somehow, and so--it really seemed the only thing,--we said if he was
so set on putting the crown back in its place, we would help him. And
I must say that after what we had heard it did seem the right thing.
If these horrid consequences had come on this poor man, might there
not really be something in the original idea of the crown having some
curious power bound up with it, to guard the coast? At least, that was
my feeling, and I think it was Long’s too. Our offer was very welcome
to Paxton, anyhow. When could we do it? It was nearing half-past ten.
Could we contrive to make a late walk plausible to the hotel people
that very night? We looked out of the window: there was a brilliant
full moon--the Paschal moon. Long undertook to tackle the boots and
propitiate him. He was to say that we should not be much over the hour,
and if we did find it so pleasant that we stopped out a bit longer we
would see that he didn’t lose by sitting up. Well, we were pretty
regular customers of the hotel, and did not give much trouble, and were
considered by the servants to be not under the mark in the way of tips;
and so the boots _was_ propitiated, and let us out on to the sea-front,
and remained, as we heard later, looking after us. Paxton had a large
coat over his arm, under which was the wrapped-up crown.
So we were off on this strange errand before we had time to think how
very much out of the way it was. I have told this part quite shortly on
purpose, for it really does represent the haste with which we settled
our plan and took action. “The shortest way is up the hill and through
the churchyard,” Paxton said, as we stood a moment before the hotel
looking up and down the front. There was nobody about--nobody at all.
Seaburgh out of the season is an early, quiet place. “We can’t go along
the dyke by the cottage, because of the dog,” Paxton also said, when I
pointed to what I thought a shorter way along the front and across two
fields. The reason he gave was good enough. We went up the road to
the church, and turned in at the churchyard gate. I confess to having
thought that there might be some lying there who might be conscious of
our business: but if it was so, they were also conscious that one who
was on their side, so to say, had us under surveillance, and we saw no
sign of them. But under observation we felt we were, as I have never
felt it at another time. Specially was it so when we passed out of the
churchyard into a narrow path with close high hedges, through which we
hurried as Christian did through that Valley; and so got out into open
fields. Then along hedges, though I would sooner have been in the open,
where I could see if anyone was visible behind me; over a gate or two,
and then a swerve to the left, taking us up on to the ridge which ended
in that mound.
As we neared it, Henry Long felt, and I felt too, that there were what
I can only call dim presences waiting for us, as well as a far more
actual one attending us. Of Paxton’s agitation all this time I can
give you no adequate picture: he breathed like a hunted beast, and we
could not either of us look at his face. How he would manage when we
got to the very place we had not troubled to think: he had seemed so
sure that that would not be difficult. Nor was it. I never saw anything
like the dash with which he flung himself at a particular spot in the
side of the mound, and tore at it, so that in a very few minutes the
greater part of his body was out of sight. We stood holding the coat
and that bundle of handkerchiefs, and looking, very fearfully, I must
admit, about us. There was nothing to be seen: a line of dark firs
behind us made one skyline, more trees and the church tower half-a-mile
off on the right, cottages and a windmill on the horizon on the left,
calm sea dead in front, faint barking of a dog at a cottage on a
gleaming dyke between us and it: full moon making that path we know
across the sea: the eternal whisper of the Scotch firs just above us
and of the sea in front. Yet, in all this quiet, an acute, an acrid
consciousness of a restrained hostility very near us, like a dog on a
leash that might be let go at any moment.
Paxton pulled himself out of the hole, and stretched a hand back to
us. “Give it to me,” he whispered, “unwrapped.” We pulled off the
handkerchiefs, and he took the crown. The moonlight just fell on it as
he snatched it. We had not ourselves touched that bit of metal, and I
have thought since that it was just as well. In another moment Paxton
was out of the hole again and busy shovelling back the soil with hands
that were already bleeding. He would have none of our help, though.
It was much the longest part of the job to get the place to look
undisturbed: yet--I don’t know how--he made a wonderful success of it.
At last he was satisfied, and we turned back.
We were a couple of hundred yards from the hill when Long suddenly said
to him: “I say, you’ve left your coat there. That won’t do. See?” And
I certainly did see it--the long dark overcoat lying where the tunnel
had been. Paxton had not stopped, however: he only shook his head, and
held up the coat on his arm. And when we joined him, he said, without
any excitement, but as if nothing mattered any more: “That wasn’t my
coat.” And, indeed, when we looked back again, that dark thing was not
to be seen.
Well, we got out on to the road, and came rapidly back that way. It
was well before twelve when we got in, trying to put a good face on
it, and saying--Long and I--what a lovely night it was for a walk. The
boots was on the lookout for us, and we made remarks like that for his
edification as we entered the hotel. He gave another look up and down
the sea-front before he locked the front door, and said: “You didn’t
meet many people about, I s’pose, sir?” “No, indeed, not a soul,” I
said; at which I remember Paxton looked oddly at me. “Only I thought
I see someone turn up the station road after you gentlemen,” said the
boots. “Still, you was three together, and I don’t suppose he meant
mischief.” I didn’t know what to say; Long merely said “Good-night,”
and we went off upstairs, promising to turn out all lights, and to go
to bed in a few minutes.
Back in our room, we did our very best to make Paxton take a cheerful
view. “There’s the crown safe back,” we said, “very likely you’d have
done better not to touch it” (and he heavily assented to that), “but no
real harm has been done, and we shall never give this away to anyone
who would be so mad as to go near it. Besides, don’t you feel better
yourself? I don’t mind confessing,” I said, “that on the way there
I was very much inclined to take your view about--well, about being
followed; but going back, it wasn’t at all the same thing, was it?”
No, it wouldn’t do: “_You’ve_ nothing to trouble yourselves about,”
he said, “but I’m not forgiven. I’ve got to pay for that miserable
sacrilege still. I know what you are going to say. The Church might
help. Yes, but it’s the body that has to suffer. It’s true I’m not
feeling that he’s waiting outside for me just now. But----” then he
stopped. Then he turned to thanking us, and we put him off as soon as
we could. And naturally we pressed him to use our sitting-room next
day, and said we should be glad to go out with him. Or did he play
golf, perhaps? Yes, he did, but he didn’t think he should care about
that to-morrow. Well, we recommended him to get up late and sit in our
room in the morning while we were playing, and we would have a walk
later in the day. He was very submissive and _piano_ about it all:
ready to do just what we thought best, but clearly quite certain in
his own mind that what was coming could not be averted or palliated.
You’ll wonder why we didn’t insist on accompanying him to his home and
seeing him safe into the care of brothers or someone. The fact was he
had nobody. He had had a flat in town, but lately he had made up his
mind to settle for a time in Sweden, and he had dismantled his flat and
shipped off his belongings, and was whiling away a fortnight or three
weeks before he made a start. Anyhow we didn’t see what we could do
better than sleep on it--or not sleep very much, as was my case--and
see what we felt like to-morrow morning.
We felt very different, Long and I, on as beautiful an April morning as
you could desire; and Paxton also looked very different when we saw him
at breakfast. “The first approach to a decent night I seem ever to have
had,” was what he said. But he was going to do as we had settled: stay
in probably all the morning, and come out with us later. We went to the
links; we met some other men and played with them in the morning, and
had lunch there rather early, so as not to be late back. All the same,
the snares of death overtook him.
Whether it could have been prevented, I don’t know. I think he would
have been got at somehow, do what we might. Anyhow, this is what
happened.
We went straight up to our room. Paxton was there, reading quite
peaceably. “Ready to come out shortly?” said Long, “say in
half-an-hour’s time?” “Certainly,” he said: and I said we would change
first, and perhaps have baths, and call for him in half-an-hour. I had
my bath first, and went and lay down on my bed, and slept for about ten
minutes. We came out of our rooms at the same time, and went together
to the sitting-room. Paxton wasn’t there--only his book. Nor was he in
his room, nor in the downstair rooms. We shouted for him. A servant
came out and said: “Why, I thought you gentlemen was gone out already,
and so did the other gentleman. He heard you a-calling from the path
there, and run out in a hurry, and I looked out of the coffee-room
window, but I didn’t see you. ’Owever, he run off down the beach that
way.”
Without a word we ran that way too--it was the opposite direction to
that of last night’s expedition. It wasn’t quite four o’clock, and the
day was fair, though not so fair as it had been, so there was really
no reason, you’d say, for anxiety: with people about, surely a man
couldn’t come to much harm.
But something in our look as we ran out must have struck the servant,
for she came out on the steps, and pointed, and said, “Yes, that’s
the way he went.” We ran on as far as the top of the shingle bank, and
there pulled up. There was a choice of ways: past the houses on the
sea-front, or along the sand at the bottom of the beach, which, the
tide being now out, was fairly broad. Or of course we might keep along
the shingle between these two tracks and have some view of both of
them; only that was heavy going. We chose the sand, for that was the
loneliest, and someone _might_ come to harm there without being seen
from the public path.
Long said he saw Paxton some distance ahead, running and waving his
stick, as if he wanted to signal to people who were on ahead of him.
I couldn’t be sure: one of these sea-mists was coming up very quickly
from the south. There was someone, that’s all I could say. And there
were tracks on the sand as of someone running who wore shoes; and there
were other tracks made before those--for the shoes sometimes trod in
them and interfered with them--of someone not in shoes. Oh, of course,
it’s only my word you’ve got to take for all this: Long’s dead. We’d
no time or means to make sketches or take casts, and the next tide
washed everything away. All we could do was to notice these marks as
we hurried on. But there they were over and over again, and we had no
doubt whatever that what we saw was the track of a bare foot, and one
that showed more bones than flesh.
The notion of Paxton running after--after anything like this, and
supposing it to be the friends he was looking for, was very dreadful
to us. You can guess what we fancied: how the thing he was following
might stop suddenly and turn round on him, and what sort of face it
would show, half-seen at first in the mist--which all the while was
getting thicker and thicker. And as I ran on wondering how the poor
wretch could have been lured into mistaking that other thing for us,
I remembered his saying, “He has some power over your eyes.” And then
I wondered what the end would be, for I had no hope now that the end
could be averted, and--well, there is no need to tell all the dismal
and horrid thoughts that flitted through my head as we ran on into the
mist. It was uncanny, too, that the sun should still be bright in the
sky and we could see nothing. We could only tell that we were now past
the houses and had reached that gap there is between them and the old
martello tower. When you are past the tower, you know, there is nothing
but shingle for a long way--not a house, not a human creature, just
that spit of land, or rather shingle, with the river on your right and
the sea on your left.
But just before that, just by the martello tower, you remember there
is the old battery, close to the sea. I believe there are only a few
blocks of concrete left now: the rest has all been washed away, but
at this time there was a lot more, though the place was a ruin. Well,
when we got there, we clambered to the top as quick as we could to take
breath and look over the shingle in front if by chance the mist would
let us see anything. But a moment’s rest we must have. We had run a
mile at least. Nothing whatever was visible ahead of us, and we were
just turning by common consent to get down and run hopelessly on, when
we heard what I can only call a laugh: and if you can understand what
I mean by a breathless, a lungless laugh, you have it; but I don’t
suppose you can. It came from below, and swerved away into the mist.
That was enough. We bent over the wall. Paxton was there at the bottom.
You don’t need to be told that he was dead. His tracks showed that
he had run along the side of the battery, had turned sharp round the
corner of it, and, small doubt of it, must have dashed straight into
the open arms of someone who was waiting there. His mouth was full of
sand and stones, and his teeth and jaws were broken to bits. I only
glanced once at his face.
At the same moment, just as we were scrambling down from the battery
to get to the body, we heard a shout, and saw a man running down the
bank of the martello tower. He was the caretaker stationed there, and
his keen old eyes had managed to descry through the mist that something
was wrong. He had seen Paxton fall, and had seen us a moment after,
running up--fortunate this, for otherwise we could hardly have escaped
suspicion of being concerned in the dreadful business. Had he, we
asked, caught sight of anybody attacking our friend? He could not be
sure.
We sent him off for help, and stayed by the dead man till they came
with the stretcher. It was then that we traced out how he had come, on
the narrow fringe of sand under the battery wall. The rest was shingle,
and it was hopelessly impossible to tell whither the other had gone.
What were we to say at the inquest? It was a duty, we felt, not to give
up, there and then, the secret of the crown, to be published in every
paper. I don’t know how much you would have told; but what we did agree
upon was this: to say that we had only made acquaintance with Paxton
the day before, and that he had told us he was under some apprehension
of danger at the hands of a man called William Ager. Also that we had
seen some other tracks besides Paxton’s when we followed him along the
beach. But of course by that time everything was gone from the sands.
No one had any knowledge, fortunately, of any William Ager living in
the district. The evidence of the man at the martello tower freed us
from all suspicion. All that could be done was to return a verdict of
wilful murder by some person or persons unknown.
Paxton was so totally without connections that all the enquiries that
were subsequently made ended in a No Thoroughfare. And I have never
been at Seaburgh, or even near it, since.
AN EVENING’S ENTERTAINMENT
Nothing is more common form in old-fashioned books than the description
of the winter fireside, where the aged grandam narrates to the circle
of children that hangs on her lips story after story of ghosts and
fairies, and inspires her audience with a pleasing terror. But we
are never allowed to know what the stories were. We hear, indeed, of
sheeted spectres with saucer eyes, and--still more intriguing--of
“Rawhead and Bloody Bones” (an expression which the Oxford Dictionary
traces back to 1550), but the context of these striking images eludes
us.
Here, then, is a problem which has long obsessed me; but I see no means
of solving it finally. The aged grandams are gone, and the collectors
of folklore began their work in England too late to save most of the
actual stories which the grandams told. Yet such things do not easily
die quite out, and imagination, working on scattered hints, may be able
to devise a picture of an evening’s entertainment, such an one as Mrs
Marcet’s _Evening Conversations_, Mr Joyce’s _Dialogues on Chemistry_,
and somebody else’s _Philosophy in Sport made Science in Earnest_,
aimed at extinguishing by substituting for Error and Superstition the
light of Utility and Truth; in some such terms as these:
_Charles_: I think, papa, that I now understand the properties of the
lever, which you so kindly explained to me on Saturday; but I have been
very much puzzled since then in thinking about the pendulum, and have
wondered why it is that, when you stop it, the clock does not go on any
more.
_Papa_: (You young sinner, have you been meddling with the clock in the
hall? Come here to me! _No, this must be a gloss that has somehow crept
into the text_). Well, my boy, though I do not wholly approve of your
conducting without my supervision experiments which may possibly impair
the usefulness of a valuable scientific instrument, I will do my best
to explain the principles of the pendulum to you. Fetch me a piece of
stout whipcord from the drawer in my study, and ask cook to be so good
as to lend you one of the weights which she uses in her kitchen.
And so we are off.
How different the scene in a household to which the beams of Science
have not yet penetrated! The Squire, exhausted by a long day after the
partridges, and replete with food and drink, is snoring on one side of
the fireplace. His old mother sits opposite to him knitting, and the
children (Charles and Lucy, not Harry and Lucy: they would never have
stood it) are gathered about her knee.
_Grandmother_: Now, my dears, you must be very good and quiet, or
you’ll wake your father, and you know what’ll happen then.
_Charles_: Yes, I know: he’ll be woundy cross-tempered and send us off
to bed.
_Grandmother_ (_stops knitting and speaks with severity_): What’s that?
Fie upon you, Charles! that’s not a way to speak. Now I _was_ going
to have told you a story, but if you use such-like words, I shan’t.
(_Suppressed outcry_: “Oh, granny!”) Hush! hush! Now I believe you
_have_ woke your father!
_Squire_ (_thickly_): Look here, mother, if you can’t keep them brats
quiet----
_Grandmother_: Yes, John, yes! it’s too bad. I’ve been telling them if
it happens again, off to bed they shall go.
_Squire_ relapses.
_Grandmother_: There, now, you see, children, what did I tell you? you
_must_ be good and sit still. And I’ll tell you what: to-morrow you
shall go a-blackberrying, and if you bring home a nice basketful, I’ll
make you some jam.
_Charles_: Oh yes, granny, do! and I know where the best blackberries
are: I saw ’em to-day.
_Grandmother_: And where’s that, Charles?
_Charles_: Why, in the little lane that goes up past Collins’s cottage.
_Grandmother_ (_laying down her knitting_): Charles! whatever you do,
don’t you dare to pick one single blackberry in that lane. Don’t you
_know_--but there, how should you--what was I thinking of? Well,
anyway, you mind what I say----
_Charles and Lucy_: But why, granny? Why shouldn’t we pick ’em there?
_Grandmother_: Hush! hush! Very well then, I’ll tell you all about it,
only you mustn’t interrupt. Now let me see. When I was quite a little
girl that lane had a bad name, though it seems people don’t remember
about it now. And one day--dear me, just as it might be to-night--I
told my poor mother when I came home to my supper--a summer evening
it was--I told her where I’d been for my walk, and how I’d come back
down that lane, and I asked her how it was that there were currant
and gooseberry bushes growing in a little patch at the top of the
lane. And oh, dear me, such a taking as she was in! She shook me and
she slapped me, and says she, “You naughty, naughty child, haven’t I
forbid you twenty times over to set foot in that lane? and here you go
dawdling down it at night-time,” and so forth, and when she’d finished
I was almost too much taken aback to say anything: but I did make her
believe that was the first I’d ever heard of it; and that was no more
than the truth. And then, to be sure, she was sorry she’d been so short
with me, and to make up she told me the whole story after my supper.
And since then I’ve often heard the same from the old people in the
place, and had my own reasons besides for thinking there was something
in it.
Now, up at the far end of that lane--let me see, is it on the right-
or the left-hand side as you go up?--the left-hand side--you’ll find
a little patch of bushes and rough ground in the field, and something
like a broken old hedge round about, and you’ll notice there’s some old
gooseberry and currant bushes growing among it--or there used to be,
for it’s years now since I’ve been up that way. Well, that means there
was a cottage stood there, of course; and in that cottage, before I was
born or thought of, there lived a man named Davis. I’ve heard that he
wasn’t born in the parish, and it’s true there’s nobody of that name
been living about here since I’ve known the place. But however that
may be, this Mr Davis lived very much to himself and very seldom went
to the public-house, and he didn’t work for any of the farmers, having
as it seemed enough money of his own to get along. But he’d go to the
town on market-days and take up his letters at the post-house where
the mails called. And one day he came back from market, and brought
a young man with him; and this young man and he lived together for
some long time, and went about together, and whether he just did the
work of the house for Mr Davis, or whether Mr Davis was his teacher in
some way, nobody seemed to know. I’ve heard he was a pale, ugly young
fellow and hadn’t much to say for himself. Well, now, what did those
two men do with themselves? Of course I can’t tell you half the foolish
things that the people got into their heads, and we know, don’t we,
that you mustn’t speak evil when you aren’t sure it’s true, even when
people are dead and gone. But as I said, those two were always about
together, late and early, up on the downland and below in the woods;
and there was one walk in particular that they’d take regularly once
a month, to the place where you’ve seen that old figure cut out in the
hillside; and it was noticed that in the summer-time when they took
that walk, they’d camp out all night, either there or somewhere near
by. I remember once my father--that’s your great-grandfather--told me
he had spoken to Mr Davis about it (for it’s his land he lived on)
and asked him why he was so fond of going there, but he only said:
“Oh, it’s a wonderful old place, sir, and I’ve always been fond of the
old-fashioned things, and when him (that was his man he meant) and me
are together there, it seems to bring back the old times so plain.” And
my father said, “Well,” he said, “it may suit _you_, but _I_ shouldn’t
like a lonely place like that in the middle of the night.” And Mr Davis
smiled, and the young man, who’d been listening, said, “Oh, we don’t
want for company at such times,” and my father said he couldn’t help
thinking Mr Davis made some kind of sign, and the young man went on
quick, as if to mend his words, and said, “That’s to say, Mr Davis
and me’s company enough for each other, ain’t we, master? and then
there’s a beautiful air there of a summer night, and you can see all
the country round under the moon, and it looks so different, seemingly,
to what it do in the daytime. Why, all them barrows on the down----”