VIII
In the afternoon he sent off his man on horseback with the letter to Dr Tamplin, and towards evening he came galloping back with this very characteristic reply:
"MY DEAR WULFREY,
Shocking business and I'm sorely grieved about whole matter. Humanum est errare, but a doctor's not supposed to. Good thing for us we're not always found out. Could you not bring yourself to certify death as result of the accident? I consider it a mistake to admit the possibility of such a thing, so d—d damaging to the profession. And have you considered the matter from your own point of view? Cannot fail to have bad effect. Perhaps give that new fellow just the chance he's been waiting for. —— him!
Think it over again, my boy, from all points, and be wise. I return certificate. Your man will tell you all about my fall. My cob stumbled over a stone last night and broke me a leg and two ribs. I'm too heavy for that kind of thing and he's a —— fool! But it was very dark and we're neither of us as young as we were. For all our sakes I hope you'll come through this all right. We can't spare you. And it might come to that. Remember what silly sheep folks are.
Yours truly,THOMAS TAMPLIN."
Just like the dear, easy-going old boy, fall and all, thought Wulfrey, and the advice tendered and the course suggested did not greatly surprise him. But he had to make allowances for the old man's age and easy-goingness, and his lack of detailed knowledge of all the circumstances of the case,—how almost impossible it would be to ascribe Carew's death to the accident, even if he could have brought himself to do so.
The old man's own shelving would add greatly to the unpleasantness of the situation, for, as deputy-coroner, he would have to call a jury himself, and submit the matter to their consideration and himself to their verdict.
However, there was no way out of that, so he set to work at once and sent out his summonses, calling the inquest for ten o'clock the next morning, at the Hall; and to relieve Elinor as much as possible, he gave orders to the undertaker at Brentham to do all that was necessary, and sent her word that he had done so.
Early next morning, before he was up, young Job was knocking on his front door, with half the pack yelping and leaping outside the gate.
"Well, Job? What's it now?" he asked, from his bedroom window.
"That gal Mollie says you better come up and see th' missus——"
"Why? What's wrong with her?"
"Id'n know, n' more don't Mollie.Shethinks she's had a stroke."
"Wait five minutes and I'll go back with you," and in five minutes they were crunching through the lanes, all hard underfoot with frost that lay like snow, and white and gay with hedge-row lacery of spiders' webs in feathery festoons, and, up above, a crimson sun rising slowly through the mist-banks over the bare black trees.
"What makes Mollie think your mistress has had a stroke?" asked the Doctor. "What does Mollie know about strokes?"
"I d'n know. 'Sims to me she've had a stroke,' was her very words. She've just laid on her bed all day an' all night without speakin' a word, Mollie says,—eatin' noth'n, and drinkin' noth'n, which is onnat'ral; an' sayin' noth'n, which in a woman is onnat'ral too."
"She was quite worn out with nursing Mr Carew."
"Like enough. Hewura handful an' no mistake. Th' house is a deal quieter wi'out him. But who's goin' to run th' pack?—that's what bothers me."
"Don't you worry, Job. Someone will turn up to run the pack all right."
"Mebbe, but it depends on who 'tis. Why not yourself now, Doctor?"
"That's a great compliment, Job, and I appreciate it. But," with a shake of the head, "I'll have other work to do," and he wondered grimly where that work might lie.
Mollie took him straight up to Mrs Carew's room, where she lay just as she had sunk down on the bed when he sent her away the previous morning.
"She's nivver spoke nor moved since she dropped down there yes'day," whispered Mollie impressively. "I covered her up, but she took no notice. An' I brought her up her dinner and her supper but she's never ate a bite."
"Get me a cup of hot milk with an egg and a glass of sherry beaten up in it, Mollie," he whispered back. "And I'll see if I can induce her to take it. You did quite right to send for me," and Mollie hurried away with a more hopeful face.
Elinor lay there with her eyes closed and a rigid, stricken look on her white face, a picture of hopeless despair. But Wulfrey's quick glance had caught the flutter of her heavy lids, and the gleam of terrified enquiry that had shot through them, as they came into the room, and he understood.
He bent over her and whispered, "I have made it all right, Elinor. You need have no further fears——"
"They will not hang me?" she whispered, and looked up into his face with all the terrors of the night still in her woful eyes.
"No one will know anything about it unless you tell them yourself. You will eat something now, and then you had better lie still. Get some sleep if you can or you will make yourself ill. If you fell ill you might say things you should not, you know."
She struggled up on to one elbow. "You are quite sure they will not hang me?" she whispered again.
"Quite sure, unless you are so foolish as to tell them all about it."
"I have felt the rope round my neck all night. Oh, it was terrible in the dark. It was terrible ... terrible——" and she felt about her pretty white neck with her trembling hands.
"Forget all about it now. I have made all the necessary arrangements. There will have to be an inquest. It will be held here—-"
"Here?" she shivered.
"At ten o'clock this morning. You are too ill to be present, so you will just lie still. It will not take long. And I have done everything else that had to be done."
"It is very good of you," she murmured, with a forlorn shake of the head.
She did not ask by what means he had saved her from the consequences of what she had done. Perhaps she dared not. Perhaps she believed he had, after all, forsworn himself for her sake, and refrained from questioning him lest it should only add to his discomfort. Anyway she was satisfied with the fact. She was not going to be hanged. That was enough.
Mollie came in with her deftly-compounded cup.
"Drink it up," said the Doctor. "I will look in again later on," and he went away to prepare the household for the coming meeting in the big dining-room.
IX
The sixteen jurymen, whom Wulfrey had summoned in order to make quite sure of a legal panel, came riding up in ones and twos, with faces tuned to the occasion, disguising, as well as they could, the vast curiosity this sudden call had excited in themselves and all their various households.
That there was something gravely unusual behind it they could not but feel. They were all friends and neighbours; many of them had witnessed Carew's accident and had been constant in their enquiries as to his progress. The news of his death had come as a surprise and a shock, and such of them as happened to join company on the road discussed the matter by fits and starts, and surreptitiously as it were, but did not venture below the surface. Their women-folk at home had done all that was necessary in that respect for the fullest ventilation of the subject, without in any degree rendering it more savoury or comprehensible.
Every man had felt it his bounden duty to be there, and so it was sixteen keenly interested faces that confronted Wulfrey when he took the chair at the head of the table and stood up to speak to them.
His face was very grave, his manner noticeably quiet and restrained and very different from its usual jovial frankness.
"This painful duty, doubly painful under the circumstances, as you will understand in a moment, has fallen to me in consequence of Dr Tamplin being laid up through the fall of his horse yesterday. I am sure you will not make it any more painful for me than it is. I shall not trouble you long. The matter is unfortunately clear and simple. Our friend, Mr Pasley Carew, died the night before last from the effects of a dose of strychnine, administered in a sleeping-draught in mistake for distilled water which was in the bottle alongside it on the shelf in my dispensary."
His eyes ranged keenly over the startled faces round the table at which they had all of them so often sat,—under which some of them had not infrequently lain.
Every face was alight with startled surprise. Not one of them showed the remotest sign of questioning his statement.
Indeed, why should they? A man does not as a rule confess to so grave a lapse unless it is absolutely unavoidable, unless the truth must out and there is no possible loophole of escape.
Not many men would fling away their life's prospects from simple pity for a woman. For love—yes, without a doubt, and count the cost small. But from simple pity, in remembrance of the time when the greater love had been possible? ...
But no such idea found place in any of their minds. His eyes searched theirs for smallest flicker of doubt, but found none. Whatever the women at home might have suggested as extreme possibilities, these men accepted his word without a moment's hesitation. Elinor was perfectly safe.
"He was in great pain and could only get rest and relief by means of opiates. How the mistake occurred I cannot explain, except that the bottles of distilled water and of strychnine stand alongside one another on my shelf, and that I had come in very tired that night and the sleeping-draught was prepared hurriedly. I deplore the results more than any of you possibly can, and of course I must accept the consequences. I have not judged it necessary to make any post-mortem examination. I was called by young Job early yesterday morning, and when I got here Carew was dead and the symptoms were those of poisoning by strychnine. I was amazed and horrified, but when I hurried back home I saw at once how the mistake might have been made, and—and—well, there the matter is and you must bring in such verdict as you deem right. You can see the body if you wish. You can examine the servants. Mrs Carew, I am sorry to say, is quite broken down with the shock. She has been, I am told, practically unconscious for nearly twenty-four hours and has only just come to herself. But if you would like to see her——"
"No, no." "No need whatever," said the jurymen deprecatingly.
Dr Wulfrey sat down and dropped his head into his hands, then got up again heavily and said, "You will discuss this matter better without me. I will leave you——"
"Couldn't you possibly say he died as result of the accident, Wulf?" asked one—Jim Barclay of Breme.
They all liked the Doctor. With some he had been on terms of very close friendship. Some of them had known him all his life and his father before him.
"Ay, couldn't you?" chorussed some of the others.
"If I could I should have done so," he said quietly. "But it wasn't so and I couldn't say it was."
"Say it now, Wulf," urged his friend. "And I swear none of us will let it out. Isn't that so, gentlemen?"
"Ay, ay!"—but somewhat dubiously from the older members, who saw that after this revelation of the actual facts to themselves their relations with the Doctor could never be quite the same again, however they might succeed in hoodwinking the world outside.
They knew him, they liked him, but—well, at the back of their minds was the thought that if Dr Wulf could make a mistake in one case, there was no knowing but what he might in another,—that he might at any time come in tired and pick up the wrong bottle,—that, whatever risks one might accept on one's own account for old friendship's sake, one's wife and daughters should hardly be put into such a position all unknown to themselves. And more than one of them wondered what he would do if he should happen to be taken ill that night—send for Dr Wulf or the new man down in the village?
Dale diagnosed their symptoms with the sensitiveness born of the equivocal nature of the new relationship in which his confession placed him towards them.
"It is like your good-heartedness to suggest it, Barclay," he said to his impetuous friend, "but it cannot be. I can only do what seems to me right," and he left them to talk over their verdict.
"Gad! but I'm mighty sorry this has happened," said one old squire who had known Wulf from the year one. "Many's the time I've sat at this table——"
"And under it," interjected one.
"Ay, and under it, and I never expected to sit round it on Pasley Carew. I'd give a year's rents to have him back, even if he was all in pieces and raging like the Devil."
"Same here. Whatever we decide it'll get out, and it's bound to tell against Dr Wulf."
"He's bound to suffer,—can't help it,—it's human nature. Suppose you took ill tonight now, Barclay. What would you do?"
"What would I do? I'd send for Wulf Dale of course, and I'd have same faith in him as I've always had."
"Of course, of course,"—but even those who said it had more the air of wishing to placate Barclay, who had a temper, rather than of any deep conviction as to their own course should the unfortunate necessity arise.
"Well," said Barclay, with the manner of a volcano on the point of eruption. "All I can say is that if any man I know goes ill and does not send for Wulf Dale, he'll have me to reckon with if the other man doesn't kill him."
"Hear, hear!" from various points about the table.
"Well, we've got to decide something and make an end of the matter," said one. "Barclay, you write out what you think and I've no doubt we'll all agree to it."
"I'm going to write nothing," said Barclay, whose strong brown hand was more accustomed to the hunting-crop than the pen. "I say 'Accidental Death,' and keep your mouths shut."
They all said 'Accidental Death' and promised to keep their mouths shut; and Wulfrey, when he was called in, thanked theta soberly for their good intentions, but added to their verdict,—"as the result of strychnine poison administered in mistake for distilled water in a sleeping-draught prepared by Dr Wulfrey Dale."
X
Jim Barclay, who was a bachelor, kept his bed next morning with an alleged bad cold,—-a thing he had never been troubled with in all his born days, and ostentatiously sent his man galloping for Dr Wulfrey as though his master's life depended on it.
Wulfrey smiled at the message, understanding the staunch friendliness which lay behind it, and went.
"Well, what's wrong with you?" he enquired of the burly patient, when he was shown up to his bedroom.
"Just you, my boy. Haven't slept a wink all night for thinking of the whole —— mess. Wulf, my lad, I'm afraid you'll have a deuce an' all of a time of it. Thought I'd show 'em there was one man thought none the worse of you. ——! ——! ——! Can't any man make a little mistake like that? Trouble is, most of those other fools have got a pack of yelping women-folk about 'em, and they're all on the quee-vee and as keen on the scent as any old——," and he launched into comparisons drawn from the kennels into which we need not enter. "They all promised not to blab, and they'll none of 'em tell any but their wives under promise of secrecy, and it'll be all over the country-side in a week."
"I know it, old man. I've just got to stand it," said Dale soberly.
"What's in your mind then?"
"I'll just wait quietly and see what comes. I can't expect things to be as they were before."
"And if things go badly? —— —— —— it all!"
"Then I'm thinking I'll go too."
"Where?"
"Oh, right away. America maybe, or Canada. It's a big country they say and just beginning to open up. I shan't starve anyway, wherever I go."
"But,—to leave us all and all this? —— —— —— it all, man! The place won't be like itself without you. —— Pasley Carew!"
"It wasn't his fault, you know——"
"It was his —— fault putting Blackbird at that —— Old Road after the run we'd had, wasn't it? I told him he was two stone too heavy for her. But he always was a fool."
"He was to blame there undoubtedly. But the rest I take to myself. If folks go to the other man I can't blame them. I shall go nowhere unless I'm sent for."
"You'll have a —— long holiday," growled Barclay.
"Well, I can do with one."
"I've half a mind to have a smash-up just to keep your hand in."
"If you do I'll—I'll turn the other man on to you."
"If he puts his nose in here he'll go out faster than he came, I wager you."
It was comforting to have so whole-hearted a supporter; but one patient, and a sham one at that, does not make a practice, and Dale very soon felt the effects of the course he had chosen.
He adhered resolutely to the decision he had come to to visit none of his patients unless he were sent for. It would be neither fair to them nor agreeable to himself. It might do more harm than good.
As to Mrs Carew,—he had visited her immediately after the inquest, and told her briefly that all was right and she need have no further fears. There was nothing wrong with her which a few days' rest and the relief of her mind would not set right. All the same he rather feared she might send for him, and he debated in his own mind whether, if she did so, he should go or send her messenger on to Dr Newman. It appeared to him hardly seemly that the man who had accepted the responsibility for the death of the husband should continue his attendance on his widow.
She did not of course as yet know the facts of the case as outsiders did. He was somewhat doubtful of the effect upon her when she came to a clear understanding of the matter. On the whole, he decided it would be better if possible not to see her again. What he had done for her had been done out of pity, but it was not the pity that sometimes leads to warmer feeling. All that had died a natural death when she married Carew.
He attended the funeral with the rest. It would only have made comment if he had not. And Jim Barclay and most of the others were at pains to manifest their continued friendliness and confidence.
Whether the full facts had got out he could not tell, but, rightly or wrongly, imagined so, and for the second time in his life he found himself ill at ease among his neighbours.
The day after the funeral, young Job and a bunch of lively dogs came down again with an urgent message from Mrs Carew requesting him to call.
"Is your mistress worse, Job?" he said.
"She be main bad, Doctor, 'cording to that gal Mollie, but what 'tis I dunnot know. Mebbe she's just down wi' it all. Have ye heard ony talk yet as t' who's going to tek on th' pack?"
"Mr Barclay will, I believe. He's a good man for it."
"Ay, he may do. Bit heavy, mebbe, an' he's got a temper 'bout as bad as Pasley's."
"Bit hot perhaps at times, but he's an excellent fellow at bottom."
"All that, and his cussin' ain't to compare wi' Pasley's, which is a good thing. I c'n stand a reasonable amount o' cussin' myself and no offence taken, but Pasley did go past th' mark at times. Th' very hosses kicked when he let out. An' Jim Barclay he is good to his hosses, an' he only cusses when he must or bust. Ay, he'll do, seein' you won't tek it on yourself, Doctor."
"It's not for me, Job. A doctor's time is not entirely his own, you know."
"Ah!" said Job, and picked a twig from the hedge, and stuck it in his mouth, and trudged on in solemn silence.
"We wus rather hopin', feyther an' me," he grunted after a time, "you'd mebbe have more time now fur th' pack an' would tek it on."
"Why that, Job?"
"Well, y' see, it'll mek a difference this. It's bound to mek a difference. Folks is such silly fools 'bout such things——"
"What things?"
"Why, that there strychnine. 'S if anyone couldn't mek a li'l mistake like that. Might have sense to know ye'd never let it happen again. Even th' leeghtnin', they say, never strikes twice i' same place. Though sure 'nuff it did hit th' old mill one side one day and t'other side next day. But even then 'twere opposite sides. But folks is fools."
"So you know all about it."
"Ay, sure! 'Twere that gal Mollie told me, an' it were Mrs Thelstane's gal Bet told her. None o' us think a bit the worse o' you, Doctor, you b'lieve me. But some folks is fools—most folks, if it comes to that.... An' as to Pasley—well, he were a terror now'n again. Th' Hall's like Heaven wi'out him."
They went on again in silence for a time. But there was that in young Job's mind which had to come out.
"If 'twere me, Doctor, askin' your pardon in advance for bein' so bold, what I'd do would be this. I'd just sit quiet till they done yelpin' and yappin' 'bout it all, then I'd marry th' missus,—we all knows you was sweet on her once,—and settle down comfortable at th' Hall and tek over th' pack an' mek us all happy."
"That's out of the question, Job."
"Is it now? ... Well, I'm sorry. Wus hopin' mebbe a word of advice from a man what's old enough to be your feyther, an's known you since day you was born, might be o' some use to ye. We'd like you fain well for Master, both o' th' Hall an' th' Hunt."
"You're a good old chap, Job, and so's your father, but you'll both be doing me a favour if you'll stop any talk of that kind."
"No manner o' use?"
"No use at all."
"Well, I'm main sorry. An' so's feyther, I can tell ye."
Mrs Carew was sitting in a large chintz-covered armchair before the fire in her bedroom, when he was taken up to her by Mollie, who favoured him with her own diagnosis as they mounted the stairs.
"She's that bad again. Can't sleep and off her food. Ain't had hardly anything all day or yes'day. Just sits 'fore th' fire and mopes from morn'n till night. 'Taint natural for sure, for him 'at's gone weren't one to cry for, that's cert'n.... No, she don't complain of any pain or anything. Just sits and mopes and cries on the quiet 's if her heart was broke. Sure she'd more cause to cry before he was took than what she has now."
When he entered the room he did not at first see her, so sunk down was she in the depths of the great ear-flapped chair.
She made no attempt to rise and greet him. When he stood beside her and quietly expressed his regret at finding her no better, she covered her face with her hands and sobbed convulsively.
She looked little more than a girl, slight and frail and forlorn, as she crouched there with hidden face, and he was truly sorry for her. It was impossible for him to keep the sympathy he felt entirely out of his voice.
"What can I do for you, Mrs Carew?" he asked quietly, and the forlorn figure shook again but made no response.
"You are doing yourself harm with all this," he said gently again. "And there is really no occasion for it, that I can see."
Her silent extremity of grief—her utter discomfiture was pitiful to look upon. It touched him profoundly, for he penetrated the meaning of it. She was overwhelmed with the knowledge of the sacrifice he had made for her—and with pity for herself.
All he could do was to wait quietly till the feeling, roused afresh by his presence, had spent itself.
"Oh, I did not know," she whispered at last, through the shielding hands. "I did not know you would do that.... You have ruined yourself.... You should have let them hang me."
And there and then, on the spur of the moment, he leaped up a height which he had not even sighted a second before.
He had, by the sacrifice of his prospects, saved her from the legal consequences of her act. That was irrevocably past and done with, and he must pay the price. But she was paying a double due—remorse for what she herself had done, bitter sorrow at the ruinous price he had paid for her safety.
He had saved her life. Why not save her the rest?—her peace of mind, all her possibilities of future happiness.
In any case it would make no difference to him. For her it might mean all the difference between darkness and light for the rest of her life. And she looked pitifully helpless and hopeless as she lay there sobbing convulsively in the big chair.
He saw the possibility in a flash and gripped it.
"Hang you? Why on earth should anyone want to hang you?" he asked, with all the natural surprise he could put into it.
"You know,"—in a scared whisper. "Because I got him the poison——"
"Come, come now! Let us have no more of that. I was hoping a good night's rest would have ridded you of that bad dream."
"Dream?" and she looked up at him wildly. "Ah, if I could only believe it was a dream!" and she shook her head forlornly.
"Why, of course it was a dream. You were over-wrought with it all, and your mind took the bit in its teeth and ran away with you. What you've got to do now is to try to forget all about it."
"Forget!"
"How I came to make such a mistake I cannot imagine, but when I got home I saw at once that there was an extra dose gone out of my strychnine bottle instead of out of the distilled water, and that explained it at once."
"You? ...Youmade the mistake?" she looked up at him again, eagerly, with warped face and knitted brows, and a wavering flutter of hope in her eyes.... "You are only saying it to comfort me."
"I'm trying to show you how foolish it is to allow yourself to be ridden by this strange notion you've got into your head."
"Strange notion? ... Did he not beg me to get him that stuff he used for the rats? And did I not get it for him? And he took it. And then——" she shivered at the remembrance of what followed when her husband took the draught.
"All in that horrible dream when your mind was running away with you——"
"And did you not come and tell me they would hang me unless I kept my mouth shut? And I lay all that dreadful night with the rope round my neck——"
"All in your dream. I'm sorry. It must have been terribly real to you."
"A dream?" and she stared wistfully into the fire, hex hands clasping and unclasping nervously. "If I could believe it!"
"You must believe what I tell you, and forget all about it and recover yourself."
"And you?" she said after a pause.
"I shall be all right. Don't trouble your head about me."
"If I did not do it," she said, after another long silent gazing into the fire, "then there would be no need for you to hate me——"
"No need whatever,—all part of that stupid dream."
"And ... sometime perhaps ... you would think better of me ... as you used to do. Oh,—Wulfrey! ..."
If it had all happened as he had almost persuaded her to believe, he might have fallen into his own pit.
For, under the stress of her emotions,—the wild hope of the possibility of relief from the horror that had been weighing her down,—the letting in of this thread of sunshine into the blackness of her despair,—the sudden joy of the thought that it was not she who needed Wulfrey's forgiveness, but he hers;—the shadows and the years fell from her, and she was more like the Elinor Baynard he had once been in love with than he had seen her since the day she married Pasley Carew.
"We must not think of any such things," he said quickly, but not unkindly. He was very sorry for her, but he was no longer in love with her. "At present all we've got to think about is getting you quite yourself again. I will send you up some medicine,—if you won't be afraid to take it——"
"Oh, Wulfrey! ..." with all the reproach she could put into it, and anxiously, "You will come again soon?"
"If you get on well perhaps. If you don't I shall turn you over to Dr Newman," and he left her.
"She ain't agoing to die, Doctor?" asked Mollie, as she waylaid him.
"No, Mollie. She's going to get better."
"Ah, I knew it'd do her good if you came to see her," said the astute handmaid with an approving look.
"Get her to eat and feed her up. She's been letting herself run down."
"Ah, she'll eat now maybe, if so be 's you've given her a bit of an appetite," said Mollie hopefully; and Dr Wulfrey went away home.
XI
But even two patients hardly make a practice, and though from the stolid commoner folk calls still came for 'th' Doctor's' services, upon the better classes a sudden blessing of unusual health appeared to have fallen, or else——
Dr Newman bought a horse about this time, and, though he did not as yet cut much of a figure on horseback, it enabled him to get about as he had never had occasion to do since he settled in the village, and it seemed as though, in his case as in others, practice would in time make him passable.
Wulfrey watched the course of events quietly and with a certain equanimity. His mind was quite made up to go abroad, but he would not go till he was satisfied that that was the only course left to him.
Everybody he met was as friendly as ever, the men especially, but sickness was a rare thing with them at any time, and their women-folk seemed to be getting along very well, for the time being without medical assistance, so far at all events as Dr Wulfrey Dale was concerned.
Mrs Carew was better. Whatever she really believed as to the actual facts of her husband's death, she apparently accepted Dale's statement, to the great relief of her mind and consequent benefit to her health. She sent for the Doctor as often as she reasonably could, and sometimes without any better reason than her desire to see him. Until at last he told her she was perfectly well and he would come no more unless there were actual need.
"But there is actual need, Wulfrey. It does me good to see you. If you don't come I shall fall into a low state again."
"If you do I shall know it is simple perversity and I'll send Dr Newman to you."
"Mollie would never let him in."
Which was likely enough, for Mollie's mind was quite made up as to the only right and proper course for matters to take under all the present circumstances.
The March winds brought on a mild epidemic of influenza.
Dr Newman and his new horse were ostentatiously busy. Wulfrey saw that he had waited long enough, and that now it was time to go. No one could accuse him of running away. It was his practice that had found its legs and walked over to Dr Newman.
He made his arrangements at once and by no means downcastly. The hanging-on had been trying. It was new life to be up and doing, with a new world somewhere in front to be discovered and conquered.
He packed his trunks, gave Mr Truscott, the lawyer, instructions to dispose of his house and everything in it except certain specified articles and pictures, arranged with his bankers at Chester to collect and re-invest his dividends, drew out a couple of hundred pounds to go on with, told them he was going abroad and they might not hear from him for some time to come, and went round to say good-bye to Jim Barclay and Elinor Carew.
"Where are you going?" asked Barclay, when he heard he was off.
"Wherever the chase may lead," said Wulfrey, in better spirits than he had been for many a day. "I shall go first to the States and Canada and have a good look round. If any place lays hold of me I may settle down there."
"For good and all?"
"Possibly. Can't say till I see what it's like. I want you to take Graylock and Billyboy till I come back. You know all about them. There's no one else I'd care to leave 'em with and I don't care to sell them."
"They'll miss you, same as the rest of us."
"For a week or two, maybe. Dr Newman is getting into things nicely, but you might give him a lesson or two in riding, Jim."
"—— him, I'd liefer break his back!" was Barclay's terse comment. "You'll let me know where you get to, Wulf, and maybe I'll take a run over to see you, if you really find it in your heart to settle out there. I'll bring the horses with me if you like."
"I'll let you know. Fine sporting country, I believe,—bears, wolves, buffaloes, game of sorts."
"Well, good-bye and God bless you, my boy! Remember there'll always be one man in the old country that wants you. I'd sooner die than have that new man poking round me. I'll send for old Tom Tamplin, hanged if I don't."
Wulfrey rode on to the Hall.
"Going away, Wulf? Where to and for how long?" asked Elinor, anxious and troubled.
"That depends. I've not been up to the mark lately and a good long change will set me up."
"But you will come back?"
"I have really no plans made, except to get away for a time and see a bit of the outside world."
"I was hoping ... you would stop and ... sometime, perhaps..." and the small white hands clasped and unclasped nervously, as was her way when her mind was upset.
"The change I am sure will be good for me. And you are quite all right again. You are looking better than I've seen you for a long time past."
"I'm all right," she said drearily, "except that I have bad dreams now and again. I cannot be quite sure in my own mind——"
"Now, now!"—shaking a peremptory finger at her. "That is all past and done with. Bad dreams are forbidden, remember!"
"I can't help their coming. They come in spite of all my trying at times. And they are always the same. I see Pasley lying on the bed, raging and cursing, and ordering me to go and get him——"
"It's only a dream of a dream. I was hoping you had quite got the better of it. You must fight against it. Now I must run. Got a lot of things to do yet, and I'm off first thing in the morning. Good-bye, Elinor,—and all happiness to you!"
BOOK II
NO MAN'S LAND
XII
Wulfrey Dale, as he strolled about the Liverpool docks and basins, felt very much like a schoolboy who had run away from home in search of the wide free life of the Rover of the Seas.
He had, however, one vast advantage over the runaway, in that he had money in his pocket and could pick and choose, and there was no angry master or troubled parent on his track to haul him back to bondage.
He had no slightest regrets in the matter. Under all the circumstances of the case, he said to himself, he could have done nothing else. Elinor, left to herself, would undoubtedly have paid with her life, either on the gallows or in a mad-house, and that was unthinkable. The inexorable Law would have taken no account of the true inwardness of the case. He had saved her because he understood, and because the alternatives had been too dreadful to think of.
As to the cost to himself,—the long blue-green heave of the sea, out there beyond the point, made little of that, changed it indeed from one side of the account to the other, and presented it, not as a loss, but as very substantial gain.
Out beyond there lay the world, the vast unknown, the larger life; and the windy blue sky streaked with long-drawn wisps of feathery white cloud, and the tumbling green waves with their crisp white caps, and the screaming gulls in their glorious free flight, all tugged at his heart and called him to the quest.
And these cumbered quays, with their heaps of merchandise, and the jerking ropes and squeaking pulley-blocks that piled them higher and higher every moment,—the swaying masts up above and busy decks down below,—the strange foreign smells and flavour of it all,—the rough tarry-breeks hanging about and spitting jovially in the intervals of uncouth talk,—all these were but a foretaste of the great change, and he savoured them all with vastest enjoyment.
He inspected, from a distance, the great clippers that did the voyage to New York in twenty to twenty-five days, stately and disciplined, in the very look of them, as ships of the line almost.
There were ships loading and unloading for and from nearly every port in the world. It was like being at the centre of a mighty spider's web whose arms and filaments reached out to the extremest ends of the earth. He had never felt so free in his life before.
He was in no pressing hurry to settle on either his port or his ship, but in any case it would not be on one of those great packet-boats he would go. His fancy ran rather to something smaller, something more intimate in itself and less likely to be crowded with passengers whose acquaintance he had no desire to make.
He wandered further among the smaller craft, with a relish in the search that was essentially a part of the new life. He developed quite a discriminating taste in ships, though it was only by chatting with the old salts who lounged about the quay-walls that he learned to distinguish a ship from a barque and a brig from a schooner. His preferences were based purely on appearances. The sea-faring qualities of the various craft were beyond him.
But here and there, one and another would attract him by reason of its looks, and he would return again and again to compare them with still later discoveries, saying to himself, "Yes, that would do first-rate now, if she should happen to be going my way. We'll see presently."
He came, in time, upon a brig loading in one of these outer basins, and even to his untutored eye she was a picture,—so graceful her lines, so tapering her masts, so trim and taut the whole look of her.
"Where does she go to?" he asked of an old sailor-man, who was sitting on a cask, chewing his quid like an old cow and spitting meditatively at intervals.
"Bawst'n, 'Merica, 's where she's bound this v'y'ge, Mister, an' ef she did it in twenty days I shouldn' be a bit s'prised, not a bit, I shouldn'."
"Good-looking boat! What does she carry?"
"Miskellaneous cargo. Bit o' everything, as you might say."
"And when does she sail?"'
"Fust tide, I reck'n, ef so be's her crew a'n't been ganged. Finished loading not ha'f an hour ago she did."
"Does she take any passengers?"
"Couldn' say. Passenger boats is mostly down yonder."
"I know, but I like the look of this one better than the big ones."
"Well, you c'n ask aboard."
"Yes? How can I get on board?"
"Why, down that there ladder," and Wulfrey, following the direction of a ponderous roll of the old fellow's head and a squirt of tobacco-juice, came upon some iron rungs let into a straight up-and-down groove in the face of the quay-wall. By going down on his hands and knees, and making careful play with his feet, he managed at last to get on to this apology for a ladder and succeeded in climbing down it, over the side of the ship on to its deck.
The deck, dirty as it was with the work of loading, felt springy to his unaccustomed feet. It was the first ship's deck he had ever trodden. The very feel of it was exhilarating. It was like setting foot on the bridge that led to the new life.
As he looked about him,—at the neatly-coiled ropes, the rope-handled buckets, the blue water-casks lashed to the deck below one of the masts, the masts themselves, massive below but tapering up into the sky like fishing-rods, the mazy network of rigging, four little brass carronades and the ship's bell, all polished to the nines and shining like gold,—the worries and troubles of the last few months fell from him like a ragged garment. Elinor Carew, and Croome, and Jim Barclay, and even Graylock and Billyboy, the parting with whom had been as sore a wrench as any, all seemed very far away, things of the past, shadowy in presence of these stimulating realities of the new life.
He walked aft along the deck towards a door under the raised poop, and at the sound of his coming a man came out of the door and said, "Hello!" and stood and stared at him out of a pair of very deep-set, sombre black eyes.
He was a tall, well-built fellow of about Wulfrey's own age, black-haired, black-bearded and moustached, and of a somewhat saturnine countenance. His face and neck were the colour of dark mahogany with much sun and weather. He wore small gold rings in his ears, and Wulfrey set him down for a foreigner,—a Spaniard, he thought, or perhaps an Italian.
"I was told you were sailing tomorrow for Boston," said Wulfrey. "I came to ask if you take passengers."
The man's black brows lifted a trifle and he took stock of Wulfrey while he considered the question. Then he said, "Ay? well, we do and we don't," and Wulfrey rearranged his ideas as to his nationality and decided that he was either Scotch or North of Ireland, though he did not look either one or the Other.
"That perhaps means that you might."
"Et's for the auld man to say——"
"The Captain?"
"Ay, Cap'n Bain."
"Where could I see him?"
"He's up in the toon."
"If you'll tell me where to find him I'll go after him."
The other seemed to turn this over in his mind, and then said, "Ye'd best see him here. He'll mebbe no be long."
"Then I'll wait. What time do you expect to clear out?"
"We'll know when the old man comes."
"Perhaps you would let me see the rooms, while I'm waiting."
The dark man turned slowly and went down three steps into the small main cabin. His leisurely manner suggested no more than a willingness not to be disobliging.
It was a fair-sized room, with a grated skylight overhead, portholes at the sides, seats and lockers below them, and a table with wooden forms to sit on. At the far end were two more doors.
"Cap'n's bunk and mine," said his guide, with a roll of the head towards the left-hand door, and opened the other for Wulfrey to look in at the narrow passage off which opened two small sleeping-rooms.
"You are then——?" asked Wulfrey.
"Mate."
"You're Scotch, aren't you? I took you at first sight for a foreigner."
"I'm frae the Islands.... Some folks hold there's mixed blood in some of us since the times when the Spaniards were wrecked there. Mebbe! I d'n know."
"And Captain Bain? He's Scotch too, I judge, by his name."
"Ay, he's Scotch—Glesca."
"If he'll take me as passenger I'll be glad. This would suit me uncommonly well."
"Ay, well. He'll say when he comes," and whenever his black eyes rested on Wulfrey they seemed to be questioning what it could be that made him wish to travel on a trading-brig rather than on a passenger-liner.
However, he asked no questions but pulled out a black clay pipe, and Wulfrey pulled out his own and anticipated the other's search for tobacco by handing him his pouch. They had sat silently smoking for but a few minutes when a heavy foot was heard on the deck outside, and there came a gruff call for "Macro!"
"Ay, ay, sir!" and the doorway darkened with the short burly figure of a man whose words preceded him, "Tom Crimp'll have 'em all here by ten o'clock an' we'll—— Wha the deevil's this?"
"Wants to go passenger to Boston," explained the mate, and left Wulfrey to his own negotiations.
"If you're open to take a passenger, Captain Bain, I've fallen in love with the looks of your ship."
"What for d'ye no want to go in a passenger-ship? We're no a passenger-ship," and the Captain eyed him suspiciously.
"Just that I dislike travelling with a crowd, I've been looking round for some days and your ship pleases me better than any I've seen."
"Where are you from, and what's your name and rating!"
"I'm from Cheshire. Name, Wulfrey Dale. Rating, Doctor."
"An' what for are ye wanting to go to Boston!"
"I'm going out to look round. I may settle out there if I find any place I like."
"Are ye in trouble? Poisoned ony one? Resurrectionist, mebbe?"
"Neither one nor the other. I've no work here. I'm going to look for some over there."
"Can ye pay?"
"Of course. I'm not asking you to take me out of charity."
"That's a guid thing."
"How much shall we say? And when do you sail?"
"Et'll be twenty guineas, ped in advance, an' ef ye want ony victuals beyant what the ship provides, which is or'nary ship's fare same as me and the mate eats, ye'll provide 'em yourself."
"Understood! And you sail——"
"To-night's flood, ef the men get aboard all safe. They're promised me for ten o'clock."
"I'll pay you now and go up for my things."
"An' whaur may they be?"
"At Cotton's, in Castle Street."
"Aweel! Juist keep a quiet tongue in your heid, Doctor, as to the ship ye're sailing on. The 'Grassadoo' doesna tak passengers, ye ken, an' I dinna want it talked aboot."
"I understand. I've only got a box and a bag, but I'll have to get a man to carry them."
"Ay—weel!" and after a moment's consideration, "You wait at Cotton's an' we'll send Jock Steele, the carpenter, up for them at eight o'clock. Ye can coach or truck 'em as far as he says and carry 'em between you the rest."
So Wulfrey paid down his twenty guineas, and Captain Bain stowed them away in his trouser pocket, and buttoned it up carefully, with a dry, "Donal' Bain's word's his only recipee. You be here before ten o'clock and the 'Grassadoo' 'll be waiting for you."
"That's all right, Captain," said Wulfrey. "And I'm much obliged to you for stretching a point and taking me."
"It's me that's doing it, ye understand, not the owners. That's why."