In a state of mind bordering as closely on frenzy as was possible in
so very cold and calculating a nature, Conseltine made his way to the
neighbouring village of Cor-dale, where, in a disreputable inn bearing
the pretentious title ‘Hotel,’ his confederate Feagus was waiting the
issue of events. He found the worthy seated in a parlour leading off
the main chamber, or taproom, playing cards with the landlord, a
truculent-looking ruffian in shirt-sleeves.
As Conseltine entered, Feagus looked up with a grin, but, seeing at a
glance by the expression of Conseltine’s face that something unusual had
occurred, he threw down his cards and rose to his feet.
‘Business before pleasure, Pat Linney,’ he said. ‘Here’s a client, good
luck to him! Will ye be seated, Mr. Conseltine?’
‘No, no,’ was the reply. ‘Come out into the fresh air; this place
is stifling’--as indeed it was, from the combined effects of bad
ventilation, bad tobacco, and bad whiskey.
‘What’s the matter now?’ sharply demanded the lawyer, as they stood
together in the open street. An Irish ‘mist’ was falling from skies dark
with heavy clouds, and the prospect all around the few miserable huts
which constituted the ‘village’ was miserable in the extreme.
In a few hurried words Conseltine recounted the facts of the interview’
with Peebles.
‘So that’s it, is it?’ cried the lawyer, scowling savagely. ‘If I’d been
in your place, I’d have coaxed the ould villain into some convanient
corner, and knocked him on the head.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Conseltine.
‘Nonsense, ye call it?’ snapped Feagus, showing his teeth like a savage
dog about to bite. ‘When you’re cooling your heels in gaol ye’ll pipe to
a different tune.’
‘And you?’
‘Don’t couple my name with yours in that connection, Conseltine. I
forbid ye. My hands are clane, and the only thing on my conscience is
that I didn’t inform against ye.’
Conseltine’s face was livid with anger, as the other continued:
‘And it’s nice of ye to bring me put into the wet to talk with me, as if
I wasn’t a dacent man, except for my dealing with the likes of you.
I’m tired of doing dirty work for one that hasn’t the brains of a brent
goose, or the pluck of a louse--I am, sir! How will ye get out of it
all? tell me that.’
‘We sink or swim together,’ answered Conseltine. ‘I didn’t come here to
listen to abuse. I want your advice.’
‘Then come in to the fireside,’ snarled Feagus, moving towards the inn.
‘No! Can’t you understand that something must be done at once? That old
fool is against us, so is Blake; and when Desmond Macartney hears that
we’re concerned in his mother’s death, he’ll never rest till he’s hunted
us down. Come away with me to Blake’s at once, and see what can be done
with him.’
For some time Feagus was obdurate, but at last he listened to his
companion’s arguments, and agreed to accompany him to Blake’s Hall.
The way thither led by a track across the open moor or ‘mountain,’ and,
after refreshing himself with one stiff tumbler of Jamieson at the inn,
Feagus followed Conseltine through the drizzling rain.
A dreary day, a dreary prospect. The ground was covered with a soft,
soaked blanket of mud, moss, and heather, and low, gray vapours were
trailing on every side across the rain-washed hills. Not one ray of
sunlight broke the gloom, but far away to seaward moved a white mass
like smoke, ever shifting and changing. The air was strangely still, for
the rain was too thin and mist-like to produce the slightest sound.
It was a miserable walk of three Irish miles from the village of Cordale
to the valley inhabited by Blake. The two men hastened along in gloomy
silence until they had covered half the distance. Then Feagus paused
with an oath, and looked fiercely into the pale, determined face of his
companion.
‘I’m a fool to follow ye!’ he cried. ‘I’d be a wiser man if I took the
car to Sligo, and left ye here to fight the devils you’ve raised.’
‘I tell you that we stand or fall together,’ said Conseltine.
‘That’s a lie! If I was an accessory before the fact, I can plade
insufficiency of motive, and turn Queen’s evidence. What d’ye say to
that, now?’
Conseltine’s face went a shade whiter, and its expression a shade
uglier, as he glanced down at Feagus, and then surveyed the gloomy
prospect surrounding him. For the moment his impulse was to spring upon
his accomplice, and strangle him then and there; but Feagus, though
small, was wiry, and fierce as a wild cat, and would have taken a great
deal of killing. Momentary as the impulse was, it expressed itself
clearly on his countenance, and was at once understood and appreciated
by Feagus, who said with a savage and spiteful grin:
‘Wouldn’t ye like to get rid of me now, as ye got rid of poor Moya
Macartney? So I’m a thorn in your side, Dick Conseltine? By the powers,
I’ll be a bigger thorn yet, if ye don’t mind what you’re after!’
‘You’re drunk,’ returned Conseltine, ‘and you talk like a child. Come
along!’
And he walked slowly on.
‘A child, am I, and drunk?’ muttered Feagus, irresolute whether to
follow or turn back. ‘Well, I’m neither too young nor too drunk to guess
what game you’re after, my fine gintleman. If I’m not before ye, ’tis
you that will be blowing the gaff, and denouncing me, to save your own
skin. So I won’t leave ye yet awhile, I’m thinking.’
He followed Conseltine at a short distance, grumbling and cursing at
every footstep of the way. From time to time Conseltine glanced back to
assure himself that he was following.
At last, soaked to the skin and splashed with mud, they came in view
of Blake’s Hall. By this time the rain had almost ceased, but above the
heights which rose seaward, beyond the flat valley in which the Hall
lay, a great mass of vaporous cumuli, black and ominous, hung like a
pall. Between this mass and the hill summits was a white space filled
with smoke-like vapour, with gleams of shimmering silver. The silence
had grown deeper, but when the slightest sound arose it travelled with
startling distinctness for miles. Here and there, between the valley and
the hills, were scattered cottages, bright patches of green pasture, and
clumps of woodland. From these, at intervals, came the lowing of cattle,
the crowing of a cock, the cry of a solitary human voice--each and all
of which seemed to make the silence more intense.
Down to the cottage, or hall, went the two men, only to find that they
had come upon a useless errand. The door stood open, but when they
entered there was no sign of anybody within. Tired with his long walk,
Feagus threw himself on a stool, and, lighting his pipe, began smoking
furiously, while Conseltine, returning to the door, searched the
prospect in vain for any trace of the man he sought.
A hundred yards from the threshold ran the river, a narrow and shallow
stream in ordinary weather, but now broadened and deepened by the rain.
It was boiling along at lightning speed, stained deep brown by the clay
and peat of the moorlands whence it flowed. The stepping-stones at the
ford, by which one gained the road to Castle Fitzpatrick, were covered,
and to cross at all a man would have had to wade nearly waist-deep, at
the risk of being carried away by the current.
Like a man lost in thought, Conseltine walked over to the bank, and
stood looking at the water. His mind was in as great a tumult as the
raging stream. All his plans had failed, the whole world seemed leagued
against him, and he was now full of a nameless dread, a horror of
discovery, of punishment, and of the accompanying shame. Recent events
had developed everything that was harsh and even savage in his nature.
He had passed from one crime to another, till the blackest of all crimes
cast its shadow on his soul; not that he felt any pity for the victim of
his evil deed--his dominant feeling was one of fierce rage that the deed
had been done in vain. How to act now he knew not. His only hope was
in the silence of Peebles, whose regard for the honour of the family he
well knew. His greatest fear was of Desmond, should the Squireen learn
that his mother’s life had been attempted.
He stood so long brooding there, that Feagus grew impatient, and came to
the door to look after him.
‘What the devil are ye doing there?’ shouted the lawyer.
Conseltine looked round, and made no reply. At that moment a strange
sound, like the faint shock of an earthquake, came from the distant
hills. Both men instinctively glanced thither, and saw, stretching from
the black mass or pile of cloud behind the hill-tops, a silhouette of
solid black, in the form of an enormous waterspout, its apex in the
clouds, its base hidden somewhere in the unseen ocean. Even as they
gazed it burst, and for a moment it seemed as if night had come, the
whole skies being wrapt in blackness, and the rain falling in a deluge,
lashing the ground.
‘Powers of heaven!’ cried Feagus, clinging to the lintel of the open
door, and feeling, almost for the first time in his life, a ghastly
sense of fear. Before he could realize his own dread, Conseltine stood
by him, panting for breath.
‘Look yonder!’ Conseltine gasped, gripping his companion by the arm, and
pointing up the mountains.
Light now broke from the clouds--gloomy light with livid rays; and it
fell full on a great green stretch of bogland covering the mountain
side. The mountain itself seemed rocking as if with earthquake, and
simultaneously the bog itself, like thick and slimy lava, seemed to be
moving downward!
‘Holy saints defend us!’ cried Feagus.
As he spoke, the sound of human cries came from the distance, and
figures were seen wildly moving to and fro. A white cottage of stone
rocked, crumbled like sugar in water, and disappeared from sight, washed
over by the moving earth.
Tempest on sea and earthquake are dreadful enough, but there is no
phenomenon more portentous than that of the moving bog, when the very
earth seems to become liquid lava, shifting and changing, obliterating
landmarks, and swallowing up whatever stands in the way of its fatal
course. Such was the phenomenon the two men were now contemplating--a
whole hillside shifting from its place and moving downward like a
great slow, ever-broadening stream, engulfing rocks, trees, and human
dwellings, bearing fragments of these in its course, urging stones
and rocks along like a river in full flood, now halting and pausing to
destroy obstacles, again rolling relentlessly on.
In the present case, it was fed with the rain of a thousand torrents,
which gushed along with it and hastened it along.
Louder and shriller cries soon broke upon the air, and groups of men,
women, and children were seen flying down the valley, some driving
before them cattle as terror-stricken as themselves, many bearing
blankets, bedding, and domestic utensils, all moaning and shrieking in
fear. Very slowly, but surely and terribly, the bog crept behind them,
devouring and destroying, yet now and then, as if in caprice, leaving
some dwelling or clump of trees untouched, like an island in a slimy,
moving pool.
As emotion spreads from one to another in a crowd of living beings, so
does trouble grow by some elemental sympathy of nature among inanimate
things. The terror and the tumult of the scene we are describing seemed
to communicate itself to the whole landscape. The very river, flowing
from the opposite direction, and winding away seaward by the base of the
mountains, seemed to boil up ominously, surging tumultuously along.
A mile away there was a wooden bridge, over which many of the
panic-stricken peasants had now crossed, gaining the open vale beyond.
Suddenly, the supports of this bridge yielded to the fury of the waters;
the bridge, covered with sheep and cattle, with men and women about to
follow, tottered, yielded, and was swept away with its load.
All this time Feagus and Conseltine had stood fascinated, forgetful of
themselves in the extraordinary scene they were contemplating; but now,
as the excitement culminated, they realized their own danger.
‘We must get out of this,’ said Feagus. ‘If we don’t cross the ford,
we’ll be buried alive!’
He flew rather than ran towards the river, and reached the place of
crossing, only to stand in abject terror above a boiling torrent.
‘Saints save us!’ he groaned. ‘No man can cross here.’
He turned trembling, and saw Conseltine standing by his side, pale but
comparatively calm.
‘What’s to be done?’ gasped Feagus.
Conseltine smiled grimly.
‘Plunge in, man, wade to the other side, or swim to it! It’s not twenty
yards from bank to bank.’
‘I should drown!’ cried the lawyer.
‘Better that than live to betray the man that has fed and kept you so
many years. You talked of turning Queen’s evidence--go and do it!’
Feagus recoiled.
‘I didn’t mane it, Conseltine--’Twas only my little joke. For God’s
sake, tell me what’s to be done!’
‘I neither know nor care,’ returned the other. ‘Perhaps it’s God’s
vengeance upon us for what we’ve done. Are you afraid to die?’
Without replying, Feagus looked round in despair. The whole
mountain-side seemed now descending on that portion of the valley where
he stood, while the river wound round and round, between Blake’s Hall
and the open moor by which they had gained the lonely vale. There was
only one way of escape--to gain the opposite bank of the river.
‘Tell me this--if we escape out of this alive, do you mean to stand by
me or to turn against me?’
‘To stand by ye, to stand by ye!’ cried Feagus.
‘Then strip off your coat, and follow me!’ said Conseltine. ‘I’m going
across. If the water takes me off my feet, I shall swim to the point
below yonder--the current swirls that way, and it’s shallow close to the
bank. You’d better come--it’s your only chance.’
Suiting the action to the word, Conseltine took off his outer garments,
and stood in trousers and shirtsleeves; then, stooping down, he unlaced
his mud-clogged boots, and threw them off. Trembling with fear, Feagus
followed his example.
Conseltine crept down to the water’s edge, and leaning forward, tried
the depth with a heavy blackthorn stick which he carried.
‘We can do it,’ he said. ‘Mind you stand firm against the current, or
you’re a dead man.’
Feagus groaned and prayed. All his natural courage had deserted him, and
he looked an abject picture of human wretchedness.
‘Stop a minute,’ he cried; ‘I’m out o’ breath!’
‘Stop if you please,’ returned Conseltine contemptuously. ‘I’m going
across!’
Then steadying himself for the struggle, and using his stick as a
partial support, he stepped into the stream, and in a moment was
fighting with the current. With slow, long strides he moved from the
bank, his feet set upon the slippery bottom. For several yards the water
reached no higher than his knees, but gradually deepened; it at last
surged wildly to his waist; but he was a tall man of unusual strength,
and nature favoured him. For a few moments, as he stood in mid-stream,
it seemed as if he must be swept away, but, facing the current and
leaning forward, he held his own--then, putting out all his strength,
he leaped rather than walked until he gained the shallower water on the
farther side. He had passed safely, and stood soaked and dripping, but
secure, upon the further bank.
Feagus, who had watched his progress with wondering eyes, but with an
increasing sense of hope, still stood crouching by the riverside.
‘Come,’ cried Conseltine, waving his stick and laughing; ‘it’s easier
than I thought!’
‘Your staff! Throw me your staff!’ shrieked Feagus, and glancing round
he saw the bog descending like a snake towards Blake’s Hall. Then an
extraordinary phenomenon took place. The bog, meeting the river just
where the bridge had fallen, blocked it like an enormous dam and then
crawled like a monster over it. The result was instantaneous. The river,
arrested in its course, began to swell up, deepen, and push backward on
itself. There was not a moment to be lost if it was to be crossed again.
‘Throw me your staff, for the love of God!’ cried Feagus.
Conseltine hesitated for a moment, then cast the stick across the flood
with all his might; it fell close to Feagus, who gripped it eagerly, and
then, with a cry, plunged forward into the water. His progress was at
first comparatively easy, but as the water deepened, it became more
and more difficult to keep his foothold. With face set hard and eyes
protruding, he struggled on.
After watching him for a moment, Conseltine ran from the bank, followed
the side of the stream, and stood on the point of land of which he had
spoken, some forty yards below. Standing there, he waited for results.
Straining every nerve, and praying aloud, the lawyer reached the middle
of the stream, and paused for a moment, gasping for breath. Then the
roar of the flood, and the rush of water and wind, seemed to blind and
confuse him, and he seemed giving way. But with a mighty effort he kept
his feet, and even then all might have gone well with him but for an
accidental impediment--the half-submerged trunk of a tree, which rolled
over and over, struck the staff from his hands and took him off
his feet. With a shriek, he was swept headlong into the flood, and
disappeared.
Only for a few moments--then, haggard and ghastly, his head re-emerged,
drifting towards the point where Conseltine stood. A good swimmer, he
struck boldly out, and was helped by the current. All he was conscious
of was the rushing water around him, and the figure of Conseltine coming
nearer and nearer.
As Conseltine had explained, the current swept right to the point, close
to which there was some shallow water. Strong and wiry as a terrier,
Feagus made his way thither, fighting for his life. He was close to the
point, his feet touched solid ground, and he could see Conseltine
close to him, looking calmly down, when his force foiled him and he was
whirled round like a straw.
‘Save me!’ he shrieked, reaching out his hands.
By wading forward, and gripping the hands so outstretched, Conseltine,
with little or no danger to himself, could have drawn him into the
shallows, but, instead of so doing, he looked at the miserable man and
made no effort to assist him. The opportunity of the moment passed, and
with a shriek of despair Feagus was swept away.
*****
Pale as death, Conseltine watched him until he disappeared altogether,
and then, pale as a spectre, walked up the riverside. He was safe now,
and the only man who could denounce him and bring any certain proof of
his guilt was silenced for ever.
‘The drunken fool!’ he muttered. ‘That threat has cost him his life. Had
he lived, he would have done what he threatened to do--so he’s better
where he is!’
He looked back across the river. Blake’s Hall stood untouched, but all
around it was the dark mass of the moving bog, still creeping across
the vale. Where the bridge had fallen, a great lake of water, fed by the
river, was spreading and spreading. The rain still fell heavily, adding
to the general desolation.
He turned and hastened till he reached the road leading to the village
and Castle of Kilpatrick. As he strode along, he passed numbers of men,
women, and children hurrying in the same direction, but spoke to none
and was heeded by none, until he was close upon the village, when he
came suddenly face to face with his son.
‘Father!’ cried Richard, aghast at the wild figure before him. ‘I’ve
been looking for you everywhere. What has happened?’
In a few brief words, Conseltine related what had occurred--the search
for Blake, the strange convulsion of nature, his own escape, and the
death of Feagus. Then Richard, on his side, had something to tell which
made Conseltine sick with rage and dread. What that ‘something’ was will
be known in the sequel. The result of the communication was that father
and son made no attempt to return to Kilpatrick Castle, but within a few
hours of their meeting had gained the nearest railway-station and were
on their way to Dublin.