“Sporting old parson who knows how to swear?” laughed Rattray. “Never saw
him in my life before; wondered who the deuce he was.”
“Really?” said I. “He professed to know something of you.”
“Against me, you mean? My dear Cole, don't trouble to perjure yourself.
I don't mind, believe me. They're easily shocked, these country clergy,
and no doubt I'm a bugbear to 'em. Yet, I could have sworn I'd never
seen this one before. Let's have another look.”
We were walking away together. We turned on the top of the bank. And
there the old clergyman was planted on the moorside, and watching us
intently from under his hollowed hands.
“Well, I'm hanged!” exclaimed Rattray, as the hands fell and their
owner beat a hasty retreat. My companion said no more; indeed, for some
minutes we pursued our way in silence. And I thought that it was with an
effort that he broke into sudden inquiries concerning my journey and my
comfort at the cottage.
This gave me an opportunity of thanking him for his little attentions.
“It was awfully good of you,” said I, taking his arm as though I had
known him all my life; nor do I think there was another living man with
whom I would have linked arms at that time.
“Good?” cried he. “Nonsense, my dear sir! I'm only afraid you find
it devilish rough. But, at all events, you're coming to dine with me
to-night.”
“Am I?” I asked, smiling.
“Rather!” said he. “My time here is short enough. I don't lose sight of
you again between this and midnight.”
“It's most awfully good of you,” said I again.
“Wait till you see! You'll find it rough enough at my place; all my
retainers are out for the day at a local show.”
“Then I certainly shall not give you the trouble.”
He interrupted me with his jovial laugh.
“My good fellow,” he cried, “that's the fun of it! How do you suppose
I've been spending the day? Told you I was going to Lancaster, did I?
Well, I've been cooking our dinner instead--laying the table--getting
up the wines--never had such a joke! Give you my word, I almost forgot I
was in the wilderness!”
“So you're quite alone, are you?”
“Yes; as much so as that other beggar who was monarch of all he
surveyed, his right there was none to dispute, from the what-is-it down
to the glade--”
“I'll come,” said I, as we reached the cottage. “Only first you must let
me make myself decent.”
“You're decent enough!”
“My boots are wet; my hands--”
“All serene! I'll give you five minutes.”
And I left him outside, flourishing a handsome watch, while, on my way
upstairs, I paused to tell Mrs. Braithwaite that I was dining at the
hall. She was busy cooking, and I felt prepared for her unpleasant
expression; but she showed no annoyance at my news. I formed the
impression that it was no news to her. And next minute I heard a
whispering below; it was unmistakable in that silent cottage, where not
a word had reached me yet, save in conversation to which I was myself a
party.
I looked out of window. Rattray I could no longer see. And I confess
that I felt both puzzled and annoyed until we walked away together, when
it was his arm which was immediately thrust through mine.
“A good soul, Jane,” said he; “though she made an idiotic marriage, and
leads a life which might spoil the temper of an archangel. She was my
nurse when I was a youngster, Cole, and we never meet without a yarn.”
Which seemed natural enough; still I failed to perceive why they need
yarn in whispers.
Kirby Hall proved startlingly near at hand. We descended the bare
valley to the right, we crossed the beck upon a plank, were in the
oak-plantation about a minute, and there was the hall upon the farther
side.
And a queer old place it seemed, half farm, half feudal castle: fowls
strutting at large about the back premises (which we were compelled to
skirt), and then a front door of ponderous oak, deep-set between walls
fully six feet thick, and studded all over with wooden pegs. The facade,
indeed, was wholly grim, with a castellated tower at one end, and a
number of narrow, sunken windows looking askance on the wreck and
ruin of a once prim, old-fashioned, high-walled garden. I thought that
Rattray might have shown more respect for the house of his ancestors.
It put me in mind of a neglected grave. And yet I could forgive a bright
young fellow for never coming near so desolate a domain.
We dined delightfully in a large and lofty hall, formerly used (said
Rattray) as a court-room. The old judgment seat stood back against the
wall, and our table was the one at which the justices had been wont to
sit. Then the chamber had been low-ceiled; now it ran to the roof, and
we ate our dinner beneath a square of fading autumn sky, with I wondered
how many ghosts looking down on us from the oaken gallery! I was
interested, impressed, awed not a little, and yet all in a way which
afforded my mind the most welcome distraction from itself and from the
past. To Rattray, on the other hand, it was rather sadly plain that the
place was both a burden and a bore; in fact he vowed it was the dampest
and the dullest old ruin under the sun, and that he would sell it
to-morrow if he could find a lunatic to buy. His want of sentiment
struck me as his one deplorable trait. Yet even this displayed his
characteristic merit of frankness. Nor was it at all unpleasant to hear
his merry, boyish laughter ringing round hall and gallery, ere it died
away against a dozen closed doors.
And there were other elements of good cheer: a log fire blazing heartily
in the old dog-grate, casting a glow over the stone flags, a reassuring
flicker into the darkest corner: cold viands of the very best: and the
finest old Madeira that has ever passed my lips.
Now, all my life I have been a “moderate drinker” in the most literal
sense of that slightly elastic term. But at the sad time of which I
am trying to write, I was almost an abstainer, from the fear, the
temptation--of seeking oblivion in strong waters. To give way then was
to go on giving way. I realized the danger, and I took stern measures.
Not stern enough, however; for what I did not realize was my weak and
nervous state, in which a glass would have the same effect on me as
three or four upon a healthy man.
Heaven knows how much or how little I took that evening! I can swear
it was the smaller half of either bottle--and the second we never
finished--but the amount matters nothing. Even me it did not make
grossly tipsy. But it warmed my blood, it cheered my heart, it excited
my brain, and--it loosened my tongue. It set me talking with a freedom
of which I should have been incapable in my normal moments, on a subject
whereof I had never before spoken of my own free will. And yet the will
to--speak--to my present companion--was no novelty. I had felt it at our
first meeting in the private hotel. His tact, his sympathy, his handsome
face, his personal charm, his frank friendliness, had one and all
tempted me to bore this complete stranger with unsolicited confidences
for which an inquisitive relative might have angled in vain. And the
temptation was the stronger because I knew in my heart that I should
not bore the young squire at all; that he was anxious enough to hear my
story from my own lips, but too good a gentleman intentionally to
betray such anxiety. Vanity was also in the impulse. A vulgar newspaper
prominence had been my final (and very genuine) tribulation; but to
please and to interest one so pleasing and so interesting to me, was
another and a subtler thing. And then there was his sympathy--shall I
add his admiration?--for my reward.
I do not pretend that I argued thus deliberately in my heated and
excited brain. I merely hold that all these small reasons and motives
were there, fused and exaggerated by the liquor which was there as well.
Nor can I say positively that Rattray put no leading questions; only
that I remember none which had that sound; and that, once started, I am
afraid I needed only too little encouragement to run on and on.
Well, I was set going before we got up from the table. I continued in
an armchair that my host dragged from a little book-lined room adjoining
the hall. I finished on my legs, my back to the fire, my hands beating
wildly together. I had told my dear Rattray of my own accord more than
living man had extracted from me yet. He interrupted me very little;
never once until I came to the murderous attack by Santos on the drunken
steward.
“The brute!” cried Rattray. “The cowardly, cruel, foreign devil! And you
never let out one word of that!”
“What was the good?” said I. “They are all gone now--all gone to their
account. Every man of us was a brute at the last. There was nothing to
be gained by telling the public that.”
He let me go on until I came to another point which I had hitherto kept
to myself: the condition of the dead mate's fingers: the cries that the
sight of them had recalled.
“That Portuguese villain again!” cried my companion, fairly leaping from
the chair which I had left and he had taken. “It was the work of the
same cane that killed the steward. Don't tell me an Englishman would
have done it; and yet you said nothing about that either!”
It was my first glimpse of this side of my young host's character. Nor
did I admire him the less, in his spirited indignation, because much of
this was clearly against myself. His eyes flashed. His face was white. I
suddenly found myself the cooler man of the two.
“My dear fellow, do consider!” said I. “What possible end could have
been served by my stating what I couldn't prove against a man who
could never be brought to book in this world? Santos was punished as he
deserved; his punishment was death, and there's an end on't.”
“You might be right,” said Rattray, “but it makes my blood boil to hear
such a story. Forgive me if I have spoken strongly;” and he paced his
hall for a little in an agitation which made me like him better and
better. “The cold-blooded villain!” he kept muttering; “the infernal,
foreign, blood-thirsty rascal! Perhaps you were right; it couldn't have
done any good, I know; but--I only wish he'd lived for us to hang him,
Cole! Why, a beast like that is capable of anything: I wonder if
you've told me the worst even now?” And he stood before me, with candid
suspicion in his fine, frank eyes.
“What makes you say that?” said I, rather nettled.
“I shan't tell you if it's going to rile you, old fellow,” was his reply.
And with it reappeared the charming youth whom I found it impossible
to resist. “Heaven knows you have had enough to worry you!” he added, in
his kindly, sympathetic voice.
“So much,” said I, “that you cannot add to it, my dear Rattray. Now,
then! Why do you think there was something worse?”
“You hinted as much in town: rightly or wrongly I gathered there was
something you would never speak about to living man.”
I turned from him with a groan.
“Ah! but that had nothing to do with Santos.”
“Are you sure?” he cried.
“No,” I murmured; “it had something to do with him, in a sense; but
don't ask me any more.” And I leaned my forehead on the high oak
mantel-piece, and groaned again.
His hand was upon my shoulder.
“Do tell me,” he urged. I was silent. He pressed me further. In my
fancy, both hand and voice shook with his sympathy.
“He had a step-daughter,” said I at last.
“Yes? Yes?”
“I loved her. That was all.”
His hand dropped from my shoulder. I remained standing, stooping,
thinking only of her whom I had lost for ever. The silence was intense.
I could hear the wind sighing in the oaks without, the logs burning
softly away at my feet And so we stood until the voice of Rattray
recalled me from the deck of the _Lady Jermyn_ and my lost love's side.
“So that was all!”
I turned and met a face I could not read.
“Was it not enough?” cried I. “What more would you have?”
“I expected some more-foul play!”
“Ah!” I exclaimed bitterly. “So that was all that interested you! No,
there was no more foul play that I know of; and if there was, I don't
care. Nothing matters to me but one thing. Now that you know what that
is, I hope you're satisfied.”
It was no way to speak to one's host. Yet I felt that he had pressed me
unduly. I hated myself for my final confidence, and his want of sympathy
made me hate him too. In my weakness, however, I was the natural prey
of violent extremes. His hand flew out to me. He was about to speak.
A moment more and I had doubtless forgiven him. But another sound
came instead and made the pair of us start and stare. It was the soft
shutting of some upstairs door.
“I thought we had the house to ourselves?” cried I, my miserable nerves
on edge in an instant.
“So did I,” he answered, very pale. “My servants must have come back. By
the Lord Harry, they shall hear of this!”
He sprang to a door, I heard his feet clattering up some stone stairs,
and in a trice he was running along the gallery overhead; in another
I heard him railing behind some upper door that he had flung open and
banged behind him; then his voice dropped, and finally died away. I was
left some minutes in the oppressively silent hall, shaken, startled,
ashamed of my garrulity, aching to get away. When he returned it was by
another of the many closed doors, and he found me awaiting him, hat in
hand. He was wearing his happiest look until he saw my hat.
“Not going?” he cried. “My dear Cole, I can't apologize sufficiently for
my abrupt desertion of you, much less for the cause. It was my man,
just come in from the show, and gone up the back way. I accused him of
listening to our conversation. Of course he denies it; but it really
doesn't matter, as I'm sorry to say he's much too 'fresh' (as they call
it down here) to remember anything to-morrow morning. I let him have it,
I can tell you. Varlet! Caitiff! But if you bolt off on the head of it,
I shall go back and sack him into the bargain!”
I assured him I had my own reasons for wishing to retire early. He could
have no conception of my weakness, my low and nervous condition of
body and mind; much as I had enjoyed myself, he must really let me go.
Another glass of wine, then? Just one more? No, I had drunk too much
already. I was in no state to stand it. And I held out my hand with
decision.
Instead of taking it he looked at me very hard.
“The place doesn't suit you,” said he. “I see it doesn't, and I'm
devilish sorry! Take my advice and try something milder; now do,
to-morrow; for I should never forgive myself if it made you worse
instead of better; and the air is too strong for lots of people.”
I was neither too ill nor too vexed to laugh outright in his face.
“It's not the air,” said I; “it's that splendid old Madeira of yours,
that was too strong for me, if you like! No, no, Rattray, you don't get
rid of me so cheaply-much as you seem to want to!”
“I was only thinking of you,” he rejoined, with a touch of pique that
convinced me of his sincerity. “Of course I want you to stop, though
I shan't be here many days; but I feel responsible for you, Cole,
and that's the fact. Think you can find your way?” he continued,
accompanying me to the gate, a postern in the high garden wall. “Hadn't
you better have a lantern?”
No; it was unnecessary. I could see splendidly, had the bump of locality
and as many more lies as would come to my tongue. I was indeed burning
to be gone.
A moment later I feared that I had shown this too plainly. For his final
handshake was hearty enough to send me away something ashamed of
my precipitancy, and with a further sense of having shown him
small gratitude for his kindly anxiety on my behalf. I would behave
differently to-morrow. Meanwhile I had new regrets.
At first it was comparatively easy to see, for the lights of the house
shone faintly among the nearer oaks. But the moon was hidden behind
heavy clouds, and I soon found myself at a loss in a terribly dark zone
of timber. Already I had left the path. I felt in my pocket for matches.
I had none.
My head was now clear enough, only deservedly heavy. I was still
quarrelling with myself for my indiscretions and my incivilities, one
and all the result of his wine and my weakness, and this new predicament
(another and yet more vulgar result) was the final mortification. I
swore aloud. I simply could not see a foot in front of my face. Once I
proved it by running my head hard against a branch. I was hopelessly and
ridiculously lost within a hundred yards of the hall!
Some minutes I floundered, ashamed to go back, unable to proceed for
the trees and the darkness. I heard the beck running over its stones. I
could still see an occasional glimmer from the windows I had left. But
the light was now on this side, now on that; the running water chuckled
in one ear after the other; there was nothing for it but to return in
all humility for the lantern which I had been so foolish as to refuse.
And as I resigned myself to this imperative though inglorious course, my
heart warmed once more to the jovial young squire. He would laugh, but
not unkindly, at my grotesque dilemma; at the thought of his laughter I
began to smile myself. If he gave me another chance I would smoke that
cigar with him before starting home afresh, and remove, from my own
mind no less than from his, all ill impressions. After all it was not
his fault that I had taken too much of his wine; but a far worse offence
was to be sulky in one's cups. I would show him that I was myself again
in all respects. I have admitted that I was temporarily, at all events,
a creature of extreme moods. It was in this one that I retraced my steps
towards the lights, and at length let myself into the garden by the
postern at which I had shaken Rattray's hand not ten minutes before.
Taking heart of grace, I stepped up jauntily to the porch. The weeds
muffled my steps. I myself had never thought of doing so, when all at
once I halted in a vague terror. Through the deep lattice windows I
had seen into the lighted hall. And Rattray was once more seated at his
table, a little company of men around him.
I crept nearer, and my heart stopped. Was I delirious, or raving mad
with wine? Or had the sea given up its dead?