THE OLD WELL HOUSE
One night Brion woke suddenly from a disturbed sleep, and sat up in
the dark, his heart thumping. He had been dreaming, and in his dreams
it had seemed to him that something shadowy and noiseless had entered
by the door, and come and bent above his bed, its features a white
blur in a pall of blackness. So strong was his sense of a presence
even then in the room, or only recently gone from it, that he held his
breath to hearken for any indication of its whereabouts; and so
sitting, a little fearful, was presently reassured by the sound of the
great door in the hall below being undisguisedly barred and bolted.
Whereat, concluding that it was earlier than he had supposed, and that
the household was only now making secure for the night, he lay down
again, convinced he had been dreaming, and was soon deep in the waters
of oblivion.
But the waking morning brought disquiet with it. No Clerivault
appeared from the neighbouring closet where he was used to sleep, to
attend, as was his wont, upon his young charge, and Brion, after a
period of restless waiting, was fain to dress himself, which he did
with all speed and in a growing uneasiness. Leaving his room at the
end, and going by Clerivault’s door, he found it opened, and old
Harlock within, feigning to busy herself over the unused bed. But she
was there, it was evident by her pretence of answering a question that
was not put, to invite comment.
‘Eh?’ she whined. ‘What sayest? I’m slow to hear.’
‘I did not speak,’ said Brion. ‘Where is Clerivault?’
‘Where?’ she answered. ‘Ask his master for that. I’m ne’er in the
goodman’s confidence.’
‘His master!’
‘Ay, his master and ours--bondslaves to his will. A may come and go,
and do with us as a lists. Be his purpose dark or light, in blindness
are we sworn to him, to see naught and follow at his call.’
‘May come--my Uncle!’ exclaimed the boy, all astounded: ‘has he been
here, then?’
‘Been and gone,’ answered the old woman. ‘Came like a thief in the
night, to steal nothing but away again.’
‘And took Clerivault with him?’
‘Took feather-head--ay, as a man in love with Folly might pluck and
put a pasque-flower behind his ear. They’re long ridden off together.’
Brion heard in dismay. His superstitious tremors of the night had
owed, then, to woefuller presage than any imagined hauntings. To lose
his friend, thus, without warning, without a word! it was grievous.
Something swelled in his breast. How could Clerivault have left him
so? And yet he might have had no choice. Who was he to cross the will
of that dark masterful spirit who controlled his destinies? It must
have been his Uncle, the boy was now convinced, who had come into his
room in the night, and looked down upon him. The thought thrilled him,
half awfully, half glowingly. He pictured his own unconscious face,
and that other, white and austere, bent above it--and the silent entry
and the silent withdrawal. Why? Why had his Uncle arrived thus in the
night, and as obscurely vanished, leaving no trace of his visit but
that dreaming memory? And yet it was a memory he would not be without.
He stood staring at the old woman.
‘I am in the dark,’ he said.
Her eyes, like two round stones, were set fixedly on his.
‘Thou art not the first in this house to be,’ she said. ‘Secrets and
mysteries before thy time have encompassed those that dwelt herein.
Their shadows yet linger in the rooms and walk upon the stairs. Thou
art not the first to feel the darkness and unrest. There is always
coming and going here; ay, even when it is emptiest of mortal
life--always something to see, though thou seest it not. This is the
place where plots are laid in darkness and fulfilled in silence.’
To say that Brion, hearing her, was conscious of a passing chill is
not to underrate his healthy young sanity. He believed the old
creature crazy: yet there is an eeriness, after all, in crazy company.
What she said might have no significance, but somehow it assorted
drearily with the lonely and desolate house and with the strange
movements of its inmates. His physical shiver converted itself,
however, in shame of its own weakness, into a shrug of irritable
dissent.
‘I am not afeard of your plots and shadows, old mother,’ said he, with
petulant scorn. ‘It is enough shadow for me that my friend hath left
me, without a word.’
She nodded her head grimly, thinning her lips.
‘Brave spirit,’ she said. ‘It shall need all of itself, maybe, in the
days to come.’
He turned from her, with an impatient exclamation, and began to
descend the stairs. Half way down he met the boy William, mounting
hot-faced towards him. This was a buxom swain, on the near side of
manhood, rosy and bucolic. His face was round as a gooseberry; an
incipient corn-gold beard frizzled on the spit of his chin. He pulled
up, and twitched his forelock with a breathless grimace.
‘Was comin’, Mars Brion, to help ee to dress,’ he said, panting. ‘Mars
Phineas a bade me humbly to tender myself.’
‘William,’ said the boy, ‘did Clerivault--did my Uncle say when they
would be back again?’
The scullion shook his noddle soberly.
‘Mars Clerivault a’ bade me to tell ee to be of good heart and not to
forget him. Mars Bagott was in a main hurry to be gone. A mounted to
thy chamber with a taper while the cattle were a-baiting, and was off
as soon as down.’
‘Whence did he come and whither ride, William--dost know?’
But William knew nothing--only that the Judge had arrived unexpectedly
by night, big Nol attending, and, after the briefest stay, had left
again, taking the porter and Clerivault with him. Neither had Phineas,
when presently questioned, any more definite information to give. They
both, it was evident, felt for the boy, and wished to do all in their
power to make up to him for the loss he had suffered, and to
ameliorate the loneliness of his lot. But a sense of grievance was on
Brion, and his response was neither grateful nor gracious. He felt
betrayed, in this committal of him to virtual solitude and neglect,
where he had been led by his comrade to count upon cheerfulness and
bright company. It was cruel, he thought, so to have inveigled him on
false pretences from a loved and happy home, and he could not be
induced, in that first sharpness of his affliction, to practise the
philosophy which after all was native to his young temperament, or to
look upon his desertion in any light other than that of deliberate
treachery. He would touch no breakfast that morning, much to the
master-cook’s concern, and generally seemed inclined to prepare
himself in the perversest possible way for the anchoretic ordeal which
lay before him.
And in truth that ordeal proved itself, as its character developed, a
sufficiently depressing affair--something comparable with that of an
eaglet, say, let loose, with a clipped wing, in an empty fowl run. For
the liberty that rode on horseback was for one thing denied Brion, his
nag having been taken away by the visitors for a spare mount; and so
was he deprived of one great incitement to forgetfulness in exercise.
No alternative was his but dreary wanderings alone, or in the company,
if he would, of a bashful clown like William. Phineas was all very
well for material pabulum, and could eke moralise humorously enough on
his craft; but he was hardly the comrade for a rambling day on the
moors. On the whole Brion preferred to be left to himself, that he
might indulge, half in rancour, half in real heartache, the dejection
of his mood.
And so he did, and experienced no soon reaction from it. In all the
long weeks to follow unrelieved on his Uncle’s visit, no word of
explanation or reassurance was to reach him; but he was left to
formulate his own ideas as to the meaning of things, and to get
through the weary days as best he could. At first, so miserable was
he, he had no spirit to continue the open life of the hills and moors;
but he would mope about the desolate house, vainly seeking distraction
in its few familiar objects, or haunt the wildered grounds about it,
kicking his cheerless heels among the tangled vegetation with which it
was overrun.
One day, when he was so idly disposed, trying to trace out the
original contour of the beds in what had been the garden, now a
confused waste of weed and vegetable matter, he made a discovery. He
had covered, in his aimless dawdlings, the inner circuit of the
estate, stopping now and again to look over the boundary wall into the
dead stagnation of the moat, or to watch the oily scum on its surface
open and shut like a mouth whenever he pitched a stone to it to gulp
and swallow. Coming round, then, by way of the porter’s lodge, he
ascended for the dozenth time, and in default of any brighter
suggestion, to the empty rooms above the gate, only, for the dozenth
time, to gaze with lacklustre eyes from their vacant windows, and to
descend again as objectless as he had mounted. Eastward of the
gatehouse were ranged the empty stables, the empty byres, the empty
pig-pens and barns--for the Grange had farmed its own produce in days
gone by--and beyond these, in a bastion of the wall, stood the
columbarium, or circular dovecote built of stone, which contained
within it a revolving ladder, like a cheval-de-frise on end, used for
reaching the birds where they might rest in any of the rows of little
cells with which the whole surface of the interior was chambered.
There were no pigeons there now, nor had been for an age; but there
was some mild excitement to be borrowed from mounting and spinning on
the ladder; and Brion was contemplating that distraction, when his eye
fell on the well in the courtyard which supplied the house with water.
It was a familiar enough object, but never till this moment regarded
by him in the light of a particular association. Was it, could it have
been the very well down which the miser had cast the body of his
victim those long years ago? Tingling, on tiptoe, he went to it and
looked over. The hatch was closed; the bucket, the slack of its rope
looped to the windlass, stood on the wall rim. And then a thought
occurred to him. This well was sunk in the open for all to see, and
the old woman had distinctly spoken of a well-house. Where?
Suddenly, with the birth of an idea, a thrill went through him, and he
started walking. He went past the stables, past the byres, past the
columbarium, and so into the wild ground beyond, where he kept along
the wall for a distance of fifty yards or so until he came to a dense
clump of ilexes, and there stopped, his heart going a little
excitedly. He had often noted and passed by this place, but had never
before, for some unexplainable reason, been moved to push into it. The
trees had built themselves up in a gloomy thicket high above the wall
and over it, and, bridging the moat, were continued in a twin clump on
the farther side. They were so grown down to the ground, so grappled
to it by the long grasses which had woven themselves into the bases of
the mass, as to appear impenetrable. Only a wrinkle, or suture, in the
hill of sombre green seemed to betray to the sharp eyes of the boy the
existence of some former passage between the foliage, now long closed
in and hidden.
Brion stood and hesitated. Somehow the place awed him--its gloom, its
silence, its distance from the house. There was a brooding stillness
about it which seemed to breathe of death and mystery. Then,
characteristically enough, he seized his determination in hand, and
made the plunge. He was of those whose instinct is always rather to
challenge a terror than by flying to call it after them.
Now, he had no sooner parted the boughs than he saw his suspicion
confirmed. Very faint, very blurred, yet still distinguishable, the
mark of a half-obliterated path ran under the trees. With just one
sigh, a little shaken, he entered and let the green covert close
behind him. And then he felt a shock of relief. It was not near so
dark within the great thicket as its exterior would have led him to
suppose. A thousand threads of gray light, rained down from overhead
like the jets in a shower-bath, made melancholy visible there. He went
forward a few steps, turned the trunk of a tree, and saw a low
building before him.
It was just a stone belvedere, moss grown, green with age and neglect,
but still whole and unbroken. Its area might have measured four yards
square; it stood some ten feet from the ground to the spring of the
roof, which was low-peaked and tiled with plates of rough-hewn stone.
Its front was open for two thirds of its width, and through the
aperture Brion caught sight of the low parapet of a well projecting
from the floor. Tingling all through, he stole forward and looked in.
There was light enough, at least, to distinguish things by, and to
stimulate both his curiosity and his fear. Here was the deadly spot,
without a question, and the sense of it was like stinging nettles in
his veins. He dared not go farther, but held to the doorpost and stood
staring in, on the prick of flight. He was looking into a dark and
death-cold little chamber, empty save for the well, sunk in the middle
of the flagged floor, and for one other rather wickedly suggestive
thing. This was a huge drum wheel, ten feet in diameter, and attached
by a short axle to one of the side walls. It was built of heavy wood
and was shaped like a round box-lid, the open side outermost. The boy
had no idea what was its purpose; but his day was the day of Holy
Inquisitions and their terrific legends, and there was something in
the appearance of this sinister engine to suggest a thought of racking
and mangled limbs. He was peering at it fascinated, his lips parted,
when something happened. From the depths of the well, in the utter
stillness, rose a little clucking noise, like a gobble of low
laughter. Human endurance had reached its limit. He turned and fled,
and bursting, panting and white faced, into the open, almost fell over
a figure that seemed to advance upon him at the moment.
But, even as he cried out--lo! it was Gammer Harlock. She had a basket
on her arm, and was poking here and there among the weedy tangle in
search of the simples she needed for her drugs and potions.
‘Eh!’ she said, never turning from her search to regard the pale lad
standing beside her. ‘So it’s you, is it--the young heart that fears
nor plot nor shadow! What ailed that cry, then, and this sound of near
running, like dead leaves blown along a wintry road?’
‘It is my breath shaking in me,’ said Brion. ‘I am winded, mother.’
He answered stoutly, but he was finely scared. He had never so
welcomed the company of this joyless old hag, or had so clung to it
for human solace and reassurance. She answered, stooping as she
spoke:--
‘Never blown lungs so rattled, I trow, save when the heart was in the
throat, like a pea in a whistle.’
He ‘owned up,’ with a little trembling laugh:--
‘I was frightened--there, I confess it. I had never before guessed it
was there, and, when I did, I went in. Mother, is it _the_ well?’
For the first time she rose erect, and looked him in the face.
‘A fool is a fool,’ she said, ‘be he ne’er so brave. Bear that in mind
when next you go to look into the dark places. So ye dared? And what
frighted ye?’
‘It was a sound came up from the well. I thought it laughed.’
‘And might it not laugh, hugging its secret all these years? Mayhap it
was that laugh killed Fulk. A was found dead there, his head hanging
over the well-rim. There were things in his eyes--things seen in the
black under water as he lay gasping out his soul. God give him mercy!’
Brion stood silent a minute. Curiosity, enough to hold him to the
spot, still fought in him for mastery over his fears.
‘Did he, Fulk, use it, _as_ a well?’ he asked.
The old woman shook her head.
‘That in the court,’ she said, ‘had already been sunk before his time.
’Tis an old, old pit, this--Roman. I’ve heard it called. It was there
before the moat itself. Never bucket nor windlass has it had in my
day. Like enow they were removed to the other.’
‘And what is that great wheel, mother, fastened to the wall?’
He spoke with a shiver, for in some way the evil spirit of the place
seemed concentrated to him in that diabolical mill. But the gammer did
not know. ‘Some wicked contrivance of Fulk’s,’ she supposed; but for
what purpose it was impossible to say. It was there when she came: and
that was all she knew about it.
She bent to her simples again, and, while she sought and plucked,
Brion lingered near her. If she knew the reason well enough, she was
flattered by the boy’s dependence on her. There was a soft place for
him in even her dark old heart. He was a bold beautiful child, so to
have dared the terrors of that mystery which to her was an article of
superstitious faith; and his flying to her in the last resort had
touched her to the quick.
That night, as he was finishing his supper in the great gloomy hall,
she came in to him with a handful of early daisies.
‘Lay these under thy pillow, and know sweet dreams,’ said she: and for
some reason Brion did not laugh, but took the little blossoms from her
with a wistful look into her eyes.