ON THE THRESHOLD.
Lionel Westford looked up at the building before him with an
involuntary shudder; and yet there was nothing either strange or
terrible in its aspect. It was only old, worn, and grey. Long rows
of narrow Gothic windows extended from one end to the other of the
massive pile. Every one of these windows was closely shuttered
within; moss grew on the old grey walls, save where the ivy crept,
darksome and thick, to the very roof.
“A dreary-looking building!” muttered Lionel, after one brief glance
at those dark shuttered windows, that damp-stained, moss-grown
wall--“a dismal, uncomfortable sort of place! I wonder the banker
doesn’t pull it down, and build something better upon its site. I
suppose he is something of an antiquarian, and respects this relic of
the days of the Plantagenets. Yet, in that case, one would think he’d
spend a little money on restoring the old building.”
He was about to turn away and leave the neighbourhood of the northern
wing for some more cheerful part of the grounds, when he was startled
by the sound of a voice--the weak quavering voice of an old man.
“Through the crack in the shutter,” said the voice, “I saw, I
saw!--through the crack in the shutter!”
Lionel Westford turned in the direction whence the voice proceeded,
and saw the half-witted gardener, whose strange talk he had overheard
upon his first arrival at Wilmingdon Hall. The old man was crouching
close against one of the lower windows, and seemed as if peering
earnestly through a crack in the heavy oak shutter.
There was something so strange in the action that it could scarcely
fail to inspire a sentiment of curiosity, even in the least
suspicious mind.
Lionel lingered to listen to what more the old man might have to say.
The weak-witted, white-haired pensioner, was strangely excited. He
clung to the stone ledge of the window; he pressed his face close
against the dingy glass, behind which the thick oak shutter looked
dark and impenetrable as the wall of a dungeon.
For some moments he remained in the same attitude, still as death.
Then a change came over him, and he began to tremble violently, with
the manner of a man who watches some appalling scene.
“Don’t, master! don’t!” he cried, in a half-stifled shriek. “Don’t
do it, master! For the love of heaven, don’t do it! O, the knife,
the dreadful knife! It’s murder--cruel, deadly, treacherous bloody
murder! Don’t, master! Don’t, don’t!”
The old man recoiled from the window, exhausted by his own emotion,
and turned as if to rush from the place. As he turned he met the gaze
of Lionel Westford, who stood pale and breathless before him.
With one savage bound the gardener flew at the young man’s throat.
“Ha!” he shrieked; “it’s you, is it? You’ve been listening! you’ve
been spying again! I know you! You’re on the watch. You want to
find out the secret--the wicked secret, the bloody secret; but you
sha’n’t, you sha’n’t! I’m an old man, and I’m weak and foolish
sometimes; but I sha’n’t live long, and, come what may, I’ll keep
that secret till I die, for the sake of the master I’ve served so
long. Did I say much? Tell me, young man! Did I say much? Speak, or
I’ll throttle you.”
The old gardener’s withered fingers grasped Lionel’s cravat. The
young man gently freed himself from that feeble grasp.
“What did I say?” repeated the gardener; “whatever it was, it meant
nothing. My poor old wits wander sometimes, you see, and I fancy
I see things--such things!--knives, daggers--and murder--cruel,
treacherous murder; a man standing on the top of a flight of dark
steps, and another man stabbing him in the back, and throwing him
down into some black dreadful place underground. It’s only a dream,
you know, a horrid dream; but I dream it so often--O, so often!”
No words can describe the look of horror upon the old man’s face as
he said this. He clung convulsively to Lionel’s arm, trembling from
head to foot, and with his eyes almost starting from their sockets.
A death-like chill crept through the young man’s veins; a death-like
horror took possession of his breast.
Something told him that in this old gardener’s wild talk there was
more than the raving of a disordered intellect. Something told him
that lurking in these hideous words there was the clue to some dark
and horrible secret--a secret in which Rupert Godwin was concerned.
He struggled against the hideous conviction, the horrible dread
that filled his breast. Rupert Godwin had been the enemy of his own
family; but, then, was he not also Julia’s father? It would have
gone hard with young Romeo Montague, if he had found himself obliged
to think ill of the paternal Capulet. To think ill of the master of
Wilmingdon Hall was torture to Lionel Westford. And yet the young man
could not help feeling that he was on the threshold of some dreadful
mystery.
Providence had, perhaps, sent him to that spot as the appointed
discoverer and avenger of some dark crime; some deed buried from the
light of day; some foul secret, the clue to which was hidden in the
bewildered brain of an imbecile old man. Come what might, Lionel felt
that it was his solemn duty to endeavour to fathom the mystery. It
was possible that the secret might not concern the present owner of
the Hall. This old man’s clouded brain might be haunted by the memory
of some deed done by a former master, in days when men held each
other’s and their own lives more cheaply than they hold them now;
in the days when duels were as common as dinner parties are to-day,
and when many a gentlemanly affray ended in horror and bloodshed.
Or it might even be that the tragic scene which tormented the old
gardener’s brain had no more substantial origin than some ghastly
legend of the old mansion told by the Christmas fire in the servants’
hall, and fatally impressed upon the imbecile mind of age.
Let its origin be what it might, however, Lionel felt that he ought
to make himself master of its real nature; and, in order to do this,
prudence and some dissimulation would be necessary. He could only
hope to succeed by lulling the old man’s fears to rest, and thus
winning his confidence.
“Come,” he said gently, slipping his arm through that of the gardener
with a protecting gesture,--“come, my friend, calm yourself, I beg.
You are an old man, and these dreams and fancies wear you out. Let us
talk of something else. Let us leave this dismal-looking place.”
“Yes, yes,” answered the gardener eagerly; “let us go away. I’ve no
business here; I don’t want to come here--but there’s something draws
me to the spot; there’s some devil, I think, that drags me here.
I don’t see him, but I feel his touch--I feel his burning fingers
dragging me, and then I come here in spite of myself, and I look
through the crack of the shutter, and I see it all again, as I saw it
that night.”
The old man turned and pointed to the window as he spoke. Following
his skinny finger, Lionel fixed his eyes on that one particular
window, and then noted its position in the range of shattered
casements.
It was the seventh window from the western angle of the wall.
The young man took special note of this circumstance, and then led
his companion very slowly away.
The gardener was very old--very feeble. At any time he might die,
and, if there were indeed a secret hidden beneath his wild talk, that
dark secret would perhaps die with him.
“You are an old servant in this household?” Lionel said.
“Yes, a very old servant, a faithful servant. I’ve served here, man
and boy, for the best part of a century. Is it likely I would turn
again them that has fed and clothed me? Is it likely I would turn
again one of my master’s race--my old master’s race? This one is dark
and cold and proud, and there’s something in his eyes that makes me
shudder when he looks at me. But the Godwin blood runs in his veins,
and old Caleb Wildred will never turned against him. It ain’t likely,
you see, after serving ’em, man and boy, for nigh upon a hundred
years--it ain’t likely.”
For some time Lionel walked side by side with the old gardener.
Caleb Wildred talked a great deal; but his talk was all of the same
rambling order, and he always came round again to the same point.
There was a secret--a secret which he would die sooner than betray.
Lionel Westford lay down to rest that night with a terrible burden
upon his mind. All through the night he was alternately tossing
wakefully upon his pillow, or tormented by hideous dreams in which
Julia Godwin came to him, pale and tearful, imploring him to keep the
secret of her father’s crime.
That hidden shapeless crime--which was as yet only a hideous shadow,
a frightful suspicion in the young man’s mind.