TELLS THE LAST OF THE TALL MAN
Somehow or other, by hook and crook, and between the three of us, we got
Bernard Huddlestone bundled upstairs and laid upon the bed in _My
Uncle's Room_. During the whole process, which was rough enough, he gave
no sign of consciousness, and he remained, as we had thrown him, without
changing the position of a finger. His daughter opened his shirt and
began to wet his head and bosom; while Northmour and I ran to the
window. The weather continued clear; the moon, which was now about full,
had risen and shed a very clear light upon the links; yet, strain our
eyes as we might, we could distinguish nothing moving. A few dark spots,
more or less, on the uneven expanse, were not to be identified; they
might be crouching men, they might be shadows; it was impossible to be
sure.
"Thank God," said Northmour, "Aggie is not coming to-night."
Aggie was the name of the old nurse; he had not thought of her till now;
but that he should think of her at all was a trait that surprised me in
the man.
We were again reduced to waiting. Northmour went to the fireplace and
spread his hands before the red embers, as if he were cold. I followed
him mechanically with my eyes, and in so doing turned my back upon the
window. At that moment a very faint report was audible from without, and
a ball shivered a pane of glass, and buried itself in the shutter two
inches from my head. I heard Clara scream; and though I whipped
instantly out of range and into a corner, she was there, so to speak,
before me, beseeching to know if I were hurt. I felt that I could stand
to be shot at every day and all day long, with such marks of solicitude
for a reward; and I continued to reassure her, with the tenderest
caresses and in complete forgetfulness of our situation, till the voice
of Northmour recalled me to myself.
"An air-gun," he said. "They wish to make no noise."
I put Clara aside, and looked at him. He was standing with his back to
the fire and his hands clasped behind him; and I knew by the black look
on his face that passion was boiling within. I had seen just such a look
before he attacked me, that March night, in the adjoining chamber; and,
though I could make every allowance for his anger, I confess I trembled
for the consequences. He gazed straight before him; but he could see us
with the tail of his eye, and his temper kept rising like a gale of
wind. With regular battle awaiting us outside, this prospect of an
internecine strife within the walls began to daunt me.
Suddenly, as I was thus closely watching his expression and prepared
against the worst, I saw a change, a flash, a look of relief, upon his
face. He took up the lamp which stood beside him on the table, and
turned to us with an air of some excitement.
"There is one point that we must know," said he. "Are they going to
butcher the lot of us, or only Huddlestone? Did they take you for him,
or fire at you for your own _beaux yeux_?"
"They took me for him, for certain," I replied. "I am near as tall, and
my head is fair."
"I am going to make sure," returned Northmour; and he stepped up to the
window, holding the lamp above his head, and stood there, quietly
affronting death, for half a minute.
Clara sought to rush forward and pull him from the place of danger; but
I had the pardonable selfishness to hold her back by force.
"Yes," said Northmour, turning coolly from the window; "it's only
Huddlestone they want."
"Oh, Mr. Northmour!" cried Clara; but found no more to add; the temerity
she had just witnessed seeming beyond the reach of words.
He, on his part, looked at me, cocking his head, with a fire of triumph
in his eyes; and I understood at once that he had thus hazarded his
life, merely to attract Clara's notice, and depose me from my position
as the hero of the hour. He snapped his fingers.
"The fire is only beginning," said he. "When they warm up to their work
they won't be so particular."
A voice was now heard hailing us from the entrance. From the window we
could see the figure of a man in the moonlight; he stood motionless, his
face uplifted to ours, and a rag of something white on his extended arm;
and as we looked right down upon him, though he was a good many yards
distant on the links, we could see the moonlight glitter on his eyes.
He opened his lips again, and spoke for some minutes on end, in a key
so loud that he might have been heard in every corner of the pavilion,
and as far away as the borders of the wood. It was the same voice that
had already shouted "_Traditore!_" through the shutters of the
dining-room; this time it made a complete and clear statement. If the
traitor "Oddlestone" were given up, all others should be spared; if not,
no one should escape to tell the tale.
"Well, Huddlestone, what do you say to that?" asked Northmour, turning
to the bed.
Up to that moment the banker had given no sign of life, and I, at least,
had supposed him to be still lying in a faint; but he replied at once,
and in such tones as I have never heard elsewhere, save from a delirious
patient, adjured and besought us not to desert him. It was the most
hideous and abject performance that my imagination can conceive.
"Enough," cried Northmour; and then he threw open the window, leaned out
into the night, and in a tone of exultation, and with a total
forgetfulness of what was due to the presence of a lady, poured out upon
the ambassador a string of the most abominable raillery both in English
and Italian, and bade him be gone where he had come from. I believe that
nothing so delighted Northmour at that moment as the thought that we
must all infallibly perish before the night was out.
Meantime the Italian put his flag of truce into his pocket, and
disappeared, at a leisurely pace, among the sand-hills.
"They make honourable war," said Northmour. "They are all gentlemen and
soldiers. For the credit of the thing, I wish we could change sides--you
and I, Frank, and you too, Missy my darling--and leave that being on the
bed to some one else. Tut! Don't look shocked! We are all going post to
what they call eternity, and may as well be above-board while there's
time. As far as I'm concerned, if I could first strangle Huddlestone and
then get Clara in my arms, I could die with some pride and satisfaction.
And as it is, by God, I'll have a kiss!"
Before I could do anything to interfere, he had rudely embraced and
repeatedly kissed the resisting girl. Next moment I had pulled him away
with fury, and flung him heavily against the wall. He laughed loud and
long, and I feared his wits had given way under the strain; for even in
the best of days he had been a sparing and a quiet laugher.
"Now, Frank," said he, when his mirth was somewhat appeased, "it's your
turn. Here's my hand. Good-bye; farewell!" Then, seeing me stand rigid
and indignant, and holding Clara to my side--"Man!" he broke out, "are
you angry? Did you think we were going to die with all the airs and
graces of society? I took a kiss; I'm glad I had it; and now you can
take another if you like, and square accounts."
I turned from him with a feeling of contempt which I did not seek to
dissemble.
"As you please," said he. "You've been a prig in life; a prig you'll
die."
And with that he sat down on a chair, a rifle over his knee, and amused
himself with snapping the lock; but I could see that his ebullition of
light spirits (the only one I ever knew him to display) had already come
to an end, and was succeeded by a sullen, scowling humour.
All this time our assailants might have been entering the house, and we
been none the wiser; we had in truth almost forgotten the danger that so
imminently overhung our days. But just then Mr. Huddlestone uttered a
cry, and leaped from the bed.
I asked him what was wrong.
"Fire!" he cried. "They have set the house on fire!"
Northmour was on his feet in an instant, and he and I ran through the
door of communication with the study. The room was illuminated by a red
and angry light. Almost at the moment of our entrance, a tower of flame
arose in front of the window, and, with a tingling report, a pane fell
inwards on the carpet. They had set fire to the lean-to outhouse, where
Northmour used to nurse his negatives.
"Hot work," said Northmour. "Let us try in your old room."
We ran thither in a breath, threw up the casement, and looked forth.
Along the whole back wall of the pavilion piles of fuel had been
arranged and kindled; and it is probable they had been drenched with
mineral oil, for, in spite of the morning's rain, they all burned
bravely. The fire had taken a firm hold already on the outhouse, which
blazed higher and higher every moment; the back-door was in the centre
of a red-hot bonfire; the eaves, we could see, as we looked upward, were
already smouldering, for the roof overhung, and was supported by
considerable beams of wood. At the same time, hot, pungent, and choking
volumes of smoke began to fill the house. There was not a human being to
be seen to right or left.
"Ah, well!" said Northmour, "here's the end, thank God."
And we returned to _My Uncle's Room_. Mr. Huddlestone was putting on his
boots, still violently trembling, but with an air of determination such
as I had not hitherto observed. Clara stood close by him, with her cloak
in both hands ready to throw about her shoulders, and a strange look in
her eyes, as if she were half-hopeful, half-doubtful of her father.
"Well, boys and girls," said Northmour, "how about a sally? The oven is
heating; it is not good to stay here and be baked; and, for my part, I
want to come to my hands with them, and be done."
"There is nothing else left," I replied.
And both Clara and Mr. Huddlestone, though with a very different
intonation, added, "Nothing."
As we went downstairs the heat was excessive, and the roaring of the
fire filled our ears; and we had scarce reached the passage before the
stairs window fell in, a branch of flame shot brandishing through the
aperture, and the interior of the pavilion became lit up with that
dreadful and fluctuating glare. At the same moment we heard the fall of
something heavy and inelastic in the upper story. The whole pavilion, it
was plain, had gone alight like a box of matches, and now not only
flamed sky-high to land and sea, but threatened with every moment to
crumble and fall in about our ears.
Northmour and I cocked our revolvers. Mr. Huddlestone, who had already
refused a firearm, put us behind him with a manner of command.
"Let Clara open the door," said he. "So, if they fire a volley, she will
be protected. And in the meantime stand behind me. I am the scapegoat;
my sins have found me out."
I heard him, as I stood breathless by his shoulder, with my pistol
ready, pattering off prayers in a tremulous, rapid whisper; and I
confess, horrid as the thought may seem, I despised him for thinking of
supplications in a moment so critical and thrilling. In the meantime,
Clara, who was dead white, but still possessed her faculties, had
displaced the barricade from the front door. Another moment, and she had
pulled it open. Firelight and moonlight illuminated the links with
confused and changeful lustre, and far away against the sky we could see
a long trail of glowing smoke.
Mr. Huddlestone, filled for the moment with a strength greater than his
own, struck Northmour and myself a back-hander in the chest; and while
we were thus for the moment incapacitated from action, lifting his arms
above his head like one about to dive, he ran straight forward out of
the pavilion.
"Here am I!" he cried--"Huddlestone! Kill me, and spare the others!"
His sudden appearance daunted, I suppose, our hidden enemies; for
Northmour and I had time to recover, to seize Clara between us, one by
each arm, and to rush forth to his assistance, ere anything further had
taken place. But scarce had we passed the threshold when there came near
a dozen reports and flashes from every direction among the hollows of
the links. Mr. Huddlestone staggered, uttered a weird and freezing cry,
threw up his arms over his head, and fell backward on the turf.
"_Traditore! Traditore!_" cried the invisible avengers.
And just then a part of the roof of the pavilion fell in, so rapid was
the progress of the fire. A loud, vague, and horrible noise accompanied
the collapse, and a vast volume of flame went soaring up to heaven. It
must have been visible at that moment from twenty miles out at sea, from
the shore at Graden-Wester, and far inland from the peak of Graystiel,
the most eastern summit of the Caulder Hills. Bernard Huddlestone,
although God knows what were his obsequies, had a fine pyre at the
moment of his death.