Seventeen years later Nat Ellery walked down the hill into Gantick
village, and entered the King of the Bells.
"I've come," said he, "to inquire about a chest I left here, one time
back along." And he told his name and the date.
The landlord, Joshua Martin--son of old Joshua, who had kept the inn
in 1806--rubbed his double chin. "So you be Nat Ellery? I can just
mind'ee as a lad. As for the chest--come to think, father sent it back
to Trethake Water. Reckon it went in the sale."
"What sale?"
"Why, don't 'ee know? When Reub sold up. That would be about five
years after the old folks died. The mill didn' pay after the war, so
Reub sold up and emigrated."
"Ah! What became of him?"
"I did hear he was dead too," said Joshua Martin, "out in Canady
somewhere. But that may be lies," he added cheerfully.
Nat made no further comment, but paid for his gin-and-water, picked up
his carpet bag, and went out to seek for a cottage. On his way he eyed
the thatched roofs critically. "Old Thatcher Hockaday will be dead,"
he told himself. "There's work for me here." He felt certain of it in
Farmer Sprague's rick-yard. Farmer Sprague owned the two round-houses
at the seaward end of the village, and wanted a tenant for one of
them. Nat applied for it, and declared his calling.
"Us can't afford to pay the old prices these times," said the farmer.
Nat's eyes had wandered off to the ricks. "You'll find you can when
you've seen my work," he answered.
Thus he became tenant of the round-house, and lived in it to the day
of his death. No one in my day knew when or how the story first spread
that he had been in the army and deserted. Perhaps he let slip the
secret in his cups; for at first he spent his Saturday evenings at the
King of Bells, dropping this habit when he found that every soul there
disliked him. Perhaps some discharged veteran of the 4th, tramping
through Gantick in search of work, had recognised him and let fall
a damning hint. Long before I can remember the story had grown up
uncontradicted, believed in by everyone. Beneath it the man lived on
and deteriorated; but his workmanship never deteriorated, and no man
challenged its excellence.
About a month before his death (I have this from the postmistress) he
sat down and wrote a letter, and ten days later a visitor arrived at
the round-house. This visitor the Jago family (who lived across the
road) declare to have been Satan himself; they have assured me
so again and again, and I cannot shake their belief. But that is
nonsense. The man was a grizzled artizan looking fellow well over
fifty; extraordinarily like the old Thatcher, though darker of
skin--yellow as a guinea, said Gantick; in fact and beyond doubt, the
old man's son. He made no friends, no acquaintances ever, but confined
himself to nursing the Thatcher, now tied to his chair by rheumatism.
One thing alone gives colour to the Jagos' belief; the Thatcher who
had sent for him could not abide the sight of him. The Jago children,
who snatched a fearful joy by stealing after dark into the unkempt
garden and peering through the uncurtained lattice windows, reported
that as the pair sat at table with the black bottle between them, the
Thatcher's eyes would be drawn to fix themselves on the other's with a
stealthy shrinking terror--or, as they put it, "vicious when he wasna'
lookin' and afeared when he was."
They would sit (so the children reported) half an hour, or maybe an
hour, at a time, without a word spoken between them; but, indeed, the
yellow stranger troubled few with his speech. His only visits were
paid to the postmistress, who kept a small grocery store, where he
bought arrowroot and other spoon-food for the invalid, and the Ring of
Bells, where he went nightly to have the black bottle refilled with
rum. On the doctor he never called.
It was on July 12th that the end came. The fine weather, after lasting
for six weeks, had broken up two days before into light thunderstorms,
which did not clear the air as usual. Ky Jago (short for Caiaphas),
across the way, prophesied a big thunderstorm to come, but allowed he
might be mistaken when on the morning of the 12th the rain came down
in sheets. This torrential rain lasted until two in the afternoon,
when the sky cleared and a pleasant northwesterly draught played up
the valley. At six o'clock Ky Jago, who, in default of the Thatcher,
was making shift to cover up Farmer Sprague's ricks, observed dense
clouds massing themselves over the sea and rolling up slowly against
the wind, and decided that the big storm would happen after all. At
nine in the evening it broke.
It broke with such fury that the Stranger, with the black bottle under
his arm, paused on the threshold as much as to ask his father, "Shall
I go?" But the old man was clamouring for drink, and he went. He was
half-way down the hill when with a crack the heavens opened and the
white jagged lightning fairly hissed by him. Crack followed crack,
flash and peal together, or so quick on each other, that no mortal
could distinguish the rattle of one discharge from the bursting
explosion of the other. No such tempest, he decided, could last for
long, and he fled down to the Ring of Bells for shelter until the
worst should be over. He waited there perhaps twenty minutes, and
still the infernal din grew worse instead of better, until his anxiety
for the old man forced him out in the teeth of it and up the hill,
where the gutters had overflowed upon the roadway, and the waters
raced over his ankles. The first thing he saw at the top in one lurid
instant was the entire Jago family gathered by their garden gate--six
of them--and all bareheaded under the deluge.
The next flash revealed why they were there. Against the round-house
opposite a ladder rested, and above it on the steep roof clung a
man--his father. He had clamped his small ladder into the thatch, and
as the heaven opened and shut, now silhouetting the round-house, now
wrapping it in white flames--they saw him climbing up, and still up,
towards the cross at the top.
"Help, there!" shouted the Stranger. "Come down! O help, you!--we must
get him down!" The women and children screamed. A fresh explosion
drowned shout and screams.
Jago and the Stranger reached the ladder together. The Stranger
mounted first; but as he did so, the watchers in one blinding moment
saw the old Thatcher's hand go up and grip the cross. The shutters of
darkness came to with a roar, but above it rose a shrill, a terribly
human cry.
"Dave!" cried the voice. "Ted!"
Silence followed, and then a heavy thud. They waited for the next
flash. It came. There was no one on the roof of the round-house, but a
broken stump where the cross had been.
V
This was the story the yellow Stranger told to the Coroner. And the
Coroner listened and asked:
"Can you account for conduct of deceased? Had he been drinking that
evening?"
"He had," answered the witness, and for a moment, while the Coroner
took a note, it seemed he had said all. Then he seemed to think better
of it, and added "My father suffered from delusions sir."
"Hey? What sort of delusions?" The Coroner glanced at the jury, who
sat impassive.
"Well, sir, my father in his young days had served as a soldier."
Here the jurymen began to show interest suddenly. One or two leaned
forward. "He belonged to the 4th Regiment, and was at the siege
of Badajos. During the sack of the city he broke into a house,
and--and--after that he was missing."
"Go on," said the Coroner, for the witness had paused.
"That was where he first met my mother, sir. It was her house, and she
and a priest kept him hidden till the English had left. After that he
married her. There were three children--all boys. My brothers came
first: they were twins. I was born two years later."
"All born in Badajos?"
"All in Badajos, sir. My brothers will be there still, if they're
living."
"But these delusions--"
"I'm coming to them. My father must have been hurt, somehow hurt in
his head. He would have it that my two brothers--twins, sir, if you'll
be pleased to mark it--were no sons of his, but of two friends of
his, soldiers of the 4th Regiment who had been killed, the both, that
evening by the San Vincente bastion. So you see he must have been
wrong in his head."
"And you?"
"O, there couldn't be any mistake about me. I was his very image,
and--perhaps I ought to say, sir--he hated me for it. When my mother
died--she had been a fruit-seller--he handed the business over to my
brothers, taking only enough to carry him back to England and me
with him. The day after we landed in London he apprenticed me to a
brassworker. I was just turned fifteen, and from that day until last
Wednesday three weeks we never set eyes on each other."
"Let me see," said the Coroner, turning back a page or two. "At the
last moment just before he fell, you say--and the other witnesses
confirm it--that he called out twice--uttered two names, I think."
"They were the names by which he used to call my brothers, sir--the
names of his two mates in the storming party."