Once more Andrew Fisher, aged ninety years, sat in his beehive chair
facing the western window in Warren House. The sun was sinking, and
seemed to hang over the distant vale, towards which the old man's
countenance was turned. Once more the sickle had done its work, and the
golden grain was garnered. For the shadow of the days had gone forward
upon the dial, whose ancient graven circles, dimmed with green rust,
timed the equinox and the march of the firmament. The merry barley was
laid low; and the acorns--first green, then faintly yellow--were
ripening brown in their cups upon the oaks.
On the ledge of the chimney, where the level rays came warmest, and
stone and tile radiated heat, the last lingering swallows twittered a
long farewell. For the oxen had already felt the drag of the heavy
plough. The ivy flowered on the wall, blossoming for winter, and there
was a buzz of flies gathering on the pane towards the sun. As a ripe
pear that waited but the rude shock of the wind, the full year was
bending to its fall. Overhead the rooks were floating idly home down
towards Thorpe Wood. The long files of the black army streaked the sky
with streaming thousands far as the eye could see, and filled the air
with the strange rush and creaking of their wings and the goblin chuckle
of the noisy jackdaws. The feathery heads of the reeds by the mill-pool
bowed mournfully; and in the hush of the dying day came the monotonous
chaunt of the mill-wheel, ever round and round, without haste and
without rest; and with it mingled the sounding rush of the race, of its
foam and bubble and spray as of human life.
The sunbeam on the chamber-wall--stained azure and purple by the painted
escutcheon of "Fischere" on the pane--travelled slowly as the sun sank
lower. There was a picture almost opposite the beehive chair--a picture
old and darkened by the thickening of the oil and varnish. It was the
portrait by a rude hand of a sturdy boy in breeches and buckles, and
with bare head, fishing in the brook. The portrait was that of Andrew
himself in his boyhood, painted to please a doting mother. Was there a
tear in his dull eyeball at the thought of her--heartbroken by his evil
so many, many weary years ago? Was he wiser, happier, now in the
fullness of his days, than when, with peeled white willow wand, a thread
and crooked pin, he angled in the bend of the brook where the eddy
scooped out a deeper hollow?
"Caer-wit! caer-weet!" It was the call of the partridge yonder, in the
mead at the foot of the hill; and a distant answer came from the stubble
lower down. Ah, the joy of the brown twist barrel and the eager dogs.
His sight is dull and sinews stiff; never again will Andrew Fisher mark
a covey down as they skim across the uplands.
The blue-stained sunbeam moved onward, the sun declined, and the
wearyful women came homeward from the gleaning and the labour of the
field. Their path passed close beneath the great window, and their
stooping shadows for a moment shut out the sunshine. Such paths used by
the workers, and going right through the grounds of the house, may be
found still, where the ancient usage has not yet succumbed to modern
privacy, and were once the general custom. It was the season of the
harvest, the time of joy and gladness. Do you suppose these women moved
in rhythmic measures to Bacchanalian song and pastoral pipe, as the
women came home from the field with corn and grape:
In Tempe and the dales of Arcady?
Do you suppose their brows were wreathed with the honeysuckle's second
autumn bloom, with streaked convolvulus and bronzed ears of wheat?
Their backs were bowed beneath great bundles of gleanings, or faggots of
dead sticks carefully sought for fuel, and they carried weary infants,
restless and fretful. Their forms had lost all semblance to the
graceful curve of woman; their faces were hard, wrinkled, and angular,
drawn with pain and labour. Save by their garments none could
distinguish them from men. Yet they were not penned in narrow walls,
but all things green and lovely were spread around them. The fresh
breezes filled their nostrils in the spring with the delicate odour of
the flowering bean-field and the clover scent; the very ground was
gilded with sunshine beneath their feet. But the magic of it touched
them not, for their hearts were pinched with poverty. These are they to
whom the old, old promise bears its full significance: "Come unto Me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
They trooped past the window, and saw the old man sitting in his chair;
and one said to another, "Thur be thuck ould varmint. He never done
nought all his time, and have got more vittels than a' can yeat. Thaay
says a' drinks a' main drop of gin moast days. He wur a bad un, he wur,
time ago. What be the matter with thuck you? How he do howl--it sounds
main unkid!"
"Come on, you," said another; "I be terrable tired, bean't you? Wonder
how long it wull be to the Judgment Daay?"
So they went by the window, and each as she passed dropped a lowly
curtsey to "Measter" in the beehive chair. Then at last the great
blood-red rim of the sun went down, and a wondrous glory of light rushed
over the earth. A fiery blaze surged up into the sky, shooting from the
west to the zenith, and thence to the east in the twinkling of an eye;
like the glow of a grand aurora, but ninefold more brilliant, a
deep-tinted crimson. Men stayed and looked up, amazed at the beauty and
the awe of it; for the world was changed, as if it were on fire, and the
flames like a flood sweeping up from the western edge. Into the chamber
came the reflection--as of the last conflagration that we dare not think
of, when the sky shall roll away as parchment--and the place was filled
with a luminous glamour. Listen! faintly up from the silence of the
ages comes the chaunt of the monks:
Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla.
The day of wrath seemed nigh at hand. Away down in the vale, and
yonder, over the everlasting hills, flowed the wonder of the light; but
the old man's face gave no sign, dazed, maybe, by the grandeur of it.
But Felix St Bees, riding towards Warren House once more, as he reached
the first slopes of the hills, was suddenly bathed in the glory, and
drew rein and gazed about him. A dome of fire above reflected by the
dull earth--a faint, phosphoric, shimmering rosiness among the grass
blades. Upon the margin of the world a thicker vapour swelling upward
with a deeper red, as of smoke tinted by the furnace under. On the
sunset side of the tree-trunks a streak of crimson, and every leaf
gleaming on its shiny smoothness; through the thickets a warm haze
pouring, and the whiteness of the road before him reddened, as by the
breath of flame. He paused, rapt in the deep marvelling which is
prayer, and watched till it passed away. Then he pushed on among the
hills.
Coming slowly up a steep ascent, where on the summit, among the thorn
thickets and the gnarled ashes, was a little lonely inn, he saw a dozen
or more men, labouring hard and shouting by the side of the road. The
highway had worn itself a gully or hollow, lessening the pull of the
hill somewhat, and leaving a low but steep bank of coarse chalky rubble.
On the sward a tinker's donkey was peacefully grazing, heedless of the
excitement.
"We've got un!"
"Heave un out, you!"
"Lay on, Jim!"
"Let I try!"
"Peach un up!"
"What is it you are trying to do?" asked Felix, guiding his horse up to
the group.
"Aw, I seed his toes a' sticking out," cried a plough-boy, eager lest
his share of the discovery should be forgotten.
"It wur thuck heavy rain as washed the rubble away," said a man with a
leathern apron, doubtless a blacksmith. Nothing ever happens without a
blacksmith being in it.
"Mebbe a rabbit a-scratching, doan't ee zee?" said the landlord of the
inn, leaning on his spade and wiping his forehead; for much ale is a
shortener of the breath.
"Well, but what is it, after all--a treasure?"
"Us doan't 'zactly knaw what it be," said the man nearest the bank,
pausing, after swinging his pickaxe with some effect. "But us means to
zee. Jim, shove thuck pole in."
Jim picked up a long stout ash-pole, and thrust one end, as directed,
into a cavity the pickaxe had made under a large sarsen boulder, the
earth above which had been previously dug away.
"Zumbody be buried thur, paason," said the landlord. "Mebbe you knaws
un? Thur never wur nar a church here as we heard tell on."
"Hang on, you chaps!" cried the blacksmith, throwing the weight of his
body on the pole. The landlord, the plough-boy, and the tinker did the
same; Jim and an aged man on the bank heaved at the great stone from
above.
"Peach un up!" [i.e. lever it]
"He be goin'." Felix saw the boulder move.
"One, two, dree!"
"War out!"
They spread right and left. Felix, who did not for the instant
comprehend that "war out" meant "clear away," had much ado to save his
horse; for the boulder came with a rush, bringing with it half a ton of
rubble, thud on the ground, which trembled.
"Aw, here a' be!"
"This be uz yod!" [head.] "Warn this be uz chine!" holding up a part of
the vertebrae.
"He wur a whopper, you!"
"The gyeaunt Goliar', I'll warn," said the aged man on the bank.
"Don't disturb the skeleton!" cried Felix, anxious to make scientific
notes of the interment; whether the grave was "orientated," or the knees
drawn up to the chin; but in the scramble for the bones his voice was
unheeded, and the skeleton was disjointed in an instant. The bones were
as light as pith, ready to crumble to pieces and little better than
dust, yet still retaining, as it were, a sketch of human shape.
"Drow um in this here," said the landlord, as the buzz subsided, and
holding out a stable-bucket which he had fetched. So skull and femur,
radius and ulna--all the relics of poor humanity--were "chucked"
indiscriminately into the stable-bucket.
"A' warn a' wur buried in th' time o' Judges," said Jim. "Um set up
stwuns for memorials, doan't you mind? Thuck sarsen be all five hunderd
weight."
"Mebbe a' fowght Julius Caesar," said the aged man on the bank above.
"I've heard tell as Julius wur a famous hand a' back-swording. You med
see as uz skull wur cracked with a pistol-bullet--one of thaay ould
vlint-locks--and here be th' trigger-guard."
From the disturbed earth above he picked up a small crooked piece of
brass, which might or might not have been connected with the interment.
It passed from hand to hand, till the landlord, rubbing it on his
sleeve, found some letters.
"Paason ull tell uz what it means," said he, giving it to Felix, who
spelt out slowly, as he removed the clinging particles of earth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"G.a.u.d.e.a.m.u.s."
"What be thuck?"
"`Let us rejoice.'"
"Sartinly."
"My friends," said Felix solemnly, "this is a fragment from an ancient
Roman trumpet--a trumpet sounding to us from the tomb. Let us rejoice
in the certainty of the life to come."
"I be main dry," said the blacksmith.
"Mebbe you'll stand us a quart, paason?" said Jim, touching his
forelock.
"Will you sell me this little piece of brass?" said Felix.
"Aw, you med take un; he bean't no vallee to we."
Felix gave them half-a-crown for the relic, and rode on slowly, while
the group adjourned to the inn to drink it, leaving the donkey, their
tools, and the bucket by the roadside among the thistles.
"I knaws it bean't nothing but the trigger-guard of one of them ould
hoss-pistols," the patriarch persisted, "them vlint-locks with
brass-barrels--I minds um."
Felix, as he rode away saddened, thought to himself: "That we should
come to this--made in the Divine image, and thrown at last into a
stable-bucket! The limbs that bounded over the sward, the nostrils that
scented the clover, and the eyes that watched and pondered, perhaps as
mine did but now, over the sunset! Ah, the tinker's ass, browsing on
the thistles, is thrusting his nose into the bucket, I see, to sniff
contemptuously at it! `Let us rejoice'--what a satire--"
"Hi, there! Hoi, you, measter!"
He looked back, saw the landlord panting after him, and drew rein and
waited till he came up. What he wanted was to know whether Felix could
tell him any further particulars respecting the sudden death of
Valentine's dark horse that had taken place very early that morning,
during a private trial upon the downs. One of the men at the inn had
recognised Felix as a friend of Valentine, and the landlord said
everybody about there was so mixed up and interested in the horse that
he had made bold to ask. Felix was quite taken by surprise. The news
had not reached Greene Ferne when he called; probably Valentine, after
the accident, had been too occupied to come down from the
training-stables some miles up among the hills.
"What was the cause?" he asked, after explaining that he knew nothing of
it.
"A' believe a' broke a blood-vessel. A' wur auver trained, bless ee,
and auver rode. Zum thenks it wur done a purpose by thuck black chap,
the trainer."
"Why should you suspect him?"
"Aw, a' be a bad un; a' can't look 'ee straight in the face; a' sort of
slyers [looks askance] at ee. Thur be a main lot of money gone auver
thuck job."
"Well, this is news," said Felix. "Good evening."
The landlord touched his hat, and went back, much delighted to have been
the first to tell the "paason" the story. Felix was much concerned at
the event, because he knew that Valentine's disappointment, apart from
pecuniary loss, would be extreme; besides which almost all their circle
had more or less backed the horse--Geoffrey, Squire Thorpe, and all. He
had done his best to persuade them not to bet; but now they had lost he
was deeply disturbed. He felt half inclined to turn back, thinking the
event would very likely put the irascible old man Fisher into a furious
state, as he was believed to have "invested" largely. These delays,
too, had brought on the twilight, and already the new moon was gleaming
in the west; but, unwilling to return, he finally resolved to go through
with his journey.
When he rode into the outskirts of the little scattered hamlet at the
Warren, it was dark, and lights were shining in the cottage-windows. He
looked for a boy to hold his horse, but, seeing none, dismounted at the
bridge over the mill-pool, and threw the reins across the palings. As
he crossed the bridge, which vibrated beneath him, he saw the stars and
crescent-moon reflected in the pool, and heard the rush of the falling
water. A dog howled mournfully as he approached the porch, and knocked
with the butt of his riding-whip on the door, which stood ajar. There
was no answer. He knocked again, and the dog chained in the courtyard
set up his woeful howl.
"Be quiet, Jip," he said. He had heard the name of the dog from May,
and love remembers trifles. Hearing his voice, the dog howled again,
and another at a distance caught up and prolonged the cry.
"This is a dismal place," he thought. "No wonder May prefers to be with
Margaret. How gloomy the shadowy hill looks, and the black mass of the
mill yonder, and the tall trees over the white ricks!" He knocked a
third time, and his blow echoed in the hall. "They must be out," he
thought, giving the heavy door, studded with broad-headed nails, a push.
It creaked like the gate of those dark regions which Dante explored,
and swung slowly back. He listened on the threshold; there was no sound
save the ponderous halting tick of the stair-clock. He called "Jane!"
recollecting the housekeeper's name; his voice wandered in hollow
spaces, and was lost. It occurred to him that perhaps she and the
servants had taken advantage of the old man's helplessness and May's
absence to go out for a gossip, and he became indignant. He stepped
into the hall, and felt his way along a stone-paved passage, which he
knew led to the great parlour; then reflected that he was intruding, and
called again.
"Mr Fisher!" The words came back to him, distorted by a broken echo
from the hall. The dog without howled piteously. Felix, in the dark
passage, felt a strange creeping sensation come over him. He shook it
off, and groped his way to the door of the parlour. The great apartment
was full of shadows, gloomy, cavernous; but a dim light, from the faint
glow still lingering in the west and the moon, came through the window
enabling him to see the beehive chair, with the back towards him.
"Excuse me, sir; but I could not make any one hear," he said, advancing.
He looked into the hollow recess of the chair, and saw the old man
sitting there with the glint of the crescent-moon upon his eyeball.
"I am afraid I have been rude," he began; but suddenly stopped,
stretched forth his arm, and touched the old man's hands, which were
folded upon his knee. Cold as a stone--he was dead!
Felix recoiled, awe-struck, shuddering. It was, indeed, a terrible
moment in that empty gloomy house; the dog howling; the moonlight
glittering on the glassy eye. He was a brave man; he had faced disease
and danger in the exercise of his office, yet never before had the
presence of death so awed him. The atmosphere of the room suddenly
seemed stifling--his first instinct was to get out. He did get out, and
the cool night air in the porch revived him. Then he unchained the dog,
who whined and fawned upon him. His natural impulse was to run for
assistance; but the thought came to him that perhaps Fisher was not
really dead--quick attention might save him, and he possessed
considerable medical and surgical skill. He went back to the parlour--
the dog sniffed at the threshold, but would not enter. He struck a
match, and lit a large wax candle on the mantelpiece. With this he
approached the beehive chair, felt the wrist, looked in the face, and
knew that Andrew Fisher had gone to his account. On the carpet by his
feet was a crumpled piece of pinkish paper. Felix picked it up, and
found that the telegram referred to betting transactions. Then he
understood that the shock of the loss he had sustained by the death of
Valentine's horse had extinguished the flickering light of life in the
old man.
Felix took off his hat reverently, went to the great window--
unconsciously drawn towards the light--knelt and prayed earnestly. Then
he covered the face with a bandana handkerchief which was lying on the
knee of the deceased, and asked himself why the countenances of the very
aged are so repellent in death, as if they had outlived the hope of
immortality. To send for a doctor was evidently useless, nor was there
one within several miles, but it was necessary that some one should be
called. He went out and walked to the nearest cottage; a shepherd, with
a pipe in his mouth, answered the door.
It was some time before his slow intellect could grasp the idea.
"Dead! be _he_ dead? Missis [to his wife within], missis! The Ould Un
have got measter at last."
"Hush!" said Felix angrily. "Have you no respect?"
By the light of the candle his wife brought to the door, the man saw it
was a clergyman, and asked pardon.
"But nobody won't miss _he_," he added, nevertheless; and thought Felix,
as they walked back to the house, feeling the little piece of brass in
his pocket, "`Let us rejoice'--they are actually glad that he is gone.
But how comes it that no one knew of this?"
Fisher had, indeed, been dead many hours. He had been ailing, as aged
persons often are, in the fall of the year; but May had not suspected
any danger, nor would there have been, in all probability, under
ordinary circumstances. Jane, the snuff-taking old hag, whom May so
detested, with low cunning kept the event secret from the household,
excepting a crony who acted as nurse, and was glad enough to assist in
plunder. Jenny, the dairy-maid, was despatched to visit her friends at
Millbourne, and a kitchen-maid had a similar permission. They were
easily prevented from entering the great parlour by Jane's report that
"Measter be in a passion, and nobody best go a-nigh un!" This was
readily believed, as they knew his illness had made him exceptionally
snappish. Something very much like this has been practised at the death
of greater men than Andrew Fisher--monarchs, if history tell truth, have
been robbed before the breath had hardly left their nostrils. So the
two old crones ransacked the house undisturbed. They took the heavy
seal-ring from his finger--it was of solid gold, weighing three times as
much as modern work. From his fob--for to the last he wore breeches and
gaiters--they removed his chain and watch, which last, being of ancient
make, would have been worth a considerable sum.
"Thur be a chest under uz bed," said Jane; "a' be vull of parchmint
stuff--I'll warn thur be zum guineas in un. This be the key on him."
The chest was of black oak, rudely carved, and strongly protected by
bands of iron. It was completely filled with yellow deeds, leases, etc,
going back as far as Elizabeth, but mainly of the eighteenth century.
These they scattered over the floor, and, as Jane had anticipated, at
the bottom, in one corner, was a large bag of guineas. Then they added
the great silver ladle, four heavy silver candlesticks, and a number of
teaspoons to their guilty bundle, and chopped the gold handle off a cane
with the billhook. With this tool they hacked open an inlaid cabinet,
of which they could not find the key; but there was nothing within,
except old letters faded from age, and a miniature on enamel--a portrait
of May's grandmother.
"Ay, poor theng," said Jane, "thuck ould varmint ground the life out of
her. A'wuver the picter be zet in gould; we med as well have un."
"A' wish us could take zum on these yer veather beds," said the other.
"Couldn't you and I car um zumhow?"
"Us could shove one in a box," said Jane, "and tell the miller to zend
un in his cart. He wouldn't knaw, doan't ee zee?" They actually
carried this idea into execution, and sent the miller's cart off with
the feather bed. Probably, in all their days, the two old hags had
never so thoroughly enjoyed themselves as when thus turning everything
upside-down, and rioting at their will. It was a curious fact that not
for one moment did they reflect that detection must of necessity quickly
follow. They had lived all their lives in the narrow boundary of the
lonely hill-parish, and the force of habit made all beyond seem so
distant that, if they could but once escape out of the hamlet, they did
not doubt they would be safe. At last, seeing nothing else they could
lay hands on, they came down into the great parlour just before sunset,
and heard the tramp of the wearyful women approaching.
"We'd better go now," said the nurse. "What had us better do with
_he_?" jerking her thumb towards the senseless clay in the beehive
chair.
"Aw, thur bean't no call to move un," said Jane; "let un bide. Nobody
won't knaw as a' be dead vor a day or two. Come on, you,"--making for
the back-door.
The wearyful women as they passed the window had curtseyed to the dead.
The luminous sunset, filling the chamber with its magical glamour, had
lit up the cold, drawn features with a rosy glow. But the dimmed
eyeball had not seen the flames of that conflagration sweeping up from
the west:--
Dies irae, dies illa.
The wrath, long withheld, must come at last.
"I fear there has been robbery here," said Felix, as, with the shepherd,
he re-entered the gloomy house.
"It do seem zo; the things be drowed about mainly. A'wuver it sarves un
right."
"Hush!" said Felix, and thought to himself, "How terrible it is to be
hated even when dead! We will go over the house," he added aloud, "and
see if anything has been taken."
In the bedchamber they found ample evidence of looting. Felix, even in
his indignation, could not resist his antiquarian tastes. He took up an
ancient deed, and while he glanced over it, the shepherd pretended to
tie his shoe-lace, and pocketed a spade-guinea which the crones had
dropped on the floor.
"Who is there that could take charge of the place?" asked Felix
presently.
"Thur be the bailie."
"Go and bring him."
The shepherd went; and Felix, to pass the time, took a book from an old
black chest of drawers, with brass rings and lions' heads for handles.
It was a small quarto, a.d. 1650, a kind of calendar of astrology,
medicine, and agriculture, telling the farmer when the conjunction of
the planets was favourable for purchasing stock or sowing seed. When,
presently, the bailiff came--a respectable man enough for his station--
Felix, in his presence, locked the upper rooms and took the keys with
him. Then, leaving the house in the bailiff's charge, he rode through
the starlit night, by the lonely highway, homeward.