free wi' Ba'weary manse; an' he ran the harder, an' wet shoon, ower the
burn, an' up the walk; but the deil a black man was there to see. He
stepped out upon the road, but there was naebody there; he gaed a' ower
the gairden, but na, nae black man. At the binder end, and a bit feared
as was but natural, he lifted the hasp and into the manse; and there was
Janet M'Clour before his een, wi' her thrawn craig, and nane sae pleased
to see him. And he aye minded sinsyne, when first he set his een upon
her, he had the same cauld and deidly grue.
"Janet," says he, "have you seen a black man?"
"A black man!" quo' she. "Save us a'! Ye're no wise, minister. There's
nae black man in a' Ba'weary."
But she didnae speak plain, ye maun understand; but yam-yammered, like a
powny wi' the bit in its moo.
"Weel," says he, "Janet, if there was nae black man, I have spoken with
the Accuser of the Brethren."
And he sat doun like ane wi' a fever, an' his teeth chittered in his
heid.
"Hoots," says she, "think shame to yoursel', minister"; and gied him a
drap brandy that she keept aye by her.
Syne Mr. Soulis gaed into his study amang a' his books. It's a lang,
laigh, mirk chalmer, perishin' cauld in winter, an' no very dry even in
the top o' the simmer, for the manse stands near the burn. Sae doun he
sat, and thocht of a' that had come an' gane since he was in Ba'weary,
an' his hame, an' the days when he was a bairn an' ran daffin' on the
braes; and that black man aye ran in his held like the owercome of a
sang. Aye the mair he thocht, the mair he thocht o' the black man. He
tried the prayer, an' the words wouldnae come to him; an' he tried, they
say, to write at his book, but he couldnae mak' nae mair o' that. There
was whiles he thocht the black man was at his oxter, an' the swat stood
upon him cauld as well-water; and there was other whiles, when he cam'
to himsel' like a christened bairn and minded naething.
The upshot was that he gaed to the window an' stood glowrin' at Dule
water. The trees are unco thick, an' the water lies deep an' black under
the manse; and there was Janet washin' the cla'es wi' her coats kilted.
She had her back to the minister, an' he, for his pairt, hardly kenned
what he was lookin' at. Syne she turned round, an' shawed her face: Mr.
Soulis had the same cauld grue as twice that day afore, an' it was borne
in upon him what folk said, that Janet was deid lang syne, an' this was
a bogle in her clay-cauld flesh. He drew back a pickle and he scanned
her narrowly. She was tramp-trampin' in the cla'es, croonin' to hersel';
and eh! Gude guide us, but it was a fearsome face. Whiles she sang
louder, but there was nae man born o' woman that could tell the words o'
her sang; an' whiles she lookit side-lang doun, but there was naething
there for her to look at. There gaed a scunner through the flesh upon
his banes; and that was Heeven's advertisement. But Mr. Soulis just
blamed himsel', he said, to think sae ill of a puir, auld afflicted wife
that hadnae a freend forbye himsel'; an' he put up a bit prayer for him
an' her, an' drank a little caller water--for his heart rose again the
meat--an' gaed up to his naked bed in the gloaming.
That was a nicht that has never been forgotten in Ba'weary, the nicht o'
the seeventeenth of August, seventeen hun'er' an' twal'. It had been het
afore, as I hae said, but that nicht it was better than ever. The sun
gaed doun amang unco-lookin' clouds; it fell as mirk as the pit; no a
star, no a breath o' wund; ye couldnae see your han' afore your face,
and even the auld folk cuist the covers frae their beds and lay pechin'
for their breath. Wi' a' that he had upon his mind, it was gey and
unlikely Mr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep. He lay an' he tummled; the
gude, caller bed that he got into brunt his very banes; whiles he slept,
and whiles he waukened; whiles he heard the time o' nicht, and whiles a
tyke yowlin' up the muir, as if somebody was deid; whiles he thocht he
heard bogles claverin' in his lug, an' whiles he saw spunkies in the
room. He behoved, he judged, to be sick; an' sick he was--little he
jaloosed the sickness.
At the hinder end, he got a clearness in his mind, sat up in his sark on
the bed-side, and fell thinkin' ance mair o' the black man an' Janet. He
couldnae weel tell how--maybe it was the cauld to his feet--but it cam'
in up upon him wi' a spate that there was some connection between thir
twa, an' that either or baith o' them were bogles. And just at that
moment, in Janet's room, which was neist to his, there cam' a stramp o'
feet as if men were wars'lin', an' then a loud bang; an' then a wund
gaed reishling round the fower quarters of the house; an' then a' was
ance mair as seelent as the grave.
Mr. Soulis was feared for neither man nor deevil. He got his tinder-box,
an' lit a can'le. He made three steps o't ower to Janet's door. It was
on the hasp, an' he pushed it open, an' keeked bauldly in. It was a big
room, as big as the minister's ain, a' plenished wi' grand, auld, solid
gear, for he had nathing else. There was a fower-posted bed wi' auld
tapestry; and a braw cabinet of aik, that was fu' o' the minister's
divinity books, an' put there to be out o' the gate; an' a wheen duds o'
Janet's lying here and there about the floor. But nae Janet could Mr.
Soulis see; nor ony sign of a contention. In he gaed (an' there's few
that wad ha'e followed him) an' lookit a' round, an' listened. But there
was naethin' to be heard, neither inside the manse nor in a' Ba'weary
parish, an' naethin' to be seen but the muckle shadows turnin' round the
can'le. An' then, a' at ance, the minister's heart played dunt an' stood
stock-still; an' a cauld wund blew amang the hairs o' his heid. Whaten a
weary sicht was that for the puir man's een! For there was Janet
hangin' frae a nail beside the auld aik cabinet: her heid aye lay on her
shouther, her een were steeked, the tongue projeckit frae her mouth, and
her heels were twa feet clear abune the floor.
"God forgive us all!" thocht Mr. Soulis, "poor Janet's dead."
He cam' a step nearer to the corp; an' then his heart fair whammled in
his inside. For by what cantrip it wad ill-beseem a man to judge, she
was hingin' frae a single nail an' by a single wursted thread for
darnin' hose.
It's a awfu' thing to be your lane at nicht wi' siccan prodigies o'
darkness; but Mr. Soulis was strong in the Lord. He turned an' gaed his
ways oot o' that room, and lockit the door ahint him; and step by step,
doon the stairs, as heavy as leed; and set doon the can'le on the table
at the stairfoot. He couldnae pray, he couldnae think, he was dreepin'
wi' caul' swat, an' naething could he hear but the dunt-dunt-duntin' o'
his ain heart. He micht maybe have stood there an hour, or maybe twa, he
minded sae little; when a' o' a sudden, he heard a laigh, uncanny steer
up-stairs; a foot gaed to an' fro in the chalmer whaur the corp was
hingin'; syne the door was opened, though he minded weel that he had
lockit it; an' syne there was a step upon the landin', an' it seemed to
him as if the corp was lookin' ower the rail and doun upon him whaur he
stood.
He took up the can'le again (for he couldnae want the licht), and as
saftly as ever he could, gaed straucht out o' the manse an' to the far
end o' the causeway. It was aye pit-mirk; the flame o' th can'le, when
he set it on the grund, brunt steedy an clear as in a room; naething
moved, but the Dule water seepin' and sabbin' doon the glen, an' yon
unhaly footstep that cam' ploddin' doun the stairs inside the manse. He
kenned the foot ower weel, for it was Janet's; and at ilka step that
cam' a wee thing nearer, the cauld got deeper in his vitals. He
commended his soul to Him that made an' keepit him; "and O Lord," said
he, "give me strength this night to war against the powers of evil."
By this time the foot was comin' through the passage for the door; he
could hear a hand skirt alang the wa', as if the fearsome thing was
feelin' for its way. The saughs tossed an' maned thegether, a long sigh
cam' ower the hills, the flame o' the can'le was blawn aboot; an' there
stood the corp of Thrawn Janet, wi' her grogram goun an' her black
mutch, wi' the heid upon the shouther, an' the grin still upon the face
o't--leevin', ye wad he said--deid, as Mr. Soulis weel kenned--upon the
threshold o' the manse.
It's a strange thing that the saul of man should be that thirled into
his perishable body; but the minister saw that, an' his heart didnae
break.
She didnae stand there lang; she began to move again an' cam' slowly
towards Mr. Soulis whaur he stood under the saughs. A' the life o' his
body, a' the strength o' his speerit, were glowerin' frae his een. It
seemed she was gaun to speak, but wanted words, an' made a sign wi' the
left hand. There cam' a clap o' wund, like a cat's fuff; oot gaed the
can'le, the saughs skrieghed like folk; an' Mr. Soulis keened that, live
or die, this was the end o't.
"Witch, beldame, devil!" he cried, "I charge you, by the power of God,
begone--if you be dead, to the grave--if you be damned, to hell."
An' at that moment the Lord's ain hand out o' the Heevens struck the
Horror whaur it stood; the auld, deid, desecrated corp o' the
witch-wife, sae lang keepit frae the grave and hirsled round by deils,
lowed up like a brunstane spunk and fell in ashes to the grund; the
thunder followed, peal on dirling peal, the rairing rain upon the back
o' that; and Mr. Soulis lowped through the garden hedge, and ran, wi'
skelloch upon skelloch, for the clachan.
That same mornin', John Christie saw the Black Man pass the Muckle Cairn
as it was chappin' six; before eicht, he gaed by the change-house at
Knockdow; an' no lang after, Sandy M'Lellan saw him gaun linkin' doun
the braes frae Kilmackerlie. There's little doubt but it was him that
dwalled se lang in Janet's body; but he was awa' at last; and sinsyne
the deil has never fashed us in Ba'weary.
But it was a sair dispensation for the minister; lang, lang he lay
ravin' in his bed; and frae that hour to this, he was the man ye ken the
day.
VIII
THE YELLOW CAT[C]
WILBUR DANIEL STEELE
At least once in my life I have had the good fortune to board a deserted
vessel at sea. I say "good fortune" because it has left me the memory of
a singular impression. I have felt a ghost of the same thing two or
three times since then, when peeping through the doorway of an abandoned
house.
Now that vessel was not dead. She was a good vessel, a sound vessel,
even a handsome vessel, in her blunt-bowed, coastwise way. She sailed
under four lowers across as blue and glittering a sea as I have ever
known, and there was not a point in her sailing that one could lay a
finger upon as wrong. And yet, passing that schooner at two miles, one
knew, somehow, that no hand was on her wheel. Sometimes I can imagine a
vessel, stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea,
carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion
of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no
landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their
foreheads with just the shadow of a smile.
I wonder if they all scream--these ships that have lost their souls?
Mine screamed. We heard her voice, like nothing I have ever heard
before, when we rowed under her counter to read her name--the
_Marionnette_ it was, of Halifax. I remember how it made me shiver,
there in the full blaze of the sun, to hear her going on so, railing and
screaming in that stark fashion. And I remember, too, how our footsteps,
pattering through the vacant internals in search of that haggard
utterance, made me think of the footsteps of hurrying warders roused in
the night.
And we found a parrot in a cage; that was all. It wanted water. We gave
it water and went away to look things over, keeping pretty close
together, all of us. In the quarters the table was set for four. Two men
had begun to eat, by the evidences of the plates. Nowhere in the vessel
was there any sign of disorder, except one sea-chest broken out,
evidently in haste. Her papers were gone and the stern davits were
empty. That is how the case stood that day, and that is how it has stood
to this. I saw this same _Marionnette_ a week later, tied up to a
Hoboken dock, where she awaited news from her owners; but even there, in
the midst of all the water-front bustle, I could not get rid of the
feeling that she was still very far away--in a sort of shippish
other-world.
The thing happens now and then. Sometimes half a dozen years will go by
without a solitary wanderer of this sort crossing the ocean paths, and
then in a single season perhaps several of them will turn up: vacant
waifs, impassive and mysterious--a quarter-column of tidings tucked away
on the second page of the evening paper.
That is where I read the story about the _Abbie Rose_. I recollect how
painfully awkward and out-of-place it looked there, cramped between
ruled black edges and smelling of landsman's ink--this thing that had to
do essentially with air and vast coloured spaces. I forget the exact
words of the heading--something like "Abandoned Craft Picked Up At
Sea"--but I still have the clipping itself, couched in the formal patter
of the marine-news writer:
The first hint of another mystery of the sea came in to-day
when the schooner _Abbie Rose_ dropped anchor in the upper
river, manned only by a crew of one. It appears that the
outbound freighter _Mercury_ sighted the _Abbie Rose_ off
Block Island on Thursday last, acting in a suspicious
manner. A boat-party sent aboard found the schooner in
perfect order and condition, sailing under four lower sails,
the topsails being pursed up to the mastheads but not
stowed. With the exception of a yellow cat, the vessel was
found to be utterly deserted, though her small boat still
hung in the davits. No evidences of disorder were visible in
any part of the craft. The dishes were washed up, the stove
in the galley was still slightly warm to the touch,
everything in its proper place with the exception of the
vessel's papers, which were not to be found.
All indications being for fair weather, Captain Rohmer of
the _Mercury_ detailed two of his company to bring the find
back to this port, a distance of one hundred and fifteen
miles. The only man available with a knowledge of the
fore-and-aft rig was Stewart McCord, the second engineer. A
seaman by the name of Bjoernsen was sent with him. McCord
arrived this noon, after a very heavy voyage of five days,
reporting that Bjoernsen had fallen overboard while shaking
out the foretopsail. McCord himself showed evidence of the
hardships he has passed through, being almost a nervous
wreck.
Stewart McCord! Yes, Stewart McCord would have a knowledge of the
fore-and-aft rig, or of almost anything else connected with the affairs
of the sea. It happened that I used to know this fellow. I had even been
quite chummy with him in the old days--that is, to the extent of
drinking too many beers with him in certain hot-country ports. I
remembered him as a stolid and deliberate sort of a person, with an
amazing hodgepodge of learning, a stamp collection, and a theory about
the effects of tropical sunshine on the Caucasian race, to which I have
listened half of more than one night, stretched out naked on a
freighter's deck. He had not impressed me as a fellow who would be
bothered by his nerves.
And there was another thing about the story which struck me as rather
queer. Perhaps it is a relic of my seafaring days, but I have always
been a conscientious reader of the weather reports; and I could remember
no weather in the past week sufficient to shake a man out of a top,
especially a man by the name of Bjoernsen--a thoroughgoing seafaring
name.
I was destined to hear more of this in the evening, from the ancient
boatman who rowed me out on the upper river. He had been to sea in his
day. He knew enough to wonder about this thing, even to indulge in a
little superstitious awe about it.
"No sir-ee. Something _happened_ to them four chaps. And another
thing--"
I fancied I heard a sea-bird whining in the darkness overhead. A shape
moved out of the gloom ahead, passed to the left, lofty and silent, and
merged once more with the gloom behind--a barge at anchor, with the
sea-grass clinging around her water-line.
"Funny about that other chap," the old fellow speculated. "Bjoernsen--I
b'lieve he called 'im. Now that story sounds to me kind of--" He
feathered his oars with a suspicious jerk and peered at me. "This McCord
a friend of yourn?" he inquired.
"In a way," I said.
"Hm-m--well--" He turned on his thwart to squint ahead. "There she is,"
he announced, with something of relief, I thought.
It was hard at that time of night to make anything but a black blotch
out of the _Abbie Rose_. Of course I could see that she was pot-bellied,
like the rest of the coastwise sisterhood. And that McCord had not
stowed his topsails. I could make them out, pursed at the mastheads and
hanging down as far as the cross-trees, like huge, over-ripe pears.
Then I recollected that he had found them so--probably had not touched
them since; a queer way to leave tops, it seemed to me. I could see also
the glowing tip of a cigar floating restlessly along the farther rail. I
called: "McCord! Oh, McCord!"
The spark came swimming across the deck. "Hello! Hello, there--ah--"
There was a note of querulous uneasiness there that somehow jarred with
my remembrance of this man.
"Ridgeway," I explained.
He echoed the name uncertainly, still with that suggestion of
peevishness, hanging over the rail and peering down at us. "Oh! By
gracious!" he exclaimed, abruptly. "I'm glad to see you, Ridgeway. I had
a boatman coming out before this, but I guess--well, I guess he'll be
along. By gracious! I'm glad--"
"I'll not keep you," I told the gnome, putting the money in his palm and
reaching for the rail. McCord lent me a hand on my wrist. Then when I
stood squarely on the deck beside him he appeared to forget my presence,
leaned forward heavily on the rail, and squinted after my waning
boatman.
"Ahoy--boat!" he called out, sharply, shielding his lips with his hand.
His violence seemed to bring him out of the blank, for he fell
immediately to puffing strongly at his cigar and explaining in rather a
shame-voiced way that he was beginning to think his own boatman had
"passed him up."
"Come in and have a nip," he urged with an abrupt heartiness, clapping
me on the shoulder.
"So you've--" I did not say what I had intended. I was thinking that in
the old days McCord had made rather a fetish of touching nothing
stronger than beer. Neither had he been of the shoulder-clapping sort.
"So you've got something aboard?" I shifted.
"Dead men's liquor," he chuckled. It gave me a queer feeling in the pit
of my stomach to hear him. I began to wish I had not come, but there was
nothing for it now but to follow him into the after-house. The cabin
itself might have been nine feet square, with three bunks occupying the
port side. To the right opened the master's stateroom, and a door in the
forward bulkhead led to the galley.
I took in these features at a casual glance. Then, hardly knowing why I
did it, I began to examine them with greater care.
"Have you a match?" I asked. My voice sounded very small, as though
something unheard of had happened to all the air.
"Smoke?" he asked. "I'll get you a cigar."
"No." I took the proffered match, scratched it on the side of the galley
door, and passed out. There seemed to be a thousand pans there, throwing
my match back at me from every wall of the box-like compartment. Even
McCord's eyes, in the doorway, were large and round and shining. He
probably thought me crazy. Perhaps I was, a little. I ran the match
along close to the ceiling and came upon a rusty hook a little aport of
the centre.
"There," I said. "Was there anything hanging from this--er--say a
parrot--or something, McCord?" The match burned my fingers and went out.
"What do you mean?" McCord demanded from the doorway. I got myself back
into the comfortable yellow glow of the cabin before I answered, and
then it was a question.
"Do you happen to know anything about this craft's personal history?"
"No. What are you talking about! Why?"
"Well, I do," I offered. "For one thing, she's changed her name. And it
happens this isn't the first time she's--Well, damn it all, fourteen
years ago I helped pick up this whatever-she-is off the Virginia
Capes--in the same sort of condition. There you are!" I was yapping like
a nerve-strung puppy.
McCord leaned forward with his hands on the table, bringing his face
beneath the fan of the hanging-lamp. For the first time I could mark how
shockingly it had changed. It was almost colourless. The jaw had somehow
lost its old-time security and the eyes seemed to be loose in their
sockets. I had expected him to start at my announcement; he only blinked
at the light.
"I am not surprised," he remarked at length. "After what I've seen and
heard--" He lifted his fist and brought it down with a sudden crash on
the table. "Man--let's have a nip!"
He was off before I could say a word, fumbling out of sight in the
narrow stateroom. Presently he reappeared, holding a glass in either
hand and a dark bottle hugged between his elbows. Putting the glasses
down, he held up the bottle between his eyes and the lamp, and its
shadow, falling across his face, green and luminous at the core, gave
him a ghastly look--like a mutilation or an unspeakable birthmark. He
shook the bottle gently and chuckled his "Dead men's liquor" again. Then
he poured two half-glasses of the clear gin, swallowed his portion, and
sat down.
"A parrot," he mused, a little of the liquor's colour creeping into his
cheeks. "No, this time it was a cat, Ridgeway. A yellow cat. She was--"
"_Was?_" I caught him up. "What's happened--what's become of her?"
"Vanished. Evaporated. I haven't seen her since night before last, when
I caught her trying to lower the boat--"
"_Stop it!_" It was I who banged the table now, without any of the
reserve of decency. "McCord, you're drunk--_drunk_, I tell you. A _cat_!
Let a _cat_ throw you off your head like this! She's probably hiding out
below this minute, on affairs of her own."
"Hiding?" He regarded me for a moment with the queer superiority of the
damned. "I guess you don't realize how many times I've been over this
hulk, from decks to keelson, with a mallet and a foot-rule."
"Or fallen overboard," I shifted, with less assurance. "Like this fellow
Bjoernsen. By the way, McCord--" I stopped there on account of the look
in his eyes.
He reached out, poured himself a shot, swallowed it, and got up to
shuffle about the confined quarters. I watched their restless
circuit--my friend and his jumping shadow. He stopped and bent forward
to examine a Sunday-supplement chromo tacked on the wall, and the two
heads drew together, as though there were something to whisper. Of a
sudden I seemed to hear the old gnome croaking, "Now that story sounds
to me kind of--"
McCord straightened up and turned to face me.
"What do you know about Bjoernsen?" he demanded.
"Well--only what they had you saying in the papers," I told him.
"Pshaw!" He snapped his fingers, tossing the affair aside. "I found her
log," he announced in quite another voice.
"You did, eh? I judged, from what I read in the paper, that there wasn't
a sign."
"No, no; I happened on this the other night, under the mattress in
there." He jerked his head toward the stateroom. "Wait!" I heard him
knocking things over in the dark and mumbling at them. After a moment he
came out and threw on the table a long, cloth-covered ledger, of the
common commercial sort. It lay open at about the middle, showing close
script running indiscriminately across the column ruling.
"When I said 'log,'" he went on, "I guess I was going it a little
strong. At least, I wouldn't want that sort of log found around _my_
vessel. Let's call it a personal record. Here's his picture,
somewhere--" He shook the book by its back and a common kodak blue-print
fluttered to the table. It was the likeness of a solid man with a
paunch, a huge square beard, small squinting eyes, and a bald head.
"What do you make of him--a writing chap?"
"From the nose down, yes," I estimated. "From the nose up, he will 'tend
to his own business if you will 'tend to yours, strictly."
McCord slapped his thigh. "By gracious! that's the fellow! He hates the
Chinaman. He knows as well as anything he ought not to put down in black
and white how intolerably he hates the Chinaman, and yet he must sneak
off to his cubby-hole and suck his pencil, and--how is it Stevenson has
it?--the 'agony of composition,' you remember. Can you imagine the
fellow, Ridgeway, bundling down here with the fever on him--"
"About the Chinaman," I broke in. "I think you said something about a
Chinaman?"