boulders he could see plainly in the moonlight--there was a "gashly owld
fogou,"[N] where, if a man went at midnight prepared to boldly summon
Hate and to "turn a stone"[O] in her honour, his hatred would be
accomplished for him "as sure as death."
"An' I'll go there, ef I die for it!" said he grimly to himself.
The village was asleep, and all its cottages were smokeless. There was
no one stirring anywhere in the cove. But far out in the moonlit bay he
could see the fishing-boats dotting the vast grey plain, and he knew
that in one of them 'Miah Laity was fishing, and was no doubt thinking
of Dorcas as he fished.
"I'll spoil 'es thinkin' for un 'fore long," said 'Lijah, "ayven ef I
have to sill me saul to do the job!"
And with that he slipped on his coat and boots--for he had been
standing at the window half undressed--and clapping on his cap as he
passed through the kitchen, strode heavily and gloomily out of the
house.
On the moor he had only the breeze for company, and its long, vague
wail, as it rustled across the ferns, merely deepened the moody
irritation in his mind. He felt as sour as a fanatic and as gloomy as a
thief.
To find the fogou, among the bewildering growth of ferns, was by no
means the easiest task in the world: for the rude cave-dwelling was
literally buried in the hill-side; its entrance being hidden by the rank
vegetation that here reached almost to Elijah's arm-pits.
As he ploughed his way through the trackless tangle, giving vent the
while to a superfluity of oaths, he presently stumbled on the entrance
to the fogou, almost precipitating himself into its darkness, so
suddenly had he stumbled on it, wading through the ferns.
The low and narrow tunnel in the hill-side, with its walls and roof
lined with slabs of rock, was as uncanny a spot as a man could set foot
in, and Elijah shook like one with the ague, as he thrust aside the
ferns and peered into the blackness.
He turned round, half inclined to retreat; but, as he turned, his eyes
chanced to travel to the sea, where he could still discern the
fishing-boats riding at their nets; and the idea of 'Miah out there
thinking of Dorcas made him clench his teeth grimly, as if he had
received a blow.
He swung round on his heels sharply and determinedly, savagely trampling
the ferns beneath his feet, and strode forward into the pitch-black
mirk.
Groping his way in, with hands extended, he presently found the block of
granite called the altar, and "turning the stone" in the hollow on its
surface, he shaped the while in his heart his rancorous prayer to Hate.
Suddenly he was aware of a face staring at him: a mere face vaguely
limned on the darkness, as if a bodiless head were held before him by
the hair.
And in that same instant, without a word being uttered, he felt that he
had looked in the face of Hate.
He reeled out of the fogou like a drunken man.
The vision was one it would be impossible to forget. He must bear with
him this memory, as a man who has committed a murder must bear with him
the memory of his victim's ghastly face.
"I'll wait an' see what comes of it," said 'Lijah to himself, as he ran
and stumbled down the hill-side in the moonlight, the thick hair
stiffening under his cap.
* * * * *
The months slipped by, and the years dragged on sluggishly, and 'Miah
and Dorcas were as happy as ever. They had a couple of bairns to toddle
about their cottage, and 'Miah had been fairly fortunate on the fishery,
so that their lives were generally sunny and enviable to an extent that
made Elijah's blood turn to gall.
"Thee'st forgotten me, thou darned owld liar that thou art!" said he,
shaking his fist savagely at the fern-clad hill-side, where Hate
presumably was watching from her lair.
On which he heard a chilling whisper at his elbow: "You shall have your
wish, as sure as death!"
Elijah heard the loud thump, thump of his heart. But an instant after,
his pulse danced buoyantly, and he went about his work chuckling grimly
to himself.
But while 'Miah's life was harvesting happiness, as his nets gathered
abundantly the harvest of the sea, Elijah's life on his farm on the
hill-side appeared to be stifling among the stones and thistles, and a
sour and acid leanness seemed eating up his heart.
It was as if Hate had shot her arrows blindly, and they had struck and
rankled in the wrong breast.
With Elijah Trevorrow nothing seemed to prosper. He might rise early
and go to bed late, he might pinch and pare as relentlessly as he
pleased, every year of his life he grew leaner and poorer, till the
scowl on his features deepened permanently among its lines, and in the
end transformed his features as completely as a mask.
He was no more like the clear-eyed, whistling young farmer who had gone
a-wooing Dorcas among the rustling wheat-fields, than the wrinkled tree,
with its heart rotted out of it, is like the green young sapling in the
bravery of its spring.
Ever watching hungrily to see Misfortune seize his rival and set her
teeth thirstily in the very pulse of his life, Elijah held aloof from
commerce with his neighbours, sour and discontented, and wishing each
day to end, in the hope that on the morrow he might see the evil he
desired.
Presently there went a whisper through the tiny hamlet that Elijah
Trevorrow was a bit touched _here_--the villagers tapping their brows
significantly as they spoke.
"He do talk as ef Hate es a woman, an' he've seed her. Up in that owld
fogou he've mit her, he do say. An' he's all'ys sayin' she ha'nt keeped
her word to un. Whatever do 'a mayne, weth 'es gashly owld tales?"
'Miah, whose name had got mixed up in the tale, one day called at the
lonely farmhouse, in order to see Elijah and reason with him if he
could.
But Elijah, as 'Miah approached, set the dogs on him savagely, and the
fisherman was obliged precipitately to beat a retreat.
At last, one day in the depth of winter, when the hills were white with
whirling snowdrifts, Elijah Trevorrow disappeared.
They searched everywhere for him, but could find no trace of him, and
the search was finally abandoned in despair.
Elijah had made his way to the fogou, determined to front Hate and to
compel her to keep faith with him, even if he squeezed her life out
through her throat.
* * * * *
Some eight months after--in the time of blackberries--some youngsters,
questing among the ferns on the hillside, stumbled across the fogou and
crept in to explore it.
They rushed down the hillside screaming with terror; and, when safe
among the cottages, began to babble incoherently that there was a ghost
up yonder in the "owld hunted fogou," they had seen its face--and it
was white--so white!
The villagers began to have an inkling of the truth, and went toiling up
through the ferns in a body.
"As like as not 'tes _he_, poor saul," they whispered awesomely as they
clambered up the windy ridges of the hill.
True enough, it was Elijah, dead in the fogou. But whether or not he had
again met Hate there, is one of the questions the gossips have still to
solve.
FOOTNOTES:
[N] A subterranean storehouse or place of shelter.
[O] A portion of the rites practised in connection with "cursing
stones."
THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
IT was only an old deserted house, perched half-way up the hillside and
overlooking the village. But it was none the less the village theatre:
the peep-hole through which the villagers obtained a glimpse of many
mysteries, and the stage and drop-scene of half the legends of the
thorp.
It was an old stone building which evidently had once been a dwelling of
importance, but for quite a century it had been tenantless and almost
entirely dismantled: the home of the owl and the lizard, of the spectre
and the bat.
When the sunrise splashed across the fragmentary panes of glass that
here and there remained in their frames, the farmer would stand still at
his ploughing on the hill-slope and glance up at the great Argus-eyed
building--that had now, however, more sockets than eyes--and a world of
memories, of legends and superstitions, would buzz, with strange
bewilderment, through his brain.
The old house reminded him of his mother and of his grandfather, and of
those who had been the village historians for his childhood, and a
musing gravity seemed to deepen in his mind. He was aware of the brevity
of life, and of the lapse of the personality; of the tragedies of
passion, with their gravity and poignancy, and of the mystery that
broods at the back of all our thoughts. But most of all he was aware
that the building standing fronting him was the very kernel of his
individuality projected into visibility: the one knot into which all his
memories were tied.
He would hold his children spell-bound by the hour as he told them the
ordinary folk-tales of the hamlet, with that ruin on the hillside as the
stage for the majority of them; till his daughter Ruth, who was young
and sentimental, though with a streak of passion running through her
nature, learned to contemplate the ruin with an awe akin to his, and
stared up wonderingly at it, so long and so often, that at last it had
become for her a necessary part of life.
While Ruth was still a child, the haunted ruin chiefly attracted her
thoughts as the scene and locality of uncanny occurrences that were
fanciful and unusual rather than sombre or suggestive. It was the great
haunted cheese in which the piskies burrowed, and out of which they
hopped with amusing unexpectedness: it was the building to pass which
you must always turn your stocking, if you wished to escape being
_pisky-ledden_, or misguided: it was the place to which the "Little
Folks"[P] conveyed stolen children: above all, it was the place of dark
and cobwebbed corners, where naughty children were put to live with
snails and spiders and with great big goggle-eyed buccaboos!
As she stood on her doorstep with her bit of knitting in her hand--a
tiny doll's stocking, or a garter for herself--little Ruth would stare
up at the great black building, with the scarlet splendour of the sunset
at its back, until she almost fancied she could see the little winking
piskies grinning through the window-holes and clambering across the
roofs.
And by-and-by, when the rich yellow sky began to darken and the flocks
of rooks flew cawing overhead, Ruth would shiver with a delicious sense
of security as she stood beneath the porch in the gathering twilight and
heard the wind begin to moan and sigh mysteriously, as if it trembled at
the thought of spending the night on the hillside with no other company
than that "whisht[Q] owld house."
As she grew older and became aware of the drift of her wishes, feeling
stirrings and promptings at the roots of her life, her imagination
seized now on the passionate human tragedies which, according to the
legends, had been enacted in the building. She had a sweetheart of her
own, and she could understand lovers; and something of the glamour and
mystery of a great heady passion she believed she could interpret out of
her own ripened life.
But Rastus Dabb, her sweetheart, was as cloddish and unimaginative as
the heavy-uddered cows, with their great fleshy dewlaps, of which he was
prouder than he was of anything else in his world. It was quite
impossible to get his feet off the solid earth: and apparently his mind
was anchored firmly to his feet. But Ruth had the attractiveness of all
young things--she was fresh and cheerful, with a heart as light as a
feather--and, by the law of contrast, she suited him to a nicety, more
especially as she was an excellent little housewife to boot. So the
courting prospered sunnily; and he let her "romance" as she pleased.
When she was a wife and mother, Ruth presently became acquainted with
that grim Shadow who knows the secret of our tears--their source and the
bitter in them--and knows, too, the secret of everlasting peace. And
thereafter, when at intervals his wings darkened the world for her, her
thoughts went out, with a strange yearning, towards the dead who had
once inhabited the ruin and could now roam through it only as ghosts.
"Shall I one day have only such a foothold as theirs in this dear green
world of ours?" she would ask herself, shiveringly. And the
Sunday-evening's sermon could soothe her not a whit.
At last, in the waning afternoon of life, when her smooth brown hair
was as yet unstreaked with grey and her cheeks had still a splash of
colour in them, she fell ill of some mysterious malady--mysterious, at
least, to the sympathetic villagers--and one dreary day in the
blustering autumn she was aware in her heart that the Shadow was in the
room.
"Draw back the curtains as far as you can," said she to Rastus, who
stood helpless by the bedside.
And when they were drawn, and she could see the great gaunt ruin
frowning blackly above the slopes of the shadow-checkered hillside, she
cried out suddenly, "I'm going there among them, Rastus! Oh, dear, hold
me!" And with that she passed.
FOOTNOTES:
[P] Fairies.
[Q] Melancholy, forlorn.
GIFTS AND AWARDS.
"TWO bonnier babes," said the grey old midwife, bending thoughtfully
over them, "I never before assisted into the world."
The mother, lying wan in her bed, smiled happily.
"So bonny are they," said the wrinkled beldame, "that I will give to
each of them one of my choicest gifts: something they will still keep
hugged to their hearts when they are as close to the gates as you or I."
"And how close is that?" asked the mother, growing whiter.
The wise old midwife turned from the bedside and bent above the
infants, mumbling to herself.
Presently the mother started up from a doze. There was no one in the
room but her married sister. "I dreamed Death was in the room with me
just now," said she. "And he had an old woman with him whom he called
his Sister. She seemed to me to be giving my babies something: but what
it was I don't know. At first I thought it was a plaything; but now I
think it was a sorrow. At least. . . ."
"_Dear!_ DEAR!" cried her sister, in alarm, as if she saw the spirit
drifting beyond her ken.
"My babies!" whispered the mother.
And presently she was "at rest."
* * * * *
Rick and Dick grew up somehow. Though motherless and fatherless they
were not quite friendless, and in the struggle for existence they held
their own and kept alive.
A more agreeable and cheerful fellow than Dick it would have been
impossible to find, according to his companions. He seemed dowered with
a disposition so equable and contented that it was a pleasure to be with
him: and he radiated cheerfulness like a fire. Moreover, he was in
thorough harmony with his surroundings. He found fault with nothing in
the structure of society, and desired no change either in laws or
institutions: everything was ordered wisely, and was ordered for the
best. In fact, he was the spirit of Content personified: and much
patting on the back did he get for his reward.
"We must give him a helping hand, must push him forward, you know," said
the Community, beaming on its cheerful young champion.
And Dick took the "pushing forward" with admirable self-composure, and
certainly seemed to deserve all he got.
As for Rick, the Community would have nothing to do with him. He was not
quite an out-and-out pessimist, it was true; but he seemed to look on
the Community as a most clumsily-articulated creature--a thing of shreds
and patches, and the Cheap Jack of shams. He was always putting his
finger on this spot or that; hinting that here there was a weakness, and
there . . . something worse. Every advanced thinker, and the majority of
theorists, could count on finding a sympathetic listener in him: and not
infrequently they found in him an advocate also; such an arrant
anti-optimist was the pestilent fellow. As if Civilization, after
thousands of years of travail, had produced nothing better than a clumsy
abortion with the claws of an animal and the tastes of Jack-an-ape! Why,
the man must be mad, to have such irregular fancies! It was a pity laws
against opinions were not oftener put in force: then--a click of the
guillotine, and the world would have peace!
Rick listened grimly, and made a note of the imagery. "You will remember
it better in black and white," said he.
* * * * *
In the course of years Dick became a churchwarden and a philanthropist
(he took the infection very mildly and in its most agreeable form), and
a highly respected gambler on, or rather member of, the Stock Exchange.
He was also joined "in the bands of holy matrimony" to a buxom young
widow who was left-handedly connected with The Aristocracy Itself! The
lady brought him a most desirable fortune to start with, and after some
years made him a present of twins: so that Dick was now a notable man
among his acquaintances, and had the ambition to become a bigger man
still, by-and-by: a Common Councilman certainly, and an Alderman
_perhaps_!
Meanwhile Rick had developed into a musty _savant_: a fellow whose
tastes, if you might call them such, were of the most _outre_ order--in
advance of everything that was sober, respectable, and conventional; and
in aggressive alliance with everything that was disturbing, and that
was maliciously and wickedly critical (said the saints).
"The kernel of his life is unhealthy," said his brother: "it has a
deadly fungus growing in it, I am afraid."
"The fungus of discontent, dear friend," said the clergyman.
"I am afraid so," said Dick, with a prodigious great sigh. "Still, we
must none the less pray for him unceasingly: for prayer availeth much,
as we know."
The clergyman dramatically clasped his white hands together, looking up
as one who speechlessly admires.
* * * * *
Rick sat musing in his gloomy study: thinking of the ladder he had
climbed, and of the scenery of his life that now stretched out like a
map before him.
Presently the study door opened softly, and a Figure came in and took a
chair at his side.
"You have come, then!" said Rick. "I thought your coming must be near."
"Shall we start?" asked the Figure.
"I am ready," answered Rick.
And they passed out together into the deep black night.
"Come, take my arm: we will call together for your brother."
"He has so much to make him happy! There are the little ones and his
wife! Could you not delay a little?"
"He must come with us to-night."
Dick was attending a banquet which was being given in his honour to
celebrate his recent election as a Common Councilman, and the lust of
life was in his every vein. But in the act of responding to the toast of
the evening he was suddenly attacked by a fit of apoplexy. He
staggered, and fell back--and they perceived that he was dead.
* * * * *
It was a bleak and a very depressing journey to pass nakedly and alone
from the warm, well-lighted, and flattering banquet, and, most of all,
from the comfortable and familiar earth, up to the Doom's-man and the
Bar beside the Gates. If he could only have had a friend or two at his
side!
On the way up, just as he was nearing the gates, Dick overtook Rick, who
was a little way ahead of him.
"Come, let us go up together," said Rick.
At the gates, however, Dick began to grow uneasy. His brother's
reputation on earth among "the godly" was a curiously unwelcome memory
to Dick now the Bar was so near and the Doom's-man was in sight.
"You go first," said Dick to his brother; falling behind as if to
dissociate himself from him.
Rick passed the gate and stood silently at the Bar.
"Place the brothers side by side," said the Doom's-man sternly.
"If you please," began Dick, stumbling in his speech, so afraid was he
of being confounded in the judgment of his brother; "If you please. . . ."
Said the Doom's-man: "Let the Advocates state the case."
The Black-robed Advocate claimed Rick boldly. The verdict of Rick's
fellow-citizens, he asserted, was emphatic on the point that Rick was
legitimately his. And he went with the majority, and claimed a verdict
accordingly.
The White-robed Advocate advanced, more hesitatingly, that Dick
presumably should go with _him_. The Community, he averred, had long ago
decided that only in this way would justice have its due.
The Doom's-man's verdict was simplicity itself.
A nature so contented, and so little given to fault-finding, would be
the typical one for the Black Advocate's household, said the Doom's-man,
humorously contemplating Dick. "Take him away with you," said he to the
Black Advocate: "the man will give you no trouble, _as you know_.
"But that restless, fault-finding fellow there," and he indicated Rick
with a movement of his forefinger, "it would need a faultless abode
like _yours_ to satisfy him," and he signed to the silent White Advocate
at his side. "Take him, he is yours," said the Doom's-man solemnly.
And with that the Advocates departed with their awards.
FRIEND OR FOE?
I.
SIR EDWARD lay back lazily in his chair, with a letter in a woman's
handwriting crumpled at his feet.
"She must make the best of it now," said he, gazing at the fire. "She is
not worse off than others, come to that." And he lolled among the
cushions, gazing into the fire, with a hard and cruel look on his
countenance, on which the stamp of sensuality was unmistakably
impressed.
It was a large and luxuriously-furnished apartment, with everything so
arranged as to minister to the senses and afford them the fullest
gratification which suggestions could impart.
But Sir Edward, lolling by the fire this evening, experienced little
satisfaction in his luxurious surroundings: the eroding tooth of thought
they could no way quiet; and it was the irritation of this that he most
desired to have allayed.
He lighted a cigar, and began to smoke vigorously, leaning back the
while and contemplating the smoke-clouds that drifted round in swirling
folds and spirals, an occasional ring mounting airily over all.
Smoking away steadily, cigar after cigar--for he was an insatiable
smoker as he was insatiable in everything--Sir Edward seemed presently
to be almost hidden among the smoke-wreaths, which had now thickened in
the room with unexampled rapidity.
At first he felt inclined to ring for a servant and have the windows
opened to let in a breath of air, but there was a certain amount of
interest in watching the floating veils of smoke; and, besides, in the
mere act of idly watching these he could let certain vivid tableaux,
with which Memory was amusing him, drift beyond the range of his
attention, he hoped. So he lay back, letting the smoke thicken in the
atmosphere, while he followed the fantastic wreaths lazily with his
eyes.
It was almost as if he were dozing as he lay there; for he could have
sworn that in the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace he
perceived a grey old fogey reclining among the cushions, yet with
deep-sunken eyes fixed watchfully on his face.
It was really absurd to have an utter stranger intrude his company on
him in this unceremonious manner, and Sir Edward felt inclined to
question him sharply, and, if need be, have him turned out neck and
crop.
But instead of taking up the intended _role_ of inquisitor, he found
himself reduced ignominiously to the _role_ of the questioned one.
"Where were you thinking of going to-night?" asked the Visitor. "To the
theatre, or the opera, or to that 'private club' we know of?" And the
Visitor looked at him with a glance of quiet intelligence which Sir
Edward somehow felt powerless to resent.
"I was thinking. . . ."
"Of going with me? Quite right!" replied the Visitor. "With me you
shall go: unless we can come to terms together. In which case,
possibly, I may leave you behind _for a time_."
Sir Edward ceased to smoke: and his hands trembled on his knees.
But he made no movement, and uttered no protest. Before the glance of
his visitor he quailed and was dumb.
"Ruth Medwin, I presume, must bear her disgrace as best she can? You
will neither recognize her, nor make her an allowance, I understand."
"I think I have changed my mind. . . ."
"Too late," said the Visitor. "After having seen _me_ you can change
your mind no more."
Sir Edward lay motionless among the cushions of his chair.
"I should like . . . if you will allow me . . ." he began feebly.
"I can allow you only one choice: and that a peremptory one. Will you go
with me instantly--I think you know me--or shall I call for you again
_on any terms I care to fix_?"
"Will your terms be as pitiless. . . ."
"You shall hear them, if you please."
Sir Edward sank deeper among the soft cushions: his whole life
concentrated in the watchful stare with which he fixed his eyes on his
visitor's face.