The man who, as we have said, received in that part of the country the
name of Silly John, stole quietly down the stairs, and finding nobody
to impede his proceedings, had no sooner entered the corridor below
than he was seized with a determination of descending the great
staircase, thinking, as he expressed it in his commune with himself,
that it would make him feel like a lord for once in his life.
We all see and know that every step which we take in our onward path
through existence, whether directed by reason or prompted by caprice,
whether apparently of the most trifling nature or seemingly of the
utmost consequence, not only affects ourselves and the course of our
own fate, but more or less influences the state, the fortunes, and the
future of others, even to the most remote bounds of that vast space in
which cause and effect are constantly weaving the widespread web of
events. So philosophers teach us; and such was certainly the case in
the present instance; for the whim which led Silly John down the grand
staircase of Danemore Castle, was by no means without its effect upon
Henry Langford; and might, under many circumstances, have produced
consequences of very great importance. The whole house was silent, for
the servants of all classes and denominations were busy at their
afternoon meal; and the half-witted man, after looking round to see
that no one was near, put on an air of mock dignity, stuck the cock's
feather more smartly in his hat, threw out one leg and then the other
with a wide stride, and saying to himself in a low tone, "Now I'm a
lord!" began to descend the staircase. At that moment his eye fell upon
a sword, with its belt and sword-knot, hanging up in the corridor, and
in order to make his figure complete, he turned back and decorated his
person therewith.
When he had got to the bottom of the stairs, however, he looked at the
sword with a somewhat wistful eye, as if he would fain have retained it
to ornament his person; but then muttering to himself, "No, no, I must
not steal! Remember the eighth commandment, John Graves!" he unslung
the sword, and looked it all over. When he had done, he burst into a
laugh, exclaiming, "It is Master Harry's sword; the very sword with
which he slit that fox's neck when they attacked Mistress Alice. They
have taken it away from him, but I'll take it back again;" and so saying
he ran hastily up to the door of the chamber in which he had left
Langford, and after tapping loudly with his knuckles, laid the weapon
down upon the threshold, and tripped rapidly away.
While Langford opened the door, and with some surprise took up his own
sword, of which he had been deprived by the magistrates when he had
been brought to the Castle, Silly John made the best of his way down
the stairs, out of the front gates, across the esplanade, and into the
park. The feat that he had performed seemed to have given him a sort of
impetus which he could not resist; and he ran on across the park as
fast as his lameness would let him, scrambled over the park paling, and
never stopped till he had arrived at that point of the road where it
branched into two divisions. There, however, he paused, and entered
into one of those consultations with himself which were not unfrequent
with him, and which formed a peculiar feature in his madness.
He suddenly remembered that he had two commissions to perform, and that
he had no directions as to which was to be first executed. On all such
occasions of difficulty, Silly John argued with himself on both sides
of the question with the nicety of a special pleader, weighing every
motive on either part, starting difficulties and solving them, seeing
differences and shades of difference where none existed; and, in fact,
acting the part of Hudibras and Ralpho both in one.
On the present occasion he stood discussing the question of whether he
should first deliver the letter to Sir Walter Herbert, or the message
to Franklin Gray, for nearly an hour; and was seen by many persons who
passed, laying down to himself the reasons, _pro_ and _con_, with the
forefinger of his right hand tapping the forefinger of his left, at
every new argument on either side. As he found it utterly impossible to
settle the matter by dint of reasoning, he fell at length upon an
expedient which decided it as rationally as any other means he could
have brought to bear upon it. Fixing himself firmly upon the heel of
his uninjured foot, he extended the other leg and arm, and whirled
himself round as if on a pivot, determining to follow that road to
which his face was turned when he stopped.
It happened that the direction in which he at length found his face was
towards the Manor House; and he accordingly bent his steps thither with
all speed. The quantity of time which he had lost in his consultation
with himself, however, and that occupied in going, rendered it very
late in the day before he arrived; so that, although the servant to
whom he delivered the note asked him in a kindly tone to come in and
take some beer, he looked wistfully at the sky, from which the sun had
just gone down; and shaking his head, walked away, turning his steps
towards the moor. The distance, as we have before shown, was
considerable; and as he went, the long twilight of a summer's evening
grew dimmer and more dim, faded away entirely, and night succeeded.
Still, however, the poor fellow toiled on up the hill, followed the
road that led across the moor, and passed the very spot where Langford
had seen the pistol fired on the preceding night.
As he went by the beeches, he thought he heard a rustling sound beneath
them; and though accustomed to go at all hours through the wildest and
least frequented paths, either fatigue and want of food, or some other
cause, had unnerved him, and the sound made him start. He ran on upon
the road as fast as he could, and then turned to look behind him. There
was no moon--the night was sultry and dark, and it was difficult to
distinguish any object distinctly; but he saw, or believed he saw, two
men come out from the beeches as if to follow him, and he again ran on
with all speed, taking his way across the moor. After he had gone about
half a mile, he cast himself flat down amongst some fern and heath, and
lay there for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour; after which he arose
again, and hurried on towards the dwelling of Franklin Gray. Twice he
thought he heard steps behind him; and his heart rejoiced when he saw
the gate in the wall that surrounded the court. The gate was locked,
however; the whole house looked dark and untenanted; not a window in
the tower, or in the large building by the side, showed the slightest
ray of light; and as he stood and shook the gate, he distinctly heard
quick steps coming on the very path he had pursued.
A degree of terror which he had seldom before felt now took possession
of him; and he ran round the wall as fast as he could, seeking for some
entrance at the back. The first gate that he met with resisted like the
other; but a second, fifty or sixty yards further on, opened at once,
and he hurried on towards the part of the building before him. He still
seemed to hear the steps behind him: and with fear that amounted almost
to agony, he felt along the wall for a bell or some other means of
making himself heard. As he did so, his hand came against a door, which
gave way beneath his touch, and he had almost fallen headlong down some
steps. He caught, however, by the lintel in time, and glad of any
entrance, went down slowly, feeling his way with his foot and hands
till he reached a level pavement. The air was cooler than it had been
above; and a small square aperture at a considerable distance before
him, while it gave admission to the wind, also showed the sort of faint
dim light which yet lingered in the sky. Towards it he took his way,
after having listened for a moment with a beating heart, to ascertain
whether he was pursued, and made himself sure that he was not.
For a few paces, nothing interrupted his progress; but the next moment,
he stumbled over some object on the ground; and as he attempted to
raise himself, his hand came in contact with something that felt like
cloth. He instantly drew it back, but, after pausing a moment and
hesitating, he stretched it out slowly again, and it lighted upon the
cold clammy features of a dead man's face. Starting back, he again fell
over the object which had thrown him down before, and which he now
found to be a coffin.
Although all these circumstances were in themselves horrible, they
served in some degree to relieve the mind of poor John Graves, who now
remembered the ruins of the old church, which stood near, and naturally
concluded that he had got into the vaults. The confusion of his brain
prevented him from remembering that the place had been long unused for
its original and legitimate purposes, and he was not one of those who
feel any horror at the mere presence of the dead. On the contrary, the
sight of the clay after the spirit had departed, seemed to offer to his
madness a curious matter of speculation, and he was fond of visiting
the chamber of death amongst all the cottages in the neighbourhood.
After he had a little recovered himself, then, he muttered, "It's a
corpse! I wonder if it's a man or a woman;" and he put out his hand
again towards the face, and ran it over the jaw and lips, to feel for
the beard.
"It must be a gentleman, to be put in the vault," he continued; "his
hand will tell that! Poor men's hands are hard; and the rich keep their
palms soft. I wonder if it is gold makes men's palms soft? Yes, it is a
gentleman," he continued, as he slid his hand down the arm to the cold
palm of the dead man.
But at that moment a light began to stream through the door by which he
had entered, and his terror was once more renewed. "If they catch me
here," he muttered, "they will think I am come to steal the coffin
plates;" and as the increasing light showed him some of the objects
around, he perceived a broken part of the wall which separated that
vault from the next, and which lay in ruin amidst the remains of former
generations, with many a coffin, stripped of all its idle finery by the
hand of time, piled up against it, together with dust and rubbish, and
the crumbling vestiges of mortality.
Behind the screen thus formed the half-witted man crept, and lay
trembling with a vague dread of he did not well know what; while the
light, which by this time had approached close to the door, remained
stationary for a moment; and two or three voices were heard speaking in
a low tone. The next moment three men descended into the vault, one of
whom bore a flambeau in his hand; but for the first two or three
minutes after they entered, Silly John could only hear without seeing,
as his terror prevented him from making the slightest movement.
"You may as well wipe the blood from off his face before you put him
into the box," said one, as he and his companions seemed to stand by
the corpse and gaze upon it with curious and speculating eyes.
"That was a deadly shot," said the other. "Poor devil! he never spoke a
word after."
"He well deserved it," said a third voice, "that's my opinion; and when
that's the case, the deadlier the shot the better. But let us make
haste, Master Hardie; though I do not see why he should be buried with
that smart belt on. Come, let us toss up for it. Here is a crown-piece.
You toss, Hardie."
While this conversation had been going on, the poor half-witted man had
remained ensconced behind the coffins and broken wall, trembling in
every limb. This tremor assuredly proceeded from fear, and not from
cold, for the air, which had been sultry all day, had now grown
oppressively hot; and the heavy clouds, which had been rolling up
during the evening, like a vast curtain between earth and the free
breath of heaven, had by this time covered the whole sky; while a few
large drops of rain, pattering amongst the ruins of the church and the
broken stones and long grass without, formed no unmusical prelude to
the storm that was about soon to descend.
Scarcely had Doveton spoken (for he it was who took the lead upon the
present occasion) when a faint blue gleam suddenly lighted up the
inside of the vault, proceeding from the small square window, and
flashing round upon all the grim and sombre features of the place,
coffins, and sculls, and bones, and broken and disjointed stones, and
high piles of mouldy earth, consisting chiefly of the dust of the dead.
It came like the clear and searching glance of eternal truth, making
dark secrets bright, and bringing forth from their obscurity all the
dim hidden things of earth. That gleam flashed upon the countenances of
the three robbers, as they stood around the corpse, unmoved, unshaken
by the solemn aspect of death, by the awful picture of their own
mortality. The sudden glance of the lightning, however, made them each
start involuntarily. He who held the crown-piece in his hand let it
drop. No thunder followed the first flash, but another far more bright
and vivid succeeded, playing round the buckles and clasps of the very
sword-belt that one of them was in the act of removing from the corpse.
A crash, which could not have been louder had the fragments of a
mountain been poured upon their heads, came instantly after, shaking
the whole building as if it would have cast down the last stone of the
ruin.
"By ----," cried one of the robbers, uttering a horrid imprecation,
"what a peal!"
"Ay, and what a flash!" said another, "but come, take off the belt, for
fear he gets up off the trestles and stops us!"
"Ay, if we let him," said Doveton; "but may I never speak again, if I
did not think I saw his lips move! There! there!" he continued, as
another flash of lightning shone again upon the features of the dead
man, reversing all the lights which the flambeau had cast upon it, and
making the whole features, without any real change, assume an
expression entirely different. "There! there! I told you so! Look, he
is grinning at us!"
"Pooh, nonsense!" cried another; "the man's dead! he'll never grin
again. Yet, by my life, there is the blood running!" And so far he
spoke truth; for the jerk which had been given to the body in order to
detach the sword-belt, had caused a stream of dark gore to well slowly
down and drop upon the ground.
"Let the belt be! let the belt be!" cried Hardcastle. "Hold the torch
to his face and see if he does move! No, no; he is still enough! But,
after all, one does not like dragging him out in such a night as this,
to bury him upon the cold moor. It would not matter if he were alive;
but let us stay here till the storm is over, and you, Harvey, run and
get us some drink. It's neither a nice night, nor a nice place, nor a
nice business; so we may as well have something to cheer us."
"I have no objection to the flagon," said Doveton, as Harvey left them
to obtain the peculiar sort of liquid cheerfulness to which men engaged
in not the most legitimate callings generally have recourse; "I have no
objection to the flagon; but you know we must have done the job before
morning, Hardie, and the grave is not dug yet."
"Oh, we'll soon dig the grave," replied Hardcastle; "the ground is soft
upon the moor, and it need not be very deep. Do you think, Doveton,
that when folks are dead they can see us? I have often thought that
very likely they can see and hear just as well as ever, but can't move
or speak."
"I hope not! I hope not!" cried his companion; and at that moment came
another flash of lightning, gleaming round and round the vault,
followed by the tremendous roar of the thunder, and the rushing and the
pattering of the big rain.
The whole scene was so awful; the corpse, the robbers, the vault, the
thunder-storm, their speculations upon the dead, the mixture of
superstition and impious daring which they displayed, the revel that
they were preparing to hold by the side of a murdered body, and the
images of the flagon and the grave, formed altogether a whole so
terrible and so extraordinary, that the poor man who lay concealed and
witnessed the strange and dreadful proceeding, could endure it no
longer; but starting up in a fit of desperation, he darted forward,
overthrowing the pile of coffins before him, and rushing with the
countenance of a risen corpse towards the stone steps which led into
the vault. Surprised and terrified, the two robbers started back, the
flambeau fell and nearly extinguished itself upon the ground; the body
of the dead man was overthrown at their feet; and rushing on without
pause, John Graves had gained the stairs and effected his exit, before
they knew who or what it was that had so suddenly broken in upon their
conference.
Running as if a whole legion of fiends had been behind him, heeding not
the deluge of rain that was now falling from the sky, but staggering
and putting his hand to his eyes when the bright gleam of the lightning
flashed across his path, the half-witted man hurried back again with
all speed towards the moor, nor ceased for a moment the rapid steps
which carried him forward, till he had reached the beeches by
Upwater-mere. There sitting down and clasping his hands over his knees,
he remained with his whole thoughts cast into a state of greater
confusion than ever, watching the liquid fire as it glanced over the
water, and talking to himself whenever the thunder would let him hear
his own voice.
It seemed, however, as if the same ghastly objects were destined to
pursue him through that night; for the storm had scarcely in a slight
degree abated, and a faint grey streak just made its appearance through
the clouds, marking where the dim moon lay veiled behind them, when he
heard coming steps; and, as his only resource, he clambered into one of
the beech-trees, and sat watching what took place below. The only
objects that he could distinguish were the forms of three men carrying
a burthen between them. They laid it down under the trees; and for the
space of about half an hour there was the busy sound of the pickaxe and
the spade, the shovelfuls of earth cast forth, and the slow delving
noise when the heavy foot pressed the edge into the ground. At the end
of that time the burden was lifted up, deposited in the pit, and the
earth piled in again. It was done with haste, for the grey dawn was
beginning to appear; and John Graves could clearly distinguish the
forms of Doveton, Hardcastle, and Harvey, as, each taking up a part of
the tools they had employed, they hurried away to escape the clear eye
of day.
When they were gone, the half-witted man came down from the tree, and
stood gazing upon the spot where the fresh grey earth of the moor,
mingling with the thin green grass under the beech-trees, showed the
place where they had concealed the body.
"And liest thou there, Harold?" he said, speaking aloud, though there
was nobody to hear, as was very much his custom; "and liest thou there,
poor boy? with nothing around thee but the cold damp earth, and the
grey morning of a storm shining upon thy last bed? And did they nurse
thee so tenderly for this? Did thy father spend wealth, and care, and
thought--did he wrong others, and endanger his chance of Heaven, and
squander hope and fear, and passion and cunning, all for this? that
thou shouldest lie here, without his knowing where thou restest--that
thou shouldest lie here, like the daisy which his proud horse's feet
cut off as he galloped along, without his knowing that it was broken?
Alack and a-well-a-day! Alack and a-well-a-day! Poor boy, though thou
hadst something of thy father's fire, and something of thy mother's
weakness, thou wert good and generous, and tender and compassionate. I
know not how it is, Harold, but I am more sorry for thee than for
people that I have loved better, and I cannot bear to think that thou
shouldest lie here, on this gloomy moor. Nor shalt thou, if I should
dig thee out with my own hands! But then they'll say I killed thee," he
added, after a moment's thought, "as they have said already of one who
would as soon have killed himself. So I'll go and tell thy father, my
poor boy; but no, I forgot, I must first go back to that man, for I
promised, and I always keep my promise. It could not be Gray that
killed thee. No, no, I do not think that; he's not fond of blood. He
spared my life, so why should he take thine? I do not half like to go
to him; yet I must, because I promised."
Poor Silly John lingered for some time beside the grave after he had
finished this soliloquy, and then turned his steps back again with some
degree of confidence gained from the open daylight, towards the abode
of Franklin Gray. He still hesitated, however, and apprehensions of
some kind made him wander at a distance from the house for several
hours before he could make up his mind to approach it. He even went to
a small alehouse, and strengthened his resolution with beer, and bread
and cheese; but what, perhaps, afforded him more courage than anything,
was the act of paying for his morning's meal with part of the money
which Franklin Gray himself had given him.
As we have before seen, the conclusions at which the poor man arrived
were very often just, and his madness consisted rather in a kind of
wandering, an occasional want of the power of seizing and holding
anything firmly, than in folly. In the present instance, then, he
inferred from the sight of the money given him by Franklin Gray, that a
person who had treated him so kindly would not ill-use him or suffer
him to be ill-used; and, accordingly, he gained courage from the
contemplation, and set out for the tower. Although he had been twice
there before, since Franklin Gray had been the tenant thereof, yet, on
both those occasions his visits had been after dark; but, as he
approached at present the scenes of all the horrors of the preceding
night, he could scarcely believe his eyes, so different was the whole
when displayed in the broad sunshine from that which it appeared under
the shadow. In this instance, however, the face that it wore in the
open day was the deceptive one, and is but too common through the
world, and in life; and in the human heart. The tower, and the large
building by its side, and the court within its walls, were converted
into a farm-house, with its barns and its yard full of straw, and
ploughshares, and farming implements, while carts stood around bearing
the name of "Franklin Gray, Farmer," though the name of the place which
followed was that of a distant part of the country, where probably he
had exercised the same kind of farming which he now carried on. There
were two or three stout men in farming habiliments about the yard too,
whose faces were not unfamiliar to the eye of John Graves, and an
honest watch-dog stood chained near the stable-door, as if the good
farmer was in fear of nightly depredators. A flaxen-headed plough-boy
whistled gaily in the court; and at the moment that Silly John
approached, a very lovely creature, habited in plain white garments,
and carrying a beautiful child of little more than a year old in her
arms, was crossing on tiptoe the dirty yard, wet and muddy with the
storm of the preceding night.
"A dainty farmer's dame, indeed!" said the half-witted man to himself;
"but I'll speak to her rather than to any of the foxes. Women are
always kindest."
His singular appearance had already attracted the attention of the
person who was the subject of his contemplation, and she seemed at once
to comprehend his character, and the nature of the affliction under
which he laboured.
"He is one of the happy," she said, speaking low, and to herself. "What
would you, poor man?" she added, with her sweet-toned voice and foreign
accent. "Do you seek money or food?"
The half-witted man did not reply directly to her question, but, caught
by her appearance and by her accent, his mind seemed to wander far away
to other things, and he answered, "Ay, pretty lady, there have been
others such as you. Many a one quits her own land and marries a
stranger, and is soon taught to repent, as women always will repent,
when they have trusted those they knew not, and forgotten their own
friends, and cast their country behind them."
She whom he addressed answered first by a smile, and then said, "Not
always! My husband will never make me repent: he never has made me
repent, though long ago I did all you said, trusted a stranger, forgot
my own friends, and cast my country behind me. But what would you, poor
man? Can I help you?"
"Only tell Franklin Gray," replied the other, "that Henry Langford has
been taken up on the charge of killing Lord Harold, and that they keep
him a prisoner in Danemore Castle; so that now's the time to help him.
I want nothing more, lady, but God's blessing upon your beautiful
face;" and so saying, he hurried away and left her, while a slight
degree of colour came up into the cheek of Mona Gray, as much at the
earnestness of the look which he gave her, as at the allusion to her
beauty.