So the old carriage mouldered on in the coach-house, and its net-work of
cobwebs grew grimier each day.
How the spiders maintained themselves was a mystery, for no fly could
have run the blockade of the window, even if the inducement had been
greater. At last Ronald and I wove a legend around them in our turn,
which terrified us more than did the carriage itself. We decided that,
after long years of mutual slaughter, the victory had rested in the end
with two or three hoary monsters, who had ensconced themselves within the
framework of the ruined carriage, from which they looked out upon the
solitude they were creating. Little by little the uncanny idea grew upon
us till, regardless of all probability, we fancied we could see their
eyes peering out of the darkness.
More than once we made illicit expeditions at midnight in the hope that
we might find the ghostly coachman cleaning and repairing his equipage
for another sortie. But we could see nothing. If either of us had gone
alone, the result might have been different; we should have seen, or
pretended to see, many matters of interest.
November was, as a rule, our month of storms at Broadwater, though
February often ran it close; and, in the year that followed upon
Frampton’s story, a gale broke upon us on the third of the month that
beat the record of our times for violence. We had not been without
warning of its coming. The sea had been “crying out” at intervals—sure
token that the storm had paused to gather breath, bidding the sea take
forward its message to the shore.
Not when the gale is at its height—at any rate along our coast—can you
best realise the grandeur of the sea. Study it rather on one of these
quiet days of warning, when you can trace a wave almost from its
inception, till it curls over at your feet with a dull roar, regular as
the boom of a minute gun, and audible for miles inland.
Lashed into foam, and its voice drowned by the wind, it parts with much
of its majesty, and becomes merely a symbol of turmoil and unrest. What
it gains in wildness, it loses in self-control, like the seething rapids
of Niagara before they compose themselves into dignity prior to the final
plunge.
Then came another and a final warning. It was one of those rare sunsets
which leave an imprint on the memory for life. Not a sunset in which
conflicting colours are fused into each other by soft and subtle
gradations—these we see often and soon forget—but one of war and discord;
when colours, the most antagonistic, meet without blending, and produce
effects that would be called crude and coarse upon a painter’s canvas.
On a background of unvarying crimson, black and purple clouds were
projected, clean cut in outline, and solid, to all appearance, as the
hull of an Atlantic liner that was cleaving her way across the sea
beneath them. The sea itself borrowed its colours from the sky, but
jealously guarded them from encroaching on the beach beyond, which shone
white as silver in the unnatural glow. Beyond it still, the valleys and
hills that rose behind Broadwater were painted a dark and luminous green,
on which a few scattered homesteads stood out in clear and startling
relief. For the moment distance was annihilated, and a step or two, or
so it seemed, might have compassed the mile of space that separated us
from our own house door.
A sunset like this, following upon a “crying” sea, can never be misread
by the dwellers on our coast. It warns every fisherman that he must haul
his lerret to the very summit of the ridge, and every Coastguard station
along the dreaded Bay that it behoves them to be awake and watching. But
it was not till midnight that the storm broke upon us.
Our faith in the old house was strong. It had outlived so many storms,
and the gale of ’24 must have been worse than this, or so we kept saying
for mutual encouragement. But it was hard to believe it, and the comfort
was quickly followed by a disquieting thought that each year, as it
passed, left the chimneys older and less capable of resisting the
pressure. We were disquieted, too, for others; we knew well by
experience what a night like this might bring us from the sea. Times
upon times, in similar gales, we had been hurried to the beach by signals
of distress, and had helped the Coastguard, sometimes in saving life,
oftener in furthering that painful recall to life which is more agonizing
to witness than death itself.
Happily there came to-night no appealing cry. Even if it had pierced its
way through wind and rain, those whom it summoned could only have watched
and waited for one of those strange freaks by which the sea now and again
elects to spare a human life. At the height of the gale, when gust upon
gust followed each other with ever increasing fury, we were still seated
in the drawing-room under various pretences. Ronald and I said openly
that we were afraid of venturing our lives in the upper rooms, just under
the chimneys. Our uncle jeered at our cowardice, but stayed where he
was. “The noise would prevent my sleeping,” he said, “but, as for
danger, I’d as lief sleep in the garrets as anywhere; only the servants’
beds ain’t as comfortable as my own. The old house’ll last our time
yet.”
As if in answer to his boast, the gale made another defiant howl. It was
answered by a dull crash, followed by a continuous roar of falling
materials—followed again by a dead silence that was audible above the
rush of wind and rain. It took us only a few minutes to satisfy
ourselves that the fabric of the house was safe. It was a chimney
stablewards that had gone, crashing through a hay loft and lumber room
right down on the top of our ghostly carriage, and clearing Broadwater of
spiders for the period of our lives. Even the uncle himself could find
no plea for extending his protection to a mass of shivered fragments. If
the powers of darkness had destroyed their own handiwork, or failed in
ability to protect it, there was no reason to suppose that the hand of
man would be more successful. So the fiat went forth—not, I believe,
without great searching of heart on the part of our uncle—and carriage
and cobwebs, and even the stable itself were swept away, and, as Bunyan
says, I saw them no more.
“Well, I’m glad that it’s gone,” said a quiet, sweet voice at my elbow,
as Ronald and I were watching the departure of the last load of
materials. And, turning, I saw before me the woman who was to be the
guiding star of Ronald’s life, yes, and my own life too. She was little
more than a girl then—only a few years older than Ronald himself—with a
great calm truthfulness in her eyes, and the air of one who had already
known sorrow, and been refined, not hardened, by the experience.
“Yes,” she repeated, “I am glad it’s gone. And now we can be friends.
It has been so lonely for me at Thorpe ever since my father died, and I
have so wanted to make friends with you; only that old carriage stood in
the way. It was silly, no doubt, to be so much afraid, but then I am
Scotch—and the Scotch you know are very superstitious,” she added with a
smile. “Besides, ever since I can remember anything, I’ve been told that
the old carriage meant mischief and trouble between Thorpe and
Broadwater. It is true, no doubt, that an ancestor of mine did die in
it, and that all sorts of ghastly rumours were current as to how he met
his death. But nothing ever came of them, and it was commonly assumed
that he died of heart disease; he had certainly been ailing for years
before. Thank heaven! the very scene of the crime—if such it were—has
been swept away at last. And it is pleasant, isn’t it? to recommence our
life’s friendship here where it was wrecked. Though I fear we shan’t
meet often as yet, for my husband that is to be lives abroad, till I can
persuade him to give up his post and settle down with me for good in the
dear old home. But you _will_ be my friends, won’t you, for always?”
She held out her hand in pledge of her friendship. And we shall be
friends, I think, “for always.” I like the old-fashioned phrase.
Besides, it was her own.