CHAPTER XVIIIHOW JAKOUB WAS NO MORE SEEN
CAPTAIN WELFARE came in leaning on Edmund, who helped him into an arm-chair.
His head was neatly bandaged, and he was clad in a dressing-gown. He was still evidently weak, although largely restored from the pitiable object that had crawled into the cellar.
The bishop and I hastened to commiserate him, and I suggested his going straight to bed.
“No, thank you, sir,” he said, leaning back in the chair. “I’m better now. I shall be all right in a few minutes. Your man is getting me something to drink. Anyhow Imustkeep on my legs for a bit. There’s a deal to be settled and done to-night.”
“Where is Jakoub?” I ventured to ask at last.
“I don’t think you will blame me, sir, or his lordship either, when I tell you about it. He came at me like a leopard. As you know, I meant him no harm.”
“I know you did not, captain. We are so far from blaming you that we are only sorry you should have been so hurt. It was a dastardly attack.”
“Aye. A proper dago’s trick,” said Welfare. He paused to sip a glass of hot milk and brandy which he had prescribed for himself, and which certainly seemed to revive him in a remarkable degree.
“It was quite dark in that passage,” he continued. “I stood about half way up it, wondering would you have got my message. It seemed a long time waiting, but at last I heard the door open and shut, and then footsteps coming very quietly on. I flashed an electric torch to show I was there, and the footsteps stopped. I waited, and then as I heard no more I went up the passage searching it with the torch.
“Presently I saw someone crouching at the side. ‘Is that Jakoub?’ I asked, but there was no answer. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘it’s me, Captain Ringrose,’ which was the name he knew me by. Then he seemed to take a little run, stooping like an animal; I saw the glint of a knife, and he was on me. I don’t rightly know how things happened then. Them natives always strike at your neck. Either I ducked or I happened to knock his hand up, but I felt the knife ripping my scalp. ‘You rob me, devil, I kill you,’ he says in a kind of snarl, as I closed on him, and then by good luck I got his wrist in my left hand. He twisted round me like a snake, but I used my weight and crushed him against the side of the passage. I knew he was struggling to get the knife in his other hand. He gave another twist and was almost free, but I managed to hold his wrist, and I felt both bones of his arm snap, but that didn’t quieten him, and then I got my right hand on his throat.
“I knew my strength would go in a minute with the blood I was losing, and if I didn’t quiet him I was done for. I felt him stiffen like a steel spring as I gripped his throat. Then a buzzing came in my ears. He went limp like, and we fell together, me still holding him.
“I suppose the fainting stopped my bleeding for a bit. Anyhow I came to, and Jakoub was still there half under me. He wasn’t breathing, and the blood started pumping out of my cut again, so I knotted my scarf as tight as I could over it and kept quiet to give it a chance of stopping. I felt about for the torch and found it, but it was broken. I was very giddy and sick, and I think I went over again. I seemed to be there a long while in the dark, and Jakoub never stirred. I put a hand on his face. His mouth was open, and his cheeks were dead cold.”
Captain Welfare paused, exhausted by his long statement. Nobody spoke, or questioned him while he took another drink. The end of the story was already clear to us, and Edmund, of course, had already been told. The long intrigue of infamy had ended in battle, murder and sudden death.
Captain Welfare was evidently distressed at our silence, interpreting it as meaning condemnation.
“I think, gentlemen,” he continued, “you will see it was self-defence. I didn’t mean him no harm, I was there to help him. But he meant doing me in right enough, and very nearly did. I could do nothing for him myself, but I tried to get help for him in case there was a chance still. I started to crawl for the house, as I thought, but I had lost my bearings, and when I came round a bend I saw the moonlight at the other end of the passage. Then the bleeding broke out again and I had to wait. Half an hour I should think I waited, and when I got back to Jakoub there was no mistake about it any more. He was dead right enough. But I swear, my lord, if I never speak another word, it was self-defence. I didn’tmean to kill him. I didn’t want to kill him. What did he want to kill me for?”
“As far as I am concerned,” said the bishop, “I accept your word absolutely. It is a heavy misfortune, especially for you, but there is certainly no blame attaching to you. If I remember rightly the wretched man said something about you just as he left us.”
“Yes,” said Edmund, “‘this is a trap of Captain Ringrose,’ or something of that sort.”
“He always thought that I was against him. I had to watch him, and I often caught him out trying to cheat us.”
“But all this must have happened hours ago, Welfare,” I exclaimed, “why did you wait so long?”
“Why, you see, sir, it took me a long time to get to this end of the passage. When I got to the door I did not know whether the police would be in the house or not. I thought, if I try to get in while they are there we shall all be ruined. So I determined to wait until—well, until I was really afraid I could not afford to bleed any more. But I’ll be all right now. The question is, what are we to do about it?”
“Unless we decide to own up to the whole thing,” Edmund argued, “we shall have to carry him out and leave him under the cliff. They will think he has fallen over in the dark.”
Welfare shook his head slowly.
“That would not do,” he said, “I could not see him in the dark, but there will be no mistake about the marks I have left on his throat. It wouldn’t take a doctor to tell he was strangled. They would be bound to trace back to the passage, and then ask how he got there and who killed him.”
An idea came into my mind, but I forbore to utter it. It seemed to me to come in the guise of temptation; temptation to use this catastrophe to further our own ends.
“We might take a boat and bury him at sea,” Welfare suggested.
This was so like my own idea, that I looked around to see how the others took it. The bishop had been sitting in silent meditation. He now rose, and stood with his hands clasped behind him looking down on us with an expression of great sadness.
“Why not bury him where he is?” he asked. It was my own idea, and I gasped to hear it propounded by him.
“This wretched man’s life,” he continued, “was forfeit to the law. Had the law taken him alive the law could only have slain him. That has been done as a result of his own wickedness and folly. Of what use is it to hand over his dead body to the law? He wrought enough mischief in his life. His dead body would but work more. It would involve some at least of us in utter ruin at the hands of the law. A ruin that none has deserved in such measure. I counsel you, Davoren, to let the wretched business end here. The man was not of our faith, so could not claim Christian burial or consecrated ground. But he was a human being and shall not be buried like a dog.”
There was again silence among us, a silence quickened with apprehension. It became clear to me that the idea that had germinated in my own mind had only seemed to be tainted with guilt because my soul was not seated high enough for clear moral judgment. The intrinsic rightness of the thing was manifest now that Parminter hadplaced it in the clear light of an honest man’s independent decision.
As it happened Welfare became our spokesman and his primitive outlook on life was the one thing needed to express the attitude of each one of us.
“If this seems the straight thing to your lordship,” he said, “it’s good enough for me. I would not have suggested it, because I seem to be coming out too cheap. It wasn’t murder, because it was self-defence. But I’d be bound to own up to manslaughter.”
“Don’t you think, Captain Welfare, that you ought to get to bed?” I asked. I was really concerned about the man, but I wanted to get rid of him too.
“Thank you, sir. But there is no need. If you don’t mind, I’d rather see the job through now.”
It was impossible for me to protest. After all he was my guest. Nevertheless what I ought to have regarded as his indomitable courage appeared to me mere want of tact. His presence made any communion between the bishop and myself an utter impossibility. I wanted to talk to the bishop alone and Welfare’s presence was something I resented in a great tragic moment of my life. I fear I suspected in him the love of the lower middle class for anything in the nature of a funeral.
Edmund said nothing, but rang the bell.
When Bates came in he whispered to him, and they left together. I knew they had gone to dig Jakoub’s grave, and presently the thud of a pick-axe and the sound of shovelling were conveyed to us along the passage and through the floor.
It was weary waiting in that room, listening to those dismal sounds, with Captain Welfare endlesslyrepeating the same explanations, the same apologies.
Through the open window I heard a rustling in the trees, and then a sudden puff of wind blew the curtains inward and caused the lamp to flare. The long-delayed storm had reached us and the moon was blotted out. There was a sudden splash of rain hard driven by the west wind. I rose to shut the window, and looking out the thought came to me that this darkness and confused rushing of the wind was more natural for the passing of Jakoub’s disordered soul than the serene tranquillity that had preceded it. It was as though the west wind had arisen to bear that soul back to the East where alone it could be at home.
One o’clock had struck when Edmund came back, soiled and perspiring, to tell us that all was ready.
Captain Welfare insisted on accompanying us, exhausted as he must have been, and he was helped down the stairs by Edmund.
By the light of a stable lantern we made our way for the last time along the fatal tunnel, and found Bates awaiting us.
The grave was dug close to the far end of the tunnel, and I marvelled at the immense amount of earth that had been removed in little more than an hour.
The body of Jakoub, shrouded in a white sheet, lay on a board beside the grave with ropes in place for lowering it.
The bishop took his place at the head of the grave, facing his congregation of four.
“My friends,” he said, “this is a solemn moment which must ever be present in the memory of each of us. The wages of sin is death, and this our brother, who was not the only sinner among us,has paid the penalty. He has drawn his wages in this world. That he may be the only one to pay that penalty is a thought that should humble us who are left behind. We are committing an act for which we should certainly be condemned by the laws of our country, but it is an act for which I take full responsibility. I am sure that it is not only expedient from the worldly point of view, but that it is right. Because to act legally in this matter would cause injustice to be done in the name of justice. I therefore as a priest absolve you from responsibility in this matter, and I counsel you to pray for the forgiveness of God for the wrong that each of us may have done. Whether my judgment in this matter is right will be proved by the event. If this night’s event should bring any of you to lead a better life and to serve God while you still have opportunity, I shall be sure that my action has God’s blessing upon it. This man has died in his sin and without the faith that supports and consoles a Christian. But it is not for us to place limits on the mercy of Almighty God. Let us offer a silent prayer that that mercy may be extended to this our brother.”
As we continued in reverent silence round the grave a pale gleam of moonlight faintly lit the scene, throwing dark shadows across the excavation and shining mournfully on the white wrapping of the corpse that lay beside us.
Looking out through the opening of the tunnel I saw as in a frame a portion of the sky. The main body of the great storm cloud had passed, and it was followed by a broken, hurrying rear-guard of ragged clouds through which the moon seemed to battle her way to the west, now submerged,now showing pale and dim, like the terrified face of a swimmer emerging between the waves of a heavy sea.
At a sign from the bishop the body of Jakoub was lowered into the grave. We threw a little soil upon it with the customary words, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Then as the grave was filled in the bishop repeated one verse from the funeral psalm: “For I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner, as all my fathers were,” and then pronounced the benediction.
Thus with reverence and as much ceremony as is permitted by the rubric which prescribes that “the office ensuing shall not be used for any that die unbaptised or excommunicate,” the body of Jakoub was committed to the earth, and his stormy passage through life ended almost within the precincts of my quiet Sussex vicarage.
As we parted for the night to get what rest we could, I felt that my tranquillity was at last restored. I could think almost kindly of Jakoub, for I believed that with him had gone the malign influence that had darkened Edmund’s life and threatened to destroy his character.