Feltram's Plan
This horror of the beautiful lake, which other people thought so lovely,
was, in that mind which affected to scoff at the unseen, a distinct
creation of downright superstition.
The nursery tales which had scared him in his childhood were founded on
the tragedy of Snakes Island, and haunted him with an unavowed
persistence still. Strange dreams untold had visited him, and a German
conjuror, who had made some strangely successful vaticinations, had told
him that his worst enemy would come up to him from a lake. He had heard
very nearly the same thing from a fortune-teller in France; and once at
Lucerne, when he was waiting alone in his room for the hour at which he
had appointed to go upon the lake, all being quiet, there came to the
window, which was open, a sunburnt, lean, wicked face. Its ragged owner
leaned his arm on the window-frame, and with his head in the room, said
in his patois, "Ho! waiting are you? You'll have enough of the lake one
day. Don't you mind watching; they'll send when you're wanted;" and
twisting his yellow face into a malicious distortion, he went on.
This thing had occurred so suddenly, and chimed-in so oddly with his
thoughts, which were at that moment at distant Mardykes and the haunted
lake, that it disconcerted him. He laughed, he looked out of the window.
He would have given that fellow money to tell him why he said that. But
there was no good in looking for the scamp; he was gone.
A memory not preoccupied with that lake and its omens, and a
presentiment about himself, would not have noted such things. But _his_
mind they touched indelibly; and he was ashamed of his childish slavery,
but could not help it.
The foundation of all this had been laid in the nursery, in the winter's
tales told by its fireside, and which seized upon his fancy and his
fears with a strange congeniality.
There is a large bedroom at Mardykes Hall, which tradition assigns to
the lady who had perished tragically in the lake. Mrs. Julaper was sure
of it; for her aunt, who died a very old woman twenty years before,
remembered the time of the lady's death, and when she grew to woman's
estate had opportunity in abundance; for the old people who surrounded
her could remember forty years farther back, and tell everything
connected with the old house in beautiful Miss Feltram's time.
This large old-fashioned room, commanding a view of Snakes Island, the
fells, and the lake--somewhat vast and gloomy, and furnished in a
stately old fashion--was said to be haunted, especially when the wind
blew from the direction of Golden Friars, the point from which it blew
on the night of her death in the lake; or when the sky was overcast, and
thunder rolled among the lofty fells, and lightning gleamed on the wide
sheet of water.
It was on a night like this that a lady visitor, who long after that
event occupied, in entire ignorance of its supernatural character, that
large room; and being herself a lady of a picturesque turn, and loving
the grander melodrama of Nature, bid her maid leave the shutters open,
and watched the splendid effects from her bed, until, the storm being
still distant, she fell asleep.
It was travelling slowly across the lake, and it was the deep-mouthed
clangour of its near approach that startled her, at dead of night, from
her slumber, to witness the same phenomena in the tremendous loudness
and brilliancy of their near approach.
At this magnificent spectacle she was looking with the awful ecstasy of
an observer in whom the sense of danger is subordinated to that of the
sublime, when she saw suddenly at the window a woman, whose long hair
and dress seemed drenched with water. She was gazing in with a look of
terror, and was shaking the sash of the window with vehemence. Having
stood there for a few seconds, and before the lady, who beheld all this
from her bed, could make up her mind what to do, the storm-beaten
figure, wringing her hands, seemed to throw herself backward, and was
gone.
Possessed with the idea that she had seen some poor woman overtaken in
the storm, who, failing to procure admission there, had gone round to
some of the many doors of the mansion, and obtained an entry there, she
again fell asleep.
It was not till the morning, when she went to her window to look out
upon the now tranquil scene, that she discovered what, being a stranger
to the house, she had quite forgotten, that this room was at a great
height--some thirty feet--from the ground.
Another story was that of good old Mr. Randal Rymer, who was often a
visitor at the house in the late Lady Mardykes' day. In his youth he had
been a campaigner; and now that he was a preacher he maintained his
hardy habits, and always slept, summer and winter, with a bit of his
window up. Being in that room in his bed, and after a short sleep lying
awake, the moon shining softly through the window, there passed by that
aperture into the room a figure dressed, it seemed to him, in gray that
was nearly white. It passed straight to the hearth, where was an
expiring wood fire; and cowering over it with outstretched hands, it
appeared to be gathering what little heat was to be had. Mr. Rymer,
amazed and awestruck, made a movement in his bed; and the figure looked
round, with large eyes that in the moonlight looked like melting snow,
and stretching its long arms up the chimney, they and the figure itself
seemed to blend with the smoke, and so pass up and away.
Sir Bale, I have said, did not like Feltram. His father, Sir William,
had left a letter creating a trust, it was said, in favour of Philip
Feltram. The document had been found with the will, addressed to Sir
Bale in the form of a letter.
"That is mine," said the Baronet, when it dropped out of the will; and
he slipped it into his pocket, and no one ever saw it after.
But Mr. Charles Twyne, the attorney of Golden Friars, whenever he got
drunk, which was pretty often, used to tell his friends with a grave
wink that he knew a thing or two about that letter. It gave Philip
Feltram two hundred a-year, charged on Harfax. It was only a direction.
It made Sir Bale a trustee, however; and having made away with the
"letter," the Baronet had been robbing Philip Feltram ever since.
Old Twyne was cautious, even in his cups, in his choice of an audience,
and was a little enigmatical in his revelations. For he was afraid of
Sir Bale, though he hated him for employing a lawyer who lived seven
miles away, and was a rival. So people were not quite sure whether Mr.
Twyne was telling lies or truth, and the principal fact that
corroborated his story was Sir Bale's manifest hatred of his secretary.
In fact, Sir Bale's retaining him in his house, detesting him as he
seemed to do, was not easily to be accounted for, except on the
principle of a tacit compromise--a miserable compensation for having
robbed him of his rights.
The battle about the bank-note proceeded. Sir Bale certainly had doubts,
and vacillated; for moral evidence made powerfully in favour of poor
Feltram, though the evidence of circumstance made as powerfully against
him. But Sir Bale admitted suspicion easily, and in weighing
probabilities would count a virtue very lightly against temptation and
opportunity; and whatever his doubts might sometimes be, he resisted and
quenched them, and never let that ungrateful scoundrel Philip Feltram so
much as suspect their existence.
For two days Sir Bale had not spoken to Feltram. He passed by on stair
and passage, carrying his head high, and with a thundrous countenance,
rolling conclusions and revenges in his soul.
Poor Feltram all this time existed in one long agony. He would have left
Mardykes, were it not that he looked vaguely to some just power--to
chance itself--against this hideous imputation. To go with this
indictment ringing in his ears, would amount to a confession and flight.
Mrs. Julaper consoled him with might and main. She was a sympathetic and
trusting spirit, and knew poor Philip Feltram, in her simplicity, better
than the shrewdest profligate on earth could have known him. She cried
with him in his misery. She was fired with indignation by these
suspicions, and still more at what followed.
Sir Bale showed no signs of relenting. It might have been that he was
rather glad of so unexceptionable an opportunity of getting rid of
Feltram, who, people thought, knew something which it galled the
Baronet's pride that he should know.
The Baronet had another shorter and sterner interview with Feltram in
his study. The result was, that unless he restored the missing note
before ten o'clock next morning, he should leave Mardykes.
To leave Mardykes was no more than Philip Feltram, feeble as he was of
will, had already resolved. But what was to become of him? He did not
very much care, if he could find any calling, however humble, that would
just give him bread.
There was an old fellow and his wife (an ancient dame,) who lived at the
other side of the lake, on the old territories of the Feltrams, and who,
from some tradition of loyalty, perhaps, were fond of poor Philip
Feltram. They lived somewhat high up on the fells--about as high as
trees would grow--and those which were clumped about their rude dwelling
were nearly the last you passed in your ascent of the mountain. These
people had a multitude of sheep and goats, and lived in their airy
solitude a pastoral and simple life, and were childless. Philip Feltram
was hardy and active, having passed his early days among that arduous
scenery. Cold and rain did not trouble him; and these people being
wealthy in their way, and loving him, would be glad to find him
employment of that desultory pastoral kind which would best suit him.
This vague idea was the only thing resembling a plan in his mind.
When Philip Feltram came to Mrs. Julaper's room, and told her that he
had made up his mind to leave the house forthwith--to cross the lake to
the Cloostedd side in Tom Marlin's boat, and then to make his way up the
hill alone to Trebeck's lonely farmstead, Mrs. Julaper was overwhelmed.
"Ye'll do no such thing to-night, anyhow. You're not to go like that.
Ye'll come into the small room here, where he can't follow; and we'll
sit down and talk it over a bit, and ye'll find 'twill all come
straight; and this will be no night, anyhow, for such a march. Why,
man,'twould take an hour and more to cross the lake, and then a long
uphill walk before ye could reach Trebeck's place; and if the night
should fall while you were still on the mountain, ye might lose your
life among the rocks. It can't be 'tis come to that yet; and the call
was in the air, I'm told, all yesterday, and distant thunder to-day,
travelling this way over Blarwyn Fells; and 'twill be a night no one
will be out, much less on the mountain side."