should stand upon the spot associated with his

crime. Nor did he pursue the subject; but he walked beside me with a

firmer step. The call that I had made upon his mind acted like a

stimulant, and I could see that he had forgotten his search for

worthless jetsam, in a profound, gloomy, and yet stirring train of

thought. In three or four minutes we had topped the brae and begun to

go down upon Sandag. The wreck had been roughly handled by the sea; the

stem had been spun round and dragged a little lower down; and perhaps

the stern had been forced a little higher, for the two parts now lay

entirely separate on the beach. When we came to the grave I stopped,

uncovered my head in the thick rain, and, looking my kinsman in the

face, addressed him.

“A man,” said I, “was in God’s providence suffered to escape from

mortal dangers; he was poor, he was naked, he was wet, he was weary, he

was a stranger; he had every claim upon the bowels of your compassion;

it may be that he was the salt of the earth, holy, helpful, and kind;

it may be he was a man laden with iniquities to whom death was the

beginning of torment. I ask you in the sight of heaven: Gordon

Darnaway, where is the man for whom Christ died?”

He started visibly at the last words; but there came no answer, and his

face expressed no feeling but a vague alarm.

“You were my father’s brother,” I continued; “You, have taught me to

count your house as if it were my father’s house; and we are both

sinful men walking before the Lord among the sins and dangers of this

life. It is by our evil that God leads us into good; we sin, I dare not

say by His temptation, but I must say with His consent; and to any but

the brutish man his sins are the beginning of wisdom. God has warned

you by this crime; He warns you still by the bloody grave between our

feet; and if there shall follow no repentance, no improvement, no

return to Him, what can we look for but the following of some memorable

judgment?”

Even as I spoke the words, the eyes of my uncle wandered from my face.

A change fell upon his looks that cannot be described; his features

seemed to dwindle in size, the colour faded from his cheeks, one hand

rose waveringly and pointed over my shoulder into the distance, and the

oft-repeated name fell once more from his lips: “The _Christ-Anna_!”

I turned; and if I was not appalled to the same degree, as I return

thanks to Heaven that I had not the cause, I was still startled by the

sight that met my eyes. The form of a man stood upright on the

cabin-hutch of the wrecked ship; his back was towards us; he appeared

to be scanning the offing with shaded eyes, and his figure was relieved

to its full height, which was plainly very great, against the sea and

sky. I have said a thousand times that I am not superstitious; but at

that moment, with my mind running upon death and sin, the unexplained

appearance of a stranger on that sea-girt, solitary island filled me

with a surprise that bordered close on terror. It seemed scarce

possible that any human soul should have come ashore alive in such a

sea as had rated last night along the coasts of Aros; and the only

vessel within miles had gone down before our eyes among the Merry Men.

I was assailed with doubts that made suspense unbearable, and, to put

the matter to the touch at once, stepped forward and hailed the figure

like a ship.

He turned about, and I thought he started to behold us. At this my

courage instantly revived, and I called and signed to him to draw near,

and he, on his part, dropped immediately to the sands, and began slowly

to approach, with many stops and hesitations. At each repeated mark of

the man’s uneasiness I grew the more confident myself; and I advanced

another step, encouraging him as I did so with my head and hand. It was

plain the castaway had heard indifferent accounts of our island

hospitality; and indeed, about this time, the people farther north had

a sorry reputation.

“Why,” I said, “the man is black!”

And just at that moment, in a voice that I could scarce have

recognised, my kinsman began swearing and praying in a mingled stream.

I looked at him; he had fallen on his knees, his face was agonised; at

each step of the castaway’s the pitch of his voice rose, the volubility

of his utterance and the fervour of his language redoubled. I call it

prayer, for it was addressed to God; but surely no such ranting

incongruities were ever before addressed to the Creator by a creature:

surely if prayer can be a sin, this mad harangue was sinful. I ran to

my kinsman, I seized him by the shoulders, I dragged him to his feet.

“Silence, man,” said I, “respect your God in words, if not in action.

Here, on the very scene of your transgressions, He sends you an

occasion of atonement. Forward and embrace it; welcome like a father

yon creature who comes trembling to your mercy.”

With that, I tried to force him towards the black; but he felled me to

the ground, burst from my grasp, leaving the shoulder of his jacket,

and fled up the hillside towards the top of Aros like a deer. I

staggered to my feet again, bruised and somewhat stunned; the negro had

paused in surprise, perhaps in terror, some halfway between me and the

wreck; my uncle was already far away, bounding from rock to rock; and I

thus found myself torn for a time between two duties. But I judged, and

I pray Heaven that I judged rightly, in favour of the poor wretch upon

the sands; his misfortune was at least not plainly of his own creation;

it was one, besides, that I could certainly relieve; and I had begun by

that time to regard my uncle as an incurable and dismal lunatic. I

advanced accordingly towards the black, who now awaited my approach

with folded arms, like one prepared for either destiny. As I came

nearer, he reached forth his hand with a great gesture, such as I had

seen from the pulpit, and spoke to me in something of a pulpit voice,

but not a word was comprehensible. I tried him first in English, then

in Gaelic, both in vain; so that it was clear we must rely upon the

tongue of looks and gestures. Thereupon I signed to him to follow me,

which he did readily and with a grave obeisance like a fallen king; all

the while there had come no shade of alteration in his face, neither of

anxiety while he was still waiting, nor of relief now that he was

reassured; if he were a slave, as I supposed, I could not but judge he

must have fallen from some high place in his own country, and fallen as

he was, I could not but admire his bearing. As we passed the grave, I

paused and raised my hands and eyes to heaven in token of respect and

sorrow for the dead; and he, as if in answer, bowed low and spread his

hands abroad; it was a strange motion, but done like a thing of common

custom; and I supposed it was ceremonial in the land from which he

came. At the same time he pointed to my uncle, whom we could just see

perched upon a knoll, and touched his head to indicate that he was mad.

We took the long way round the shore, for I feared to excite my uncle

if we struck across the island; and as we walked, I had time enough to

mature the little dramatic exhibition by which I hoped to satisfy my

doubts. Accordingly, pausing on a rock, I proceeded to imitate before

the negro the action of the man whom I had seen the day before taking

bearings with the compass at Sandag. He understood me at once, and,

taking the imitation out of my hands, showed me where the boat was,

pointed out seaward as if to indicate the position of the schooner, and

then down along the edge of the rock with the words “Espirito Santo,”

strangely pronounced, but clear enough for recognition. I had thus been

right in my conjecture; the pretended historical inquiry had been but a

cloak for treasure-hunting; the man who had played on Dr. Robertson was

the same as the foreigner who visited Grisapol in spring, and now, with

many others, lay dead under the Roost of Aros: there had their greed

brought them, there should their bones be tossed for evermore. In the

meantime the black continued his imitation of the scene, now looking up

skyward as though watching the approach of the storm now, in the

character of a seaman, waving the rest to come aboard; now as an

officer, running along the rock and entering the boat; and anon bending

over imaginary oars with the air of a hurried boatman; but all with the

same solemnity of manner, so that I was never even moved to smile.

Lastly, he indicated to me, by a pantomime not to be described in

words, how he himself had gone up to examine the stranded wreck, and,

to his grief and indignation, had been deserted by his comrades; and

thereupon folded his arms once more, and stooped his head, like one

accepting fate.

The mystery of his presence being thus solved for me, I explained to

him by means of a sketch the fate of the vessel and of all aboard her.

He showed no surprise nor sorrow, and, with a sudden lifting of his

open hand, seemed to dismiss his former friends or masters (whichever

they had been) into God’s pleasure. Respect came upon me and grew

stronger, the more I observed him; I saw he had a powerful mind and a

sober and severe character, such as I loved to commune with; and before

we reached the house of Aros I had almost forgotten, and wholly

forgiven him, his uncanny colour.

To Mary I told all that had passed without suppression, though I own my

heart failed me; but I did wrong to doubt her sense of justice.

“You did the right,” she said. “God’s will be done.” And she set out

meat for us at once.

As soon as I was satisfied, I bade Rorie keep an eye upon the castaway,

who was still eating, and set forth again myself to find my uncle. I

had not gone far before I saw him sitting in the same place, upon the

very topmost knoll, and seemingly in the same attitude as when I had

last observed him. From that point, as I have said, the most of Aros

and the neighbouring Ross would be spread below him like a map; and it

was plain that he kept a bright look-out in all directions, for my head

had scarcely risen above the summit of the first ascent before he had

leaped to his feet and turned as if to face me. I hailed him at once,

as well as I was able, in the same tones and words as I had often used

before, when I had come to summon him to dinner. He made not so much as

a movement in reply. I passed on a little farther, and again tried

parley, with the same result. But when I began a second time to

advance, his insane fears blazed up again, and still in dead silence,

but with incredible speed, he began to flee from before me along the

rocky summit of the hill. An hour before, he had been dead weary, and I

had been comparatively active. But now his strength was recruited by

the fervour of insanity, and it would have been vain for me to dream of

pursuit. Nay, the very attempt, I thought, might have inflamed his

terrors, and thus increased the miseries of our position. And I had

nothing left but to turn homeward and make my sad report to Mary.

She heard it, as she had heard the first, with a concerned composure,

and, bidding me lie down and take that rest of which I stood so much in

need, set forth herself in quest of her misguided father. At that age

it would have been a strange thing that put me from either meat or

sleep; I slept long and deep; and it was already long past noon before

I awoke and came downstairs into the kitchen. Mary, Rorie, and the

black castaway were seated about the fire in silence; and I could see

that Mary had been weeping. There was cause enough, as I soon learned,

for tears. First she, and then Rorie, had been forth to seek my uncle;

each in turn had found him perched upon the hill-top, and from each in

turn he had silently and swiftly fled. Rorie had tried to chase him,

but in vain; madness lent a new vigour to his bounds; he sprang from

rock to rock over the widest gullies; he scoured like the wind along

the hill-tops; he doubled and twisted like a hare before the dogs; and

Rorie at length gave in; and the last that he saw, my uncle was seated

as before upon the crest of Aros. Even during the hottest excitement of

the chase, even when the fleet-footed servant had come, for a moment,

very near to capture him, the poor lunatic had uttered not a sound. He

fled, and he was silent, like a beast; and this silence had terrified

his pursuer.

There was something heart-breaking in the situation. How to capture the

madman, how to feed him in the meanwhile, and what to do with him when

he was captured, were the three difficulties that we had to solve.

“The black,” said I, “is the cause of this attack. It may even be his

presence in the house that keeps my uncle on the hill. We have done the

fair thing; he has been fed and warmed under this roof; now I propose

that Rorie put him across the bay in the coble, and take him through

the Ross as far as Grisapol.”

In this proposal Mary heartily concurred; and bidding the black follow

us, we all three descended to the pier. Certainly, Heaven’s will was

declared against Gordon Darnaway; a thing had happened, never

paralleled before in Aros; during the storm, the coble had broken

loose, and, striking on the rough splinters of the pier, now lay in

four feet of water with one side stove in. Three days of work at least

would be required to make her float. But I was not to be beaten. I led

the whole party round to where the gut was narrowest, swam to the other

side, and called to the black to follow me. He signed, with the same

clearness and quiet as before, that he knew not the art; and there was

truth apparent in his signals, it would have occurred to none of us to

doubt his truth; and that hope being over, we must all go back even as

we came to the house of Aros, the negro walking in our midst without

embarrassment.

All we could do that day was to make one more attempt to communicate

with the unhappy madman. Again he was visible on his perch; again he

fled in silence. But food and a great cloak were at least left for his

comfort; the rain, besides, had cleared away, and the night promised to

be even warm. We might compose ourselves, we thought, until the morrow;

rest was the chief requisite, that we might be strengthened for unusual

exertions; and as none cared to talk, we separated at an early hour.

I lay long awake, planning a campaign for the morrow. I was to place

the black on the side of Sandag, whence he should head my uncle towards

the house; Rorie in the west, I on the east, were to complete the

cordon, as best we might. It seemed to me, the more I recalled the

configuration of the island, that it should be possible, though hard,

to force him down upon the low ground along Aros Bay; and once there,

even with the strength of his madness, ultimate escape was hardly to be

feared. It was on his terror of the black that I relied; for I made

sure, however he might run, it would not be in the direction of the man

whom he supposed to have returned from the dead, and thus one point of

the compass at least would be secure.

When at length I fell asleep, it was to be awakened shortly after by a

dream of wrecks, black men, and submarine adventure; and I found myself

so shaken and fevered that I arose, descended the stair, and stepped

out before the house. Within, Rorie and the black were asleep together

in the kitchen; outside was a wonderful clear night of stars, with here

and there a cloud still hanging, last stragglers of the tempest. It was

near the top of the flood, and the Merry Men were roaring in the

windless quiet of the night. Never, not even in the height of the

tempest, had I heard their song with greater awe. Now, when the winds

were gathered home, when the deep was dandling itself back into its

summer slumber, and when the stars rained their gentle light over land

and sea, the voice of these tide-breakers was still raised for havoc.

They seemed, indeed, to be a part of the world’s evil and the tragic

side of life. Nor were their meaningless vociferations the only sounds

that broke the silence of the night. For I could hear, now shrill and

thrilling and now almost drowned, the note of a human voice that

accompanied the uproar of the Roost. I knew it for my kinsman’s; and a

great fear fell upon me of God’s judgments, and the evil in the world.

I went back again into the darkness of the house as into a place of

shelter, and lay long upon my bed, pondering these mysteries.

It was late when I again woke, and I leaped into my clothes and hurried

to the kitchen. No one was there; Rorie and the black had both

stealthily departed long before; and my heart stood still at the

discovery. I could rely on Rorie’s heart, but I placed no trust in his

discretion. If he had thus set out without a word, he was plainly bent

upon some service to my uncle. But what service could he hope to render

even alone, far less in the company of the man in whom my uncle found

his fears incarnated? Even if I were not already too late to prevent

some deadly mischief, it was plain I must delay no longer. With the

thought I was out of the house; and often as I have run on the rough

sides of Aros, I never ran as I did that fatal morning. I do not

believe I put twelve minutes to the whole ascent.

My uncle was gone from his perch. The basket had indeed been torn open

and the meat scattered on the turf; but, as we found afterwards, no

mouthful had been tasted; and there was not another trace of human

existence in that wide field of view. Day had already filled the clear

heavens; the sun already lighted in a rosy bloom upon the crest of Ben

Kyaw; but all below me the rude knolls of Aros and the shield of sea

lay steeped in the clear darkling twilight of the dawn.

“Rorie!” I cried; and again “Rorie!” My voice died in the silence, but

there came no answer back. If there were indeed an enterprise afoot to

catch my uncle, it was plainly not in fleetness of foot, but in

dexterity of stalking, that the hunters placed their trust. I ran on

farther, keeping the higher spurs, and looking right and left, nor did

I pause again till I was on the mount above Sandag. I could see the

wreck, the uncovered belt of sand, the waves idly beating, the long

ledge of rocks, and on either hand the tumbled knolls, boulders, and

gullies of the island. But still no human thing.

At a stride the sunshine fell on Aros, and the shadows and colours

leaped into being. Not half a moment later, below me to the west, sheep

began to scatter as in a panic. There came a cry. I saw my uncle

running. I saw the black jump up in hot pursuit; and before I had time

to understand, Rorie also had appeared, calling directions in Gaelic as

to a dog herding sheep.

I took to my heels to interfere, and perhaps I had done better to have

waited where I was, for I was the means of cutting off the madman’s

last escape. There was nothing before him from that moment but the

grave, the wreck, and the sea in Sandag Bay. And yet Heaven knows that

what I did was for the best.

My uncle Gordon saw in what direction, horrible to him, the chase was

driving him. He doubled, darting to the right and left; but high as the

fever ran in his veins, the black was still the swifter. Turn where he

would, he was still forestalled, still driven toward the scene of his

crime. Suddenly he began to shriek aloud, so that the coast re-echoed;

and now both I and Rorie were calling on the black to stop. But all was

vain, for it was written otherwise. The pursuer still ran, the chase

still sped before him screaming; they avoided the grave, and skimmed

close past the timbers of the wreck; in a breath they had cleared the

sand; and still my kinsman did not pause, but dashed straight into the

surf; and the black, now almost within reach, still followed swiftly

behind him. Rorie and I both stopped, for the thing was now beyond the

hands of men, and these were the decrees of God that came to pass

before our eyes. There was never a sharper ending. On that steep beach

they were beyond their depth at a bound; neither could swim; the black

rose once for a moment with a throttling cry; but the current had them,

racing seaward; and if ever they came up again, which God alone can

tell, it would be ten minutes after, at the far end of Aros Roost,

where the seabirds hover fishing.

WILL O’ THE MILL.

CHAPTER I.

THE PLAIN AND THE STARS.

The Mill here Will lived with his adopted parents stood in a falling

valley between pinewoods and great mountains. Above, hill after hill,

soared upwards until they soared out of the depth of the hardiest

timber, and stood naked against the sky. Some way up, a long grey

village lay like a seam or a ray of vapour on a wooded hillside; and

when the wind was favourable, the sound of the church bells would drop

down, thin and silvery, to Will. Below, the valley grew ever steeper

and steeper, and at the same time widened out on either hand; and from

an eminence beside the mill it was possible to see its whole length and

away beyond it over a wide plain, where the river turned and shone, and

moved on from city to city on its voyage towards the sea. It chanced

that over this valley there lay a pass into a neighbouring kingdom; so

that, quiet and rural as it was, the road that ran along beside the

river was a high thoroughfare between two splendid and powerful

societies. All through the summer, travelling-carriages came crawling

up, or went plunging briskly downwards past the mill; and as it

happened that the other side was very much easier of ascent, the path

was not much frequented, except by people going in one direction; and

of all the carriages that Will saw go by, five-sixths were plunging

briskly downwards and only one-sixth crawling up. Much more was this

the case with foot-passengers. All the light-footed tourists, all the

pedlars laden with strange wares, were tending downward like the river

that accompanied their path. Nor was this all; for when Will was yet a

child a disastrous war arose over a great part of the world. The

newspapers were full of defeats and victories, the earth rang with

cavalry hoofs, and often for days together and for miles around the

coil of battle terrified good people from their labours in the field.

Of all this, nothing was heard for a long time in the valley; but at

last one of the commanders pushed an army over the pass by forced

marches, and for three days horse and foot, cannon and tumbril, drum

and standard, kept pouring downward past the mill. All day the child

stood and watched them on their passage—the rhythmical stride, the

pale, unshaven faces tanned about the eyes, the discoloured regimentals

and the tattered flags, filled him with a sense of weariness, pity, and

wonder; and all night long, after he was in bed, he could hear the

cannon pounding and the feet trampling, and the great armament sweeping

onward and downward past the mill. No one in the valley ever heard the

fate of the expedition, for they lay out of the way of gossip in those

troublous times; but Will saw one thing plainly, that not a man

returned. Whither had they all gone? Whither went all the tourists and

pedlars with strange wares? whither all the brisk barouches with

servants in the dicky? whither the water of the stream, ever coursing

downward and ever renewed from above? Even the wind blew oftener down

the valley, and carried the dead leaves along with it in the fall. It

seemed like a great conspiracy of things animate and inanimate; they

all went downward, fleetly and gaily downward, and only he, it seemed,

remained behind, like a stock upon the wayside. It sometimes made him

glad when he noticed how the fishes kept their heads up stream. They,

at least, stood faithfully by him, while all else were posting downward

to the unknown world.

One evening he asked the miller where the river went.

“It goes down the valley,” answered he, “and turns a power of mills—six

score mills, they say, from here to Unterdeck—and is none the wearier

after all. And then it goes out into the lowlands, and waters the great

corn country, and runs through a sight of fine cities (so they say)

where kings live all alone in great palaces, with a sentry walling up

and down before the door. And it goes under bridges with stone men upon

them, looking down and smiling so curious it the water, and living

folks leaning their elbows on the wall and looking over too. And then

it goes on and on, and down through marshes and sands, until at last it

falls into the sea, where the ships are that bring parrots and tobacco

from the Indies. Ay, it has a long trot before it as it goes singing

over our weir, bless its heart!”

“And what is the sea?” asked Will.

“The sea!” cried the miller. “Lord help us all, it is the greatest

thing God made! That is where all the water in the world runs down into

a great salt lake. There it lies, as flat as my hand and as

innocent-like as a child; but they do say when the wind blows it gets

up into water-mountains bigger than any of ours, and swallows down

great ships bigger than our mill, and makes such a roaring that you can

hear it miles away upon the land. There are great fish in it five times

bigger than a bull, and one old serpent as long as our river and as old

as all the world, with whiskers like a man, and a crown of silver on

her head.”

Will thought he had never heard anything like this, and he kept on

asking question after question about the world that lay away down the

river, with all its perils and marvels, until the old miller became

quite interested himself, and at last took him by the hand and led him

to the hilltop that overlooks the valley and the plain. The sun was

near setting, and hung low down in a cloudless sky. Everything was

defined and glorified in golden light. Will had never seen so great an

expanse of country in his life; he stood and gazed with all his eyes.

He could see the cities, and the woods and fields, and the bright

curves of the river, and far away to where the rim of the plain

trenched along the shining heavens. An over-mastering emotion seized

upon the boy, soul and body; his heart beat so thickly that he could

not breathe; the scene swam before his eyes; the sun seemed to wheel

round and round, and throw off, as it turned, strange shapes which

disappeared with the rapidity of thought, and were succeeded by others.

Will covered his face with his hands, and burst into a violent fit of

tears; and the poor miller, sadly disappointed and perplexed, saw

nothing better for it than to take him up in his arms and carry him

home in silence.

From that day forward Will was full of new hopes and longings.

Something kept tugging at his heart-strings; the running water carried

his desires along with it as he dreamed over its fleeting surface; the

wind, as it ran over innumerable tree-tops, hailed him with encouraging

words; branches beckoned downward; the open road, as it shouldered

round the angles and went turning and vanishing fast and faster down

the valley, tortured him with its solicitations. He spent long whiles

on the eminence, looking down the rivershed and abroad on the fat

lowlands, and watched the clouds that travelled forth upon the sluggish

wind and trailed their purple shadows on the plain; or he would linger

by the wayside, and follow the carriages with his eyes as they rattled

downward by the river. It did not matter what it was; everything that

went that way, were it cloud or carriage, bird or brown water in the

stream, he felt his heart flow out after it in an ecstasy of longing.

We are told by men of science that all the ventures of mariners on the

sea, all that counter-marching of tribes and races that confounds old

history with its dust and rumour, sprang from nothing more abstruse

than the laws of supply and demand, and a certain natural instinct for

cheap rations. To any one thinking deeply, this will seem a dull and

pitiful explanation. The tribes that came swarming out of the North and

East, if they were indeed pressed onward from behind by others, were

drawn at the same time by the magnetic influence of the South and West.

The fame of other lands had reached them; the name of the eternal city

rang in their ears; they were not colonists, but pilgrims; they

travelled towards wine and gold and sunshine, but their hearts were set

on something higher. That divine unrest, that old stinging trouble of

humanity that makes all high achievements and all miserable failure,

the same that spread wings with Icarus, the same that sent Columbus

into the desolate Atlantic, inspired and supported these barbarians on

their perilous march. There is one legend which profoundly represents

their spirit, of how a flying party of these wanderers encountered a

very old man shod with iron. The old man asked them whither they were

going; and they answered with one voice: “To the Eternal City!” He

looked upon them gravely. “I have sought it,” he said, “over the most

part of the world. Three such pairs as I now carry on my feet have I

worn out upon this pilgrimage, and now the fourth is growing slender

underneath my steps. And all this while I have not found the city.” And

he turned and went his own way alone, leaving them astonished.

And yet this would scarcely parallel the intensity of Will’s feeling

for the plain. If he could only go far enough out there, he felt as if

his eyesight would be purged and clarified, as if his hearing would

grow more delicate, and his very breath would come and go with luxury.

He was transplanted and withering where he was; he lay in a strange

country and was sick for home. Bit by bit, he pieced together broken

notions of the world below: of the river, ever moving and growing until

it sailed forth into the majestic ocean; of the cities, full of brisk

and beautiful people, playing fountains, bands of music and marble

palaces, and lighted up at night from end to end with artificial stars

of gold; of the great churches, wise universities, brave armies, and

untold money lying stored in vaults; of the high-flying vice that moved

in the sunshine, and the stealth and swiftness of midnight murder. I

have said he was sick as if for home: the figure halts. He was like

some one lying in twilit, formless preexistence, and stretching out his

hands lovingly towards many-coloured, many-sounding life. It was no

wonder he was unhappy, he would go and tell the fish: they were made

for their life, wished for no more than worms and running water, and a

hole below a falling bank; but he was differently designed, full of

desires and aspirations, itching at the fingers, lusting with the eyes,

whom the whole variegated world could not satisfy with aspects. The

true life, the true bright sunshine, lay far out upon the plain. And O!

to see this sunlight once before he died! to move with a jocund spirit

in a golden land! to hear the trained singers and sweet church bells,

and see the holiday gardens! “And O fish!” he would cry, “if you would

only turn your noses down stream, you could swim so easily into the

fabled waters and see the vast ships passing over your head like

clouds, and hear the great water-hills making music over you all day

long!” But the fish kept looking patiently in their own direction,

until Will hardly knew whether to laugh or cry.

Hitherto the traffic on the road had passed by Will, like something

seen in a picture: he had perhaps exchanged salutations with a tourist,

or caught sight of an old gentleman in a travelling cap at a carriage

window; but for the most part it had been a mere symbol, which he

contemplated from apart and with something of a superstitious feeling.

A time came at last when this was to be changed. The miller, who was a

greedy man in his way, and never forewent an opportunity of honest

profit, turned the mill-house into a little wayside inn, and, several

pieces of good fortune falling in opportunely, built stables and got

the position of post master on the road. It now became Will’s duty to

wait upon people, as they sat to break their fasts in the little arbour

at the top of the mill garden; and you may be sure that he kept his

ears open, and learned many new things about the outside world as he

brought the omelette or the wine. Nay, he would often get into

conversation with single guests, and by adroit questions and polite

attention, not only gratify his own curiosity, but win the goodwill of

the travellers. Many complimented the old couple on their serving-boy;

and a professor was eager to take him away with him, and have him

properly educated in the plain. The miller and his wife were mightily

astonished and even more pleased. They thought it a very good thing

that they should have opened their inn. “You see,” the old man would

remark, “he has a kind of talent for a publican; he never would have

made anything else!” And so life wagged on in the valley, with high

satisfaction to all concerned but Will. Every carriage that left the

inn-door seemed to take a part of him away with it; and when people

jestingly offered him a lift, he could with difficulty command his

emotion. Night after night he would dream that he was awakened by

flustered servants, and that a splendid equipage waited at the door to

carry him down into the plain; night after night; until the dream,

which had seemed all jollity to him at first, began to take on a colour

of gravity, and the nocturnal summons and waiting equipage occupied a

place in his mind as something to be both feared and hoped for.

One day, when Will was about sixteen, a fat young man arrived at sunset

to pass the night. He was a contented-looking fellow, with a jolly eye,

and carried a knapsack. While dinner was preparing, he sat in the

arbour to read a book; but as soon as he had begun to observe Will, the

book was laid aside; he was plainly one of those who prefer living

people to people made of ink and paper. Will, on his part, although he

had not been much interested in the stranger at first sight, soon began

to take a great deal of pleasure in his talk, which was full of good

nature and good sense, and at last conceived a great respect for his

character and wisdom. They sat far into the night; and about two in the

morning Will opened his heart to the young man, and told him how he

longed to leave the valley and what bright hopes he had connected with

the cities of the plain. The young man whistled, and then broke into a

smile.

“My young friend,” he remarked, “you are a very curious little fellow

to be sure, and wish a great many things which you will never get. Why,

you would feel quite ashamed if you knew how the little fellows in

these fairy cities of yours are all after the same sort of nonsense,

and keep breaking their hearts to get up into the mountains. And let me

tell you, those who go down into the plains are a very short while

there before they wish themselves heartily back again. The air is not

so light nor so pure; nor is the sun any brighter. As for the beautiful

men and women, you would see many of them in rags and many of them

deformed with horrible disorders; and a city is so hard a place for

people who are poor and sensitive that many choose to die by their own

hand.”

“You must think me very simple,” answered Will. “Although I have never

been out of this valley, believe me, I have used my eyes. I know how

one thing lives on another; for instance, how the fish hangs in the

eddy to catch his fellows; and the shepherd, who makes so pretty a

picture carrying home the lamb, is only carrying it home for dinner. I

do not expect to find all things right in your cities. That is not what

troubles me; it might have been that once upon a time; but although I

live here always, I have asked many questions and learned a great deal

in these last years, and certainly enough to cure me of my old fancies.

But you would not have me die like a dog and not see all that is to be

seen, and do all that a man can do, let it be good or evil? you would

not have me spend all my days between this road here and the river, and

not so much as make a motion to be up and live my life?—I would rather

die out of hand,” he cried, “than linger on as I am doing.”

“Thousands of people,” said the young man, “live and die like you, and

are none the less happy.”

“Ah!” said Will, “if there are thousands who would like, why should not

one of them have my place?”

It was quite dark; there was a hanging lamp in the arbour which lit up

the table and the faces of the speakers; and along the arch, the leaves

upon the trellis stood out illuminated against the night sky, a pattern

of transparent green upon a dusky purple. The fat young man rose, and,

taking Will by the arm, led him out under the open heavens.

“Did you ever look at the stars?” he asked, pointing upwards.

“Often and often,” answered Will.

“And do you know what they are?”

“I have fancied many things.”

“They are worlds like ours,” said the young man. “Some of them less;

many of them a million times greater; and some of the least sparkles

that you see are not only worlds, but whole clusters of worlds turning

about each other in the midst of space. We do not know what there may

be in any of them; perhaps the answer to all our difficulties or the

cure of all our sufferings: and yet we can never reach them; not all

the skill of the craftiest of men can fit out a ship for the nearest of

these our neighbours, nor would the life of the most aged suffice for

such a journey. When a great battle has been lost or a dear friend is

dead, when we are hipped or in high spirits, there they are unweariedly

shining overhead. We may stand down here, a whole army of us together,

and shout until we break our hearts, and not a whisper reaches them. We

may climb the highest mountain, and we are no nearer them. All we can

do is to stand down here in the garden and take off our hats; the

starshine lights upon our heads, and where mine is a little bald, I

dare say you can see it glisten in the darkness. The mountain and the

mouse. That is like to be all we shall ever have to do with Arcturus or

Aldebaran. Can you apply a parable?” he added, laying his hand upon

Will’s shoulder. “It is not the same thing as a reason, but usually

vastly more convincing.”

Will hung his head a little, and then raised it once more to heaven.

The stars seemed to expand and emit a sharper brilliancy; and as he

kept turning his eyes higher and higher, they seemed to increase in

multitude under his gaze.

“I see,” he said, turning to the young man. “We are in a rat-trap.”

“Something of that size. Did you ever see a squirrel turning in a cage?

and another squirrel sitting philosophically over his nuts? I needn’t

ask you which of them looked more of a fool.”

CHAPTER II.

THE PARSON’S MARJORY.

After some years the old people died, both in one winter, very

carefully tended by their adopted son, and very quietly mourned when

they were gone. People who had heard of his roving fancies supposed he

would hasten to sell the property, and go down the river to push his

fortunes. But there was never any sign of such in intention on the part

of Will. On the contrary, he had the inn set on a better footing, and

hired a couple of servants to assist him in carrying it on; and there

he settled down, a kind, talkative, inscrutable young man, six feet

three in his stockings, with an iron constitution and a friendly voice.

He soon began to take rank in the district as a bit of an oddity: it

was not much to be wondered at from the first, for he was always full

of notions, and kept calling the plainest common-sense in question; but

what most raised the report upon him was the odd circumstance of his

courtship with the parson’s Marjory.

The parson’s Marjory was a lass about nineteen, when Will would be

about thirty; well enough looking, and much better educated than any

other girl in that part of the country, as became her parentage. She

held her head very high, and had already refused several offers of

marriage with a grand air, which had got her hard names among the

neighbours. For all that she was a good girl, and one that would have

made any man well contented.

Will had never seen much of her; for although the church and parsonage

were only two miles from his own door, he was never known to go there

but on Sundays. It chanced, however, that the parsonage fell into

disrepair, and had to be dismantled; and the parson and his daughter

took lodgings for a month or so, on very much reduced terms, at Will’s

inn. Now, what with the inn, and the mill, and the old miller’s

savings, our friend was a man of substance; and besides that, he had a

name for good temper and shrewdness, which make a capital portion in

marriage; and so it was currently gossiped, among their ill-wishers,

that the parson and his daughter had not chosen their temporary lodging

with their eyes shut. Will was about the last man in the world to be

cajoled or frightened into marriage. You had only to look into his

eyes, limpid and still like pools of water, and yet with a sort of

clear light that seemed to come from within, and you would understand

at once that here was one who knew his own mind, and would stand to it

immovably. Marjory herself was no weakling by her looks, with strong,

steady eyes and a resolute and quiet bearing. It might be a question

whether she was not Will’s match in stedfastness, after all, or which

of them would rule the roost in marriage. But Marjory had never given

it a thought, and accompanied her father with the most unshaken

innocence and unconcern.

The season was still so early that Will’s customers were few and far

between; but the lilacs were already flowering, and the weather was so

mild that the party took dinner under the trellice, with the noise of

the river in their ears and the woods ringing about them with the songs

of birds. Will soon began to take a particular pleasure in these

dinners. The parson was rather a dull companion, with a habit of dozing

at table; but nothing rude or cruel ever fell from his lips. And as for

the parson’s daughter, she suited her surroundings with the best grace

imaginable; and whatever she said seemed so pat and pretty that Will

conceived a great idea of her talents. He could see her face, as she

leaned forward, against a background of rising pinewoods; her eyes

shone peaceably; the light lay around her hair like a kerchief;

something that was hardly a smile rippled her pale cheeks, and Will

could not contain himself from gazing on her in an agreeable dismay.

She looked, even in her quietest moments, so complete in herself, and

so quick with life down to her finger tips and the very skirts of her

dress, that the remainder of created things became no more than a blot

by comparison; and if Will glanced away from her to her surroundings,

the trees looked inanimate and senseless, the clouds hung in heaven

like dead things, and even the mountain tops were disenchanted. The

whole valley could not compare in looks with this one girl.

Will was always observant in the society of his fellow-creatures; but

his observation became almost painfully eager in the case of Marjory.

He listened to all she uttered, and read her eyes, at the same time,

for the unspoken commentary. Many kind, simple, and sincere speeches

found an echo in his heart. He became conscious of a soul beautifully

poised upon itself, nothing doubting, nothing desiring, clothed in

peace. It was not possible to separate her thoughts from her

appearance. The turn of her wrist, the still sound of her voice, the

light in her eyes, the lines of her body, fell in tune with her grave

and gentle words, like the accompaniment that sustains and harmonises

the voice of the singer. Her influence was one thing, not to be divided

or discussed, only to be felt with gratitude and joy. To Will, her

presence recalled something of his childhood, and the thought of her

took its place in his mind beside that of dawn, of running water, and

of the earliest violets and lilacs. It is the property of things seen

for the first time, or for the first time after long, like the flowers

in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of sense and that

impression of mystic strangeness which otherwise passes out of life

with the coming of years; but the sight of a loved face is what renews

a man’s character from the fountain upwards.

One day after dinner Will took a stroll among the firs; a grave

beatitude possessed him from top to toe, and he kept smiling to himself

and the landscape as he went. The river ran between the stepping-stones

with a pretty wimple; a bird sang loudly in the wood; the hill-tops

looked immeasurably high, and as he glanced at them from time to time

seemed to contemplate his movements with a beneficent but awful

curiosity. His way took him to the eminence which overlooked the plain;

and there he sat down upon a stone, and fell into deep and pleasant

thought. The plain lay abroad with its cities and silver river;

everything was asleep, except a great eddy of birds which kept rising

and falling and going round and round in the blue air. He repeated

Marjory’s name aloud, and the sound of it gratified his ear. He shut

his eyes, and her image sprang up before him, quietly luminous and

attended with good thoughts. The river might run for ever; the birds

fly higher and higher till they touched the stars. He saw it was empty

bustle after all; for here, without stirring a feet, waiting patiently

in his own narrow valley, he also had attained the better sunlight.

The next day Will made a sort of declaration across the dinner-table,

while the parson was filling his pipe.

“Miss Marjory,” he said, “I never knew any one I liked so well as you.

I am mostly a cold, unkindly sort of man; not from want of heart, but

out of strangeness in my way of thinking; and people seem far away from

me. ’Tis as if there were a circle round me, which kept every one out

but you; I can hear the others talking and laughing; but you come quite

close. Maybe, this is disagreeable to you?” he asked.

Marjory made no answer.

“Speak up, girl,” said the parson.

“Nay, now,” returned Will, “I wouldn’t press her, parson. I feel

tongue-tied myself, who am not used to it; and she’s a woman, and

little more than a child, when all is said. But for my part, as far as

I can understand what people mean by it, I fancy I must be what they

call in love. I do not wish to be held as committing myself; for I may

be wrong; but that is how I believe things are with me. And if Miss

Marjory should feel any otherwise on her part, mayhap she would be so

kind as shake her head.”

Marjory was silent, and gave no sign that she had heard.

“How is that, parson?” asked Will.

“The girl must speak,” replied the parson, laying down his pipe.

“Here’s our neighbour who says he loves you, Madge. Do you love him, ay

or no?”

“I think I do,” said Marjory, faintly.

“Well then, that’s all that could be wished!” cried Will, heartily. And

he took her hand across the table, and held it a moment in both of his

with great satisfaction.

“You must marry,” observed the parson, replacing his pipe in his mouth.

“Is that the right thing to do, think you?” demanded Will.

“It is indispensable,” said the parson.

“Very well,” replied the wooer.

Two or three days passed away with great delight to Will, although a

bystander might scarce have found it out. He continued to take his

meals opposite Marjory, and to talk with her and gaze upon her in her

father’s presence; but he made no attempt to see her alone, nor in any

other way changed his conduct towards her from what it had been since

the beginning. Perhaps the girl was a little disappointed, and perhaps

not unjustly; and yet if it had been enough to be always in the

thoughts of another person, and so pervade and alter his whole life,

she might have been thoroughly contented. For she was never out of

Will’s mind for an instant. He sat over the stream, and watched the

dust of the eddy, and the poised fish, and straining weeds; he wandered

out alone into the purple even, with all the blackbirds piping round

him in the wood; he rose early in the morning, and saw the sky turn

from grey to gold, and the light leap upon the hill-tops; and all the

while he kept wondering if he had never seen such things before, or how

it was that they should look so different now. The sound of his own

mill-wheel, or of the wind among the trees, confounded and charmed his

heart. The most enchanting thoughts presented themselves unbidden in

his mind. He was so happy that he could not sleep at night, and so

restless, that he could hardly sit still out of her company. And yet it

seemed as if he avoided her rather than sought her out.

One day, as he was coming home from a ramble, Will found Marjory in the

garden picking flowers, and as he came up with her, slackened his pace

and continued walking by her side.

“You like flowers?” he said.

“Indeed I love them dearly,” she replied. “Do you?”

“Why, no,” said he, “not so much. They are a very small affair, when

all is done. I can fancy people caring for them greatly, but not doing

as you are just now.”

“How?” she asked, pausing and looking up at him.

“Plucking them,” said he. “They are a deal better off where they are,

and look a deal prettier, if you go to that.”

“I wish to have them for my own,” she answered, “to carry them near my

heart, and keep them in my room. They tempt me when they grow here;

they seem to say, ‘Come and do something with us;’ but once I have cut

them and put them by, the charm is laid, and I can look at them with

quite an easy heart.”

“You wish to possess them,” replied Will, “in order to think no more

about them. It’s a bit like killing the goose with the golden eggs.

It’s a bit like what I wished to do when I was a boy. Because I had a

fancy for looking out over the plain, I wished to go down there—where I

couldn’t look out over it any longer. Was not that fine reasoning?

Dear, dear, if they only thought of it, all the world would do like me;

and you would let your flowers alone, just as I stay up here in the

mountains.” Suddenly he broke off sharp. “By the Lord!” he cried. And

when she asked him what was wrong, he turned the question off and

walked away into the house with rather a humorous expression of face.

He was silent at table; and after the night hid fallen and the stars

had come out overhead, he walked up and down for hours in the courtyard

and garden with an uneven pace. There was still a light in the window

of Marjory’s room: one little oblong patch of orange in a world of dark

blue hills and silver starlight. Will’s mind ran a great deal on the

window; but his thoughts were not very lover-like. “There she is in her

room,” he thought, “and there are the stars overhead:—a blessing upon

both!” Both were good influences in his life; both soothed and braced

him in his profound contentment with the world. And what more should he

desire with either? The fat young man and his councils were so present

to his mind, that he threw back his head, and, putting his hands before

his mouth, shouted aloud to the populous heavens. Whether from the

position of his head or the sudden strain of the exertion, he seemed to

see a momentary shock among the stars, and a diffusion of frosty light

pass from one to another along the sky. At the same instant, a corner

of the blind was lifted and lowered again at once. He laughed a loud

ho-ho! “One and another!” thought Will. “The stars tremble, and the

blind goes up. Why, before Heaven, what a great magician I must be! Now

if I were only a fool, should not I be in a pretty way?” And he went

off to bed, chuckling to himself: “If I were only a fool!”

The next morning, pretty early, he saw her once more in the garden, and

sought her out.

“I have been thinking about getting married,” he began abruptly; “and

after having turned it all over, I have made up my mind it’s not

worthwhile.”

She turned upon him for a single moment; but his radiant, kindly

appearance would, under the circumstances, have disconcerted an angel,

and she looked down again upon the ground in silence. He could see her

tremble.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he went on, a little taken aback. “You ought

not. I have turned it all over, and upon my soul there’s nothing in it.

We should never be one whit nearer than we are just now, and, if I am a

wise man, nothing like so happy.”

“It is unnecessary to go round about with me,” she said. “I very well

remember that you refused to commit yourself; and now that I see you

were mistaken, and in reality have never cared for me, I can only feel

sad that I have been so far misled.”

“I ask your pardon,” said Will stoutly; “you do not understand my

meaning. As to whether I have ever loved you or not, I must leave that

to others. But for one thing, my feeling is not changed; and for

another, you may make it your boast that you have made my whole life

and character something different from what they were. I mean what I

say; no less. I do not think getting married is worth while. I would

rather you went on living with your father, so that I could walk over

and see you once, or maybe twice a week, as people go to church, and

then we should both be all the happier between whiles. That’s my

notion. But I’ll marry you if you will,” he added.

“Do you know that you are insulting me?” she broke out.

“Not I, Marjory,” said he; “if there is anything in a clear conscience,

not I. I offer all my heart’s best affection; you can take it or want

it, though I suspect it’s beyond either your power or mine to change

what has once been done, and set me fancy-free. I’ll marry you, if you

like; but I tell you again and again, it’s not worth while, and we had

best stay friends. Though I am a quiet man I have noticed a heap of

things in my life. Trust in me, and take things as I propose; or, if

you don’t like that, say the word, and I’ll marry you out of hand.”

There was a considerable pause, and Will, who began to feel uneasy,

began to grow angry in consequence.

“It seems you are too proud to say your mind,” he said. “Believe me

that’s a pity. A clean shrift makes simple living. Can a man be more

downright or honourable, to a woman than I have been? I have said my

say, and given you your choice. Do you want me to marry you? or will

you take my friendship, as I think best? or have you had enough of me

for good? Speak out for the dear God’s sake! You know your father told

you a girl should speak her mind in these affairs.”

She seemed to recover herself at that, turned without a word, walked

rapidly through the garden, and disappeared into the house, leaving

Will in some confusion as to the result. He walked up and down the

garden, whistling softly to himself. Sometimes he stopped and

contemplated the sky and hill-tops; sometimes he went down to the tail

of the weir and sat there, looking foolishly in the water. All this

dubiety and perturbation was so foreign to his nature and the life

which he had resolutely chosen for himself, that he began to regret

Marjory’s arrival. “After all,” he thought, “I was as happy as a man

need be. I could come down here and watch my fishes all day long if I

wanted: I was as settled and contented as my old mill.”

Marjory came down to dinner, looking very trim and quiet; and no sooner

were all three at table than she made her father a speech, with her

eyes fixed upon her plate, but showing no other sign of embarrassment

or distress.

“Father,” she began, “Mr. Will and I have been talking things over. We

see that we have each made a mistake about our feelings, and he has

agreed, at my request, to give up all idea of marriage, and be no more

than my very good friend, as in the past. You see, there is no shadow

of a quarrel, and indeed I hope we shall see a great deal of him in the

future, for his visits will always be welcome in our house. Of course,

father, you will know best, but perhaps we should do better to leave

Mr. Will’s house for the present. I believe, after what has passed, we

should hardly be agreeable inmates for some days.”

Will, who had commanded himself with difficulty from the first, broke

out upon this into an inarticulate noise, and raised one hand with an

appearance of real dismay, as if he were about to interfere and

contradict. But she checked him at once looking up at him with a swift

glance and an angry flush upon her cheek.

“You will perhaps have the good grace,” she said, “to let me explain

these matters for myself.”

Will was put entirely out of countenance by her expression and the ring

of her voice. He held his peace, concluding that there were some things

about this girl beyond his comprehension, in which he was exactly

right.

The poor parson was quite crestfallen. He tried to prove that this was

no more than a true lovers’ tiff, which would pass off before night;

and when he was dislodged from that position, he went on to argue that

where there was no quarrel there could be no call for a separation; for

the good man liked both his entertainment and his host. It was curious

to see how the girl managed them, saying little all the time, and that

very quietly, and yet twisting them round her finger and insensibly

leading them wherever she would by feminine tact and generalship. It

scarcely seemed to have been her doing—it seemed as if things had

merely so fallen out—that she and her father took their departure that

same afternoon in a farm-cart, and went farther down the valley, to

wait, until their own house was ready for them, in another hamlet. But

Will had been observing closely, and was well aware of her dexterity

and resolution. When he found himself alone he had a great many curious

matters to turn over in his mind. He was very sad and solitary, to

begin with. All the interest had gone out of his life, and he might

look up at the stars as long as he pleased, he somehow failed to find

support or consolation. And then he was in such a turmoil of spirit

about Marjory. He had been puzzled and irritated at her behaviour, and

yet he could not keep himself from admiring it. He thought he

recognised a fine, perverse angel in that still soul which he had never

hitherto suspected; and though he saw it was an influence that would

fit but ill with his own life of artificial calm, he could not keep

himself from ardently desiring to possess it. Like a man who has lived

among shadows and now meets the sun, he was both pained and delighted.

As the days went forward he passed from one extreme to another; now

pluming himself on the strength of his determination, now despising his

timid and silly caution. The former was, perhaps, the true thought of

his heart, and represented the regular tenor of the man’s reflections;

but the latter burst forth from time to time with an unruly violence,

and then he would forget all consideration, and go up and down his

house and garden or walk among the fir-woods like one who is beside

himself with remorse. To equable, steady-minded Will this state of

matters was intolerable; and he determined, at whatever cost, to bring

it to an end. So, one warm summer afternoon he put on his best clothes,

took a thorn switch in his hand, and set out down the valley by the

river. As soon as he had taken his determination, he had regained at a

bound his customary peace of heart, and he enjoyed the bright weather

and the variety of the scene without any admixture of alarm or

unpleasant eagerness. It was nearly the same to him how the matter

turned out. If she accepted him he would have to marry her this time,

which perhaps was, all for the best. If she refused him, he would have

done his utmost, and might follow his own way in the future with an

untroubled conscience. He hoped, on the whole, she would refuse him;

and then, again, as he saw the brown roof which sheltered her, peeping

through some willows at an angle of the stream, he was half inclined to

reverse the wish, and more than half ashamed of himself for this

infirmity of purpose.

Marjory seemed glad to see him, and gave him her hand without

affectation or delay.

“I have been thinking about this marriage,” he began.

“So have I,” she answered. “And I respect you more and more for a very

wise man. You understood me better than I understood myself; and I am

now quite certain that things are all for the best as they are.”

“At the same time—,” ventured Will.

“You must be tired,” she interrupted. “Take a seat and let me fetch you

a glass of wine. The afternoon is so warm; and I wish you not to be

displeased with your visit. You must come quite often; once a week, if

you can spare the time; I am always so glad to see my friends.”

“O, very well,” thought Will to himself. “It appears I was right after

all.” And he paid a very agreeable visit, walked home again in capital

spirits, and gave himself no further concern about the matter.

For nearly three years Will and Marjory continued on these terms,

seeing each other once or twice a week without any word of love between

them; and for all that time I believe Will was nearly as happy as a man

can be. He rather stinted himself the pleasure of seeing her; and he

would often walk half-way over to the parsonage, and then back again,

as if to whet his appetite. Indeed there was one corner of the road,

whence he could see the church-spire wedged into a crevice of the

valley between sloping firwoods, with a triangular snatch of plain by

way of background, which he greatly affected as a place to sit and

moralise in before returning homewards; and the peasants got so much

into the habit of finding him there in the twilight that they gave it

the name of “Will o’ the Mill’s Corner.”

At the end of the three years Marjory played him a sad trick by

suddenly marrying somebody else. Will kept his countenance bravely, and

merely remarked that, for as little as he knew of women, he had acted

very prudently in not marrying her himself three years before. She

plainly knew very little of her own mind, and, in spite of a deceptive

manner, was as fickle and flighty as the rest of them. He had to

congratulate himself on an escape, he said, and would take a higher

opinion of his own wisdom in consequence. But at heart, he was

reasonably displeased, moped a good deal for a month or two, and fell

away in flesh, to the astonishment of his serving-lads.

It was perhaps a year after this marriage that Will was awakened late

one night by the sound of a horse galloping on the road, followed by

precipitate knocking at the inn-door. He opened his window and saw a

farm servant, mounted and holding a led horse by the bridle, who told

him to make what haste he could and go along with him; for Marjory was

dying, and had sent urgently to fetch him to her bedside. Will was no

horseman, and made so little speed upon the way that the poor young

wife was very near her end before he arrived. But they had some

minutes’ talk in private, and he was present and wept very bitterly

while she breathed her last.

CHAPTER III.

DEATH

Year after year went away into nothing, with great explosions and

outcries in the cities on the plain: red revolt springing up and being

suppressed in blood, battle swaying hither and thither, patient

astronomers in observatory towers picking out and christening new

stars, plays being performed in lighted theatres, people being carried

into hospital on stretchers, and all the usual turmoil and agitation of

men’s lives in crowded centres. Up in Will’s valley only the winds and

seasons made an epoch; the fish hung in the swift stream, the birds

circled overhead, the pine-tops rustled underneath the stars, the tall

hills stood over all; and Will went to and fro, minding his wayside

inn, until the snow began to thicken on his head. His heart was young

and vigorous; and if his pulses kept a sober time, they still beat

strong and steady in his wrists. He carried a ruddy stain on either

cheek, like a ripe apple; he stooped a little, but his step was still

firm; and his sinewy hands were reached out to all men with a friendly

pressure. His face was covered with those wrinkles which are got in

open air, and which rightly looked at, are no more than a sort of

permanent sunburning; such wrinkles heighten the stupidity of stupid

faces; but to a person like Will, with his clear eyes and smiling

mouth, only give another charm by testifying to a simple and easy life.

His talk was full of wise sayings. He had a taste for other people; and

other people had a taste for him. When the valley was full of tourists

in the season, there were merry nights in Will’s arbour; and his views,

which seemed whimsical to his neighbours, were often enough admired by

learned people out of towns and colleges. Indeed, he had a very noble

old age, and grew daily better known; so that his fame was heard of in

the cities of the plain; and young men who had been summer travellers

spoke together in _cafés_ of Will o’ the Mill and his rough philosophy.

Many and many an invitation, you may be sure, he had; but nothing could

tempt him from his upland valley. He would shake his head and smile

over his tobacco-pipe with a deal of meaning. “You come too late,” he

would answer. “I am a dead man now: I have lived and died already.

Fifty years ago you would have brought my heart into my mouth; and now

you do not even tempt me. But that is the object of long living, that

man should cease to care about life.” And again: “There is only one

difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner,

the sweets come last.” Or once more: “When I was a boy, I was a bit

puzzled, and hardly knew whether it was myself or the world that was

curious and worth looking into. Now, I know it is myself, and stick to

that.”

He never showed any symptom of frailty, but kept stalwart and firm to

the last; but they say he grew less talkative towards the end, and

would listen to other people by the hour in an amused and sympathetic

silence. Only, when he did speak, it was more to the point and more

charged with old experience. He drank a bottle of wine gladly; above

all, at sunset on the hill-top or quite late at night under the stars

in the arbour. The sight of something attractive and unatttainable

seasoned his enjoyment, he would say; and he professed he had lived

long enough to admire a candle all the more when he could compare it

with a planet.

One night, in his seventy-second year, he awoke in bed in such

uneasiness of body and mind that he arose and dressed himself and went

out to meditate in the arbour. It was pitch dark, without a star; the

river was swollen, and the wet woods and meadows loaded the air with

perfume. It had thundered during the day, and it promised more thunder

for the morrow. A murky, stifling night for a man of seventy-two!

Whether it was the weather or the wakefulness, or some little touch of

fever in his old limbs, Will’s mind was besieged by tumultuous and

crying memories. His boyhood, the night with the fat young man, the

death of his adopted parents, the summer days with Marjory, and many of

those small circumstances, which seem nothing to another, and are yet

the very gist of a man’s own life to himself—things seen, words heard,

looks misconstrued—arose from their forgotten corners and usurped his

attention. The dead themselves were with him, not merely taking part in

this thin show of memory that defiled before his brain, but revisiting

his bodily senses as they do in profound and vivid dreams. The fat

young man leaned his elbows on the table opposite; Marjory came and

went with an apronful of flowers between the garden and the arbour; he

could hear the old parson knocking out his pipe or blowing his resonant

nose. The tide of his consciousness ebbed and flowed: he was sometimes

half-asleep and drowned in his recollections of the past; and sometimes

he was broad awake, wondering at himself. But about the middle of the

night he was startled by the voice of the dead miller calling to him

out of the house as he used to do on the arrival of custom. The

hallucination was so perfect that Will sprang from his seat and stood

listening for the summons to be repeated; and as he listened he became

conscious of another noise besides the brawling of the river and the

ringing in his feverish ears. It was like the stir of horses and the

creaking of harness, as though a carriage with an impatient team had

been brought up upon the road before the courtyard gate. At such an

hour, upon this rough and dangerous pass, the supposition was no better

than absurd; and Will dismissed it from his mind, and resumed his seat

upon the arbour chair; and sleep closed over him again like running

water. He was once again awakened by the dead miller’s call, thinner

and more spectral than before; and once again he heard the noise of an

equipage upon the road. And so thrice and four times, the same dream,

or the same fancy, presented itself to his senses: until at length,

smiling to himself as when one humours a nervous child, he proceeded

towards the gate to set his uncertainty at rest.

From the arbour to the gate was no great distance, and yet it took Will

some time; it seemed as if the dead thickened around him in the court,

and crossed his path at every step. For, first, he was suddenly

surprised by an overpowering sweetness of heliotropes; it was as if his

garden had been planted with this flower from end to end, and the hot,

damp night had drawn forth all their perfumes in a breath. Now the

heliotrope had been Marjory’s favourite flower, and since her death not

one of them had ever been planted in Will’s ground.

“I must be going crazy,” he thought. “Poor Marjory and her

heliotropes!”

And with that he raised his eyes towards the window that had once been

hers. If he had been bewildered before, he was now almost terrified;

for there was a light in the room; the window was an orange oblong as

of yore; and the corner of the blind was lifted and let fall as on the

night when he stood and shouted to the stars in his perplexity. The

illusion only endured an instant; but it left him somewhat unmanned,

rubbing his eyes and staring at the outline of the house and the black

night behind it. While he thus stood, and it seemed as if he must have

stood there quite a long time, there came a renewal of the noises on

the road: and he turned in time to meet a stranger, who was advancing

to meet him across the court. There was something like the outline of a

great carriage discernible on the road behind the stranger, and, above

that, a few black pine-tops, like so many plumes.

“Master Will?” asked the new-comer, in brief military fashion.

“That same, sir,” answered Will. “Can I do anything to serve you?”

“I have heard you much spoken of, Master Will,” returned the other;

“much spoken of, and well. And though I have both hands full of

business, I wish to drink a bottle of wine with you in your arbour.

Before I go, I shall introduce myself.”

Will led the way to the trellis, and got a lamp lighted and a bottle

uncorked. He was not altogether unused to such complimentary

interviews, and hoped little enough from this one, being schooled by

many disappointments. A sort of cloud had settled on his wits and

prevented him from remembering the strangeness of the hour. He moved

like a person in his sleep; and it seemed as if the lamp caught fire

and the bottle came uncorked with the facility of thought. Still, he

had some curiosity about the appearance of his visitor, and tried in

vain to turn the light into his face; either he handled the lamp

clumsily, or there was a dimness over his eyes; but he could make out

little more than a shadow at table with him. He stared and stared at

this shadow, as he wiped out the glasses, and began to feel cold and

strange about the heart. The silence weighed upon him, for he could

hear nothing now, not even the river, but the drumming of his own

arteries in his ears.

“Here’s to you,” said the stranger, roughly.

“Here is my service, sir,” replied Will, sipping his wine, which

somehow tasted oddly.

“I understand you are a very positive fellow,” pursued the stranger.

Will made answer with a smile of some satisfaction and a little nod.

“So am I,” continued the other; “and it is the delight of my heart to

tramp on people’s corns. I will have nobody positive but myself; not

one. I have crossed the whims, in my time, of kings and generals and

great artists. And what would you say,” he went on, “if I had come up

here on purpose to cross yours?”

Will had it on his tongue to make a sharp rejoinder; but the politeness

of an old innkeeper prevailed; and he held his peace and made answer

with a civil gesture of the hand.

“I have,” said the stranger. “And if I did not hold you in a particular

esteem, I should make no words about the matter. It appears you pride

yourself on staying where you are. You mean to stick by your inn. Now I

mean you shall come for a turn with me in my barouche; and before this

bottle’s empty, so you shall.”

“That would be an odd thing, to be sure,” replied Will, with a chuckle.

“Why, sir, I have grown here like an old oak-tree; the Devil himself

could hardly root me up: and for all I perceive you are a very

entertaining old gentleman, I would wager you another bottle you lose

your pains with me.”

The dimness of Will’s eyesight had been increasing all this while; but

he was somehow conscious of a sharp and chilling scrutiny which

irritated and yet overmastered him.

“You need not think,” he broke out suddenly, in an explosive, febrile

manner that startled and alarmed himself, “that I am a stay-at-home,

because I fear anything under God. God knows I am tired enough of it

all; and when the time comes for a longer journey than ever you dream

of, I reckon I shall find myself prepared.”

The stranger emptied his glass and pushed it away from him. He looked

down for a little, and then, leaning over the table, tapped Will three

times upon the forearm with a single finger. “The time has come!” he

said solemnly.

An ugly thrill spread from the spot he touched. The tones of his voice

were dull and startling, and echoed strangely in Will’s heart.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, with some discomposure. “What do you

mean?”

“Look at me, and you will find your eyesight swim. Raise your hand; it

is dead-heavy. This is your last bottle of wine, Master Will, and your

last night upon the earth.”

“You are a doctor?” quavered Will.

“The best that ever was,” replied the other; “for I cure both mind and

body with the same prescription. I take away all pain and I forgive all

sins; and where my patients have gone wrong in life, I smooth out all

complications and set them free again upon their feet.”

“I have no need of you,” said Will.

“A time comes for all men, Master Will,” replied the doctor, “when the

helm is taken out of their hands. For you, because you were prudent and

quiet, it has been long of coming, and you have had long to discipline

yourself for its reception. You have seen what is to be seen about your

mill; you have sat close all your days like a hare in its form; but now

that is at an end; and,” added the doctor, getting on his feet, “you

must arise and come with me.”

“You are a strange physician,” said Will, looking steadfastly upon his

guest.

“I am a natural law,” he replied, “and people call me Death.”

“Why did you not tell me so at first?” cried Will. “I have been waiting

for you these many years. Give me your hand, and welcome.”

“Lean upon my arm,” said the stranger, “for already your strength

abates. Lean on me as heavily as you need; for though I am old, I am

very strong. It is but three steps to my carriage, and there all your

trouble ends. Why, Will,” he added, “I have been yearning for you as if

you were my own son; and of all the men that ever I came for in my long

days, I have come for you most gladly. I am caustic, and sometimes

offend people at first sight; but I am a good friend at heart to such

as you.”

“Since Marjory was taken,” returned Will, “I declare before God you

were the only friend I had to look for.” So the pair went arm-in-arm

across the courtyard.

One of the servants awoke about this time and heard the noise of horses

pawing before he dropped asleep again; all down the valley that night

there was a rushing as of a smooth and steady wind descending towards

the plain; and when the world rose next morning, sure enough Will o’

the Mill had gone at last upon his travels.

MARKHEIM

“Yes,” said the dealer, “our windfalls are of various kinds. Some

customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior

knowledge. Some are dishonest,” and here he held up the candle, so that

the light fell strongly on his visitor, “and in that case,” he

continued, “I profit by my virtue.”

Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes

had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the

shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the

flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside.

The dealer chuckled. “You come to me on Christmas Day,” he resumed,

“when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and

make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that;

you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my

books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I

remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and

ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the

eye, he has to pay for it.” The dealer once more chuckled; and then,

changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of

irony, “You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into

the possession of the object?” he continued. “Still your uncle’s

cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!”

And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe,

looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with

every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of

infinite pity, and a touch of horror.

“This time,” said he, “you are in error. I have not come to sell, but

to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle’s cabinet is bare to

the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock

Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my

errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a

lady,” he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he

had prepared; “and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing

you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I

must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well

know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected.”

There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this

statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious

lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near

thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence.

“Well, sir,” said the dealer, “be it so. You are an old customer after

all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be

it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now,” he

went on, “this hand glass—fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a

good collection, too; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my

customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole

heir of a remarkable collector.”

The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had

stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a

shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a

sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as

swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the

hand that now received the glass.

“A glass,” he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more

clearly. “A glass? For Christmas? Surely not?”

“And why not?” cried the dealer. “Why not a glass?”

Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. “You ask

me why not?” he said. “Why, look here—look in it—look at yourself! Do

you like to see it? No! nor I—nor any man.”

The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted

him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on

hand, he chuckled. “Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard

favoured,” said he.

“I ask you,” said Markheim, “for a Christmas present, and you give me

this—this damned reminder of years, and sins and follies—this

hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell

me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself.

I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?”

The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim

did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an

eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth.

“What are you driving at?” the dealer asked.

“Not charitable?” returned the other, gloomily. “Not charitable; not

pious; not scrupulous; unloving, unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safe

to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?”

“I will tell you what it is,” began the dealer, with some sharpness,

and then broke off again into a chuckle. “But I see this is a love

match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady’s health.”

“Ah!” cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. “Ah, have you been in

love? Tell me about that.”

“I,” cried the dealer. “I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the

time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?”

“Where is the hurry?” returned Markheim. “It is very pleasant to stand

here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry

away from any pleasure—no, not even from so mild a one as this. We

should rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a

cliff’s edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it—a cliff a

mile high—high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of

humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each

other: why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows,

we might become friends?”

“I have just one word to say to you,” said the dealer. “Either make

your purchase, or walk out of my shop!”

“True true,” said Markheim. “Enough, fooling. To business. Show me

something else.”

The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the

shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim

moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he

drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many different

emotions were depicted together on his face—terror, horror, and

resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard

lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.

“This, perhaps, may suit,” observed the dealer: and then, as he began

to re-arise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long,

skewerlike dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen,

striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in a

heap.

Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow

as was becoming to their great age; others garrulous and hurried. All

these told out the seconds in an intricate, chorus of tickings. Then

the passage of a lad’s feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in

upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness

of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on

the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that

inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless

bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross

blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces

of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images

in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of

shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.

From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim’s eyes returned to the body

of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small

and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in

that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim

had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed,

this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent

voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or

direct the miracle of locomotion—there it must lie till it was found.

Found! ay, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that

would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit.

Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy. “Time was that when the

brains were out,” he thought; and the first word struck into his mind.

Time, now that the deed was accomplished—time, which had closed for the

victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.

The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with

every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral

turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz-the

clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.

The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered

him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle,

beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance

reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home design, some from

Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were

an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of

his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And

still, as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with a

sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should

have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he

should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and

only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have

been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all

things otherwise: poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the

mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to

be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all

this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted

attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand

of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would

jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock,

the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin.

Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a

besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumour of

the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their

curiosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined them

sitting motionless and with uplifted ear—solitary people, condemned to

spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now

startingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties

struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised

finger: every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths,

prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him.

Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of

the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by

the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. And

then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence

of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to strike and

freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud

among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado,

the movements of a busy man at ease in his own house.

But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one

portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on

the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold

on his credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside his

window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the

pavement—these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through the

brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But

here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched

the servant set forth sweet-hearting, in her poor best, “out for the

day” written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course;

and yet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a

stir of delicate footing—he was surely conscious, inexplicably

conscious of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the

house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and

yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet

again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and

hatred.

At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which

still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small

and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to

the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the

threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness,

did there not hang wavering a shadow?

Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to

beat with a staff on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with shouts

and railleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name.

Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he lay

quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and

shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which

would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had

become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from

his knocking, and departed.

Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth

from this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of London

multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of

safety and apparent innocence—his bed. One visitor had come: at any

moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the

deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure.

The money, that was now Markheim’s concern; and as a means to that, the

keys.

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was

still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the

mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his

victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit

half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on

the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and

inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to

the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its

back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had

been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all

expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with

blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing

circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain

fair-day in a fishers’ village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon

the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice

of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the

crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the

chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with

pictures, dismally designed, garishly coloured: Brown-rigg with her

apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in the

death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes. The thing

was as clear as an illusion; he was once again that little boy; he was

looking once again, and with the same sense of physical revolt, at

these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the thumping of the drums.

A bar of that day’s music returned upon his memory; and at that, for

the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a sudden

weakness of the joints, which he must instantly resist and conquer.

He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these

considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his

mind to realise the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a

while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale

mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable

energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been

arrested, as the horologist, with interjected finger, arrests the

beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more

remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before the

painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he

felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all

those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one

who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a

tremor.

With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the

keys and advanced towards the open door of the shop. Outside, it had

begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had

banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house

were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled

with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door,

he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of

another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated

loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton’s weight of resolve upon his

muscles, and drew back the door.

The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs;

on the bright suit of armour posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing;

and on the dark wood-carvings, and framed pictures that hung against

the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain

through all the house that, in Markheim’s ears, it began to be

distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the

tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the

counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to

mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of

the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him

to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by

presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop,

he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a great

effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed

stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he

would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening with ever fresh

attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense which held the

outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned

continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from their

orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half-rewarded as

with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty

steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies.

On that first storey, the doors stood ajar, three of them like three

ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could never

again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men’s

observing eyes, he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among

bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he

wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear

they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at

least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous

and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of

his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitions

terror, some scission in the continuity of man’s experience, some

wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on

the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as

the defeated tyrant overthrew the chess-board, should break the mould

of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said)

when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might

befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal

his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might

yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch;

ay, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for

instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his

victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen

invade him from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense,

these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against

sin. But about God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless

exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew; it was there, and

not among men, that he felt sure of justice.

When he had got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind

him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite

dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and

incongruous furniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld

himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures,

framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine

Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with

tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good

fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this

concealed him from the neighbours. Here, then, Markheim drew in a

packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It

was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides;

for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on

the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the

tail of his eye he saw the door—even glanced at it from time to time

directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate

of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the

street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the

notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of

many children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable

was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it

smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with

answerable ideas and images; church-going children and the pealing of

the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on

the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky;

and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the

somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson

(which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs,

and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.

And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his

feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went

over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted

the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the

knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened.

Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the

dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some

chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But

when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room,

looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and

then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke

loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the

visitant returned.

“Did you call me?” he asked, pleasantly, and with that he entered the

room and closed the door behind him.

Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a

film upon his sight, but the outlines of the new comer seemed to change

and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle-light of the

shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he

bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,

there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the

earth and not of God.

And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood

looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: “You are looking

for the money, I believe?” it was in the tones of everyday politeness.

Markheim made no answer.

“I should warn you,” resumed the other, “that the maid has left her

sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be

found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences.”

“You know me?” cried the murderer.

The visitor smiled. “You have long been a favourite of mine,” he said;

“and I have long observed and often sought to help you.”

“What are you?” cried Markheim: “the devil?”

“What I may be,” returned the other, “cannot affect the service I

propose to render you.”

“It can,” cried Markheim; “it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by

you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!”

“I know you,” replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or

rather firmness. “I know you to the soul.”

“Know me!” cried Markheim. “Who can do so? My life is but a travesty

and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature. All men do; all

men are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them.

You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos have seized and

muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control—if you could see

their faces, they would be altogether different, they would shine out

for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid;

my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time, I could disclose

myself.”

“To me?” inquired the visitant.

“To you before all,” returned the murderer. “I supposed you were

intelligent. I thought—since you exist—you would prove a reader of the

heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it;

my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants have

dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother—the giants

of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not

look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you

not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any

wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me

for a thing that surely must be common as humanity—the unwilling

sinner?”

“All this is very feelingly expressed,” was the reply, “but it regards

me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care

not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so

as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the

servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures

on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it

is as if the gallows itself was striding towards you through the

Christmas streets! Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell you

where to find the money?”

“For what price?” asked Markheim.

“I offer you the service for a Christmas gift,” returned the other.

Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph.

“No,” said he, “I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of

thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should

find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing

to commit myself to evil.”

“I have no objection to a death-bed repentance,” observed the visitant.

“Because you disbelieve their efficacy!” Markheim cried.

“I do not say so,” returned the other; “but I look on these things from

a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man

has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion,

or to sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak

compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance,

he can add but one act of service—to repent, to die smiling, and thus

to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving

followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please

yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply,

spread your elbows at the board; and when the night begins to fall and

the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that

you will find it even easy to compound your quarrel with your

conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God. I came but now from

such a deathbed, and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening

to the man’s last words: and when I looked into that face, which had

been set as a flint against mercy, I found it smiling with hope.”

“And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?” asked Markheim. “Do you

think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and

sin, and, at the last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the

thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because

you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? and is this

crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of

good?”

“Murder is to me no special category,” replied the other. “All sins are

murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving

mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and

feeding on each other’s lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their

acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death; and to my

eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on

a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a

murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtues

also; they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are both scythes

for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in

action but in character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act,

whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling

cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those of the

rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a dealer, but

because you are Markheim, that I offer to forward your escape.”

“I will lay my heart open to you,” answered Markheim. “This crime on

which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many

lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been

driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bond-slave to poverty,

driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these

temptations; mine was not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day,

and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches—both the power

and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor

in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the agents

of good, this heart at peace. Something comes over me out of the past;

something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of

the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble

books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies my

life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of

destination.”

“You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?” remarked

the visitor; “and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some

thousands?”

“Ah,” said Markheim, “but this time I have a sure thing.”

“This time, again, you will lose,” replied the visitor quietly.

“Ah, but I keep back the half!” cried Markheim.

“That also you will lose,” said the other.

The sweat started upon Markheim’s brow. “Well, then, what matter?” he

exclaimed. “Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall

one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override

the better? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I do

not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds,

renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as

murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows

their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I

love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth

but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life,

and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the

mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts.”

But the visitant raised his finger. “For six-and-thirty years that you

have been in this world,” said be, “through many changes of fortune and

varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years

ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have

blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any

cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?—five years from now I

shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor

can anything but death avail to stop you.”

“It is true,” Markheim said huskily, “I have in some degree complied

with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise

of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their

surroundings.”

“I will propound to you one simple question,” said the other; “and as

you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in

many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so—and at any

account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any

one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your

own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?”

“In any one?” repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration.

“No,” he added, with despair, “in none! I have gone down in all.”

“Then,” said the visitor, “content yourself with what you are, for you

will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are

irrevocably written down.”

Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor

who first broke the silence. “That being so,” he said, “shall I show

you the money?”

“And grace?” cried Markheim.

“Have you not tried it?” returned the other. “Two or three years ago,

did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your

voice the loudest in the hymn?”

“It is true,” said Markheim; “and I see clearly what remains for me by

way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are

opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am.”

At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house;

and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which

he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour.

“The maid!” he cried. “She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there

is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say,

is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious

countenance—no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once

the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has

already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in

your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening—the whole night, if

needful—to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your

safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!” he

cried; “up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales: up, and

act!”

Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. “If I be condemned to evil

acts,” he said, “there is still one door of freedom open—I can cease

from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I

be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet,

by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love

of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have

still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment,

you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage.”

The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely

change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph, and, even

as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to

watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went

downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly

before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream,

random as chance-medley—a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed

it, tempted him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiet

haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop,

where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely

silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood

gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamour.

He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.

“You had better go for the police,” said he: “I have killed your

master.”

THRAWN JANET

The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of

Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful

to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without

relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse

under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features,

his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private

admonitions, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if his eye

pierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Many

young persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of the

Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon

on lst Peter, v. and 8th, “The devil as a roaring lion,” on the Sunday

after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass

himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and

the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened

into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all

that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself,

where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the

Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold,

moorish hilltops rising towards the sky, had begun, at a very early

period of Mr. Soulis’s ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all

who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the

clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing

late by that uncanny neighbourhood. There was one spot, to be more

particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood

between the high road and the water of Dule, with a gable to each; its

back was towards the kirk-town of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in

front of it, a bare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied the land

between the river and the road. The house was two stories high, with

two large rooms on each. It opened not directly on the garden, but on a

causewayed path, or passage, giving on the road on the one hand, and

closed on the other by the tall willows and elders that bordered on the

stream. And it was this strip of causeway that enjoyed among the young

parishioners of Balweary so infamous a reputation. The minister walked

there often after dark, sometimes groaning aloud in the instancy of his

unspoken prayers; and when he was from home, and the manse door was

locked, the more daring schoolboys ventured, with beating hearts, to

“follow my leader” across that legendary spot.

This atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did, a man of God of

spotless character and orthodoxy, was a common cause of wonder and

subject of inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance or

business into that unknown, outlying country. But many even of the

people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had

marked the first year of Mr. Soulis’s ministrations; and among those

who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy

of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk

would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and recount the cause

of the minister’s strange looks and solitary life.

Fifty years syne, when Mr. Soulis cam first into Ba’weary, he was still

a young man—a callant, the folk said—fu’ o’ book learnin’ and grand at

the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi’ nae leevin’

experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi’ his

gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and women were

moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a

self-deceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied. It

was before the days o’ the moderates—weary fa’ them; but ill things are

like guid—they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time; and there

were folk even then that said the Lord had left the college professors

to their ain devices, an’ the lads that went to study wi’ them wad hae

done mair and better sittin’ in a peat-bog, like their forbears of the

persecution, wi’ a Bible under their oxter and a speerit o’ prayer in

their heart. There was nae doubt, onyway, but that Mr. Soulis had been

ower lang at the college. He was careful and troubled for mony things

besides the ae thing needful. He had a feck o’ books wi’ him—mair than

had ever been seen before in a’ that presbytery; and a sair wark the

carrier had wi’ them, for they were a’ like to have smoored in the

Deil’s Hag between this and Kilmackerlie. They were books o’ divinity,

to be sure, or so they ca’d them; but the serious were o’ opinion there

was little service for sae mony, when the hail o’ God’s Word would gang

in the neuk of a plaid. Then he wad sit half the day and half the nicht

forbye, which was scant decent—writin’, nae less; and first, they were

feared he wad read his sermons; and syne it proved he was writin’ a

book himsel’, which was surely no fittin’ for ane of his years an’ sma’

experience.

Onyway it behoved him to get an auld, decent wife to keep the manse for

him an’ see to his bit denners; and he was recommended to an auld

limmer—Janet M’Clour, they ca’d her—and sae far left to himsel’ as to

be ower persuaded. There was mony advised him to the contrar, for Janet

was mair than suspeckit by the best folk in Ba’weary. Lang or that, she

had had a wean to a dragoon; she hadnae come forrit[140] for maybe

thretty year; and bairns had seen her mumblin’ to hersel’ up on Key’s

Loan in the gloamin’, whilk was an unco time an’ place for a

God-fearin’ woman. Howsoever, it was the laird himsel’ that had first

tauld the minister o’ Janet; and in thae days he wad have gane a far

gate to pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet was sib to

the deil, it was a’ superstition by his way of it; an’ when they cast

up the Bible to him an’ the witch of Endor, he wad threep it doun their

thrapples that thir days were a’ gane by, and the deil was mercifully

restrained.

Weel, when it got about the clachan that Janet M’Clour was to be

servant at the manse, the folk were fair mad wi’ her an’ him thegether;

and some o’ the guidwives had nae better to dae than get round her door

cheeks and chairge her wi’ a’ that was ken’t again her, frae the

sodger’s bairn to John Tamson’s twa kye. She was nae great speaker;

folk usually let her gang her ain gate, an’ she let them gang theirs,

wi’, neither Fair-guid-een nor Fair-guid-day; but when she buckled to,

she had a tongue to deave the miller. Up she got, an’ there wasnae an

auld story in Ba’weary but she gart somebody lowp for it that day; they

couldnae say ae thing but she could say twa to it; till, at the hinder

end, the guidwives up and claught haud of her, and clawed the coats aff

her back, and pu’d her doun the clachan to the water o’ Dule, to see if

she were a witch or no, soum or droun. The carline skirled till ye

could hear her at the Hangin’ Shaw, and she focht like ten; there was

mony a guidwife bure the mark of her neist day an’ mony a lang day

after; and just in the hettest o’ the collieshangie, wha suld come up

(for his sins) but the new minister.

“Women,” said he (and he had a grand voice), “I charge you in the

Lord’s name to let her go.”

Janet ran to him—she was fair wud wi’ terror—an’ clang to him, an’

prayed him, for Christ’s sake, save her frae the cummers; an’ they, for

their pairt, tauld him a’ that was ken’t, and maybe mair.

“Woman,” says he to Janet, “is this true?”

“As the Lord sees me,” says she, “as the Lord made me, no a word o’t.

Forbye the bairn,” says she, “I’ve been a decent woman a’ my days.”

“Will you,” says Mr. Soulis, “in the name of God, and before me, His

unworthy minister, renounce the devil and his works?”

Weel, it wad appear that when he askit that, she gave a girn that

fairly frichtit them that saw her, an’ they could hear her teeth play

dirl thegether in her chafts; but there was naething for it but the ae

way or the ither; an’ Janet lifted up her hand and renounced the deil

before them a’.

“And now,” says Mr. Soulis to the guidwives, “home with ye, one and

all, and pray to God for His forgiveness.”

And he gied Janet his arm, though she had little on her but a sark, and

took her up the clachan to her ain door like a leddy of the land; an’

her scrieghin’ and laughin’ as was a scandal to be heard.

There were mony grave folk lang ower their prayers that nicht; but when

the morn cam’ there was sic a fear fell upon a’ Ba’weary that the

bairns hid theirsels, and even the men folk stood and keekit frae their

doors. For there was Janet comin’ doun the clachan—her or her likeness,

nane could tell—wi’ her neck thrawn, and her heid on ae side, like a

body that has been hangit, and a girn on her face like an unstreakit

corp. By an’ by they got used wi’ it, and even speered at her to ken

what was wrang; but frae that day forth she couldnae speak like a

Christian woman, but slavered and played click wi’ her teeth like a

pair o’ shears; and frae that day forth the name o’ God cam never on

her lips. Whiles she wad try to say it, but it michtnae be. Them that

kenned best said least; but they never gied that Thing the name o’

Janet M’Clour; for the auld Janet, by their way o’t, was in muckle hell

that day. But the minister was neither to haud nor to bind; he preached

about naething but the folk’s cruelty that had gi’en her a stroke of

the palsy; he skelpt the bairns that meddled her; and he had her up to

the manse that same nicht, and dwalled there a’ his lane wi’ her under

the Hangin’ Shaw.

Weel, time gaed by: and the idler sort commenced to think mair lichtly

o’ that black business. The minister was weel thocht o’; he was aye

late at the writing, folk wad see his can’le doon by the Dule water

after twal’ at e’en; and he seemed pleased wi’ himsel’ and upsitten as

at first, though a’ body could see that he was dwining. As for Janet

she cam an’ she gaed; if she didnae speak muckle afore, it was reason

she should speak less then; she meddled naebody; but she was an

eldritch thing to see, an’ nane wad hae mistrysted wi’ her for Ba’weary

glebe.

About the end o’ July there cam’ a spell o’ weather, the like o’t never

was in that country side; it was lown an’ het an’ heartless; the herds

couldnae win up the Black Hill, the bairns were ower weariet to play;

an’ yet it was gousty too, wi’ claps o’ het wund that rumm’led in the

glens, and bits o’ shouers that slockened naething. We aye thocht it

but to thun’er on the morn; but the morn cam, an’ the morn’s morning,

and it was aye the same uncanny weather, sair on folks and bestial. Of

a’ that were the waur, nane suffered like Mr. Soulis; he could neither

sleep nor eat, he tauld his elders; an’ when he wasnae writin’ at his

weary book, he wad be stravaguin’ ower a’ the countryside like a man

possessed, when a’ body else was blythe to keep caller ben the house.

Abune Hangin’ Shaw, in the bield o’ the Black Hill, there’s a bit

enclosed grund wi’ an iron yett; and it seems, in the auld days, that

was the kirkyaird o’ Ba’weary, and consecrated by the Papists before

the blessed licht shone upon the kingdom. It was a great howff o’ Mr.

Soulis’s, onyway; there he would sit an’ consider his sermons; and

indeed it’s a bieldy bit. Weel, as he cam ower the wast end o’ the

Black Hill, ae day, he saw first twa, an syne fower, an’ syne seeven

corbie craws fleein’ round an’ round abune the auld kirkyaird. They

flew laigh and heavy, an’ squawked to ither as they gaed; and it was

clear to Mr. Soulis that something had put them frae their ordinar. He

wasnae easy fleyed, an’ gaed straucht up to the wa’s; an’ what suld he

find there but a man, or the appearance of a man, sittin’ in the inside

upon a grave. He was of a great stature, an’ black as hell, and his

e’en were singular to see.[144] Mr. Soulis had heard tell o’ black men,

mony’s the time; but there was something unco about this black man that

daunted him. Het as he was, he took a kind o’ cauld grue in the marrow

o’ his banes; but up he spak for a’ that; an’ says he: “My friend, are

you a stranger in this place?” The black man answered never a word; he

got upon his feet, an’ begude to hirsle to the wa’ on the far side; but

he aye lookit at the minister; an’ the minister stood an’ lookit back;

till a’ in a meenute the black man was ower the wa’ an’ rinnin’ for the

bield o’ the trees. Mr. Soulis, he hardly kenned why, ran after him;

but he was sair forjaskit wi’ his walk an’ the het, unhalesome weather;

and rin as he likit, he got nae mair than a glisk o’ the black man

amang the birks, till he won doun to the foot o’ the hill-side, an’

there he saw him ance mair, gaun, hap, step, an’ lowp, ower Dule water

to the manse.

Mr. Soulis wasnae weel pleased that this fearsome gangrel suld mak’ sae

free wi’ Ba’weary manse; an’ he ran the harder, an’, wet shoon, ower

the burn, an’ up the walk; but the deil a black man was there to see.

He stepped out upon the road, but there was naebody there; he gaed a’

ower the gairden, but na, nae black man. At the hinder end, and a bit

feared as was but natural, he lifted the hasp and into the manse; and

there was Janet M’Clour before his een, wi’ her thrawn craig, and nane

sae pleased to see him. And he aye minded sinsyne, when first he set

his een upon her, he had the same cauld and deidly grue.

“Janet,” says he, “have you seen a black man?”

“A black man?” quo’ she. “Save us a’! Ye’re no wise, minister. There’s

nae black man in a Ba’weary.”

But she didnae speak plain, ye maun understand; but yam-yammered, like

a powney wi’ the bit in its moo.

“Weel,” says he, “Janet, if there was nae black man, I have spoken with

the Accuser of the Brethren.”

And he sat down like ane wi’ a fever, an’ his teeth chittered in his

heid.

“Hoots,” says she, “think shame to yoursel’, minister;” an’ gied him a

drap brandy that she keept aye by her.

Syne Mr. Soulis gaed into his study amang a’ his books. It’s a lang,

laigh, mirk chalmer, perishin’ cauld in winter, an’ no very dry even in

the tap o’ the simmer, for the manse stands near the burn. Sae doun he

sat, and thocht of a’ that had come an’ gane since he was in Ba’weary,

an’ his hame, an’ the days when he was a bairn an’ ran daffin’ on the

braes; and that black man aye ran in his heid like the ower-come of a

sang. Aye the mair he thocht, the mair he thocht o’ the black man. He

tried the prayer, an’ the words wouldnae come to him; an’ he tried,

they say, to write at his book, but he could nae mak’ nae mair o’ that.

There was whiles he thocht the black man was at his oxter, an’ the swat

stood upon him cauld as well-water; and there was other whiles, when he

cam to himsel’ like a christened bairn and minded naething.

The upshot was that he gaed to the window an’ stood glowrin’ at Dule

water. The trees are unco thick, an’ the water lies deep an’ black

under the manse; an’ there was Janct washin’ the cla’es wi’ her coats

kilted. She had her back to the minister, an’ he, for his pairt, hardly

kenned what he was lookin’ at. Syne she turned round, an’ shawed her

face; Mr. Soulis had the same cauld grue as twice that day afore, an’

it was borne in upon him what folk said, that Janet was deid lang syne,

an’ this was a bogle in her clay-cauld flesh. He drew back a pickle and

he scanned her narrowly. She was tramp-trampin’ in the cla’es, croonin’

to hersel’; and eh! Gude guide us, but it was a fearsome face. Whiles

she sang louder, but there was nae man born o’ woman that could tell

the words o’ her sang; an’ whiles she lookit side-lang doun, but there

was naething there for her to look at. There gaed a scunner through the

flesh upon his banes; and that was Heeven’s advertisement. But Mr.

Soulis just blamed himsel’, he said, to think sae ill of a puir, auld

afflicted wife that hadnae a freend forbye himsel’; an’ he put up a bit

prayer for him and her, an’ drank a little caller water—for his heart

rose again the meat—an’ gaed up to his naked bed in the gloaming.

That was a nicht that has never been forgotten in Ba’weary, the nicht

o’ the seeventeenth of August, seventeen hun’er’ an twal’. It had been

het afore, as I hae said, but that nicht it was hetter than ever. The

sun gaed doun amang unco-lookin’ clouds; it fell as mirk as the pit; no

a star, no a breath o’ wund; ye couldnae see your han’ afore your face,

and even the auld folk cuist the covers frae their beds and lay pechin’

for their breath. Wi’ a’ that he had upon his mind, it was gey and

unlikely Mr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep. He lay an’ he tummled; the

gude, caller bed that he got into brunt his very banes; whiles he

slept, and whiles he waukened; whiles he heard the time o’ nicht, and

whiles a tyke yowlin’ up the muir, as if somebody was deid; whiles he

thocht he heard bogles claverin’ in his lug, an’ whiles he saw spunkies

in the room. He behoved, he judged, to be sick; an’ sick he was—little

he jaloosed the sickness.

At the hinder end, he got a clearness in his mind, sat up in his sark

on the bed-side, and fell thinkin’ ance mair o’ the black man an’

Janet. He couldnae weel tell how—maybe it was the cauld to his feet—but

it cam’ in upon him wi’ a spate that there was some connection between

thir twa, an’ that either or baith o’ them were bogles. And just at

that moment, in Janet’s room, which was neist to his, there cam’ a

stramp o’ feet as if men were wars’lin’, an’ then a loud bang; an’ then

a wund gaed reishling round the fower quarters of the house; an’ then

a’ was aince mair as seelent as the grave.

Mr. Soulis was feared for neither man nor deevil. He got his

tinder-box, an’ lit a can’le, an’ made three steps o’t ower to Janet’s

door. It was on the hasp, an’ he pushed it open, an’ keeked bauldly in.

It was a big room, as big as the minister’s ain, an’ plenished wi’

grand, auld, solid gear, for he had naething else. There was a

fower-posted bed wi’ auld tapestry; and a braw cabinet of aik, that was

fu’ o’ the minister’s divinity books, an’ put there to be out o’ the

gate; an’ a wheen duds o’ Janet’s lying here and there about the floor.

But nae Janet could Mr. Soulis see; nor ony sign of a contention. In he

gaed (an’ there’s few that wad ha’e followed him) an’ lookit a’ round,

an’ listened. But there was naethin’ to be heard, neither inside the

manse nor in a’ Ba’weary parish, an’ naethin’ to be seen but the muckle

shadows turnin’ round the can’le. An’ then a’ at aince, the minister’s

heart played dunt an’ stood stock-still; an’ a cauld wund blew amang

the hairs o’ his heid. Whaten a weary sicht was that for the puir man’s

een! For there was Janat hangin’ frae a nail beside the auld aik

cabinet: her heid aye lay on her shoother, her een were steeked, the

tongue projekit frae her mouth, and her heels were twa feet clear abune

the floor.

“God forgive us all!” thocht Mr. Soulis; “poor Janet’s dead.”

He cam’ a step nearer to the corp; an’ then his heart fair whammled in

his inside. For by what cantrip it wad ill-beseem a man to judge, she

was hingin’ frae a single nail an’ by a single wursted thread for

darnin’ hose.

It’s an awfu’ thing to be your lane at nicht wi’ siccan prodigies o’

darkness; but Mr. Soulis was strong in the Lord. He turned an’ gaed his

ways oot o’ that room, and lockit the door ahint him; and step by step,

doon the stairs, as heavy as leed; and set doon the can’le on the table

at the stairfoot. He couldnae pray, he couldnae think, he was dreepin’

wi’ caul’ swat, an’ naething could he hear but the dunt-dunt-duntin’ o’

his ain heart. He micht maybe have stood there an hour, or maybe twa,

he minded sae little; when a’ o’ a sudden, he heard a laigh, uncanny

steer upstairs; a foot gaed to an’ fro in the cha’mer whaur the corp

was hingin’; syne the door was opened, though he minded weel that he

had lockit it; an’ syne there was a step upon the landin’, an’ it

seemed to him as if the corp was lookin’ ower the rail and doun upon

him whaur he stood.

He took up the can’le again (for he couldnae want the licht), and as

saftly as ever he could, gaed straucht out o’ the manse an’ to the far

end o’ the causeway. It was aye pit-mirk; the flame o’ the can’le, when

he set it on the grund, brunt steedy and clear as in a room; naething

moved, but the Dule water seepin’ and sabbin’ doon the glen, an’ yon

unhaly footstep that cam’ ploddin doun the stairs inside the manse. He

kenned the foot over weel, for it was Janet’s; and at ilka step that

cam’ a wee thing nearer, the cauld got deeper in his vitals. He

commanded his soul to Him that made an’ keepit him; “and O Lord,” said

he, “give me strength this night to war against the powers of evil.”

By this time the foot was comin’ through the passage for the door; he

could hear a hand skirt alang the wa’, as if the fearsome thing was

feelin’ for its way. The saughs tossed an’ maned thegether, a lang sigh

cam’ ower the hills, the flame o’ the can’le was blawn aboot; an’ there

stood the corp of Thrawn Janet, wi’ her grogram goun an’ her black

mutch, wi’ the heid aye upon the shouther, an’ the girn still upon the

face o’t—leevin’, ye wad hae said—deid, as Mr. Soulis weel kenned—upon

the threshold o’ the manse.

It’s a strange thing that the saul of man should be that thirled into

his perishable body; but the minister saw that, an’ his heart didnae

break.

She didnae stand there lang; she began to move again an’ cam’ slowly

towards Mr. Soulis whaur he stood under the saughs. A’ the life o’ his

body, a’ the strength o’ his speerit, were glowerin’ frae his een. It

seemed she was gaun to speak, but wanted words, an’ made a sign wi’ the

left hand. There cam’ a clap o’ wund, like a cat’s fuff; oot gaed the

can’le, the saughs skrieghed like folk; an’ Mr. Soulis kenned that,

live or die, this was the end o’t.

“Witch, beldame, devil!” he cried, “I charge you, by the power of God,

begone—if you be dead, to the grave—if you be damned, to hell.”

An’ at that moment the Lord’s ain hand out o’ the Heevens struck the

Horror whaur it stood; the auld, deid, desecrated corp o’ the

witch-wife, sae lang keepit frae the grave and hirsled round by deils,

lowed up like a brunstane spunk and fell in ashes to the grund; the

thunder followed, peal on dirling peal, the rairing rain upon the back

o’ that; and Mr. Soulis lowped through the garden hedge, and ran, wi’

skelloch upon skelloch, for the clachan.

That same mornin’, John Christie saw the Black Man pass the Muckle

Cairn as it was chappin’ six; before eicht, he gaed by the change-house

at Knockdow; an’ no lang after, Sandy M’Lellan saw him gaun linkin’

doun the braes frae Kilmackerlie. There’s little doubt but it was him

that dwalled sae lang in Janet’s body; but he was awa’ at last; and

sinsyne the deil has never fashed us in Ba’weary.

But it was a sair dispensation for the minister; lang, lang he lay

ravin’ in his bed; and frae that hour to this, he was the man ye ken

the day.

OLALLA

“Now,” said the doctor, “my part is done, and, I may say, with some

vanity, well done. It remains only to get you out of this cold and

poisonous city, and to give you two months of a pure air and an easy

conscience. The last is your affair. To the first I think I can help

you. It falls indeed rather oddly; it was but the other day the Padre

came in from the country; and as he and I are old friends, although of

contrary professions, he applied to me in a matter of distress among

some of his parishioners. This was a family—but you are ignorant of

Spain, and even the names of our grandees are hardly known to you;

suffice it, then, that they were once great people, and are now fallen

to the brink of destitution. Nothing now belongs to them but the

residencia, and certain leagues of desert mountain, in the greater part

of which not even a goat could support life. But the house is a fine

old place, and stands at a great height among the hills, and most

salubriously; and I had no sooner heard my friend’s tale, than I

remembered you. I told him I had a wounded officer, wounded in the good

cause, who was now able to make a change; and I proposed that his

friends should take you for a lodger. Instantly the Padre’s face grew

dark, as I had maliciously foreseen it would. It was out of the

question, he said. Then let them starve, said I, for I have no sympathy

with tatterdemalion pride. There-upon we separated, not very content

with one another; but yesterday, to my wonder, the Padre returned and

made a submission: the difficulty, he said, he had found upon enquiry

to be less than he had feared; or, in other words, these proud people

had put their pride in their pocket. I closed with the offer; and,

subject to your approval, I have taken rooms for you in the residencia.

The air of these mountains will renew your blood; and the quiet in

which you will there live is worth all the medicines in the world.”

“Doctor,” said I, “you have been throughout my good angel, and your

advice is a command. But tell me, if you please, something of the

family with which I am to reside.”

“I am coming to that,” replied my friend; “and, indeed, there is a

difficulty in the way. These beggars are, as I have said, of very high

descent and swollen with the most baseless vanity; they have lived for

some generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on either hand,

from the rich who had now become too high for them, and from the poor,

whom they still regarded as too low; and even to-day, when poverty

forces them to unfasten their door to a guest, they cannot do so

without a most ungracious stipulation. You are to remain, they say, a

stranger; they will give you attendance, but they refuse from the first

the idea of the smallest intimacy.”

I will not deny that I was piqued, and perhaps the feeling strengthened

my desire to go, for I was confident that I could break down that

barrier if I desired. “There is nothing offensive in such a

stipulation,” said I; “and I even sympathise with the feeling that

inspired it.”

“It is true they have never seen you,” returned the doctor politely;

“and if they knew you were the handsomest and the most pleasant man

that ever came from England (where I am told that handsome men are

common, but pleasant ones not so much so), they would doubtless make

you welcome with a better grace. But since you take the thing so well,

it matters not. To me, indeed, it seems discourteous. But you will find

yourself the gainer. The family will not much tempt you. A mother, a

son, and a daughter; an old woman said to be halfwitted, a country

lout, and a country girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and

is, therefore,” chuckled the physician, “most likely plain; there is

not much in that to attract the fancy of a dashing officer.”

“And yet you say they are high-born,” I objected.

“Well, as to that, I should distinguish,” returned the doctor. “The

mother is; not so the children. The mother was the last representative

of a princely stock, degenerate both in parts and fortune. Her father

was not only poor, he was mad: and the girl ran wild about the

residencia till his death. Then, much of the fortune having died with

him, and the family being quite extinct, the girl ran wilder than ever,

until at last she married, Heaven knows whom, a muleteer some say,

others a smuggler; while there are some who uphold there was no

marriage at all, and that Felipe and Olalla are bastards. The union,

such as it was, was tragically dissolved some years ago; but they live

in such seclusion, and the country at that time was in so much

disorder, that the precise manner of the man’s end is known only to the

priest—if even to him.”

“I begin to think I shall have strange experiences,” said I.

“I would not romance, if I were you,” replied the doctor; “you will

find, I fear, a very grovelling and commonplace reality. Felipe, for

instance, I have seen. And what am I to say? He is very rustic, very

cunning, very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others are

probably to match. No, no, senor commandante, you must seek congenial

society among the great sights of our mountains; and in these at least,

if you are at all a lover of the works of nature, I promise you will

not be disappointed.”

The next day Felipe came for me in a rough country cart, drawn by a

mule; and a little before the stroke of noon, after I had said farewell

to the doctor, the innkeeper, and different good souls who had

befriended me during my sickness, we set forth out of the city by the

Eastern gate, and began to ascend into the Sierra. I had been so long a

prisoner, since I was left behind for dying after the loss of the

convoy, that the mere smell of the earth set me smiling. The country

through which we went was wild and rocky, partially covered with rough

woods, now of the cork-tree, and now of the great Spanish chestnut, and

frequently intersected by the beds of mountain torrents. The sun shone,

the wind rustled joyously; and we had advanced some miles, and the city

had already shrunk into an inconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind

us, before my attention began to be diverted to the companion of my

drive. To the eye, he seemed but a diminutive, loutish, well-made

country lad, such as the doctor had described, mighty quick and active,

but devoid of any culture; and this first impression was with most

observers final. What began to strike me was his familiar, chattering

talk; so strangely inconsistent with the terms on which I was to be

received; and partly from his imperfect enunciation, partly from the

sprightly incoherence of the matter, so very difficult to follow

clearly without an effort of the mind. It is true I had before talked

with persons of a similar mental constitution; persons who seemed to

live (as he did) by the senses, taken and possessed by the visual

object of the moment and unable to discharge their minds of that

impression. His seemed to me (as I sat, distantly giving ear) a kind of

conversation proper to drivers, who pass much of their time in a great

vacancy of the intellect and threading the sights of a familiar

country. But this was not the case of Felipe; by his own account, he

was a home-keeper; “I wish I was there now,” he said; and then, spying

a tree by the wayside, he broke off to tell me that he had once seen a

crow among its branches.

“A crow?” I repeated, struck by the ineptitude of the remark, and

thinking I had heard imperfectly.

But by this time he was already filled with a new idea; hearkening with

a rapt intentness, his head on one side, his face puckered; and he

struck me rudely, to make me hold my peace. Then he smiled and shook

his head.

“What did you hear?” I asked.

“O, it is all right,” he said; and began encouraging his mule with

cries that echoed unhumanly up the mountain walls.

I looked at him more closely. He was superlatively well-built, light,

and lithe and strong; he was well-featured; his yellow eyes were very

large, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him altogether, he

was a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to find with him, beyond

that he was of a dusky hue, and inclined to hairyness; two

characteristics that I disliked. It was his mind that puzzled, and yet

attracted me. The doctor’s phrase—an innocent—came back to me; and I

was wondering if that were, after all, the true description, when the

road began to go down into the narrow and naked chasm of a torrent. The

waters thundered tumultuously in the bottom; and the ravine was filled

full of the sound, the thin spray, and the claps of wind, that

accompanied their descent. The scene was certainly impressive; but the

road was in that part very securely walled in; the mule went steadily

forward; and I was astonished to perceive the paleness of terror in the

face of my companion. The voice of that wild river was inconstant, now

sinking lower as if in weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones;

momentary freshets seemed to swell its volume, sweeping down the gorge,

raving and booming against the barrier walls; and I observed it was at

each of these accessions to the clamour, that my driver more

particularly winced and blanched. Some thoughts of Scottish

superstition and the river Kelpie, passed across my mind; I wondered if

perchance the like were prevalent in that part of Spain; and turning to

Felipe, sought to draw him out.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“O, I am afraid,” he replied.

“Of what are you afraid?” I returned. “This seems one of the safest

places on this very dangerous road.”

“It makes a noise,” he said, with a simplicity of awe that set my

doubts at rest.

The lad was but a child in intellect; his mind was like his body,

active and swift, but stunted in development; and I began from that

time forth to regard him with a measure of pity, and to listen at first

with indulgence, and at last even with pleasure, to his disjointed

babble.

By about four in the afternoon we had crossed the summit of the

mountain line, said farewell to the western sunshine, and began to go

down upon the other side, skirting the edge of many ravines and moving

through the shadow of dusky woods. There rose upon all sides the voice

of falling water, not condensed and formidable as in the gorge of the

river, but scattered and sounding gaily and musically from glen to

glen. Here, too, the spirits of my driver mended, and he began to sing

aloud in a falsetto voice, and with a singular bluntness of musical

perception, never true either to melody or key, but wandering at will,

and yet somehow with an effect that was natural and pleasing, like that

of the of birds. As the dusk increased, I fell more and more under the

spell of this artless warbling, listening and waiting for some

articulate air, and still disappointed; and when at last I asked him

what it was he sang—“O,” cried he, “I am just singing!” Above all, I

was taken with a trick he had of unweariedly repeating the same note at

little intervals; it was not so monotonous as you would think, or, at

least, not disagreeable; and it seemed to breathe a wonderful

contentment with what is, such as we love to fancy in the attitude of

trees, or the quiescence of a pool.

Night had fallen dark before we came out upon a plateau, and drew up a

little after, before a certain lump of superior blackness which I could

only conjecture to be the residencia. Here, my guide, getting down from

the cart, hooted and whistled for a long time in vain; until at last an

old peasant man came towards us from somewhere in the surrounding dark,

carrying a candle in his hand. By the light of this I was able to

perceive a great arched doorway of a Moorish character: it was closed

by iron-studded gates, in one of the leaves of which Felipe opened a

wicket. The peasant carried off the cart to some out-building; but my

guide and I passed through the wicket, which was closed again behind

us; and by the glimmer of the candle, passed through a court, up a

stone stair, along a section of an open gallery, and up more stairs

again, until we came at last to the door of a great and somewhat bare

apartment. This room, which I understood was to be mine, was pierced by

three windows, lined with some lustrous wood disposed in panels, and

carpeted with the skins of many savage animals. A bright fire burned in

the chimney, and shed abroad a changeful flicker; close up to the blaze

there was drawn a table, laid for supper; and in the far end a bed

stood ready. I was pleased by these preparations, and said so to

Felipe; and he, with the same simplicity of disposition that I held

already remarked in him, warmly re-echoed my praises. “A fine room,” he

said; “a very fine room. And fire, too; fire is good; it melts out the

pleasure in your bones. And the bed,” he continued, carrying over the

candle in that direction—“see what fine sheets—how soft, how smooth,

smooth;” and he passed his hand again and again over their texture, and

then laid down his head and rubbed his cheeks among them with a

grossness of content that somehow offended me. I took the candle from

his hand (for I feared he would set the bed on fire) and walked back to

the supper-table, where, perceiving a measure of wine, I poured out a

cup and called to him to come and drink of it. He started to his feet

at once and ran to me with a strong expression of hope; but when he saw

the wine, he visibly shuddered.

“Oh, no,” he said, “not that; that is for you. I hate it.”

“Very well, Senor,” said I; “then I will drink to your good health, and

to the prosperity of your house and family. Speaking of which,” I

added, after I had drunk, “shall I not have the pleasure of laying my

salutations in person at the feet of the Senora, your mother?”

But at these words all the childishness passed out of his face, and was

succeeded by a look of indescribable cunning and secrecy. He backed

away from me at the same time, as though I were an animal about to leap

or some dangerous fellow with a weapon, and when he had got near the

door, glowered at me sullenly with contracted pupils. “No,” he said at

last, and the next moment was gone noiselessly out of the room; and I

heard his footing die away downstairs as light as rainfall, and silence

closed over the house.

After I had supped I drew up the table nearer to the bed and began to

prepare for rest; but in the new position of the light, I was struck by

a picture on the wall. It represented a woman, still young. To judge by

her costume and the mellow unity which reigned over the canvas, she had

long been dead; to judge by the vivacity of the attitude, the eyes and

the features, I might have been beholding in a mirror the image of

life. Her figure was very slim and strong, and of a just proportion;

red tresses lay like a crown over her brow; her eyes, of a very golden

brown, held mine with a look; and her face, which was perfectly shaped,

was yet marred by a cruel, sullen, and sensual expression. Something in

both face and figure, something exquisitely intangible, like the echo

of an echo, suggested the features and bearing of my guide; and I stood

awhile, unpleasantly attracted and wondering at the oddity of the

resemblance. The common, carnal stock of that race, which had been

originally designed for such high dames as the one now looking on me

from the canvas, had fallen to baser uses, wearing country clothes,

sitting on the shaft and holding the reins of a mule cart, to bring

home a lodger. Perhaps an actual link subsisted; perhaps some scruple

of the delicate flesh that was once clothed upon with the satin and

brocade of the dead lady, now winced at the rude contact of Felipe’s

frieze.

The first light of the morning shone full upon the portrait, and, as I

lay awake, my eyes continued to dwell upon it with growing complacency;

its beauty crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples one

after another; and while I knew that to love such a woman were to sign

and seal one’s own sentence of degeneration, I still knew that, if she

were alive, I should love her. Day after day the double knowledge of

her wickedness and of my weakness grew clearer. She came to be the

heroine of many day-dreams, in which her eyes led on to, and

sufficiently rewarded, crimes. She cast a dark shadow on my fancy; and

when I was out in the free air of heaven, taking vigorous exercise and

healthily renewing the current of my blood, it was often a glad thought

to me that my enchantress was safe in the grave, her wand of beauty

broken, her lips closed in silence, her philtre spilt. And yet I had a

half-lingering terror that she might not be dead after all, but

re-arisen in the body of some descendant.

Felipe served my meals in my own apartment; and his resemblance to the

portrait haunted me. At times it was not; at times, upon some change of

attitude or flash of expression, it would leap out upon me like a

ghost. It was above all in his ill tempers that the likeness triumphed.

He certainly liked me; he was proud of my notice, which he sought to

engage by many simple and childlike devices; he loved to sit close

before my fire, talking his broken talk or singing his odd, endless,

wordless songs, and sometimes drawing his hand over my clothes with an

affectionate manner of caressing that never failed to cause in me an

embarrassment of which I was ashamed. But for all that, he was capable

of flashes of causeless anger and fits of sturdy sullenness. At a word

of reproof, I have seen him upset the dish of which I was about to eat,

and this not surreptitiously, but with defiance; and similarly at a

hint of inquisition. I was not unnaturally curious, being in a strange

place and surrounded by staring people; but at the shadow of a

question, he shrank back, lowering and dangerous. Then it was that, for

a fraction of a second, this rough lad might have been the brother of

the lady in the frame. But these humours were swift to pass; and the

resemblance died along with them.

In these first days I saw nothing of any one but Felipe, unless the

portrait is to be counted; and since the lad was plainly of weak mind,

and had moments of passion, it may be wondered that I bore his

dangerous neighbourhood with equanimity. As a matter of fact, it was

for some time irksome; but it happened before long that I obtained over

him so complete a mastery as set my disquietude at rest.

It fell in this way. He was by nature slothful, and much of a vagabond,

and yet he kept by the house, and not only waited upon my wants, but

laboured every day in the garden or small farm to the south of the

residencia. Here he would be joined by the peasant whom I had seen on

the night of my arrival, and who dwelt at the far end of the enclosure,

about half a mile away, in a rude out-house; but it was plain to me

that, of these two, it was Felipe who did most; and though I would

sometimes see him throw down his spade and go to sleep among the very

plants he had been digging, his constancy and energy were admirable in

themselves, and still more so since I was well assured they were

foreign to his disposition and the fruit of an ungrateful effort. But

while I admired, I wondered what had called forth in a lad so

shuttle-witted this enduring sense of duty. How was it sustained? I

asked myself, and to what length did it prevail over his instincts? The

priest was possibly his inspirer; but the priest came one day to the

residencia. I saw him both come and go after an interval of close upon

an hour, from a knoll where I was sketching, and all that time Felipe

continued to labour undisturbed in the garden.

At last, in a very unworthy spirit, I determined to debauch the lad

from his good resolutions, and, way-laying him at the gate, easily

pursuaded him to join me in a ramble. It was a fine day, and the woods

to which I led him were green and pleasant and sweet-smelling and alive

with the hum of insects. Here he discovered himself in a fresh

character, mounting up to heights of gaiety that abashed me, and

displaying an energy and grace of movement that delighted the eye. He

leaped, he ran round me in mere glee; he would stop, and look and

listen, and seem to drink in the world like a cordial; and then he

would suddenly spring into a tree with one bound, and hang and gambol

there like one at home. Little as he said to me, and that of not much

import, I have rarely enjoyed more stirring company; the sight of his

delight was a continual feast; the speed and accuracy of his movements

pleased me to the heart; and I might have been so thoughtlessly unkind

as to make a habit of these wants, had not chance prepared a very rude

conclusion to my pleasure. By some swiftness or dexterity the lad

captured a squirrel in a tree top. He was then some way ahead of me,

but I saw him drop to the ground and crouch there, crying aloud for

pleasure like a child. The sound stirred my sympathies, it was so fresh

and innocent; but as I bettered my pace to draw near, the cry of the

squirrel knocked upon my heart. I have heard and seen much of the

cruelty of lads, and above all of peasants; but what I now beheld

struck me into a passion of anger. I thrust the fellow aside, plucked

the poor brute out of his hands, and with swift mercy killed it. Then I

turned upon the torturer, spoke to him long out of the heat of my

indignation, calling him names at which he seemed to wither; and at

length, pointing toward the residencia, bade him begone and leave me,

for I chose to walk with men, not with vermin. He fell upon his knees,

and, the words coming to him with more cleanness than usual, poured out

a stream of the most touching supplications, begging me in mercy to

forgive him, to forget what he had done, to look to the future. “O, I

try so hard,” he said. “O, commandante, bear with Felipe this once; he

will never be a brute again!” Thereupon, much more affected than I

cared to show, I suffered myself to be persuaded, and at last shook

hands with him and made it up. But the squirrel, by way of penance, I

made him bury; speaking of the poor thing’s beauty, telling him what

pains it had suffered, and how base a thing was the abuse of strength.

“See, Felipe,” said I, “you are strong indeed; but in my hands you are

as helpless as that poor thing of the trees. Give me your hand in mine.

You cannot remove it. Now suppose that I were cruel like you, and took

a pleasure in pain. I only tighten my hold, and see how you suffer.” He

screamed aloud, his face stricken ashy and dotted with needle points of

sweat; and when I set him free, he fell to the earth and nursed his

hand and moaned over it like a baby. But he took the lesson in good

part; and whether from that, or from what I had said to him, or the

higher notion he now had of my bodily strength, his original affection

was changed into a dog-like, adoring fidelity.

Meanwhile I gained rapidly in health. The residencia stood on the crown

of a stony plateau; on every side the mountains hemmed it about; only

from the roof, where was a bartizan, there might be seen between two

peaks, a small segment of plain, blue with extreme distance. The air in

these altitudes moved freely and largely; great clouds congregated

there, and were broken up by the wind and left in tatters on the

hilltops; a hoarse, and yet faint rumbling of torrents rose from all

round; and one could there study all the ruder and more ancient

characters of nature in something of their pristine force. I delighted

from the first in the vigorous scenery and changeful weather; nor less

in the antique and dilapidated mansion where I dwelt. This was a large

oblong, flanked at two opposite corners by bastion-like projections,

one of which commanded the door, while both were loopholed for

musketry. The lower storey was, besides, naked of windows, so that the

building, if garrisoned, could not be carried without artillery. It

enclosed an open court planted with pomegranate trees. From this a

broad flight of marble stairs ascended to an open gallery, running all

round and resting, towards the court, on slender pillars. Thence again,

several enclosed stairs led to the upper storeys of the house, which

were thus broken up into distinct divisions. The windows, both within

and without, were closely shuttered; some of the stone-work in the

upper parts had fallen; the roof, in one place, had been wrecked in one

of the flurries of wind which were common in these mountains; and the

whole house, in the strong, beating sunlight, and standing out above a

grove of stunted cork-trees, thickly laden and discoloured with dust,

looked like the sleeping palace of the legend. The court, in

particular, seemed the very home of slumber. A hoarse cooing of doves

haunted about the eaves; the winds were excluded, but when they blew

outside, the mountain dust fell here as thick as rain, and veiled the

red bloom of the pomegranates; shuttered windows and the closed doors

of numerous cellars, and the vacant arches of the gallery, enclosed it;

and all day long the sun made broken profiles on the four sides, and

paraded the shadow of the pillars on the gallery floor. At the ground

level there was, however, a certain pillared recess, which bore the

marks of human habitation. Though it was open in front upon the court,

it was yet provided with a chimney, where a wood fire would he always

prettily blazing; and the tile floor was littered with the skins of

animals.

It was in this place that I first saw my hostess. She had drawn one of

the skins forward and sat in the sun, leaning against a pillar. It was

her dress that struck me first of all, for it was rich and brightly

coloured, and shone out in that dusty courtyard with something of the

same relief as the flowers of the pomegranates. At a second look it was

her beauty of person that took hold of me. As she sat back—watching me,

I thought, though with invisible eyes—and wearing at the same time an

expression of almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed a

perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were

beyond a statue’s. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her face

puckered with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the

breeze; but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my

customary walk a trifle daunted, her idol-like impassivity haunting me;

and when I returned, although she was still in much the same posture, I

was half surprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar,

following the sunshine. This time, however, she addressed me with some

trivial salutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the same

deep-chested, and yet indistinct and lisping tones, that had already

baffled the utmost niceness of my hearing from her son. I answered

rather at a venture; for not only did I fail to take her meaning with

precision, but the sudden disclosure of her eyes disturbed me. They

were unusually large, the iris golden like Felipe’s, but the pupil at

that moment so distended that they seemed almost black; and what

affected me was not so much their size as (what was perhaps its

consequence) the singular insignificance of their regard. A look more

blankly stupid I have never met. My eyes dropped before it even as I

spoke, and I went on my way upstairs to my own room, at once baffled

and embarrassed. Yet, when I came there and saw the face of the

portrait, I was again reminded of the miracle of family descent. My

hostess was, indeed, both older and fuller in person; her eyes were of

a different colour; her face, besides, was not only free from the

ill-significance that offended and attracted me in the painting; it was

devoid of either good or bad—a moral blank expressing literally naught.

And yet there was a likeness, not so much speaking as immanent, not so

much in any particular feature as upon the whole. It should seem, I

thought, as if when the master set his signature to that grave canvas,

he had not only caught the image of one smiling and false-eyed woman,

but stamped the essential quality of a race.

From that day forth, whether I came or went, I was sure to find the

Senora seated in the sun against a pillar, or stretched on a rug before

the fire; only at times she would shift her station to the top round of

the stone staircase, where she lay with the same nonchalance right

across my path. In all these days, I never knew her to display the

least spark of energy beyond what she expended in brushing and

re-brushing her copious copper-coloured hair, or in lisping out, in the

rich and broken hoarseness of her voice, her customary idle salutations

to myself. These, I think, were her two chief pleasures, beyond that of

mere quiescence. She seemed always proud of her remarks, as though they

had been witticisms: and, indeed, though they were empty enough, like

the conversation of many respectable persons, and turned on a very

narrow range of subjects, they were never meaningless or incoherent;

nay, they had a certain beauty of their own, breathing, as they did, of

her entire contentment. Now she would speak of the warmth, in which

(like her son) she greatly delighted; now of the flowers of the

pomegranate trees, and now of the white doves and long-winged swallows

that fanned the air of the court. The birds excited her. As they raked

the eaves in their swift flight, or skimmed sidelong past her with a

rush of wind, she would sometimes stir, and sit a little up, and seem

to awaken from her doze of satisfaction. But for the rest of her days

she lay luxuriously folded on herself and sunk in sloth and pleasure.

Her invincible content at first annoyed me, but I came gradually to

find repose in the spectacle, until at last it grew to be my habit to

sit down beside her four times in the day, both coming and going, and

to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knew of what. I had come to like

her dull, almost animal neighbourhood; her beauty and her stupidity

soothed and amused me. I began to find a kind of transcendental good

sense in her remarks, and her unfathomable good nature moved me to

admiration and envy. The liking was returned; she enjoyed my presence

half-unconsciously, as a man in deep meditation may enjoy the babbling

of a brook. I can scarce say she brightened when I came, for

satisfaction was written on her face eternally, as on some foolish

statue’s; but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some more

intimate communication than the sight. And one day, as I set within

reach of her on the marble step, she suddenly shot forth one of her

hands and patted mine. The thing was done, and she was back in her

accustomed attitude, before my mind had received intelligence of the

caress; and when I turned to look her in the face I could perceive no

answerable sentiment. It was plain she attached no moment to the act,

and I blamed myself for my own more uneasy consciousness.

The sight and (if I may so call it) the acquaintance of the mother

confirmed the view I had already taken of the son. The family blood had

been impoverished, perhaps by long inbreeding, which I knew to be a

common error among the proud and the exclusive. No decline, indeed, was

to be traced in the body, which had been handed down unimpaired in

shapeliness and strength; and the faces of to-day were struck as

sharply from the mint, as the face of two centuries ago that smiled

upon me from the portrait. But the intelligence (that more precious

heirloom) was degenerate; the treasure of ancestral memory ran low; and

it had required the potent, plebeian crossing of a muleteer or mountain

contrabandista to raise, what approached hebetude in the mother, into

the active oddity of the son. Yet of the two, it was the mother I

preferred. Of Felipe, vengeful and placable, full of starts and

shyings, inconstant as a hare, I could even conceive as a creature

possibly noxious. Of the mother I had no thoughts but those of

kindness. And indeed, as spectators are apt ignorantly to take sides, I

grew something of a partisan in the enmity which I perceived to

smoulder between them. True, it seemed mostly on the mother’s part. She

would sometimes draw in her breath as he came near, and the pupils of

her vacant eyes would contract as if with horror or fear. Her emotions,

such as they were, were much upon the surface and readily shared; and

this latent repulsion occupied my mind, and kept me wondering on what

grounds it rested, and whether the son was certainly in fault.

I had been about ten days in the residencia, when there sprang up a

high and harsh wind, carrying clouds of dust. It came out of malarious

lowlands, and over several snowy sierras. The nerves of those on whom

it blew were strung and jangled; their eyes smarted with the dust;

their legs ached under the burthen of their body; and the touch of one

hand upon another grew to be odious. The wind, besides, came down the

gullies of the hills and stormed about the house with a great, hollow

buzzing and whistling that was wearisome to the ear and dismally

depressing to the mind. It did not so much blow in gusts as with the

steady sweep of a waterfall, so that there was no remission of

discomfort while it blew. But higher upon the mountain, it was probably

of a more variable strength, with accesses of fury; for there came down

at times a far-off wailing, infinitely grievous to hear; and at times,

on one of the high shelves or terraces, there would start up, and then

disperse, a tower of dust, like the smoke of an explosion.

I no sooner awoke in bed than I was conscious of the nervous tension

and depression of the weather, and the effect grew stronger as the day

proceeded. It was in vain that I resisted; in vain that I set forth

upon my customary morning’s walk; the irrational, unchanging fury of

the storm had soon beat down my strength and wrecked my temper; and I

returned to the residencia, glowing with dry heat, and foul and gritty

with dust. The court had a forlorn appearance; now and then a glimmer

of sun fled over it; now and then the wind swooped down upon the

pomegranates, and scattered the blossoms, and set the window shutters

clapping on the wall. In the recess the Senora was pacing to and fro

with a flushed countenance and bright eyes; I thought, too, she was

speaking to herself, like one in anger. But when I addressed her with

my customary salutation, she only replied by a sharp gesture and

continued her walk. The weather had distempered even this impassive

creature; and as I went on upstairs I was the less ashamed of my own

discomposure.

All day the wind continued; and I sat in my room and made a feint of

reading, or walked up and down, and listened to the riot overhead.

Night fell, and I had not so much as a candle. I began to long for some

society, and stole down to the court. It was now plunged in the blue of

the first darkness; but the recess was redly lighted by the fire. The

wood had been piled high, and was crowned by a shock of flames, which

the draught of the chimney brandished to and fro. In this strong and

shaken brightness the Senora continued pacing from wall to wall with

disconnected gestures, clasping her hands, stretching forth her arms,

throwing back her head as in appeal to heaven. In these disordered

movements the beauty and grace of the woman showed more clearly; but

there was a light in her eye that struck on me unpleasantly; and when I

had looked on awhile in silence, and seemingly unobserved, I turned

tail as I had come, and groped my way back again to my own chamber.

By the time Felipe brought my supper and lights, my nerve was utterly

gone; and, had the lad been such as I was used to seeing him, I should

have kept him (even by force had that been necessary) to take off the

edge from my distasteful solitude. But on Felipe, also, the wind had

exercised its influence. He had been feverish all day; now that the

night had come he was fallen into a low and tremulous humour that

reacted on my own. The sight of his scared face, his starts and pallors

and sudden harkenings, unstrung me; and when he dropped and broke a

dish, I fairly leaped out of my seat.

“I think we are all mad to-day,” said I, affecting to laugh.

“It is the black wind,” he replied dolefully. “You feel as if you must

do something, and you don’t know what it is.”

I noted the aptness of the description; but, indeed, Felipe had

sometimes a strange felicity in rendering into words the sensations of

the body. “And your mother, too,” said I; “she seems to feel this

weather much. Do you not fear she may be unwell?”

He stared at me a little, and then said, “No,” almost defiantly; and

the next moment, carrying his hand to his brow, cried out lamentably on

the wind and the noise that made his head go round like a millwheel.

“Who can be well?” he cried; and, indeed, I could only echo his

question, for I was disturbed enough myself.

I went to bed early, wearied with day-long restlessness, but the

poisonous nature of the wind, and its ungodly and unintermittent

uproar, would not suffer me to sleep. I lay there and tossed, my nerves

and senses on the stretch. At times I would doze, dream horribly, and

wake again; and these snatches of oblivion confused me as to time. But

it must have been late on in the night, when I was suddenly startled by

an outbreak of pitiable and hateful cries. I leaped from my bed,

supposing I had dreamed; but the cries still continued to fill the

house, cries of pain, I thought, but certainly of rage also, and so

savage and discordant that they shocked the heart. It was no illusion;

some living thing, some lunatic or some wild animal, was being foully

tortured. The thought of Felipe and the squirrel flashed into my mind,

and I ran to the door, but it had been locked from the outside; and I

might shake it as I pleased, I was a fast prisoner. Still the cries

continued. Now they would dwindle down into a moaning that seemed to be

articulate, and at these times I made sure they must be human; and

again they would break forth and fill the house with ravings worthy of

hell. I stood at the door and gave ear to them, till at, last they died

away. Long after that, I still lingered and still continued to hear

them mingle in fancy with the storming of the wind; and when at last I

crept to my bed, it was with a deadly sickness and a blackness of

horror on my heart.

It was little wonder if I slept no more. Why had I been locked in? What

had passed? Who was the author of these indescribable and shocking

cries? A human being? It was inconceivable. A beast? The cries were

scarce quite bestial; and what animal, short of a lion or a tiger,

could thus shake the solid walls of the residencia? And while I was

thus turning over the elements of the mystery, it came into my mind

that I had not yet set eyes upon the daughter of the house. What was

more probable than that the daughter of the Senora, and the sister of

Felipe, should be herself insane? Or, what more likely than that these

ignorant and half-witted people should seek to manage an afflicted

kinswoman by violence? Here was a solution; and yet when I called to

mind the cries (which I never did without a shuddering chill) it seemed

altogether insufficient: not even cruelty could wring such cries from

madness. But of one thing I was sure: I could not live in a house where

such a thing was half conceivable, and not probe the matter home and,

if necessary, interfere.

The next day came, the wind had blown itself out, and there was nothing

to remind me of the business of the night. Felipe came to my bedside

with obvious cheerfulness; as I passed through the court, the Senora

was sunning herself with her accustomed immobility; and when I issued

from the gateway, I found the whole face of nature austerely smiling,

the heavens of a cold blue, and sown with great cloud islands, and the

mountain-sides mapped forth into provinces of light and shadow. A short

walk restored me to myself, and renewed within me the resolve to plumb

this mystery; and when, from the vantage of my knoll, I had seen Felipe

pass forth to his labours in the garden, I returned at once to the

residencia to put my design in practice. The Senora appeared plunged in

slumber; I stood awhile and marked her, but she did not stir; even if

my design were indiscreet, I had little to fear from such a guardian;

and turning away, I mounted to the gallery and began my exploration of

the house.

All morning I went from one door to another, and entered spacious and

faded chambers, some rudely shuttered, some receiving their full charge

of daylight, all empty and unhomely. It was a rich house, on which Time

had breathed his tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion. The spider

swung there; the bloated tarantula scampered on the cornices; ants had

their crowded highways on the floor of halls of audience; the big and

foul fly, that lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death,

had set up his nest in the rotten woodwork, and buzzed heavily about

the rooms. Here and there a stool or two, a couch, a bed, or a great

carved chair remained behind, like islets on the bare floors, to

testify of man’s bygone habitation; and everywhere the walls were set

with the portraits of the dead. I could judge, by these decaying

effigies, in the house of what a great and what a handsome race I was

then wandering. Many of the men wore orders on their breasts and had

the port of noble offices; the women were all richly attired; the

canvases most of them by famous hands. But it was not so much these

evidences of greatness that took hold upon my mind, even contrasted, as

they were, with the present depopulation and decay of that great house.

It was rather the parable of family life that I read in this succession

of fair faces and shapely bodies. Never before had I so realised the

miracle of the continued race, the creation and recreation, the weaving

and changing and handing down of fleshly elements. That a child should

be born of its mother, that it should grow and clothe itself (we know

not how) with humanity, and put on inherited looks, and turn its head

with the manner of one ascendant, and offer its hand with the gesture

of another, are wonders dulled for us by repetition. But in the

singular unity of look, in the common features and common bearing, of

all these painted generations on the walls of the residencia, the

miracle started out and looked me in the face. And an ancient mirror

falling opportunely in my way, I stood and read my own features a long

while, tracing out on either hand the filaments of descent and the

bonds that knit me with my family.

At last, in the course of these investigations, I opened the door of a

chamber that bore the marks of habitation. It was of large proportions

and faced to the north, where the mountains were most wildly figured.

The embers of a fire smouldered and smoked upon the hearth, to which a

chair had been drawn close. And yet the aspect of the chamber was

ascetic to the degree of sternness; the chair was uncushioned; the

floor and walls were naked; and beyond the books which lay here and

there in some confusion, there was no instrument of either work or

pleasure. The sight of books in the house of such a family exceedingly

amazed me; and I began with a great hurry, and in momentary fear of

interruption, to go from one to another and hastily inspect their

character. They were of all sorts, devotional, historical, and

scientific, but mostly of a great age and in the Latin tongue. Some I

could see to bear the marks of constant study; others had been torn

across and tossed aside as if in petulance or disapproval. Lastly, as I

cruised about that empty chamber, I espied some papers written upon

with pencil on a table near the window. An unthinking curiosity led me

to take one up. It bore a copy of verses, very roughly metred in the

original Spanish, and which I may render somewhat thus—

Pleasure approached with pain and shame,

Grief with a wreath of lilies came.

Pleasure showed the lovely sun;

Jesu dear, how sweet it shone!

Grief with her worn hand pointed on,

Jesu dear, to thee!

Shame and confusion at once fell on me; and, laying down the paper, I

beat an immediate retreat from the apartment. Neither Felipe nor his

mother could have read the books nor written these rough but feeling

verses. It was plain I had stumbled with sacrilegious feet into the

room of the daughter of the house. God knows, my own heart most sharply

punished me for my indiscretion. The thought that I had thus secretly

pushed my way into the confidence of a girl so strangely situated, and

the fear that she might somehow come to hear of it, oppressed me like

guilt. I blamed myself besides for my suspicions of the night before;

wondered that I should ever have attributed those shocking cries to one

of whom I now conceived as of a saint, spectral of mien, wasted with

maceration, bound up in the practices of a mechanical devotion, and

dwelling in a great isolation of soul with her incongruous relatives;

and as I leaned on the balustrade of the gallery and looked down into

the bright close of pomegranates and at the gaily dressed and somnolent

woman, who just then stretched herself and delicately licked her lips

as in the very sensuality of sloth, my mind swiftly compared the scene

with the cold chamber looking northward on the mountains, where the

daughter dwelt.

That same afternoon, as I sat upon my knoll, I saw the Padre enter the

gates of the residencia. The revelation of the daughter’s character had

struck home to my fancy, and almost blotted out the horrors of the

night before; but at sight of this worthy man the memory revived. I

descended, then, from the knoll, and making a circuit among the woods,

posted myself by the wayside to await his passage. As soon as he

appeared I stepped forth and introduced myself as the lodger of the

residencia. He had a very strong, honest countenance, on which it was

easy to read the mingled emotions with which he regarded me, as a

foreigner, a heretic, and yet one who had been wounded for the good

cause. Of the family at the residencia he spoke with reserve, and yet

with respect. I mentioned that I had not yet seen the daughter,

whereupon he remarked that that was as it should be, and looked at me a

little askance. Lastly, I plucked up courage to refer to the cries that

had disturbed me in the night. He heard me out in silence, and then

stopped and partly turned about, as though to mark beyond doubt that he

was dismissing me.

“Do you take tobacco powder?” said he, offering his snuff-box; and

then, when I had refused, “I am an old man,” he added, “and I may be

allowed to remind you that you are a guest.”

“I have, then, your authority,” I returned, firmly enough, although I

flushed at the implied reproof, “to let things take their course, and

not to interfere?”

He said “yes,” and with a somewhat uneasy salute turned and left me

where I was. But he had done two things: he had set my conscience at

rest, and he had awakened my delicacy. I made a great effort, once more

dismissed the recollections of the night, and fell once more to

brooding on my saintly poetess. At the same time, I could not quite

forget that I had been locked in, and that night when Felipe brought me

my supper I attacked him warily on both points of interest.

“I never see your sister,” said I casually.

“Oh, no,” said he; “she is a good, good girl,” and his mind instantly

veered to something else.

“Your sister is pious, I suppose?” I asked in the next pause.

“Oh!” he cried, joining his hands with extreme fervour, “a saint; it is

she that keeps me up.”

“You are very fortunate,” said I, “for the most of us, I am afraid, and

myself among the number, are better at going down.”

“Senor,” said Felipe earnestly, “I would not say that. You should not

tempt your angel. If one goes down, where is he to stop?”

“Why, Felipe,” said I, “I had no guess you were a preacher, and I may

say a good one; but I suppose that is your sister’s doing?”

He nodded at me with round eyes.

“Well, then,” I continued, “she has doubtless reproved you for your sin

of cruelty?”

“Twelve times!” he cried; for this was the phrase by which the odd

creature expressed the sense of frequency. “And I told her you had done

so—I remembered that,” he added proudly—“and she was pleased.”

“Then, Felipe,” said I, “what were those cries that I heard last night?

for surely they were cries of some creature in suffering.”

“The wind,” returned Felipe, looking in the fire.

I took his hand in mine, at which, thinking it to be a caress, he

smiled with a brightness of pleasure that came near disarming my

resolve. But I trod the weakness down. “The wind,” I repeated; “and yet

I think it was this hand,” holding it up, “that had first locked me

in.” The lad shook visibly, but answered never a word. “Well,” said I,

“I am a stranger and a guest. It is not my part either to meddle or to

judge in your affairs; in these you shall take your sister’s counsel,

which I cannot doubt to be excellent. But in so far as concerns my own

I will be no man’s prisoner, and I demand that key.” Half an hour later

my door was suddenly thrown open, and the key tossed ringing on the

floor.

A day or two after I came in from a walk a little before the point of

noon. The Senora was lying lapped in slumber on the threshold of the

recess; the pigeons dozed below the eaves like snowdrifts; the house

was under a deep spell of noontide quiet; and only a wandering and

gentle wind from the mountain stole round the galleries, rustled among

the pomegranates, and pleasantly stirred the shadows. Something in the

stillness moved me to imitation, and I went very lightly across the

court and up the marble staircase. My foot was on the topmost round,

when a door opened, and I found myself face to face with Olalla.

Surprise transfixed me; her loveliness struck to my heart; she glowed

in the deep shadow of the gallery, a gem of colour; her eyes took hold

upon mine and clung there, and bound us together like the joining of

hands; and the moments we thus stood face to face, drinking each other

in, were sacramental and the wedding of souls. I know not how long it

was before I awoke out of a deep trance, and, hastily bowing, passed on

into the upper stair. She did not move, but followed me with her great,

thirsting eyes; and as I passed out of sight it seemed to me as if she

paled and faded.

In my own room, I opened the window and looked out, and could not think

what change had come upon that austere field of mountains that it

should thus sing and shine under the lofty heaven. I had seen

her—Olalla! And the stone crags answered, Olalla! and the dumb,

unfathomable azure answered, Olalla! The pale saint of my dreams had

vanished for ever; and in her place I beheld this maiden on whom God

had lavished the richest colours and the most exuberant energies of

life, whom he had made active as a deer, slender as a reed, and in

whose great eyes he had lighted the torches of the soul. The thrill of

her young life, strung like a wild animal’s, had entered into me; the

force of soul that had looked out from her eyes and conquered mine,

mantled about my heart and sprang to my lips in singing. She passed

through my veins: she was one with me.

I will not say that this enthusiasm declined; rather my soul held out

in its ecstasy as in a strong castle, and was there besieged by cold

and sorrowful considerations. I could not doubt but that I loved her at

first sight, and already with a quivering ardour that was strange to my

experience. What then was to follow? She was the child of an afflicted

house, the Senora’s daughter, the sister of Felipe; she bore it even in

her beauty. She had the lightness and swiftness of the one, swift as an

arrow, light as dew; like the other, she shone on the pale background

of the world with the brilliancy of flowers. I could not call by the

name of brother that half-witted lad, nor by the name of mother that

immovable and lovely thing of flesh, whose silly eyes and perpetual

simper now recurred to my mind like something hateful. And if I could

not marry, what then? She was helplessly unprotected; her eyes, in that

single and long glance which had been all our intercourse, had

confessed a weakness equal to my own; but in my heart I knew her for

the student of the cold northern chamber, and the writer of the

sorrowful lines; and this was a knowledge to disarm a brute. To flee

was more than I could find courage for; but I registered a vow of

unsleeping circumspection.

As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait. It had

fallen dead, like a candle after sunrise; it followed me with eyes of

paint. I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type in

that declining race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference. I

remembered how it had seemed to me a thing unapproachable in the life,

a creature rather of the painter’s craft than of the modesty of nature,

and I marvelled at the thought, and exulted in the image of Olalla.

Beauty I had seen before, and not been charmed, and I had been often

drawn to women, who were not beautiful except to me; but in Olalla all

that I desired and had not dared to imagine was united.

I did not see her the next day, and my heart ached and my eyes longed

for her, as men long for morning. But the day after, when I returned,

about my usual hour, she was once more on the gallery, and our looks

once more met and embraced. I would have spoken, I would have drawn

near to her; but strongly as she plucked at my heart, drawing me like a

magnet, something yet more imperious withheld me; and I could only bow

and pass by; and she, leaving my salutation unanswered, only followed

me with her noble eyes.

I had now her image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it

seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of

her mother’s coquetry, and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I

know she must have made with her own hands, clung about her with a

cunning grace. After the fashion of that country, besides, her bodice

stood open in the middle, in a long slit, and here, in spite of the

poverty of the house, a gold coin, hanging by a ribbon, lay on her

brown bosom. These were proofs, had any been needed, of her inborn

delight in life and her own loveliness. On the other hand, in her eyes

that hung upon mine, I could read depth beyond depth of passion and

sadness, lights of poetry and hope, blacknesses of despair, and

thoughts that were above the earth. It was a lovely body, but the

inmate, the soul, was more than worthy of that lodging. Should I leave

this incomparable flower to wither unseen on these rough mountains?

Should I despise the great gift offered me in the eloquent silence of

her eyes? Here was a soul immured; should I not burst its prison? All

side considerations fell off from me; were she the child of Herod I

swore I should make her mine; and that very evening I set myself, with

a mingled sense of treachery and disgrace, to captivate the brother.

Perhaps I read him with more favourable eyes, perhaps the thought of

his sister always summoned up the better qualities of that imperfect

soul; but he had never seemed to me so amiable, and his very likeness

to Olalla, while it annoyed, yet softened me.

A third day passed in vain—an empty desert of hours. I would not lose a

chance, and loitered all afternoon in the court where (to give myself a

countenance) I spoke more than usual with the Senora. God knows it was

with a most tender and sincere interest that I now studied her; and

even as for Felipe, so now for the mother, I was conscious of a growing

warmth of toleration. And yet I wondered. Even while I spoke with her,

she would doze off into a little sleep, and presently awake again

without embarrassment; and this composure staggered me. And again, as I

marked her make infinitesimal changes in her posture, savouring and

lingering on the bodily pleasure of the movement, I was driven to

wonder at this depth of passive sensuality. She lived in her body; and

her consciousness was all sunk into and disseminated through her

members, where it luxuriously dwelt. Lastly, I could not grow

accustomed to her eyes. Each time she turned on me these great

beautiful and meaningless orbs, wide open to the day, but closed

against human inquiry—each time I had occasion to observe the lively

changes of her pupils which expanded and contracted in a breath—I know

not what it was came over me, I can find no name for the mingled

feeling of disappointment, annoyance, and distaste that jarred along my

nerves. I tried her on a variety of subjects, equally in vain; and at

last led the talk to her daughter. But even there she proved

indifferent; said she was pretty, which (as with children) was her

highest word of commendation, but was plainly incapable of any higher

thought; and when I remarked that Olalla seemed silent, merely yawned

in my face and replied that speech was of no great use when you had

nothing to say. “People speak much, very much,” she added, looking at

me with expanded pupils; and then again yawned and again showed me a

mouth that was as dainty as a toy. This time I took the hint, and,

leaving her to her repose, went up into my own chamber to sit by the

open window, looking on the hills and not beholding them, sunk in

lustrous and deep dreams, and hearkening in fancy to the note of a

voice that I had never heard.

I awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of anticipation that

seemed to challenge fate. I was sure of myself, light of heart and

foot, and resolved to put my love incontinently to the touch of

knowledge. It should lie no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb

thing, living by the eye only, like the love of beasts; but should now

put on the spirit, and enter upon the joys of the complete human

intimacy. I thought of it with wild hopes, like a voyager to El Dorado;

into that unknown and lovely country of her soul, I no longer trembled

to adventure. Yet when I did indeed encounter her, the same force of

passion descended on me and at once submerged my mind; speech seemed to

drop away from me like a childish habit; and I but drew near to her as

the giddy man draws near to the margin of a gulf. She drew back from me

a little as I came; but her eyes did not waver from mine, and these

lured me forward. At last, when I was already within reach of her, I

stopped. Words were denied me; if I advanced I could but clasp her to

my heart in silence; and all that was sane in me, all that was still

unconquered, revolted against the thought of such an accost. So we

stood for a second, all our life in our eyes, exchanging salvos of

attraction and yet each resisting; and then, with a great effort of the

will, and conscious at the same time of a sudden bitterness of

disappointment, I turned and went away in the same silence.

What power lay upon me that I could not speak? And she, why was she

also silent? Why did she draw away before me dumbly, with fascinated

eyes? Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless and

inevitable, like that of the magnet for the steel? We had never spoken,

we were wholly strangers: and yet an influence, strong as the grasp of

a giant, swept us silently together. On my side, it filled me with

impatience; and yet I was sure that she was worthy; I had seen her

books, read her verses, and thus, in a sense, divined the soul of my

mistress. But on her side, it struck me almost cold. Of me, she knew

nothing but my bodily favour; she was drawn to me as stones fall to the

earth; the laws that rule the earth conducted her, unconsenting, to my

arms; and I drew back at the thought of such a bridal, and began to be

jealous for myself. It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And

then I began to fall into a great pity for the girl herself. I thought

how sharp must be her mortification, that she, the student, the

recluse, Felipe’s saintly monitress, should have thus confessed an

overweening weakness for a man with whom she had never exchanged a

word. And at the coming of pity, all other thoughts were swallowed up;

and I longed only to find and console and reassure her; to tell her how

wholly her love was returned on my side, and how her choice, even if

blindly made, was not unworthy.

The next day it was glorious weather; depth upon depth of blue

over-canopied the mountains; the sun shone wide; and the wind in the

trees and the many falling torrents in the mountains filled the air

with delicate and haunting music. Yet I was prostrated with sadness. My

heart wept for the sight of Olalla, as a child weeps for its mother. I

sat down on a boulder on the verge of the low cliffs that bound the

plateau to the north. Thence I looked down into the wooded valley of a

stream, where no foot came. In the mood I was in, it was even touching

to behold the place untenanted; it lacked Olalla; and I thought of the

delight and glory of a life passed wholly with her in that strong air,

and among these rugged and lovely surroundings, at first with a

whimpering sentiment, and then again with such a fiery joy that I

seemed to grow in strength and stature, like a Samson.

And then suddenly I was aware of Olalla drawing near. She appeared out

of a grove of cork-trees, and came straight towards me; and I stood up

and waited. She seemed in her walking a creature of such life and fire

and lightness as amazed me; yet she came quietly and slowly. Her energy

was in the slowness; but for inimitable strength, I felt she would have

run, she would have flown to me. Still, as she approached, she kept her

eyes lowered to the ground; and when she had drawn quite near, it was

without one glance that she addressed me. At the first note of her

voice I started. It was for this I had been waiting; this was the last

test of my love. And lo, her enunciation was precise and clear, not

lisping and incomplete like that of her family; and the voice, though

deeper than usual with women, was still both youthful and womanly. She

spoke in a rich chord; golden contralto strains mingled with

hoarseness, as the red threads were mingled with the brown among her

tresses. It was not only a voice that spoke to my heart directly; but

it spoke to me of her. And yet her words immediately plunged me back

upon despair.

“You will go away,” she said, “to-day.”

Her example broke the bonds of my speech; I felt as lightened of a

weight, or as if a spell had been dissolved. I know not in what words I

answered; but, standing before her on the cliffs, I poured out the

whole ardour of my love, telling her that I lived upon the thought of

her, slept only to dream of her loveliness, and would gladly forswear

my country, my language, and my friends, to live for ever by her side.

And then, strongly commanding myself, I changed the note; I reassured,

I comforted her; I told her I had divined in her a pious and heroic

spirit, with which I was worthy to sympathise, and which I longed to

share and lighten. “Nature,” I told her, “was the voice of God, which

men disobey at peril; and if we were thus humbly drawn together, ay,

even as by a miracle of love, it must imply a divine fitness in our

souls; we must be made,” I said—“made for one another. We should be mad

rebels,” I cried out—“mad rebels against God, not to obey this

instinct.”

She shook her head. “You will go to-day,” she repeated, and then with a

gesture, and in a sudden, sharp note—“no, not to-day,” she cried,

“to-morrow!”

But at this sign of relenting, power came in upon me in a tide. I

stretched out my arms and called upon her name; and she leaped to me

and clung to me. The hills rocked about us, the earth quailed; a shock

as of a blow went through me and left me blind and dizzy. And the next

moment she had thrust me back, broken rudely from my arms, and fled

with the speed of a deer among the cork-trees.

I stood and shouted to the mountains; I turned and went back towards

the residencia, waltzing upon air. She sent me away, and yet I had but

to call upon her name and she came to me. These were but the weaknesses

of girls, from which even she, the strangest of her sex, was not

exempted. Go? Not I, Olalla—O, not I, Olalla, my Olalla! A bird sang

near by; and in that season, birds were rare. It bade me be of good

cheer. And once more the whole countenance of nature, from the

ponderous and stable mountains down to the lightest leaf and the

smallest darting fly in the shadow of the groves, began to stir before

me and to put on the lineaments of life and wear a face of awful joy.

The sunshine struck upon the hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil,

and the hills shook; the earth, under that vigorous insulation, yielded

up heady scents; the woods smouldered in the blaze. I felt the thrill

of travail and delight run through the earth. Something elemental,

something rude, violent, and savage, in the love that sang in my heart,

was like a key to nature’s secrets; and the very stones that rattled

under my feet appeared alive and friendly. Olalla! Her touch had

quickened, and renewed, and strung me up to the old pitch of concert

with the rugged earth, to a swelling of the soul that men learn to

forget in their polite assemblies. Love burned in me like rage;

tenderness waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, I pitied, I revered her

with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound me in with dead things on

the one hand, and with our pure and pitying God upon the other: a thing

brutal and divine, and akin at once to the innocence and to the

unbridled forces of the earth.

My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of the residencia, and

the sight of the mother struck me like a revelation. She sat there, all

sloth and contentment, blinking under the strong sunshine, branded with

a passive enjoyment, a creature set quite apart, before whom my ardour

fell away like a thing ashamed. I stopped a moment, and, commanding

such shaken tones as I was able, said a word or two. She looked at me

with her unfathomable kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely out

of the realm of peace in which she slumbered, and there fell on my

mind, for the first time, a sense of respect for one so uniformly

innocent and happy, and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself, that

I should be so much disquieted.

On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper I had seen in

the north room; it was written on with pencil in the same hand,

Olalla’s hand, and I picked it up with a sudden sinking of alarm, and

read, “If you have any kindness for Olalla, if you have any chivalry

for a creature sorely wrought, go from here to-day; in pity, in honour,

for the sake of Him who died, I supplicate that you shall go.” I looked

at this awhile in mere stupidity, then I began to awaken to a weariness

and horror of life; the sunshine darkened outside on the bare hills,

and I began to shake like a man in terror. The vacancy thus suddenly

opened in my life unmanned me like a physical void. It was not my

heart, it was not my happiness, it was life itself that was involved. I

could not lose her. I said so, and stood repeating it. And then, like

one in a dream, I moved to the window, put forth my hand to open the

casement, and thrust it through the pane. The blood spurted from my

wrist; and with an instantaneous quietude and command of myself, I

pressed my thumb on the little leaping fountain, and reflected what to

do. In that empty room there was nothing to my purpose; I felt,

besides, that I required assistance. There shot into my mind a hope

that Olalla herself might be my helper, and I turned and went down

stairs, still keeping my thumb upon the wound.

There was no sign of either Olalla or Felipe, and I addressed myself to

the recess, whither the Senora had now drawn quite back and sat dozing

close before the fire, for no degree of heat appeared too much for her.

“Pardon me,” said I, “if I disturb you, but I must apply to you for

help.”

She looked up sleepily and asked me what it was, and with the very

words I thought she drew in her breath with a widening of the nostrils

and seemed to come suddenly and fully alive.

“I have cut myself,” I said, “and rather badly. See!” And I held out my

two hands from which the blood was oozing and dripping.

Her great eyes opened wide, the pupils shrank into points; a veil

seemed to fall from her face, and leave it sharply expressive and yet

inscrutable. And as I still stood, marvelling a little at her

disturbance, she came swiftly up to me, and stooped and caught me by

the hand; and the next moment my hand was at her mouth, and she had

bitten me to the bone. The pang of the bite, the sudden spurting of

blood, and the monstrous horror of the act, flashed through me all in

one, and I beat her back; and she sprang at me again and again, with

bestial cries, cries that I recognised, such cries as had awakened me

on the night of the high wind. Her strength was like that of madness;

mine was rapidly ebbing with the loss of blood; my mind besides was

whirling with the abhorrent strangeness of the onslaught, and I was

already forced against the wall, when Olalla ran betwixt us, and

Felipe, following at a bound, pinned down his mother on the floor.

A trance-like weakness fell upon me; I saw, heard, and felt, but I was

incapable of movement. I heard the struggle roll to and fro upon the

floor, the yells of that catamount ringing up to Heaven as she strove

to reach me. I felt Olalla clasp me in her arms, her hair falling on my

face, and, with the strength of a man, raise and half drag, half carry

me upstairs into my own room, where she cast me down upon the bed. Then

I saw her hasten to the door and lock it, and stand an instant

listening to the savage cries that shook the residencia. And then,

swift and light as a thought, she was again beside me, binding up my

hand, laying it in her bosom, moaning and mourning over it with

dove-like sounds. They were not words that came to her, they were

sounds more beautiful than speech, infinitely touching, infinitely

tender; and yet as I lay there, a thought stung to my heart, a thought

wounded me like a sword, a thought, like a worm in a flower, profaned

the holiness of my love. Yes, they were beautiful sounds, and they were

inspired by human tenderness; but was their beauty human?

All day I lay there. For a long time the cries of that nameless female

thing, as she struggled with her half-witted whelp, resounded through

the house, and pierced me with despairing sorrow and disgust. They were

the death-cry of my love; my love was murdered; was not only dead, but

an offence to me; and yet, think as I pleased, feel as I must, it still

swelled within me like a storm of sweetness, and my heart melted at her

looks and touch. This horror that had sprung out, this doubt upon

Olalla, this savage and bestial strain that ran not only through the

whole behaviour of her family, but found a place in the very

foundations and story of our love—though it appalled, though it shocked

and sickened me, was yet not of power to break the knot of my

infatuation.

When the cries had ceased, there came a scraping at the door, by which

I knew Felipe was without; and Olalla went and spoke to him—I know not

what. With that exception, she stayed close beside me, now kneeling by

my bed and fervently praying, now sitting with her eyes upon mine. So

then, for these six hours I drank in her beauty, and silently perused

the story in her face. I saw the golden coin hover on her breaths; I

saw her eyes darken and brighter, and still speak no language but that

of an unfathomable kindness; I saw the faultless face, and, through the

robe, the lines of the faultless body. Night came at last, and in the

growing darkness of the chamber, the sight of her slowly melted; but

even then the touch of her smooth hand lingered in mine and talked with

me. To lie thus in deadly weakness and drink in the traits of the

beloved, is to reawake to love from whatever shock of disillusion. I

reasoned with myself; and I shut my eyes on horrors, and again I was

very bold to accept the worst. What mattered it, if that imperious

sentiment survived; if her eyes still beckoned and attached me; if now,

even as before, every fibre of my dull body yearned and turned to her?

Late on in the night some strength revived in me, and I spoke:—

“Olalla,” I said, “nothing matters; I ask nothing; I am content; I love

you.”

She knelt down awhile and prayed, and I devoutly respected her

devotions. The moon had begun to shine in upon one side of each of the

three windows, and make a misty clearness in the room, by which I saw

her indistinctly. When she rearose she made the sign of the cross.

“It is for me to speak,” she said, “and for you to listen. I know; you

can but guess. I prayed, how I prayed for you to leave this place. I

begged it of you, and I know you would have granted me even this; or if

not, O let me think so!”

“I love you,” I said.

“And yet you have lived in the world,” she said; after a pause, “you

are a man and wise; and I am but a child. Forgive me, if I seem to

teach, who am as ignorant as the trees of the mountain; but those who

learn much do but skim the face of knowledge; they seize the laws, they

conceive the dignity of the design—the horror of the living fact fades

from their memory. It is we who sit at home with evil who remember, I

think, and are warned and pity. Go, rather, go now, and keep me in

mind. So I shall have a life in the cherished places of your memory: a

life as much my own, as that which I lead in this body.”

“I love you,” I said once more; and reaching out my weak hand, took

hers, and carried it to my lips, and kissed it. Nor did she resist, but

winced a little; and I could see her look upon me with a frown that was

not unkindly, only sad and baffled. And then it seemed she made a call

upon her resolution; plucked my hand towards her, herself at the same

time leaning somewhat forward, and laid it on the beating of her heart.

“There,” she cried, “you feel the very footfall of my life. It only

moves for you; it is yours. But is it even mine? It is mine indeed to

offer you, as I might take the coin from my neck, as I might break a

live branch from a tree, and give it you. And yet not mine! I dwell, or

I think I dwell (if I exist at all), somewhere apart, an impotent

prisoner, and carried about and deafened by a mob that I disown. This

capsule, such as throbs against the sides of animals, knows you at a

touch for its master; ay, it loves you! But my soul, does my soul? I

think not; I know not, fearing to ask. Yet when you spoke to me your

words were of the soul; it is of the soul that you ask—it is only from

the soul that you would take me.”

“Olalla,” I said, “the soul and the body are one, and mostly so in

love. What the body chooses, the soul loves; where the body clings, the

soul cleaves; body for body, soul to soul, they come together at God’s

signal; and the lower part (if we can call aught low) is only the

footstool and foundation of the highest.”

“Have you,” she said, “seen the portraits in the house of my fathers?

Have you looked at my mother or at Felipe? Have your eyes never rested

on that picture that hangs by your bed? She who sat for it died ages

ago; and she did evil in her life. But, look again: there is my hand to

the least line, there are my eyes and my hair. What is mine, then, and

what am I? If not a curve in this poor body of mine (which you love,

and for the sake of which you dotingly dream that you love me) not a

gesture that I can frame, not a tone of my voice, not any look from my

eyes, no, not even now when I speak to him I love, but has belonged to

others? Others, ages dead, have wooed other men with my eyes; other men

have heard the pleading of the same voice that now sounds in your ears.

The hands of the dead are in my bosom; they move me, they pluck me,

they guide me; I am a puppet at their command; and I but reinform

features and attributes that have long been laid aside from evil in the

quiet of the grave. Is it me you love, friend? or the race that made

me? The girl who does not know and cannot answer for the least portion

of herself? or the stream of which she is a transitory eddy, the tree

of which she is the passing fruit? The race exists; it is old, it is

ever young, it carries its eternal destiny in its bosom; upon it, like

waves upon the sea, individual succeeds to individual, mocked with a

semblance of self-control, but they are nothing. We speak of the soul,

but the soul is in the race.”

“You fret against the common law,” I said. “You rebel against the voice

of God, which he has made so winning to convince, so imperious to

command. Hear it, and how it speaks between us! Your hand clings to

mine, your heart leaps at my touch, the unknown elements of which we

are compounded awake and run together at a look; the clay of the earth

remembers its independent life and yearns to join us; we are drawn

together as the stars are turned about in space, or as the tides ebb

and flow, by things older and greater than we ourselves.”

“Alas!” she said, “what can I say to you? My fathers, eight hundred

years ago, ruled all this province: they were wise, great, cunning, and

cruel; they were a picked race of the Spanish; their flags led in war;

the king called them his cousin; the people, when the rope was slung

for them or when they returned and found their hovels smoking,

blasphemed their name. Presently a change began. Man has risen; if he

has sprung from the brutes, he can descend again to the same level. The

breath of weariness blew on their humanity and the cords relaxed; they

began to go down; their minds fell on sleep, their passions awoke in

gusts, heady and senseless like the wind in the gutters of the

mountains; beauty was still handed down, but no longer the guiding wit

nor the human heart; the seed passed on, it was wrapped in flesh, the

flesh covered the bones, but they were the bones and the flesh of

brutes, and their mind was as the mind of flies. I speak to you as I

dare; but you have seen for yourself how the wheel has gone backward

with my doomed race. I stand, as it were, upon a little rising ground

in this desperate descent, and see both before and behind, both what we

have lost and to what we are condemned to go farther downward. And

shall I—I that dwell apart in the house of the dead, my body, loathing

its ways—shall I repeat the spell? Shall I bind another spirit,

reluctant as my own, into this bewitched and tempest-broken tenement

that I now suffer in? Shall I hand down this cursed vessel of humanity,

charge it with fresh life as with fresh poison, and dash it, like a

fire, in the faces of posterity? But my vow has been given; the race

shall cease from off the earth. At this hour my brother is making

ready; his foot will soon be on the stair; and you will go with him and

pass out of my sight for ever. Think of me sometimes as one to whom the

lesson of life was very harshly told, but who heard it with courage; as

one who loved you indeed, but who hated herself so deeply that her love

was hateful to her; as one who sent you away and yet would have longed

to keep you for ever; who had no dearer hope than to forget you, and no

greater fear than to be forgotten.”

She had drawn towards the door as she spoke, her rich voice sounding

softer and farther away; and with the last word she was gone, and I lay

alone in the moonlit chamber. What I might have done had not I lain

bound by my extreme weakness, I know not; but as it was there fell upon

me a great and blank despair. It was not long before there shone in at

the door the ruddy glimmer of a lantern, and Felipe coming, charged me

without a word upon his shoulders, and carried me down to the great

gate, where the cart was waiting. In the moonlight the hills stood out

sharply, as if they were of cardboard; on the glimmering surface of the

plateau, and from among the low trees which swung together and sparkled

in the wind, the great black cube of the residencia stood out bulkily,

its mass only broken by three dimly lighted windows in the northern

front above the gate. They were Olalla’s windows, and as the cart

jolted onwards I kept my eyes fixed upon them till, where the road

dipped into a valley, they were lost to my view forever. Felipe walked

in silence beside the shafts, but from time to time he would cheek the

mule and seem to look back upon me; and at length drew quite near and

laid his hand upon my head. There was such kindness in the touch, and

such a simplicity, as of the brutes, that tears broke from me like the

bursting of an artery.

“Felipe,” I said, “take me where they will ask no questions.”

He said never a word, but he turned his mule about, end for end,

retraced some part of the way we had gone, and, striking into another

path, led me to the mountain village, which was, as we say in Scotland,

the kirkton of that thinly peopled district. Some broken memories dwell

in my mind of the day breaking over the plain, of the cart stopping, of

arms that helped me down, of a bare room into which I was carried, and

of a swoon that fell upon me like sleep.

The next day and the days following the old priest was often at my side

with his snuff-box and prayer book, and after a while, when I began to

pick up strength, he told me that I was now on a fair way to recovery,

and must as soon as possible hurry my departure; whereupon, without

naming any reason, he took snuff and looked at me sideways. I did not

affect ignorance; I knew he must have seen Olalla. “Sir,” said I, “you

know that I do not ask in wantonness. What of that family?”

He said they were very unfortunate; that it seemed a declining race,

and that they were very poor and had been much neglected.

“But she has not,” I said. “Thanks, doubtless, to yourself, she is

instructed and wise beyond the use of women.”

“Yes,” he said; “the Senorita is well-informed. But the family has been

neglected.”

“The mother?” I queried.

“Yes, the mother too,” said the Padre, taking snuff. “But Felipe is a

well-intentioned lad.”

“The mother is odd?” I asked.

“Very odd,” replied the priest.

“I think, sir, we beat about the bush,” said I. “You must know more of

my affairs than you allow. You must know my curiosity to be justified

on many grounds. Will you not be frank with me?”

“My son,” said the old gentleman, “I will be very frank with you on

matters within my competence; on those of which I know nothing it does

not require much discretion to be silent. I will not fence with you, I

take your meaning perfectly; and what can I say, but that we are all in

God’s hands, and that His ways are not as our ways? I have even advised

with my superiors in the church, but they, too, were dumb. It is a

great mystery.”

“Is she mad?” I asked.

“I will answer you according to my belief. She is not,” returned the

Padre, “or she was not. When she was young—God help me, I fear I

neglected that wild lamb—she was surely sane; and yet, although it did

not run to such heights, the same strain was already notable; it had

been so before her in her father, ay, and before him, and this inclined

me, perhaps, to think too lightly of it. But these things go on

growing, not only in the individual but in the race.”

“When she was young,” I began, and my voice failed me for a moment, and

it was only with a great effort that I was able to add, “was she like

Olalla?”

“Now God forbid!” exclaimed the Padre. “God forbid that any man should

think so slightingly of my favourite penitent. No, no; the Senorita

(but for her beauty, which I wish most honestly she had less of) has

not a hair’s resemblance to what her mother was at the same age. I

could not bear to have you think so; though, Heaven knows, it were,

perhaps, better that you should.”

At this, I raised myself in bed, and opened my heart to the old man;

telling him of our love and of her decision, owning my own horrors, my

own passing fancies, but telling him that these were at an end; and

with something more than a purely formal submission, appealing to his

judgment.

He heard me very patiently and without surprise; and when I had done,

he sat for some time silent. Then he began: “The church,” and instantly

broke off again to apologise. “I had forgotten, my child, that you were

not a Christian,” said he. “And indeed, upon a point so highly unusual,

even the church can scarce be said to have decided. But would you have

my opinion? The Senorita is, in a matter of this kind, the best judge;

I would accept her judgment.”

On the back of that he went away, nor was he thenceforward so assiduous

in his visits; indeed, even when I began to get about again, he plainly

feared and deprecated my society, not as in distaste but much as a man

might be disposed to flee from the riddling sphynx. The villagers, too,

avoided me; they were unwilling to be my guides upon the mountain. I

thought they looked at me askance, and I made sure that the more

superstitious crossed themselves on my approach. At first I set this

down to my heretical opinions; but it began at length to dawn upon me

that if I was thus redoubted it was because I had stayed at the

residencia. All men despise the savage notions of such peasantry; and

yet I was conscious of a chill shadow that seemed to fall and dwell

upon my love. It did not conquer, but I may not deny that it restrained

my ardour.

Some miles westward of the village there was a gap in the sierra, from

which the eye plunged direct upon the residencia; and thither it became

my daily habit to repair. A wood crowned the summit; and just where the

pathway issued from its fringes, it was overhung by a considerable

shelf of rock, and that, in its turn, was surmounted by a crucifix of

the size of life and more than usually painful in design. This was my

perch; thence, day after day, I looked down upon the plateau, and the

great old house, and could see Felipe, no bigger than a fly, going to

and fro about the garden. Sometimes mists would draw across the view,

and be broken up again by mountain winds; sometimes the plain slumbered

below me in unbroken sunshine; it would sometimes be all blotted out by

rain. This distant post, these interrupted sights of the place where my

life had been so strangely changed, suited the indecision of my humour.

I passed whole days there, debating with myself the various elements of

our position; now leaning to the suggestions of love, now giving an ear

to prudence, and in the end halting irresolute between the two.

One day, as I was sitting on my rock, there came by that way a somewhat

gaunt peasant wrapped in a mantle. He was a stranger, and plainly did

not know me even by repute; for, instead of keeping the other side, he

drew near and sat down beside me, and we had soon fallen in talk. Among

other things he told me he had been a muleteer, and in former years had

much frequented these mountains; later on, he had followed the army

with his mules, had realised a competence, and was now living retired

with his family.

“Do you know that house?” I inquired, at last, pointing to the

residencia, for I readily wearied of any talk that kept me from the

thought of Olalla.

He looked at me darkly and crossed himself.

“Too well,” he said, “it was there that one of my comrades sold himself

to Satan; the Virgin shield us from temptations! He has paid the price;

he is now burning in the reddest place in Hell!”

A fear came upon me; I could answer nothing; and presently the man

resumed, as if to himself: “Yes,” he said, “O yes, I know it. I have

passed its doors. There was snow upon the pass, the wind was driving

it; sure enough there was death that night upon the mountains, but

there was worse beside the hearth. I took him by the arm, Senor, and

dragged him to the gate; I conjured him, by all he loved and respected,

to go forth with me; I went on my knees before him in the snow; and I

could see he was moved by my entreaty. And just then she came out on

the gallery, and called him by his name; and he turned, and there was

she standing with a lamp in her hand and smiling on him to come back. I

cried out aloud to God, and threw my arms about him, but he put me by,

and left me alone. He had made his choice; God help us. I would pray

for him, but to what end? there are sins that not even the Pope can

loose.”

“And your friend,” I asked, “what became of him?”

“Nay, God knows,” said the muleteer. “If all be true that we hear, his

end was like his sin, a thing to raise the hair.”

“Do you mean that he was killed?” I asked.

“Sure enough, he was killed,” returned the man. “But how? Ay, how? But

these are things that it is sin to speak of.”

“The people of that house . . . ” I began.

But he interrupted me with a savage outburst. “The people?” he cried.

“What people? There are neither men nor women in that house of Satan’s!

What? have you lived here so long, and never heard?” And here he put

his mouth to my ear and whispered, as if even the fowls of the mountain

might have over-heard and been stricken with horror.

What he told me was not true, nor was it even original; being, indeed,

but a new edition, vamped up again by village ignorance and

superstition, of stories nearly as ancient as the race of man. It was

rather the application that appalled me. In the old days, he said, the

church would have burned out that nest of basilisks; but the arm of the

church was now shortened; his friend Miguel had been unpunished by the

hands of men, and left to the more awful judgment of an offended God.

This was wrong; but it should be so no more. The Padre was sunk in age;

he was even bewitched himself; but the eyes of his flock were now awake

to their own danger; and some day—ay, and before long—the smoke of that

house should go up to heaven.

He left me filled with horror and fear. Which way to turn I knew not;

whether first to warn the Padre, or to carry my ill-news direct to the

threatened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was to decide for me;

for, while I was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a

woman drawing near to me up the pathway. No veil could deceive my

penetration; by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla; and

keeping hidden behind a corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the

summit. Then I came forward. She knew me and paused, but did not speak;

I, too, remained silent; and we continued for some time to gaze upon

each other with a passionate sadness.

“I thought you had gone,” she said at length. “It is all that you can

do for me—to go. It is all I ever asked of you. And you still stay. But

do you know, that every day heaps up the peril of death, not only on

your head, but on ours? A report has gone about the mountain; it is

thought you love me, and the people will not suffer it.”

I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I rejoiced at it.

“Olalla,” I said, “I am ready to go this day, this very hour, but not

alone.”

She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix to pray, and I

stood by and looked now at her and now at the object of her adoration,

now at the living figure of the penitent, and now at the ghastly,

daubed countenance, the painted wounds, and the projected ribs of the

image. The silence was only broken by the wailing of some large birds

that circled sidelong, as if in surprise or alarm, about the summit of

the hills. Presently Olalla rose again, turned towards me, raised her

veil, and, still leaning with one hand on the shaft of the crucifix,

looked upon me with a pale and sorrowful countenance.

“I have laid my hand upon the cross,” she said. “The Padre says you are

no Christian; but look up for a moment with my eyes, and behold the

face of the Man of Sorrows. We are all such as He was—the inheritors of

sin; we must all bear and expiate a past which was not ours; there is

in all of us—ay, even in me—a sparkle of the divine. Like Him, we must

endure for a little while, until morning returns bringing peace. Suffer

me to pass on upon my way alone; it is thus that I shall be least

lonely, counting for my friend Him who is the friend of all the

distressed; it is thus that I shall be the most happy, having taken my

farewell of earthly happiness, and willingly accepted sorrow for my

portion.”

I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I was no friend to

images, and despised that imitative and grimacing art of which it was a

rude example, some sense of what the thing implied was carried home to

my intelligence. The face looked down upon me with a painful and deadly

contraction; but the rays of a glory encircled it, and reminded me that

the sacrifice was voluntary. It stood there, crowning the rock, as it

still stands on so many highway sides, vainly preaching to passers-by,

an emblem of sad and noble truths; that pleasure is not an end, but an

accident; that pain is the choice of the magnanimous; that it is best

to suffer all things and do well. I turned and went down the mountain

in silence; and when I looked back for the last time before the wood

closed about my path, I saw Olalla still leaning on the crucifix.

THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD.

CHAPTER I.

BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK.

They had sent for the doctor from Bourron before six. About eight some

villagers came round for the performance, and were told how matters

stood. It seemed a liberty for a mountebank to fall ill like real

people, and they made off again in dudgeon. By ten Madame Tentaillon

was gravely alarmed, and had sent down the street for Doctor Desprez.

The Doctor was at work over his manuscripts in one corner of the little

dining-room, and his wife was asleep over the fire in another, when the

messenger arrived.

“Sapristi!” said the Doctor, “you should have sent for me before. It

was a case for hurry.” And he followed the messenger as he was, in his

slippers and skull-cap.

The inn was not thirty yards away, but the messenger did not stop

there; he went in at one door and out by another into the court, and

then led the way by a flight of steps beside the stable, to the loft

where the mountebank lay sick. If Doctor Desprez were to live a

thousand years, he would never forget his arrival in that room; for not

only was the scene picturesque, but the moment made a date in his

existence. We reckon our lives, I hardly know why, from the date of our

first sorry appearance in society, as if from a first humiliation; for

no actor can come upon the stage with a worse grace. Not to go further

back, which would be judged too curious, there are subsequently many

moving and decisive accidents in the lives of all, which would make as

logical a period as this of birth. And here, for instance, Doctor

Desprez, a man past forty, who had made what is called a failure in

life, and was moreover married, found himself at a new point of

departure when he opened the door of the loft above Tentaillon’s

stable.

It was a large place, lighted only by a single candle set upon the

floor. The mountebank lay on his back upon a pallet; a large man, with

a Quixotic nose inflamed with drinking. Madame Tentaillon stooped over

him, applying a hot water and mustard embrocation to his feet; and on a

chair close by sat a little fellow of eleven or twelve, with his feet

dangling. These three were the only occupants, except the shadows. But

the shadows were a company in themselves; the extent of the room

exaggerated them to a gigantic size, and from the low position of the

candle the light struck upwards and produced deformed foreshortenings.

The mountebank’s profile was enlarged upon the wall in caricature, and

it was strange to see his nose shorten and lengthen as the flame was

blown about by draughts. As for Madame Tentaillon, her shadow was no

more than a gross hump of shoulders, with now and again a hemisphere of

head. The chair legs were spindled out as long as stilts, and the boy

set perched atop of them, like a cloud, in the corner of the roof.

It was the boy who took the Doctor’s fancy. He had a great arched

skull, the forehead and the hands of a musician, and a pair of haunting

eyes. It was not merely that these eyes were large, or steady, or the

softest ruddy brown. There was a look in them, besides, which thrilled

the Doctor, and made him half uneasy. He was sure he had seen such a

look before, and yet he could not remember how or where. It was as if

this boy, who was quite a stranger to him, had the eyes of an old

friend or an old enemy. And the boy would give him no peace; he seemed

profoundly indifferent to what was going on, or rather abstracted from

it in a superior contemplation, beating gently with his feet against

the bars of the chair, and holding his hands folded on his lap. But,

for all that, his eyes kept following the Doctor about the room with a

thoughtful fixity of gaze. Desprez could not tell whether he was

fascinating the boy, or the boy was fascinating him. He busied himself

over the sick man: he put questions, he felt the pulse, he jested, he

grew a little hot and swore: and still, whenever he looked round, there

were the brown eyes waiting for his with the same inquiring, melancholy

gaze.

At last the Doctor hit on the solution at a leap. He remembered the

look now. The little fellow, although he was as straight as a dart, had

the eyes that go usually with a crooked back; he was not at all

deformed, and yet a deformed person seemed to be looking at you from

below his brows. The Doctor drew a long breath, he was so much relieved

to find a theory (for he loved theories) and to explain away his

interest.

For all that, he despatched the invalid with unusual haste, and, still

kneeling with one knee on the floor, turned a little round and looked

the boy over at his leisure. The boy was not in the least put out, but

looked placidly back at the Doctor.

“Is this your father?” asked Desprez.

“Oh, no,” returned the boy; “my master.”

“Are you fond of him?” continued the Doctor.

“No, sir,” said the boy.

Madame Tentaillon and Desprez exchanged expressive glances.

“That is bad, my man,” resumed the latter, with a shade of sternness.

“Every one should be fond of the dying, or conceal their sentiments;

and your master here is dying. If I have watched a bird a little while

stealing my cherries, I have a thought of disappointment when he flies

away over my garden wall, and I see him steer for the forest and

vanish. How much more a creature such as this, so strong, so astute, so

richly endowed with faculties! When I think that, in a few hours, the

speech will be silenced, the breath extinct, and even the shadow

vanished from the wall, I who never saw him, this lady who knew him

only as a guest, are touched with some affection.”

The boy was silent for a little, and appeared to be reflecting.

“You did not know him,” he replied at last, “he was a bad man.”

“He is a little pagan,” said the landlady. “For that matter, they are

all the same, these mountebanks, tumblers, artists, and what not. They

have no interior.”

But the Doctor was still scrutinising the little pagan, his eyebrows

knotted and uplifted.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Jean-Marie,” said the lad.

Desprez leaped upon him with one of his sudden flashes of excitement,

and felt his head all over from an ethnological point of view.

“Celtic, Celtic!” he said.

“Celtic!” cried Madame Tentaillon, who had perhaps confounded the word

with hydrocephalous. “Poor lad! is it dangerous?”

“That depends,” returned the Doctor grimly. And then once more

addressing the boy: “And what do you do for your living, Jean-Marie?”

he inquired.

“I tumble,” was the answer.

“So! Tumble?” repeated Desprez. “Probably healthful. I hazard the

guess, Madame Tentaillon, that tumbling is a healthful way of life. And

have you never done anything else but tumble?”

“Before I learned that, I used to steal,” answered Jean-Marie gravely.

“Upon my word!” cried the doctor. “You are a nice little man for your

age. Madame, when my _confrère_ comes from Bourron, you will

communicate my unfavourable opinion. I leave the case in his hands; but

of course, on any alarming symptom, above all if there should be a sign

of rally, do not hesitate to knock me up. I am a doctor no longer, I

thank God; but I have been one. Good night, madame. Good sleep to you,

Jean-Marie.”