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The Queen of Hearts
by Wilkie Collins
LETTER OF DEDICATION.
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TO
EMILE FORGUES.
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AT a time when French readers were altogether unaware of the
existence of any books of my writing, a critical examination of
my novels appeared under your signature in the _Revue des Deux
Moudes_. I read that article, at the time of its appearance, with
sincere pleasure and sincere gratitude to the writer, and I have
honestly done my best to profit by it ever since.
At a later period, when arrangements were made for the
publication of my novels in Paris, you kindly undertook, at some
sacrifice of your own convenience, to give the first of the
series--"The Dead Secret"--the great advantage of being rendered
into French by your pen. Your excellent translation of "The
Lighthouse" had already taught me how to appreciate the value of
your assistance; and when "The Dead Secret" appeared in its
French form, although I was sensibly gratified, I was by no means
surprised to find my fortunate work of fiction, not translated,
in the mechanical sense of the word, but transformed from a novel
that I had written in my language to a novel that you might have
written in yours.
I am now about to ask you to confer one more literary obligation
on me by accepting the dedication of this book, as the earliest
acknowledgment which it has been in my power to make of the debt
I owe to my critic, to my translator, and to my friend.
The stories which form the principal contents of the following
pages are all, more or less, exercises in that art which I have
now studied anxiously for some years, and which I still hope to
cultivate, to better and better purpose, for many more. Allow me,
by inscribing the collection to you, to secure one reader for it
at the outset of its progress through the world of letters whose
capacity for seeing all a writer's defects may be matched by many
other critics, but whose rarer faculty of seeing all a writer's
merits is equaled by very few.
WILKIE COLLINS.
THE QUEEN OF HEARTS.
CHAPTER I.
OURSELVES.
WE were three quiet, lonely old men, and SHE was a lively,
handsome young woman, and we were at our wits' end what to do
with her.
A word about ourselves, first of all--a necessary word, to
explain the singular situation of our fair young guest.
We are three brothers; and we live in a barbarous, dismal old
house called The Glen Tower. Our place of abode stands in a
hilly, lonesome district of South Wales. No such thing as a line
of railway runs anywhere near us. No gentleman's seat is within
an easy drive of us. We are at an unspeakably inconvenient
distance from a town, and the village to which we send for our
letters is three miles off.
My eldest brother, Owen, was brought up to the Church. All the
prime of his life was passed in a populous London parish. For
more years than I now like to reckon up, he worked unremittingly,
in defiance of failing health and adverse fortune, amid the
multitudinous misery of the London poor; and he would, in all
probability, have sacrificed his life to his duty long before the
present time if The Glen Tower had not come into his possession
through two unexpected deaths in the elder and richer branch of
our family. This opening to him of a place of rest and refuge
saved his life. No man ever drew breath who better deserved the
gifts of fortune; for no man, I sincerely believe, more tender of
others, more diffident of himself, more gentle, more generous,
and more simple-hearted than Owen, ever walked this earth.
My second brother, Morgan, started in life as a doctor, and
learned all that his profession could teach him at home and
abroad. He realized a moderate independence by his practice,
beginning in one of our large northern towns and ending as a
physician in London; but, although he was well known and
appreciated among his brethren, he failed to gain that sort of
reputation with the public which elevates a man into the position
of a great doctor. The ladies never liked him. In the first
place, he was ugly (Morgan will excuse me for mentioning this);
in the second place, he was an inveterate smoker, and he smelled
of tobacco when he felt languid pulses in elegant bedrooms; in
the third place, he was the most formidably outspoken teller of
the truth as regarded himself, his profession, and his patients,
that ever imperiled the social standing of the science of
medicine. For these reasons, and for others which it is not
necessary to mention, he never pushed his way, as a doctor, into
the front ranks, and he never cared to do so. About a year after
Owen came into possession of The Glen Tower, Morgan discovered
that he had saved as much money for his old age as a sensible man
could want; that he was tired of the active pursuit--or, as he
termed it, of the dignified quackery of his profession; and that
it was only common charity to give his invalid brother a
companion who could physic him for nothing, and so prevent him
from getting rid of his money in the worst of all possible ways,
by wasting it on doctors' bills. In a week after Morgan had
arrived at these conclusions, he was settled at The Glen Tower;
and from that time, opposite as their characters were, my two
elder brothers lived together in their lonely retreat, thoroughly
understanding, and, in their very different ways, heartily loving
one another.
Many years passed before I, the youngest of the three--christened
by the unmelodious name of Griffith--found my way, in my turn, to
the dreary old house, and the sheltering quiet of the Welsh
hills. My career in life had led me away from my brothers; and
even now, when we are all united, I have still ties and interests
to connect me with the outer world which neither Owen nor Morgan
possess.
I was brought up to the Bar. After my first year's study of the
law, I wearied of it, and strayed aside idly into the brighter
and more attractive paths of literature. My occasional occupation
with my pen was varied by long traveling excursions in all parts
of the Continent; year by year my circle of gay friends and
acquaintances increased, and I bade fair to sink into the
condition of a wandering desultory man, without a fixed purpose
in life of any sort, when I was saved by what has saved many
another in my situation--an attachment to a good and a sensible
woman. By the time I had reached the age of thirty-five, I had
done what neither of my brothers had done before me--I had
married.
As a single man, my own small independence, aided by what little
additions to it I could pick up with my pen, had been sufficient
for my wants; but with marriage and its responsibilities came the
necessity for serious exertion. I returned to my neglected
studies, and grappled resolutely, this time, with the intricate
difficulties of the law. I was called to the Bar. My wife's
father aided me with his interest, and I started into practice
without difficulty and without delay.
For the next twenty years my married life was a scene of
happiness and prosperity, on which I now look back with a
grateful tenderness that no words of mine can express. The memory
of my wife is busy at my heart while I think of those past times.
The forgotten tears rise in my eyes again, and trouble the course
of my pen while it traces these simple lines.
Let me pass rapidly over the one unspeakable misery of my life;
let me try to remember now, as I tried to remember then, that she
lived to see our only child--our son, who was so good to her, who
is still so good to me--grow up to manhood; that her head lay on
my bosom when she died; and that the last frail movement of her
hand in this world was the movement that brought it closer to her
boy's lips.
I bore the blow--with God's help I bore it, and bear it still.
But it struck me away forever from my hold on social life; from
the purposes and pursuits, the companions and the pleasures of
twenty years, which her presence had sanctioned and made dear to
me. If my son George had desired to follow my profession, I
should still have struggled against myself, and have kept my
place in the world until I had seen h im prosperous and settled.
But his choice led him to the army; and before his mother's death
he had obtained his commission, and had entered on his path in
life. No other responsibility remained to claim from me the
sacrifice of myself; my brothers had made my place ready for me
by their fireside; my heart yearned, in its desolation, for the
friends and companions of the old boyish days; my good, brave son
promised that no year should pass, as long as he was in England,
without his coming to cheer me; and so it happened that I, in my
turn, withdrew from the world, which had once been a bright and a
happy world to me, and retired to end my days, peacefully,
contentedly, and gratefully, as my brothers are ending theirs, in
the solitude of The Glen Tower.
How many years have passed since we have all three been united it
is not necessary to relate. It will be more to the purpose if I
briefly record that we have never been separated since the day
which first saw us assembled together in our hillside retreat;
that we have never yet wearied of the time, of the place, or of
ourselves; and that the influence of solitude on our hearts and
minds has not altered them for the worse, for it has not
embittered us toward our fellow-creatures, and it has not dried
up in us the sources from which harmless occupations and innocent
pleasures may flow refreshingly to the last over the waste places
of human life. Thus much for our own story, and for the
circumstances which have withdrawn us from the world for the rest
of our days.
And now imagine us three lonely old men, tall and lean, and
white-headed; dressed, more from past habit than from present
association, in customary suits of solemn black: Brother Owen,
yielding, gentle, and affectionate in look, voice, and manner;
brother Morgan, with a quaint, surface-sourness of address, and a
tone of dry sarcasm in his talk, which single him out, on all
occasions, as a character in our little circle; brother Griffith
forming the link between his two elder companions, capable, at
one time, of sympathizing with the quiet, thoughtful tone of
Owen's conversation, and ready, at another, to exchange brisk
severities on life and manners with Morgan--in short, a pliable,
double-sided old lawyer, who stands between the clergyman-brother
and the physician-brother with an ear ready for each, and with a
heart open to both, share and share together.
Imagine the strange old building in which we live to be really
what its name implies--a tower standing in a glen; in past times
the fortress of a fighting Welsh chieftain; in present times a
dreary land-lighthouse, built up in many stories of two rooms
each, with a little modern lean-to of cottage form tacked on
quaintly to one of its sides; the great hill, on whose lowest
slope it stands, rising precipitously behind it; a dark,
swift-flowing stream in the valley below; hills on hills all
round, and no way of approach but by one of the loneliest and
wildest crossroads in all South Wales.
Imagine such a place of abode as this, and such inhabitants of it
as ourselves, and them picture the descent among us--as of a
goddess dropping from the clouds--of a lively, handsome,
fashionable young lady--a bright, gay, butterfly creature, used
to flutter away its existence in the broad sunshine of perpetual
gayety--a child of the new generation, with all the modern ideas
whirling together in her pretty head, and all the modern
accomplishments at the tips of her delicate fingers. Imagine such
a light-hearted daughter of Eve as this, the spoiled darling of
society, the charming spendthrift of Nature's choicest treasures
of beauty and youth, suddenly flashing into the dim life of three
weary old men--suddenly dropped into the place, of all others,
which is least fit for her--suddenly shut out from the world in
the lonely quiet of the loneliest home in England. Realize, if it
be possible, all that is most whimsical and most anomalous in
such a situation as this, and the startling confession contained
in the opening sentence of these pages will no longer excite the
faintest emotion of surprise. Who can wonder now, when our bright
young goddess really descended on us, that I and my brothers were
all three at our wits' end what to do with her!
CHAPTER II.
OUR DILEMMA.
WHO is the young lady? And how did she find her way into The Glen
Tower?
Her name (in relation to which I shall have something more to say
a little further on) is Jessie Yelverton. She is an orphan and an
only child. Her mother died while she was an infant; her father
was my dear and valued friend, Major Yelverton. He lived long
enough to celebrate his darling's seventh birthday. When he died
he intrusted his authority over her and his responsibility toward
her to his brother and to me.
When I was summoned to the reading of the major's will, I knew
perfectly well that I should hear myself appointed guardian and
executor with his brother; and I had been also made acquainted
with my lost friend's wishes as to his daughter's education, and
with his intentions as to the disposal of all his property in her
favor. My own idea, therefore, was, that the reading of the will
would inform me of nothing which I had not known in the
testator's lifetime. When the day came for hearing it, however, I
found that I had been over hasty in arriving at this conclusion.
Toward the end of the document there was a clause inserted which
took me entirely by surprise.
After providing for the education of Miss Yelverton under the
direction of her guardians, and for her residence, under ordinary
circumstances, with the major's sister, Lady Westwick, the clause
concluded by saddling the child's future inheritance with this
curious condition:
From the period of her leaving school to the period of her
reaching the age of twenty-one years, Miss Yelverton was to pass
not less than six consecutive weeks out of every year under the
roof of one of her two guardians. During the lives of both of
them, it was left to her own choice to say which of the two she
would prefer to live with. In all other respects the condition
was imperative. If she forfeited it, excepting, of course, the
case of the deaths of both her guardians, she was only to have a
life-interest in the property; if she obeyed it, the money itself
was to become her own possession on the day when she completed
her twenty-first year.
This clause in the will, as I have said, took me at first by
surprise. I remembered how devotedly Lady Westwick had soothed
her sister-in-law's death-bed sufferings, and how tenderly she
had afterward watched over the welfare of the little motherless
child--I remembered the innumerable claims she had established in
this way on her brother's confidence in her affection for his
orphan daughter, and I was, therefore, naturally amazed at the
appearance of a condition in his will which seemed to show a
positive distrust of Lady Westwick's undivided influence over the
character and conduct of her niece.
A few words from my fellow-guardian, Mr. Richard Yelverton, and a
little after-consideration of some of my deceased friend's
peculiarities of disposition and feeling, to which I had not
hitherto attached sufficient importance, were enough to make me
understand the motives by which he had been influenced in
providing for the future of his child.
Major Yelverton had raised himself to a position of affluence and
eminence from a very humble origin. He was the son of a small
farmer, and it was his pride never to forget this circumstance,
never to be ashamed of it, and never to allow the prejudices of
society to influence his own settled opinions on social questions
in general.
Acting, in all that related to his intercourse with the world, on
such principles as these, the major, it is hardly necessary to
say, held some strangely heterodox opinions on the modern
education of girls, and on the evil influence of society over the
characters of women in general. Out of the strength of those
opinions, and out of the certainty of his conviction that his
sister did not share them, had grown that condition in his will
which removed his daughter from the influence of her aunt for six
consec utive weeks in every year. Lady Westwick was the most
light-hearted, the most generous, the most impulsive of women;
capable, when any serious occasion called it forth, of all that
was devoted and self-sacrificing, but, at other and ordinary
times, constitutionally restless, frivolous, and eager for
perpetual gayety. Distrusting the sort of life which he knew his
daughter would lead under her aunt's roof, and at the same time
gratefully remembering his sister's affectionate devotion toward
his dying wife and her helpless infant, Major Yelverton had
attempted to make a compromise, which, while it allowed Lady
Westwick the close domestic intercourse with her niece that she
had earned by innumerable kind offices, should, at the same time,
place the young girl for a fixed period of every year of her
minority under the corrective care of two such quiet
old-fashioned guardians as his brother and myself. Such is the
history of the clause in the will. My friend little thought, when
he dictated it, of the extraordinary result to which it was one
day to lead.
For some years, however, events ran on smoothly enough. Little
Jessie was sent to an excellent school, with strict instructions
to the mistress to make a good girl of her, and not a fashionable
young lady. Although she was reported to be anything but a
pattern pupil in respect of attention to her lessons, she became
from the first the chosen favorite of every one about her. The
very offenses which she committed against the discipline of the
school were of the sort which provoke a smile even on the stern
countenance of authority itself. One of these quaint freaks of
mischief may not inappropriately be mentioned here, inasmuch as
it gained her the pretty nickname under which she will be found
to appear occasionally in these pages.
On a certain autumn night shortly after the Midsummer vacation,
the mistress of the school fancied she saw a light under the door
of the bedroom occupied by Jessie and three other girls. It was
then close on midnight; and, fearing that some case of sudden
illness might have happened, she hastened into the room. On
opening the door, she discovered, to her horror and amazement,
that all four girls were out of bed--were dressed in
brilliantly-fantastic costumes, representing the four grotesque
"Queens" of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs, familiar to us
all on the pack of cards--and were dancing a quadrille, in which
Jessie sustained the character of The Queen of Hearts. The next
morning's investigation disclosed that Miss Yelverton had
smuggled the dresses into the school, and had amused herself by
giving an impromptu fancy ball to her companions, in imitation of
an entertainment of the same kind at which she had figured in a
"court-card" quadrille at her aunt's country house.
The dresses were instantly confiscated and the necessary
punishment promptly administered; but the remembrance of Jessie's
extraordinary outrage on bedroom discipline lasted long enough to
become one of the traditions of the school, and she and her
sister-culprits were thenceforth hailed as the "queens" of the
four "suites" by their class-companions whenever the mistress's
back was turned, Whatever might have become of the nicknames thus
employed in relation to the other three girls, such a mock title
as The Queen of Hearts was too appropriately descriptive of the
natural charm of Jessie's character, as well as of the adventure
in which she had taken the lead, not to rise naturally to the
lips of every one who knew her. It followed her to her aunt's
house--it came to be as habitually and familiarly connected with
her, among her friends of all ages, as if it had been formally
inscribed on her baptismal register; and it has stolen its way
into these pages because it falls from my pen naturally and
inevitably, exactly as it often falls from my lips in real life.
When Jessie left school the first difficulty presented itself--in
other words, the necessity arose of fulfilling the conditions of
the will. At that time I was already settled at The Glen Tower,
and her living six weeks in our dismal solitude and our humdrum
society was, as she herself frankly wrote me word, quite out of
the question. Fortunately, she had always got on well with her
uncle and his family; so she exerted her liberty of choice, and,
much to her own relief and to mine also, passed her regular six
weeks of probation, year after year, under Mr. Richard
Yelverton's roof.
During this period I heard of her regularly, sometimes from my
fellow-guardian, sometimes from my son George, who, whenever his
military duties allowed him the opportunity, contrived to see
her, now at her aunt's house, and now at Mr. Yelverton's. The
particulars of her character and conduct, which I gleaned in this
way, more than sufficed to convince me that the poor major's plan
for the careful training of his daughter's disposition, though
plausible enough in theory, was little better than a total
failure in practice. Miss Jessie, to use the expressive common
phrase, took after her aunt. She was as generous, as impulsive,
as light-hearted, as fond of change, and gayety, and fine
clothes--in short, as complete and genuine a woman as Lady
Westwick herself. It was impossible to reform the "Queen of
Hearts," and equally impossible not to love her. Such, in few
words, was my fellow-guardian's report of his experience of our
handsome young ward.
So the time passed till the year came of which I am now
writing--the ever-memorable year, to England, of the Russian war.
It happened that I had heard less than usual at this period, and
indeed for many months before it, of Jessie and her proceedings.
My son had been ordered out with his regiment to the Crimea in
1854, and had other work in hand now than recording the sayings
and doings of a young lady. Mr. Richard Yelverton, who had been
hitherto used to write to me with tolerable regularity, seemed
now, for some reason that I could not conjecture, to have
forgotten my existence. Ultimately I was reminded of my ward by
one of George's own letters, in which he asked for news of her;
and I wrote at once to Mr. Yelverton. The answer that reached me
was written by his wife: he was dangerously ill. The next letter
that came informed me of his death. This happened early in the
spring of the year 1855.
I am ashamed to confess it, but the change in my own position was
the first idea that crossed my mind when I read the news of Mr.
Yelverton's death. I was now left sole guardian, and Jessie
Yelverton wanted a year still of coming of age.
By the next day's post I wrote to her about the altered state of
the relations between us. She was then on the Continent with her
aunt, having gone abroad at the very beginning of the year.
Consequently, so far as eighteen hundred and fifty-five was
concerned, the condition exacted by the will yet remained to be
performed. She had still six weeks to pass--her last six weeks,
seeing that she was now twenty years old--under the roof of one
of her guardians, and I was now the only guardian left.
In due course of time I received my answer, written on
rose-colored paper, and expressed throughout in a tone of light,
easy, feminine banter, which amused me in spite of myself. Miss
Jessie, according to her own account, was hesitating, on receipt
of my letter, between two alternatives--the one, of allowing
herself to be buried six weeks in The Glen Tower; the other, of
breaking the condition, giving up the money, and remaining
magnanimously contented with nothing but a life-interest in her
father's property. At present she inclined decidedly toward
giving up the money and escaping the clutches of "the three
horrid old men;" but she would let me know again if she happened
to change her mind. And so, with best love, she would beg to
remain always affectionately mine, as long as she was well out of
my reach.
The summer passed, the autumn came, and I never heard from her
again. Under ordinary circumstances, this long silence might have
made me feel a little uneasy. But news reached me about this time
from the Crimea that my son was wounded--not dangerously, thank
God, but still severely enough to be la id up--and all my
anxieties were now centered in that direction. By the beginning
of September, however, I got better accounts of him, and my mind
was made easy enough to let me think of Jessie again. Just as I
was considering the necessity of writing once more to my
refractory ward, a second letter arrived from her. She had
returned at last from abroad, had suddenly changed her mind,
suddenly grown sick of society, suddenly become enamored of the
pleasures of retirement, and suddenly found out that the three
horrid old men were three dear old men, and that six weeks'
solitude at The Glen Tower was the luxury, of all others, that
she languished for most. As a necessary result of this altered
state of things, she would therefore now propose to spend her
allotted six weeks with her guardian. We might certainly expect
her on the twentieth of September, and she would take the
greatest care to fit herself for our society by arriving in the
lowest possible spirits, and bringing her own sackcloth and ashes
along with her.
The first ordeal to which this alarming letter forced me to
submit was the breaking of the news it contained to my two
brothers. The disclosure affected them very differently. Poor
dear Owen merely turned pale, lifted his weak, thin hands in a
panic-stricken manner, and then sat staring at me in speechless
and motionless bewilderment. Morgan stood up straight before me,
plunged both his hands into his pockets, burst suddenly into the
harshest laugh I ever heard from his lips, and told me, with an
air of triumph, that it was exactly what he expected.
"What you expected?" I repeated, in astonishment.
"Yes," returned Morgan, with his bitterest emphasis. "It doesn't
surprise me in the least. It's the way things go in this
world--it's the regular moral see-saw of good and evil--the old
story with the old end to it. They were too happy in the garden
of Eden--down comes the serpent and turns them out. Solomon was
too wise--down comes the Queen of Sheba, and makes a fool of him.
We've been too comfortable at The Glen Tower--down comes a woman,
and sets us all three by the ears together. All I wonder at is
that it hasn't happened before." With those words Morgan
resignedly took out his pipe, put on his old felt hat and turned
to the door.
"You're not going away before she comes?" exclaimed Owen,
piteously. "Don't leave us--please don't leave us!"
"Going!" cried Morgan, with great contempt. "What should I gain
by that? When destiny has found a man out, and heated his
gridiron for him, he has nothing left to do, that I know of, but
to get up and sit on it."
I opened my lips to protest against the implied comparison
between a young lady and a hot gridiron, but, before I could
speak, Morgan was gone.
"Well," I said to Owen, "we must make the best of it. We must
brush up our manners, and set the house tidy, and amuse her as
well as we can. The difficulty is where to put her; and, when
that is settled, the next puzzle will be, what to order in to
make her comfortable. It's a hard thing, brother, to say what
will or what will not please a young lady's taste."
Owen looked absently at me, in greater bewilderment than
ever--opened his eyes in perplexed consideration--repeated to
himself slowly the word "tastes"--and then helped me with this
suggestion:
"Hadn't we better begin, Griffith, by getting her a plum-cake?"
"My dear Owen," I remonstrated, "it is a grown young woman who is
coming to see us, not a little girl from school."
"Oh!" said Owen, more confused than before. "Yes--I see; we
couldn't do wrong, I suppose--could we?--if we got her a little
dog, and a lot of new gowns."
There was, evidently, no more help in the way of advice to be
expected from Owen than from Morgan himself. As I came to that
conclusion, I saw through the window our old housekeeper on her
way, with her basket, to the kitchen-garden, and left the room to
ascertain if she could assist us.
To my great dismay, the housekeeper took even a more gloomy view
than Morgan of the approaching event. When I had explained all
the circumstances to her, she carefully put down her basket,
crossed her arms, and said to me in slow, deliberate, mysterious
tones:
"You want my advice about what's to be done with this young
woman? Well, sir, here's my advice: Don't you trouble your head
about her. It won't be no use. Mind, I tell you, it won't be no
use."
"What do you mean?"
"You look at this place, sir--it's more like a prison than a
house, isn't it? You, look at us as lives in it. We've got
(saving your presence) a foot apiece in our graves, haven't we?
When you was young yourself, sir, what would you have done if
they had shut you up for six weeks in such a place as this, among
your grandfathers and grandmothers, with their feet in the
grave?"
"I really can't say."
"I can, sir. You'd have run away. _She'll_ run away. Don't you
worry your head about her--she'll save you the trouble. I tell
you again, she'll run away."
With those ominous words the housekeeper took up her basket,
sighed heavily, and left me.
I sat down under a tree quite helpless. Here was the whole
responsibility shifted upon my miserable shoulders. Not a lady in
the neighborhood to whom I could apply for assistance, and the
nearest shop eight miles distant from us. The toughest case I
ever had to conduct, when I was at the Bar, was plain sailing
compared with the difficulty of receiving our fair guest.
It was absolutely necessary, however, to decide at once where she
was to sleep. All the rooms in the tower were of stone--dark,
gloomy, and cold even in the summer-time. Impossible to put her
in any one of them. The only other alternative was to lodge her
in the little modern lean-to, which I have already described as
being tacked on to the side of the old building. It contained
three cottage-rooms, and they might be made barely habitable for
a young lady. But then those rooms were occupied by Morgan. His
books were in one, his bed was in another, his pipes and general
lumber were in the third. Could I expect him, after the sour
similitudes he had used in reference to our expected visitor, to
turn out of his habitation and disarrange all his habits for her
convenience? The bare idea of proposing the thing to him seemed
ridiculous; and yet inexorable necessity left me no choice but to
make the hopeless experiment. I walked back to the tower hastily
and desperately, to face the worst that might happen before my
courage cooled altogether.
On crossing the threshold of the hall door I was stopped, to my
great amazement, by a procession of three of the farm-servants,
followed by Morgan, all walking after each other, in Indian file,
toward the spiral staircase that led to the top of the tower. The
first of the servants carried the materials for making a fire;
the second bore an inverted arm-chair on his head; the third
tottered under a heavy load of books; while Morgan came last,
with his canister of tobacco in his hand, his dressing-gown over
his shoulders, and his whole collection of pipes hugged up
together in a bundle under his arm.
"What on earth does this mean?" I inquired.
"It means taking Time by the forelock," answered Morgan, looking
at me with a smile of sour satisfaction. "I've got the start of
your young woman, Griffith, and I'm making the most of it."
"But where, in Heaven's name, are you going?" I asked, as the
head man of the procession disappeared with his firing up the
staircase.
"How high is this tower?" retorted Morgan.
"Seven stories, to be sure," I replied.
"Very good," said my eccentric brother, setting his foot on the
first stair, "I'm going up to the seventh."
"You can't," I shouted.
"_She_ can't, you mean," said Morgan, "and that's exactly why I'm
going there."
"But the room is not furnished."
"It's out of her reach."
"One of the windows has fallen to pieces."
"It's out of her reach."
"There's a crow's nest in the corner."
"It's out of her reach."
By the time this unanswerable argument had attained its third
repetition, Morgan, in his turn, had disappeared up the winding
stairs. I knew him too well to attempt any further protest.
Here was my first difficulty smoothed away most unexpectedly; for
here were the rooms in the lean-to placed by their owner's free
act and deed at my disposal. I wrote on the spot to the one
upholsterer of our distant county town to come immediately and
survey the premises, and sent off a mounted messenger with the
letter. This done, and the necessary order also dispatched to the
carpenter and glazier to set them at work on Morgan's sky-parlor
in the seventh story, I began to feel, for the first time, as if
my scattered wits were coming back to me. By the time the evening
had closed in I had hit on no less than three excellent ideas,
all providing for the future comfort and amusement of our fair
guest. The first idea was to get her a Welsh pony; the second was
to hire a piano from the county town; the third was to send for a
boxful of novels from London. I must confess I thought these
projects for pleasing her very happily conceived, and Owen agreed
with me. Morgan, as usual, took the opposite view. He said she
would yawn over the novels, turn up her nose at the piano, and
fracture her skull with the pony. As for the housekeeper, she
stuck to her text as stoutly in the evening as she had stuck to
it in the morning. "Pianner or no pianner, story-book or no
story-book, pony or no pony, you mark my words, sir--that young
woman will run away."
Such were the housekeeper's parting words when she wished me
good-night.
When the next morning came, and brought with it that terrible
waking time which sets a man's hopes and projects before him, the
great as well as the small, stripped bare of every illusion, it
is not to be concealed that I felt less sanguine of our success
in entertaining the coming guest. So far as external preparations
were concerned, there seemed, indeed, but little to improve; but
apart from these, what had we to offer, in ourselves and our
society, to attract her? There lay the knotty point of the
question, and there the grand difficulty of finding an answer.
I fall into serious reflection while I am dressing on the
pursuits and occupations with which we three brothers have been
accustomed, for years past, to beguile the time. Are they at all
likely, in the case of any one of us, to interest or amuse her?
My chief occupation, to begin with the youngest, consists, in
acting as steward on Owen's property. The routine of my duties
has never lost its sober attraction to my tastes, for it has
always employed me in watching the best interests of my brother,
and of my son also, who is one day to be his heir. But can I
expect our fair guest to sympathize with such family concerns as
these? Clearly not.
Morgan's pursuit comes next in order of review--a pursuit of a
far more ambitious nature than mine. It was always part of my
second brother's whimsical, self-contradictory character to view
with the profoundest contempt the learned profession by which he
gained his livelihood, and he is now occupying the long leisure
hours of his old age in composing a voluminous treatise,
intended, one of these days, to eject the whole body corporate of
doctors from the position which they have usurped in the
estimation of their fellow-creatures. This daring work is
entitled "An Examination of the Claims of Medicine on the
Gratitude of Mankind. Decided in the Negative by a Retired
Physician." So far as I can tell, the book is likely to extend to
the dimensions of an Encyclopedia; for it is Morgan's plan to
treat his comprehensive subject principally from the historical
point of view, and to run down all the doctors of antiquity, one
after another, in regular succession, from the first of the
tribe. When I last heard of his progress he was hard on the heels
of Hippocrates, but had no immediate prospect of tripping up his
successor, Is this the sort of occupation (I ask myself) in which
a modern young lady is likely to feel the slightest interest?
Once again, clearly not.
Owen's favorite employment is, in its way, quite as
characteristic as Morgan's, and it has the great additional
advantage of appealing to a much larger variety of tastes. My
eldest brother--great at drawing and painting when he was a lad,
always interested in artists and their works in after life--has
resumed, in his declining years, the holiday occupation of his
schoolboy days. As an amateur landscape-painter, he works with
more satisfaction to himself, uses more color, wears out more
brushes, and makes a greater smell of paint in his studio than
any artist by profession, native or foreign, whom I ever met
with. In look, in manner, and in disposition, the gentlest of
mankind, Owen, by some singular anomaly in his character, which
he seems to have caught from Morgan, glories placidly in the
wildest and most frightful range of subjects which his art is
capable of representing. Immeasurable ruins, in howling
wildernesses, with blood-red sunsets gleaming over them;
thunder-clouds rent with lightning, hovering over splitting trees
on the verges of awful precipices; hurricanes, shipwrecks, waves,
and whirlpools follow each other on his canvas, without an
intervening glimpse of quiet everyday nature to relieve the
succession of pictorial horrors. When I see him at his easel, so
neat and quiet, so unpretending and modest in himself, with such
a composed expression on his attentive face, with such a weak
white hand to guide such bold, big brushes, and when I look at
the frightful canvasful of terrors which he is serenely
aggravating in fierceness and intensity with every successive
touch, I find it difficult to realize the connection between my
brother and his work, though I see them before me not six inches
apart. Will this quaint spectacle possess any humorous
attractions for Miss Jessie? Perhaps it may. There is some slight
chance that Owen's employment will be lucky enough to interest
her.
Thus far my morning cogitations advance doubtfully enough, but
they altogether fail in carrying me beyond the narrow circle of
The Glen Tower. I try hard, in our visitor's interest, to look
into the resources of the little world around us, and I find my
efforts rewarded by the prospect of a total blank.
Is there any presentable living soul in the neighborhood whom we
can invite to meet her? Not one. There are, as I have already
said, no country seats near us; and society in the county town
has long since learned to regard us as three misanthropes,
strongly suspected, from our monastic way of life and our dismal
black costume, of being popish priests in disguise. In other
parts of England the clergyman of the parish might help us out of
our difficulty; but here in South Wales, and in this latter half
of the nineteenth century, we have the old type parson of the
days of Fielding still in a state of perfect preservation. Our
local clergyman receives a stipend which is too paltry to bear
comparison with the wages of an ordinary mechanic. In dress,
manners, and tastes he is about on a level with the upper class
of agricultural laborer. When attempts have been made by
well-meaning gentlefolks to recognize the claims of his
profession by asking him to their houses, he has been known, on
more than one occasion, to leave his plowman's pair of shoes in
the hall, and enter the drawing-room respectfully in his
stockings. Where he preaches, miles and miles away from us and
from the poor cottage in which he lives, if he sees any of the
company in the squire's pew yawn or fidget in their places, he
takes it as a hint that they are tired of listening, and closes
his sermon instantly at the end of the sentence. Can we ask this
most irreverend and unclerical of men to meet a young lady? I
doubt, even if we made the attempt, whether we should succeed, by
fair means, in getting him beyond the servants' hall.
Dismissing, therefore, all idea of inviting visitors to entertain
our guest, and feeling, at the same time, more than doubtful of
her chance of discovering any attraction in the sober society of
the inmates of the house, I finish my dressing and go down to
breakfast, secretly veering round to the housekeeper's opinion
that Miss Jessie will really bring matters to an abrupt
conclusion by running away. I find Morgan as bitterly resigned to
his destiny
as ever, and Owen so affectionately anxious to make himself of
some use, and so lamentably ignorant of how to begin, that I am
driven to disembarrass myself of him at the outset by a
stratagem.
I suggest to him that our visitor is sure to be interested in
pictures, and that it would be a pretty attention, on his part,
to paint her a landscape to hang up in her room. Owen brightens
directly, informs me in his softest tones that he is then at work
on the Earthquake at Lisbon, and inquires whether I think she
would like that subject. I preserve my gravity sufficiently to
answer in the affirmative, and my brother retires meekly to his
studio, to depict the engulfing of a city and the destruction of
a population. Morgan withdraws in his turn to the top of the
tower, threatening, when our guest comes, to draw all his meals
up to his new residence by means of a basket and string. I am
left alone for an hour, and then the upholsterer arrives from the
county town.
This worthy man, on being informed of our emergency, sees his
way, apparently, to a good stroke of business, and thereupon wins
my lasting gratitude by taking, in opposition to every one else,
a bright and hopeful view of existing circumstances.
"You'll excuse me, sir," he says, confidentially, when I show him
the rooms in the lean-to, "but this is a matter of experience.
I'm a family man myself, with grown-up daughters of my own, and
the natures of young women are well known to me. Make their rooms
comfortable, and you make 'em happy. Surround their lives, sir,
with a suitable atmosphere of furniture, and you never hear a
word of complaint drop from their lips. Now, with regard to these
rooms, for example, sir--you put a neat French bedstead in that
corner, with curtains conformable--say a tasty chintz; you put on
that bedstead what I will term a sufficiency of bedding; and you
top up with a sweet little eider-down quilt, as light as roses,
and similar the same in color. You do that, and what follows? You
please her eye when she lies down at night, and you please her
eye when she gets up in the morning--and you're all right so far,
and so is she. I will not dwell, sir, on the toilet-table, nor
will I seek to detain you about the glass to show her figure, and
the other glass to show her face, because I have the articles in
stock, and will be myself answerable for their effect on a lady's
mind and person."
He led the way into the next room as he spoke, and arranged its
future fittings, and decorations, as he had already planned out
the bedroom, with the strictest reference to the connection which
experience had shown him to exist between comfortable furniture
and female happiness.
Thus far, in my helpless state of mind, the man's confidence had
impressed me in spite of myself, and I had listened to him in
superstitious silence. But as he continued to rise, by regular
gradations, from one climax of upholstery to another, warning
visions of his bill disclosed themselves in the remote background
of the scene of luxury and magnificence which my friend was
conjuring up. Certain sharp professional instincts of bygone
times resumed their influence over me; I began to start doubts
and ask questions; and as a necessary consequence the interview
between us soon assumed something like a practical form.
Having ascertained what the probable expense of furnishing would
amount to and having discovered that the process of transforming
the lean-to (allowing for the time required to procure certain
articles of rarity from Bristol) would occupy nearly a fortnight,
I dismissed the upholsterer with the understanding that I should
take a day or two for consideration, and let him know the result.
It was then the fifth of September, and our Queen of Hearts was
to arrive on the twentieth. The work, therefore, if it was begun
on the seventh or eighth, would be begun in time.
In making all my calculations with a reference to the twentieth
of September, I relied implicitly, it will be observed, on a
young lady's punctuality in keeping an appointment which she had
herself made. I can only account for such extraordinary
simplicity on my part on the supposition that my wits had become
sadly rusted by long seclusion from society. Whether it was
referable to this cause or not, my innocent trustfulness was at
any rate destined to be practically rebuked before long in the
most surprising manner. Little did I suspect, when I parted from
the upholsterer on the fifth of the month, what the tenth of the
month had in store for me.
On the seventh I made up my mind to have the bedroom furnished at
once, and to postpone the question of the sitting-room for a few
days longer. Having dispatched the necessary order to that
effect, I next wrote to hire the piano and to order the box of
novels. This done, I congratulated myself on the forward state of
the preparations, and sat down to repose in the atmosphere of my
own happy delusions.
On the ninth the wagon arrived with the furniture, and the men
set to work on the bedroom. From this moment Morgan retired
definitely to the top of the tower, and Owen became too nervous
to lay the necessary amount of paint on the Earthquake at Lisbon.
On the tenth the work was proceeding bravely. Toward noon Owen
and I strolled to the door to enjoy the fine autumn sunshine. We
were sitting lazily on our favorite bench in front of the tower
when we were startled by a shout from above us. Looking up
directly, we saw Morgan half in and half out of his narrow window
In the seventh story, gesticulating violently with the stem of
his long meerschaum pipe in the direction of the road below us.
We gazed eagerly in the quarter thus indicated, but our low
position prevented us for some time from seeing anything. At last
we both discerned an old yellow post-chaise distinctly and
indisputably approaching us.
Owen and I looked at one another in panic-stricken silence. It
was coming to us--and what did it contain? Do pianos travel in
chaises? Are boxes of novels conveyed to their destination by a
postilion? We expected the piano and expected the novels, but
nothing else--unquestionably nothing else.
The chaise took the turn in the road, passed through the gateless
gap in our rough inclosure-wall of loose stone, and rapidly
approached us. A bonnet appeared at the window and a hand gayly
waved a white handkerchief.
Powers of caprice, confusion, and dismay! It was Jessie Yelverton
herself--arriving, without a word of warning, exactly ten days
before her time.
CHAPTER III.
OUR QUEEN OF' HEARTS.
THE chaise stopped in front of us, and before we had recovered
from our bewilderment the gardener had opened the door and let
down the steps.
A bright, laughing face, prettily framed round by a black veil
passed over the head and tied under the chin--a traveling-dress
of a nankeen color, studded with blue buttons and trimmed with
white braid--a light brown cloak over it--little neatly-gloved
hands, which seized in an instant on one of mine and on one of
Owen's--two dark blue eyes, which seemed to look us both through
and through in a moment--a clear, full, merrily confident
voice--a look and manner gayly and gracefully
self-possessed--such were the characteristics of our fair guest
which first struck me at the moment when she left the postchaise
and possessed herself of my hand.
"Don't begin by scolding me," she said, before I could utter a
word of welcome. "There will be time enough for that in the
course of the next six weeks. I beg pardon, with all possible
humility, for the offense of coming ten days before my time.
Don't ask me to account for it, please; if you do, I shall be
obliged to confess the truth. My dear sir, the fact is, this is
an act of impulse."
She paused, and looked us both in the face with a bright
confidence in her own flow of nonsense that was perfectly
irresistible.
"I must tell you all about it," she ran on, leading the way to
the bench, and inviting us, by a little mock gesture of
supplication, to seat ourselves on either side of her. "I feel so
guilty till I've told you. Dear me! how nice this is! Here I am
quite at home already. Isn't it odd? Well, and how do you think
it happene d? The morning before yesterday Matilda--there is
Matilda, picking up my bonnet from the bottom of that remarkably
musty carriage--Matilda came and woke me as usual, and I hadn't
an idea in my head, I assure you, till she began to brush my
hair. Can you account for it?--I can't--but she seemed, somehow,
to brush a sudden fancy for coming here into my head. When I went
down to breakfast, I said to my aunt, 'Darling, I have an
irresistible impulse to go to Wales at once, instead of waiting
till the twentieth.' She made all the necessary objections, poor
dear, and my impulse got stronger and stronger with every one of
them. 'I'm quite certain,' I said, 'I shall never go at all if I
don't go now.' 'In that case,' says my aunt, 'ring the bell, and
have your trunks packed. Your whole future depends on your going;
and you terrify me so inexpressibly that I shall be glad to get
rid of you.' You may not think it, to look at her--but Matilda is
a treasure; and in three hours more I was on the Great Western
Railway. I have not the least idea how I got here--except that
the men helped me everywhere. They are always such delightful
creatures! I have been casting myself, and my maid, and my trunks
on their tender mercies at every point in the journey, and their
polite attentions exceed all belief. I slept at your horrid
little county town last night; and the night before I missed a
steamer or a train, I forget which, and slept at Bristol; and
that's how I got here. And, now I am here, I ought to give my
guardian a kiss--oughtn't I? Shall I call you papa? I think I
will. And shall I call _you_ uncle, sir, and give you a kiss too?
We shall come to it sooner or later--shan't we?--and we may as
well begin at once, I suppose."
Her fresh young lips touched my old withered cheek first, and
then Owen's; a soft, momentary shadow of tenderness, that was
very pretty and becoming, passing quickly over the sunshine and
gayety of her face as she saluted us. The next moment she was on
her feet again, inquiring "who the wonderful man was who built
The Glen Tower," and wanting to go all over it immediately from
top to bottom.
As we took her into the house, I made the necessary apologies for
the miserable condition of the lean-to, and assured her that, ten
days later, she would have found it perfectly ready to receive
her. She whisked into the rooms--looked all round them--whisked
out again--declared she had come to live in the old Tower, and
not in any modern addition to it, and flatly declined to inhabit
the lean-to on any terms whatever. I opened my lips to state
certain objections, but she slipped away in an instant and made
straight for the Tower staircase.
"Who lives here?" she asked, calling down to us, eagerly, from
the first-floor landing.
"I do," said Owen; "but, if you would like me to move out--"
She was away up the second flight before he could say any more.
The next sound we heard, as we slowly followed her, was a
peremptory drumming against the room door of the second story.
"Anybody here?" we heard her ask through the door.
I called up to her that, under ordinary circumstances, I was
there; but that, like Owen, I should be happy to move out--
My polite offer was cut short as my brother's had been. We heard
more drumming at the door of the third story. There were two
rooms here also--one perfectly empty, the other stocked with odds
and ends of dismal, old-fashioned furniture for which we had no
use, and grimly ornamented by a life-size basket figure
supporting a complete suit of armor in a sadly rusty condition.
When Owen and I got to the third-floor landing, the door was
open; Miss Jessie had taken possession of the rooms; and we found
her on a chair, dusting the man in armor with her cambric
pocket-handkerchief.
"I shall live here," she said, looking round at us briskly over
her shoulder.
We both remonstrated, but it was quite in vain. She told us that
she had an impulse to live with the man in armor, and that she
would have her way, or go back immediately in the post-chaise,
which we pleased. Finding it impossible to move her, we bargained
that she should, at least, allow the new bed and the rest of the
comfortable furniture in the lean-to to be moved up into the
empty room for her sleeping accommodation. She consented to this
condition, protesting, however, to the last against being
compelled to sleep in a bed, because it was a modern
conventionality, out of all harmony with her place of residence
and her friend in armor.
Fortunately for the repose of Morgan, who, under other
circumstances, would have discovered on the very first day that
his airy retreat was by no means high enough to place him out of
Jessie's reach, the idea of settling herself instantly in her new
habitation excluded every other idea from the mind of our fair
guest. She pinned up the nankeen-colored traveling dress in
festoons all round her on the spot; informed us that we were now
about to make acquaintance with her in the new character of a
woman of business; and darted downstairs in mad high spirits,
screaming for Matilda and the trunks like a child for a set of
new toys. The wholesome protest of Nature against the artificial
restraints of modern life expressed itself in all that she said
and in all that she did. She had never known what it was to be
happy before, because she had never been allowed, until now, to
do anything for herself. She was down on her knees at one moment,
blowing the fire, and telling us that she felt like Cinderella;
she was up on a table the next, attacking the cobwebs with a long
broom, and wishing she had been born a housemaid. As for my
unfortunate friend, the upholsterer, he was leveled to the ranks
at the first effort he made to assume the command of the domestic
forces in the furniture department. She laughed at him, pushed
him about, disputed all his conclusions, altered all his
arrangements, and ended by ordering half his bedroom furniture to
be taken back again, for the one unanswerable reason that she
meant to do without it.
As evening approached, the scene presented by the two rooms
became eccentric to a pitch of absurdity which is quite
indescribable. The grim, ancient walls of the bedroom had the
liveliest modern dressing-gowns and morning-wrappers hanging all
about them. The man in armor had a collection of smart little
boots and shoes dangling by laces and ribbons round his iron
legs. A worm-eaten, steel-clasped casket, dragged out of a
corner, frowned on the upholsterer's brand-new toilet-table, and
held a miscellaneous assortment of combs, hairpins, and brushes.
Here stood a gloomy antique chair, the patriarch of its tribe,
whose arms of blackened oak embraced a pair of pert, new deal
bonnet-boxes not a fortnight old. There, thrown down lightly on a
rugged tapestry table-cover, the long labor of centuries past,
lay the brief, delicate work of a week ago in the shape of silk
and muslin dresses turned inside out. In the midst of all these
confusions and contradictions, Miss Jessie ranged to and fro, the
active center of the whole scene of disorder, now singing at the
top of her voice, and now declaring in her lighthearted way that
one of us must make up his mind to marry her immediately, as she
was determined to settle for the rest of her life at The Glen
Tower.
She followed up that announcement, when we met at dinner, by
inquiring if we quite understood by this time that she had left
her "company manners" in London, and that she meant to govern us
all at her absolute will and pleasure, throughout the whole
period of her stay. Having thus provided at the outset for the
due recognition of her authority by the household generally and
individually having briskly planned out all her own forthcoming
occupations and amusements over the wine and fruit at dessert,
and having positively settled, between her first and second cups
of tea, where our connection with them was to begin and where it
was to end, she had actually succeeded, when the time came to
separate for the night, in setting us as much at our ease, and in
making herself as completely a necessary part of our household as
if she had lived among us for years and years past.
Such was our first day's experience of the formidable guest whose
anticipated visit had so sorely and so absurdly discomposed us
all. I could hardly believe that I had actually wasted hours of
precious time in worrying myself and everybody else in the house
about the best means of laboriously entertaining a lively,
high-spirited girl, who was perfectly capable, without an effort
on her own part or on ours, of entertaining herself.
Having upset every one of our calculations on the first day of
her arrival, she next falsified all our predictions before she
had been with us a week. Instead of fracturing her skull with the
pony, as Morgan had prophesied, she sat the sturdy, sure-footed,
mischievous little brute as if she were part and parcel of
himself. With an old water-proof cloak of mine on her shoulders,
with a broad-flapped Spanish hat of Owen's on her head, with a
wild imp of a Welsh boy following her as guide and groom on a
bare-backed pony, and with one of the largest and ugliest
cur-dogs in England (which she had picked up, lost and starved by
the wayside) barking at her heels, she scoured the country in all
directions, and came back to dinner, as she herself expressed it,
"with the manners of an Amazon, the complexion of a dairy-maid,
and the appetite of a wolf."
On days when incessant rain kept her indoors, she amused herself
with a new freak. Making friends everywhere, as became The Queen
of Hearts, she even ingratiated herself with the sour old
housekeeper, who had predicted so obstinately that she was
certain to run away. To the amazement of everybody in the house,
she spent hours in the kitchen, learning to make puddings and
pies, and trying all sorts of recipes with very varying success,
from an antiquated cookery book which she had discovered at the
back of my bookshelves. At other times, when I expected her to be
upstairs, languidly examining her finery, and idly polishing her
trinkets, I heard of her in the stables, feeding the rabbits, and
talking to the raven, or found her in the conservatory,
fumigating the plants, and half suffocating the gardener, who was
trying to moderate her enthusiasm in the production of smoke.
Instead of finding amusement, as we had expected, in Owen's
studio, she puckered up her pretty face in grimaces of disgust at
the smell of paint in the room, and declared that the horrors of
the Earthquake at Lisbon made her feel hysterical. Instead of
showing a total want of interest in my business occupations on
the estate, she destroyed my dignity as steward by joining me in
my rounds on her pony, with her vagabond retinue at her heels.
Instead of devouring the novels I had ordered for her, she left
them in the box, and put her feet on it when she felt sleepy
after a hard day's riding. Instead of practicing for hours every
evening at the piano, which I had hired with such a firm
conviction of her using it, she showed us tricks on the cards,
taught us new games, initiated us into the mystics of dominoes,
challenged us with riddles, an even attempted to stimulate us
into acting charades--in short, tried every evening amusement in
the whole category except the amusement of music. Every new
aspect of her character was a new surprise to us, and every fresh
occupation that she chose was a fresh contradiction to our
previous expectations. The value of experience as a guide is
unquestionable in many of the most important affairs of life;
but, speaking for myself personally, I never understood the utter
futility of it, where a woman is concerned, until I was brought
into habits of daily communication with our fair guest.
In her domestic relations with ourselves she showed that
exquisite nicety of discrimination in studying our characters,
habits and tastes which comes by instinct with women, and which
even the longest practice rarely teaches in similar perfection to
men. She saw at a glance all the underlying tenderness and
generosity concealed beneath Owen's external shyness,
irresolution, and occasional reserve; and, from first to last,
even in her gayest moments, there was always a certain
quietly-implied consideration--an easy, graceful, delicate
deference--in her manner toward my eldest brother, which won upon
me and upon him every hour in the day.
With me she was freer in her talk, quicker in her actions,
readier and bolder in all the thousand little familiarities of
our daily intercourse. When we met in the morning she always took
Owen's hand, and waited till he kissed her on the forehead. In my
case she put both her hands on my shoulders, raised herself on
tiptoe, and saluted me briskly on both checks in the foreign way.
She never differed in opinion with Owen without propitiating him
first by some little artful compliment in the way of excuse. She
argued boldly with me on every subject under the sun, law and
politics included; and, when I got the better of her, never
hesitated to stop me by putting her hand on my lips, or by
dragging me out into the garden in the middle of a sentence.
As for Morgan, she abandoned all restraint in his case on the
second day of her sojourn among us. She had asked after him as
soon as she was settled in her two rooms on the third story; had
insisted on knowing why he lived at the top of the tower, and why
he had not appeared to welcome her at the door; had entrapped us
into all sorts of damaging admissions, and had thereupon
discovered the true state of the case in less than five minutes.
From that time my unfortunate second brother became the victim of
all that was mischievous and reckless in her disposition. She
forced him downstairs by a series of maneuvers which rendered his
refuge uninhabitable, and then pretended to fall violently in
love with him. She slipped little pink three-cornered notes under
his door, entreating him to make appointments with her, or
tenderly inquiring how he would like to see her hair dressed at
dinner on that day. She followed him into the garden, sometimes
to ask for the privilege of smelling his tobacco-smoke, sometimes
to beg for a lock of his hair, or a fragment of his ragged old
dressing-gown, to put among her keepsakes. She sighed at him when
he was in a passion, and put her handkerchief to her eyes when he
was sulky. In short, she tormented Morgan, whenever she could
catch him, with such ingenious and such relentless malice, that
he actually threatened to go back to London, and prey once more,
in the unscrupulous character of a doctor, on the credulity of
mankind.
Thus situated in her relations toward ourselves, and thus
occupied by country diversions of her own choosing, Miss Jessie
passed her time at The Glen Tower, excepting now and then a dull
hour in the long evenings, to her guardian's satisfaction--and,
all things considered, not without pleasure to herself. Day
followed day in calm and smooth succession, and five quiet weeks
had elapsed out of the six during which her stay was to last
without any remarkable occurrence to distinguish them, when an
event happened which personally affected me in a very serious
manner, and which suddenly caused our handsome Queen of Hearts to
become the object of my deepest anxiety in the present, and of my
dearest hopes for the future.
CHAPTER IV.
OUR GRAND PROJECT.
AT the end of the fifth week of our guest's stay, among the
letters which the morning's post brought to The Glen Tower there
was one for me, from my son George, in the Crimea.
The effect which this letter produced in our little circle
renders it necessary that I should present it here, to speak for
itself.
This is what I read alone in my own room:
"MY DEAREST FATHER--After the great public news of the fall of
Sebastopol, have you any ears left for small items of private
intelligence from insignificant subaltern officers? Prepare, if
you have, for a sudden and a startling announcement. How shall I
write the words? How shall I tell you that I am really coming
home?
"I have a private opportunity of sending this letter, and only a
short time to write it in; so I must put many things, if I can,
into few words. The doctor has reported me fit to travel at last,
and I leave, thanks to the privilege of a wounded man, by the
next ship. The name of the vessel and the time of starting are on
the list which I inclose. I have made all my calculations, and,
allowing for every possible delay, I find that I shall be with
you, at the latest, on the first of November--perhaps some days
earlier.
"I am far too full of my return, and of something else connected
with it which is equally dear to me, to say anything about public
affairs, more especially as I know that the newspapers must, by
this time, have given you plenty of information. Let me fill the
rest of this paper with a subject which is very near to my
heart--nearer, I am almost ashamed to say, than the great triumph
of my countrymen, in which my disabled condition has prevented me
from taking any share.
"I gathered from your last letter that Miss Yelverton was to pay
you a visit this autumn, in your capacity of her guardian. If she
is already with you, pray move heaven and earth to keep her at
The Glen Tower till I come back. Do you anticipate my confession
from this entreaty? My dear, dear father, all my hopes rest on
that one darling treasure which you are guarding perhaps, at this
moment, under your own roof--all my happiness depends on making
Jessie Yelverton my wife.
"If I did not sincerely believe that you will heartily approve of
my choice, I should hardly have ventured on this abrupt
confession. Now that I have made it, let me go on and tell you
why I have kept my attachment up to this time a secret from every
one--even from Jessie herself. (You see I call her by her
Christian name already!)
"I should have risked everything, father, and have laid my whole
heart open before her more than a year ago, but for the order
which sent our regiment out to take its share in this great
struggle of the Russian war. No ordinary change in my life would
have silenced me on the subject of all others of which I was most
anxious to speak; but this change made me think seriously of the
future; and out of those thoughts came the resolution which I
have kept until this time. For her sake, and for her sake only, I
constrained myself to leave the words unspoken which might have
made her my promised wife. I resolved to spare her the dreadful
suspense of waiting for her betrothed husband till the perils of
war might, or might not, give him back to her. I resolved to save
her from the bitter grief of my death if a bullet laid me low. I
resolved to preserve her from the wretched sacrifice of herself
if I came back, as many a brave man will come back from this war,
invalided for life. Leaving her untrammeled by any engagement,
unsuspicious perhaps of my real feelings toward her, I might die,
and know that, by keeping silence, I had spared a pang to the
heart that was dearest to me. This was the thought that stayed
the words on my lips when I left England, uncertain whether I
should ever come back. If I had loved her less dearly, if her
happiness had been less precious to me, I might have given way
under the hard restraint I imposed on myself, and might have
spoken selfishly at the last moment.
"And now the time of trial is past; the war is over; and,
although I still walk a little lame, I am, thank God, in as good
health and in much better spirits than when I left home. Oh,
father, if I should lose her now--if I should get no reward for
sparing her but the bitterest of all disappointments! Sometimes I
am vain enough to think that I made some little impression on
her; sometimes I doubt if she has a suspicion of my love. She
lives in a gay world--she is the center of perpetual
admiration--men with all the qualities to win a woman's heart are
perpetually about her--can I, dare I hope? Yes, I must! Only keep
her, I entreat you, at The Glen Tower. In that quiet world, in
that freedom from frivolities and temptations, she will listen to
me as she might listen nowhere else. Keep her, my dearest,
kindest father--and, above all things, breathe not a word to her
of this letter. I have surely earned the privilege of being the
first to open her eyes to the truth. She must know nothing, now
that I am coming home, till she knows all from my own lips."
Here the writing hurriedly broke off. I am only giving myself
credit for common feeling, I trust, when I confess that what I
read deeply affected me. I think I never felt so fond of my boy,
and so proud of him, as at the moment when I laid down his
letter.
As soon as I could control my spirits, I began to calculate the
question of time with a trembling eagerness, which brought back
to my mind my own young days of love and hope. My son was to come
back, at the latest, on the first of November, and Jessie's
allotted six weeks would expire on the twenty-second of October.
Ten days too soon! But for the caprice which had brought her to
us exactly that number of days before her time she would have
been in the house, as a matter of necessity, on George's return.
I searched back in my memory for a conversation that I had held
with her a week since on her future plans. Toward the middle of
November, her aunt, Lady Westwick, had arranged to go to her
house in Paris, and Jessie was, of course, to accompany her--to
accompany her into that very circle of the best English and the
best French society which contained in it the elements most
adverse to George's hopes. Between this time and that she had no
special engagement, and she had only settled to write and warn
her aunt of her return to London a day or two before she left The
Glen Tower.
Under these circumstances, the first, the all-important necessity
was to prevail on her to prolong her stay beyond the allotted six
weeks by ten days. After the caution to be silent impressed on me
(and most naturally, poor boy) in George's letter, I felt that I
could only appeal to her on the ordinary ground of hospitality.
Would this be sufficient to effect the object?
I was sure that the hours of the morning and the afternoon had,
thus far, been fully and happily occupied by her various
amusements indoors and out. She was no more weary of her days now
than she had been when she first came among us. But I was by no
means so certain that she was not tired of her evenings. I had
latterly noticed symptoms of weariness after the lamps were lit,
and a suspicious regularity in retiring to bed the moment the
clock struck ten. If I could provide her with a new amusement for
the long evenings, I might leave the days to take care of
themselves, and might then make sure (seeing that she had no
special engagement in London until the middle of November) of her
being sincerely thankful and ready to prolong her stay.
How was this to be done? The piano and the novels had both failed
to attract her. What other amusement was there to offer?
It was useless, at present, to ask myself such questions as
these. I was too much agitated to think collectedly on the most
trifling subjects. I was even too restless to stay in my own
room. My son's letter had given me so fresh an interest in Jessie
that I was now as impatient to see her as if we were about to
meet for the first time. I wanted to look at her with my new
eyes, to listen to her with my new ears, to study her secretly
with my new purposes, and my new hopes and fears. To my dismay
(for I wanted the very weather itself to favor George's
interests), it was raining heavily that morning. I knew,
therefore, that I should probably find her in her own
sitting-room. When I knocked at her door, with George's letter
crumpled up in my hand, with George's hopes in full possession of
my heart, it is no exaggeration to say that my nerves were almost
as much fluttered, and my ideas almost as much confused, as they
were on a certain memorable day in the far past, when I rose, in
brand-new wig and gown, to set my future prospects at the bar on
the hazard of my first speech.
When I entered the room I found Jessie leaning back languidly in
her largest arm-chair, watching the raindrops dripping down the
window-pane. The unfortunate box of novels was open by her side,
and the books were lying, for the most part, strewed about on the
ground at her feet. One volume lay open, back upward, on her lap,
and her hands were crossed over it listlessly. To my great
dismay, she was yawning--palpably and widely yawning--when I came
in.
No sooner did I find myself in her presence than an irresistible
anxiety to make some secret discovery of the real state of her
feelings toward George took possession of me. After the customary
condolences on the imprisonment to which she was subjected by the
weather, I said, in as careless a manner as it was possible to
assume:
"I have heard from my son this morning. He talks of being ordered
home, and tells me I may expect to see him before the end of the
year."
I was too cautious to mention the exact date of his return, for
in that case she might have detected my motive for asking her to
prolong her visit.
"Oh, indeed?" she said. "How very nice. How glad you must be."
I watched her narrowly. The clear, dark blue eyes met mine as
openly as ever. The smooth, round cheeks kept their fresh color
quite unchanged. The full, good-humored, smiling lips never
trembled or altered their expression in the slightest degree. Her
light checked silk dress, with its pretty trimming of
cherry-colored ribbon, lay quite still over the bosom beneath it.
For all the information I could get from her look and manner, we
might as well have been a hundred miles apart from each other. Is
the best woman in the world little better than a fathomless abyss
of duplicity on certain occasions, and where certain feelings of
her own are concerned? I would rather not think that; and yet I
don't know how to account otherwise for the masterly manner in
which Miss Jessie contrived to baffle me.
I was afraid--literally afraid--to broach the subject of
prolonging her sojourn with us on a rainy day, so I changed the
topic, in despair, to the novels that were scattered about her.
"Can you find nothing there," I asked, "to amuse you this wet
morning?"
"There are two or three good novels," she said, carelessly, "but
I read them before I left London."
"And the others won't even do for a dull day in the country?" I
went on.
"They might do for some people," she answered, "but not for me.
I'm rather peculiar, perhaps, in my tastes. I'm sick to death of
novels with an earnest purpose. I'm sick to death of outbursts of
eloquence, and large-minded philanthropy, and graphic
descriptions, and unsparing anatomy of the human heart, and all
that sort of thing. Good gracious me! isn't it the original
intention or purpose, or whatever you call it, of a work of
fiction, to set out distinctly by telling a story? And how many
of these books, I should like to know, do that? Why, so far as
telling a story is concerned, the greater part of them might as
well be sermons as novels. Oh, dear me! what I want is something
that seizes hold of my interest, and makes me forget when it is
time to dress for dinner--something that keeps me reading,
reading, reading, in a breathless state to find out the end. You
know what I mean--at least you ought. Why, there was that little
chance story you told me yesterday in the garden--don't you
remember?--about your strange client, whom you never saw again: I
declare it was much more interesting than half these novels,
_because_ it was a story. Tell me another about your young days,
when you were seeing the world, and meeting with all sorts of
remarkable people. Or, no--don't tell it now--keep it till the
evening, when we all want something to stir us up. You old people
might amuse us young ones out of your own resources oftener than
you do. It was very kind of you to get me these books; but, with
all respect to them, I would rather have the rummaging of your
memory than the rummaging of this box. What's the matter? Are you
afraid I have found out the window in your bosom already?"
I had half risen from my chair at her last words, and I felt that
my face must have flushed at the same moment. She had started an
idea in my mind--the very idea of which I had been in search when
I was pondering over the best means of amusing her in the long
autumn evenings.
I parried her questions by the best excuses I could offer;
changed the conversation for the next five minutes, and then,
making a sudden remembrance of business my apology for leaving
her, hastily withdrew to devote myself to the new idea in the
solitude of my own room.
A little quiet thinking convinced me that I had discovered a
means not only of occupying her idle time, but of decoying her
into staying on with us, evening by evening, until my son's
return. The new project which she had herself unconsciously
suggested involved nothing less than acting forthwith on her own
chance hint, and appealing to her interest and curiosity by the
recital of incidents and adventures drawn from my own personal
experience and (if I could get them to help me) from the
experience of my brothers as well. Strange people and startling
events had connected themselves with Owen's past life as a
clergyman, with Morgan's past life as a doctor, and with my past
life as a lawyer, which offered elements of interest of a strong
and striking kind ready to our hands. If these narratives were
written plainly and unpretendingly; if one of them was read every
evening, under circumstances that should pique the curiosity and
impress the imagination of our young guest, the very occupation
was found for her weary hours which would gratify her tastes,
appeal to her natural interest in the early lives of my brothers
and myself, and lure her insensibly into prolonging her visit by
ten days without exciting a suspicion of our real motive for
detaining her.
I sat down at my desk; I hid my face in my hands to keep out all
impressions of external and present things; and I searched back
through the mysterious labyrinth of the Past, through the dun,
ever-deepening twilight of the years that were gone.
Slowly, out of the awful shadows, the Ghosts of Memory rose about
me. The dead population of a vanished world came back to life
round me, a living man. Men and women whose earthly pilgrimage
had ended long since, returned upon me from the unknown spheres,
and fond, familiar voices burst their way back to my ears through
the heavy silence of the grave. Moving by me in the nameless
inner light, which no eye saw but mine, the dead procession of
immaterial scenes and beings unrolled its silent length. I saw
once more the pleading face of a friend of early days, with the
haunting vision that had tortured him through life by his side
again--with the long-forgotten despair in his eyes which had once
touched my heart, and bound me to him, till I had tracked his
destiny through its darkest windings to the end. I saw the figure
of an innocent woman passing to and fro in an ancient country
house, with the shadow of a strange suspicion stealing after her
wherever she went. I saw a man worn by hardship and old age,
stretched dreaming on the straw of a stable, and muttering in his
dream the terrible secret of his life.
Other scenes and persons followed these, less vivid in their
revival, but still always recognizable and distinct; a young girl
alone by night, and in peril of her life, in a cottage on a
dreary moor--an upper chamber of an inn, with two beds in it; the
curtains of one bed closed, and a man standing by them, waiting,
yet dreading to draw them back--a husband secretly following the
first traces of a mystery which his wife's anxious love had
fatally hidden from him since the day when they first met; these,
and other visions like them, shadowy reflections of the living
beings and the real events that had been once, peopled the
solitude and the emptiness around me. They haunted me still when
I tried to break the chain of thought which my own efforts had
wound about my mind; they followed me to and fro in the room; and
they came out with me when I left it. I had lifted the veil from
the Past for myself, and I was now to rest no more till I had
lifted it for others.
I went at once to my eldest brother and showed him my son's
letter, and told him all that I have written here. His kind heart
was touched as mine had been. He felt for my suspense; he shared
my anxiety; he laid aside his own occupation on the spot.
"Only tell me," he said, "how I can help, and I will give every h
our in the day to you and to George."
I had come to him with my mind almost as full of his past life as
of my own; I recalled to his memory events in his experience as a
working clergyman in London; I set him looking among papers which
he had preserved for half his lifetime, and the very existence of
which he had forgotten long since; I recalled to him the names of
persons to whose necessities he had ministered in his sacred
office, and whose stories he had heard from their own lips or
received under their own handwriting. When we parted he was
certain of what he was wanted to do, and was resolute on that
very day to begin the work.
I went to Morgan next, and appealed to him as I had already
appealed to Owen. It was only part of his odd character to start
all sorts of eccentric objections in reply; to affect a cynical
indifference, which he was far from really and truly feeling; and
to indulge in plenty of quaint sarcasm on the subject of Jessie
and his nephew George. I waited till these little
surface-ebullitions had all expended themselves, and then pressed
my point again with the earnestness and anxiety that I really
felt.
Evidently touched by the manner of my appeal to him even more
than by the language in which it was expressed, Morgan took
refuge in his customary abruptness, spread out his paper
violently on the table, seized his pen and ink, and told me quite
fiercely to give him his work and let him tackle it at once.
I set myself to recall to his memory some very remarkable
experiences of his own in his professional days, but he stopped
me before I had half done.
"I understand," he said, taking a savage dip at the ink, "I'm to
make her flesh creep, and to frighten her out of her wits. I'll
do it with a vengeance!"
Reserving to myself privately an editorial right of supervision
over Morgan's contributions, I returned to my own room to begin
my share--by far the largest one--of the task before us. The
stimulus applied to my mind by my son's letter must have been a
strong one indeed, for I had hardly been more than an hour at my
desk before I found the old literary facility of my youthful
days, when I was a writer for the magazines, returning to me as
if by magic. I worked on unremittingly till dinner-time, and then
resumed the pen after we had all separated for the night. At two
o'clock the next morning I found myself--God help
me!--masquerading, as it were, in my own long-lost character of a
hard-writing young man, with the old familiar cup of strong tea
by my side, and the old familiar wet towel tied round my head.
My review of the progress I had made, when I looked back at my
pages of manuscript, yielded all the encouragement I wanted to
drive me on. It is only just, however, to add to the record of
this first day's attempt, that the literary labor which it
involved was by no means of the most trying kind. The great
strain on the intellect--the strain of invention--was spared me
by my having real characters and events ready to my hand. If I
had been called on to create, I should, in all probability, have
suffered severely by contrast with the very worst of those
unfortunate novelists whom Jessie had so rashly and so
thoughtlessly condemned. It is not wonderful that the public
should rarely know how to estimate the vast service which is done
to them by the production of a good book, seeing that they are,
for the most part, utterly ignorant of the immense difficulty of
writing even a bad one.
The next day was fine, to my great relief; and our visitor, while
we were at work, enjoyed her customary scamper on the pony, and
her customary rambles afterward in the neighborhood of the house.
Although I had interruptions to contend with on the part of Owen
and Morgan, neither of whom possessed my experience in the
production of what heavy people call "light literature," and both
of whom consequently wanted assistance, still I made great
progress, and earned my hours of repose on the evening of the
second day.
On that evening I risked the worst, and opened my negotiations
for the future with "The Queen of Hearts."
About an hour after the tea had been removed, and when I happened
to be left alone in the room with her, I noticed that she rose
suddenly and went to the writing-table. My suspicions were
aroused directly, and I entered on the dangerous subject by
inquiring if she intended to write to her aunt.
"Yes," she said. "I promised to write when the last week came. If
you had paid me the compliment of asking me to stay a little
longer, I should have returned it by telling you I was sorry to
go. As it is, I mean to be sulky and say nothing."
With those words she took up her pen to begin the letter.
"Wait a minute," I remonstrated. "I was just on the point of
begging you to stay when I spoke."
"Were you, indeed?" she returned. "I never believed in
coincidences of that sort before, but now, of course, I put the
most unlimited faith in them!"
"Will you believe in plain proofs?" I asked, adopting her humor.
"How do you think I and my brothers have been employing ourselves
all day to-day and all day yesterday? Guess what we have been
about."
"Congratulating yourselves in secret on my approaching
departure," she answered, tapping her chin saucily with the
feather-end of her pen.
I seized the opportunity of astonishing her, and forthwith told
her the truth. She started up from the table, and approached me
with the eagerness of a child, her eyes sparkling, and her cheeks
flushed.
"Do you really mean it?" she said.
I assured her that I was in earnest. She thereupon not only
expressed an interest in our undertaking, which was evidently
sincere, but, with characteristic impatience, wanted to begin the
first evening's reading on that very night. I disappointed her
sadly by explaining that we required time to prepare ourselves,
and by assuring her that we should not be ready for the next five
days. On the sixth day, I added, we should be able to begin, and
to go on, without missing an evening, for probably ten days more.
"The next five days?" she replied. "Why, that will just bring us
to the end of my six weeks' visit. I suppose you are not setting
a trap to catch me? This is not a trick of you three cunning old
gentlemen to make me stay on, is it?"
I quailed inwardly as that dangerously close guess at the truth
passed her lips.
"You forget," I said, "that the idea only occurred to me after
what you said yesterday. If it had struck me earlier, we should
have been ready earlier, and then where would your suspicions
have been?"
"I am ashamed of having felt them," she said, in her frank,
hearty way. "I retract the word 'trap,' and I beg pardon for
calling you 'three cunning old gentlemen.' But what am I to say
to my aunt?"
She moved back to the writing-table as she spoke.
"Say nothing," I replied, "till you have heard the first story.
Shut up the paper-case till that time, and then decide when you
will open it again to write to your aunt."
She hesitated and smiled. That terribly close guess of hers was
not out of her mind yet.
"I rather fancy," she said, slyly, "that the story will turn out
to be the best of the whole series."
"Wrong again," I retorted. "I have a plan for letting chance
decide which of the stories the first one shall be. They shall be
all numbered as they are done; corresponding numbers shall be
written inside folded pieces of card and well mixed together; you
shall pick out any one card you like; you shall declare the
number written within; and, good or bad, the story that answers
to that number shall be the story that is read. Is that fair?"
"Fair!" she exclaimed; "it's better than fair; it makes _me_ of
some importance; and I must be more or less than woman not to
appreciate that."
"Then you consent to wait patiently for the next five days?"
"As patiently as I can."
"And you engage to decide nothing about writing to your aunt
until you have heard the first story?"
"I do," she said, returning to the writing-table. "Behold the
proof of it." She raised her hand with theatrical solemnity, and
closed the paper-case with an impressive bang.
I leaned back in my chair with my mind at ease for the first time
since the receipt of my son's letter.
"Only let George return by the first of November," I thought to
myself, "and all the aunts in Christendom shall not prevent
Jessie Yelverton from being here to meet him."
THE TEN DAYS.
THE FIRST DAY.
SHOWERY and unsettled. In spite of the weather, Jessie put on my
Mackintosh cloak and rode off over the hills to one of Owen's
outlying farms. She was already too impatient to wait quietly for
the evening's reading in the house, or to enjoy any amusement
less exhilarating than a gallop in the open air.
I was, on my side, as anxious and as uneasy as our guest. Now
that the six weeks of her stay had expired--now that the day had
really arrived, on the evening of which the first story was to be
read, I began to calculate the chances of failure as well as the
chances of success. What if my own estimate of the interest of
the stories turned out to be a false one? What if some unforeseen
accident occurred to delay my son's return beyond ten days?
The arrival of the newspaper had already become an event of the
deepest importance to me. Unreasonable as it was to expect any
tidings of George at so early a date, I began, nevertheless, on
this first of our days of suspense, to look for the name of his
ship in the columns of telegraphic news. The mere mechanical act
of looking was some relief to my overstrained feelings, although
I might have known, and did know, that the search, for the
present, could lead to no satisfactory result.
Toward noon I shut myself up with my collection of manuscripts to
revise them for the last time. Our exertions had thus far
produced but six of the necessary ten stories. As they were only,
however, to be read, one by one, on six successive evenings, and
as we could therefore count on plenty of leisure in the daytime,
I was in no fear of our failing to finish the little series.
Of the six completed stories I had written two, and had found a
third in the form of a collection of letters among my papers.
Morgan had only written one, and this solitary contribution of
his had given me more trouble than both my own put together, in
consequence of the perpetual intrusion of my brother's
eccentricities in every part of his narrative. The process of
removing these quaint turns and frisks of Morgan's humor--which,
however amusing they might have been in an essay, were utterly
out of place in a story appealing to suspended interest for its
effect--certainly tried my patience and my critical faculty (such
as it is) more severely than any other part of our literary
enterprise which had fallen my share.
Owen's investigations among his papers had supplied us with the
two remaining narratives. One was contained in a letter, and the
other in the form of a diary, and both had been received by him
directly from the writers. Besides these contributions, he had
undertaken to help us by some work of his own, and had been
engaged for the last four days in molding certain events which
had happened within his personal knowledge into the form of a
story. His extreme fastidiousness as a writer interfered,
however, so seriously with his progress that he was still sadly
behindhand, and was likely, though less heavily burdened than
Morgan or myself, to be the last to complete his allotted task.
Such was our position, and such the resources at our command,
when the first of the Ten Days dawned upon us. Shortly after four
in the afternoon I completed my work of revision, numbered the
manuscripts from one to six exactly as they happened to lie under
my hand, and inclosed them all in a portfolio, covered with
purple morocco, which became known from that time by the imposing
title of The Purple Volume.
Miss Jessie returned from her expedition just as I was tying the
strings of the portfolio, and, womanlike, instantly asked leave
to peep inside, which favor I, manlike, positively declined to
grant.
As soon as dinner was over our guest retired to array herself in
magnificent evening costume. It had been arranged that the
readings were to take place in her own sitting-room; and she was
so enthusiastically desirous to do honor to the occasion, that
she regretted not having brought with her from London the dress
in which she had been presented at court the year before, and not
having borrowed certain materials for additional splendor which
she briefly described as "aunt's diamonds."
Toward eight o'clock we assembled in the sitting-room, and a
strangely assorted company we were. At the head of the table,
radiant in silk and jewelry, flowers and furbelows, sat The Queen
of Hearts, looking so handsome and so happy that I secretly
congratulated my absent son on the excellent taste he had shown
in falling in love with her. Round this bright young creature
(Owen, at the foot of the table, and Morgan and I on either side)
sat her three wrinkled, gray-headed, dingily-attired hosts, and
just behind her, in still more inappropriate companionship,
towered the spectral figure of the man in armor, which had so
unaccountably attracted her on her arrival. This strange scene
was lighted up by candles in high and heavy brass sconces. Before
Jessie stood a mighty china punch-bowl of the olden time,
containing the folded pieces of card, inside which were written
the numbers to be drawn, and before Owen reposed the Purple
Volume from which one of us was to read. The walls of the room
were hung all round with faded tapestry; the clumsy furniture was
black with age; and, in spite of the light from the sconces, the
lofty ceiling was almost lost in gloom. If Rembrandt could have
painted our background, Reynolds our guest, and Hogarth
ourselves, the picture of the scene would have been complete.
When the old clock over the tower gateway had chimed eight, I
rose to inaugurate the proceedings by requesting Jessie to take
one of the pieces of card out of the punch-bowl, and to declare
the number.
She laughed; then suddenly became frightened and serious; then
looked at me, and said, "It was dreadfully like business;" and
then entreated Morgan not to stare at her, or, in the present
state of her nerves, she should upset the punch-bowl. At last she
summoned resolution enough to take out one of the pieces of card
and to unfold it.
"Declare the number, my dear," said Owen.
"Number Four," answered Jessie, making a magnificent courtesy,
and beginning to look like herself again.
Owen opened the Purple Volume, searched through the manuscripts,
and suddenly changed color. The cause of his discomposure was
soon explained. Malicious fate had assigned to the most diffident
individual in the company the trying responsibility of leading
the way. Number Four was one of the two narratives which Owen had
found among his own papers.
"I am almost sorry," began my eldest brother, confusedly, "that
it has fallen to my turn to read first. I hardly know which I
distrust most, myself or my story."
"Try and fancy you are in the pulpit again," said Morgan,
sarcastically. "Gentlemen of your cloth, Owen, seldom seem to
distrust themselves or their manuscripts when they get into that
position."
"The fact is," continued Owen, mildly impenetrable to his
brother's cynical remark, "that the little thing I am going to
try and read is hardly a story at all. I am afraid it is only an
anecdote. I became possessed of the letter which contains my
narrative under these circumstances. At the time when I was a
clergyman in London, my church was attended for some months by a
lady who was the wife of a large farmer in the country. She had
been obliged to come to town, and to remain there for the sake of
one of her children, a little boy, who required the best medical
advice."
At the words "medical advice" Morgan shook his head and growled
to himself contemptuously. Owen went on:
"While she was attending in this way to one child, his share in
her love was unexpectedly disputed by another, who came into the
world rather before his time. I baptized the baby, and was asked
to the little christening party afterward. This was my first
introduction to the lady, and I was very favorably impressed by
her; not so much on account of her personal appearance, for she
was but a little wo man and had no pretensions to beauty, as on
account of a certain simplicity, and hearty, downright kindness
in her manner, as well as of an excellent frankness and good
sense in her conversation. One of the guests present, who saw how
she had interested me, and who spoke of her in the highest terms,
surprised me by inquiring if I should ever have supposed that
quiet, good-humored little woman to be capable of performing an
act of courage which would have tried the nerves of the boldest
man in England? I naturally enough begged for an explanation; but
my neighbor at the table only smiled and said, 'If you can find
an opportunity, ask her what happened at The Black Cottage, and
you will hear something that will astonish you.' I acted on the
hint as soon as I had an opportunity of speaking to her
privately. The lady answered that it was too long a story to tell
then, and explained, on my suggesting that she should relate it
on some future day, that she was about to start for her country
home the next morning. 'But,' she was good enough to add, 'as I
have been under great obligations to you for many Sundays past,
and as you seem interested in this matter, I will employ my first
leisure time after my return in telling you by writing, instead
of by word of mouth, what really happened to me on one memorable
night of my life in The Black Cottage.'
"She faithfully performed her promise. In a fortnight afterward I
received from her the narrative which I am now about to read."
BROTHER OWEN'S STORY
OF
THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK COTTAGE.
To begin at the beginning, I must take you back to the time after
my mother's death, when my only brother had gone to sea, when my
sister was out at service, and when I lived alone with my father
in the midst of a moor in the west of England.
The moor was covered with great limestone rocks, and intersected
here and there by streamlets. The nearest habitation to ours was
situated about a mile and a half off, where a strip of the
fertile land stretched out into the waste like a tongue. Here the
outbuildings of the great Moor Farm, then in the possession of my
husband's father, began. The farm-lands stretched down gently
into a beautiful rich valley, lying nicely sheltered by the high
platform of the moor. When the ground began to rise again, miles
and miles away, it led up to a country house called Holme Manor,
belonging to a gentleman named Knifton. Mr. Knifton had lately
married a young lady whom my mother had nursed, and whose
kindness and friendship for me, her foster-sister, I shall
remember gratefully to the last day of my life. These and other
slight particulars it is necessary to my story that I should tell
you, and it is also necessary that you should be especially
careful to bear them well in mind.
My father was by trade a stone-mason. His cottage stood a mile
and a half from the nearest habitation. In all other directions
we were four or five times that distance from neighbors. Being
very poor people, this lonely situation had one great attraction
for us--we lived rent free on it. In addition to that advantage,
the stones, by shaping which my father gained his livelihood, lay
all about him at his very door, so that he thought his position,
solitary as it was, quite an enviable one. I can hardly say that
I agreed with him, though I never complained. I was very fond of
my father, and managed to make the best of my loneliness with the
thought of being useful to him. Mrs. Knifton wished to take me
into her service when she married, but I declined, unwillingly
enough, for my father's sake. If I had gone away, he would have
had nobody to live with him; and my mother made me promise on her
death-bed that he should never be left to pine away alone in the
midst of the bleak moor.
Our cottage, small as it was, was stoutly and snugly built, with
stone from the moor as a matter of course. The walls were lined
inside and fenced outside with wood, the gift of Mr. Knifton's
father to my father. This double covering of cracks and crevices,
which would have been superfluous in a sheltered position, was
absolutely necessary, in our exposed situation, to keep out the
cold winds which, excepting just the summer months, swept over us
continually all the year round. The outside boards, covering our
roughly-built stone walls, my father protected against the wet
with pitch and tar. This gave to our little abode a curiously
dark, dingy look, especially when it was seen from a distance;
and so it had come to be called in the neighborhood, even before
I was born, The Black Cottage.
I have now related the preliminary particulars which it is
desirable that you should know, and may proceed at once to the
pleasanter task of telling you my story.
One cloudy autumn day, when I was rather more than eighteen years
old, a herdsman walked over from Moor Farm with a letter which
had been left there for my father. It came from a builder living
at our county town, half a day's journey off, and it invited my
father to come to him and give his judgment about an estimate for
some stonework on a very large scale. My father's expenses for
loss of time were to be paid, and he was to have his share of
employment afterwards in preparing the stone. He was only too
glad, therefore, to obey the directions which the letter
contained, and to prepare at once for his long walk to the county
town.
Considering the time at which he received the letter, and the
necessity of resting before he attempted to return, it was
impossible for him to avoid being away from home for one night,
at least. He proposed to me, in case I disliked being left alone
in the Black Cottage, to lock the door and to take me to Moor
Farm to sleep with any one of the milkmaids who would give me a
share of her bed. I by no means liked the notion of sleeping with
a girl whom I did not know, and I saw no reason to feel afraid of
being left alone for only one night; so I declined. No thieves
had ever come near us; our poverty was sufficient protection
against them; and of other dangers there were none that even the
most timid person could apprehend. Accordingly, I got my father's
dinner, laughing at the notion of my taking refuge under the
protection of a milkmaid at Moor Farm. He started for his walk as
soon as he had done, saying he should try and be back by
dinner-time the next day, and leaving me and my cat Polly to take
care of the house.
I had cleared the table and brightened up the fire, and had sat
down to my work with the cat dozing at my feet, when I heard the
trampling of horses, and, running to the door, saw Mr. and Mrs.
Knifton, with their groom behind them, riding up to the Black
Cottage. It was part of the young lady's kindness never to
neglect an opportunity of coming to pay me a friendly visit, and
her husband was generally willing to accompany her for his wife's
sake. I made my best courtesy, therefore, with a great deal of
pleasure, but with no particular surprise at seeing them. They
dismounted and entered the cottage, laughing and talking in great
spirits. I soon heard that they were riding to the same county
town for which my father was bound and that they intended to stay
with some friends there for a few days, and to return home on
horseback, as they went out.
I heard this, and I also discovered that they had been having an
argument, in jest, about money-matters, as they rode along to our
cottage. Mrs. Knifton had accused her husband of inveterate
extravagance, and of never being able to go out with money in his
pocket without spending it all, if he possibly could, before he
got home again. Mr. Knifton had laughingly defended himself by
declaring that all his pocket-money went in presents for his
wife, and that, if he spent it lavishly, it was under her sole
influence and superintendence.
"We are going to Cliverton now," he said to Mrs. Knifton, naming
the county town, and warming himself at our poor fire just as
pleasantly as if he had been standing on his own grand hearth.
"You will stop to admire every pretty thing in every one of the
Cliverton shop-windows; I shall hand you the purse, and you will
go in and buy. When we have reached home again, and you have h ad
time to get tired of your purchases, you will clasp your hands in
amazement, and declare that you are quite shocked at my habits of
inveterate extravagance. I am only the banker who keeps the
money; you, my love, are the spendthrift who throws it all away!"
"Am I, sir?" said Mrs. Knifton, with a look of mock indignation.
"We will see if I am to be misrepresented in this way with
impunity. Bessie, my dear" (turning to me), "you shall judge how
far I deserve the character which that unscrupulous man has just
given to me. _I_ am the spendthrift, am I? And you are only the
banker? Very well. Banker, give me my money at once, if you
please!"
Mr. Knifton laughed, and took some gold and silver from his
waistcoat pocket.
"No, no," said Mrs. Knifton, "you may want what you have got
there for necessary expenses. Is that all the money you have
about you? What do I feel here?" and she tapped her husband on
the chest, just over the breast-pocket of his coat.
Mr. Knifton laughed again, and produced his pocketbook. His wife
snatched it out of his hand, opened it, and drew out some
bank-notes, put them back again immediately, and, closing the
pocketbook, stepped across the room to my poor mother's little
walnut-wood book-case, the only bit of valuable furniture we had
in the house.
"What are you going to do there?" asked Mr. Knifton, following
his wife.
Mrs. Knifton opened the glass door of the book-case, put the
pocketbook in a vacant place on one of the lower shelves, closed
and locked the door again, and gave me the key.
"You called me a spendthrift just now," she said. "There is my
answer. Not one farthing of that money shall you spend at
Cliverton on _me_. Keep the key in your pocket, Bessie, and,
whatever Mr. Knifton may say, on no account let him have it until
we call again on our way back. No, sir, I won't trust you with
that money in your pocket in the town of Cliverton. I will make
sure of your taking it all home again, by leaving it here in more
trustworthy hands than yours until we ride back. Bessie, my dear,
what do you say to that as a lesson in economy inflicted on a
prudent husband by a spendthrift wife?"
She took Mr. Knifton's arm while she spoke, and drew him away to
the door. He protested and made some resistance, but she easily
carried her point, for he was far too fond of her to have a will
of his own in any trifling matter between them. Whatever the men
might say, Mr. Knifton was a model husband in the estimation of
all the women who knew him.
"You will see us as we come back, Bessie. Till then, you are our
banker, and the pocketbook is yours," cried Mrs. Knifton, gayly,
at the door. Her husband lifted her into the saddle, mounted
himself, and away they both galloped over the moor as wild and
happy as a couple of children.
Although my being trusted with money by Mrs. Knifton was no
novelty (in her maiden days she always employed me to pay her
dress-maker's bills), I did not feel quite easy at having a
pocketbook full of bank-notes left by her in my charge. I had no
positive apprehensions about the safety of the deposit placed in
my hands, but it was one of the odd points in my character then
(and I think it is still) to feel an unreasonably strong
objection to charging myself with money responsibilities of any
kind, even to suit the convenience of my dearest friends. As soon
as I was left alone, the very sight of the pocketbook behind the
glass door of the book-case began to worry me, and instead of
returning to my work, I puzzled my brains about finding a place
to lock it up in, where it would not be exposed to the view of
any chance passers-by who might stray into the Black Cottage.
This was not an easy matter to compass in a poor house like ours,
where we had nothing valuable to put under lock and key. After
running over various hiding-places in my mind, I thought of my
tea-caddy, a present from Mrs. Knifton, which I always kept out
of harm's way in my own bedroom. Most unluckily--as it afterward
turned out--instead of taking the pocketbook to the tea-caddy, I
went into my room first to take the tea-caddy to the pocketbook.
I only acted in this roundabout way from sheer thoughtlessness,
and severely enough I was punished for it, as you will
acknowledge yourself when you have read a page or two more of my
story.
I was just getting the unlucky tea-caddy out of my cupboard, when
I heard footsteps in the passage, and, running out immediately,
saw two men walk into the kitchen--the room in which I had
received Mr. and Mrs. Knifton. I inquired what they wanted
sharply enough, and one of them answered immediately that they
wanted my father. He turned toward me, of course, as he spoke,
and I recognized him as a stone-mason, going among his comrades
by the name of Shifty Dick. He bore a very bad character for
everything but wrestling, a sport for which the working men of
our parts were famous all through the county. Shifty Dick was
champion, and he had got his name from some tricks of wrestling,
for which he was celebrated. He was a tall, heavy man, with a
lowering, scarred face, and huge hairy hands--the last visitor in
the whole world that I should have been glad to see under any
circumstances. His companion was a stranger, whom he addressed by
the name of Jerry--a quick, dapper, wicked-looking man, who took
off his cap to me with mock politeness, and showed, in so doing,
a very bald head, with some very ugly-looking knobs on it. I
distrusted him worse than I did Shifty Dick, and managed to get
between his leering eyes and the book-case, as I told the two
that my father was gone out, and that I did not expect him back
till the next day.
The words were hardly out of my mouth before I repented that my
anxiety to get rid of my unwelcome visitors had made me
incautious enough to acknowledge that my father would be away
from home for the whole night.
Shifty Dick and his companion looked at each other when I
unwisely let out the truth, but made no remark except to ask me
if I would give them a drop of cider. I answered sharply that I
had no cider in the house, having no fear of the consequences of
refusing them drink, because I knew that plenty of men were at
work within hail, in a neighboring quarry. The two looked at each
other again when I denied having any cider to give them; and
Jerry (as I am obliged to call him, knowing no other name by
which to distinguish the fellow) took off his cap to me once
more, and, with a kind of blackguard gentility upon him, said
they would have the pleasure of calling the next day, when my
father was at home. I said good-afternoon as ungraciously as
possible, and, to my great relief, they both left the cottage
immediately afterward.
As soon as they were well away, I watched them from the door.
They trudged off in the direction of Moor Farm; and, as it was
beginning to get dusk, I soon lost sight of them.
Half an hour afterward I looked out again.
The wind had lulled with the sunset, but the mist was rising, and
a heavy rain was beginning to fall. Never did the lonely prospect
of the moor look so dreary as it looked to my eyes that evening.
Never did I regret any slight thing more sincerely than I then
regretted the leaving of Mr. Knifton's pocketbook in my charge. I
cannot say that I suffered under any actual alarm, for I felt
next to certain that neither Shifty Dick nor Jerry had got a
chance of setting eyes on so small a thing as the pocketbook
while they were in the kitchen; but there was a kind of vague
distrust troubling me--a suspicion of the night--a dislike of
being left by myself, which I never remember having experienced
before. This feeling so increased after I had closed the door and
gone back to the kitchen, that, when I heard the voices of the
quarrymen as they passed our cottage on their way home to the
village in the valley below Moor Farm, I stepped out into the
passage with a momentary notion of telling them how I was
situated, and asking them for advice and protection.
I had hardly formed this idea, however, before I dismissed it.
None of the quarrymen were intimate friends of mine. I had a
nodding acquaintance with them, and believed them to be honest
men, as times
went. But my own common sense told me that what little knowledge
of their characters I had was by no means sufficient to warrant
me in admitting them into my confidence in the matter of the
pocketbook. I had seen enough of poverty and poor men to know
what a terrible temptation a large sum of money is to those whose
whole lives are passed in scraping up sixpences by weary hard
work. It is one thing to write fine sentiments in books about
incorruptible honesty, and another thing to put those sentiments
in practice when one day's work is all that a man has to set up
in the way of an obstacle between starvation and his own
fireside.
The only resource that remained was to carry the pocketbook with
me to Moor Farm, and ask permission to pass the night there. But
I could not persuade myself that there was any real necessity for
taking such a course as this; and, if the truth must be told, my
pride revolted at the idea of presenting myself in the character
of a coward before the people at the farm. Timidity is thought
rather a graceful attraction among ladies, but among poor women
it is something to be laughed at. A woman with less spirit of her
own than I had, and always shall have, would have considered
twice in my situation before she made up her mind to encounter
the jokes of plowmen and the jeers of milkmaids. As for me, I had
hardly considered about going to the farm before I despised
myself for entertaining any such notion. "No, no," thought I, "I
am not the woman to walk a mile and a half through rain, and
mist, and darkness to tell a whole kitchenful of people that I am
afraid. Come what may, here I stop till father gets back."
Having arrived at that valiant resolution, the first thing I did
was to lock and bolt the back and front doors, and see to the
security of every shutter in the house.
That duty performed, I made a blazing fire, lighted my candle,
and sat down to tea, as snug and comfortable as possible. I could
hardly believe now, with the light in the room, and the sense of
security inspired by the closed doors and shutters, that I had
ever felt even the slightest apprehension earlier in the day. I
sang as I washed up the tea-things; and even the cat seemed to
catch the infection of my good spirits. I never knew the pretty
creature so playful as she was that evening.
The tea-things put by, I took up my knitting, and worked away at
it so long that I began at last to get drowsy. The fire was so
bright and comforting that I could not muster resolution enough
to leave it and go to bed. I sat staring lazily into the blaze,
with my knitting on my lap--sat till the splashing of the rain
outside and the fitful, sullen sobbing of the wind grew fainter
and fainter on my ear. The last sounds I heard before I fairly
dozed off to sleep were the cheerful crackling of the fire and
the steady purring of the cat, as she basked luxuriously in the
warm light on the hearth. Those were the last sounds before I
fell asleep. The sound that woke me was one loud bang at the
front door.
I started up, with my heart (as the saying is) in my mouth, with
a frightful momentary shuddering at the roots of my hair--I
started up breathless, cold and motionless, waiting in the
silence I hardly knew for what, doubtful at first whether I had
dreamed about the bang at the door, or whether the blow had
really been struck on it.
In a minute or less there came a second bang, louder than the
first. I ran out into the passage.
"Who's there?"
"Let us in," answered a voice, which I recognised immediately as
the voice of Shifty Dick.
"Wait a bit, my dear, and let me explain," said a second voice,
in the low, oily, jeering tones of Dick's companion--the wickedly
clever little man whom he called Jerry. "You are alone in the
house, my pretty little dear. You may crack your sweet voice with
screeching, and there's nobody near to hear you. Listen to
reason, my love, and let us in. We don't want cider this time--we
only want a very neat-looking pocketbook which you happen to
have, and your late excellent mother's four silver teaspoons,
which you keep so nice and clean on the chimney-piece. If you let
us in we won't hurt a hair of your head, my cherub, and we
promise to go away the moment we have got what we want, unless
you particularly wish us to stop to tea. If you keep us out, we
shall be obliged to break into the house and then--"
"And then," burst in Shifty Dick, "we'll _mash_ you!"
"Yes," said Jerry, "we'll mash you, my beauty. But you won't
drive us to doing that, will you? You will let us in?"
This long parley gave me time to recover from the effect which
the first bang at the door had produced on my nerves. The threats
of the two villains would have terrified some women out of their
senses, but the only result they produced on _me_ was violent
indignation. I had, thank God, a strong spirit of my own, and the
cool, contemptuous insolence of the man Jerry effectually roused
it.
"You cowardly villains!" I screamed at them through the door.
"You think you can frighten me because I am only a poor girl left
alone in the house. You ragamuffin thieves, I defy you both! Our
bolts are strong, our shutters are thick. I am here to keep my
father's house safe, and keep it I will against an army of you!"
You may imagine what a passion I was in when I vapored and
blustered in that way. I heard Jerry laugh and Shifty Dick swear
a whole mouthful of oaths. Then there was a dead silence for a
minute or two, and then the two ruffians attacked the door.
I rushed into the kitchen and seized the poker, and then heaped
wood on the fire, and lighted all the candles I could find; for I
felt as though I could keep up my courage better if I had plenty
of light. Strange and improbable as it may appear, the next thing
that attracted my attention was my poor pussy, crouched up,
panic-stricken, in a corner. I was so fond of the little creature
that I took her up in my arms and carried her into my bedroom and
put her inside my bed. A comical thing to do in a situation of
deadly peril, was it not? But it seemed quite natural and proper
at the time.
All this while the blows were falling faster and faster on the
door. They were dealt, as I conjectured, with heavy stones picked
up from the ground outside. Jerry sang at his wicked work, and
Shifty Dick swore. As I left the bedroom after putting the cat
under cover, I heard the lower panel of the door begin to crack.
I ran into the kitchen and huddled our four silver spoons into my
pocket; then took the unlucky book with the bank-notes and put it
in the bosom of my dress. I was determined to defend the property
confided to my care with my life. Just as I had secured the
pocketbook I heard the door splintering, and rushed into the
passage again with my heavy kitchen poker lifted in both hands.
I was in time to see the bald head of Jerry, with the
ugly-looking knobs on it, pushed into the passage through a great
rent in one of the lower panels of the door.
"Get out, you villain, or I'll brain you on the spot!" I
screeched, threatening him with the poker.
Mr. Jerry took his head out again much faster than he put it in.
The next thing that came through the rent was a long pitchfork,
which they darted at me from the outside, to move me from the
door. I struck at it with all my might, and the blow must have
jarred the hand of Shifty Dick up to his very shoulder, for I
heard him give a roar of rage and pain. Before he could catch at
the fork with his other hand I had drawn it inside. By this time
even Jerry lost his temper and swore more awfully than Dick
himself.
Then there came another minute of respite. I suspected they had
gone to get bigger stones, and I dreaded the giving way of the
whole door.
Running into the bedroom as this fear beset me, I laid hold of my
chest of drawers, dragged it into the passage, and threw it down
against the door. On the top of that I heaped my father's big
tool chest, three chairs, and a scuttleful of coals; and last, I
dragged out the kitchen table and rammed it as hard as I could
against the whole barricade. They heard me as they were coming up
to the door with fresh stones. Jerry said: "Stop a bit!" and t
hen the two consulted together in whispers. I listened eagerly,
and just caught these words:
"Let's try it the other way."
Nothing more was said, but I heard their footsteps retreating
from the door.
Were they going to besiege the back door now?
I had hardly asked myself that question when I heard their voices
at the other side of the house. The back door was smaller than
the front, but it had this advantage in the way of strength--it
was made of two solid oak boards joined lengthwise, and
strengthened inside by heavy cross pieces. It had no bolts like
the front door, but was fastened by a bar of iron running across
it in a slanting direction, and fitting at either end into the
wall.
"They must have the whole cottage down before they can break in
at that door!" I thought to myself. And they soon found out as
much for themselves. After five minutes of banging at the back
door they gave up any further attack in that direction and cast
their heavy stones down with curses of fury awful to hear.
I went into the kitchen and dropped on the window-seat to rest
for a moment. Suspense and excitement together were beginning to
tell upon me. The perspiration broke out thick on my forehead,
and I began to feel the bruises I had inflicted on my hands in
making the barricade against the front door. I had not lost a
particle of my resolution, but I was beginning to lose strength.
There was a bottle of rum in the cupboard, which my brother the
sailor had left with us the last time he was ashore. I drank a
drop of it. Never before or since have I put anything down my
throat that did me half so much good as that precious mouthful of
rum!
I was still sitting in the window-seat drying my face, when I
suddenly heard their voices close behind me.
They were feeling the outside of the window against which I was
sitting. It was protected, like all the other windows in the
cottage, by iron bars. I listened in dreadful suspense for the
sound of filing, but nothing of the sort was audible. They had
evidently reckoned on frightening me easily into letting them in,
and had come unprovided with house-breaking tools of any kind. A
fresh burst of oaths informed me that they had recognized the
obstacle of the iron bars. I listened breathlessly for some
warning of what they were going to do next, but their voices
seemed to die away in the distance. They were retreating from the
window. Were they also retreating from the house altogether? Had
they given up the idea of effecting an entrance in despair?
A long silence followed--a silence which tried my courage even
more severely than the tumult of their first attack on the
cottage.
Dreadful suspicions now beset me of their being able to
accomplish by treachery what they had failed to effect by force.
Well as I knew the cottage, I began to doubt whether there might
not be ways of cunningly and silently entering it against which I
was not provided. The ticking of the clock annoyed me; the
crackling of the fire startled me. I looked out twenty times in a
minute into the dark corners of the passage, straining my eyes,
holding my breath, anticipating the most unlikely events, the
most impossible dangers. Had they really gone, or were they still
prowling about the house? Oh, what a sum of money I would have
given only to have known what they were about in that interval of
silence!
I was startled at last out of my suspense in the most awful
manner. A shout from one of them reached my ears on a sudden down
the kitchen chimney. It was so unexpected and so horrible in the
stillness that I screamed for the first time since the attack on
the house. My worst forebodings had never suggested to me that
the two villains might mount upon the roof.
"Let us in, you she-devil!" roared a voice down the chimney.
There was another pause. The smoke from the wood fire, thin and
light as it was in the red state of the embers at that moment,
had evidently obliged the man to take his face from the mouth of
the chimney. I counted the seconds while he was, as I
conjectured, getting his breath again. In less than half a minute
there came another shout:
"Let us in, or we'll burn the place down over your head!"
Burn it? Burn what? There was nothing easily combustible but the
thatch on the roof; and that had been well soaked by the heavy
rain which had now fallen incessantly for more than six hours.
Burn the place over my head? How?
While I was still casting about wildly in my mind to discover
what possible danger there could be of fire, one of the heavy
stones placed on the thatch to keep it from being torn up by high
winds came thundering down the chimney. It scattered the live
embers on the hearth all over the room. A richly-furnished place,
with knickknacks and fine muslin about it, would have been set on
fire immediately. Even our bare floor and rough furniture gave
out a smell of burning at the first shower of embers which the
first stone scattered.
For an instant I stood quite horror-struck before this new proof
of the devilish ingenuity of the villains outside. But the
dreadful danger I was now in recalled me to my senses
immediately. There was a large canful of water in my bedroom, and
I ran in at once to fetch it. Before I could get back to the
kitchen a second stone had been thrown down the chimney, and the
floor was smoldering in several places.
I had wit enough to let the smoldering go on for a moment or two
more, and to pour the whole of my canful of water over the fire
before the third stone came down the chimney. The live embers on
the floor I easily disposed of after that. The man on the roof
must have heard the hissing of the fire as I put it out, and have
felt the change produced in the air at the mouth of the chimney,
for after the third stone had descended no more followed it. As
for either of the ruffians themselves dropping down by the same
road along which the stones had come, that was not to be dreaded.
The chimney, as I well knew by our experience in cleaning it, was
too narrow to give passage to any one above the size of a small
boy.
I looked upward as that comforting reflection crossed my mind--I
looked up, and saw, as plainly as I see the paper I am now
writing on, the point of a knife coming through the inside of the
roof just over my head. Our cottage had no upper story, and our
rooms had no ceilings. Slowly and wickedly the knife wriggled its
way through the dry inside thatch between the rafters. It stopped
for a while, and there came a sound of tearing. That, in its
turn, stopped too; there was a great fall of dry thatch on the
floor; and I saw the heavy, hairy hand of Shifty Dick, armed with
the knife, come through after the fallen fragments. He tapped at
the rafters with the back of the knife, as if to test their
strength. Thank God, they were substantial and close together!
Nothing lighter than a hatchet would have sufficed to remove any
part of them.
The murderous hand was still tapping with the knife when I heard
a shout from the man Jerry, coming from the neighborhood of my
father's stone-shed in the back yard. The hand and knife
disappeared instantly. I went to the back door and put my ear to
it, and listened.
Both men were now in the shed. I made the most desperate efforts
to call to mind what tools and other things were left in it which
might be used against me. But my agitation confused me. I could
remember nothing except my father's big stone-saw, which was far
too heavy and unwieldy to be used on the roof of the cottage. I
was still puzzling my brains, and making my head swim to no
purpose, when I heard the men dragging something out of the shed.
At the same instant that the noise caught my ear, the remembrance
flashed across me like lightning of some beams of wood which had
lain in the shed for years past. I had hardly time to feel
certain that they were removing one of these beams before I heard
Shifty Dick say to Jerry.
"Which door?"
"The front," was the answer. "We've cracked it already; we'll
have it down now in no time."
Senses less sharpened by danger than mine would have understood
but too easily, from these words, that they were about to use the
beam as a battering-ram against the door. When that conviction
overcame me, I lost courage at last. I felt that the door must
come down. No such barricade as I had constructed could support
it for more than a few minutes against such shocks as it was now
to receive.
"I can do no more to keep the house against them," I said to
myself, with my knees knocking together, and the tears at last
beginning to wet my cheeks. "I must trust to the night and the
thick darkness, and save my life by running for it while there is
yet time."
I huddled on my cloak and hood, and had my hand on the bar of the
back door, when a piteous mew from the bedroom reminded me of the
existence of poor Pussy. I ran in, and huddled the creature up in
my apron. Before I was out in the passage again, the first shock
from the beam fell on the door.
The upper hinge gave way. The chairs and coal-scuttle, forming
the top of my barricade, were hurled, rattling, on to the floor,
but the lower hinge of the door, and the chest of drawers and the
tool-chest still kept their places.
"One more!" I heard the villains cry--"one more run with the
beam, and down it comes!"
Just as they must have been starting for that "one more run," I
opened the back door and fled into the night, with the bookful of
banknotes in my bosom, the silver spoons in my pocket, and the
cat in my arms. I threaded my way easily enough through the
familiar obstacles in the backyard, and was out in the pitch
darkness of the moor before I heard the second shock, and the
crash which told me that the whole door had given way.
In a few minutes they must have discovered the fact of my flight
with the pocketbook, for I heard shouts in the distance as if
they were running out to pursue me. I kept on at the top of my
speed, and the noise soon died away. It was so dark that twenty
thieves instead of two would have found it useless to follow me.
How long it was before I reached the farmhouse--the nearest place
to which I could fly for refuge--I cannot tell you. I remember
that I had just sense enough to keep the wind at my back (having
observed in the beginning of the evening that it blew toward Moor
Farm), and to go on resolutely through the darkness. In all other
respects I was by this time half crazed by what I had gone
through. If it had so happened that the wind had changed after I
had observed its direction early in the evening, I should have
gone astray, and have probably perished of fatigue and exposure
on the moor. Providentially, it still blew steadily as it had
blown for hours past, and I reached the farmhouse with my clothes
wet through, and my brain in a high fever. When I made my alarm
at the door, they had all gone to bed but the farmer's eldest
son, who was sitting up late over his pipe and newspaper. I just
mustered strength enough to gasp out a few words, telling him
what was the matter, and then fell down at his feet, for the
first time in my life in a dead swoon.
That swoon was followed by a severe illness. When I got strong
enough to look about me again, I found myself in one of the
farmhouse beds--my father, Mrs. Knifton, and the doctor were all
in the room--my cat was asleep at my feet, and the pocketbook
that I had saved lay on the table by my side.
There was plenty of news for me to hear as soon as I was fit to
listen to it. Shifty Dick and the other rascal had been caught,
and were in prison, waiting their trial at the next assizes. Mr.
and Mrs. Knifton had been so shocked at the danger I had run--for
which they blamed their own want of thoughtfulness in leaving the
pocketbook in my care--that they had insisted on my father's
removing from our lonely home to a cottage on their land, which
we were to inhabit rent free. The bank-notes that I had saved
were given to me to buy furniture with, in place of the things
that the thieves had broken. These pleasant tidings assisted so
greatly in promoting my recovery, that I was soon able to relate
to my friends at the farmhouse the particulars that I have
written here. They were all surprised and interested, but no one,
as I thought, listened to me with such breathless attention as
the farmer's eldest son. Mrs. Knifton noticed this too, and began
to make jokes about it, in her light-hearted way, as soon as we
were alone. I thought little of her jesting at the time; but when
I got well, and we went to live at our new home, "the young
farmer," as he was called in our parts, constantly came to see
us, and constantly managed to meet me out of doors. I had my
share of vanity, like other young women, and I began to think of
Mrs. Knifton's jokes with some attention. To be brief, the young
farmer managed one Sunday--I never could tell how--to lose his
way with me in returning from church, and before we found out the
right road home again he had asked me to be his wife.
His relations did all they could to keep us asunder and break off
the match, thinking a poor stonemason's daughter no fit wife for
a prosperous yeoman. But the farmer was too obstinate for them.
He had one form of answer to all their objections. "A man, if he
is worth the name, marries according to his own notions, and to
please himself," he used to say. "My notion is, that when I take
a wife I am placing my character and my happiness--the most
precious things I have to trust--in one woman's care. The woman I
mean to marry had a small charge confided to her care, and showed
herself worthy of it at the risk of her life. That is proof
enough for me that she is worthy of the greatest charge I can put
into her hands. Rank and riches are fine things, but the
certainty of getting a good wife is something better still. I'm
of age, I know my own mind, and I mean to marry the stone-mason's
daughter."
And he did marry me. Whether I proved myself worthy or not of his
good opinion is a question which I must leave you to ask my
husband. All that I had to relate about myself and my doings is
now told. Whatever interest my perilous adventure may excite,
ends, I am well aware, with my escape to the farmhouse. I have
only ventured on writing these few additional sentences because
my marriage is the moral of my story. It has brought me the
choicest blessings of happiness and prosperity, and I owe them
all to my night-adventure in _The Black Cottage_.
THE SECOND DAY.
A CLEAR, cloudless, bracing autumn morning. I rose gayly, with
the pleasant conviction on my mind that our experiment had thus
far been successful beyond our hopes.
Short and slight as the first story had been, the result of it on
Jessie's mind had proved conclusive. Before I could put the
question to her, she declared of her own accord, and with her
customary exaggeration, that she had definitely abandoned all
idea of writing to her aunt until our collection of narratives
was exhausted.
"I am in a fever of curiosity about what is to come," she said,
when we all parted for the night; "and, even if I wanted to leave
you, I could not possibly go away now, without hearing the
stories to the end."
So far, so good. All my anxieties from this time were for
George's return. Again to-day I searched the newspapers, and
again there were no tidings of the ship.
Miss Jessie occupied the second day by a drive to our county town
to make some little purchases. Owen, and Morgan, and I were all
hard at work, during her absence, on the stories that still
remained to be completed. Owen desponded about ever getting done;
Morgan grumbled at what he called the absurd difficulty of
writing nonsense. I worked on smoothly and contentedly,
stimulated by the success of the first night.
We assembled as before in our guest's sitting-room. As the clock
struck eight she drew out the second card. It was Number Two. The
lot had fallen on me to read next.
"Although my story is told in the first person," I said,
addressing Jessie, "you must not suppose that the events related
in this particular case happened to me. They happened to a friend
of mine, who naturally described them to me from his own personal
point of view. In producing my narrative from the recollection of
what he told me some years since, I have supposed myself to be
listening to him again, and have therefore written in his
character, and, w henever my memory would help me, as nearly as
possible in his language also. By this means I hope I have
succeeded in giving an air of reality to a story which has truth,
at any rate, to recommend it. I must ask you to excuse me if I
enter into no details in offering this short explanation.
Although the persons concerned in my narrative have ceased to
exist, it is necessary to observe all due delicacy toward their
memories. Who they were, and how I became acquainted with them,
are matters of no moment. The interest of the story, such as it
is, stands in no need, in this instance, of any assistance from
personal explanations."
With those words I addressed myself to my task, and read as
follows:
BROTHER GRIFFITH'S STORY
of
THE FAMILY SECRET.
CHAPTER I.
WAS it an Englishman or a Frenchman who first remarked that every
family had a skeleton in its cupboard? I am not learned enough to
know, but I reverence the observation, whoever made it. It speaks
a startling truth through an appropriately grim metaphor--a truth
which I have discovered by practical experience. Our family had a
skeleton in the cupboard, and the name of it was Uncle George.
I arrived at the knowledge that this skeleton existed, and I
traced it to the particular cupboard in which it was hidden, by
slow degrees. I was a child when I first began to suspect that
there was such a thing, and a grown man when I at last discovered
that my suspicions were true.
My father was a doctor, having an excellent practice in a large
country town. I have heard that he married against the wishes of
his family. They could not object to my mother on the score of
birth, breeding, or character--they only disliked her heartily.
My grandfather, grandmother, uncles, and aunts all declared that
she was a heartless, deceitful woman; all disliked her manners,
her opinions, and even the expression of her face--all, with the
exception of my father's youngest brother, George.
George was the unlucky member of our family. The rest were all
clever; he was slow in capacity. The rest were all remarkably
handsome; he was the sort of man that no woman ever looks at
twice. The rest succeeded in life; he failed. His profession was
the same as my father's, but he never got on when he started in
practice for himself. The sick poor, who could not choose,
employed him, and liked him. The sick rich, who could--especially
the ladies--declined to call him in when they could get anybody
else. In experience he gained greatly by his profession; in money
and reputation he gained nothing.
There are very few of us, however dull and unattractive we may be
to outward appearance, who have not some strong passion, some
germ of what is called romance, hidden more or less deeply in our
natures. All the passion and romance in the nature of my Uncle
George lay in his love and admiration for my father.
He sincerely worshipped his eldest brother as one of the noblest
of human beings. When my father was engaged to be married, and
when the rest of the family, as I have already mentioned, did not
hesitate to express their unfavorable opinion of the disposition
of his chosen wife, Uncle George, who had never ventured on
differing with anyone before, to the amazement of everybody,
undertook the defense of his future sister-in-law in the most
vehement and positive manner. In his estimation, his brother's
choice was something sacred and indisputable. The lady might, and
did, treat him with unconcealed contempt, laugh at his
awkwardness, grow impatient at his stammering--it made no
difference to Uncle George. She was to be his brother's wife,
and, in virtue of that one great fact, she became, in the
estimation of the poor surgeon, a very queen, who, by the laws of
the domestic constitution, could do no wrong.
When my father had been married a little while, he took his
youngest brother to live with him as his assistant.
If Uncle George had been made president of the College of
Surgeons, he could not have been prouder and happier than he was
in his new position. I am afraid my father never understood the
depth of his brother's affection for him. All the hard work fell
to George's share: the long journeys at night, the physicking of
wearisome poor people, the drunken cases, the revolting
cases--all the drudging, dirty business of the surgery, in short,
was turned over to him; and day after day, month after month, he
struggled through it without a murmur. When his brother and his
sister-in-law went out to dine with the county gentry, it never
entered his head to feel disappointed at being left unnoticed at
home. When the return dinners were given, and he was asked to
come in at tea-time, and left to sit unregarded in a corner, it
never occurred to him to imagine that he was treated with any
want of consideration or respect. He was part of the furniture of
the house, and it was the business as well as the pleasure of his
life to turn himself to any use to which his brother might please
to put him.
So much for what I have heard from others on the subject of my
Uncle George. My own personal experience of him is limited to
what I remember as a mere child. Let me say something, however,
first about my parents, my sister and myself.
My sister was the eldest born and the best loved. I did not come
into the world till four years after her birth, and no other
child followed me. Caroline, from her earliest days, was the
perfection of beauty and health. I was small, weakly, and, if the
truth must be told, almost as plain-featured as Uncle George
himself. It would be ungracious and undutiful in me to presume to
decide whether there was any foundation or not for the dislike
that my father's family always felt for my mother. All I can
venture to say is, that her children never had any cause to
complain of her.
Her passionate affection for my sister, her pride in the child's
beauty, I remember well, as also her uniform kindness and
indulgence toward me. My personal defects must have been a sore
trial to her in secret, but neither she nor my father ever showed
me that they perceived any difference between Caroline and
myself. When presents were made to my sister, presents were made
to me. When my father and mother caught my sister up in their
arms and kissed her they scrupulously gave me my turn afterward.
My childish instinct told me that there was a difference in their
smiles when they looked at me and looked at her; that the kisses
given to Caroline were warmer than the kisses given to me; that
the hands which dried her tears in our childish griefs, touched
her more gently than the hands which dried mine. But these, and
other small signs of preference like them, were such as no
parents could be expected to control. I noticed them at the time
rather with wonder than with repining. I recall them now without
a harsh thought either toward my father or my mother. Both loved
me, and both did their duty by me. If I seem to speak
constrainedly of them here, it is not on my own account. I can
honestly say that, with all my heart and soul.
Even Uncle George, fond as he was of me, was fonder of my
beautiful child-sister.
When I used mischievously to pull at his lank, scanty hair, he
would gently and laughingly take it out of my hands, but he would
let Caroline tug at it till his dim, wandering gray eyes winked
and watered again with pain. He used to plunge perilously about
the garden, in awkward imitation of the cantering of a horse,
while I sat on his shoulders; but he would never proceed at any
pace beyond a slow and safe walk when Caroline had a ride in her
turn. When he took us out walking, Caroline was always on the
side next the wall. When we interrupted him over his dirty work
in the surgery, he used to tell me to go and play until he was
ready for me; but he would put down his bottles, and clean his
clumsy fingers on his coarse apron, and lead Caroline out again,
as if she had been the greatest lady in the land. Ah! how he
loved her! and, let me be honest and grateful, and add, how he
loved me, too!
When I was eight years old and Caroline was twelve, I was
separated from home for some time. I had been ailing for many
months previously; had got ben efit from being taken to the
sea-side, and had shown symptoms of relapsing on being brought
home again to the midland county in which we resided. After much
consultation, it was at last resolved that I should be sent to
live, until my constitution got stronger, with a maiden sister of
my mother's, who had a house at a watering-place on the south
coast.
I left home, I remember, loaded with presents, rejoicing over the
prospect of looking at the sea again, as careless of the future
and as happy in the present as any boy could be. Uncle George
petitioned for a holiday to take me to the seaside, but he could
not be spared from the surgery. He consoled himself and me by
promising to make me a magnificent model of a ship.
I have that model before my eyes now while I write. It is dusty
with age; the paint on it is cracked; the ropes are tangled; the
sails are moth-eaten and yellow. The hull is all out of
proportion, and the rig has been smiled at by every nautical
friend of mine who has ever looked at it. Yet, worn-out and
faulty as it is--inferior to the cheapest miniature vessel
nowadays in any toy-shop window--I hardly know a possession of
mine in this world that I would not sooner part with than Uncle
George's ship.
My life at the sea-side was a very happy one. I remained with my
aunt more than a year. My mother often came to see how I was
going on, and at first always brought my sister with her; but
during the last eight months of my stay Caroline never once
appeared. I noticed also, at the same period, a change in my
mother's manner. She looked paler and more anxious at each
succeeding visit, and always had long conferences in private with
my aunt. At last she ceased to come and see us altogether, and
only wrote to know how my health was getting on. My father, too,
who had at the earlier periods of my absence from home traveled
to the sea-side to watch the progress of my recovery as often as
his professional engagements would permit, now kept away like my
mother. Even Uncle George, who had never been allowed a holiday
to come and see me, but who had hitherto often written and begged
me to write to him, broke off our correspondence.
I was naturally perplexed and amazed by these changes, and
persecuted my aunt to tell me the reason of them. At first she
tried to put me off with excuses; then she admitted that there
was trouble in our house; and finally she confessed that the
trouble was caused by the illness of my sister. When I inquired
what that illness was, my aunt said it was useless to attempt to
explain it to me. I next applied to the servants. One of them was
less cautious than my aunt, and answered my question, but in
terms that I could not comprehend. After much explanation, I was
made to understand that "something was growing on my sister's
neck that would spoil her beauty forever, and perhaps kill her,
if it could not be got rid of." How well I remember the shudder
of horror that ran through me at the vague idea of this deadly
"something"! A fearful, awe-struck curiosity to see what
Caroline's illness was with my own eyes troubled my inmost heart,
and I begged to be allowed to go home and help to nurse her. The
request was, it is almost needless to say, refused.
Weeks passed away, and still I heard nothing, except that my
sister continued to be ill. One day I privately wrote a letter to
Uncle George, asking him, in my childish way, to come and tell me
about Caroline's illness.
I knew where the post-office was, and slipped out in the morning
unobserved and dropped my letter in the box. I stole home again
by the garden, and climbed in at the window of a back parlor on
the ground floor. The room above was my aunt's bedchamber, and
the moment I was inside the house I heard moans and loud
convulsive sobs proceeding from it. My aunt was a singularly
quiet, composed woman. I could not imagine that the loud sobbing
and moaning came from her, and I ran down terrified into the
kitchen to ask the servants who was crying so violently in my
aunt's room.
I found the housemaid and the cook talking together in whispers
with serious faces. They started when they saw me as if I had
been a grown-up master who had caught them neglecting their work.
"He's too young to feel it much," I heard one say to the other.
"So far as he is concerned, it seems like a mercy that it
happened no later."
In a few minutes they had told me the worst. It was indeed my
aunt who had been crying in the bedroom. Caroline was dead.
I felt the blow more severely than the servants or anyone else
about me supposed. Still I was a child in years, and I had the
blessed elasticity of a child's nature. If I had been older I
might have been too much absorbed in grief to observe my aunt so
closely as I did, when she was composed enough to see me later in
the day.
I was not surprised by the swollen state of her eyes, the
paleness of her cheeks, or the fresh burst of tears that came
from her when she took me in her arms at meeting. But I was both
amazed and perplexed by the look of terror that I detected in her
face. It was natural enough that she should grieve and weep over
my sister's death, but why should she have that frightened look
as if some other catastrophe had happened?
I asked if there was any more dreadful news from home besides the
news of Caroline's death.
My aunt, said No in a strange, stifled voice, and suddenly turned
her face from me. Was my father dead? No. My mother? No. Uncle
George? My aunt trembled all over as she said No to that also,
and bade me cease asking any more questions. She was not fit to
bear them yet she said, and signed to the servant to lead me out
of the room.
The next day I was told that I was to go home after the funeral,
and was taken out toward evening by the housemaid, partly for a
walk, partly to be measured for my mourning clothes. After we had
left the tailor's, I persuaded the girl to extend our walk for
some distance along the sea-beach, telling her, as we went, every
little anecdote connected with my lost sister that came tenderly
back to my memory in those first days of sorrow. She was so
interested in hearing and I in speaking that we let the sun go
down before we thought of turning back.
The evening was cloudy, and it got on from dusk to dark by the
time we approached the town again. The housemaid was rather
nervous at finding herself alone with me on the beach, and once
or twice looked behind her distrustfully as we went on. Suddenly
she squeezed my hand hard, and said:
"Let's get up on the cliff as fast as we can."
The words were hardly out of her mouth before I heard footsteps
behind me--a man came round quickly to my side, snatched me away
from the girl, and, catching me up in his arms without a word,
covered my face with kisses. I knew he was crying, because my
cheeks were instantly wet with his tears; but it was too dark for
me to see who he was, or even how he was dressed. He did not, I
should think, hold me half a minute in his arms. The housemaid
screamed for help. I was put down gently on the sand, and the
strange man instantly disappeared in the darkness.
When this extraordinary adventure was related to my aunt, she
seemed at first merely bewildered at hearing of it; but in a
moment more there came a change over her face, as if she had
suddenly recollected or thought of something. She turned deadly
pale, and said, in a hurried way, very unusual with her:
"Never mind; don't talk about it any more. It was only a
mischievous trick to frighten you, I dare say. Forget all about
it, my dear--forget all about it."
It was easier to give this advice than to make me follow it. For
many nights after, I thought of nothing but the strange man who
had kissed me and cried over me.
Who could he be? Somebody who loved me very much, and who was
very sorry. My childish logic carried me to that length. But when
I tried to think over all the grown-up gentlemen who loved me
very much, I could never get on, to my own satisfaction, beyond
my father and my Uncle George.
CHAPTER II.
I was taken home on the appointed day to suffer the trial--a hard
one even at my tender years--of witnessing my mother's passionate
grief and my father's mute despair. I remember that the scene of
our first meeting after Caroline's death was wisely and
considerately shortened by my aunt, who took me out of the room.
She seemed to have a confused desire to keep me from leaving her
after the door had closed behind us; but I broke away and ran
downstairs to the surgery, to go and cry for my lost playmate
with the sharer of all our games, Uncle George.
I opened the surgery door and could see nobody. I dried my tears
and looked all round the room--it was empty. I ran upstairs again
to Uncle George's garret bedroom--he was not there; his cheap
hairbrush and old cast-off razor-case that had belonged to my
grandfather were not on the dressing-table. Had he got some other
bedroom? I went out on the landing and called softly, with an
unaccountable terror and sinking at my heart:
"Uncle George!"
Nobody answered; but my aunt came hastily up the garret stairs.
"Hush!" she said. "You must never call that name out here again!"
She stopped suddenly, and looked as if her own words had
frightened her.
"Is Uncle George dead?" I asked. My aunt turned red and pale, and
stammered.
I did not wait to hear what she said. I brushed past her, down
the stairs. My heart was bursting--my flesh felt cold. I ran
breathlessly and recklessly into the room where my father and
mother had received me. They were both sitting there still. I ran
up to them, wringing my hands, and crying out in a passion of
tears:
"Is Uncle George dead?"
My mother gave a scream that terrified me into instant silence
and stillness. My father looked at her for a moment, rang the
bell that summoned the maid, then seized me roughly by the arm
and dragged me out of the room.
He took me down into the study, seated himself in his accustomed
chair, and put me before him between his knees. His lips were
awfully white, and I felt his two hands, as they grasped my
shoulders, shaking violently.
"You are never to mention the name of Uncle George again," he
said, in a quick, angry, trembling whisper. "Never to me, never
to your mother, never to your aunt, never to anybody in this
world! Never--never--never!"
The repetition of the word terrified me even more than the
suppressed vehemence with which he spoke. He saw that I was
frightened, and softened his manner a little before he went on.
"You will never see Uncle George again," he said. "Your mother
and I love you dearly; but if you forget what I have told you,
you will be sent away from home. Never speak that name
again--mind, never! Now kiss me, and go away."
How his lips trembled--and oh, how cold they felt on mine!
I shrunk out of the room the moment he had kissed me, and went
and hid myself in the garden.
"Uncle George is gone. I am never to see him any more; I am never
to speak of him again"--those were the words I repeated to
myself, with indescribable terror and confusion, the moment I was
alone. There was something unspeakably horrible to my young mind
in this mystery which I was commanded always to respect, and
which, so far as I then knew, I could never hope to see revealed.
My father, my mother, my aunt, all appeared to be separated from
me now by some impassable barrier. Home seemed home no longer
with Caroline dead, Uncle George gone, and a forbidden subject of
talk perpetually and mysteriously interposing between my parents
and me.
Though I never infringed the command my father had given me in
his study (his words and looks, and that dreadful scream of my
mother's, which seemed to be still ringing in my ears, were more
than enough to insure my obedience), I also never lost the secret
desire to penetrate the darkness which clouded over the fate of
Uncle George.
For two years I remained at home and discovered nothing. If I
asked the servants about my uncle, they could only tell me that
one morning he disappeared from the house. Of the members of my
father's family I could make no inquiries. They lived far away,
and never came to see us; and the idea of writing to them, at my
age and in my position, was out of the question. My aunt was as
unapproachably silent as my father and mother; but I never forgot
how her face had altered when she reflected for a moment after
hearing of my extraordinary adventure while going home with the
servant over the sands at night. The more I thought of that
change of countenance in connection with what had occurred on my
return to my father's house, the more certain I felt that the
stranger who had kissed me and wept over me must have been no
other than Uncle George.
At the end of my two years at home I was sent to sea in the
merchant navy by my own earnest desire. I had always determined
to be a sailor from the time when I first went to stay with my
aunt at the sea-side, and I persisted long enough in my
resolution to make my parents recognize the necessity of acceding
to my wishes.
My new life delighted me, and I remained away on foreign stations
more than four years. When I at length returned home, it was to
find a new affliction darkening our fireside. My father had died
on the very day when I sailed for my return voyage to England.
Absence and change of scene had in no respect weakened my desire
to penetrate the mystery of Uncle George's disappearance. My
mother's health was so delicate that I hesitated for some time to
approach the forbidden subject in her presence. When I at last
ventured to refer to it, suggesting to her that any prudent
reserve which might have been necessary while I was a child, need
no longer be persisted in now that I was growing to be a young
man, she fell into a violent fit of trembling, and commanded me
to say no more. It had been my father's will, she said, that the
reserve to which I referred should be always adopted toward me;
he had not authorized her, before he died, to speak more openly;
and, now that he was gone, she would not so much as think of
acting on her own unaided judgment. My aunt said the same thing
in effect when I appealed to her. Determined not to be
discouraged even yet, I undertook a journey, ostensibly to pay my
respects to my father's family, but with the secret intention of
trying what I could learn in that quarter on the subject of Uncle
George.
My investigations led to some results, though they were by no
means satisfactory. George had always been looked upon with
something like contempt by his handsome sisters and his
prosperous brothers, and he had not improved his position in the
family by his warm advocacy of his brother's cause at the time of
my father's marriage. I found that my uncle's surviving relatives
now spoke of him slightingly and carelessly. They assured me that
they had never heard from him, and that they knew nothing about
him, except that he had gone away to settle, as they supposed, in
some foreign place, after having behaved very basely and badly to
my father. He had been traced to London, where he had sold out of
the funds the small share of money which he had inherited after
his father's death, and he had been seen on the deck of a packet
bound for France later on the same day. Beyond this nothing was
known about him. In what the alleged baseness of his behavior had
consisted none of his brothers and sisters could tell me. My
father had refused to pain them by going into particulars, not
only at the time of his brother's disappearance, but afterward,
whenever the subject was mentioned. George had always been the
black sheep of the flock, and he must have been conscious of his
own baseness, or he would certainly have written to explain and
to justify himself.
Such were the particulars which I gleaned during my visit to my
father's family. To my mind, they tended rather to deepen than to
reveal the mystery. That such a gentle, docile, affectionate
creature as Uncle George should have injured the brother he loved
by word or deed at any period of their intercourse, seemed
incredible; but that he should have been guilty of an act of
baseness at the very time when my sister was dying was simply and
plainly impossible. And yet there was the incomprehensible fact
staring me in the face that the death of Caroline and the
disappearance of Uncle George had taken plac e in the same week!
Never did I feel more daunted and bewildered by the family secret
than after I had heard all the particulars in connection with it
that my father's relatives had to tell me.
I may pass over the events of the next few years of my life
briefly enough.
My nautical pursuits filled up all my time, and took me far away
from my country and my friends. But, whatever I did, and wherever
I went, the memory of Uncle George, and the desire to penetrate
the mystery of his disappearance, haunted me like familiar
spirits. Often, in the lonely watches of the night at sea, did I
recall the dark evening on the beach, the strange man's hurried
embrace, the startling sensation of feeling his tears on my
cheeks, the disappearance of him before I had breath or
self-possession enough to say a word. Often did I think over the
inexplicable events that followed, when I had returned, after my
sister's funeral, to my father's house; and oftener still did I
puzzle my brains vainly, in the attempt to form some plan for
inducing my mother or my aunt to disclose the secret which they
had hitherto kept from me so perseveringly. My only chance of
knowing what had really happened to Uncle George, my only hope of
seeing him again, rested with those two near and dear relatives.
I despaired of ever getting my mother to speak on the forbidden
subject after what had passed between us, but I felt more
sanguine about my prospects of ultimately inducing my aunt to
relax in her discretion. My anticipations, however, in this
direction were not destined to be fulfilled. On my next visit to
England I found my aunt prostrated by a paralytic attack, which
deprived her of the power of speech. She died soon afterward in
my arms, leaving me her sole heir. I searched anxiously among her
papers for some reference to the family mystery, but found no
clew to guide me. All my mother's letters to her sister at the
time of Caroline's illness and death had been destroyed.
CHAPTER III.
MORE years passed; my mother followed my aunt to the grave, and
still I was as far as ever from making any discoveries in
relation to Uncle George. Shortly after the period of this last
affliction my health gave way, and I departed, by my doctor's
advice, to try some baths in the south of France.
I traveled slowly to my destination, turning aside from the
direct road, and stopping wherever I pleased. One evening, when I
was not more than two or three days' journey from the baths to
which I was bound, I was struck by the picturesque situation of a
little town placed on the brow of a hill at some distance from
the main road, and resolved to have a nearer look at the place,
with a view to stopping there for the night, if it pleased me. I
found the principal inn clean and quiet--ordered my bed
there--and, after dinner, strolled out to look at the church. No
thought of Uncle George was in my mind when I entered the
building; and yet, at that very moment, chance was leading me to
the discovery which, for so many years past, I had vainly
endeavored to make--the discovery which I had given up as
hopeless since the day of my mother's death.
I found nothing worth notice in the church, and was about to
leave it again, when I caught a glimpse of a pretty view through
a side door, and stopped to admire it.
The churchyard formed the foreground, and below it the hill-side
sloped away gently into the plain, over which the sun was setting
in full glory. The cure of the church was reading his breviary,
walking up and down a gravel-path that parted the rows of graves.
In the course of my wanderings I had learned to speak French as
fluently as most Englishmen, and when the priest came near me I
said a few words in praise of the view, and complimented him on
the neatness and prettiness of the churchyard. He answered with
great politeness, and we got into conversation together
immediately.
As we strolled along the gravel-walk, my attention was attracted
by one of the graves standing apart from the rest. The cross at
the head of it differed remarkably, in some points of appearance,
from the crosses on the other graves. While all the rest had
garlands hung on them, this one cross was quite bare; and, more
extraordinary still, no name was inscribed on it.
The priest, observing that I stopped to look at the grave, shook
his head and sighed.
"A countryman of yours is buried there," he said. "I was present
at his death. He had borne the burden of a great sorrow among us,
in this town, for many weary years, and his conduct had taught us
to respect and pity him with all our hearts."
"How is it that his name is not inscribed over his grave?" I
inquired.
"It was suppressed by his own desire," answered the priest, with
some little hesitation. "He confessed to me in his last moments
that he had lived here under an assumed name. I asked his real
name, and he told it to me, with the particulars of his sad
story. He had reasons for desiring to be forgotten after his
death. Almost the last words he spoke were, 'Let my name die with
me.' Almost the last request he made was that I would keep that
name a secret from all the world excepting only one person."
"Some relative, I suppose?" said I.
"Yes--a nephew," said the priest.
The moment the last word was out of his mouth, my heart gave a
strange answering bound. I suppose I must have changed color
also, for the cure looked at me with sudden attention and
interest.
"A nephew," the priest went on, "whom he had loved like his own
child. He told me that if this nephew ever traced him to his
burial-place, and asked about him, I was free in that case to
disclose all I knew. 'I should like my little Charley to know the
truth,' he said. 'In spite of the difference in our ages, Charley
and I were playmates years ago.' "
My heart beat faster, and I felt a choking sensation at the
throat the moment I heard the priest unconsciously mention my
Christian name in mentioning the dying man's last words.
As soon as I could steady my voice and feel certain of my
self-possession, I communicated my family name to the cure, and
asked him if that was not part of the secret that he had been
requested to preserve.
He started back several steps, and clasped his hands amazedly.
"Can it be?" he said, in low tones, gazing at me earnestly, with
something like dread in his face.
I gave him my passport, and looked away toward the grave. The
tears came into my eyes as the recollections of past days crowded
back on me. Hardly knowing what I did, I knelt down by the grave,
and smoothed the grass over it with my hand. Oh, Uncle George,
why not have told your secret to your old playmate? Why leave him
to find you _here?_
The priest raised me gently, and begged me to go with him into
his own house. On our way there, I mentioned persons and places
that I thought my uncle might have spoken of, in order to satisfy
my companion that I was really the person I represented myself to
be. By the time we had entered his little parlor, and had sat
down alone in it, we were almost like old friends together.
I thought it best that I should begin by telling all that I have
related here on the subject of Uncle George, and his
disappearance from home. My host listened with a very sad face,
and said, when I had done:
"I can understand your anxiety to know what I am authorized to
tell you, but pardon me if I say first that there are
circumstances in your uncle's story which it may pain you to
hear--" He stopped suddenly.
"Which it may pain me to hear as a nephew?" I asked.
"No," said the priest, looking away from me, "as a son."
I gratefully expressed my sense of the delicacy and kindness
which had prompted my companion's warning, but I begged him, at
the same time, to keep me no longer in suspense and to tell me
the stern truth, no matter how painfully it might affect me as a
listener.
"In telling me all you knew about what you term the Family
Secret," said the priest, "you have mentioned as a strange
coincidence that your sister's death and your uncle's
disappearance took place at the same time. Did you ever suspect
what cause it was that occasioned your sister's death?"
"I only knew what my father told me, an d what all our friends
believed--that she had a tumor in the neck, or, as I sometimes
heard it stated, from the effect on her constitution of a tumor
in the neck."
"She died under an operation for the removal of that tumor," said
the priest, in low tones; "and the operator was your Uncle
George."
In those few words all the truth burst upon me.
"Console yourself with the thought that the long martyrdom of his
life is over," the priest went on. "He rests; he is at peace. He
and his little darling understand each other, and are happy now.
That thought bore him up to the last on his death-bed. He always
spoke of your sister as his 'little darling.' He firmly believed
that she was waiting to forgive and console him in the other
world--and who shall say he was deceived in that belief?"
Not I! Not anyone who has ever loved and suffered, surely!
"It was out of the depths of his self-sacrificing love for the
child that he drew the fatal courage to undertake the operation,"
continued the priest. "Your father naturally shrank from
attempting it. His medical brethren whom he consulted all doubted
the propriety of taking any measures for the removal of the
tumor, in the particular condition and situation of it when they
were called in. Your uncle alone differed with them. He was too
modest a man to say so, but your mother found it out. The
deformity of her beautiful child horrified her. She was desperate
enough to catch at the faintest hope of remedying it that anyone
might hold out to her; and she persuaded your uncle to put his
opinion to the proof. Her horror at the deformity of the child,
and her despair at the prospect of its lasting for life, seem to
have utterly blinded her to all natural sense of the danger of
the operation. It is hard to know how to say it to you, her son,
but it must be told, nevertheless, that one day, when your father
was out, she untruly informed your uncle that his brother had
consented to the performance of the operation, and that he had
gone purposely out of the house because he had not nerve enough
to stay and witness it. After that, your uncle no longer
hesitated. He had no fear of results, provided he could be
certain of his own courage. All he dreaded was the effect on him
of his love for the child when he first found himself face to
face with the dreadful necessity of touching her skin with the
knife."
I tried hard to control myself, but I could not repress a shudder
at those words.
"It is useless to shock you by going into particulars," said the
priest, considerately. "Let it be enough if I say that your
uncle's fortitude failed to support him when he wanted it most.
His love for the child shook the firm hand which had never
trembled before. In a word, the operation failed. Your father
returned, and found his child dying. The frenzy of his despair
when the truth was told him carried him to excesses which it
shocks me to mention--excesses which began in his degrading his
brother by a blow, which ended in his binding himself by an oath
to make that brother suffer public punishment for his fatal
rashness in a court of law. Your uncle was too heartbroken by
what had happened to feel those outrages as some men might have
felt them. He looked for one moment at his sister-in-law (I do
not like to say your mother, considering what I have now to tell
you), to see if she would acknowledge that she had encouraged him
to attempt the operation, and that she had deceived him in saying
that he had his brother's permission to try it. She was silent,
and when she spoke, it was to join her husband in denouncing him
as the murderer of their child. Whether fear of your father's
anger, or revengeful indignation against your uncle most actuated
her, I cannot presume to inquire in your presence. I can only
state facts."
The priest paused and looked at me anxiously. I could not speak
to him at that moment--I could only encourage him to proceed by
pressing his hand.
He resumed in these terms:
"Meanwhile, your uncle turned to your father, and spoke the last
words he was ever to address to his eldest brother in this world.
He said, 'I have deserved the worst your anger can inflict on me,
but I will spare you the scandal of bringing me to justice in
open court. The law, if it found me guilty, could at the worst
but banish me from my country and my friends. I will go of my own
accord. God is my witness that I honestly believed I could save
the child from deformity and suffering. I have risked all and
lost all. My heart and spirit are broken. I am fit for nothing
but to go and hide myself, and my shame and misery, from all eyes
that have ever looked on me. I shall never come back, never
expect your pity or forgiveness. If you think less harshly of me
when I am gone, keep secret what has happened; let no other lips
say of me what yours and your wife's have said. I shall think
that forbearance atonement enough--atonement greater than I have
deserved. Forget me in this world. May we meet in another, where
the secrets of all hearts are opened, and where the child who is
gone before may make peace between us!' He said those words and
went out. Your father never saw him or heard from him again."
I knew the reason now why my father had never confided the truth
to anyone, his own family included. My mother had evidently
confessed all to her sister under the seal of secrecy, and there
the dreadful disclosure had been arrested.
"Your uncle told me," the priest continued, "that before he left
England he took leave of you by stealth, in a place you were
staying at by the sea-side. Tie had not the heart to quit his
country and his friends forever without kissing you for the last
time. He followed you in the dark, and caught you up in his arms,
and left you again before you had a chance of discovering him.
The next day he quitted England."
"For this place?" I asked.
"Yes. He had spent a week here once with a student friend at the
time when he was a pupil in the Hotel Dieu, and to this place he
returned to hide, to suffer, and to die. We all saw that he was a
man crushed and broken by some great sorrow, and we respected him
and his affliction. He lived alone, and only came out of doors
toward evening, when he used to sit on the brow of the hill
yonder, with his head on his hand, looking toward England. That
place seemed a favorite with him, and he is buried close by it.
He revealed the story of his past life to no living soul here but
me, and to me he only spoke when his last hour was approaching.
What he had suffered during his long exile no man can presume to
say. I, who saw more of him than anyone, never heard a word of
complaint fall from his lips. He had the courage of the martyrs
while he lived, and the resignation of the saints when he died.
Just at the last his mind wandered. He said he saw his little
darling waiting by the bedside to lead him away, and he died with
a smile on his face--the first I had ever seen there."
The priest ceased, and we went out together in the mournful
twilight, and stood for a little while on the brow of the hill
where Uncle George used to sit, with his face turned toward
England. How my heart ached for him as I thought of what he must
have suffered in the silence and solitude of his long exile! Was
it well for me that I had discovered the Family Secret at last? I
have sometimes thought not. I have sometimes wished that the
darkness had never been cleared away which once hid from me the
fate of Uncle George.
THE THIRD DAY.
FINE again. Our guest rode out, with her ragged little groom, as
usual. There was no news yet in the paper--that is to say, no
news of George or his ship.
On this day Morgan completed his second story, and in two or
three days more I expected to finish the last of my own
contributions. Owen was still behindhand and still despondent.
The lot drawing to-night was Five. This proved to be the number
of the first of Morgan's stories, which he had completed before
we began the readings. His second story, finished this day, being
still uncorrected by me, could not yet be added to the common
stock.
On being informed that it had come to his turn to occupy the
attention of the company, Morga n startled us by immediately
objecting to the trouble of reading his own composition, and by
coolly handing it over to me, on the ground that my numerous
corrections had made it, to all intents and purposes, my story.
Owen and I both remonstrated; and Jessie, mischievously
persisting in her favorite jest at Morgan's expense, entreated
that he would read, if it was only for her sake. Finding that we
were all determined, and all against him, he declared that,
rather than hear our voices any longer, he would submit to the
minor inconvenience of listening to his own. Accordingly, he took
his manuscript back again, and, with an air of surly resignation,
spread it open before him.
"I don't think you will like this story, miss," he began,
addressing Jessie, "but I shall read it, nevertheless, with the
greatest pleasure. It begins in a stable--it gropes its way
through a dream--it keeps company with a hostler--and it stops
without an end. What do you think of that?"
After favoring his audience with this promising preface, Morgan
indulged himself in a chuckle of supreme satisfaction, and then
began to read, without wasting another preliminary word on any
one of us.
BROTHER MORGAN'S STORY
of
THE DREAM-WOMAN.
CHAPTER I.
I HAD not been settled much more than six weeks in my country
practice when I was sent for to a neighboring town, to consult
with the resident medical man there on a case of very dangerous
illness.
My horse had come down with me at the end of a long ride the
night before, and had hurt himself, luckily, much more than he
had hurt his master. Being deprived of the animal's services, I
started for my destination by the coach (there were no railways
at that time), and I hoped to get back again, toward the
afternoon, in the same way.
After the consultation was over, I went to the principal inn of
the town to wait for the coach. When it came up it was full
inside and out. There was no resource left me but to get home as
cheaply as I could by hiring a gig. The price asked for this
accommodation struck me as being so extortionate, that I
determined to look out for an inn of inferior pretensions, and to
try if I could not make a better bargain with a less prosperous
establishment.
I soon found a likely-looking house, dingy and quiet, with an
old-fashioned sign, that had evidently not been repainted for
many years past. The landlord, in this case, was not above making
a small profit, and as soon as we came to terms he rang the
yard-bell to order the gig.
"Has Robert not come back from that errand?" asked the landlord,
appealing to the waiter who answered the bell.
"No, sir, he hasn't."
"Well, then, you must wake up Isaac."
"Wake up Isaac!" I repeated; "that sounds rather odd. Do your
hostlers go to bed in the daytime?"
"This one does," said the landlord, smiling to himself in rather
a strange way.
"And dreams too," added the waiter; "I shan't forget the turn it
gave me the first time I heard him."
"Never you mind about that," retorted the proprietor; "you go and
rouse Isaac up. The gentleman's waiting for his gig."
The landlord's manner and the waiter's manner expressed a great
deal more than they either of them said. I began to suspect that
I might be on the trace of something professionally interesting
to me as a medical man, and I thought I should like to look at
the hostler before the waiter awakened him.
"Stop a minute," I interposed; "I have rather a fancy for seeing
this man before you wake him up. I'm a doctor; and if this queer
sleeping and dreaming of his comes from anything wrong in his
brain, I may be able to tell you what to do with him."
"I rather think you will find his complaint past all doctoring,
sir," said the landlord; "but, if you would like to see him,
you're welcome, I'm sure."
He led the way across a yard and down a passage to the stables,
opened one of the doors, and, waiting outside himself, told me to
look in.
I found myself in a two-stall stable. In one of the stalls a
horse was munching his corn; in the other an old man was lying
asleep on the litter.
I stooped and looked at him attentively. It was a withered,
woe-begone face. The eyebrows were painfully contracted; the
mouth was fast set, and drawn down at the corners.
The hollow wrinkled cheeks, and the scanty grizzled hair, told
their own tale of some past sorrow or suffering. He was drawing
his breath convulsively when I first looked at him, and in a
moment more he began to talk in his sleep.
"Wake up!" I heard him say, in a quick whisper, through his
clinched teeth. "Wake up there! Murder!"
He moved one lean arm slowly till it rested over his throat,
shuddered a little, and turned on his straw. Then the arm left
his throat, the hand stretched itself out, and clutched at the
side toward which he had turned, as if he fancied himself to be
grasping at the edge of something. I saw his lips move, and bent
lower over him. He was still talking in his sleep.
"Light gray eyes," he murmured, "and a droop in the left eyelid;
flaxen hair, with a gold-yellow streak in it--all right,
mother--fair white arms, with a down on them--little lady's hand,
with a reddish look under the finger nails. The knife--always the
cursed knife--first on one side, then on the other. Aha! you
she-devil, where's the knife?"
At the last word his voice rose, and he grew restless on a
sudden. I saw him shudder on the straw; his withered face became
distorted, and he threw up both his hands with a quick hysterical
gasp. They struck against the bottom of the manger under which he
lay, and the blow awakened him. I had just time to slip through
the door and close it before his eyes were fairly open, and his
senses his own again.
"Do you know anything about that man's past life?" I said to the
landlord.
"Yes, sir, I know pretty well all about it," was the answer, "and
an uncommon queer story it is. Most people don't believe it. It's
true, though, for all that. Why, just look at him," continued the
landlord, opening the stable door again. "Poor devil! he's so
worn out with his restless nights that he's dropped back into his
sleep already."
"Don't wake him," I said; "I'm in no hurry for the gig. Wait till
the other man comes back from his errand; and, in the meantime,
suppose I have some lunch and a bottle of sherry, and suppose you
come and help me to get through it?"
The heart of mine host, as I had anticipated, warmed to me over
his own wine. He soon became communicative on the subject of the
man asleep in the stable, and by little and little I drew the
whole story out of him. Extravagant and incredible as the events
must appear to everybody, they are related here just as I heard
them and just as they happened.
CHAPTER II.
SOME years ago there lived in the suburbs of a large seaport town
on the west coast of England a man in humble circumstances, by
name Isaac Scatchard. His means of subsistence were derived from
any employment that he could get as an hostler, and occasionally,
when times went well with him, from temporary engagements in
service as stable-helper in private houses. Though a faithful,
steady, and honest man, he got on badly in his calling. His ill
luck was proverbial among his neighbors. He was always missing
good opportunities by no fault of his own, and always living
longest in service with amiable people who were not punctual
payers of wages. "Unlucky Isaac" was his nickname in his own
neighborhood, and no one could say that he did not richly deserve
it.
With far more than one man's fair share of adversity to endure,
Isaac had but one consolation to support him, and that was of the
dreariest and most negative kind. He had no wife and children to
increase his anxieties and add to the bitterness of his various
failures in life. It might have been from mere insensibility, or
it might have been from generous unwillingness to involve another
in his own unlucky destiny, but the fact undoubtedly was, that he
had arrived at the middle term of life without marrying, and,
what is much more remarkable, without once exposing himself, from
eighteen to eight-and-thirty, to the genial imputation of ever
having had a sweetheart.
When he was out of service he lived alone with his widowed
mother. Mrs. Scatchard was a woman above the average in her lowly
station as to capacity and manners. She had seen better days, as
the phrase is, but she never referred to them in the presence of
curious visitors; and, though perfectly polite to every one who
approached her, never cultivated any intimacies among her
neighbors. She contrived to provide, hardly enough, for her
simple wants by doing rough work for the tailors, and always
managed to keep a decent home for her son to return to whenever
his ill luck drove him out helpless into the world.
One bleak autumn when Isaac was getting on fast toward forty and
when he was as usual out of place through no fault of his own, he
set forth, from his mother's cottage on a long walk inland to a
gentleman's seat where he had heard that a stable-helper was
required.
It wanted then but two days of his birthday; and Mrs. Scatchard,
with her usual fondness, made him promise, before he started,
that he would be back in time to keep that anniversary with her,
in as festive a way as their poor means would allow. It was easy
for him to comply with this request, even supposing he slept a
night each way on the road.
He was to start from home on Monday morning, and, whether he got
the new place or not, he was to be back for his birthday dinner
on Wednesday at two o'clock.
Arriving at his destination too late on the Monday night to make
application for the stablehelper's place, he slept at the village
inn, and in good time on the Tuesday morning presented himself at
the gentleman's house to fill the vacant situation. Here again
his ill luck pursued him as inexorably as ever. The excellent
written testimonials to his character which he was able to
produce availed him nothing; his long walk had been taken in
vain: only the day before the stable-helper's place had been
given to another man.
Isaac accepted this new disappointment resignedly and as a matter
of course. Naturally slow in capacity, he had the bluntness of
sensibility and phlegmatic patience of disposition which
frequently distinguish men with sluggishly-working mental powers.
He thanked the gentleman's steward with his usual quiet civility
for granting him an interview, and took his departure with no
appearance of unusual depression in his face or manner.
Before starting on his homeward walk he made some inquiries at
the inn, and ascertained that he might save a few miles on his
return by following the new road. Furnished with full
instructions, several times repeated, as to the various turnings
he was to take, he set forth on his homeward journey and walked
on all day with only one stoppage for bread and cheese. Just as
it was getting toward dark, the rain came on and the wind began
to rise, and he found himself, to make matters worse, in a part
of the country with which he was entirely unacquainted, though he
knew himself to be some fifteen miles from home. The first house
he found to inquire at was a lonely roadside inn, standing on the
outskirts of a thick wood. Solitary as the place looked, it was
welcome to a lost man who was also hungry, thirsty, footsore and
wet. The landlord was civil and respectable-looking, and the
price he asked for a bed was reasonable enough. Isaac therefore
decided on stopping comfortably at the inn for that night.
He was constitutionally a temperate man.
His supper consisted of two rashers of bacon, a slice of
home-made bread and a pint of ale. He did not go to bed
immediately after this moderate meal, but sat up with the
landlord, talking about his bad prospects and his long run of
ill-luck, and diverging from these topics to the subjects of
horse-flesh and racing. Nothing was said either by himself, his
host, or the few laborers who strayed into the tap-room, which
could, in the slightest degree, excite the very small and very
dull imaginative faculty which Isaac Scatchard possessed.
At a little after eleven the house was closed. Isaac went round
with the landlord and held the candle while the doors and lower
windows were being secured. He noticed with surprise the strength
of the bolts and bars, and iron-sheathed shutters.
"You see, we are rather lonely here," said the landlord. "We
never have had any attempts made to break in yet, but it's always
as well to be on the safe side. When nobody is sleeping here, I
am the only man in the house. My wife and daughter are timid, and
the servant-girl takes after her missuses. Another glass of ale
before you turn in? No! Well, how such a sober man as you comes
to be out of place is more than I can make out, for one. Here's
where you're to sleep. You're our only lodger to-night, and I
think you'll say my missus has done her best to make you
comfortable. You're quite sure you won't have another glass of
ale? Very well. Good-night."
It was half-past eleven by the clock in the passage as they went
upstairs to the bedroom, the window of which looked on to the
wood at the back of the house.
Isaac locked the door, set his candle on the chest of drawers,
and wearily got ready for bed.
The bleak autumn wind was still blowing, and the solemn,
monotonous, surging moan of it in the wood was dreary and awful
to hear through the night-silence. Isaac felt strangely wakeful.
He resolved, as he lay down in bed, to keep the candle alight
until he began to grow sleepy, for there was something
unendurably depressing in the bare idea of lying awake in the
darkness, listening to the dismal, ceaseless moaning of the wind
in the wood.
Sleep stole on him before he was aware of it. His eyes closed,
and he fell off insensibly to rest without having so much as
thought of extinguishing the candle.
The first sensation of which he was conscious after sinking into
slumber was a strange shivering that ran through him suddenly
from head to foot, and a dreadful sinking pain at the heart, such
as he had never felt before. The shivering only disturbed his
slumbers; the pain woke him instantly. In one moment he passed
from a state of sleep to a state of wakefulness--his eyes wide
open--his mental perceptions cleared on a sudden, as if by a
miracle.
The candle had burned down nearly to the last morsel of tallow,
but the top of the unsnuffed wick had just fallen off, and the
light in the little room was, for the moment, fair and full.
Between the foot of his bed and the closed door there stood a
woman with a knife in her hand, looking at him.
He was stricken speechless with terror, but he did not lose the
preternatural clearness of his faculties, and he never took his
eyes off the woman. She said not a word as they stared each other
in the face, but she began to move slowly toward the left-hand
side of the bed.
His eyes followed her. She was a fair, fine woman, with yellowish
flaxen hair and light gray eyes, with a droop in the left eyelid.
He noticed those things and fixed them on his mind before she was
round at the side of the bed. Speechless, with no expression in
her face, with no noise following her footfall, she came closer
and closer--stopped--and slowly raised the knife. He laid his
right arm over his throat to save it; but, as he saw the knife
coming down, threw his hand across the bed to the right side, and
jerked his body over that way just as the knife descended on the
mattress within an inch of his shoulder.
His eyes fixed on her arm and hand as she slowly drew her knife
out of the bed: a white, well-shaped arm, with a pretty down
lying lightly over the fair skin--a delicate lady's hand, with
the crowning beauty of a pink flush under and round the
finger-nails.
She drew the knife out, and passed back again slowly to the foot
of the bed; stopped there for a moment looking at him; then came
on--still speechless, still with no expression on the blank,
beautiful face, still with no sound following the stealthy
footfalls--came on to the right side of the bed, where he now
lay.
As she approached, she raised the knife again, and he drew
himself away to the left side. She struck, as before, right into
the mattress, with a deliberate, perpendicularly downward action
of the arm. This time his eyes wandered from her to the knife. It
was like the large cla sp-knives which he had often seen laboring
men use to cut their bread and bacon with. Her delicate little
fingers did not conceal more than two-thirds of the handle: he
noticed that it was made of buck-horn, clean and shining as the
blade was, and looking like new.
For the second time she drew the knife out, concealed it in the
wide sleeve of her gown, then stopped by the bedside, watching
him. For an instant he saw her standing in that position, then
the wick of the spent candle fell over into the socket; the flame
diminished to a little blue point, and the room grew dark.
A moment, or less, if possible, passed so, and then the wick
flamed up, smokingly, for the last time. His eyes were still
looking eagerly over the right-hand side of the bed when the
final flash of light came, but they discovered nothing. The fair
woman with the knife was gone.
The conviction that he was alone again weakened the hold of the
terror that had struck him dumb up to this time. The
preternatural sharpness which the very intensity of his panic had
mysteriously imparted to his faculties left them suddenly. His
brain grew confused--his heart beat wildly--his ears opened for
the first time since the appearance of the woman to a sense of
the woeful ceaseless moaning of the wind among the trees. With
the dreadful conviction of the reality of what he had seen still
strong within him, he leaped out of bed, and screaming "Murder!
Wake up, there! wake up!" dashed headlong through the darkness to
the door.
It was fast locked, exactly as he had left it on going to bed.
His cries on starting up had alarmed the house. He heard the
terrified, confused exclamations of women; he saw the master of
the house approaching along the passage with his burning
rush-candle in one hand and his gun in the other.
"What is it?" asked the landlord, breathlessly. Isaac could only
answer in a whisper. "A woman, with a knife in her hand," he
gasped out. "In my room--a fair, yellow-haired woman; she jobbed
at me with the knife twice over."
The landlord's pale cheeks grew paler. He looked at Isaac eagerly
by the flickering light of his candle, and his face began to get
red again; his voice altered, too, as well as his complexion.
"She seems to have missed you twice," he said.
"I dodged the knife as it came down," Isaac went on, in the same
scared whisper. "It struck the bed each time."
The landlord took his candle into the bedroom immediately. In
less than a minute he came out again into the passage in a
violent passion.
"The devil fly away with you and your woman with the knife! There
isn't a mark in the bedclothes anywhere. What do you mean by
coming into a man's place and frightening his family out of their
wits about a dream?"
"I'll leave your house," said Isaac, faintly. "Better out on the
road, in rain and dark, on my road home, than back again in that
room, after what I've seen in it. Lend me a light to get my
clothes by, and tell me what I'm to pay."
"Pay!" cried the landlord, leading the way with his light sulkily
into the bedroom. "You'll find your score on the slate when you
go downstairs. I wouldn't have taken you in for all the money
you've got about you if I'd known your dreaming, screeching ways
beforehand. Look at the bed. Where's the cut of a knife in it?
Look at the window--is the lock bursted? Look at the door (which
I heard you fasten yourself)--is it broke in? A murdering woman
with a knife in my house! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
Isaac answered not a word. He huddled on his clothes, and then
they went downstairs together.
"Nigh on twenty minutes past two!" said the landlord, as they
passed the clock. "A nice time in the morning to frighten honest
people out of their wits!"
Isaac paid his bill, and the landlord let him out at the front
door, asking, with a grin of contempt, as he undid the strong
fastenings, whether "the murdering woman got in that way."
They parted without a word on either side. The rain had ceased,
but the night was dark, and the wind bleaker than ever. Little
did the darkness, or the cold, or the uncertainty about the way
home matter to Isaac. If he had been turned out into a wilderness
in a thunder-storm it would have been a relief after what he had
suffered in the bedroom of the inn.
What was the fair woman with the knife? The creature of a dream,
or that other creature from the unknown world called among men by
the name of ghost? He could make nothing of the mystery--had made
nothing of it, even when it was midday on Wednesday, and when he
stood, at last, after many times missing his road, once more on
the doorstep of home.
CHAPTER III.
His mother came out eagerly to receive him.
His face told her in a moment that something was wrong.
"I've lost the place; but that's my luck. I dreamed an ill dream
last night, mother--or maybe I saw a ghost. Take it either way,
it scared me out of my senses, and I'm not my own man again yet."
"Isaac, your face frightens me. Come in to the fire--come in, and
tell mother all about it."
He was as anxious to tell as she was to hear; for it had been his
hope, all the way home, that his mother, with her quicker
capacity and superior knowledge, might be able to throw some
light on the mystery which he could not clear up for himself. His
memory of the dream was still mechanically vivid, though his
thoughts were entirely confused by it.
His mother's face grew paler and paler as he went on. She never
interrupted him by so much as a single word; but when he had
done, she moved her chair close to his, put her arm round his
neck, and said to him:
"Isaac, you dreamed your ill dream on this Wednesday morning.
What time was it when you saw the fair woman with the knife in
her hand?" Isaac reflected on what the landlord had said when
they had passed by the clock on his leaving the inn; allowed as
nearly as he could for the time that must have elapsed between
the unlocking of his bedroom door and the paying of his bill just
before going away, and answered:
"Somewhere about two o'clock in the morning."
His mother suddenly quitted her hold of his neck, and struck her
hands together with a gesture of despair.
"This Wednesday is your birthday, Isaac, and two o'clock in the
morning was the time when you were born."
Isaac's capacities were not quick enough to catch the infection
of his mother's superstitious dread. He was amazed, and a little
startled, also, when she suddenly rose from her chair, opened her
old writing-desk, took pen, ink and paper, and then said to him:
"Your memory is but a poor one, Isaac, and, now I'm an old woman,
mine's not much better. I want all about this dream of yours to
be as well known to both of us, years hence, as it is now. Tell
me over again all you told me a minute ago, when you spoke of
what the woman with the knife looked like."
Isaac obeyed, and marveled much as he saw his mother carefully
set down on paper the very words that he was saying.
"Light gray eyes," she wrote, as they came to the descriptive
part, "with a droop in the left eyelid; flaxen hair, with a
gold-yellow streak in it; white arms, with a down upon them;
little lady's hand, with a reddish look about the finger nails;
clasp-knife with a buck-horn handle, that seemed as good as new."
To these particulars Mrs. Scatchard added the year, month, day of
the week, and time in the morning when the woman of the dream
appeared to her son. She then locked up the paper carefully in
her writing-desk.
Neither on that day nor on any day after could her son induce her
to return to the matter of the dream. She obstinately kept her
thoughts about it to herself, and even refused to refer again to
the paper in her writing-desk. Ere long Isaac grew weary of
attempting to make her break her resolute silence; and time,
which sooner or later wears out all things, gradually wore out
the impression produced on him by the dream. He began by thinking
of it carelessly, and he ended by not thinking of it at all.
The result was the more easily brought about by the advent of
some important changes for the better in his prospects which
commenced not long after his terrible night's experience at the
inn. He reaped at last th e reward of his long and patient
suffering under adversity by getting an excellent place, keeping
it for seven years, and leaving it, on the death of his master,
not only with an excellent character, but also with a comfortable
annuity bequeathed to him as a reward for saving his mistress's
life in a carriage accident. Thus it happened that Isaac
Scatchard returned to his old mother, seven years after the time
of the dream at the inn, with an annual sum of money at his
disposal sufficient to keep them both in ease and independence
for the rest of their lives.
The mother, whose health had been bad of late years, profited so
much by the care bestowed on her and by freedom from money
anxieties, that when Isaac's birthday came round she was able to
sit up comfortably at table and dine with him.
On that day, as the evening drew on, Mrs. Scatchard discovered
that a bottle of tonic medicine which she was accustomed to take,
and in which she had fancied that a dose or more was still left,
happened to be empty. Isaac immediately volunteered to go to the
chemist's and get it filled again. It was as rainy and bleak an
autumn night as on the memorable past occasion when he lost his
way and slept at the road-side inn.
On going into the chemist's shop he was passed hurriedly by a
poorly-dressed woman coming out of it. The glimpse he had of her
face struck him, and he looked back after her as she descended
the door-steps.
"You're noticing that woman?" said the chemist's apprentice
behind the counter. "It's my opinion there's something wrong with
her. She's been asking for laudanum to put to a bad tooth.
Master's out for half an hour, and I told her I wasn't allowed to
sell poison to strangers in his absence. She laughed in a queer
way, and said she would come back in half an hour. If she expects
master to serve her, I think she'll be disappointed. It's a case
of suicide, sir, if ever there was one yet."
These words added immeasurably to the sudden interest in the
woman which Isaac had felt at the first sight of her face. After
he had got the medicine-bottle filled, he looked about anxiously
for her as soon as he was out in the street. She was walking
slowly up and down on the opposite side of the road. With his
heart, very much to his own surprise, beating fast, Isaac crossed
over and spoke to her.
He asked if she was in any distress. She pointed to her torn
shawl, her scanty dress, her crushed, dirty bonnet; then moved
under a lamp so as to let the light fall on her stern, pale, but
still most beautiful face.
"I look like a comfortable, happy woman, don't I?" she said, with
a bitter laugh.
She spoke with a purity of intonation which Isaac had never heard
before from other than ladies' lips. Her slightest actions seemed
to have the easy, negligent grace of a thoroughbred woman. Her
skin, for all its poverty-stricken paleness, was as delicate as
if her life had been passed in the enjoyment of every social
comfort that wealth can purchase. Even her small, finely-shaped
hands, gloveless as they were, had not lost their whiteness.
Little by little, in answer to his questions, the sad story of
the woman came out. There is no need to relate it here; it is
told over and over again in police reports and paragraphs about
attempted suicides.
"My name is Rebecca Murdoch," said the woman, as she ended. "I
have nine-pence left, and I thought of spending it at the
chemist's over the way in securing a passage to the other world.
Whatever it is, it can't be worse to me than this, so why should
I stop here?"
Besides the natural compassion and sadness moved in his heart by
what he heard, Isaac felt within him some mysterious influence at
work all the time the woman was speaking which utterly confused
his ideas and almost deprived him of his powers of speech. All
that he could say in answer to her last reckless words was that
he would prevent her from attempting her own life, if he followed
her about all night to do it. His rough, trembling earnestness
seemed to impress her.
"I won't occasion you that trouble," she answered, when he
repeated his threat. "You have given me a fancy for living by
speaking kindly to me. No need for the mockery of protestations
and promises. You may believe me without them. Come to Fuller's
Meadow to-morrow at twelve, and you will find me alive, to answer
for myself--No !--no money. My ninepence will do to get me as
good a night's lodging as I want."
She nodded and left him. He made no attempt to follow--he felt no
suspicion that she was deceiving him.
"It's strange, but I can't help believing her," he said to
himself, and walked away, bewildered, toward home.
On entering the house, his mind was still so completely absorbed
by its new subject of interest that he took no notice of what his
mother was doing when he came in with the bottle of medicine. She
had opened her old writing-desk in his absence, and was now
reading a paper attentively that lay inside it. On every birthday
of Isaac's since she had written down the particulars of his
dream from his own lips, she had been accustomed to read that
same paper, and ponder over it in private.
The next day he went to Fuller's Meadow.
He had done only right in believing her so implicitly. She was
there, punctual to a minute, to answer for herself. The last-left
faint defenses in Isaac's heart against the fascination which a
word or look from her began inscrutably to exercise over him sank
down and vanished before her forever on that memorable morning.
When a man, previously insensible to the influence of women,
forms an attachment in middle life, the instances are rare
indeed, let the warning circumstances be what they may, in which
he is found capable of freeing himself from the tyranny of the
new ruling passion. The charm of being spoken to familiarly,
fondly, and gratefully by a woman whose language and manners
still retained enough of their early refinement to hint at the
high social station that she had lost, would have been a
dangerous luxury to a man of Isaac's rank at the age of twenty.
But it was far more than that--it was certain ruin to him--now
that his heart was opening unworthily to a new influence at that
middle time of life when strong feelings of all kinds, once
implanted, strike root most stubbornly in a man's moral nature. A
few more stolen interviews after that first morning in Fuller's
Meadow completed his infatuation. In less than a month from the
time when he first met her, Isaac Scatchard had consented to give
Rebecca Murdoch a new interest in existence, and a chance of
recovering the character she had lost by promising to make her
his wife.
She had taken possession, not of his passions only, but of his
faculties as well. All the mind he had he put into her keeping.
She directed him on every point--even instructing him how to
break the news of his approaching marriage in the safest manner
to his mother.
"If you tell her how you met me and who I am at first," said the
cunning woman, "she will move heaven and earth to prevent our
marriage. Say l am the sister of one of your fellow-servants--ask
her to see me before you go into any more particulars--and leave
it to me to do the rest. I mean to make her love me next best to
you, Isaac, before she knows anything of who I really am." The
motive of the deceit was sufficient to sanctify it to Isaac. The
stratagem proposed relieved him of his one great anxiety, and
quieted his uneasy conscience on the subject of his mother.
Still, there was something wanting to perfect his happiness,
something that he could not realize, something mysteriously
untraceable, and yet something that perpetually made itself felt;
not when he was absent from Rebecca Murdoch, but, strange to say,
when he was actually in her presence! She was kindness itself
with him. She never made him feel his inferior capacities and
inferior manners. She showed the sweetest anxiety to please him
in the smallest trifles; but, in spite of all these attractions,
he never could feel quite at his ease with her. At their first
meeting, there had mingled with his admiration, when he looked in
her face, a faint, involuntary feeling of doubt whether that face
was entirely strange to him. No after familiarity had the
slightest effect on this inexplicable, wearisome uncertainty.
Concealing the truth as he had been directed, he announced his
marriage engagement precipitately and confusedly to his mother on
the day when he contracted it. Poor Mrs. Scatchard showed her
perfect confidence in her son by flinging her arms round his
neck, and giving him joy of having found at last, in the sister
of one of his fellow-servants, a woman to comfort and care for
him after his mother was gone. She was all eagerness to see the
woman of her son's choice, and the next day was fixed for the
introduction.
It was a bright sunny morning, and the little cottage parlor was
full of light as Mrs. Scatchard, happy and expectant, dressed for
the occasion in her Sunday gown, sat waiting for her son and her
future daughter-in-law.
Punctual to the appointed time, Isaac hurriedly and nervously led
his promised wife into the room. His mother rose to receive
her--advanced a few steps, smiling--looked Rebecca full in the
eyes, and suddenly stopped. Her face, which had been flushed the
moment before, turned white in an instant; her eyes lost their
expression of softness and kindness, and assumed a blank look of
terror; her outstretched hands fell to her sides, and she
staggered back a few steps with a low cry to her son.
"Isaac," she whispered, clutching him fast by the arm when he
asked alarmedly if she was taken ill, "Isaac, does that woman's
face remind you of nothing?"
Before he could answer--before he could look round to where
Rebecca stood, astonished and angered by her reception, at the
lower end of the room, his mother pointed impatiently to her
writing-desk, and gave him the key.
"Open it," she said, in a quick breathless whisper.
"What does this mean? Why am I treated as if I had no business
here? Does your mother want to insult me?" asked Rebecca,
angrily.
"Open it, and give me the paper in the left-hand drawer. Quick!
quick, for Heaven's sake!" said Mrs. Scatchard, shrinking further
back in terror.
Isaac gave her the paper. She looked it over eagerly for a
moment, then followed Rebecca, who was now turning away haughtily
to leave the room, and caught her by the shoulder--abruptly
raised the long, loose sleeve of her gown, and glanced at her
hand and arm. Something like fear began to steal over the angry
expression of Rebecca's face as she shook herself free from the
old woman's grasp. "Mad!" she said to herself; "and Isaac never
told me." With these few words she left the room.
Isaac was hastening after her when his mother turned and stopped
his further progress. It wrung his heart to see the misery and
terror in her face as she looked at him.
"Light gray eyes," she said, in low, mournful, awe-struck tones,
pointing toward the open door; "a droop in the left eyelid;
flaxen hair, with a gold-yellow streak in it; white arms, with a
down upon them; little lady's hand, with a reddish look under the
finger nails--The Dream- Woman, Isaac, the Dream-Woman!"
That faint cleaving doubt which he had never been able to shake
off in Rebecca Murdoch's presence was fatally set at rest
forever. He had seen her face, then, before--seven years before,
on his birthday, in the bedroom of the lonely inn.
"Be warned! oh, my son, be warned! Isaac, Isaac, let her go, and
do you stop with me!"
Something darkened the parlor window as those words were said. A
sudden chill ran through him, and he glanced sidelong at the
shadow. Rebecca Murdoch had come back. She was peering in
curiously at them over the low window-blind.
"I have promised to marry, mother," he said, "and marry I must."
The tears came into his eyes as he spoke and dimmed his sight,
but he could just discern the fatal face outside moving away
again from the window.
His mother's head sank lower.
"Are you faint?" he whispered.
"Broken-hearted, Isaac."
He stooped down and kissed her. The shadow, as he did so,
returned to the window, and the fatal face peered in curiously
once more.
CHAPTER IV.
THREE weeks after that day Isaac and Rebecca were man and wife.
All that was hopelessly dogged and stubborn in the man's moral
nature seemed to have closed round his fatal passion, and to have
fixed it unassailably in his heart.
After that first interview in the cottage parlor no consideration
would induce Mrs. Scatchard to see her son's wife again or even
to talk of her when Isaac tried hard to plead her cause after
their marriage.
This course of conduct was not in any degree occasioned by a
discovery of the degradation in which Rebecca had lived. There
was no question of that between mother and son. There was no
question of anything but the fearfully-exact resemblance between
the living, breathing woman and the specter-woman of Isaac's
dream.
Rebecca on her side neither felt nor expressed the slightest
sorrow at the estrangement between herself and her mother-in-law.
Isaac, for the sake of peace, had never contradicted her first
idea that age and long illness had affected Mrs. Scatchard's
mind. He even allowed his wife to upbraid him for not having
confessed this to her at the time of their marriage engagement,
rather than risk anything by hinting at the truth. The sacrifice
of his integrity before his one all-mastering delusion seemed but
a small thing, and cost his conscience but little after the
sacrifices he had already made.
The time of waking from this delusion--the cruel and the rueful
time--was not far off. After some quiet months of married life,
as the summer was ending, and the year was getting on toward the
month of his birthday, Isaac found his wife altering toward him.
She grew sullen and contemptuous; she formed acquaintances of the
most dangerous kind in defiance of his objections, his
entreaties, and his commands; and, worst of all, she learned, ere
long, after every fresh difference with her husband, to seek the
deadly self-oblivion of drink. Little by little, after the first
miserable discovery that his wife was keeping company with
drunkards, the shocking certainty forced itself on Isaac that she
had grown to be a drunkard herself.
He had been in a sadly desponding state for some time before the
occurrence of these domestic calamities. His mother's health, as
he could but too plainly discern every time he went to see her at
the cottage, was failing fast, and he upbraided himself in secret
as the cause of the bodily and mental suffering she endured. When
to his remorse on his mother's account was added the shame and
misery occasioned by the discovery of his wife's degradation, he
sank under the double trial--his face began to alter fast, and he
looked what he was, a spirit-broken man.
His mother, still struggling bravely against the illness that was
hurrying her to the grave, was the first to notice the sad
alteration in him, and the first to hear of his last worst
trouble with his wife. She could only weep bitterly on the day
when he made his humiliating confession, but on the next occasion
when he went to see her she had taken a resolution in reference
to his domestic afflictions which astonished and even alarmed
him. He found her dressed to go out, and on asking the reason
received this answer:
"I am not long for this world, Isaac," she said, "and I shall not
feel easy on my death-bed unless I have done my best to the last
to make my son happy. I mean to put my own fears and my own
feelings out of the question, and to go with you to your wife,
and try what I can do to reclaim her. Give me your arm, Isaac,
and let me do the last thing I can in this world to help my son
before it is too late."
He could not disobey her, and they walked together slowly toward
his miserable home.
It was only one o'clock in the afternoon when they reached the
cottage where he lived. It was their dinner-hour, and Rebecca was
in the kitchen. He was thus able to take his mother quietly into
the parlor, and then prepare his wife for the interview. She had
fortunately drunk but little at that early hour, and she was less
sullen and capricious than usual.
He returned to his mother with his mind tolerably at ease. His
wife soon followed him into the parlor, and the m eeting between
her and Mrs. Scatchard passed off better than he had ventured to
anticipate, though he observed with secret apprehension that his
mother, resolutely as she controlled herself in other respects,
could not look his wife in the face when she spoke to her. It was
a relief to him, therefore, when Rebecca began to lay the cloth.
She laid the cloth, brought in the bread-tray, and cut a slice
from the loaf for her husband, then returned to the kitchen. At
that moment, Isaac, still anxiously watching his mother, was
startled by seeing the same ghastly change pass over her face
which had altered it so awfully on the morning when Rebecca and
she first met. Before he could say a word, she whispered, with a
look of horror:
"Take me back--home, home again, Isaac. Come with me, and never
go back again."
He was afraid to ask for an explanation; he could only sign to
her to be silent, and help her quickly to the door. As they
passed the breadtray on the table she stopped and pointed to it.
"Did you see what your wife cut your bread with?" she asked, in a
low whisper.
"No, mother--I was not noticing--what was it?"
"Look!"
He did look. A new clasp-knife with a buckhorn handle lay with
the loaf in the bread-tray. He stretched out his hand
shudderingly to possess himself of it; but, at the same time,
there was a noise in the kitchen, and his mother caught at his
arm.
"The knife of the dream! Isaac, I'm faint with fear. Take me away
before she comes back."
He was hardly able to support her. The visible, tangible reality
of the knife struck him with a panic, and utterly destroyed any
faint doubts that he might have entertained up to this time in
relation to the mysterious dream-warning of nearly eight years
before. By a last desperate effort, he summoned self-possession
enough to help his mother out of the house--so quietly that the
"Dream-woman" (he thought of her by that name now) did not hear
them departing from the kitchen.
"Don't go back, Isaac--don't go back!" implored Mrs. Scatchard,
as he turned to go away, after seeing her safely seated again in
her own room.
"I must get the knife," he answered, under his breath. His mother
tried to stop him again, but he hurried out without another word.
On his return he found that his wife had discovered their secret
departure from the house. She had been drinking, and was in a
fury of passion. The dinner in the kitchen was flung under the
grate; the cloth was off the parlor table. Where was the knife?
Unwisely, he asked for it. She was only too glad of the
opportunity of irritating him which the request afforded her. "He
wanted the knife, did he? Could he give her a reason why? No!
Then he should not have it--not if he went down on his knees to
ask for it." Further recriminations elicited the fact that she
had bought it a bargain, and that she considered it her own
especial property. Isaac saw the uselessness of attempting to get
the knife by fair means, and determined to search for it, later
in the day, in secret. The search was unsuccessful. Night came
on, and he left the house to walk about the streets. He was
afraid now to sleep in the same room with her.
Three weeks passed. Still sullenly enraged with him, she would
not give up the knife; and still that fear of sleeping in the
same room with her possessed him. He walked about at night, or
dozed in the parlor, or sat watching by his mother's bedside.
Before the expiration of the first week in the new month his
mother died. It wanted then but ten days of her son's birthday.
She had longed to live till that anniversary. Isaac was present
at her death, and her last words in this world were addressed to
him:
"Don't go back, my son, don't go back!" He was obliged to go
back, if it were only to watch his wife. Exasperated to the last
degree by his distrust of her, she had revengefully sought to add
a sting to his grief, during the last days of his mother's
illness, by declaring that she would assert her right to attend
the funeral. In spite of any thing he could do or say, she held
with wicked pertinacity to her word, and on the day appointed for
the burial forced herself--inflamed and shameless with
drink--into her husband's presence, and declared that she would
walk in the funeral procession to his mother's grave.
This last worst outrage, accompanied by all that was most
insulting in word and look, maddened him for the moment. He
struck her.
The instant the blow was dealt he repented it. She crouched down,
silent, in a corner of the room, and eyed him steadily; it was a
look that cooled his hot blood and made him tremble. But there
was no time now to think of a means of making atonement. Nothing
remained but to risk the worst till the funeral was over. There
was but one way of making sure of her. He locked her into her
bedroom.
When he came back some hours after, he found her sitting, very
much altered in look and bearing, by the bedside, with a bundle
on her lap. She rose, and faced him quietly, and spoke with a
strange stillness in her voice, a strange repose in her eyes, a
strange composure in her manner.
"No man has ever struck me twice," she said, "and my husband
shall have no second opportunity. Set the door open and let me
go. From this day forth we see each other no more."
Before he could answer she passed him and left the room. He saw
her walk away up the street.
Would she return?
All that night he watched and waited, but no footstep came near
the house. The next night, overpowered by fatigue, he lay down in
bed in his clothes, with the door locked, the key on the table,
and the candle burning. His slumber was not disturbed. The third
night, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth passed, and nothing
happened.
He lay down on the seventh, still in his clothes, still with the
door locked, the key on the table, and the candle burning, but
easier in his mind.
Easier in his mind, and in perfect health of body when he fell
off to sleep. But his rest was disturbed. He woke twice without
any sensation of uneasiness. But the third time it was that
never-to-be-forgotten shivering of the night at the lonely inn,
that dreadful sinking pain at the heart, which once more aroused
him in an instant.
His eyes opened toward the left-hand side of the bed, and there
stood--The Dream-Woman again? No! His wife; the living reality,
with the dream-specter's face, in the dream-specter's attitude;
the fair arm up, the knife clasped in the delicate white hand.
He sprang upon her almost at the instant of seeing her, and yet
not quickly enough to prevent her from hiding the knife. Without
a word from him--without a cry from her--he pinioned her in a
chair. With one hand he felt up her sleeve, and there, where the
Dream-Woman had hidden the knife, his wife had hidden it--the
knife with the buckhorn handle, that looked like new.
In the despair of that fearful moment his brain was steady, his
heart was calm. He looked at her fixedly with the knife in his
hand, and said these last words:
"You told me we should see each other no more, and you have come
back. It is my turn now to go, and to go forever. I say that we
shall see each other no more, and my word shall not be broken."
He left her, and set forth into the night. There was a bleak wind
abroad, and the smell of recent rain was in the air. The distant
church-clocks chimed the quarter as he walked rapidly beyond the
last houses in the suburb. He asked the first policeman he met
what hour that was of which the quarter past had just struck.
The man referred sleepily to his watch, and answered, "Two
o'clock." Two in the morning. What day of the month was this day
that had just begun? He reckoned it up from the date of his
mother's funeral. The fatal parallel was complete: it was his
birthday!
Had he escaped the mortal peril which his dream foretold? or had
he only received a second warning?
As that ominous doubt forced itself on his mind, he stopped,
reflected, and turned back again toward the city. He was still
resolute to hold to his word, and never to let her see him more;
but there was a thought now in his mind of having her watched and
followed. The knife was in his possession; the world was b efore
him; but a new distrust of her--a vague, unspeakable,
superstitious dread had overcome him.
"I must know where she goes, now she thinks I have left her," he
said to himself, as he stole back wearily to the precincts of his
house.
It was still dark. He had left the candle burning in the
bedchamber; but when he looked up to the window of the room now
there was no light in it. He crept cautiously to the house door.
On going away, he remembered to have closed it; on trying it now,
he found it open.
He waited outside, never losing sight of the house, till
daylight. Then he ventured indoors--listened, and heard
nothing--looked into kitchen, scullery, parlor and found nothing;
went up at last into the bedroom--it was empty. A picklock lay on
the floor betraying how she had gained entrance in the night, and
that was the only trace of her.
Whither had she gone? That no mortal tongue could tell him. The
darkness had covered her flight; and when the day broke, no man
could say where the light found her.
Before leaving the house and the town forever, he gave
instructions to a friend and neighbor to sell his furniture for
anything that it would fetch, and apply the proceeds to employing
the police to trace her. The directions were honestly followed,
and the money was all spent, but the inquiries led to nothing.
The picklock on the bedroom floor remained the one last useless
trace of the Dream-Woman.
At this point of the narrative the landlord paused, and,
turning toward the window of the room in which we were sitting,
looked in the direction of the stable-yard.
"So far," he said, "I tell you what was told to me. The little
that remains to be added lies within my own experience. Between
two and three months after the events I have just been relating,
Isaac Scatchard came to me, withered and old-looking before his
time, just as you saw him to-day. He had his testimonials to
character with him, and he asked for employment here. Knowing
that my wife and he were distantly related, I gave him a trial in
consideration of that relationship, and liked him in spite of his
queer habits. He is as sober, honest, and willing a man as there
is in England. As for his restlessness at night, and his sleeping
away his leisure time in the day, who can wonder at it after
hearing his story? Besides, he never objects to being roused up
when he's wanted, so there's not much inconvenience to complain
of, after all."
"I suppose he is afraid of a return of that dreadful dream, and
of waking out of it in the dark?" said I.
"No," returned the landlord. "The dream comes back to him so
often that he has got to bear with it by this time resignedly
enough. It's his wife keeps him waking at night as he has often
told me."
"What! Has she never been heard of yet?"
"Never. Isaac himself has the one perpetual thought about her,
that she is alive and looking for him. I believe he wouldn't let
himself drop off to sleep toward two in the morning for a king's
ransom. Two in the morning, he says, is the time she will find
him, one of these days. Two in the morning is the time all the
year round when he likes to be most certain that he has got that
clasp-knife safe about him. He does not mind being alone as long
as he is awake, except on the night before his birthday, when he
firmly believes himself to be in peril of his life. The birthday
has only come round once since he has been here, and then he sat
up along with the night-porter. 'She's looking for me,' is all he
says when anybody speaks to him about the one anxiety of his
life; 'she's looking for me.' He may be right. She may be looking
for him. Who can tell?"
"Who can tell?" said I.
THE FOURTH DAY.
THE sky once more cloudy and threatening. No news of George. I
corrected Morgan's second story to-day; numbered it Seven, and
added it to our stock.
Undeterred by the weather, Miss Jessie set off this morning on
the longest ride she had yet undertaken. She had heard--through
one of my brother's laborers, I believe--of the actual existence,
in this nineteenth century, of no less a personage than a Welsh
Bard, who was to be found at a distant farmhouse far beyond the
limits of Owen's property. The prospect of discovering this
remarkable relic of past times hurried her off, under the
guidance of her ragged groom, in a high state of excitement, to
see and hear the venerable man. She was away the whole day, and
for the first time since her visit she kept us waiting more than
half an hour for dinner. The moment we all sat down to table, she
informed us, to Morgan's great delight, that the bard was a rank
impostor.
"Why, what did you expect to see?" I asked.
"A Welsh patriarch, to be sure, with a long white beard, flowing
robes, and a harp to match," answered Miss Jessie.
"And what did you find?"
"A highly-respectable middle-aged rustic; a smiling,
smoothly-shaven, obliging man, dressed in a blue swallow-tailed
coat, with brass buttons, and exhibiting his bardic legs in a
pair of extremely stout. and comfortable corduroy trousers."
"But he sang old Welsh songs, surely?"
"Sang! I'll tell you what he did. He sat down on a Windsor chair,
without a harp; he put his hands in his pockets, cleared his
throat, looked up at the ceiling, and suddenly burst into a
series of the shrillest falsetto screeches I ever heard in my
life. My own private opinion is that he was suffering from
hydrophobia. I have lost all belief, henceforth and forever, in
bards--all belief in everything, in short, except your very
delightful stories and this remarkably good dinner.
Ending with that smart double fire of compliments to her hosts,
the Queen of Hearts honored us all three with a smile of
approval, and transferred her attention to her knife and fork.
The number drawn to-night was One. On examination of the Purple
Volume, it proved to be my turn to read again.
"Our story to-night," I said, "contains the narrative of a very
remarkable adventure which really befell me when I was a young
man. At the time of my life when these events happened I was
dabbling in literature when I ought to have been studying law,
and traveling on the Continent when I ought to have been keeping
my terms at Lincoln's Inn. At the outset of the story, you will
find that I refer to the county in which I lived in my youth, and
to a neighboring family possessing a large estate in it. That
county is situated in a part of England far away from The Glen
Tower, and that family is therefore not to be associated with any
present or former neighbors of ours in this part of the world."
After saying these necessary words of explanation, I opened the
first page, and began the story of my Own Adventure. I observed
that my audience started a little as I read the title, which I
must add, in my own defense, had been almost forced on my choice
by the peculiar character of the narrative. It was "MAD MONKTON."
BROTHER GRIFFITH'S STORY
of
MAD MONKTON
CHAPTER I.
THE Monktons of Wincot Abbey bore a sad character for want of
sociability in our county. They never went to other people's
houses, and, excepting my father, and a lady and her daughter
living near them, never received anybody under their own roof.
Proud as they all certainly were, it was not pride, but dread,
which kept them thus apart from their neighbors. The family had
suffered for generations past from the horrible affliction of
hereditary insanity, and the members of it shrank from exposing
their calamity to others, as they must have exposed it if they
had mingled with the busy little world around them. There is a
frightful story of a crime committed in past times by two of the
Monktons, near relatives, from which the first appearance of the
insanity was always supposed to date, but it is needless for me
to shock any one by repeating it. It is enough to say that at
intervals almost every form of madness appeared in the family,
monomania being the most frequent manifestation of the affliction
among them. I have these particulars, and one or two yet to be
related, from my father.
At the period of my youth but three of the Monktons were left at
the Abbey--Mr. and Mrs. Monkton and their only child Alfred, heir
to the prope rty. The one other member of this, the elder branch
of the family, who was then alive, was Mr. Monkton's younger
brother, Stephen. He was an unmarried man, possessing a fine
estate in Scotland; but he lived almost entirely on the
Continent, and bore the reputation of being a shameless
profligate. The family at Wincot held almost as little
communication with him as with their neighbors.
I have already mentioned my father, and a lady and her daughter,
as the only privileged people who were admitted into Wincot
Abbey.
My father had been an old school and college friend of Mr.
Monkton, and accident had brought them so much together in later
life that their continued intimacy at Wincot was quite
intelligible. I am not so well able to account for the friendly
terms on which Mrs. Elmslie (the lady to whom I have alluded)
lived with the Monktons. Her late husband had been distantly
related to Mrs. Monkton, and my father was her daughter's
guardian. But even these claims to friendship and regard never
seemed to me strong enough to explain the intimacy between Mrs.
Elmslie and the inhabitants of the Abbey. Intimate, however, they
certainly were, and one result of the constant interchange of
visits between the two families in due time declared itself: Mr.
Monkton's son and Mrs. Elmslie's daughter became attached to each
other.
I had no opportunities of seeing much of the young lady; I only
remember her at that time as a delicate, gentle, lovable girl,
the very opposite in appearance, and apparently in character
also, to Alfred Monkton. But perhaps that was one reason why they
fell in love with each other. The attachment was soon discovered,
and was far from being disapproved by the parents on either side.
In all essential points except that of wealth, the Elmslies were
nearly the equals of the Monktons, and want of money in a bride
was of no consequence to the heir of Wincot. Alfred, it was well
known, would succeed to thirty thousand a year on his father's
death.
Thus, though the parents on both sides thought the young people
not old enough to be married at once, they saw no reason why Ada
and Alfred should not be engaged to each other, with the
understanding that they should be united when young Monkton came
of age, in two years' time. The person to be consulted in the
matter, after the parents, was my father, in his capacity of
Ada's guardian. He knew that the family misery had shown itself
many years ago in Mrs. Monkton, who was her husband's cousin. The
_illness,_ as it was significantly called, had been palliated by
careful treatment, and was reported to have passed away. But my
father was not to be deceived. He knew where the hereditary taint
still lurked; he viewed with horror the bare possibility of its
reappearing one day in the children of his friend's only
daughter; and he positively refused his consent to the marriage
engagement.
The result was that the doors of the Abbey and the doors of Mrs.
Elmslie's house were closed to him. This suspension of friendly
intercourse had lasted but a very short time when Mrs. Monkton
died. Her husband, who was fondly attached to her, caught a
violent cold while attending her funeral. The cold was neglected,
and settled on his lungs. In a few months' time he followed his
wife to the grave, and Alfred was left master of the grand old
Abbey and the fair lands that spread all around it.
At this period Mrs. Elmslie had the indelicacy to endeavor a
second time to procure my father's consent to the marriage
engagement. He refused it again more positively than before. More
than a year passed away. The time was approaching fast when
Alfred would be of age. I returned from college to spend the long
vacation at home, and made some advances toward bettering my
acquaintance with young Monkton. They were evaded--certainly with
perfect politeness, but still in such a way as to prevent me from
offering my friendship to him again. Any mortification I might
have felt at this petty repulse under ordinary circumstances was
dismissed from my mind by the occurrence of a real misfortune in
our household. For some months past my father's health had been
failing, and, just at the time of which I am now writing, his
sons had to mourn the irreparable calamity of his death.
This event, through some informality or error in the late Mr.
Elmslie's will, left the future of Ada's life entirely at her
mother's disposal. The consequence was the immediate ratification
of the marriage engagement to which my father had so steadily
refused his consent. As soon as the fact was publicly announced,
some of Mrs. Elmslie's more intimate friends, who were acquainted
with the reports affecting the Monkton family, ventured to mingle
with their formal congratulations one or two significant
references to the late Mrs. Monkton and some searching inquiries
as to the disposition of her son.
Mrs. Elmslie always met these polite hints with one bold form of
answer. She first admitted the existence of these reports about
the Monktons which her friends were unwilling to specify
distinctly, and then declared that they were infamous calumnies.
The hereditary taint had died out of the family generations back.
Alfred was the best, the kindest, the sanest of human beings. He
loved study and retirement; Ada sympathized with his tastes, and
had made her choice unbiased; if any more hints were dropped
about sacrificing her by her marriage, those hints would be
viewed as so many insults to her mother, whose affection for her
it was monstrous to call in question. This way of talking
silenced people, but did not convince them. They began to
suspect, what was indeed the actual truth, that Mrs. Elmslie was
a selfish, worldly, grasping woman, who wanted to get her
daughter well married, and cared nothing for consequences as long
as she saw Ada mistress of the greatest establishment in the
whole county.
It seemed, however, as if there was some fatality at work to
prevent the attainment of Mrs. Elmslie's great object in life.
Hardly was one obstacle to the ill-omened marriage removed by my
father's death before another succeeded it in the shape of
anxieties and difficulties caused by the delicate state of Ada's
health. Doctors were consulted in all directions, and the result
of their advice was that the marriage must be deferred, and that
Miss Elmslie must leave England for a certain time, to reside in
a warmer climate--the south of France, if I remember rightly.
Thus it happened that just before Alfred came of age Ada and her
mother departed for the Continent, and the union of the two young
people was understood to be indefinitely postponed. Some
curiosity was felt in the neighborhood as to what Alfred Monkton
would do under these circumstances. Would he follow his
lady-love? would he go yachting? would he throw open the doors of
the old Abbey at last, and endeavor to forget the absence of Ada
and the postponement of his marriage in a round of gayeties? He
did none of these things. He simply remained at Wincot, living as
suspiciously strange and solitary a life as his father had lived
before him. Literally, there was now no companion for him at the
Abbey but the old priest--the Monktons, I should have mentioned
before, were Roman Catholics--who had held the office of tutor to
Alfred from his earliest years. He came of age, and there was not
even so much as a private dinner-party at Wincot to celebrate the
event. Families in the neighborhood determined to forget the
offense which his father's reserve had given them, and invited
him to their houses. The invitations were politely declined.
Civil visitors called resolutely at the Abbey, and were as
resolutely bowed away from the doors as soon as they had left
their cards. Under this combination of sinister and aggravating
circumstances people in all directions took to shaking their
heads mysteriously when the name of Mr. Alfred Monkton was
mentioned, hinting at the family calamity, and wondering
peevishly or sadly, as their tempers inclined them, what he could
possibly do to occupy himself month after month in the lonely old
house.
The right answer to this question was not easy to find. It was
quite useless, for ex ample, to apply to the priest for it. He
was a very quiet, polite old gentleman; his replies were always
excessively ready and civil, and appeared at the time to convey
an immense quantity of information; but when they came to be
reflected on, it was universally observed that nothing tangible
could ever be got out of them. The housekeeper, a weird old
woman, with a very abrupt and repelling manner, was too fierce
and taciturn to be safely approached. The few indoor servants had
all been long enough in the family to have learned to hold their
tongues in public as a regular habit. It was only from the
farm-servants who supplied the table at the Abbey that any
information could be obtained, and vague enough it was when they
came to communicate it.
Some of them had observed the "young master" walking about the
library with heaps of dusty papers in his hands. Others had heard
odd noises in the uninhabited parts of the Abbey, had looked up,
and had seen him forcing open the old windows, as if to let light
and air into the rooms supposed to have been shut close for years
and years, or had discovered him standing on the perilous summit
of one of the crumbling turrets, never ascended before within
their memories, and popularly considered to be inhabited by the
ghosts of the monks who had once possessed the building. The
result of these observations and discoveries, when they were
communicated to others, was of course to impress every one with a
firm belief that "poor young Monkton was going the way that the
rest of the family had gone before him," which opinion always
appeared to be immensely strengthened in the popular mind by a
conviction--founded on no particle of evidence--that the priest
was at the bottom of all the mischief.
Thus far I have spoken from hearsay evidence mostly. What I have
next to tell will be the result of my own personal experience.
CHAPTER II.
ABOUT five months after Alfred Monkton came of age I left
college, and resolved to amuse and instruct myself a little by
traveling abroad.
At the time when I quitted England young Monkton was still
leading his secluded life at the Abbey, and was, in the opinion
of everybody, sinking rapidly, if he had not already succumbed,
under the hereditary curse of his family. As to the Elmslies,
report said that Ada had benefited by her sojourn abroad, and
that mother and daughter were on their way back to England to
resume their old relations with the heir of Wincot. Before they
returned I was away on my travels, and wandered half over Europe,
hardly ever planning whither I should shape my course beforehand.
Chance, which thus led me everywhere, led me at last to Naples.
There I met with an old school friend, who was one of the
_attaches_ at the English embassy, and there began the
extraordinary events in connection with Alfred Monkton which form
the main interest of the story I am now relating.
I was idling away the time one morning with my friend the
_attache_ in the garden of the Villa Reale, when we were passed
by a young man, walking alone, who exchanged bows with my friend.
I thought I recognized the dark, eager eyes, the colorless
cheeks, the strangely-vigilant, anxious expression which I
remembered in past times as characteristic of Alfred Monkton's
face, and was about to question my friend on the subject, when he
gave me unasked the information of which I was in search.
"That is Alfred Monkton," said he; "he comes from your part of
England. You ought to know him."
"I do know a little of him," I answered; "he was engaged to Miss
Elmslie when I was last in the neighborhood of Wincot. Is he
married to her yet?"
"No, and he never ought to be. He has gone the way of the rest of
the family--or, in plainer words, he has gone mad."
"Mad! But I ought not to be surprised at hearing that, after the
reports about him in England."
"I speak from no reports; I speak from what he has said and done
before me, and before hundreds of other people. Surely you must
have heard of it?"
"Never. I have been out of the way of news from Naples or England
for months past."
"Then I have a very extraordinary story to tell you. You know, of
course, that Alfred had an uncle, Stephen Monkton. Well, some
time ago this uncle fought a duel in the Roman States with a
Frenchman, who shot him dead. The seconds and the Frenchman (who
was unhurt) took to flight in different directions, as it is
supposed. We heard nothing here of the details of the duel till a
month after it happened, when one of the French journals
published an account of it, taken from the papers left by
Monkton's second, who died at Paris of consumption. These papers
stated the manner in which the duel was fought, and how it
terminated, but nothing more. The surviving second and the
Frenchman have never been traced from that time to this. All that
anybody knows, therefore, of the duel is that Stephen Monkton was
shot; an event which nobody can regret, for a greater scoundrel
never existed. The exact place where he died, and what was done
with the body are still mysteries not to be penetrated."
"But what has all this to do with Alfred?"
"Wait a moment, and you will hear. Soon after the news of his
uncle's death reached England, what do you think Alfred did? He
actually put off his marriage with Miss Elmslie, which was then
about to be celebrated, to come out here in search of the
burial-place of his wretched scamp of an uncle; and no power on
earth will now induce him to return to England and to Miss
Elmslie until he has found the body, and can take it back with
him, to be buried with all the other dead Monktons in the vault
under Wincot Abbey Chapel. He has squandered his money, pestered
the police, and exposed himself to the ridicule of the men and
the indignation of the women for the last three months in trying
to achieve his insane purpose, and is now as far from it as ever.
He will not assign to anybody the smallest motive for his
conduct. You can't laugh him out of it or reason him out of it.
When we met him just now, I happen to know that he was on his way
to the office of the police minister, to send out fresh agents to
search and inquire through the Roman States for the place where
his uncle was shot. And, mind, all this time he professes to be
passionately in love with Miss Elmslie, and to be miserable at
his separation from her. Just think of that! And then think of
his self-imposed absence from her here, to hunt after the remains
of a wretch who was a disgrace to the family, and whom he never
saw but once or twice in his life. Of all the 'Mad Monktons,' as
they used to call them in England, Alfred is the maddest. He is
actually our principal excitement in this dull opera season;
though, for my own part, when I think of the poor girl in
England, I am a great deal more ready to despise him than to
laugh at him."
"You know the Elmslies then?"
"Intimately. The other day my mother wrote to me from England,
after having seen Ada. This escapade of Monkton's has outraged
all her friends. They have been entreating her to break off the
match, which it seems she could do if she liked. Even her mother,
sordid and selfish as she is, has been obliged at last, in common
decency, to side with the rest of the family; but the good,
faithful girl won't give Monkton up. She humors his insanity;
declares he gave her a good reason in secret for going away; says
she could always make him happy when they were together in the
old Abbey, and can make him still happier when they are married;
in short, she loves him dearly, and will therefore believe in him
to the last. Nothing shakes her. She has made up her mind to
throw away her life on him, and she will do it."
"I hope not. Mad as his conduct looks to us, he may have some
sensible reason for it that we cannot imagine. Does his mind seem
at all disordered when he talks on ordinary topics?"
"Not in the least. When you can get him to say anything, which is
not often, he talks like a sensible, well-educated man. Keep
silence about his precious errand here, and you would fancy him
the gentlest and most temperate of human beings; but touch the
subject of his vagabond of an uncle, and the Monkton madness
comes out directly. The other night a lady asked him, jestingly
of course, whether he had ever seen his uncle's ghost. He scowled
at her like a perfect fiend, and said that he and his uncle would
answer her question together some day, if they came from hell to
do it. We laughed at his words, but the lady fainted at his
looks, and we had a scene of hysterics and hartshorn in
consequence. Any other man would have been kicked out of the room
for nearly frightening a pretty woman to death in that way; but
'Mad Monkton,' as we have christened him, is a privileged lunatic
in Neapolitan society, because he is English, good-looking, and
worth thirty thousand a year. He goes out everywhere under the
impression that he may meet with somebody who has been let into
the secret of the place where the mysterious duel was fought. If
you are introduced to him he is sure to ask you whether you know
anything about it; but beware of following up the subject after
you have answered him, unless you want to make sure that he is
out of his senses. In that case, only talk of his uncle, and the
result will rather more than satisfy you."
A day or two after this conversation with my friend the
_attache,_ I met Monkton at an evening party.
The moment he heard my name mentioned, his face flushed up; he
drew me away into a corner, and referring to his cool reception
of my advance years ago toward making his acquaintance, asked my
pardon for what he termed his inexcusable ingratitude with an
earnestness and an agitation which utterly astonished me. His
next proceeding was to question me, as my friend had said he
would, about the place of the mysterious duel.
An extraordinary change came over him while he interrogated me on
this point. Instead of looking into my face as they had looked
hitherto, his eyes wandered away, and fixed themselves intensely,
almost fiercely, either on the perfectly empty wall at our side,
or on the vacant space between the wall and ourselves, it was
impossible to say which. I had come to Naples from Spain by sea,
and briefly told him so, as the best way of satisfying him that I
could not assist his inquiries. He pursued them no further; and,
mindful of my friend's warning, I took care to lead the
conversation to general topics. He looked back at me directly,
and, as long as we stood in our corner, his eyes never wandered
away again to the empty wall or the vacant space at our side.
Though more ready to listen than to speak, his conversation, when
he did talk, had no trace of anything the least like insanity
about it. He had evidently read, not generally only, but deeply
as well, and could apply his reading with singular felicity to
the illustration of almost any subject under discussion, neither
obtruding his knowledge absurdly, nor concealing it affectedly.
His manner was in itself a standing protest against such a
nickname as "Mad Monkton." He was so shy, so quiet, so composed
and gentle in all his actions, that at times I should have been
almost inclined to call him effeminate. We had a long talk
together on the first evening of our meeting; we often saw each
other afterward, and never lost a single opportunity of bettering
our acquaintance. I felt that he had taken a liking to me, and,
in spite of what I had heard about his behavior to Miss Elmslie,
in spite of the suspicions which the history of his family and
his own conduct had arrayed against him, I began to like "Mad
Monkton" as much as he liked me. We took many a quiet ride
together in the country, and sailed often along the shores of the
Bay on either side. But for two eccentricities in his conduct,
which I could not at all understand, I should soon have felt as
much at my ease in his society as if he had been my own brother.
The first of these eccentricities consisted in the reappearance
on several occasions of the odd expression in his eyes which I
had first seen when he asked me whether I knew anything about the
duel. No matter what we were talking about, or where we happened
to be, there were times when he would suddenly look away from my
face, now on one side of me, now on the other, but always where
there was nothing to see, and always with the same intensity and
fierceness in his eyes. This looked so like madness--or
hypochondria at the least--that I felt afraid to ask him about
it, and always pretended not to observe him.
The second peculiarity in his conduct was that he never referred,
while in my company, to the reports about his errand at Naples,
and never once spoke of Miss Elmslie, or of his life at Wincot
Abbey. This not only astonished me, but amazed those who had
noticed our intimacy, and who had made sure that I must be the
depositary of all his secrets. But the time was near at hand when
this mystery, and some other mysteries of which I had no
suspicion at that period, were all to be revealed.
I met him one night at a large ball, given by a Russian nobleman,
whose name I could not pronounce then, and cannot remember now. I
had wandered away from reception-room, ballroom, and cardroom, to
a small apartment at one extremity of the palace, which was half
conservatory, half boudoir, and which had been prettily
illuminated for the occasion with Chinese lanterns. Nobody was in
the room when I got there. The view over the Mediterranean,
bathed in the bright softness of Italian moonlight, was so lovely
that I remained for a long time at the window, looking out, and
listening to the dance-music which faintly reached me from the
ballroom. My thoughts were far away with the relations I had left
in England, when I was startled out of them by hearing my name
softly pronounced.
I looked round directly, and saw Monkton standing in the room. A
livid paleness overspread his face, and his eyes were turned away
from me with the same extraordinary expression in them to which I
have already alluded.
"Do you mind leaving the ball early to-night?" he asked, still
not looking at me.
"Not at all," said I. "Can I do anything for you? Are you ill?"
"No--at least nothing to speak of. Will you come to my rooms?"
"At once, if you like."
"No, not at once. _I_ must go home directly; but don't you come
to me for half an hour yet. You have not been at my rooms before,
I know, but you will easily find them out; they are close by.
There is a card with my address. I _must_ speak to you to-night;
my life depends on it. Pray come! for God's sake, come when the
half hour is up!"
I promised to be punctual, and he left me directly.
Most people will be easily able to imagine the state of nervous
impatience and vague expectation in which I passed the allotted
period of delay, after hearing such words as those Monkton had
spoken to me. Before the half hour had quite expired I began to
make my way out through the ballroom.
At the head of the staircase my friend, the _attache,_ met me.
"What! going away already?" Said he.
"Yes; and on a very curious expedition. I am going to Monkton's
rooms, by his own invitation."
"You don't mean it! Upon my honor, you're a bold fellow to trust
yourself alone with 'Mad Monkton' when the moon is at the full."
"He is ill, poor fellow. Besides, I don't think him half as mad
as you do."
"We won't dispute about that; but mark my words, he has not asked
you to go where no visitor has ever been admitted before without
a special purpose. I predict that you will see or hear something
to-night which you will remember for the rest of your life."
We parted. When I knocked at the courtyard gate of the house
where Monkton lived, my friend's last words on the palace
staircase recurred to me, and, though I had laughed at him when
he spoke them, I began to suspect even then that his prediction
would be fulfilled.
CHAPTER III.
THE porter who let me into the house where Monkton lived directed
me to the floor on which his rooms were situated. On getting
upstairs, I found his door on the landing ajar. He heard my
footsteps, I suppose, for he called to me to come in before I
could knock.
I entered, and found him sitting by the table, with some loose
letters in his hand, which he was just tying together into a
packet. I noticed, as he asked me to sit down, that his express
ion looked more composed, though the paleness had not yet left
his face. He thanked me for coming; repeated that he had
something very important to say to me; and then stopped short,
apparently too much embarrassed to proceed. I tried to set him at
his ease by assuring him that, if my assistance or advice could
be of any use, I was ready to place myself and my time heartily
and unreservedly at his service.
As I said this I saw his eyes beginning to wander away from my
face--to wander slowly, inch by inch, as it were, until they
stopped at a certain point, with the same fixed stare into
vacancy which had so often startled me on former occasions. The
whole expression of his face altered as I had never yet seen it
alter; he sat before me looking like a man in a death-trance.
"You are very kind," he said, slowly and faintly, speaking, not
to me, but in the direction in which his eyes were still fixed.
"I know you can help me; but--"
He stopped; his face whitened horribly, and the perspiration
broke out all over it. He tried to continue--said a word or
two--then stopped again. Seriously alarmed about him, I rose from
my chair with the intention of getting him some water from a jug
which I saw standing on a side-table.
He sprang up at the same moment. All the suspicions I had ever
heard whispered against his sanity flashed over my mind in an
instant, and I involuntarily stepped back a pace or two.
"Stop," he said, seating himself again; "don't mind me; and don't
leave your chair. I want--I wish, if you please, to make a little
alteration, before we say anything more. Do you mind sitting in a
strong light?"
"Not in the least."
I had hitherto been seated in the shade of his reading-lamp, the
only light in the room.
As I answered him he rose again, and, going into another
apartment, returned with a large lamp in his hand; then took two
candles from the side-table, and two others from the chimney
piece; placed them all, to my amazement, together, so as to stand
exactly between us, and then tried to light them. His hand
trembled so that he was obliged to give up the attempt, and allow
me to come to his assistance. By his direction, I took the shade
off the reading-lamp after I had lit the other lamp and the four
candles. When we sat down again, with this concentration of light
between us, his better and gentler manner began to return, and
while he now addressed me he spoke without the slightest
hesitation.
"It is useless to ask whether you have heard the reports about
me," he said; "I know that you have. My purpose to-night is to
give you some reasonable explanation of the conduct which has
produced those reports. My secret has been hitherto confided to
one person only; I am now about to trust it to your keeping, with
a special object which will appear as I go on. First, however, I
must begin by telling you exactly what the great difficulty is
which obliges me to be still absent from England. I want your
advice and your help; and, to conceal nothing from you, I want
also to test your forbearance and your friendly sympathy, before
I can venture on thrusting my miserable secret into your keeping.
Will you pardon this apparent distrust of your frank and open
character--this apparent ingratitude for your kindness toward me
ever since we first met?"
I begged him not to speak of these things, but to go on.
"You know," he proceeded, "that I am here to recover the body of
my Uncle Stephen, and to carry it back with me to our family
burial-place in England, and you must also be aware that I have
not yet succeeded in discovering his remains. Try to pass over,
for the present, whatever may seem extraordinary and
incomprehensible in such a purpose as mine is, and read this
newspaper article where the ink-line is traced. It is the only
evidence hitherto obtained on the subject of the fatal duel in
which my uncle fell, and I want to hear what course of proceeding
the perusal of it may suggest to you as likely to be best on my
part."
He handed me an old French newspaper. The substance of what I
read there is still so firmly impressed on my memory that I am
certain of being able to repeat correctly at this distance of
time all the facts which it is necessary for me to communicate to
the reader.
The article began, I remember, with editorial remarks on the
great curiosity then felt in regard to the fatal duel between the
Count St. Lo and Mr. Stephen Monkton, an English gentleman. The
writer proceeded to dwell at great length on the extraordinary
secrecy in which the whole affair had been involved from first to
last, and to express a hope that the publication of a certain
manuscript, to which his introductory observations referred,
might lead to the production of fresh evidence from other and
better-informed quarters. The manuscript had been found among the
papers of Monsieur Foulon, Mr. Monkton's second, who had died at
Paris of a rapid decline shortly after returning to his home in
that city from the scene of the duel. The document was
unfinished, having been left incomplete at the very place where
the reader would most wish to find it continued. No reason could
be discovered for this, and no second manuscript bearing on the
all-important subject had been found, after the strictest search
among the papers left by the deceased.
The document itself then followed.
It purported to be an agreement privately drawn up between Mr.
Monkton's second, Monsieur Foulon, and the Count St. Lo's second,
Monsieur Dalville, and contained a statement of all the
arrangements for conducting the duel. The paper was dated
"Naples, February 22d," and was divided into some seven or eight
clauses. The first clause described the origin and nature of the
quarrel--a very disgraceful affair on both sides, worth neither
remembering nor repeating. The second clause stated that, the
challenged man having chosen the pistol as his weapon, and the
challenger (an excellent swordsman), having, on his side,
thereupon insisted that the duel should be fought in such a
manner as to make the first fire decisive in its results, the
seconds, seeing that fatal consequences must inevitably follow
the hostile meeting, determined, first of all, that the duel
should be kept a profound secret from everybody, and that the
place where it was to be fought should not be made known
beforehand, even to the principals themselves. It was added that
this excess of precaution had been rendered absolutely necessary
in consequence of a recent address from the Pope to the ruling
powers in Italy commenting on the scandalous frequency of the
practice of dueling, and urgently desiring that the laws against
duelists should be enforced for the future with the utmost rigor.
The third clause detailed the manner in which it had been
arranged that the duel should be fought.
The pistols having been loaded by the seconds on the ground, the
combatants were to be placed thirty paces apart, and were to toss
up for the first fire. The man who won was to advance ten paces
marked out for him beforehand--and was then to discharge his
pistol. If he missed, or failed to disable his opponent, the
latter was free to advance, if he chose, the whole remaining
twenty paces before he fired in his turn. This arrangement
insured the decisive termination of the duel at the first
discharge of the pistols, and both principals and seconds pledged
themselves on either side to abide by it.
The fourth clause stated that the seconds had agreed that the
duel should be fought out of the Neapolitan States, but left
themselves to be guided by circumstances as to the exact locality
in which it should take place. The remaining clauses, so far as I
remember them, were devoted to detailing the different
precautions to be adopted for avoiding discovery. The duelists
and their seconds were to leave Naples in separate parties; were
to change carriages several times; were to meet at a certain
town, or, failing that, at a certain post-house on the high road
from Naples to Rome; were to carry drawing-books, color boxes,
and camp-stools, as if they had been artists out on a
sketching-tour; and were to proceed to the place of the duel on
foot, employing no gui des, for fear of treachery. Such general
arrangements as these, and others for facilitating the flight of
the survivors after the affair was over, formed the conclusion of
this extraordinary document, which was signed, in initials only,
by both the seconds.
Just below the initials appeared the beginning of a narrative,
dated "Paris," and evidently intended to describe the duel itself
with extreme minuteness. The hand-writing was that of the
deceased second.
Monsieur Foulon, tire gentleman in question, stated his belief
that circumstances might transpire which would render an account
by an eyewitness of the hostile meeting between St. Lo and Mr.
Monkton an important document. He proposed, therefore, as one of
the seconds, to testify that the duel had been fought in exact
accordance with the terms of the agreement, both the principals
conducting themselves like men of gallantry and honor (!). And he
further announced that, in order not to compromise any one, he
should place the paper containing his testimony in safe hands,
with strict directions that it was on no account to be opened
except in a case of the last emergency.
After thus preamble, Monsieur Foulon related that the duel had
been fought two days after the drawing up of the agreement, in a
locality to which accident had conducted the dueling party. (The
name of the place was not mentioned, nor even the neighborhood in
which it was situated.) The men having been placed according to
previous arrangement, the Count St. Lo had won the toss for the
first fire, had advanced his ten paces, and had shot his opponent
in the body. Mr. Monkton did not immediately fall, but staggered
forward some six or seven paces, discharged his pistol
ineffectually at the count, and dropped to the ground a dead man.
Monsieur Foulon then stated that he tore a leaf from his
pocketbook, wrote on it a brief description of the manner in
which Mr. Monkton had died, and pinned the paper to his clothes;
this proceeding having been rendered necessary by the peculiar
nature of the plan organized on the spot for safely disposing of
the dead body. What this plan was, or what was done with the
corpse, did not appear, for at this important point the narrative
abruptly broke off.
A foot-note in the newspaper merely stated the manner in which
the document had been obtained for publication, and repeated the
announcement contained in the editor's introductory remarks, that
no continuation had been found by the persons intrusted with the
care of Monsieur Foulon's papers. I have now given the whole
substance of what I read, and have mentioned all that was then
known of Mr. Stephen Monkton's death.
When I gave the newspaper back to Alfred he was too much agitated
to speak, but he reminded me by a sign that he was anxiously
waiting to hear what I had to say. My position was a very trying
and a very painful one. I could hardly tell what consequences
might not follow any want of caution on my part, and could think
at first of no safer plan than questioning him carefully before I
committed myself either one way or the other.
"Will you excuse me if I ask you a question or two before I give
you my advice?" said I.
He nodded impatiently.
"Yes, yes--any questions you like."
"Were you at any time in the habit of seeing your uncle
frequently?"
"I never saw him more than twice in my life--on each occasion
when I was a mere child."
"Then you could have had no very strong personal regard for him?"
'Regard for him! I should have been ashamed to feel any regard
for him. He disgraced us wherever he went."
"May I ask if any family motive is involved in your anxiety to
recover his remains?"
"Family motives may enter into it among others--but why do you
ask?"
"Because, having heard that you employ the police to assist your
search, I was anxious to know whether you had stimulated their
superiors to make them do their best in your service by giving
some strong personal reasons at headquarters for the very unusual
project which has brought you here."
"I give no reasons. I pay for the work I want done, and, in
return for my liberality, I am treated with the most infamous
indifference on all sides. A stranger in the country, and badly
acquainted with the language, I can do nothing to help myself.
The authorities, both at Rome and in this place, pretend to
assist me, pretend to search and inquire as I would have them
search and inquire, and do nothing more. I am insulted, laughed
at, almost to my face."
"Do you not think it possible--mind, I have no wish to excuse the
misconduct of the authorities, and do not share in any such
opinion myself--but do you not think it likely that the police
may doubt whether you are in earnest?"
"Not in earnest!" he cried, starting up and confronting me
fiercely, with wild eyes and quickened breath. "Not in earnest!
_You_ think I'm not in earnest too. I know you think it, though
you tell me you don't. Stop; before we say another word, your own
eyes shall convince you. Come here--only for a minute--only for
one minute!"
I followed him into his bedroom, which opened out of the
sitting-room. At one side of his bed stood a large packing-case
of plain wood, upward of seven feet in length.
"Open the lid and look in," he said, "while I hold the candle so
that you can see."
I obeyed his directions, and discovered to my astonishment that
the packing-case contained a leaden coffin, magnificently
emblazoned with the arms of the Monkton family, and inscribed in
old-fashioned letters with the name of "Stephen Monkton," his age
and the manner of his death being added underneath.
"I keep his coffin ready for him," whispered Alfred, close at my
ear. "Does that look like earnest?"
It looked more like insanity--so like that I shrank from
answering him.
"Yes! yes! I see you are convinced," he continued quickly; "we
may go back into the next room, and may talk without restraint on
either side now."
On returning to our places, I mechanically moved my chair away
from the table. My mind was by this time in such a state of
confusion and uncertainty about what it would be best for me to
say or do next, that I forgot for the moment the position he had
assigned to me when we lit the candles. He reminded me of this
directly.
"Don't move away," he said, very earnestly; "keep on sitting in
the light; pray do! I'll soon tell you why I am so particular
about that. But first give me your advice; help me in my great
distress and suspense. Remember, you promised me you would."
I made an effort to collect my thoughts, and succeeded. It was
useless to treat the affair otherwise than seriously in his
presence; it would have been cruel not to have advised him as I
best could.
"You know," I said, "that two days after the drawing up of the
agreement at Naples, the duel was fought out of the Neapolitan
States. This fact has of course led you to the conclusion that
all inquiries about localities had better be confined to the
Roman territory?"
"Certainly; the search, such as it is, has been made there, and
there only. If I can believe the police, they and their agents
have inquired for the place where the duel was fought (offering a
large reward in my name to the person who can discover it) all
along the high road from Naples to Rome. They have also
circulated--at least so they tell me--descriptions of the
duelists and their seconds; have left an agent to superintend
investigations at the post-house, and another at the town
mentioned as meeting-points in the agreement; and have
endeavored, by correspondence with foreign authorities, to trace
the Count St. Lo and Monsieur Dalville to their place or places
of refuge. All these efforts, supposing them to have been really
made, have hitherto proved utterly fruitless."
"My impression is," said I, after a moment's consideration, "that
all inquiries made along the high road, or anywhere near Rome,
are likely to be made in vain. As to the discovery of your
uncle's remains, that is, I think, identical with the discovery
of the place where he was shot; for those engaged in the duel
would certainly not risk detection by carrying a corpse any
distance with them in their flight. The place, then,
is all that we want to find out. Now let us consider for a
moment. The dueling-party changed carriages; traveled separately,
two and two; doubtless took roundabout roads; stopped at the
post-house and the town as a blind; walked, perhaps, a
considerable distance unguided. Depend upon it, such precautions
as these (which we know they must have employed) left them very
little time out of the two days--though they might start at
sunrise and not stop at night-fall--for straightforward
traveling. My belief therefore is, that the duel was fought
somewhere near the Neapolitan frontier; and, if I had been the
police agent who conducted the search, I should only have pursued
it parallel with the frontier, starting from west to east till I
got up among the lonely places in the mountains. That is my idea;
do you think it worth anything?"
His face flushed all over in an instant. "I think it an
inspiration!" he cried. "Not a day is to be lost in carrying out
our plan. The police are not to be trusted with it. I must start
myself to-morrow morning; and you--"
He stopped; his face grew suddenly pale; he sighed heavily; his
eyes wandered once more into the fixed look at vacancy; and the
rigid, deathly expression fastened again upon all his features.
"I must tell you my secret before I talk of to-morrow," he
proceeded, faintly. "If I hesitated any longer at confessing
everything, I should be unworthy of your past kindness, unworthy
of the help which it is my last hope that you will gladly give me
when you have heard all."
I begged him to wait until he was more composed, until he was
better able to speak; but he did not appear to notice what I
said. Slowly, and struggling as it seemed against himself, he
turned a little away from me, and, bending his head over the
table, supported it on his hand. The packet of letters with which
I had seen him occupied when I came in lay just beneath his eyes.
He looked down on it steadfastly when he next spoke to me.
CHAPTER IV.
"You were born, I believe, in our county," he said; "perhaps,
therefore, you may have heard at some time of a curious old
prophecy about our family, which is still preserved among the
traditions of Wincot Abbey?"
"I have heard of such a prophecy," I answered, "but I never knew
in what terms it was expressed. It professed to predict the
extinction of your family, or something of that sort, did it
not?"
"No inquiries," he went on, "have traced back that prophecy to
the time when it was first made; none of our family records tell
us anything of its origin. Old servants and old tenants of ours
remember to have heard it from their fathers and grandfathers.
The monks, whom we succeeded in the Abbey in Henry the Eighth's
time, got knowledge of it in some way, for I myself discovered
the rhymes, in which we know the prophecy to have been preserved
from a very remote period, written on a blank leaf of one of the
Abbey manuscripts. These are the verses, if verses they deserve
to be called:
When in Wincot vault a place Waits for one of Monkton's race--
When that one forlorn shall lie Graveless under open sky,
Beggared of six feet of earth, Though lord of acres from his
birth-- That shall be a certain sign Of the end of Monkton's
line. Dwindling ever faster, faster, Dwindling to the last-left
master; From mortal ken, from light of day, Monkton's race shall
pass away."
"The prediction seems almost vague enough to have been uttered by
an ancient oracle," said I, observing that he waited, after
repeating the verses, as if expecting me to say something.
"Vague or not, it is being accomplished," he returned. "I am now
the 'last-left master'--the last of that elder line of our family
at which the prediction points; and the corpse of Stephen Monkton
is not in the vaults of Wincot Abbey. Wait before you exclaim
against me. I have more to say about this. Long before the Abbey
was ours, when we lived in the ancient manor-house near it (the
very ruins of which have long since disappeared), the family
burying-place was in the vault under the Abbey chapel. Whether in
those remote times the prediction against us was known and
dreaded or not, this much is certain: every one of the Monktons
(whether living at the Abbey or on the smaller estate in
Scotland) was buried in Wincot vault, no matter at what risk or
what sacrifice. In the fierce fighting days of the olden time,
the bodies of my ancestors who fell in foreign places were
recovered and brought back to Wincot, though it often cost not
heavy ransom only, but desperate bloodshed as well, to obtain
them. This superstition, if you please to call it so, has never
died out of the family from that time to the present day; for
centuries the succession of the dead in the vault at the Abbey
has been unbroken--absolutely unbroken--until now. The place
mentioned in the prediction as waiting to be filled is Stephen
Monkton's place; the voice that cries vainly to the earth for
shelter is the spirit-voice of the dead. As surely as if I saw
it, I know that they have left him unburied on the ground where
he fell!"
He stopped me before I could utter a word in remonstrance by
slowly rising to his feet, and pointing in the same direction
toward which his eyes had wandered a short time since.
"I can guess what you want to ask me," he exclaimed, sternly and
loudly; "you want to ask me how I can be mad enough to believe in
a doggerel prophecy uttered in an age of superstition to awe the
most ignorant hearers. I answer" (at those words his voice sank
suddenly to a whisper), "I answer, because _Stephen Monkton
himself stands there at this moment confirming me in my belief_."
Whether it was the awe and horror that looked out ghastly from
his face as he confronted me, whether it was that I had never
hitherto fairly believed in the reports about his madness, and
that the conviction of their truth now forced itself upon me on a
sudden, I know not, but I felt my blood curdling as he spoke, and
I knew in my own heart, as I sat there speechless, that I dare
not turn round and look where he was still pointing close at my
side.
"I see there," he went on, in the same whispering voice, "the
figure of a dark-complexioned man standing up with his head
uncovered. One of his hands, still clutching a pistol, has fallen
to his side; the other presses a bloody handkerchief over his
mouth. The spasm of mortal agony convulses his features; but I
know them for the features of a swarthy man who twice frightened
me by taking me up in his arms when I was a child at Wincot
Abbey. I asked the nurses at the time who that man was, and they
told me it was my uncle, Stephen Monkton. Plainly, as if he stood
there living, I see him now at your side, with the death-glare in
his great black eyes; and so have I ever seen him, since the
moment when he was shot; at home and abroad, waking or sleeping,
day and night, we are always together, wherever I go!"
His whispering tones sank into almost inaudible murmuring as he
pronounced these last words. From the direction and expression of
his eyes, I suspected that he was speaking to the apparition. If
I had beheld it myself at that moment, it would have been, I
think, a less horrible sight to witness than to see him, as I saw
him now, muttering inarticulately at vacancy. My own nerves were
more shaken than I could have thought possible by what had
passed. A vague dread of being near him in his present mood came
over me, and I moved back a step or two.
He noticed the action instantly.
"Don't go! pray--pray don't go! Have I alarmed you? Don't you
believe me? Do the lights make your eyes ache? I only asked you
to sit in the glare of the candles because I could not bear to
see the light that always shines from the phantom there at dusk
shining over you as you sat in the shadow. Don't go--don't leave
me yet!"
There was an utter forlornness, an unspeakable misery in his face
as he spoke these words, which gave me back my self-possession by
the simple process of first moving me to pity. I resumed my
chair, and said that I would stay with him as long as he wished.
"Thank you a thousand times. You are patience and kindness
itself," he said, going back to his former place
and resuming his former gentleness of manner. "Now that I have
got over my first confession of the misery that follows me in
secret wherever I go, I think I can tell you calmly all that
remains to be told. You see, as I said, my Uncle Stephen" he
turned away his head quickly, and looked down at the table as the
name passed his lips--"my Uncle Stephen came twice to Wincot
while I was a child, and on both occasions frightened me
dreadfully. He only took me up in his arms and spoke to me--very
kindly, as I afterward heard, for _him_--but he terrified me,
nevertheless. Perhaps I was frightened at his great stature, his
swarthy complexion, and his thick black hair and mustache, as
other children might have been; perhaps the mere sight of him had
some strange influence on me which I could not then understand
and cannot now explain. However it was, I used to dream of him
long after he had gone away, and to fancy that he was stealing on
me to catch me up in his arms whenever I was left in the dark.
The servants who took care of me found this out, and used to
threaten me with my Uncle Stephen whenever I was perverse and
difficult to manage. As I grew up, I still retained my vague
dread and abhorrence of our absent relative. I always listened
intently, yet without knowing why, whenever his name was
mentioned by my father or my mother--listened with an
unaccountable presentiment that something terrible had happened
to him, or was about to happen to me. This feeling only changed
when I was left alone in the Abbey; and then it seemed to merge
into the eager curiosity which had begun to grow on me, rather
before that time, about the origin of the ancient prophecy
predicting the extinction of our race. Are you following me?"
"I follow every word with the closest attention."
"You must know, then, that I had first found out some fragments
of the old rhyme in which the prophecy occurs quoted as a
curiosity in an antiquarian book in the library. On the page
opposite this quotation had been pasted a rude old wood-cut,
representing a dark-haired man, whose face was so strangely like
what I remembered of my Uncle Stephen that the portrait
absolutely startled me. When I asked my father about this--it was
then just before his death--he either knew, or pretended to know,
nothing of it; and when I afterward mentioned the prediction he
fretfully changed the subject. It was just the same with our
chaplain when I spoke to him. He said the portrait had been done
centuries before my uncle was born, and called the prophecy
doggerel and nonsense. I used to argue with him on the latter
point, asking why we Catholics, who believed that the gift of
working miracles had never departed from certain favored persons,
might not just as well believe that the gift of prophecy had
never departed, either? He would not dispute with me; he would
only say that I must not waste time in thinking of such trifles;
that I had more imagination than was good for me, and must
suppress instead of exciting it. Such advice as this only
irritated my curiosity. I determined secretly to search
throughout the oldest uninhabited part of the Abbey, and to try
if I could not find out from forgotten family records what the
portrait was, and when the prophecy had been first written or
uttered. Did you ever pass a day alone in the long-deserted
chambers of an ancient house?"
"Never! such solitude as that is not at all to my taste."
"Ah! what a life it was when I began my search. I should like to
live it over again. Such tempting suspense, such strange
discoveries, such wild fancies, such inthralling terrors, all
belonged to that life. Only think of breaking open the door of a
room which no living soul had entered before you for nearly a
hundred years; think of the first step forward into a region of
airless, awful stillness, where the light falls faint and sickly
through closed windows and rotting curtains; think of the ghostly
creaking of the old floor that cries out on you for treading on
it, step as softly as you will; think of arms, helmets, weird
tapestries of by-gone days, that seem to be moving out on you
from the walls as you first walk up to them in the dim light;
think of prying into great cabinets and iron-clasped chests, not
knowing what horrors may appear when you tear them open; of
poring over their contents till twilight stole on you and
darkness grew terrible in the lonely place; of trying to leave
it, and not being able to go, as if something held you; of wind
wailing at you outside; of shadows darkening round you, and
closing you up in obscurity within--only think of these things,
and you may imagine the fascination of suspense and terror in
such a life as mine was in those past days."
(I shrank from imagining that life: it was bad enough to see its
results, as I saw them before me now.)
"Well, my search lasted months and months; then it was suspended
a little; then resumed. In whatever direction I pursued it I
always found something to lure me on. Terrible confessions of
past crimes, shocking proofs of secret wickedness that had been
hidden securely from all eyes but mine, came to light. Sometimes
these discoveries were associated with particular parts of the
Abbey, which have had a horrible interest of their own for me
ever since; sometimes with certain old portraits in the
picture-gallery, which I actually dreaded to look at after what I
had found out. There were periods when the results of this search
of mine so horrified me that I determined to give it up entirely;
but I never could persevere in my resolution; the temptation to
go on seemed at certain intervals to get too strong for me, and
then I yielded to it again and again. At last I found the book
that had belonged to the monks with the whole of the prophecy
written in the blank leaf. This first success encouraged me to
get back further yet in the family records. I had discovered
nothing hitherto of the identity of the mysterious portrait; but
the same intuitive conviction which had assured me of its
extraordinary resemblance to my Uncle Stephen seemed also to
assure me that he must be more closely connected with the
prophecy, and must know more of it than any one else. I had no
means of holding any communication with him, no means of
satisfying myself whether this strange idea of mine were right or
wrong, until the day when my doubts were settled forever by the
same terrible proof which is now present to me in this very
room."
He paused for a moment, and looked at me intently and
suspiciously; then asked if I believed all he had said to me so
far. My instant reply in the affirmative seemed to satisfy his
doubts, and he went on.
"On a fine evening in February I was standing alone in one of the
deserted rooms of the western turret at the Abbey, looking at the
sunset. Just before the sun went down I felt a sensation stealing
over me which it is impossible to explain. I saw nothing, heard
nothing, knew nothing. This utter self-oblivion came suddenly; it
was not fainting, for I did not fall to the ground, did not move
an inch from my place. If such a thing could be, I should say it
was the temporary separation of soul and body without death; but
all description of my situation at that time is impossible. Call
my state what you will, trance or catalepsy, I know that I
remained standing by the window utterly unconscious--dead, mind
and body--until the sun had set. Then I came to my senses again;
and then, when I opened my eyes, there was the apparition of
Stephen Monkton standing opposite to me, faintly luminous, just
as it stands opposite me at this very moment by your side."
Was this before the news of the duel reached England?" I asked.
"_Two weeks before_ the news of it reached us at Wincot. And even
when we heard of the duel, we did not hear of the day on which it
was fought. I only found that out when the document which you
have read was published in the French newspaper. The date of that
document, you will remember, is February 22d, and it is stated
that the duel was fought two days afterward. I wrote down in my
pocketbook, on the evening when I saw the phantom, the day of the
month on which it first appeared to me . That day was the 24th of
February.
He paused again, as if expecting me to say something. After the
words he had just spoken, what could I say? what could I think?
"Even in the first horror of first seeing the apparition," he
went on, "the prophecy against our house came to my mind, and
with it the conviction that I beheld before me, in that spectral
presence, the warning of my own doom. As soon as I recovered a
little, I determined, nevertheless, to test the reality of what I
saw; to find out whether I was the dupe of my own diseased fancy
or not. I left the turret; the phantom left it with me. I made an
excuse to have the drawing-room at the Abbey brilliantly lighted
up; the figure was still opposite me. I walked out into the park;
it was there in the clear starlight. I went away from home, and
traveled many miles to the sea-side; still the tall dark man in
his death agony was with me. After this I strove against the
fatality no more. I returned to the Abbey, and tried to resign
myself to my misery. But this was not to be. I had a hope that
was dearer to me than my own life; I had one treasure belonging
to me that I shuddered at the prospect of losing; and when the
phantom presence stood a warning obstacle between me and this one
treasure, this dearest hope, then my misery grew heavier than I
could bear. You must know what I am alluding to; you must have
heard often that I was engaged to be married?"
"Yes, often. I have some acquaintance myself with Miss Elmslie."
"You never can know all that she has sacrificed for me--never can
imagine what I have felt for years and years past"--his voice
trembled, and the tears came into his eyes--"but I dare not trust
myself to speak of that; the thought of the old happy days in the
Abbey almost breaks my heart now. Let me get back to the other
subject. I must tell you that I kept the frightful vision which
pursued me, at all times and in all places, a secret from
everybody, knowing the vile reports about my having inherited
madness from my family, and fearing that an unfair advantage
would be taken of any confession that I might make. Though the
phantom always stood opposite to me, and therefore always
appeared either before or by the side of any person to whom I
spoke, I soon schooled myself to hide from others that I was
looking at it except on rare occasions, when I have perhaps
betrayed myself to you. But my self-possession availed me nothing
with Ada. The day of our marriage was approaching."
He stopped and shuddered. I waited in silence till he had
controlled himself.
"Think," he went on, "think of what I must have suffered at
looking always on that hideous vision whenever I looked on my
betrothed wife! Think of my taking her hand, and seeming to take
it through the figure of the apparition! Think of the calm
angel-face and the tortured specter-face being always together
whenever my eyes met hers! Think of this, and you will not wonder
that I betrayed my secret to her. She eagerly entreated to know
the worst--nay, more, she insisted on knowing it. At her bidding
I told all, and then left her free to break our engagement. The
thought of death was in my heart as I spoke the parting
words--death by my own act, if life still held out after our
separation. She suspected that thought; she knew it, and never
left me till her good influence had destroyed it forever. But for
her I should not have been alive now; but for her I should never
have attempted the project which has brought me here."
"Do you mean that it was at Miss Elmslie's suggestion that you
came to Naples?" I asked, in amazement.
"I mean that what she said suggested the design which has brought
me to Naples," he answered. "While I believed that the phantom
had appeared to me as the fatal messenger of death, there was no
comfort--there was misery, rather, in hearing her say that no
power on earth should make her desert me, and that she would live
for me, and for me only, through every trial. But it was far
different when we afterward reasoned together about the purpose
which the apparition had come to fulfill--far different when she
showed me that its mission might be for good instead of for evil,
and that the warning it was sent to give might be to my profit
instead of to my loss. At those words, the new idea which gave
the new hope of life came to me in an instant. I believed then,
what I believe now, that I have a supernatural warrant for my
errand here. In that faith I live; without it I should die. _She_
never ridiculed it, never scorned it as insanity. Mark what I
say! The spirit that appeared to me in the Abbey--that has never
left me since--that stands there now by your side, warns me to
escape from the fatality which hangs over our race, and commands
me, if I would avoid it, to bury the unburied dead. Mortal loves
and mortal interests must bow to that awful bidding. The
specter-presence will never leave me till I have sheltered the
corpse that cries to the earth to cover it! I dare not return--I
dare not marry till I have filled the place that is empty in
Wincot vault."
His eyes flashed and dilated--his voice deepened--a fanatic
ecstasy shone in his expression as he uttered these words.
Shocked and grieved as I was, I made no attempt to remonstrate or
to reason with him. It would have been useless to have referred
to any of the usual commonplaces about optical delusions or
diseased imaginations--worse than useless to have attempted to
account by natural causes for any of the extraordinary
coincidences and events of which he had spoken. Briefly as he had
referred to Miss Elmslie, he had said enough to show me that the
only hope of the poor girl who loved him best and had known him
longest of any one was in humoring his delusions to the last. How
faithfully she still clung to the belief that she could restore
him! How resolutely was she sacrificing herself to his morbid
fancies, in the hope of a happy future that might never come!
Little as I knew of Miss Elmslie, the mere thought of her
situation, as I now reflected on it, made me feel sick at heart.
"They call me Mad Monkton!" he exclaimed, suddenly breaking the
silence between us during the last few minutes, "Here and in
England everybody believes I am out of my senses except Ada and
you. She has been my salvation, and you will be my salvation too.
Something told me that when I first met you walking in the Villa
Peale. I struggled against the strong desire that was in me to
trust my secret to you, but I could resist it no longer when I
saw you to-night at the ball; the phantom seemed to draw me on to
you as you stood alone in the quiet room. Tell me more of that
idea of yours about finding the place where the duel was fought.
If I set out to-morrow to seek for it myself, where must I go to
first? where?" He stopped; his strength was evidently becoming
exhausted, and his mind was growing confused. "What am I to do? I
can't remember. You know everything--will you not help me? My
misery has made me unable to help myself."
He stopped, murmured something about failing if he went to the
frontier alone, and spoke confusedly of delays that might be
fatal, then tried to utter the name of "Ada"; but, in pronouncing
the first letter, his voice faltered, and, turning abruptly from
me, he burst into tears.
My pity for him got the better of my prudence at that moment, and
without thinking of responsibilities, I promised at once to do
for him whatever he asked. The wild triumph in his expression as
he started up and seized my hand showed me that I had better have
been more cautious; but it was too late now to retract what I had
said. The next best thing to do was to try if I could not induce
him to compose himself a little, and then to go away and think
coolly over the whole affair by myself.
"Yes, yes," he rejoined, in answer to the few words I now spoke
to try and calm him, "don't be afraid about me. After what you
have said, I'll answer for my own coolness and composure under
all emergencies. I have been so long used to the apparition that
I hardly feel its presence at all except on rare occasions.
Besides, I have here in this little packet of letters the
medicine for every m alady of the sick heart. They are Ada's
letters; I read them to calm me whenever my misfortune seems to
get the better of my endurance. I wanted that half hour to read
them in to-night before you came, to make myself fit to see you,
and I shall go through them again after you are gone; so, once
more, don't be afraid about me. I know I shall succeed with your
help, and Ada shall thank you as you deserve to be thanked when
we get back to England. If you hear the fools at Naples talk
about my being mad, don't trouble yourself to contradict them;
the scandal is so contemptible that it must end by contradicting
itself."
I left him, promising to return early the next day.
When I got back to my hotel, I felt that any idea of sleeping
after all that I had seen and heard was out of the question; so I
lit my pipe, and, sitting by the window--how it refreshed my mind
just then to look at the calm moonlight!--tried to think what it
would be best to do. In the first place, any appeal to doctors or
to Alfred's friends in England was out of the question. I could
not persuade myself that his intellect was sufficiently
disordered to justify me, under existing circumstances, in
disclosing the secret which he had intrusted to my keeping. In
the second place, all attempts on my part to induce him to
abandon the idea of searching out his uncle's remains would be
utterly useless after what I had incautiously said to him. Having
settled these two conclusions, the only really great difficulty
which remained to perplex me was whether I was justified in
aiding him to execute his extraordinary purpose.
Supposing that, with my help, he found Mr. Monkton's body, and
took it back with him to England, was it right in me thus to lend
myself to promoting the marriage which would most likely follow
these events--a marriage which it might be the duty of every one
to prevent at all hazards? This set me thinking about the extent
of his madness, or to speak more mildly and more correctly, of
his delusion. Sane he certainly was on all ordinary subjects;
nay, in all the narrative parts of what he had said to me on this
very evening he had spoken clearly and connectedly. As for the
story of the apparition, other men, with intellects as clear as
the intellects of their neighbors had fancied themselves pursued
by a phantom, and had even written about it in a high strain of
philosophical speculation. It was plain that the real
hallucination in the case now before me lay in Monkton's
conviction of the truth of the old prophecy, and in his idea that
the fancied apparition was a supernatural warning to him to evade
its denunciations; and it was equally clear that both delusions
had been produced, in the first instance, by the lonely life he
had led acting on a naturally excitable temperament, which was
rendered further liable to moral disease by an hereditary taint
of insanity.
Was this curable? Miss Elmslie, who knew him far better than I
did, seemed by her conduct to think so. Had I any reason or right
to determine offhand that she was mistaken? Supposing I refused
to go to the frontier with him, he would then most certainly
depart by himself, to commit all sorts of errors, and perhaps to
meet with all sorts of accidents; while I, an idle man, with my
time entirely at my own disposal, was stopping at Naples, and
leaving him to his fate after I had suggested the plan of his
expedition, and had encouraged him to confide in me. In this way
I kept turning the subject over and over again in my mind, being
quite free, let me add, from looking at it in any other than a
practical point of view. I firmly believed, as a derider of all
ghost stories, that Alfred was deceiving himself in fancying that
he had seen the apparition of his uncle before the news of Mr.
Monkton's death reached England, and I was on this account,
therefore, uninfluenced by the slightest infection of my unhappy
friend's delusions when I at last fairly decided to accompany him
in his extraordinary search. Possibly my harum-scarum fondness
for excitement at that time biased me a little in forming my
resolution; but I must add, in common justice to myself, that I
also acted from motives of real sympathy for Monkton, and from a
sincere wish to allay, if I could, the anxiety of the poor girl
who was still so faithfully waiting and hoping for him far away
in England.
Certain arrangements preliminary to our departure, which I found
myself obliged to make after a second interview with Alfred,
betrayed the object of our journey to most of our Neapolitan
friends. The astonishment of everybody was of course unbounded,
and the nearly universal suspicion that I must be as mad in my
way as Monkton himself showed itself pretty plainly in my
presence. Some people actually tried to combat my resolution by
telling me what a shameless profligate Stephen Monkton had
been--as if I had a strong personal interest in hunting out his
remains! Ridicule moved me as little as any arguments of this
sort; my mind was made up, and I was as obstinate then as I am
now.
In two days' time I had got everything ready, and had ordered the
traveling carriage to the door some hours earlier than we had
originally settled. We were jovially threatened with "a parting
cheer" by all our English acquaintances, and I thought it
desirable to avoid this on my friend's account; for he had been
more excited, as it was, by the preparations for the journey than
I at all liked. Accordingly, soon after sunrise, without a soul
in the street to stare at us, we privately left Naples.
Nobody will wonder, I think, that I experienced some difficulty
in realizing my own position, and shrank instinctively from
looking forward a single day into the future, when I now found
myself starting, in company with "Mad Monkton," to hunt for the
body of a dead duelist all along the frontier line of the Roman
States!
CHAPTER V.
I HAD settled it in my own mind that we had better make the town
of Fondi, close on the frontier, our headquarters, to begin with,
and I had arranged, with the assistance of the embassy, that the
leaden coffin should follow us so far, securely nailed up in its
packing-case. Besides our passports, we were well furnished with
letters of introduction to the local authorities at most of the
important frontier towns, and, to crown all, we had money enough
at our command (thanks to Monkton's vast fortune) to make sure of
the services of any one whom we wanted to assist us all along our
line of search. These various resources insured us every facility
for action, provided always that we succeeded in discovering the
body of the dead duelist. But, in the very probable event of our
failing to do this, our future prospects--more especially after
the responsibility I had undertaken--were of anything but an
agreeable nature to contemplate. I confess I felt uneasy, almost
hopeless, as we posted, in the dazzling Italian sunshine, along
the road to Fondi.
We made an easy two days' journey of it; for I had insisted, on
Monkton's account, that we should travel slowly.
On the first day the excessive agitation of my companion a little
alarmed me; he showed, in many ways, more symptoms of a
disordered mind than I had yet observed in him. On the second
day, however, he seemed to get accustomed to contemplate calmly
the new idea of the search on which we were bent, and, except on
one point, he was cheerful and composed enough. Whenever his dead
uncle formed the subject of conversation, he still persisted--on
the strength of the old prophecy, and under the influence of the
apparition which he saw, or thought he saw always--in asserting
that the corpse of Stephen Monkton, wherever it was, lay yet
unburied. On every other topic he deferred to me with the utmost
readiness and docility; on this he maintained his strange opinion
with an obstinacy which set reason and persuasion alike at
defiance.
On the third day we rested at Fondi. The packing-case, with the
coffin in it, reached us, and was deposited in a safe place under
lock and key. We engaged some mules, and found a man to act as
guide who knew the country thoroughly. It occurred to me that we
had better begin by confiding th e real object of our journey
only to the most trustworthy people we could find among the
better-educated classes. For this reason we followed, in one
respect, the example of the fatal dueling-party, by starting,
early on the morning of the fourth day, with sketch-books and
color-boxes, as if we were only artists in search of the
picturesque.
After traveling some hours in a northerly direction within the
Roman frontier, we halted to rest ourselves and our mules at a
wild little village far out of the track of tourists in general.
The only person of the smallest importance in the place was the
priest, and to him I addressed my first inquiries, leaving
Monkton to await my return with the guide. I spoke Italian quite
fluently, and correctly enough for my purpose, and was extremely
polite and cautious in introducing my business, but in spite of
all the pains I took, I only succeeded in frightening and
bewildering the poor priest more and more with every fresh word I
said to him. The idea of a dueling-party and a dead man seemed to
scare him out of his senses. He bowed, fidgeted, cast his eyes up
to heaven, and piteously shrugging his shoulders, told me, with
rapid Italian circumlocution, that he had not the faintest idea
of what I was talking about. This was my first failure. I confess
I was weak enough to feel a little dispirited when I rejoined
Monkton and the guide.
After the heat of the day was over we resumed our journey.
About three miles from the village, the road, or rather
cart-track, branched off in two directions. The path to the
right, our guide informed us, led up among the mountains to a
convent about six miles off. If we penetrated beyond the convent
we should soon reach the Neapolitan frontier. The path to the
left led far inward on the Roman territory, and would conduct us
to a small town where we could sleep for the night. Now the Roman
territory presented the first and fittest field for our search,
and the convent was always within reach, supposing we returned to
Fondi unsuccessful. Besides, the path to the left led over the
widest part of the country we were starting to explore, and I was
always for vanquishing the greatest difficulty first; so we
decided manfully on turning to the left. The expedition in which
this resolution involved us lasted a whole week, and produced no
results. We discovered absolutely nothing, and returned to our
headquarters at Fondi so completely baffled that we did not know
whither to turn our steps next.
I was made much more uneasy by the effect of our failure on
Monkton than by the failure itself. His resolution appeared to
break down altogether as soon as we began to retrace our steps.
He became first fretful and capricious, then silent and
desponding. Finally, he sank into a lethargy of body and mind
that seriously alarmed me. On the morning after our return to
Fondi he showed a strange tendency to sleep incessantly, which
made me suspect the existence of some physical malady in his
brain. The whole day he hardly exchanged a word with me, and
seemed to be never fairly awake. Early the next morning I went
into his room, and found him as silent and lethargic as ever. His
servant, who was with us, informed me that Alfred had once or
twice before exhibited such physical symptoms of mental
exhaustion as we were now observing during his father's lifetime
at Wincot Abbey. This piece of information made me feel easier,
and left my mind free to return to the consideration of the
errand which had brought us to Fondi.
I resolved to occupy the time until my companion got better in
prosecuting our search by myself. That path to the right hand
which led to the convent had not yet been explored. If I set off
to trace it, I need not be away from Monkton more than one night,
and I should at least be able, on my return, to give him the
satisfaction of knowing that one more uncertainty regarding the
place of the duel had been cleared up. These considerations
decided me. I left a message for my friend in case he asked where
I had gone, and set out once more for the village at which we had
halted when starting on our first expedition.
Intending to walk to the convent, I parted company with the guide
and the mules where the track branched off, leaving them to go
back to the village and await my return.
For the first four miles the path gently ascended through an open
country, then became abruptly much steeper, and led me deeper and
deeper among thickets and endless woods. By the time my watch
informed me that I must have nearly walked my appointed distance,
the view was bounded on all sides and the sky was shut out
overhead by an impervious screen of leaves and branches. I still
followed my only guide, the steep path; and in ten minutes,
emerging suddenly on a plot of tolerably clear and level ground,
I saw the convent before me.
It was a dark, low, sinister-looking place. Not a sign of life or
movement was visible anywhere about it. Green stains streaked the
once white facade of the chapel in all directions. Moss clustered
thick in every crevice of the heavy scowling wall that surrounded
the convent. Long lank weeds grew out of the fissures of roof and
parapet, and, drooping far downward, waved wearily in and out of
the barred dormitory windows. The very cross opposite the
entrance-gate, with a shocking life-sized figure in wood nailed
to it, was so beset at the base with crawling creatures, and
looked so slimy, green, and rotten all the way up, that I
absolutely shrank from it.
A bell-rope with a broken handle hung by the gate. I approached
it--hesitated, I hardly knew why--looked up at the convent again,
and then walked round to the back of the building, partly to gain
time to consider what I had better do next, partly from an
unaccountable curiosity that urged me, strangely to myself, to
see all I could of the outside of the place before I attempted to
gain admission at the gate.
At the back of the convent I found an outhouse, built on to the
wall--a clumsy, decayed building, with the greater part of the
roof fallen in, and with a jagged hole in one of its sides, where
in all probability a window had once been. Behind the outhouse
the trees grew thicker than ever. As I looked toward them I could
not determine whether the ground beyond me rose or fell--whether
it was grassy, or earthy, or rocky. I could see nothing but the
all-pervading leaves, brambles, ferns, and long grass.
Not a sound broke the oppressive stillness. No bird's note rose
from the leafy wilderness around me; no voices spoke in the
convent garden behind the scowling wall; no clock struck in the
chapel-tower; no dog barked in the ruined outhouse. The dead
silence deepened the solitude of the place inexpressibly. I began
to feel it weighing on my spirits--the more, because woods were
never favorite places with me to walk in. The sort of pastoral
happiness which poets often represent when they sing of life in
the woods never, to my mind, has half the charm of life on the
mountain or in the plain. When I am in a wood, I miss the
boundless loveliness of the sky, and the delicious softness that
distance gives to the earthly view beneath. I feel oppressively
the change which the free air suffers when it gets imprisoned
among leaves, and I am always awed, rather than pleased, by that
mysterious still light which shines with such a strange dim
luster in deep places among trees. It may convict me of want of
taste and absence of due feeling for the marvelous beauties of
vegetation, but I must frankly own that I never penetrate far
into a wood without finding that the getting out of it again is
the pleasantest part of my walk--the getting out on to the barest
down, the wildest hill-side, the bleakest mountain top--the
getting out anywhere, so that I can see the sky over me and the
view before me as far as my eye can reach.
After such a confession as I have now made, it will appear
surprising to no one that I should have felt the strongest
possible inclination, while I stood by the ruined outhouse, to
retrace my steps at once, and make the best of my way out of the
wood. I had, indeed, actually turned to depart, when the
remembrance of the er rand which had brought me to the convent
suddenly stayed my feet. It seemed doubtful whether I should be
admitted into the building if I rang the bell; and more than
doubtful, if I were let in, whether the inhabitants would be able
to afford me any clew to the information of which I was in
search. However, it was my duty to Monkton to leave no means of
helping him in his desperate object untried; so I resolved to go
round to the front of the convent again, and ring at the
gate-bell at all hazards.
By the merest chance I looked up as I passed the side of the
outhouse where the jagged hole was, and noticed that it was
pierced rather high in the wall.
As I stopped to observe this, the closeness of the atmosphere in
the wood seemed to be affecting me more unpleasantly than ever.
I waited a minute and untied my cravat.
Closeness? surely it was something more than that. The air was
even more distasteful to my nostrils than to my lungs. There was
some faint, indescribable smell loading it--some smell of which I
had never had any previous experience--some smell which I thought
(now that my attention was directed to it) grew more and more
certainly traceable to its source the nearer I advanced to the
outhouse,
By the time I had tried the experiment two or three times, and
had made myself sure of this fact, my curiosity became excited.
There were plenty of fragments of stone and brick lying about me.
I gathered some of them together, and piled them up below the
hole, then mounted to the top, and, feeling rather ashamed of
what I was doing, peeped into the outhouse.
The sight of horror that met my eyes the instant I looked through
the hole is as present to my memory now as if I had beheld it
yesterday. I can hardly write of it at this distance of time
without a thrill of the old terror running through me again to
the heart.
The first impression conveyed to me, as I looked in, was of a
long, recumbent object, tinged with a lightish blue color all
over, extended on trestles, and bearing a certain hideous,
half-formed resemblance to the human face and figure. I looked
again, and felt certain of it. There were the prominences of the
forehead, nose, and chin, dimly shown as under a veil--there, the
round outline of the chest and the hollow below it--there, the
points of the knees, and the stiff, ghastly, upturned feet. I
looked again, yet more attentively. My eyes got accustomed to the
dim light streaming in through the broken roof, and I satisfied
myself, judging by the great length of the body from head to
foot, that I was looking at the corpse of a man--a corpse that
had apparently once had a sheet spread over it, and that had lain
rotting on the trestles under the open sky long enough for the
linen to take the livid, light-blue tinge of mildew and decay
which now covered it.
How long I remained with my eyes fixed on that dread sight of
death, on that tombless, terrible wreck of humanity, poisoning
the still air, and seeming even to stain the faint descending
light that disclosed it, I know not. I remember a dull, distant
sound among the trees, as if the breeze were rising--the slow
creeping on of the sound to near the place where I stood--the
noiseless whirling fall of a dead leaf on the corpse below me,
through the gap in the outhouse roof--and the effect of awakening
my energies, of relaxing the heavy strain on my mind, which even
the slight change wrought in the scene I beheld by the falling
leaf produced in me immediately. I descended to the ground, and,
sitting down on the heap of stones, wiped away the thick
perspiration which covered my face, and which I now became aware
of for the first time. It was something more than the hideous
spectacle unexpectedly offered to my eyes which had shaken my
nerves as I felt that they were shaken now. Monkton's prediction
that, if we succeeded in discovering his uncle's body, we should
find it unburied, recurred to me the instant I saw the trestles
and their ghastly burden. I felt assured on the instant that I
had found the dead man--the old prophecy recurred to my memory--a
strange yearning sorrow, a vague foreboding of ill, an
inexplicable terror, as I thought of the poor lad who was
awaiting my return in the distant town, struck through me with a
chill of superstitious dread, robbed me of my judgment and
resolution, and left me when I had at last recovered myself, weak
and dizzy, as if I had just suffered under some pang of
overpowering physical pain.
I hastened round to the convent gate and rang impatiently at the
bell--waited a little while and rang again--then heard footsteps.
In the middle of the gate, just opposite my face, there was a
small sliding panel, not more than a few inches long; this was
presently pushed aside from within. I saw, through a bit of iron
grating, two dull, light gray eyes staring vacantly at me, and
heard a feeble husky voice saying:
"What may you please to want?'
"I am a traveler--" I began.
"We live in a miserable place. We have nothing to show travelers
here."
"I don't come to see anything. I have an important question to
ask, which I believe some one in this convent will be able to
answer. If you are not willing to let me in, at least come out
and speak to me here."
"Are you alone?"
"Quite alone."
"Are there no women with you?"
"None."
The gate was slowly unbarred, and an old Capuchin, very infirm,
very suspicious, and very dirty, stood before me. I was far too
excited and impatient to waste any time in prefatory phrases; so,
telling the monk at once how I had looked through the hole in the
outhouse, and what I had seen inside, I asked him, in plain
terms, who the man had been whose corpse I had beheld, and why
the body was left unburied?
The old Capuchin listened to me with watery eyes that twinkled
suspiciously. He had a battered tin snuff-box in his hand, and
his finger and thumb slowly chased a few scattered grains of
snuff round and round the inside of the box all the time I was
speaking. When I had done, he shook his head and said: "That was
certainly an ugly sight in their outhouse; one of the ugliest
sights, he felt sure, that ever I had seen in all my life!"
"I don't want to talk of the sight," I rejoined, impatiently; "I
want to know who the man was, how he died, and why he is not
decently buried. Can you tell me?"
The monk's finger and thumb having captured three or four grains
of snuff at last, he slowly drew them into his nostrils, holding
the box open under his nose the while, to prevent the possibility
of wasting even one grain, sniffed once or twice
luxuriously--closed the box--then looked at me again with his
eyes watering and twinkling more suspiciously than before.
"Yes," said the monk, "that's an ugly sight in our outhouse--a
very ugly sight, certainly!"
I never had more difficulty in keeping my temper in my life than
at that moment. I succeeded, however, in repressing a very
disrespectful expression on the subject of monks in general,
which was on the tip of my tongue, and made another attempt to
conquer the old man's exasperating reserve. Fortunately for my
chances of succeeding with him, I was a snuff-taker myself, and I
had a box full of excellent English snuff in my pocket, which I
now produced as a bribe. It was my last resource.
"I thought your box seemed empty just now," said I; "will you try
a pinch out of mine?"
The offer was accepted with an almost youthful alacrity of
gesture. The Capuchin took the largest pinch I ever saw held
between any man's finger and thumb--inhaled it slowly without
spilling a single grain--half closed his eyes--and, wagging his
head gently, patted me paternally on the back.
"Oh, my son," said the monk, "what delectable snuff! Oh, my son
and amiable traveler, give the spiritual father who loves you yet
another tiny, tiny pinch!"
"Let me fill your box for you. I shall have plenty left for
myself."
The battered tin snuff-box was given to me before I had done
speaking; the paternal hand patted my back more approvingly than
ever; the feeble, husky voice grew glib and eloquent in my
praise. I had evidently found out the weak side of the old
Capuchin, and, on returning him his box, I took instan t
advantage of the discovery.
"Excuse my troubling you on the subject again," I said, "but I
have particular reasons for wanting to hear all that you can tell
me in explanation of that horrible sight in the outhouse."
"Come in," answered the monk.
He drew me inside the gate, closed it, and then leading the way
across a grass-grown courtyard, looking out on a weedy
kitchen-garden, showed me into a long room with a low ceiling, a
dirty dresser, a few rudely-carved stall seats, and one or two
grim, mildewed pictures for ornaments. This was the sacristy.
"There's nobody here, and it's nice and cool," said the old
Capuchin. It was so damp that I actually shivered. "Would you
like to see the church?" said the monk; "a jewel of a church, if
we could keep it in repair; but we can't. Ah! malediction and
misery, we are too poor to keep our church in repair!"
Here he shook his head and began fumbling with a large bunch of
keys.
"Never mind the church now," said I. "Can you, or can you not,
tell me what I want to know?"
"Everything, from beginning to end--absolutely everything. Why, I
answered the gate-bell--I always answer the gate-bell here," said
the Capuchin.
"What, in Heaven's name, has the gate-bell to do with the
unburied corpse in your house?"
"Listen, son of mine, and you shall know. Some time ago--some
months--ah! me, I'm old; I've lost my memory; I don't know how
many months--ah! miserable me, what a very old, old monk I am!"
Here he comforted himself with another pinch of snuff.
"Never mind the exact time," said I. "I don't care about that."
"Good," said the Capuchin. "Now I can go on. Well, let us say it
is some months ago--we in this convent are all at
breakfast--wretched, wretched breakfasts, son of mine, in this
convent!--we are at breakfast, and we hear _bang! bang!_ twice
over. 'Guns,' says I. 'What are they shooting for?' says Brother
Jeremy. 'Game,' says Brother Vincent. 'Aha! game,' says Brother
Jeremy. 'If I hear more, I shall send out and discover what it
means,' says the father superior. We hear no more, and we go on
with our wretched breakfasts."
"Where did the report of firearms come from?" I inquired.
"From down below--beyond the big trees at the back of the
convent, where there's some clear ground--nice ground, if it
wasn't for the pools and puddles. But, ah! misery, how damp we
are in these parts! how very, very damp!"
"Well, what happened after the report of firearms?"
"You shall hear. We are still at breakfast, all silent--for what
have we to talk about here? What have we but our devotions, our
kitchen-garden, and our wretched, wretched bits of breakfasts and
dinners? I say we are all silent, when there comes suddenly such
a ring at the bell as never was heard before--a very devil of a
ring--a ring that caught us all with our bits--our wretched,
wretched bits!--in our mouths, and stopped us before we could
swallow them. 'Go, brother of mine,' says the father superior to
me, 'go; it is your duty--go to the gate.' I am brave--a very
lion of a Capuchin. I slip out on tiptoe--I wait--I listen--I
pull back our little shutter in the gate--I wait, I listen
again--I peep through the hole--nothing, absolutely nothing that
I can see. I am brave--I am not to be daunted. What do I do next?
I open the gate. Ah! sacred Mother of Heaven, what do I behold
lying all along our threshold? A man--dead!--a big man; bigger
than you, bigger than me, bigger than anybody in this
convent--buttoned up tight in a fine coat, with black eyes,
staring, staring up at the sky, and blood soaking through and
through the front of his shirt. What do I do? I scream once--I
scream twice--and run back to the father superior!"
All the particulars of the fatal duel which I had gleaned from
the French newspaper in Monkton's room at Naples recurred vividly
to my memory. The suspicion that I had felt when
I looked into the outhouse became a certainty as I listened to
the old monk's last words.
"So far I understand," said I. "The corpse I have just seen in
the outhouse is the corpse of the man whom you found dead outside
your gate. Now tell me why you have not given the remains decent
burial."
"Wait--wait--wait," answered the Capuchin. "The father superior
hears me scream and comes out; we all run together to the gate;
we lift up the big man and look at him close. Dead! dead as this
(smacking the dresser with his hand). We look again, and see a
bit of paper pinned to the collar of his coat. Aha! son of mine,
you start at that. I thought I should make you start at last."
I had started, indeed. That paper was doubtless the leaf
mentioned in the second's unfinished narrative as having been
torn out of his pocketbook, and inscribed with the statement of
how the dead man had lost his life. If proof positive were wanted
to identify the dead body, here was such proof found.
"What do you think was written on the bit of paper?" continued
the Capuchin "We read and shudder. This dead man has been killed
in a duel--he, the desperate, the miserable, has died in the
commission of mortal sin; and the men who saw the killing of him
ask us Capuchins, holy men, servants of Heaven, children of our
lord the Pope--they ask _us_ to give him burial! Oh! but we are
outraged when we read that; we groan, we wring our hands, we turn
away, we tear our beards, we--"
"Wait one moment," said I, seeing that the old man was heating
himself with his narrative, and was likely, unless I stopped him,
to talk more and more fluently to less and less purpose--"wait a
moment. Have you preserved the paper that was pinned to the dead
man's coat; and can I look at it?"
The Capuchin seemed on the point of giving me an answer, when he
suddenly checked himself. I saw his eyes wander away from my
face, and at the same moment heard a door softly opened and
closed again behind me.
Looking round immediately, I observed another monk in the
sacristy--a tall, lean, black-bearded man, in whose presence my
old friend with the snuff-box suddenly became quite decorous and
devotional to look at. I suspected I was in the presence of the
father superior, and I found that I was right the moment he
addressed me.
"I am the father superior of this convent," he said, in quiet,
clear tones, and looking me straight in the face while he spoke,
with coldly attentive eyes. "I have heard the latter part of your
conversation, and I wish to know why you are so particularly
anxious to see the piece of paper that was pinned to the dead
man's coat?"
The coolness with which he avowed that he had been listening, and
the quietly imperative manner in which he put his concluding
question, perplexed and startled me. I hardly knew at first what
tone I ought to take in answering him. He observed my hesitation,
and attributing it to the wrong cause, signed to the old Capuchin
to retire. Humbly stroking his long gray beard, and furtively
consoling himself with a private pinch of the "delectable snuff,"
my venerable friend shuffled out of the room, making a profound
obeisance at the door just before he disappeared.
"Now," said the father superior, as coldly as ever, "I am
waiting, sir, for your reply."
"You shall have it in the fewest possible words," said I,
answering him in his own tone. "I find, to my disgust and horror,
that there is an unburied corpse in an outhouse attached to your
convent. I believe that corpse to be the body of an English
gentleman of rank and fortune, who was killed in a duel. I have
come into this neighborhood with the nephew and only relation of
the slain man, for the express purpose of recovering his remains;
and I wish to see the paper found on the body, because I believe
that paper will identify it to the satisfaction of the relative
to whom I have referred. Do you find my reply sufficiently
straightforward? And do you mean to give me permission to look at
the paper?"
"I am satisfied with your reply, and see no reason for refusing
you a sight of the paper," said the father superior; "but I have
something to say first. In speaking of the impression produced on
you by beholding the corpse, you used the words 'disgust' and
'horror.' This license of expression in relation to what you have
seen in the precincts of a convent proves to me that you are out
of the pale of the Holy Catholic Church. You have no right,
therefore, to expect any explanation; but I will give you one,
nevertheless, as a favor. The slain man died, unabsolved, in the
commission of mortal sin. We infer so much from the paper which
we found on his body; and we know, by the evidence of our own
eyes and ears, that he was killed on the territories of the
Church, and in the act of committing direct violation of those
special laws against the crime of dueling, the strict enforcement
of which the holy father himself has urged on the faithful
throughout his dominions by letters signed with his own hand.
Inside this convent the ground is consecrated, and we Catholics
are not accustomed to bury the outlaws of our religion, the
enemies of our holy father, and the violators of our most sacred
laws in consecrated ground. Outside this convent we have no
rights and no power; and, if we had both, we should remember that
we are monks, not grave-diggers, and that the only burial with
which _we_ can have any concern is burial with the prayers of the
Church. That is all the explanation I think it necessary to give.
Wait for me here, and you shall see the paper." With those words
the father superior left the room as quietly as he had entered
it.
I had hardly time to think over this bitter and ungracious
explanation, and to feel a little piqued by the language and
manner of the person who had given it to me, before the father
superior returned with the paper in his hand. He placed it before
me on the dresser, and I read, hurriedly traced in pencil, the
following lines:
"This paper is attached to the body of the late Mr. Stephen
Monkton, an Englishman of distinction. He has been shot in a
duel, conducted with perfect gallantry and honor on both sides.
His body is placed at the door of this convent, to receive burial
at the hands of its inmates, the survivors of the encounter being
obliged to separate and secure their safety by immediate flight.
I, the second of the slain man, and the writer of this
explanation, certify, on my word of honor as a gentleman that the
shot which killed my principal on the instant was fired fairly,
in the strictest accordance with the rules laid down beforehand
for the conduct of the duel.
"(Signed), F."
"F." I recognized easily enough as the initial letter of
Monsieur Foulon's name, the second of Mr. Monkton, who had died
of consumption at Paris.
The discovery and the identification were now complete. Nothing
remained but to break the news to Alfred, and to get permission
to remove the remains in the outhouse. I began almost to doubt
the evidence of my own senses when I reflected that the
apparently impracticable object with which we had left Naples was
already, by the merest chance, virtually accomplished.
"The evidence of the paper is decisive," said I, handing it back.
"There can be no doubt that the remains in the outhouse are the
remains of which we have been in search. May I inquire if any
obstacles will be thrown in our way should the late Mr. Monkton's
nephew wish to remove his uncle's body to the family burial-place
in England?"
"Where is this nephew?" asked the father superior.
"He is now awaiting my return at the town of Fondi."
"Is he in a position to prove his relationship?"
"Certainly; he has papers with him which will place it beyond a
doubt."
"Let him satisfy the civil authorities of his claim, and he need
expect no obstacle to his wishes from any one here."
I was in no humor for talking a moment longer with my
sour-tempered companion than I could help. The day was wearing on
me fast; and, whether night overtook me or not, I was resolved
never to stop on my return till I got back to Fondi. Accordingly,
after telling the father superior that he might expect to hear
from me again immediately, I made my bow and hastened out of the
sacristy.
At the convent gate stood my old friend with the tin snuff-box,
waiting to let me out.
"Bless you, may son," said the venerable recluse, giving me a
farewell pat on the shoulder, "come back soon to your spiritual
father who loves you, and amiably favor him with another tiny,
tiny pinch of the delectable snuff."
CHAPTER VI.
I RETURNED at the top of my speed to the village where I had left
the mules, had the animals saddled immediately, and succeeded in
getting back to Fondi a little before sunset.
While ascending the stairs of our hotel, I suffered under the
most painful uncertainty as to how I should best communicate the
news of my discovery to Alfred. If I could not succeed in
preparing him properly for my tidings, the results, with such an
organization as his, might be fatal. On opening the door of his
room, I felt by no means sure of myself; and when I confronted
him, his manner of receiving me took me so much by surprise that,
for a moment or two, I lost my self-possession altogether.
Every trace of the lethargy in which he was sunk when I had last
seen him had disappeared. His eyes were bright, his cheeks deeply
flushed. As I entered, he started up, and refused my offered
hand.
"You have not treated me like a friend," he said, passionately;
"you had no right to continue the search unless I searched with
you--you had no right to leave me here alone. I was wrong to
trust you; you are no better than all the rest of them."
I had by this time recovered a little from my first astonishment,
and was able to reply before he could say anything more. It was
quite useless, in his present state, to reason with him or to
defend myself. I determined to risk everything, and break my news
to him at once.
"You will treat me more justly, Monkton, when you know that I
have been doing you good service during my absence," I said.
"Unless I am greatly mistaken, the object for which we have left
Naples may be nearer attainment by both of us than--"
The flush left his cheeks almost in an instant. Some expression
in my face, or some tone in my voice, of which I was not
conscious, had revealed to his nervously-quickened perception
more than I had intended that he should know at first. His eyes
fixed themselves intently on mine; his hand grasped my arm; and
he said to me in an eager whisper:
"Tell me the truth at once. Have you found him?"
It was too late to hesitate. I answered in the affirmative.
"Buried or unburied?"
His voice rose abruptly as he put the question, and his
unoccupied hand fastened on my other arm.
"Unburied."
I had hardly uttered the word before the blood flew back into his
cheeks; his eyes flashed again as they looked into mine, and he
burst into a fit of triumphant laughter, which shocked and
startled me inexpressibly.
"What did I tell you? What do you say to the old prophecy now?"
he cried, dropping his hold on my arms, and pacing backward and
forward in the room. "Own you were wrong. Own it, as all Naples
shall own it, when once I have got him safe in his coffin!"
His laughter grew more and mere violent. I tried to quiet him in
vain. His servant and the landlord of the inn entered the room,
but they only added fuel to the fire, and I made them go out
again. As I shut the door on them, I observed lying on a table
near at hand the packet of letters from Miss Elmslie, which my
unhappy friend preserved with such care, and read and re-read
with such unfailing devotion. Looking toward me just when I
passed by the table, the letters caught his eye. The new hope for
the future, in connection with the writer of them, which my news
was already awakening in his heart, seemed to overwhelm him in an
instant at sight of the treasured memorials that reminded him of
his betrothed wife. His laughter ceased, his face changed, he ran
to the table, caught the letters up in his hand, looked from them
to me for one moment with an altered expression which went to my
heart, then sank down on his knees at the table, laid his face on
the letters, and burst into tears. I let the new emotion have its
way uninterruptedly, and quitted the room without saying a word.
When I returned after a lapse of some little time, I found him
sitting quietly in his chair, reading one of the letters from the
pack et which rested on his knee.
His look was kindness itself; his gesture almost womanly in its
gentleness as he rose to meet me, and anxiously held out his
hand.
He was quite calm enough now to hear in detail all that I had to
tell him. I suppressed nothing but the particulars of the state
in which I had found the corpse. I assumed no right of direction
as to the share he was to take in our future proceedings, with
the exception of insisting beforehand that he should leave the
absolute superintendence of the removal of the body to me, and
that he should be satisfied with a sight of M. Foulon's paper,
after receiving my assurance that the remains placed in the
coffin were really and truly the remains of which we had been in
search.
"Your nerves are not so strong as mine," I said, by way of
apology for my apparent dictation, "and for that reason I must
beg leave to assume the leadership in all that we have now to do,
until I see the leaden coffin soldered down and safe in your
possession. After that I shall resign all my functions to you."
"I want words to thank you for your kindness," he answered. "No
brother could have borne with me more affectionately, or helped
me more patiently than you."
He stopped and grew thoughtful, then occupied himself in tying up
slowly and carefully the packet of Miss Elmslie's letters, and
then looked suddenly toward the vacant wall behind me with that
strange expression the meaning of which I knew so well. Since we
had left Naples I had purposely avoided exciting him by talking
on the useless and shocking subject of the apparition by which he
believed himself to be perpetually followed. Just now, however,
he seemed so calm and collected--so little likely to be violently
agitated by any allusion to the dangerous topic, that I ventured
to speak out boldly.
"Does the phantom still appear to you," I asked, "as it appeared
at Naples?"
He looked at me and smiled.
"Did I not tell you that it followed me everywhere?" His eyes
wandered back again to the vacant space, and he went on speaking
in that direction as if he had been continuing the conversation
with some third person in the room. "We shall part," he said,
slowly and softly, when the empty place is filled in Wincot
vault. Then I shall stand with Ada before the altar in the Abbey
chapel, and when my eyes meet hers they will see the tortured
face no more."
Saying this, he leaned his head on his hand, sighed, and began
repeating softly to himself the lines of the old prophecy:
When in Wincot vault a place Waits for one of Monkton's race--
When that one forlorn shall lie Graveless under open sky,
Beggared of six feet of earth, Though lord of acres from his
birth-- That shall he a certain sign Of the end of Monktons line.
Dwindling ever faster, faster, Dwindling to the last-left master;
From mortal ken, from light of day, Monkton's race shall pass
away."
Fancying that he pronounced the last lines a little incoherently,
I tried to make him change the subject. He took no notice of what
I said, and went on talking to himself.
"Monkton's race shall pass away," he repeated, "but not with
_me_. The fatality hangs over _my_ head no longer. I shall bury
the unburied dead; I shall fill the vacant place in Wincot vault;
and then--then the new life, the life with Ada!" That name seemed
to recall him to himself. He drew his traveling desk toward him,
placed the packet of letters in it, and then took out a sheet of
paper. "I am going to write to Ada," he said, turning to me, "and
tell her the good news. Her happiness, when she knows it, will be
even greater than mine."
Worn out by the events of the day, I left him writing and went to
bed. I was, however, either too anxious or too tired to sleep. In
this waking condition, my mind naturally occupied itself with the
discovery at the convent and with the events to which that
discovery would in all probability lead. As I thought on the
future, a depression for which I could not account weighed on my
spirits. There was not the slightest reason for the vaguely
melancholy forebodings that oppressed me. The remains, to the
finding of which my unhappy friend attached so much importance,
had been traced; they would certainly be placed at his disposal
in a few days; he might take them to England by the first
merchant vessel that sailed from Naples; and, the gratification
of his strange caprice thus accomplished, there was at least some
reason to hope that his mind might recover its tone, and that the
new life he would lead at Wincot might result in making him a
happy man. Such considerations as these were, in themselves,
certainly not calculated to exert any melancholy influence over
me; and yet, all through the night, the same inconceivable,
unaccountable depression weighed heavily on my spirits--heavily
through the hours of darkness--heavily, even when I walked out to
breathe the first freshness of the early morning air.
With the day came the all-engrossing business of opening
negotiations with the authorities.
Only those who have had to deal with Italian officials can
imagine how our patience was tried by every one with whom we came
in contact. We were bandied about from one authority to the
other, were stared at, cross-questioned, mystified--not in the
least because the case presented any special difficulties or
intricacies, but because it was absolutely necessary that every
civil dignitary to whom we applied should assert his own
importance by leading us to our object in the most roundabout
manner possible. After our first day's experience of official
life in Italy, I left the absurd formalities, which we had no
choice but to perform, to be accomplished by Alfred alone, and
applied myself to the really serious question of how the remains
in the convent outhouse were to be safely removed.
The best plan that suggested itself to me was to write to a
friend in Rome, where I knew that it was a custom to embalm the
bodies of high dignitaries of the Church, and where, I
consequently inferred, such chemical assistance as was needed in
our emergency might be obtained. I simply stated in my letter
that the removal of the body was imperative, then described the
condition in which I had found it, and engaged that no expense on
our part should be spared if the right person or persons could be
found to help us. Here, again, more difficulties interposed
themselves, and more useless formalities were to be gone through,
but in the end patience, perseverance, and money triumphed, and
two men came expressly from Rome to undertake the duties we
required of them.
It is unnecessary that I should shock the reader by entering into
any detail in this part of my narrative. When I have said that
the progress of decay was so far suspended by chemical means as
to allow of the remains being placed in the coffin, and to insure
their being transported to England with perfect safety and
convenience, I have said enough. After ten days had been wasted
in useless delays and difficulties, I had the satisfaction of
seeing the convent outhouse empty at last; passed through a final
ceremony of snuff-taking, or rather, of snuff-giving, with the
old Capuchin, and ordered the traveling carriages to be ready at
the inn door. Hardly a month had elapsed since our departure ere
we entered Naples successful in the achievement of a design which
had been ridiculed as wildly impracticable by every friend of
ours who had heard of it.
The first object to be accomplished on our return was to obtain
the means of carrying the coffin to England--by sea, as a matter
of course. All inquiries after a merchant vessel on the point of
sailing for any British port led to the most unsatisfactory
results. There was only one way of insuring the immediate
transportation of the remains to England, and that was to hire a
vessel. Impatient to return, and resolved not to lose sight of
the coffin till he had seen it placed in Wincot vault, Monkton
decided immediately on hiring the first ship that could be
obtained. The vessel in port which we were informed could soonest
be got ready for sea was a Sicilian brig, and this vessel my
friend accordingly engaged. The best dock-yard artisans tha t
could be got were set to work, and the smartest captain and crew
to be picked up on an emergency in Naples were chosen to navigate
the brig.
Monkton, after again expressing in the warmest terms his
gratitude for the services I had rendered him, disclaimed any
intention of asking me to accompany him on the voyage to England.
Greatly to his surprise and delight, however, I offered of my own
accord to take passage in the brig. The strange coincidences I
had witnessed, the extraordinary discovery I had hit on since our
first meeting in Naples, had made his one great interest in life
my one great interest for the time being as well. I shared none
of his delusions, poor fellow; but it is hardly an exaggeration
to say that my eagerness to follow our remarkable adventure to
its end was as great as his anxiety to see the coffin laid in
Wincot vault. Curiosity influenced me, I am afraid, almost as
strongly as friendship, when I offered myself as the companion of
his voyage home.
We set sail for England on a calm and lovely afternoon.
For the first time since I had known him, Monkton seemed to be in
high spirits. He talked and jested on all sorts of subjects, and
laughed at me for allowing my cheerfulness to be affected by the
dread of seasickness. I had really no such fear; it was my excuse
to my friend for a return of that unaccountable depression under
which I had suffered at Fondi. Everything was in our favor;
everybody on board the brig was in good spirits. The captain was
delighted with the vessel; the crew, Italians and Maltese, were
in high glee at the prospect of making a short voyage on high
wages in a well-provisioned ship. I alone felt heavy at heart.
There was no valid reason that I could assign to myself for the
melancholy that oppressed me, and yet I struggled against it in
vain.
Late on our first night at sea, I made a discovery which was by
no means calculated to restore my spirits to their usual
equilibrium. Monkton was in the cabin, on the floor of which had
been placed the packing-case containing the coffin, and I was on
deck. The wind had fallen almost to a calm, and I was lazily
watching the sails of the brig as they flapped from time to time
against the masts, when the captain approached, and, drawing me
out of hearing of the man at the helm, whispered in my ear:
"There's something wrong among the men forward. Did you observe
how suddenly they all became silent just before sunset?"
I had observed it, and told him so.
"There's a Maltese boy on board," pursued the captain, "who is a
smart enough lad, but a bad one to deal with. I have found out
that he has been telling the men there is a dead body inside that
packing-case of your friend's in the cabin."
My heart sank as he spoke. Knowing the superstitious
irrationality of sailors--of foreign sailors especially--I had
taken care to spread a report on board the brig, before the
coffin was shipped, that the packing-case contained a valuable
marble statue which Mr. Monkton prized highly, and was unwilling
to trust out of his own sight. How could this Maltese boy have
discovered that the pretended statue was a human corpse? As I
pondered over the question, my suspicions fixed themselves on
Monkton's servant, who spoke Italian fluently, and whom I knew to
be an incorrigible gossip. The man denied it when I charged him
with betraying us, but I have never believed his denial to this
day.
"The little imp won't say where he picked up this notion of his
about the dead body," continued the captain. "It's not my place
to pry into secrets; but I advise you to call the crew aft, and
contradict the boy, whether he speaks the truth or not. The men
are a parcel of fools who believe in ghosts, and all the rest of
it. Some of them say they would never have signed our articles if
they had known they were going to sail with a dead man; others
only grumble; but I'm afraid we shall have some trouble with them
all, in case of rough weather, unless the boy is contradicted by
you or the other gentleman. The men say that if either you or
your friend tell them on your words of honor that the Maltese is
a liar, they will hand him up to be rope's-ended accordingly; but
that if you won't, they have made up their minds to believe the
boy."
Here the captain paused and awaited my answer. I could give him
none. I felt hopeless under our desperate emergency. To get the
boy punished by giving my word of honor to support a direct
falsehood was not to be thought of even for a moment. What other
means of extrication from this miserable dilemma remained? None
that I could think of. I thanked the captain for his attention to
our interests, told him I would take time to consider what course
I should pursue, and begged that he would say nothing to my
friend about the discovery he had made. He promised to be silent,
sulkily enough, and walked away from me.
We had expected the breeze to spring up with the morning, but no
breeze came. As it wore on toward noon the atmosphere became
insufferably sultry, and the sea looked as smooth as glass. I saw
the captain's eye turn often and anxiously to windward. Far away
in that direction, and alone in the blue heaven, I observed a
little black cloud, and asked if it would bring us any wind.
"More than we want," the captain replied, shortly; and then, to
my astonishment, ordered the crew aloft to take in sail. The
execution of this maneuver showed but too plainly the temper of
the men; they did their work sulkily and slowly, grumbling and
murmuring among themselves. The captain's manner, as he urged
them on with oaths and threats, convinced me we were in danger. I
looked again to windward. The one little cloud had enlarged to a
great bank of murky vapor, and the sea at the horizon had changed
in color.
"The squall will be on us before we know where we are," said the
captain. "Go below; you will be only in the way here."
I descended to the cabin, and prepared Monkton for what was
coming. He was still questioning me about what I had observed on
deck when the storm burst on us. We felt the little brig strain
for an instant as if she would part in two, then she seemed to be
swinging round with us, then to be quite still for a moment,
trembling in every timber. Last came a shock which hurled us from
our seats, a deafening crash, and a flood of water pouring into
the cabin. We clambered, half drowned, to the deck. The brig had,
in the nautical phrase, "broached to," and she now lay on her
beam-ends.
Before I could make out anything distinctly in the horrible
confusion except the one tremendous certainty that we were
entirely at the mercy of the sea, I heard a voice from the fore
part of the ship which stilled the clamoring and shouting of the
rest of the crew in an instant. The words were in Italian, but I
understood their fatal meaning only too easily. We had sprung a
leak, and the sea was pouring into the ship's hold like the race
of a mill-stream. The captain did not lose his presence of mind
in this fresh emergency. He called for his ax to cut away the
foremast, and, ordering some of the crew to help him, directed
the others to rig out the pumps.
The words had hardly passed his lips before the men broke into
open mutiny. With a savage look at me, their ringleader declared
that the passengers might do as they pleased, but that he and his
messmates were determined to take to the boat, and leave the
accursed ship, and _the dead man in her,_ to go to the bottom
together. As he spoke there was a shout among the sailors, and I
observed some of them pointing derisively behind me. Looking
round, I saw Monkton, who had hitherto kept close at my side,
making his way back to the cabin. I followed him directly, but
the water and confusion on deck, and the impossibility, from the
position of the brig, of moving the feet without the slow
assistance of the hands, so impeded my progress that it was
impossible for me to overtake him. When I had got below he was
crouched upon the coffin, with the water on the cabin floor
whirling and splashing about him as the ship heaved and plunged.
I saw a warning brightness in his eyes, a warning flush on his
cheek, as I approached and said to him:
"There is nothing left for it, Alfred, but to bow to our
misfortune, and do the best we can to save our lives."
"Save yours," he cried, waving his hand to me, "for _you_ have a
future before you. Mine is gone when this coffin goes to the
bottom. If the ship sinks, I shall know that the fatality is
accomplished, and shall sink with her."
I saw that he was in no state to be reasoned with or persuaded,
and raised myself again to the deck. The men were cutting away
all obstacles so as to launch the longboat placed amidships over
the depressed bulwark of the brig as she lay on her side, and the
captain, after having made a last vain exertion to restore his
authority, was looking on at them in silence. The violence of the
squall seemed already to be spending itself, and I asked whether
there was really no chance for us if we remained by the ship. The
captain answered that there might have been the best chance if
the men had obeyed his orders, but that now there was none.
Knowing that I could place no dependence on the presence of mind
of Monkton's servant, I confided to the captain, in the fewest
and plainest words, the condition of my unhappy friend, and asked
if I might depend on his help. He nodded his head, and we
descended together to the cabin. Even at this day it costs me
pain to write of the terrible necessity to which the strength and
obstinacy of Monkton's delusion reduced us in the last resort. We
were compelled to secure his hands, and drag him by main force to
the deck. The men were on the point of launching the boat, and
refused at first to receive us into it.
"You cowards!" cried the captain, "have we got the dead man with
us this time? Isn't he going to the bottom along with the brig?
Who are you afraid of when we get into the boat?"
This sort of appeal produced the desired effect; the men became
ashamed of themselves, and retracted their refusal.
Just as we pushed off from the sinking ship Alfred made an effort
to break from me, but I held him firm, and he never repeated the
attempt. He sat by me with drooping head, still and silent, while
the sailors rowed away from the vessel; still and silent when,
with one accord, they paused at a little distance off, and we all
waited and watched to see the brig sink; still and silent, even
when that sinking happened, when the laboring hull plunged slowly
into a hollow of the sea--hesitated, as it seemed, for one
moment, rose a little again, then sank to rise no more.
Sank with her dead freight--sank, and snatched forever from our
power the corpse which we had discovered almost by a
miracle--those jealously-preserved remains, on the safe-keeping
of which rested so strangely the hopes and the love-destinies of
two living beings! As the last signs of the ship in the depths of
the waters,
I felt Monkton trembling all over as he sat close at my side, and
heard him repeating to himself, sadly, and many times over, the
name of "Ada."
I tried to turn his thoughts to another subject, but it was
useless. He pointed over the sea to where the brig had once been,
and where nothing was left to look at but the rolling waves.
"The empty place will now remain empty forever in Wincot vault."
As he said these words, he fixed his eyes for a moment sadly and
earnestly on my face, then looked away, leaned his cheek on his
hand, and spoke no more.
We were sighted long before nightfall by a trading vessel, were
taken on board, and landed at Cartagena in Spain. Alfred never
held up his head, and never once spoke to me of his own accord
the whole time we were at sea in the merchantman. I observed,
however, with alarm, that he talked often and incoherently to
himself--constantly muttering the lines of the old
prophecy--constantly referring to the fatal place that was empty
in Wincot vault--constantly repeating in broken accents, which it
affected me inexpressibly to hear, the name of the poor girl who
was awaiting his return to England. Nor were these the only
causes for the apprehension that I now felt on his account.
Toward the end of our voyage he began to suffer from alternations
of fever-fits and shivering-fits, which I ignorantly imagined to
be attacks of ague. I was soon undeceived. We had hardly been a
day on shore before he became so much worse that I secured the
best medical assistance Cartagena could afford. For a day or two
the doctors differed, as usual, about the nature of his
complaint, but ere long alarming symptoms displayed themselves.
The medical men declared that his life was in danger, and told me
that his disease was brain fever.
Shocked and grieved as I was, I hardly knew how to act at first
under the fresh responsibility now laid upon me. Ultimately I
decided on writing to the old priest who had been Alfred's tutor,
and who, as I knew, still resided at Wincot Abbey. I told this
gentleman all that had happened, begged him to break my
melancholy news as gently as possible to Miss Elmslie, and
assured him of my resolution to remain with Monkton to the last.
After I had dispatched my letter, and had sent to Gibraltar to
secure the best English medical advice that could be obtained, I
felt that I had done my best, and that nothing remained but to
wait and hope.
Many a sad and anxious hour did I pass by my poor friend's
bedside. Many a time did I doubt whether I had done right in
giving any encouragement to his delusion. The reasons for doing
so which had suggested themselves to me after my first interview
with him seemed, however, on reflection, to be valid reasons
still. The only way of hastening his return to England and to
Miss Elmslie, who was pining for that return, was the way I had
taken. It was not my fault that a disaster which no man could
foresee had overthrown all his projects and all mine. But, now
that the calamity had happened and was irretrievable, how, in the
event of his physical recovery, was his moral malady to be
combated?
When I reflected on the hereditary taint in his mental
organization, on that first childish fright of Stephen Monkton
from which he had never recovered, on the perilously-secluded
life that he had led at the Abbey, and on his firm persuasion of
the reality of the apparition by which he believed himself to be
constantly followed, I confess I despaired of shaking his
superstitious faith in every word and line of the old family
prophecy. If the series of striking coincidences which appeared
to attest its truth had made a strong and lasting impression on
_me_ (and this was assuredly the case), how could I wonder that
they had produced the effect of absolute conviction on _his_
mind, constituted as it was? If I argued with him, and he
answered me, how could I rejoin? If he said, "The prophecy points
at the last of the family: _I_ am the last of the family. The
prophecy mentions an empty place in Wincot vault; there is such
an empty place there at this moment. On the faith of the prophecy
I told you that Stephen Monkton's body was unburied, and you
found that it was unburied"--if he said this, what use would it
be for me to reply, "These are only strange coincidences after
all?"
The more I thought of the task that lay before me, if he
recovered, the more I felt inclined to despond. The oftener the
English physician who attended on him said to me, "He may get the
better of the fever, but he has a fixed idea, which never leaves
him night or day, which has unsettled his reason, and which will
end in killing him, unless you or some of his friends can remove
it"--the oftener I heard this, the more acutely I felt my own
powerlessness, the more I shrank from every idea that was
connected with the hopeless future.
I had only expected to receive my answer from Wincot in the shape
of a letter. It was consequently a great surprise, as well as a
great relief, to be informed one day that two gentlemen wished to
speak with me, and to find that of these two gentlemen the first
was the old priest, and the second a male relative of Mrs.
Elmslie.
Just before their arrival the fever symptoms had disappeared, and
Alfred had been pronounced out of danger. Both the priest and his
companion were eager to know when the sufferer would be strong
enough to travel. The y had come to Cartagena expressly to take
him home with them, and felt far more hopeful than I did of the
restorative effects of his native air. After all the questions
connected with the first important point of the journey to
England had been asked and answered, I ventured to make some
inquiries after Miss Elmslie. Her relative informed me that she
was suffering both in body and in mind from excess of anxiety on
Alfred's account. They had been obliged to deceive her as to the
dangerous nature of his illness in order to deter her from
accompanying the priest and her relation on their mission to
Spain.
Slowly and imperfectly, as the weeks wore on, Alfred regained
something of his former physical strength, but no alteration
appeared in his illness as it affected his mind.
From the very first day of his advance toward recovery, it had
been discovered that the brain fever had exercised the strangest
influence over his faculties of memory. All recollection of
recent events was gone from him. Everything connected with
Naples, with me, with his journey to Italy, had dropped in some
mysterious manner entirely out of his remembrance. So completely
had all late circumstances passed from his memory that, though he
recognized the old priest and his own servant easily on the first
days of his convalescence, he never recognized me, but regarded
me with such a wistful, doubting expression, that I felt
inexpressibly pained when I approached his bedside. All his
questions were about Miss Elmslie and Wincot Abbey, and all his
talk referred to the period when his father was yet alive.
The doctors augured good rather than ill from this loss of memory
of recent incidents, saying that it would turn out to be
temporary, and that it answered the first great healing purpose
of keeping his mind at ease. I tried to believe them--tried to
feel as sanguine, when the day came for his departure, as the old
friends felt who were taking him home. But the effort was too
much for me. A foreboding that I should never see him again
oppressed my heart, and the tears came into my eyes as I saw the
worn figure of my poor friend half helped, half lifted into the
traveling-carriage, and borne away gently on the road toward
home.
He had never recognized me, and the doctors had begged that I
would give him, for some time to come, as few opportunities as
possible of doing so. But for this request I should have
accompanied him to England. As it was, nothing better remained
for me to do than to change the scene, and recruit as I best
could my energies of body and mind, depressed of late by much
watching and anxiety. The famous cities of Spain were not new to
me, but I visited them again and revived old impressions of the
Alhambra and Madrid. Once or twice I thought of making a
pilgrimage to the East, but late events had sobered and altered
me. That yearning, unsatisfied feeling which we call
"homesickness" began to prey upon my heart, and I resolved to
return to England.
I went back by way of Paris, having settled with the priest that
he should write to me at my banker's there as soon as he could
after Alfred had returned to Wincot. If I had gone to the East,
the letter would have been forwarded to me. I wrote to prevent
this; and, on my arrival at Paris, stopped at the banker's before
I went to my hotel.
The moment the letter was put into my hands, the black border on
the envelope told me the worst. He was dead.
There was but one consolation--he had died calmly, almost
happily, without once referring to those fatal chances which had
wrought the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy. "My beloved
pupil," the old priest wrote, "seemed to rally a little the first
few days after his return, but he gained no real strength, and
soon suffered a slight relapse of fever. After this he sank
gradually and gently day by day, and so departed from us on the
last dread journey. Miss Elmslie (who knows that I am writing
this) desires me to express her deep and lasting gratitude for
all your kindness to Alfred. She told me when we brought him back
that she had waited for him as his promised wife, and that she
would nurse him now as a wife should; and she never left him. his
face was turned toward her, his hand was clasped in hers when he
died. It will console you to know that he never mentioned events
at Naples, or the shipwreck that followed them, from the day of
his return to the day of his death."
Three days after reading the letter I was at Wincot, and heard
all the details of Alfred's last moments from the priest. I felt
a shock which it would not be very easy for me to analyze or
explain when I heard that he had been buried, at his own desire,
in the fatal Abbey vault.
The priest took me down to see the place--a grim, cold,
subterranean building, with a low roof, supported on heavy Saxon
arches. Narrow niches, with the ends only of coffins visible
within them, ran down each side of the vault. The nails and
silver ornaments flashed here and there as my companion moved
past them with a lamp in his hand. At the lower end of the place
he stopped, pointed to a niche, and said, "He lies there, between
his father and mother." I looked a little further on, and saw
what appeared at first like a long dark tunnel. "That is only an
empty niche," said the priest, following me. "If the body of Mr.
Stephen Monkton had been brought to Wincot, his coffin would have
been placed there."
A chill came over me, and a sense of dread which I am ashamed of
having felt now, but which I could not combat then. The blessed
light of day was pouring down gayly at the other end of the vault
through the open door. I turned my back on the empty niche, and
hurried into the sunlight and the fresh air.
As I walked across the grass glade leading down to the vault, I
heard the rustle of a woman's dress behind me, and turning round,
saw a young lady advancing, clad in deep mourning. Her sweet, sad
face, her manner as she held out her hand, told me who it was in
an instant.
"I heard that you were here," she said, "and I wished--" Her
voice faltered a little. My heart ached as I saw how her lip
trembled, but before I could say anything she recovered herself
and went on: "I wished to take your hand, and thank you for your
brotherly kindness to Alfred; and I wanted to tell you that I am
sure in all you did you acted tenderly and considerately for the
best. Perhaps you may be soon going away from home again, and we
may not meet any more. I shall never, never forget that you were
kind to him when he wanted a friend, and that you have the
greatest claim of any one on earth to be gratefully remembered in
my thoughts as long as I live."
The inexpressible tenderness of her voice, trembling a little all
the while she spoke, the pale beauty of her face, the artless
candor in her sad, quiet eyes, so affected me that I could not
trust myself to answer her at first except by gesture. Before I
recovered my voice she had given me her hand once more and had
left me.
I never saw her again. The chances and changes of life kept us
apart. When I last heard of her, years and years ago, she was
faithful to the memory of the dead, and was Ada Elmslie still for
Alfred Monkton's sake.
THE FIFTH DAY.
STILL cloudy, but no rain to keep our young lady indoors. The
paper, as usual, without interest to _me_.
To-day Owen actually vanquished his difficulties and finished his
story. I numbered it Eight, and threw the corresponding number
(as I had done the day before in Morgan's case) into the china
bowl.
Although I could discover no direct evidence against her, I
strongly suspected The Queen of Hearts of tampering with the lots
on the fifth evening, to irritate Morgan by making it his turn to
read again, after the shortest possible interval of repose.
However that might be, the number drawn was certainly Seven, and
the story to be read was consequently the story which my brother
had finished only two days before.
If I had not known that it was part of Morgan's character always
to do exactly the reverse of what might be expected from him, I
should have been surprised at the extraordinary docility he
exhibited the moment his manuscript was placed i n his hands.
"My turn again?" he said. "How very satisfactory! I was anxious
to escape from this absurd position of mine as soon as possible,
and here is the opportunity most considerately put into my hands.
Look out, all of you! I won't waste another moment. I mean to
begin instantly."
"Do tell me," interposed Jessie, mischievously, "shall I be very
much interested to-night'?'
"Not you!" retorted Morgan. "You will be very much frightened
instead. You hair is uncommonly smooth at the present moment, but
it will be all standing on end before I've done. Don't blame me,
miss, if you are an object when you go to bed to-night!"
With this curious introductory speech he began to read. I was
obliged to interrupt him to say the few words of explanation
which the story needed.
"Before my brother begins," I said, "it may be as well to mention
that he is himself the doctor who is supposed to relate this
narrative. The events happened at a time of his life when he had
left London, and had established himself in medical practice in
one of our large northern towns."
With that brief explanation, I apologized for interrupting the
reader, and Morgan began once more.
BROTHER MORGAN'S STORY
of
THE DEAD HAND
WHEN this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many
years than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur
Holliday, happened to arrive in the town of Doncaster exactly in
the middle of the race-week, or, in other words, in the middle of
the month of September.
He was one of those reckless, rattle-pated, open-hearted, and
open-mouthed young gentlemen who possess the gift of familiarity
in its highest perfection, and who scramble carelessly along the
journey of life, making friends, as the phrase is, wherever they
go. His father was a rich manufacturer, and had bought landed
property enough in one of the midland counties to make all the
born squires in his neighborhood thoroughly envious of him.
Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect of the great
estate and the great business after his father's death; well
supplied with money, and not too rigidly looked after during his
father's lifetime. Report, or scandal, whichever you please, said
that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youthful days,
and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed to be
violently indignant when he found that his son took after him.
This may be true or not. I myself only knew the elder Mr.
Holliday when he was getting on in years, and then he was as
quiet and as respectable a gentleman as ever I met with.
Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to
Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in his hare-brained
way, that he would go to the races. He did not reach the town
till toward the close of evening, and he went at once to see
about his dinner and bed at the principal hotel. Dinner they were
ready enough to give him, but as for a bed, they laughed when he
mentioned it. In the race-week at Doncaster it is no uncommon
thing for visitors who have not bespoken apartments to pass the
night in their carriages at the inn doors. As for the lower sort
of strangers, I myself have often seen them, at that full time,
sleeping out on the doorsteps for want of a covered place to
creep under. Rich as he was, Arthur's chance of getting a night's
lodging (seeing that he had not written beforehand to secure one)
was more than doubtful. He tried the second hotel, and the third
hotel, and two of the inferior inns after that, and was met
everywhere with the same form of answer. No accommodation for the
night of any sort was left. All the bright golden sovereigns in
his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the race-week.
To a young fellow of Arthur's temperament, the novelty of being
turned away into the street like a penniless vagabond, at every
house where he asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light
of a new and highly amusing piece of experience. He went on with
his carpet-bag in his hand, applying for a bed at every place of
entertainment for travelers that he could find in Doncaster,
until he wandered into the outskirts of the town.
By this time the last glimmer of twilight had faded out, the moon
was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting cold, the clouds
were gathering heavily, and there was every prospect that it was
soon going to rain!
The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young
Holliday's spirits. He began to contemplate the houseless
situation in which he was placed from the serious rather than the
humorous point of view, and he looked about him for another
public house to inquire at with something very like downright
anxiety in his mind on the subject of a lodging for the night.
The suburban part of the town toward which he had now strayed was
hardly lighted at all, and he could see nothing of the houses as
he passed them, except that they got progressively smaller and
dirtier the further he went. Down the winding road before him
shone the dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one faint lonely light
that struggled ineffectually with the foggy darkness all round
him. He resolved to go on as far as this lamp, and then, if it
showed him nothing in the shape of an inn, to return to the
central part of the town, and to try if he could not at least
secure a chair to sit down on through the night at one of the
principal hotels.
As he got near the lamp he heard voices, and, walking close under
it, found that it lighted the entrance to a narrow court, on the
wall of which was painted a long hand in faded flesh-color,
pointing, with a lean forefinger, to this inscription:
THE TWO ROBINS.
Arthur turned into the court without hesitation to see what The
Two Robins could do for him. Four or five men were standing
together round the door of the house, which was at the bottom of
the court, facing the entrance from the street. The men were all
listening to one other man, better dressed than the rest, who was
telling his audience something, in a low voice, in which they
were apparently very much interested.
On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a stranger with a
knapsack in his hand, who was evidently leaving the house.
"No," said the traveler with the knapsack, turning round and
addressing himself cheerfully to a fat, sly-looking, bald-headed
man, with a dirty white apron on, who had followed him down the
passage, "no, Mr. Landlord, I am not easily scared by trifles;
but I don't mind confessing that I can't quite stand _that_."
It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard these words,
that the stranger had been asked an exorbitant price for a bed at
The Two Robins, and that he was unable or unwilling to pay it.
The moment his back was turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of
his own well-filled pockets, addressed himself in a great hurry,
for fear any other benighted traveler should slip in and
forestall him, to the sly-looking landlord with the dirty apron
and the bald head.
"If you have got a bed to let," he said, "and if that gentleman
who has just gone out won't pay your price for it, I will."
The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur. "Will you, sir?" he
asked, in a meditative, doubtful way.
"Name your price," said young Holliday, thinking that the
landlord's hesitation sprang from some boorish distrust of him.
"Name your price, and I'll give you the money at once, if you
like."
"Are you game for five shillings?" inquired the landlord, rubbing
his stubby double chin and looking up thoughtfully at the ceiling
above him.
Arthur nearly laughed in the man's face; but, thinking it prudent
to control himself, offered the five shillings as seriously as he
could. The sly landlord held out his hand, then suddenly drew it
back again.
"You're acting all fair and aboveboard by me," he said, "and,
before I take your money, I'll do the same by you. Look here;
this is how it stands. You can have a bed all to yourself for
five shillings, but you can't have more than a half share of the
room it stands in. Do you see what I mean, young gentleman?"
"Of course I do," returned Arthur, a little irritably. "You mean
that it is a double-bedded room, and that one of the beds is
occupied?"
The land lord nodded his head, and rubbed his double chin harder
than ever. Arthur hesitated, and mechanically moved back a step
or two toward the door. The idea of sleeping in the same room
with a total stranger did not present an attractive prospect to
him. He felt more than half inclined to drop his five shillings
into his pocket and to go out into the street once more.
"Is it yes or no?" asked the landlord. "Settle it as quick as you
can, because there's lots of people wanting a bed at Doncaster
to-night besides you."
Arthur looked toward the court and heard the rain falling heavily
in the street outside. He thought he would ask a question or two
before he rashly decided on leaving the shelter of The Two
Robins.
"What sort of man is it who has got the other bed?" he inquired.
"Is he a gentleman? I mean, is he a quiet, well-behaved person?"
"The quietest man I ever came across," said the landlord, rubbing
his fat hands stealthily one over the other. "As sober as a
judge, and as regular as clock-work in his habits. It hasn't
struck nine, not ten minutes ago, and he's in his bed already. I
don't know whether that comes up to your notion of a quiet man:
it goes a long way ahead of mine, I can tell you."
"Is he asleep, do you think?" asked Arthur.
"I know he's asleep," returned the landlord; "and, what's more,
he's gone off so fast that I'll warrant you don't wake him. This
way, sir," said the landlord, speaking over young Holliday's
shoulder, as if he was addressing some new guest who was
approaching the house.
"Here you are," said Arthur, determined to be beforehand with the
stranger, whoever he might be. "I'll take the bed." And he handed
the five shillings to the landlord, who nodded, dropped the money
carelessly into his waistcoat pocket, and lighted a candle.
"Come up and see the room," said the host of The Two Robins,
leading the way to the staircase quite briskly, considering how
fat he was.
They mounted to the second floor of the house. The landlord half
opened a door fronting the landing, then stopped, and turned
round to Arthur.
"It's a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on yours," he
said. "You give me five shillings, and I give you in return a
clean, comfortable bed; and I warrant, beforehand, that you won't
be interfered with, or annoyed in anyway, by the man who sleeps
in the same room with you." Saying those words, he looked hard,
for a moment, in young Holliday's face, and then led the way into
the room.
It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it would be.
The two beds stood parallel with each other, a space of about six
feet intervening between them. They were both of the same medium
size, and both had the same plain white curtains, made to draw,
if necessary, all round them.
The occupied bed was the bed nearest the window. The curtains
were all drawn round it except the half curtain at the bottom, on
the side of the bed furthest from the window. Arthur saw the feet
of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp
little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back. He took the
candle, and advanced softly to draw the curtain--stopped half
way, and listened for a moment--then turned to the landlord.
"He is a very quiet sleeper," said Arthur. "Yes," said the
landlord, "very quiet." Young Holliday advanced with the candle,
and looked in at the man cautiously.
"How pale he is," said Arthur.
"Yes," returned the landlord, "pale enough, isn't he?"
Arthur looked closer at the man. The bedclothes were drawn up to
his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the region of his
chest. Surprised and vaguely startled as he noticed this, Arthur
stooped down closer over the stranger, looked at his ashy, parted
lips, listened breathlessly for an instant, looked again at the
strangely still face, and the motionless lips and chest, and
turned round suddenly on the landlord with his own cheeks as pale
for the moment as the hollow cheeks of the man on the bed.
"Come here," he whispered, under his breath. "Come here, for
God's sake! The man's not asleep--he is dead."
"You have found that out sooner than I thought you would," said
the landlord, composedly. "Yes, he's dead, sure enough. He died
at five o'clock to-day."
"How did he die? Who is he?" asked Arthur, staggered for the
moment by the audacious coolness of the answer.
"As to who is he," rejoined the landlord, "I know no more about
him than you do. There are his books, and letters, and things all
sealed up in that brown paper parcel for the coroner's inquest to
open to-morrow or next day. He's been here a week, paying his way
fairly enough, and stopping indoors, for the most part, as if he
was ailing. My girl brought him up his tea at five to-day, and as
he was pouring of it out, he fell down in a faint, or a fit, or a
compound of both, for anything I know. We couldn't bring him to,
and I said he was dead. And, the doctor couldn't bring him to,
and the doctor said he was dead. And there he is. And the
coroner's inquest's coming as soon as it can. And that's as much
as I know about it."
Arthur held the candle close to the man's lips. The flame still
burned straight up as steadily as ever. There was a moment of
silence, and the rain pattered drearily through it against the
panes of the window.
"If you haven't got nothing more to say to me," continued the
landlord, "I suppose I may go. You don't expect your five
shillings back, do you? There's the bed I promised you, clean and
comfortable. There's the man I warranted not to disturb you,
quiet in this world forever. If you're frightened to stop alone
with him, that's not my lookout. I've kept my part of the
bargain, and I mean to keep the money. I'm not Yorkshire myself,
young gentleman, but I've lived long enough in these parts to
have my wits sharpened, and I shouldn't wonder if you found out
the way to brighten up yours next time you come among us."
With these words the landlord turned toward the door, and laughed
to himself softly, in high satisfaction at his own sharpness.
Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this time
sufficiently recovered himself to feel indignant at the trick
that had been played on him, and at the insolent manner in which
the landlord exulted in it.
"Don't laugh," he said sharply, "till you are quite sure you have
got the laugh against me. You shan't have the five shillings for
nothing, my man. I'll keep the bed."
"Will you?" said the landlord. "Then I wish you a good night's
rest." With that brief farewell he went out and shut the door
after him.
A good night's rest! The words had hardly been spoken, the door
had hardly been closed, before Arthur half repented the hasty
words that had just escaped him. Though not naturally
over-sensitive, and not wanting in courage of the moral as well
as the physical sort, the presence of the dead man had an
instantaneously chilling effect on his mind when he found himself
alone in the room--alone, and bound by his own rash words to stay
there till the next morning. An older man would have thought
nothing of those words, and would have acted, without reference
to them, as his calmer sense suggested. But Arthur was too young
to treat the ridicule even of his inferiors with contempt--too
young not to fear the momentary humiliation of falsifying his own
foolish boast more than he feared the trial of watching out the
long night in the same chamber with the dead.
"It is but a few hours," he thought to himself, "and I can get
away the first thing in the morning."
He was looking toward the occupied bed as that idea passed
through his mind, and the sharp, angular eminence made in the
clothes by the dead man's upturned feet again caught his eye. He
advanced and drew the curtains, purposely abstaining, as he did
so, from looking at the face of the corpse, lest he might unnerve
himself at the outset by fastening some ghastly impression of it
on his mind. He drew the curtain very gently, and sighed
involuntarily as he closed it.
"Poor fellow," he said, almost as sadly as if he had known the
man. "Ah! poor fellow!"
He went next to the window. The night was black, and he could see
nothing from it. The rain still pattered heavily agai nst the
glass. He inferred, from hearing it, that the window was at the
back of the house, remembering that the front was sheltered from
the weather by the court and the buildings over it.
While he was still standing at the window--for even the dreary
rain was a relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also,
because it moved, and had some faint suggestion, in consequence,
of life and companionship in it--while he was standing at the
window, and looking vacantly into the black darkness outside, he
heard a distant church clock strike ten. Only ten! How was he to
pass the time till the house was astir the next morning?
Under any other circumstances he would have gone down to the
public-house parlor, would have called for his grog, and would
have laughed and talked with the company assembled as familiarly
as if he had known them all his life. But the very thought of
whiling away the time in this manner was now distasteful to him.
The new situation in which he was placed seemed to have altered
him to himself already. Thus far his life had been the common,
trifling, prosaic, surface-life of a prosperous young man, with
no troubles to conquer and no trials to face. He had lost no
relation whom he loved, no friend whom he treasured. Till this
night, what share he had of the immortal inheritance that is
divided among us all had lain dormant within him. Till this
night, Death and he had not once met, even in thought.
He took a few turns up and down the room, then stopped. The noise
made by his boots on the poorly-carpeted floor jarred on his ear.
He hesitated a little, and ended by taking the boots off, and
walking backward and forward noiselessly.
All desire to sleep or to rest had left him. The bare thought of
lying down on the unoccupied bed instantly drew the picture on
his mind of a dreadful mimicry of the position of the dead man.
Who was he? What was the story of his past life? Poor he must
have been, or he would not have stopped at such a place as the
Two Robins Inn; and weakened, probably, by long illness, or he
could hardly have died in the manner which the landlord had
described. Poor, ill, lonely--dead in a strange place--dead, with
nobody but a stranger to pity him. A sad story; truly, on the
mere face of it, a very sad story.
While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he had
stopped insensibly at the window, close to which stood the foot
of the bed with the closed curtains. At first he looked at it
absently; then he became conscious that his eyes were fixed on
it; and then a perverse desire took possession of him to do the
very thing which he had resolved not to do up to this time--to
look at the dead man.
He stretched out his hand toward the curtains, but checked
himself in the very act of undrawing them, turned his back
sharply on the bed, and walked toward the chimney-piece, to see
what things were placed on it, and to try if he could keep the
dead man out of his mind in that way.
There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, with some
mildewed remains of ink in the bottle. There were two coarse
china ornaments of the commonest kind; and there was a square of
embossed card, dirty and fly-blown, with a collection of wretched
riddles printed on it, in all sorts of zigzag directions, and in
variously colored inks. He took the card and went away to read it
at the table on which the candle was placed, sitting down with
his back resolutely turned to the curtained bed.
He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one
corner of the card, then turned it round impatiently to look at
another. Before he could begin reading the riddles printed here
the sound of the church clock stopped him.
Eleven.
He had got through an hour of the time in the room with the dead
man.
Once more he looked at the card. It was not easy to make out the
letters printed on it in consequence of the dimness of the light
which the landlord had left him--a common tallow candle,
furnished with a pair of heavy old-fashioned steel snuffers. Up
to this time his mind had been too much occupied to think of the
light. He had left the wick of the candle unsnuffed till it had
risen higher than the flame, and had burned into an odd
pent-house shape at the top, from which morsels of the charred
cotton fell off from time to time in little flakes. He took up
the snuffers now and trimmed the wick. The light brightened
directly, and the room became less dismal.
Again he turned to the riddles, reading them doggedly and
resolutely, now in one corner of the card, now in another. All
his efforts, however, could not fix his attention on them. He
pursued his occupation mechanically, deriving no sort of
impression from what he was reading. It was as if a shadow from
the curtained bed had got between his mind and the gayly printed
letters--a shadow that nothing could dispel. At last he gave up
the struggle, threw the card from him impatiently, and took to
walking softly up and down the room again.
The dead man, the dead man, the _hidden_ dead man on the bed!
There was the one persistent idea still haunting him. Hidden! Was
it only the body being there, or was it the body being there
_concealed,_ that was preying on his mind? He stopped at the
window with that doubt in him, once more listening to the
pattering rain, once more looking out into the black darkness.
Still the dead man!
The darkness forced his mind back upon itself, and set his memory
at work, reviving with a painfully vivid distinctness the
momentary impression it had received from his first sight of the
corpse. Before long the face seemed to be hovering out in the
middle of the darkness, confronting him through the window, with
the paleness whiter--with the dreadful dull line of light between
the imperfectly-closed eyelids broader than he had seen it--with
the parted lips slowly dropping further and further away from
each other--with the features growing larger and moving closer,
till they seemed to fill the window, and to silence the rain, and
to shut out the night.
The sound of a voice shouting below stairs woke him suddenly from
the dream of his own distempered fancy. He recognized it as the
voice of the landlord.
"Shut up at twelve, Ben," he heard it say. "I'm off to bed."
He wiped away the damp that had gathered on his forehead,
reasoned with himself for a little while, and resolved to shake
his mind free of the ghastly counterfeit which still clung to it
by forcing himself to confront, if it was only for a moment, the
solemn reality. Without allowing himself an instant to hesitate,
he parted the curtains at the foot of the bed, and looked
through.
There was the sad, peaceful, white face, with the awful mystery
of stillness on it, laid back upon the pillow. No stir, no change
there! He only looked at it for a moment before he closed the
curtains again, but that moment steadied him, calmed him,
restored him--mind and body--to himself. He returned to his old
occupation of walking up and down the room, persevering in it
this time till the clock struck again.
Twelve.
As the sound of the clock-bell died away, it was succeeded by the
confused noise downstairs of the drinkers in the taproom leaving
the house. The next sound, after an interval of silence, was
caused by the barring of the door and the closing of the shutters
at the back of the inn. Then the silence followed again, and was
disturbed no more.
He was alone now--absolutely, hopelessly alone with the dead man
till the next morning.
The wick of the candle wanted trimming again. He took up the
snuffers, but paused suddenly on the very point of using them,
and looked attentively at the candle--then back, over his
shoulder, at the curtained bed--then again at the candle. It had
been lighted for the first time to show him the way upstairs, and
three parts of it, at least, were already consumed. In another
hour it would be burned out. In another hour, unless he called at
once to the man who had shut up the inn for a fresh candle, he
would be left in the dark.
Strongly as his mind had been affected since he had entered the
room, his unreasonable dread of encountering ridicule and of
exposing his courage to suspicion had not
altogether lost its influence over him even yet.
He lingered irresolutely by the table, waiting till he could
prevail on himself to open the door, and call from the landing,
to the man who had shut up the inn. In his present hesitating
frame of mind, it was a kind of relief to gain a few moments only
by engaging in the trifling occupation of snuffing the candle.
His hand trembled a little, and the snuffers were heavy and
awkward to use. When he closed them on the wick, he closed them a
hair-breadth too low. In an instant the candle was out, and the
room was plunged in pitch darkness.
The one impression which the absence of light immediately
produced on his mind was distrust of the curtained bed--distrust
which shaped itself into no distinct idea, but which was powerful
enough, in its very vagueness, to bind him down to his chair, to
make his heart beat fast, and to set him listening intently. No
sound stirred in the room, but the familiar sound of the rain
against the window, louder and sharper now than he had heard it
yet.
Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed him,
and kept him in his chair. He had put his carpet-bag on the table
when he first entered the room, and he now took the key from his
pocket, reached out his hand softly, opened the bag, and groped
in it for his traveling writing-case, in which he knew that there
was a small store of matches. When he had got one of the matches
he waited before he struck it on the coarse wooden table, and
listened intently again without knowing why. Still there was no
sound in the room but the steady, ceaseless rattling sound of the
rain.
He lighted the candle again without another moment of delay, and,
on the instant of its burning up, the first object in the room
that his eyes sought for was the curtained bed.
Just before the light had been put out he had looked in that
direction, and had seen no change, no disarrangement of any sort
in the folds of the closely-drawn curtains.
When he looked at the bed now, he saw hanging over the side of it
a long white hand.
It lay perfectly motionless midway on the side of the bed, where
the curtain at the head and the curtain at the foot met. Nothing
more was visible. The clinging curtains hid everything but the
long white hand.
He stood looking at it, unable to stir, unable to call
out--feeling nothing, knowing nothing--every faculty he possessed
gathered up and lost in the one seeing faculty. How long that
first panic held him he never could tell afterward. It might have
been only for a moment--it might have been for many minutes
together. How he got to the bed--whether he ran to it headlong,
or whether he approached it slowly; how he wrought himself up to
unclose the curtains and look in, he never has remembered, and
never will remember to his dying day. It is enough that he did go
to the bed, and that he did look inside the curtains.
The man had moved. One of his arms was outside the clothes; his
face was turned a little on the pillow; his eyelids were wide
open. Changed as to position and as to one of the features, the
face was otherwise fearfully and wonderfully unaltered. The dead
paleness and the dead quiet were on it still.
One glance showed Arthur this--one glance before he flew
breathlessly to the door and alarmed the house.
The man whom the landlord called "Ben" was the first to appear on
the stairs. In three words Arthur told him what had happened, and
sent him for the nearest doctor.
I, who tell you this story, was then staying with a medical
friend of mine, in practice at Doncaster, taking care of his
patients for him during his absence in London; and I, for the
time being, was the nearest doctor. They had sent for me from the
inn when the stranger was taken ill in the afternoon, but I was
not at home, and medical assistance was sought for elsewhere.
When the man from The Two Robins rang the night-bell, I was just
thinking of going to bed. Naturally enough, I did not believe a
word of his story about "a dead man who had come to life again."
However, I put on my hat, armed myself with one or two bottles of
restorative medicine, and ran to the inn, expecting to find
nothing more remarkable, when I got there, than a patient in a
fit.
My surprise at finding that the man had spoken the literal truth
was almost, if not quite, equaled by my astonishment at finding
myself face to face with Arthur Holliday as soon as I entered the
bedroom. It was no time then for giving or seeking explanations.
We just shook hands amazedly, and then I ordered everybody but
Arthur out of the room, and hurried to the man on the bed.
The kitchen fire had not been long out. There was plenty of hot
water in the boiler, and plenty of flannel to be had. With these,
with my medicines, and with such help as Arthur could render
under my direction, I dragged the man literally out of the jaws
of death. In less than an hour from the time when I had been
called in, he was alive and talking in the bed on which he had
been laid out to wait for the coroner's inquest.
You will naturally ask me what had been the matter with him, and
I might treat you, in reply, to a long theory, plentifully
sprinkled with what the children call hard words. I prefer
telling you that, in this case, cause and effect could not be
satisfactorily joined together by any theory whatever. There are
mysteries in life and the conditions of it which human science
has not fathomed yet; and I candidly confess to you that, in
bringing that man back to existence, I was, morally speaking,
groping haphazard in the dark. I know (from the testimony of the
doctor who attended him in the afternoon) that the vital
machinery, so far as its action is appreciable by our senses,
had, in this case, unquestionably stopped, and I am equally
certain (seeing that I recovered him) that the vital principle
was not extinct. When I add that he had suffered from a long and
complicated illness, and that his whole nervous system was
utterly deranged, I have told you all I really know of the
physical condition of my dead-alive patient at the Two Robins
Inn.
When he "came to," as the phrase goes, he was a startling object
to look at, with his colorless face, his sunken cheeks, his wild
black eyes, and his long black hair. The first question he asked
me about himself when he could speak made me suspect that I had
been called in to a man in my own profession. I mentioned to him
my surmise, and he told me that I was right.
He said he had come last from Paris, where he had been attached
to a hospital; that he had lately returned to England, on his way
to Edinburgh, to continue his studies; that he had been taken ill
on the journey; and that he had stopped to rest and recover
himself at Doncaster. He did not add a word about his name, or
who he was, and of course I did not question him on the subject.
All I inquired when he ceased speaking was what branch of the
profession he intended to follow.
"Any branch," he said, bitterly, "which will put bread into the
mouth of a poor man."
At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him in silent
curiosity, burst out impetuously in his usual good-humored way:
"My dear fellow" (everybody was "my dear fellow" with Arthur),
"now you have come to life again, don't begin by being
down-hearted about your prospects. I'll answer for it I can help
you to some capital thing in the medical line, or, if I can't, I
know my father can."
The medical student looked at him steadily.
"Thank you," he said, coldly; then added, "May I ask who your
father is?"
"He's well enough known all about this part of the country,"
replied Arthur. "He is a great manufacturer, and his name is
Holliday."
My hand was on the man's wrist during this brief conversation.
The instant the name of Holliday was pronounced I felt the pulse
under my fingers flutter, stop, go on suddenly with a bound, and
beat afterward for a minute or two at the fever rate.
"How did you come here?" asked the stranger, quickly, excitably,
passionately almost.
Arthur related briefly what had happened from the time of his
first taking the bed at the inn.
"I am indebted to Mr. Holliday's son, then, for the help that has
saved my life," said the medical student, speaking to himself,
with a singular sarcasm in his voice. "Come here!"
He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony right hand.
"With all my heart," said Arthur, taking his hand cordially. "I
may confess it now," he continued, laughing, "upon my honor, you
almost frightened me out of my wits."
The stranger did not seem to listen. His wild black eyes were
fixed with a look of eager interest on Arthur's face, and his
long bony fingers kept tight hold of Arthur's hand. Young
Holliday, on his side, returned the gaze, amazed and puzzled by
the medical student's odd language and manners. The two faces
were close together; I looked at them, and, to my amazement, I
was suddenly impressed by the sense of a likeness between
them--not in features or complexion, but solely in expression. It
must have been a strong likeness, or I should certainly not have
found it out, for I am naturally slow at detecting resemblances
between faces.
"You have saved my life," said the strange man, still looking
hard in Arthur's face, still holding tightly by his hand. "If you
had been my own brother, you could not have done more for me than
that."
He laid a singularly strong emphasis on those three words "my own
brother," and a change passed over his face as he pronounced
them--a change that no language of mine is competent to describe.
"I hope I have not done being of service to you yet," said
Arthur. "I'll speak to my father as soon as I get home."
"You seem to be fond and proud of your father," said the medical
student. "I suppose, in return, he is fond and proud of you?"
"Of course he is," answered Arthur, laughing. "Is there anything
wonderful in that? Isn't _your_ father fond--"
The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday's hand and turned
his face away.
"I beg your pardon," said Arthur. "I hope I have not
unintentionally pained you. I hope you have not lost your
father?"
"I can't well lose what I have never had," retorted the medical
student, with a harsh mocking laugh.
"What you have never had!"
The strange man suddenly caught Arthur's hand again, suddenly
looked once more hard in his face.
"Yes," he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh. "You have
brought a poor devil back into the world who has no business
there. Do I astonish you? Well, I have a fancy of my own for
telling you what men in my situation generally keep a secret. I
have no name and no father. The merciful law of society tells me
I am nobody's son! Ask your father if he will be my father too,
and help me on in life with the family name."
Arthur looked at me more puzzled than ever.
I signed to him to say nothing, and then laid my fingers again on
the man's wrist. No. In spite of the extraordinary speech that he
had just made, he was not, as I had been disposed to suspect,
beginning to get light-headed. His pulse, by this time, had
fallen back to a quiet, slow beat, and his skin was moist and
cool. Not a symptom of fever or agitation about him.
Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned to me, and
began talking of the extraordinary nature of his case, and asking
my advice about the future course of medical treatment to which
he ought to subject himself. I said the matter required careful
thinking over, and suggested that I should send him a
prescription a little later. He told me to write it at once, as
he would most likely be leaving Doncaster in the morning before I
was up. It was quite useless to represent to him the folly and
danger of such a proceeding as this. He heard me politely and
patiently, but held to his resolution, without offering any
reasons or explanations, and repeated to me that, if I wished to
give him a chance of seeing my prescription, I must write it at
once.
Hearing this, Arthur volunteered the loan of a traveling
writing-case, which he said he had with him, and, bringing it to
the bed, shook the note-paper out of the pocket of the case
forthwith in his usual careless way. With the paper there fell
out on the counterpane of the bed a small packet of
sticking-plaster, and a little water-color drawing of a
landscape.
The medical student took up the drawing and looked at it. His eye
fell on some initials neatly written in cipher in one corner. He
started and trembled; his pale face grew whiter than over; his
wild black eyes turned on Arthur, and looked through and through
him.
"A pretty drawing," he said, in a remarkably quiet tone of voice.
"Ah! and done by such a pretty girl," said Arthur. "Oh, such a
pretty girl! I wish it was not a landscape--I wish it was a
portrait of her!"
"You admire her very much?"
Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand for
answer.
"Love at first sight," said young Holliday, putting the drawing
away again. "But the course of it doesn't run smooth. It's the
old story. She's monopolized, as usual; trammeled by a rash
engagement to some poor man who is never likely to get money
enough to marry her. It was lucky I heard of it in time, or I
should certainly have risked a declaration when she gave me that
drawing. Here, doctor, here is pen, ink, and paper all ready for
you."
"When she gave you that drawing? Gave it? gave it?"
He repeated the words slowly to himself, and suddenly closed his
eyes. A momentary distortion passed across his face, and I saw
one of his hands clutch up the bedclothes and squeeze them hard.
I thought he was going to be ill again, and begged that there
might be no more talking. He opened his eyes when I spoke, fixed
them once more searchingly on Arthur, and said, slowly and
distinctly:
"You like her, and she likes you. The poor man may die out of
your way. Who can tell that she may not give you herself as well
as her drawing, after all?"
Before young Holliday could answer he turned to me, and said in a
whisper: "Now for the prescription." From that time, though he
spoke to Arthur again, he never looked at him more.
When I had written the prescription, he examined it, approved of
it, and then astonished us both by abruptly wishing us
good-night. I offered to sit up with him, and he shook his head.
Arthur offered to sit up with him, and he said, shortly, with his
face turned away, "No." I insisted on having somebody left to
watch him. He gave way when he found I was determined, and said
he would accept the services of the waiter at the inn.
"Thank you both," he said, as we rose to go. "I have one last
favor to ask--not of you, doctor, for I leave you to exercise
your professional discretion, but of Mr. Holliday." His eyes,
while he spoke, still rested steadily on me, and never once
turned toward Arthur. "I beg that Mr. Holliday will not mention
to any one, least of all to his father, the events that have
occurred and the words that have passed in this room. I entreat
him to bury me in his memory as, but for him, I might have been
buried in my grave. I cannot give my reason for making this
strange request. I can only implore him to grant it."
His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his face on the
pillow. Arthur, completely bewildered, gave the required pledge.
I took young Holliday away with me immediately afterward to the
house of my friend, determining to go back to the inn and to see
the medical student again before he had left in the morning.
I returned to the inn at eight o'clock, purposely abstaining from
waking Arthur, who was sleeping off the past night's excitement
on one of my friend's sofas. A suspicion had occurred to me, as
soon as I was alone in my bedroom, which made me resolve that
Holliday and the stranger whose life he had saved should not meet
again, if I could prevent it.
I have already alluded to certain reports or scandals which I
knew of relating to the early life of Arthur's father. While I
was thinking, in my bed, of what had passed at the inn; of the
change in the student's pulse when he heard the name of Holliday;
of the resemblance of expression that I had discovered between
his face and Arthur's; of the emphasis he had laid on those three
words, "my own brother," and of his incomprehensible
acknowledgment of his own illegitimacy--while I was thinking of
these things, the reports I have me ntioned suddenly flew into my
mind, and linked themselves fast to the chain of my previous
reflections. Something within me whispered, "It is best that
those two young men should not meet again." I felt it before I
slept; I felt it when I woke; and I went as I told you, alone to
the inn the next morning.
I had missed my only opportunity of seeing my nameless patient
again. He had been gone nearly an hour when I inquired for him.
I have now told you everything that I know for certain in
relation to the man whom I brought back to life in the
double-bedded room of the inn at Doncaster. What I have next to
add is matter for inference and surmise, and is not, strictly
speaking, matter of fact.
I have to tell you, first, that the medical student turned out to
be strangely and unaccountably right in assuming it as more than
probable that Arthur Holliday would marry the young lady who had
given him the water-color drawing of the landscape. That marriage
took place a little more than a year after the events occurred
which I have just been relating.
The young couple came to live in the neighborhood in which I was
then established in practice. I was present at the wedding, and
was rather surprised to find that Arthur was singularly reserved
with me, both before and after his marriage, on the subject of
the young lady's prior engagement. He only referred to it once
when we were alone, merely telling me, on that occasion, that his
wife had done all that honor and duty required of her in the
matter, and that the engagement had been broken off with the full
approval of her parents. I never heard more from him than this.
For three years he and his wife lived together happily. At the
expiration of that time the symptoms of a serious illness first
declared themselves in Mrs. Arthur Holliday. It turned out to be
a long, lingering, hopeless malady. I attended her throughout. We
had been great friends when she was well, and we became more
attached to each other than ever when she was ill. I had many
long and interesting conversations with her in the intervals when
she suffered least. The result of one of those conversations I
may briefly relate, leaving you to draw any inferences from it
that you please.
The interview to which I refer occurred shortly before her death.
I called one evening as usual, and found her alone, with a look
in her eyes which told me she had been crying. She only informed
me at first that she had been depressed in spirits, but by little
and little she became more communicative, and confessed to me
that she had been looking over some old letters which had been
addressed to her, before she had seen Arthur, by a man to whom
she had been engaged to be married. I asked her how the
engagement came to be broken off. She replied that it had not
been broken off, but that it had died out in a very mysterious
way. The person to whom she was engaged--her first love, she
called him--was very poor, and there was no immediate prospect of
their being married. He followed my profession, and went abroad
to study. They had corresponded regularly until the time when, as
she believed, he had returned to England. From that period she
heard no more of him. He was of a fretful, sensitive temperament,
and she feared that she might have inadvertently done or said
something to offend him. However that might be, he had never
written to her again, and after waiting a year she had married
Arthur. I asked when the first estrangement had begun, and found
that the time at which she ceased to hear anything of her first
lover exactly corresponded with the time at which I had been
called in to my mysterious patient at The Two Robins Inn.
A fortnight after that conversation she died. In course of time
Arthur married again. Of late years he has lived principally in
London, and I have seen little or nothing of him.
I have some years to pass over before I can approach to anything
like a conclusion of this fragmentary narrative. And even when
that later period is reached, the little that I have to say will
not occupy your attention for more than a few minutes.
One rainy autumn evening, while I was still practicing as a
country doctor, I was sitting alone, thinking over a case then
under my charge, which sorely perplexed me, when I heard a low
knock at the door of my room.
"Come in," I cried, looking up curiously to see who wanted me.
After a momentary delay, the lock moved, and a long, white, bony
hand stole round the door as it opened, gently pushing it over a
fold in the carpet which hindered it from working freely on the
hinges. The hand was followed by a man whose face instantly
struck me with a very strange sensation. There was something
familiar to me in the look of him, and yet it was also something
that suggested the idea of change.
He quietly introduced himself as "Mr. Lorn," presented to me some
excellent professional recommendations, and proposed to fill the
place, then vacant, of my assistant. While he was speaking I
noticed it as singular that we did not appear to be meeting each
other like strangers, and that, while I was certainly startled at
seeing him, he did not appear to be at all startled at seeing me.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I thought I had met
with him before. But there was something in his face, and
something in my own recollections--I can hardly say what--which
unaccountably restrained me from speaking and which as
unaccountably attracted me to him at once, and made me feel ready
and glad to accept his proposal.
He took his assistant's place on that very day. We got on
together as if we had been old friends from the first; but,
throughout the whole time of his residence in my house, he never
volunteered any confidences on the subject of his past life, and
I never approached the forbidden topic except by hints, which he
resolutely refused to understand.
I had long had a notion that my patient at the inn might have
been a natural son of the elder Mr. Holliday's, and that he might
also have been the man who was engaged to Arthur's first wife.
And now another idea occurred to me, that Mr. Lorn was the only
person in existence who could, if he chose, enlighten me on both
those doubtful points. But he never did choose, and I was never
enlightened. He remained with me till I removed to London to try
my fortune there as a physician for the second time, and then he
went his way and I went mine, and we have never seen one another
since.
I can add no more. I may have been right in my suspicion, or I
may have been wrong. All I know is that, in those days of my
country practice, when I came home late, and found my assistant
asleep, and woke him, he used to look, in coming to, wonderfully
like the stranger at Doncaster as he raised himself in the bed on
that memorable night.
THE SIXTH DAY
AN oppressively mild temperature, and steady, soft, settled
rain--dismal weather for idle people in the country. Miss Jessie,
after looking longingly out of the window, resigned herself to
circumstances, and gave up all hope of a ride. The gardener, the
conservatory, the rabbits, the raven, the housekeeper, and, as a
last resource, even the neglected piano, were all laid under
contribution to help her through the time. It was a long day, but
thanks to her own talent for trifling, she contrived to occupy it
pleasantly enough.
Still no news of my son. The time was getting on now, and it was
surely not unreasonable to look for some tidings of him.
To-day Morgan and I both finished our third and last stories. I
corrected my brother's contribution with no very great difficulty
on this occasion, and numbered it Nine. My own story came next,
and was thus accidentally distinguished as the last of the
series--Number Ten. When I dropped the two corresponding cards
into the bowl, the thought that there would be now no more to add
seemed to quicken my prevailing sense of anxiety on the subject
of George's return. A heavy depression hung upon my spirits, and
I went out desperately in the rain to shake my mind free of
oppressing influences by dint of hard bodily exercise.
The number drawn this evening was Three. On the production of the
corresponding man uscript it proved to be my turn to read again.
"I can promise you a little variety to-night," I said, addressing
our fair guest, "if I can promise nothing else. This time it is
not a story of my own writing that I am about to read, but a copy
of a very curious correspondence which I found among my
professional papers."
Jessie's countenance fell. "Is there no story in it?" she asked,
rather discontentedly.
"Certainly there is a story in it," I replied--"a story of a much
lighter kind than any we have yet read, and which may, on that
account, prove acceptable, by way of contrast and relief, even if
it fails to attract you by other means. I obtained the original
correspondence, I must tell you, from the office of the Detective
Police of London."
Jessie's face brightened. "That promises something to begin
with," she said.
"Some years since," I continued, "there was a desire at
headquarters to increase the numbers and efficiency of the
Detective Police, and I had the honor of being one of the persons
privately consulted on that occasion. The chief obstacle to the
plan proposed lay in the difficulty of finding new recruits. The
ordinary rank and file of the police of London are sober,
trustworthy, and courageous men, but as a body they are sadly
wanting in intelligence. Knowing this, the authorities took into
consideration a scheme, which looked plausible enough on paper,
for availing themselves of the services of that proverbially
sharp class of men, the experienced clerks in attorney's offices.
Among the persons whose advice was sought on this point, I was
the only one who dissented from the arrangement proposed. I felt
certain that the really experienced clerks intrusted with
conducting private investigations and hunting up lost evidence,
were too well paid and too independently situated in their
various offices to care about entering the ranks of the Detective
Police, and submitting themselves to the rigid discipline of
Scotland Yard, and I ventured to predict that the inferior clerks
only, whose discretion was not to be trusted, would prove to be
the men who volunteered for detective employment. My advice was
not taken and the experiment of enlisting the clerks was tried in
two or three cases. I was naturally interested in the result, and
in due course of time I applied for information in the right
quarter. In reply, the originals of the letters of which I am now
about to read the copies were sent to me, with an intimation that
the correspondence in this particular instance offered a fair
specimen of the results of the experiment in the other cases. The
letters amused me, and I obtained permission to copy them before
I sent them back. You will now hear, therefore, by his own
statement, how a certain attorney's clerk succeeded in conducting
a very delicate investigation, and how the regular members of the
Detective Police contrived to help him through his first
experiment."
BROTHER GRIFFITH'S STORY
of
THE BITER BIT.
_Extracted from the Correspondence of the London Police_.
FROM CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE, OF THE DETECTIVE POLICE, TO
SERGEANT BULMER, OF THE SAME FORCE.
London, 4th July, 18--.
SERGEANT BULMER--This is to inform you that you are wanted to
assist in looking up a case of importance, which will require all
the attention of an experienced member of the force. The matter
of the robbery on which you are now engaged you will please to
shift over to the young man who brings you this letter. You will
tell him all the circumstances of the case, just as they stand;
you will put him up to the progress you have made (if any) toward
detecting the person or persons by whom the money has been
stolen; and you will leave him to make the best he can of the
matter now in your hands. He is to have the whole responsibility
of the case, and the whole credit of his success if he brings it
to a proper issue.
So much for the orders that I am desired to communicate to you.
A word in your ear, next, about this new man who is to take your
place. His name is Matthew Sharpin, and he is to have the chance
given him of dashing into our office at one jump--supposing he
turns out strong enough to take it. You will naturally ask me how
he comes by this privilege. I can only tell you that he has some
uncommonly strong interest to back him in certain high quarters,
which you and I had better not mention except under our breaths.
He has been a lawyer's clerk, and he is wonderfully conceited in
his opinion of himself, as well as mean and underhand, to look
at. According to his own account, he leaves his old trade and
joins ours of his own free will and preference. You will no more
believe that than I do. My notion is, that he has managed to
ferret out some private information in connection with the
affairs of one of his master's clients, which makes him rather an
awkward customer to keep in the office for the future, and which,
at the same time, gives him hold enough over his employer to make
it dangerous to drive him into a corner by turning him away. I
think the giving him this unheard-of chance among us is, in plain
words, pretty much like giving him hush money to keep him quiet.
However that may be, Mr. Matthew Sharpin is to have the case now
in your hands, and if he succeeds with it he pokes his ugly nose
into our office as sure as fate. I put you up to this, sergeant,
so that you may not stand in your own light by giving the new man
any cause to complain of you at headquarters, and remain yours,
FRANCIS THEAKSTONE.
FROM MR. MATTHEW SHARPIN TO CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE.
London, 5th July, 18--.
DEAR SIR--Having now been favored with the necessary instructions
from Sergeant Bulmer, I beg to remind you of certain directions
which I have received relating to the report of my future
proceedings which I am to prepare for examination at
headquarters.
The object of my writing, and of your examining what I have
written before you send it to the higher authorities, is, I am
informed, to give me, as an untried hand, the benefit of your
advice in case I want it (which I venture to think I shall not)
at any stage of my proceedings. As the extraordinary
circumstances of the case on which I am now engaged make it
impossible for me to absent myself from the place where the
robbery was committed until I have made some progress toward
discovering the thief, I am necessarily precluded from consulting
you personally. Hence the necessity of my writing down the
various details, which might perhaps be better communicated by
word of mouth. This, if I am not mistaken, is the position in
which we are now placed. I state my own impressions on the
subject in writing, in order that we may clearly understand each
other at the outset; and have the honor to remain your obedient
servant,
MATTHEW SHARPIN.
FROM CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE TO MR. MATTHEW SHARPIN.
London, 5th July, 18--.
SIR--You have begun by wasting time, ink, and paper. We both of
us perfectly well knew the position we stood in toward each other
when I sent you with my letter to Sergeant Bulmer. There was not
the least need to repeat it in writing. Be so good as to employ
your pen in future on the business actually in hand.
You have now three separate matters on which to write me. First,
you have to draw up a statement of your instructions received
from Sergeant Bulmer, in order to show us that nothing has
escaped your memory, and that you are thoroughly acquainted with
all the circumstances of the case which has been intrusted to
you. Secondly, you are to inform me what it is you propose to do.
Thirdly, you are to report every inch of your progress (if you
make any) from day to day, and, if need be, from hour to hour as
well. This is _your_ duty. As to what _my_ duty may be, when I
want you to remind me of it, I will write and tell you so. In the
meantime, I remain yours,
FRANCIS THEAKSTONE.
FROM MR. MATTHEW SHARPIN TO CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE.
London, 6th July, 18--.
SIR--You are rather an elderly person, and as such, naturally
inclined to be a little jealous of men like me, who are in the
prime of their lives and their faculties. Under these
circumstances, it is my duty to be considerate
toward you, and not to bear too hardly on your small failings. I
decline, therefore, altogether to take offense at the tone of
your letter; I give you the full benefit of the natural
generosity of my nature; I sponge the very existence of your
surly communication out of my memory--in short, Chief Inspector
Theakstone, I forgive you, and proceed to business.
My first duty is to draw up a full statement of the instructions
I have received from Sergeant Bulmer. Here they are at your
service, according to my version of them.
At Number Thirteen Rutherford Street, Soho, there is a
stationer's shop. It is kept by one Mr. Yatman. He is a married
man, but has no family. Besides Mr. and Mrs. Yatman, the other
inmates in the house are a lodger, a young single man named Jay,
who occupies the front room on the second floor--a shopman, who
sleeps in one of the attics, and a servant-of-all-work, whose bed
is in the back kitchen. Once a week a charwoman comes to help
this servant. These are all the persons who, on ordinary
occasions, have means of access to the interior of the house,
placed, as a matter of course, at their disposal. Mr. Yatman has
been in business for many years, carrying on his affairs
prosperously enough to realize a handsome independence for a
person in his position. Unfortunately for himself, he endeavored
to increase the amount of his property by speculating. He
ventured boldly in his investments; luck went against him; and
rather less than two years ago he found himself a poor man again.
All that was saved out of the wreck of his property was the sum
of two hundred pounds.
Although Mr. Yatman did his best to meet his altered
circumstances, by giving up many of the luxuries and comforts to
which he and his wife had been accustomed, he found it impossible
to retrench so far as to allow of putting by any money from the
income produced by his shop. The business has been declining of
late years, the cheap advertising stationers having done it
injury with the public. Consequently, up to the last week, the
only surplus property possessed by Mr. Yatman consisted of the
two hundred pounds which had been recovered from the wreck of his
fortune. This sum was placed as a deposit in a joint-stock bank
of the highest possible character.
Eight days ago Mr. Yatman and his lodger, Mr. Jay, held a
conversation on the subject of the commercial difficulties which
are hampering trade in all directions at the present time. Mr.
Jay (who lives by supplying the newspapers with short paragraphs
relating to accidents, offenses, and brief records of remarkable
occurrences in general--who is, in short, what they call a
penny-a-liner) told his landlord that he had been in the city
that day and heard unfavorable rumors on the subject of the
joint-stock banks. The rumors to which he alluded had already
reached the ears of Mr. Yatman from other quarters, and the
confirmation of them by his lodger had such an effect on his
mind--predisposed as it was to alarm by the experience of his
former losses--that he resolved to go at once to the bank and
withdraw his deposit. It was then getting on toward the end of
the afternoon, and he arrived just in time to receive his money
before the bank closed.
He received the deposit in bank-notes of the following amounts:
one fifty-pound note, three twenty-pound notes, six ten-pound
notes, and six five-pound notes. His object in drawing the money
in this form was to have it ready to lay out immediately in
trifling loans, on good security, among the small tradespeople of
his district, some of whom are sorely pressed for the very means
of existence at the present time. Investments of this kind seemed
to Mr. Yatman to be the most safe and the most profitable on
which he could now venture.
He brought the money back in an envelope placed in his breast
pocket, and asked his shopman, on getting home, to look for a
small, flat, tin cash-box, which had not been used for years, and
which, as Mr. Yatman remembered it, was exactly of the right size
to hold the bank-notes. For some time the cash-box was searched
for in vain. Mr. Yatman called to his wife to know if she had any
idea where it was. The question was overheard by the
servant-of-all-work, who was taking up the tea-tray at the time,
and by Mr. Jay, who was coming downstairs on his way out to the
theater. Ultimately the cash-box was found by the shopman. Mr.
Yatman placed the bank-notes in it, secured them by a padlock,
and put the box in his coat pocket. It stuck out of the coat
pocket a very little, but enough to be seen. Mr. Yatman remained
at home, upstairs, all that evening. No visitors called. At
eleven o'clock he went to bed, and put the cash-box under his
pillow.
When he and his wife woke the next morning the box was gone.
Payment of the notes was immediately stopped at the Bank of
England, but no news of the money has been heard of since that
time.
So far the circumstances of the case are perfectly clear. They
point unmistakably to the conclusion that the robbery must have
been committed by some person living in the house. Suspicion
falls, therefore, upon the servant-of-all-work, upon the shopman,
and upon Mr. Jay. The two first knew that the cash-box was being
inquired for by their master, but did not know what it was he
wanted to put into it. They would assume, of course, that it was
money. They both had opportunities (the servant when she took
away the tea, and the shopman when he came, after shutting up, to
give the keys of the till to his master) of seeing the cash-box
in Mr. Yatman's pocket, and of inferring naturally, from its
position there, that he intended to take it into his bedroom with
him at night.
Mr. Jay, on the other hand, had been told, during the afternoon's
conversation on the subject of joint-stock banks, that his
landlord had a deposit of two hundred pounds in one of them. He
also knew that Mr. Yatman left him with the intention of drawing
that money out; and he heard the inquiry for the cash-box
afterward, when he was coming downstairs. He must, therefore,
have inferred that the money was in the house, and that the
cash-box was the receptacle intended to contain it. That he could
have had any idea, however, of the place in which Mr. Yatman
intended to keep it for the night is impossible, seeing that he
went out before the box was found, and did not return till his
landlord was in bed. Consequently, if he committed the robbery,
he must have gone into the bedroom purely on speculation.
Speaking of the bedroom reminds me of the necessity of noticing
the situation of it in the house, and the means that exist of
gaining easy access to it at any hour of the night.
The room in question is the back room on the first floor. In
consequence of Mrs. Yatman's constitutional nervousness on the
subject of fire, which makes her apprehend being burned alive in
her room, in case of accident, by the hampering of the lock if
the key is turned in it, her husband has never been accustomed to
lock the bedroom door. Both he and his wife are, by their own
admission, heavy sleepers; consequently, the risk to be run by
any evil-disposed persons wishing to plunder the bedroom was of
the most trifling kind. They could enter the room by merely
turning the handle of the door; and, if they moved with ordinary
caution, there was no fear of their waking the sleepers inside.
This fact is of importance. It strengthens our conviction that
the money must have been taken by one of the inmates of the
house, because it tends to show that the robbery, in this case,
might have been committed by persons not possessed of the
superior vigilance and cunning of the experienced thief.
Such are the circumstances, as they were related to Sergeant
Bulmer, when he was first called in to discover the guilty
parties, and, if possible, to recover the lost bank-notes. The
strictest inquiry which he could institute failed of producing
the smallest fragment of evidence against any of the persons on
whom suspicion naturally fell. Their language and behavior on
being informed of the robbery was perfectly consistent with the
language and behavior of innocent people. Sergeant Bulmer felt
from the firs t that this was a case for private inquiry and
secret observation. He began by recommending Mr. and Mrs. Yatman
to affect a feeling of perfect confidence in the innocence of the
persons living under their roof, and he then opened the campaign
by employing himself in following the goings and comings, and in
discovering the friends, the habits, and the secrets of the
maid-of-all-work.
Three days and nights of exertion on his own part, and on that of
others who were competent to assist his investigations, were
enough to satisfy him that there was no sound cause for suspicion
against the girl.
He next practiced the same precaution in relation to the shopman.
There was more difficulty and uncertainty in privately clearing
up this person's character without his knowledge, but the
obstacles were at last smoothed away with tolerable success; and,
though there is not the same amount of certainty in this case
which there was in the case of the girl, there is still fair
reason for supposing that the shopman has had nothing to do with
the robbery of the cash-box.
As a necessary consequence of these proceedings, the range of
suspicion now becomes limited to the lodger, Mr. Jay.
When I presented your letter of introduction to Sergeant Bulmer,
he had already made some inquiries on the subject of this young
man. The result, so far, has not been at all favorable. Mr. Jay's
habits are irregular; he frequents public houses, and seems to be
familiarly acquainted with a great many dissolute characters; he
is in debt to most of the tradespeople whom he employs; he has
not paid his rent to Mr. Yatman for the last month; yesterday
evening he came home excited by liquor, and last week he was seen
talking to a prize-fighter; in short, though Mr. Jay does call
himself a journalist, in virtue of his penny-a-line contributions
to the newspapers, he is a young man of low tastes, vulgar
manners, and bad habits. Nothing has yet been discovered in
relation to him which redounds to his credit in the smallest
degree.
I have now reported, down to the very last details, all the
particulars communicated to me by Sergeant Bulmer. I believe you
will not find an omission anywhere; and I think you will admit,
though you are prejudiced against me, that a clearer statement of
facts was never laid before you than the statement I have now
made. My next duty is to tell you what I propose to do now that
the case is confided to my hands.
In the first place, it is clearly my business to take up the case
at the point where Sergeant Bulmer has left it. On his authority,
I am justified in assuming that I have no need to trouble myself
about the maid-of-all-work and the shopman. Their characters are
now to be considered as cleared up. What remains to be privately
investigated is the question of the guilt or innocence of Mr.
Jay. Before we give up the notes for lost, we must make sure, if
we can, that he knows nothing about them.
This is the plan that I have adopted, with the full approval of
Mr. and Mrs. Yatman, for discovering whether Mr. Jay is or is not
the person who has stolen the cash-box:
I propose to-day to present myself at the house in the character
of a young man who is looking for lodgings. The back room on the
second floor will be shown to me as the room to let, and I shall
establish myself there to-night as a person from the country who
has come to London to look for a situation in a respectable shop
or office.
By this means I shall be living next to the room occupied by Mr.
Jay. The partition between us is mere lath and plaster. I shall
make a small hole in it, near the cornice, through which I can
see what Mr. Jay does in his room, and hear every word that is
said when any friend happens to call on him. Whenever he is at
home, I shall be at my post of observation; whenever he goes out,
I shall be after him. By employing these means of watching him, I
believe I may look forward to the discovery of his secret--if he
knows anything about the lost bank-notes--as to a dead certainty.
What you may think of my plan of observation I cannot undertake
to say. It appears to me to unite the invaluable merits of
boldness and simplicity. Fortified by this conviction, I close
the present communication with feelings of the most sanguine
description in regard to the future, and remain your obedient
servant,
MATTHEW SHARPIN.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
7th July.
SIR--As you have not honored me with any answer to my last
communication, I assume that, in spite of your prejudices against
me, it has produced the favorable impression on your mind which I
ventured to anticipate. Gratified and encouraged beyond measure
by the token of approval which your eloquent silence conveys to
me, I proceed to report the progress that has been made in the
course of the last twenty-four hours.
I am now comfortably established next door to Mr. Jay, and I am
delighted to say that I have two holes in the partition instead
of one. My natural sense of humor has led me into the pardonable
extravagance of giving them both appropriate names. One I call my
peep-hole, and the other my pipe-hole. The name of the first
explains itself; the name of the second refers to a small tin
pipe or tube inserted in the hole, and twisted so that the mouth
of it comes close to my ear while I am standing at my post of
observation. Thus, while I am looking at Mr. Jay through my
peep-hole, I can hear every word that may be spoken in his room
through my pipe-hole.
Perfect candor--a virtue which I have possessed from my
childhood--compels me to acknowledge, before I go any further,
that the ingenious notion of adding a pipe-hole to my proposed
peep-hole originated with Mrs. Yatman. This lady--a most
intelligent and accomplished person, simple, and yet
distinguished in her manners, has entered into all my little
plans with an enthusiasm and intelligence which I cannot too
highly praise. Mr. Yatman is so cast down by his loss that he is
quite incapable of affording me any assistance. Mrs. Yatman, who
is evidently most tenderly attached to him, feels her husband's
sad condition of mind even more acutely than she feels the loss
of the money, and is mainly stimulated to exertion by her desire
to assist in raising him from the miserable state of prostration
into which he has now fallen.
"The money, Mr. Sharpin," she said to me yesterday evening, with
tears in her eyes, "the money may be regained by rigid economy
and strict attention to business. It is my husband's wretched
state of mind that makes me so anxious for the discovery of the
thief. I may be wrong, but I felt hopeful of success as soon as
you entered the house; and I believe that, if the wretch who
robbed us is to be found, you are the man to discover him." I
accepted this gratifying compliment in the spirit in which it was
offered, firmly believing that I shall be found, sooner or later,
to have thoroughly deserved it.
Let me now return to business--that is to say, to my peep-hole
and my pipe-hole.
I have enjoyed some hours of calm observation of Mr. Jay. Though
rarely at home, as I understand from Mrs. Yatman, on ordinary
occasions, he has been indoors the whole of this day. That is
suspicious, to begin with. I have to report, further, that he
rose at a late hour this morning (always a bad sign in a young
man), and that he lost a great deal of time, after he was up, in
yawning and complaining to himself of headache. Like other
debauched characters, he ate little or nothing for breakfast. His
next proceeding was to smoke a pipe--a dirty clay pipe, which a
gentleman would have been ashamed to put between his lips. When
he had done smoking he took out pen, ink and paper, and sat down
to write with a groan--whether of remorse for having taken the
bank-notes, or of disgust at the task before him, I am unable to
say. After writing a few lines (too far away from my peep-hole to
give me a chance of reading over his shoulder), he leaned back in
his chair, and amused himself by humming the tunes of popular
songs. I recognized "My Mary Anne," "Bobbin' Around," and "Old
Dog Tray," among other melodies. Whether these do or do not
represent secret signals by which he communicates
with his accomplices remains to be seen. After he had amused
himself for some time by humming, he got up and began to walk
about the room, occasionally stopping to add a sentence to the
paper on his desk. Before long he went to a locked cupboard and
opened it. I strained my eyes eagerly, in expectation of making a
discovery. I saw him take something carefully out of the
cupboard--he turned round--and |
