Adventure in Tom Marlin's Boat
Philip Feltram was liked very well--a gentle, kindly, and very timid
creature, and, before he became so heart-broken, a fellow who liked a
joke or a pleasant story, and could laugh heartily. Where will Sir Bale
find so unresisting and respectful a butt and retainer? and whom will he
bully now?
Something like remorse was worrying Sir Bale's heart a little; and the
more he thought on the strange visit of Hugh Creswell that night, with
its unexplained menace, the more uneasy he became.
The storm continued; and even to him there seemed something exaggerated
and inhuman in the severity of his expulsion on such a night. It was his
own doing, it was true; but would people believe that? and would he have
thought of leaving Mardykes at all if it had not been for his kinsman's
severity? Nay, was it not certain that if Sir Bale had done as Hugh
Creswell had urged him, and sent for Feltram forthwith, and told him how
all had been cleared up, and been a little friendly with him, he would
have found him still in the house?--for he had not yet gone for ten
minutes after Creswell's departure, and thus, all that was to follow
might have been averted. But it was too late now, and Sir Bale would let
the affair take its own course.
Below him, outside the window at which he stood ruminating, he heard
voices mingling with the storm. He could with tolerable certainty
perceive, looking into the obscurity, that there were three men passing
close under it, carrying some very heavy burden among them.
He did not know what these three black figures in the obscurity were
about. He saw them pass round the corner of the building toward the
front, and in the lulls of the storm could hear their gruff voices
talking.
We have all experienced what a presentiment is, and we all know with
what an intuition the faculty of observation is sometimes heightened. It
was such an apprehension as sometimes gives its peculiar horror to a
dream--a sort of knowledge that what those people were about was in a
dreadful way connected with his own fate.
He watched for a time, thinking that they might return; but they did
not. He was in a state of uncomfortable suspense.
"If they want me, they won't have much trouble in finding me, nor any
scruple, egad, in plaguing me; they never have."
Sir Bale returned to his letters, a score of which he was that night
getting off his conscience--an arrear which would not have troubled him
had he not ceased, for two or three days, altogether to employ Philip
Feltram, who had been accustomed to take all that sort of drudgery off
his hands.
All the time he was writing now he had a feeling that the shadows he had
seen pass under his window were machinating some trouble for him, and an
uneasy suspense made him lift his eyes now and then to the door,
fancying sounds and footsteps; and after a resultless wait he would say
to himself, "If any one is coming, why the devil don't he come?" and
then he would apply himself again to his letters.
But on a sudden he heard good Mrs. Julaper's step trotting along the
lobby, and the tiny ringing of her keys.
Here was news coming; and the Baronet stood up looking at the door, on
which presently came a hurried rapping; and before he had answered, in
the midst of a long thunder-clap that suddenly broke, rattling over the
house, the good woman opened the door in great agitation, and cried with
a tremulous uplifting of her hands.
"O, Sir Bale! O, la, sir! here's poor dear Philip Feltram come home
dead!"
Sir Bale stared at her sternly for some seconds.
"Gome, now, do be distinct," said Sir Bale; "what has happened?"
"He's lying on the sofer in the old still-room. You never saw--my
God!--O, sir--what is life?"
"D--n it, can't you cry by-and-by, and tell me what's the matter now?"
"A bit o' fire there, as luck would have it; but what is hot or cold
now? La, sir, they're all doin' what they can; he's drowned, sir, and
Tom Warren is on the gallop down to Golden Friars for Doctor Torvey."
"_Is_ he drowned, or is it only a ducking? Come, bring me to the place.
Dead men don't usually want a fire, or consult doctors. I'll see for
myself."
So Sir Bale Mardykes, pale and grim, accompanied by the light-footed
Mrs. Julaper, strode along the passages, and was led by her into the old
still-room, which had ceased to be used for its original purpose. All
the servants in the house were now collected there, and three men also
who lived by the margin of the lake; one of them thoroughly drenched,
with rivulets of water still trickling from his sleeves, water along the
wrinkles and pockets of his waistcoat and from the feet of his trousers,
and pumping and oozing from his shoes, and streaming from his hair down
the channels of his cheeks like a continuous rain of tears.
The people drew back a little as Sir Bale entered with a quick step and
a sharp pallid frown on his face. There was a silence as he stooped over
Philip Feltram, who lay on a low bed next the wall, dimly lighted by two
or three candles here and there about the room.
He laid his hand, for a moment, on his cold wet breast.
Sir Bale knew what should be done in order to give a man in such a case
his last chance for life. Everybody was speedily put in motion. Philip's
drenched clothes were removed, hot blankets enveloped him, warming-pans
and hot bricks lent their aid; he was placed at the prescribed angle, so
that the water flowed freely from his mouth. The old expedient for
inducing artificial breathing was employed, and a lusty pair of bellows
did duty for his lungs.
But these helps to life, and suggestions to nature, availed not. Forlorn
and peaceful lay the features of poor Philip Feltram; cold and dull to
the touch; no breath through the blue lips; no sight in the fish-like
eyes; pulseless and cold in the midst of all the hot bricks and
warming-pans about him.
At length, everything having been tried, Sir Bale, who had been
directing, placed his hand within the clothes, and laid it silently on
Philip's shoulder and over his heart; and after a little wait, he shook
his head, and looking down on his sunken face, he said,
"I am afraid he's gone. Yes, he's gone, poor fellow! And bear you this
in mind, all of you; Mrs. Julaper there can tell you more about it. She
knows that it was certainly in no compliance with my wish that he left
the house to-night: it was his own obstinate perversity, and perhaps--I
forgive him for it--a wish in his unreasonable resentment to throw some
blame upon this house, as having refused him shelter on such a night;
than which imputation nothing can be more utterly false. Mrs. Julaper
there knows how welcome he was to stay the night; but he would not; he
had made up his mind, it seems, without telling any person. Had he told
you, Mrs. Julaper?"
"No, sir," sobbed Mrs. Julaper from the centre of a pocket-handkerchief
in which her face was buried.
"Not a human being: an angry whim of his own. Poor Feltram! and here's
the result," said the Baronet. "We have done our best--done everything.
I don't think the doctor, when he comes, will say that anything has been
omitted; but all won't do. Does any one here know how it happened?"
Two men knew very well--the man who had been ducked, and his companion,
a younger man, who was also in the still-room, and had lent a hand in
carrying Feltram up to the house.
Tom Marlin had a queer old stone tenement by the edge of the lake just
under Mardykes Hall. Some people said it was the stump of an old tower
that had once belonged to Mardykes Castle, of which in the modern
building scarcely a relic was discoverable.
This Tom Marlin had an ancient right of fishing in the lake, where he
caught pike enough for all Golden Friars; and keeping a couple of boats,
he made money beside by ferrying passengers over now and then. This
fellow, with a furrowed face and shaggy eyebrows, bald at top, but with
long grizzled locks falling upon his shoulders, said,
"He wer wi' me this mornin', sayin' he'd want t' boat to cross the lake
in, but he didn't say what hour; and when it came on to thunder and blow
like this, ye guess I did not look to see him to-night. Well, my wife
was just lightin' a pig-tail--tho' light enough and to spare there was
in the lift already--when who should come clatterin' at the latch-pin in
the blow o' thunder and wind but Philip, poor lad, himself; and an ill
hour for him it was. He's been some time in ill fettle, though he was
never frowsy, not he, but always kind and dooce, and canty once, like
anither; and he asked me to tak the boat across the lake at once to the
Clough o' Cloostedd at t'other side. The woman took the pet and wodn't
hear o't; and, 'Dall me, if I go to-night,' quoth I. But he would not be
put off so, not he; and dingdrive he went to it, cryin' and putrein'
ye'd a-said, poor fellow, he was wrang i' his garrets a'most. So at long
last I bethought me, there's nout o' a sea to the north o' Snakes
Island, so I'll pull him by that side--for the storm is blowin' right up
by Golden Friars, ye mind--and when we get near the point, thinks I,
he'll see wi' his een how the lake is, and gie it up. For I liked him,
poor lad; and seein' he'd set his heart on't, I wouldn't vex nor frump
him wi' a no. So down we three--myself, and Bill there, and Philip
Feltram--come to the boat; and we pulled out, keeping Snakes Island
atwixt us and the wind. 'Twas smooth water wi' us, for 'twas a scug
there, but white enough was all beyont the point; and passing the
finger-stone, not forty fathom from the shore o' the island, Bill and me
pullin' and he sittin' in the stern, poor lad, up he rises, a bit
rabblin' to himself, wi' his hands lifted so.
"'Look a-head!' says I, thinkin' something wos comin' atort us.
"But 'twasn't that. The boat was quiet, for while we looked, oo'er our
shouthers, oo'er her bows, we didn't pull, so she lay still; and lookin'
back again on Philip, he was rabblin' on all the same.
"'It's nobbut a prass wi' himsel", poor lad,' thinks I.
"But that wasn't it neither; for I sid something white come out o' t'
water, by the gunwale, like a hand. By Jen! and he leans oo'er and tuk
it; and he sagged like, and so it drew him in, under the mere, before I
cud du nout. There was nout to thraa tu him, and no time; down he went,
and I followed; and thrice I dived before I found him, and brought him
up by the hair at last; and there he is, poor lad! and all one if he lay
at the bottom o' t' mere."
As Tom Marlin ended his narrative--often interrupted by the noise of the
tempest without, and the peals of thunder that echoed awfully above,
like the chorus of a melancholy ballad--the sudden clang of the
hall-door bell, and a more faintly-heard knocking, announced a new
arrival.
[Illustration: "I sid something white come out o' t' water, by the
gunwale, like a hand."]