The night-porter at the Admiralty had been sleeping in his chair. He was red-eyed and wore his livery coat buttoned at random. He grumbled to himself as he opened the great door.
He carried a glass-screened candle, and held it somewhat above the level of his forehead—which was protuberant and heavily pock-marked. Under the light he peered out at the visitor, who stood tall and stiff, with uniform overcoat buttoned to the chin, between the Ionic pillars of the portico.
"Who's there?"
"Lieutenant Lapenotiere, of thePickleschooner—with dispatches."
"Dispatches?" echoed the night-porter. Out beyond the screen of masonry that shut off the Board of Admiralty's forecourt from Whitehall, one of the tired post-horses started blowing through its nostrils on this foggy night.
"From Admiral Collingwood—Mediterranean Fleet off Cadiz—sixteen days," answered the visitor curtly. "Is everyone abed?"
"Admiral Collingwood? Why Admiral Collingwood?" The night-porter fell back a pace, opening the door a trifle wider. "Good God, sir! You don't say as how—"
"You can fetch down a Secretary or someone, I hope?" said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, quickly stepping past him into the long dim hall. "My dispatches are of the first importance. I have posted up from Falmouth without halt but for relays."
As the man closed the door, he heard his post-boy of the last relay slap one of the horses encouragingly before heading home to stable. The chaise wheels began to move on the cobbles.
"His Lordship himself will see you, sir. Of that I make no doubt," twittered the night-porter, fumbling with the bolt. "There was a terrible disturbance, back in July, when Captain Bettesworth arrived—not so late as this, to be sure, but towards midnight—and they waited till morning, to carry up the dispatches with his Lordship's chocolate. Thankful was I next day not to have been on duty at the time.…If you will follow me, sir—"
Lieutenant Lapenotiere had turned instinctively towards a door on the right. It admitted to the Waiting Room, and there were few officers in the service who did not know—and only too well—that Chamber of Hope Deferred.
"No, sir,…this way, if you please," the night-porter corrected him, and opened a door on the left. "The Captains' Room," he announced, passing in and steering for the chimney-shelf, on which stood a pair of silver sconces each carrying three wax candles. These he took down, lit and replaced. "Ah, sir! Many's the time I've showed Lord Nelson himself into this room, in the days before Sir Horatio, and even after. And you were sayin'—"
"I said nothing."
The man moved to the door; but halted there and came back, as though in his own despite.
"I can't help it, sir.…Half a guinea he used to give me, regular. But the last time—and hard to believe 'twas little more than a month ago—he halts on his way out, and says he, searchin' awkward-like in his breeches' pocket with his left hand, 'Ned,' says he, 'my old friend'—aye, sir, his old friend he called me—'Ned,' says he, pullin' out a fistful o' gold, 'my old friend,' says he, 'I'll compound with you for two guineas, this bein' the last time you may hold the door open for me, in or out. But you must pick 'em out,' says he, spreadin' his blessed fingers with the gold in 'em: 'for a man can't count money who's lost his right flapper.' Those were his words, sir. 'Old friend,' he called me, in that way of his."
Lieutenant Lapenotiere pointed to his left arm. Around the sleeve a black scarf was knotted.
"Dead, sir," the night-porter hushed his voice.
"Dead," echoed Lieutenant Lapenotiere, staring at the Turkey carpet, of which the six candles, gaining strength, barely illumined the pattern. "Dead, at the top of victory; a great victory. Go: fetch somebody down."
The night-porter shuffled off. Lieutenant Lapenotiere, erect and sombre, cast a look around the apartment, into which he had never before been admitted. The candles lit up a large painting—a queer bird's-eye view of Venice. Other pictures, dark and bituminous, decorated the panelled walls—portraits of dead admirals, a sea-piece or two, some charts.…This was all he discerned out in the dim light; and in fact he scanned the walls, the furniture of the room, inattentively. His stomach was fasting, his head light with rapid travel; above all, he had a sense of wonder that all this should be happening tohim. For, albeit a distinguished officer, he was a modest man, and by habit considered himself of no great importance; albeit a brave man, too, he shrank at the thought of the message he carried—a message to explode and shake millions of men in a confusion of wild joy or grief.
For about the tenth time in those sixteen days it seemed to burst and escape in an actual detonation, splitting his head—there, as he waited in the strange room where never a curtain stirred. . . . It was a trick his brain played him, repeating, echoing the awful explosion of the French seventy-fourAchille, which had blown up towards the close of the battle. When the ship was ablaze and sinking, his own crew had put off in boats to rescue the Frenchmen, at close risk of their own lives, for her loaded guns, as they grew red-hot, went off at random among rescuers and rescued. . . .
As had happened before when he felt this queer shock, his mind travelled back and he seemed to hear the series of discharges running up at short intervals to the great catastrophe.…To divert his thoughts, he turned to study the view of Venice above the chimney-piece…and on a sudden faced about again.
He had a sensation that someone was in the room—someone standing close behind him.
But no.…For the briefest instant his eyes rested on an indistinct shadow—his own perhaps, cast by the candle-light? Yet why should it lie lengthwise there, shaped like a coffin, on the dark polished table that occupied the middle of the room?
The answer was that it did not. Before he could rub his eyes it had gone. Moreover, he had turned to recognise a living being…and no living person was in the room, unless by chance (absurd supposition) one were hidden behind the dark red window curtains.
"Recognise" may seem a strange word to use; but here had lain the strangeness of the sensation—that the someone standing there was a friend, waiting to be greeted. It was with eagerness and a curious warmth of the heart that Lieutenant Lapenotiere had faced about—upon nothing.
He continued to stare in a puzzled way at the window curtains, when a voice by the door said:
"Good evening!—or perhaps, to be correct, good morning! You are Mr.—"
"Lapenotiere," answered the Lieutenant, who had turned sharply. The voice—a gentleman's and pleasantly modulated—was not one he knew; nor did he recognise the speaker—a youngish, shrewd-looking man, dressed in civilian black, with knee-breeches. "Lapenotiere—of thePickleschooner."
"Yes, yes—the porter bungled your name badly, but I guessed. Lord Barham will see you personally. He is, in fact, dressing with all haste at this moment.…I am his private secretary," explained the shrewd-looking gentleman in his quiet, business-like voice. "Will you come with me upstairs?"
Lieutenant Lapenotiere followed him. At the foot of the great staircase the Secretary turned.
"I may take it, sir, that we are not lightly disturbing his Lordship—who is an old man."
"The news is of great moment, sir. Greater could scarcely be."
The Secretary bent his head. As they went up the staircase Lieutenant Lapenotiere looked back and caught sight of the night-porter in the middle of the hall, planted there and gazing up, following their ascent.
On the first-floor landing they were met by a truly ridiculous spectacle. There emerged from a doorway on the left of the wide corridor an old gentleman clad in night-cap, night-shirt and bedroom slippers, buttoning his breeches and cursing vigorously; while close upon him followed a valet with dressing-gown on one arm, waistcoat and wig on the other, vainly striving to keep pace with his master's impatience.
"The braces, my lord—your Lordship has them forepart behind, if I may suggest—"
"Damn the braces!" swore the old gentleman. "Where is he? Hi, Tylney!" as he caught sight of the Secretary. "Where are we to go? My room, I suppose?"
"The fire is out there, my lord.…'Tis past three in the morning. But after sending word to awake you, I hunted round and by good luck found a plenty of promising embers in the Board Room grate. On top of these I've piled what remained of my own fire, and Dobson has set a lamp there—"
"You've been devilish quick, Tylney. Dressed like a buck you are, too!"
"Your Lordship's wig," suggested the valet.
"Damn the wig!" Lord Barham snatched it and attempted to stick it on top of his night-cap, damned the night-cap, and, plucking it off, flung it to the man.
"I happened to be sitting up late, my lord, over theAeoluspapers," said Mr. Secretary Tylney.
"Ha?" Then, to the valet, "The dressing-gown there! Don't fumble! …So this is Captain—"
"Lieutenant, sir: Lapenotiere, commanding thePickleschooner."
The Lieutenant saluted.
"From the Fleet, my lord—off Cadiz; or rather, off Cape Trafalgaro."
He drew the sealed dispatch from an inner breast-pocket and handed it to the First Lord.
"Here, step into the Board Room.…Where the devil are my spectacles?" he demanded of the valet, who had sprung forward to hold open the door.
Evidently the Board Room had been but a few hours ago the scene of a large dinner-party. Glasses, dessert-plates, dishes of fruit, decanters empty and half empty, cumbered the great mahogany table as dead and wounded, guns and tumbrils, might a battlefield. Chairs stood askew; crumpled napkins lay as they had been dropped or tossed, some on the floor, others across the table between the dishes.
"Looks cosy, eh?" commented the First Lord. "Maggs, set a screen around the fire, and look about for a decanter and some clean glasses."
He drew a chair close to the reviving fire, and glanced at the cover of the dispatch before breaking its seal.
"Nelson's handwriting?" he asked. It was plain that his old eyes, unaided by spectacles, saw the superscription only as a blur.
"No, my lord: Admiral Collingwood's," said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, inclining his head.
Old Lord Barham looked up sharply. His wig set awry, he made a ridiculous figure in his hastily donned garments. Yet he did not lack dignity.
"Why Collingwood?" he asked, his fingers breaking the seal. "God! you don't tell me—"
"Lord Nelson is dead, sir."
"Dead—dead?…Here, Tylney—you read what it says. Dead? . . . No, damme, let the captain tell his tale. Briefly, sir."
"Briefly, sir—Lord Nelson had word of Admiral Villeneuve coming out of the Straits, and engaged the combined fleets off Cape Trafalgaro. They were in single line, roughly; and he bore down in two columns, and cut off their van under Dumanoir. This was at dawn or thereabouts, and by five o'clock the enemy was destroyed."
"How many prizes?"
"I cannot say precisely, my lord. The word went, when I was signalled aboard the Vice-Admiral's flagship, that either fifteen or sixteen had struck. My own men were engaged, at the time, in rescuing the crew of a French seventy-four that had blown up; and I was too busy to count, had counting been possible. One or two of my officers maintain to me that our gains were higher. But the dispatch will tell, doubtless."
"Aye, to be sure.…Read, Tylney. Don't sit there clearing your throat, but read, man alive!" And yet it appeared that while the Secretary was willing enough to read, the First Lord had no capacity, as yet, to listen. Into the very first sentence he broke with—
"No, wait a minute. 'Dead,' d'ye say?…My God! . . . Lieutenant, pour yourself a glass of wine and tell us first how it happened."
Lieutenant Lapenotiere could not tell very clearly. He had twice been summoned to board theRoyal Sovereign—he first time to receive the command to hold himself ready. It was then that, coming alongside the great ship, he had read in all the officers' faces an anxiety hard to reconcile with the evident tokens of victory around them. At once it had occurred to him that the Admiral had fallen, and he put the question to one of the lieutenants—to be told that Lord Nelson had indeed been mortally wounded and could not live long; but that he must be alive yet, and conscious, since theVictorywas still signalling orders to the Fleet.
"I think, my lord," said he, "that Admiral Collingwood must have been doubtful, just then, what responsibility had fallen upon him, or how soon it might fall. He had sent for me to 'stand by' so to speak. He was good enough to tell me the news as it had reached him—"
Here Lieutenant Lapenotiere, obeying the order to fill his glass, let spill some of the wine on the table. The sight of the dark trickle on the mahogany touched some nerve of the brain: he saw it widen into a pool of blood, from which, as they picked up a shattered seaman and bore him below, a lazy stream crept across the deck of the flag-ship towards the scuppers. He moved his feet, as he had moved them then, to be out of the way of it: but recovered himself in another moment and went on—
"He told me, my lord, that theVictoryafter passing under theBucentaure'sstern, and so raking her that she was put out of action, or almost, fell alongside theRedoutable. There was a long swell running, with next to no wind, and the two ships could hardly have cleared had they tried. At any rate, they hooked, and it was then a question which could hammer the harder. The Frenchman had filled his tops with sharp-shooters, and from one of these— the mizen-top, I believe—a musket-ball struck down the Admiral. He was walking at the time to and fro on a sort of gangway he had caused to be planked over his cabin sky-light, between the wheel and the ladder-way.…Admiral Collingwood believed it had happened about half-past one . . ."
"Sit down, man, and drink your wine," commanded the First Lord as the dispatch-bearer swayed with a sudden faintness.
"It is nothing, my lord—"
But it must have been a real swoon, or something very like it: for he recovered to find himself lying in an arm-chair. He heard the Secretary's voice reading steadily on and on.…Also they must have given him wine, for he awoke to feel the warmth of it in his veins and coursing about his heart. But he was weak yet, and for the moment well content to lie still and listen.
Resting there and listening, he was aware of two sensations that alternated within him, chasing each other in and out of his consciousness. He felt all the while that he, John Richards Lapenotiere, a junior officer in His Majesty's service, was assisting in one of the most momentous events in his country's history; and alone in the room with these two men, he felt it as he had never begun to feel it amid the smoke and roar of the actual battle. He had seen the dead hero but half a dozen times in his life: he had never been honoured by a word from him: but like every other naval officer, he had come to look up to Nelson as to the splendid particular star among commanders.Therewas greatness:therewas that which lifted men to such deeds as write man's name across the firmament! And, strange to say, Lieutenant Lapenotiere recognised something of it in this queer old man, in dressing-gown and ill-fitting wig, who took snuff and interrupted now with a curse and anon with a "bravo!" as the Secretary read. He was absurd: but he was no common man, this Lord Barham. He had something of the ineffable aura of greatness.
But in the Lieutenant's brain, across this serious, even awful sense of the moment and of its meaning, there played a curious secondary sense that the moment was not—that what was happening before his eyes had either happened before or was happening in some vacuum in which past, present, future and the ordinary divisions of time had lost their bearings. The great twenty-four-hour clock at the end of the Board Room, ticking on and on while the Secretary read, wore an unfamiliar face.…Yes, time had gone wrong, somehow: and the events of the passage home to Falmouth, of the journey up to the doors of the Admiralty, though they ran on a chain, had no intervals to be measured by a clock, but followed one another like pictures on a wall. He saw the long, indigo-coloured swell thrusting the broken ships shoreward. He felt the wind freshening as it southered and he left the Fleet behind: he watched their many lanterns as they sank out of sight, then the glow of flares by the light of which dead-tired men were repairing damages, cutting away wreckage. His ship was wallowing heavily now, with the gale after her,—and now dawn was breaking clean and glorious on the swell off Lizard Point. A Mount's Bay lugger had spied them, and lying in wait, had sheered up close alongside, her crew bawling for news. He had not forbidden his men to call it back, and he could see the fellows' faces now, as it reached them from the speaking-trumpet: "Great victory—twenty taken or sunk—Admiral Nelson killed!" They had guessed something, noting thePickle'sensign at half-mast: yet as they took in the purport of the last three words, these honest fishermen had turned and stared at one another; and without one answering word, the lugger had been headed straight back to the mainland.
So it had been at Falmouth. A ship entering port has a thousand eyes upon her, and thePickle'serrand could not be hidden. The news seemed in some mysterious way to have spread even before he stepped ashore there on the Market Strand. A small crowd had collected, and, as he passed through it, many doffed their hats. There was no cheering at all—no, not for this the most glorious victory of the war—outshining even the Nile or Howe's First of June.
He had set his face as he walked to the inn. But the news had flown before him, and fresh crowds gathered to watch him off. The post-boys knew…andtheytold the post-boys at the next stage, and the next—Bodmin and Plymouth—not to mention the boatmen at Torpoint Ferry. But the countryside did not know: nor the labourers gathering in cider apples heaped under Devon apple-trees, nor, next day, the sportsmen banging off guns at the partridges around Salisbury. The slow, jolly life of England on either side of the high road turned leisurely as a wagon-wheel on its axle, while between hedgerows, past farm hamlets, church-towers and through the cobbled streets of market towns, he had sped and rattled with Collingwood's dispatch in his sealed case. The news had reached London with him. His last post-boys had carried it to their stables, and from stable to tavern. To-morrow—to-day, rather—in an hour or two—all the bells of London would be ringing—or tolling! . . .
"He's as tired as a dog," said the voice of the Secretary. "Seems almost a shame to waken him."
The Lieutenant opened his eyes and jumped to his feet with an apology. Lord Barham had gone, and the Secretary hard by was speaking to the night-porter, who bent over the fire, raking it with a poker. The hands of the Queen Anne clock indicated a quarter to six.
"The First Lord would like to talk with you…later in the day," said Mr. Tylney gravely, smiling a little these last words. He himself was white and haggard. "He suggested the early afternoon, say half-past two. That will give you time for a round sleep. . . . You might leave me the name of your hotel, in case he should wish to send for you before that hour."
"'The Swan with Two Necks,' Lad Lane, Cheapside," said Lieutenant Lapenotiere.
He knew little of London, and gave the name of the hostelry at which, many years ago, he had alighted from a West Country coach with his box and midshipman's kit…. A moment later he found himself wondering if it still existed as a house of entertainment. Well, he must go and seek it.
The Secretary shook hands with him, smiling wanly.
"Few men, sir, have been privileged to carry such news as you have brought us to-night."
"And I went to sleep after delivering it," said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, smiling back.
The night-porter escorted him to the hall, and opened the great door for him. In the portico he bade the honest man good night, and stood for a moment, mapping out in his mind his way to "The Swan with Two Necks." He shivered slightly, after his nap, in the chill of the approaching dawn.
As the door closed behind him he was aware of a light shining, out beyond the screen of the fore-court, and again a horse blew through its nostrils on the raw air.
"Lord!" thought the Lieutenant. "That fool of a post-boy cannot have mistaken me and waited all this time!"
He hurried out into Whitehall. Sure enough a chaise was drawn up there, and a post-boy stood by the near lamp, conning a scrap of paper by the light of it. No, it was a different chaise, and a different post-boy. He wore the buff and black, whereas the other had worn the blue and white. Yet he stepped forward confidently, and with something of a smile.
"Lieutenant Lapenotiere?" he asked, reaching back and holding up his paper to the lamp to make sure of the syllables.
"That is my name," said the amazed Lieutenant.
"I was ordered here—five-forty-five—to drive you down to Merton."
"To Merton?" echoed Lieutenant Lapenotiere, his hand going to his pocket. The post-boy's smile, or so much as could be seen of it by the edge of the lamp, grew more knowing.
"I ask no questions, sir."
"But—but who ordered you?"
The post-boy did not observe, or disregarded, his bewilderment.
"A Briton's a Briton, sir, I hope? I ask no questions, knowing my place.…But if so be as you were to tell me there's been a great victory—" He paused on this.
"Well, my man, you're right so far, and no harm in telling you."
"Aye," chirruped the post-boy. "When the maid called me up with the order, and said as howheand no other had called with it—"
"He?"
The fellow nodded.
"She knew him at once, from his portraits. Who wouldn't? With his right sleeve pinned across so.…And, said I, 'Then there's been a real victory. Never would you see him back, unless. And I was right, sir!' he concluded triumphantly.
"Let me see that piece of paper."
"You'll let me have it back, sir?—for a memento," the post-boy pleaded. Lieutenant Lapenotiere took it from him—a plain half-sheet of note-paper roughly folded. On it was scribbled in pencil, back-hand wise, "Lt. Lapenotiere. Admiralty, Whitehall. At 6.30 a.m., not later. For Merton, Surrey."
He folded the paper very slowly, and handed it back to the post-boy.
"Very well, then. For Merton."
The house lay but a very little distance beyond Wimbledon. Its blinds were drawn as Lieutenant Lapenotiere alighted from the chaise and went up to the modest porch.
His hand was on the bell-pull. But some pressure checked him as he was on the point of ringing. He determined to wait for a while and turned away towards the garden.
The dawn had just broken; two or three birds were singing. It did not surprise—at any rate, it did not frighten—Lieutenant Lapenotiere at all, when, turning into a short pleached alley, he looked along it and sawhimadvancing.
—Yes,him, with the pinned sleeve, the noble, seamed, eager face. They met as friends.…In later years the lieutenant could never remember a word that passed, if any passed at all. He was inclined to think that they met and walked together in complete silence, for many minutes. Yet he ever maintained that they walked as two friends whose thoughts hold converse without need of words. He was not terrified at all. He ever insisted, on the contrary, that there, in the cold of the breaking day, his heart was light and warm as though flooded with first love—not troubled by it, as youth in first love is wont to be—but bathed in it; he, the ardent young officer, bathed in a glow of affection, ennobling, exalting him, making him free of a brotherhood he had never guessed.
He used also, in telling the story, to scandalise the clergyman of his parish by quoting the evangelists, and especially St. John's narrative of Mary Magdalen at the sepulchre.
For the door of the house opened at length; and a beautiful woman, scarred by knowledge of the world, came down the alley, slowly, unaware of him. Then (said he), as she approached, his hand went up to his pocket for the private letter he carried, and the shade at his side left him to face her in the daylight.
At the head of a diminutive creek of the Tamar River, a little above Saltash on the Cornish shore, stands the village of Botusfleming; and in early summer, when its cherry-orchards come into bloom, you will search far before finding a prettier.
The years have dealt gently with Botusfleming. As it is to-day, so— or nearly so—it was on a certain sunny afternoon in the year 1807, when the Reverend Edward Spettigew, Curate-in-Charge, sat in the garden before his cottage and smoked his pipe while he meditated a sermon. That is to say, he intended to meditate a sermon. But the afternoon was warm: the bees hummed drowsily among the wallflowers and tulips. From the bench his eyes followed the vale's descent between overlapping billows of cherry blossom to a gap wherein shone the silver Tamar—not, be it understood, the part called Hamoaze, where lay the warships and the hulks containing the French prisoners, but an upper reach seldom troubled by shipping.
Parson Spettigew laid the book face-downwards on his knee while his lips murmured a part of the text he had chosen: "A place of broad rivers and streams…wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. . . ." His pipe went out. The book slipped from his knee to the ground. He slumbered.
The garden gate rattled, and he awoke with a start. In the pathway below him stood a sailor; a middle-sized, middle-aged man, rigged out in best shore-going clothes—shiny tarpaulin hat, blue coat and waistcoat, shirt open at the throat, and white duck trousers with broad-buckled waistbelt.
"Beggin' your Reverence's pardon," began the visitor, touching the brim of his hat, and then upon second thoughts uncovering, "but my name's Jope—Ben Jope."
"Eh?…What can I do for you?" asked Parson Spettigew, a trifle flustered at being caught napping.
"—Of theVesooviusbomb, bo's'n," pursued Mr. Jope, with a smile that disarmed annoyance, so ingenuous it was, so friendly, and withal so respectful: "but paid off at eight this morning. Maybe your Reverence can tell me whereabouts to find an embalmer in these parts?"
"A—awhat?"
"Embalmer." Mr. Jope chewed thoughtfully for a moment or two upon a quid of tobacco. "Sort of party you'd go to supposin' as you had a corpse by you and wanted to keep it for a permanency. You take a lot of gums and spices, and first of all you lays out the deceased, and next—"
"Yes, yes," the Parson interrupted hurriedly; "I know the process, of course."
"What? topractiseit?" Hope illumined Mr. Jope's countenance.
"No, most certainly not.…But, my good man,—an embalmer! and at Botusfleming, of all places!"
The sailor's face fell. He sighed patiently.
"That's what they said at Saltash, more or less. I got a sister living there—Sarah Treleaven her name is—a widow-woman, and sells fish. When I called on her this morning, 'Embalmer?' she said; 'Go and embalm your grandmother!' Those were her words, and the rest of Saltash wasn't scarcely more helpful. But, as luck would have it, while I was searchin', Bill Adams went for a shave, and inside of the barber's shop what should he see but a fair-sized otter in a glass case? Bill began to admire it, and it turned out the barber had stuffed the thing. Maybe your Reverence knows the man?—'A. Grigg and Son,' he calls hisself."
"Grigg? Yes, to be sure: he stuffed a trout for me last summer."
"What weight, makin' so bold?"
"Seven pounds."
Mr. Jope's face fell again.
"Well-a-well! I dare say the size don't matter, once you've got the knack. We've brought him along, anyway; and, what's more, we've made him bring all his tools. By his talk, he reckons it to be a shavin' job, and we agreed to wait before we undeceived him."
"But—you'll excuse me—I don't quite follow—"
Mr. Jope pressed a forefinger mysteriously to his lip, then jerked a thumb in the direction of the river.
"If your Reverence wouldn' mind steppin' down to the creek with me?" he suggested respectfully.
Parson Spettigew fetched his hat, and together the pair descended the vale beneath the dropping petals of the cherry. At the foot of it they came to a creek, which the tide at this hour had flooded and almost overbrimmed. Hard by the water's edge, backed by tall elms, stood a dilapidated fish-store, and below it lay a boat with nose aground on a beach of flat stones. Two men were in the boat. The barber—a slip of a fellow in rusty top-hat and suit of rusty black—sat in the stern-sheets face to face with a large cask; a cask so ample that, to find room for his knees, he was forced to crook them at a high, uncomfortable angle. In the bows, boathook in hand, stood a tall sailor, arrayed in shore-going clothes similar to Mr. Jope's. His face was long, sallow, and expressive of taciturnity, and he wore a beard—not, however, where beards are usually worn, but as a fringe beneath his clean-shaven chin.
"Well, here we are!" announced Mr. Jope cheerfully. "Your Reverence knows A. Grigg and Son, and the others you can trust in all weathers; bein' William Adams, otherwise Bill, and Eli Tonkin—friends o' mine an' shipmates both."
The tall seaman touched his hat by way of acknowledging the introduction.
"But—but I only seeone!" protested Parson Spettigew.
"This here's Bill Adams," said Mr. Jope, and again the tall seaman touched his hat. "Is it Eli you're missin'? He's in the cask."
"Oh!"
"We'll hoick him up to the store, Bill, if you're ready? It looks a nice cool place. And while you're prizin' him open, I'd best explain to his Reverence and the barber. Here, unship the shore-plank; and you, A. Grigg and Son, lend a hand to heave.…Aye, you're right: it weighs more'n a trifle—bein' a quarter-puncheon, an' the best proof-spirits. Tilt herthisway,…Ready?…then w'y-ho! and away she goes!"
With a heave and a lurch that canted the boat until the water poured over her gunwale, the huge tub was rolled overside into shallow water. The recoil, as the boat righted herself, cast the small barber off his balance, and he fell back over a thwart with heels in air. But before he picked himself up, the two seamen, encouraging one another with strange cries, had leapt out and were trundling the cask up the beach, using the flats of their hands. With anotherw'y-ho!and a tremendous lift, they ran it up to the turfy plat, whence Bill Adams steered it with ease through the ruinated doorway of the store. Mr. Jope returned, smiling and mopping his brow.
"It's this-a-way," he said, addressing the Parson. "Eli Tonkin his name is, or was; and, as he said, of this parish."
"Tonkin?" queried the Parson. "There are no Tonkins surviving in Botusfleming parish. The last of them was a poor old widow I laid to rest the week after Christmas."
"Belay there!…Dead, is she?" Mr. Jope's face exhibited the liveliest disappointment. "And after the surprise we'd planned for her!" he murmured ruefully. "Hi! Bill!" he called to his shipmate, who having stored the cask, was returning to the boat.
"Wot is it?" asked Bill Adams inattentively. "Look here, where did we stow the hammer an' chisel?"
"Take your head out o' the boat an' listen. The old woman's dead!"
The tall man absorbed the news slowly.
"That's a facer," he said at length. "But maybe we can fixherup, too? I'll stand my share."
"She was buried the week after Christmas."
"Oh?" Bill scratched his head. "Then we can't—not very well."
"Times an' again I've heard Eli talk of his poor old mother," said Mr. Jope, turning to the Parson. "Which you'll hardly believe it, but though I knowed him for a West Country man, 'twas not till the last I larned what parish he hailed from. It happened very curiously. Bill, rout up A. Grigg and Son, an' fetch him forra'd here to listen. You'll find the tools underneath him in the stern-sheets."
Bill obeyed, and possessing himself of hammer and chisel lounged off to the shore. The little barber drew near, and stood at Mr. Jope's elbow. His face wore an unhealthy pallor, and he smelt potently of strong drink.
"Brandy it is," apologised Mr. Jope, observing a slight contraction of the Parson's nostril. "I reckoned 'twould tauten him a bit for what's ahead.…Well, as I was sayin', it happened very curiously. This day fortnight we were beatin' up an' across the Bay o' Biscay, after a four months' to-an'-fro game in front of Toolon Harbour. Blowin' fresh it was, an' we makin' pretty poor weather of it—theVesooviusbein' a powerful wet tub, an' a slug at the best o' times. 'Tisn' her fault, you understand: aboard a bombship everything's got to be heavy—timbers, scantling, everything about her—to stand the concussion. What with this an' her mortars, she sits pretty low; but to make up for it, what with all this dead weight, and bein' short-sparred, she can carry all sail in a breeze that would surprise you. Well, sir, for two days she'd been carryin' canvas that fairly smothered us, an' Cap'n Crang not a man to care how we fared forra'd, so long as the water didn' reach aft to his own quarters. But at last the First Lootenant, Mr. Wapshott, took pity on us, and—the Cap'n bein' below, takin' his nap after dinner—sends the crew o' the maintop aloft to take a reef in the tops'le. Poor Eli was one. Whereby the men had scarcely reached the top afore Cap'n Crang comes up from his cabin an' along the deck, not troublin' to cast an eye aloft. Whereby he missed what was happenin'. Whereby he had just come abreast of the mainmast, when—sock at his very feet—there drops a man. 'Twas Eli, that had missed his hold, an' dropped somewhere on the back of his skull. 'Hallo!' says the Cap'n, 'an' where the devil mightyoucome from?' Eli heard it, poor fellow—an' says he, as I lifted him, 'If you please, sir, from Botusfleming, three miles t'other side of Saltash.' 'Then you've had a damn quick passage,' answers Cap'n Crang, an' turns on his heel.
"Well, sir, we all agreed the Cap'n might ha' showed more feelin', specially as poor Eli'd broke the base of his skull, an' by eight bells handed in the number of his mess. Five or six of us talked it over, agreein' as how 'twas hardly human, an' Eli such a good fellow, too, let alone bein' a decent seaman. Whereby the notion came to me that, as he'd come from Botusfieming—those bein' his last words— back to Botusfleming he should go, an' on that we cooked up a plan. Bill Adams being on duty in the sick-bay, there wasn' no difficulty in sewin' up a dummy in Eli's place; an' the dummy, sir, nex' day we dooly committed to the deep, Cap'n Crang hisself readin' the service. The real question was, what to do with Eli? Whereby, the purser and me bein' friends, I goes to him an' says, 'Look here,' I says, 'we'll be paid off in ten days or so, an' there's a trifle o' prize-money, too. 'What price'll you sell us a cask o' the ship's rum—say a quarter-puncheon for choice?' 'What for?' says he. 'For shore-going purposes,' says I. 'Bill Adams an' me got a use for it.' 'Well,' says the purser—a decent chap, an' by name Wilkins—'I'm an honest man,' says he, 'an' to oblige a friend you shall have it at store-valuation rate. An' what's more,' said he, 'I got the wind o' your little game, an'll do what I can to help it along; for I al'ays liked the deceased, an' in my opinion Captain Crang behaved most unfeelin'. You tell Bill to bring the body to me, an' there'll be no more trouble about it till I hand you over the cask at Plymouth.' Well, sir, the man was as good as his word. We smuggled the cask ashore last evenin', an' hid it in the woods this side o' Mount Edgcumbe. This mornin' we re-shipped it as you see. First along we intended no more than just to break the news to Eli's mother, an' hand him over to her; but Bill reckoned that to hand him over, cask an' all, would look careless; for (as he said) 'twasn' as if you couldbury'im in a cask. We allowed your Reverence would draw the line at that, though we hadn' the pleasure o' knowin' you at the time."
"Yes," agreed the Parson, as Mr. Jope paused, "I fear it could not be done without scandal."
"That's just how Bill put it. 'Well then,' says I, thinkin' it over, 'why not do the handsome while we're about it? You an' me ain't the sort of men,' I says, 'to spoil the ship for a ha'porth o' tar.' 'Certainly we ain't,' says Bill. 'An' we've done a lot for Eli,' says I. 'We have,' says Bill. 'Well then,' says I, 'let's put a coat o' paint on the whole business an' have him embalmed.' Bill was enchanted."
"I—I beg your pardon," put in the barber, edging away a pace.
"Bill was enchanted. Hark to him in the store, there, knockin' away at the chisel."
"But there's some misunderstanding," the little man protested earnestly. "I understood it was to be ashave."
"You can shave him, too, if you like."
"If I th—thought you were s—serious—"
"Have some more brandy." Mr. Jope pulled out and proffered a flask. "Only don't overdo it, or it'll make your hand shaky.…Serious? You may lay to it that Bill's serious. He's that set on the idea, it don't make no difference to him, as you may have noticed, Eli's mother not bein' alive to take pleasure in it. Why, he wanted to embalmher, too! He's doin' this now for his own gratification, is Bill, an' you may take it from me when Bill sets his heart on a thing he sees it through. Don't you cross him, that's my advice."
"But—but—"
"No, you don't." As the little man made a wild spring to flee up the beach, Mr. Jope shot out a hand and gripped him by the coat collar. "Now look here," he said very quietly, as the poor wretch would have grovelled at the Parson's feet, "you was boastin' to Bill, not an hour agone, as you could stuffanything."
"Don't hurt him," Parson Spettigew interposed, touching Mr. Jope's arm.
"I'm not hurtin' him, your Reverence, only—Eh? What's that?"
All turned their faces towards the store.
"Your friend is calling to you," said the Parson.
"Bad language, too…that's not like Bill, as a rule. Ahoy there, Bill!"
"Ahoy!" answered the voice of Mr. Adams.
"What's up?" Without waiting for an answer Mr. Jope ran the barber before him up the beach to the doorway, the Parson following. "What's up?" he demanded again, as he drew breath.
"Take an' see for yourself," answered Mr. Adams darkly, pointing with his chisel.
A fine fragrance of rum permeated the store.
Mr. Jope advanced, and peered into the staved cask.
"Gone?" he exclaimed, and gazed around blankly.
Bill Adams nodded.
"Butwhere?…You don't say he'sdissolved?"
"It ain't the usual way o' rum. An' itisrum?"
Bill appealed to the Parson.
"By the smell, undoubtedly."
"I tell you what's happened. That fool of a Wilkins has made a mistake in the cask. . . ."
"An' Eli?—oh, Lord!" gasped Mr. Jope.
"They'll have returned Eli to the Victuallin' Yard before this," said Bill gloomily. "I overheard Wilkins sayin' as he was to pass over all stores an' accounts at nine-thirty this mornin'."
"An', once there, who knows where he's got mixed?…He'll go the round o' the Fleet, maybe. Oh, my word, an' the ship that broaches him!"
Bill Adams opened and shut his mouth quickly, like a fish ashore.
"They'll reckon they've got a lucky-bag," he said weakly.
"An' Wilkins paid off with the rest, an' no address, even if he could help—which I doubt."
"Eh? I got a note from Wilkins, as it happens." Bill Adams took off his tarpaulin hat, and extracted a paper from the lining of the crown. "He passed it down to me this mornin' as I pushed off from the ship. Said I was to keep it, an' maybe I'd find it useful. I wondered what he meant at the time, me takin' no particular truck with pursers ashore.…It crossed my mind as I'd heard he meant to get married, and maybe he wanted me to stand best man at the weddin'. W'ich I didn' open the note at the time; not likin' to refuse him, after he'd behaved so well to me."
"Pass it over," commanded Mr. Jope. He took the paper and unfolded it, but either the light was dim within the store, or the handwriting hard to decipher. "Would your Reverence read it out for us?"
Parson Spettigew carried the paper to the doorway. He read its contents aloud, and slowly:
To Mr. Bill Adams,
Capt. of the Fore-top, H.M.S.Vesuvius.
Sir,—It was a dummy Capt. Crang buried. We cast the late E. Tonkin overboard the second night in lat. 46/30, long. 7/15, or thereabouts. By which time the feeling aboard had cooled down and it seemed a waste of good spirit. The rum you paid for is good rum. Hoping that you and Mr. Jope will find a use for it,
Your obedient servant, S. Wilkins.
There was a long pause, through which Mr. Adams could be heard breathing hard.
"But what are we to do with it?" asked Mr. Jope, scratching his head in perplexity.
"Drink it. Wot else?"
"But where?"
"Oh," said Mr. Adams, "anywhere!"
"That's all very well," replied his friend. "You never had no property, an' don't know its burdens. We'll have to hire a house for this, an' live there till it's finished."
St. Dilp by Tamar has altered little in a hundred years. As it stands to-day, embowered in cherry-trees, so (or nearly so) it stood on that warm afternoon in the early summer of 1807, when two weather-tanned seamen of His Majesty's Fleet came along its fore street with a hand-barrow and a huge cask very cunningly lashed thereto. On their way they eyed the cottages and gardens to right and left with a lively curiosity; but "Lord, Bill," said the shorter seaman, misquoting Wordsworth unawares, "the werry houses look asleep!"
At the "Punch-Bowl" Inn, kept by J. Coyne, they halted by silent consent. Mr. William Adams, who had been trundling the barrow, set it down, and Mr. Benjamin Jope—whose good-natured face would have recommended him anywhere—walked into the drinking-parlour and rapped on the table. This brought to him the innkeeper's daughter, Miss Elizabeth, twenty years old and comely. "What can I do for you, sir?" she asked.
"Two pots o' beer, first-along," said Mr. Jope.
"Two?"
"I got a shipmate outside."
Miss Elizabeth fetched the two pots.
"Here, Bill!" he called, carrying one to the door. Returning, he blew at the froth on his own pot meditatively. "And the next thing is, I want a house."
"A house?"
"'Stonishing echo you keep here.…Yes, miss, a house. My name's Jope—Ben Jope—o' theVesuviusbomb, bo's'un; but paid off at eight this morning. My friend outside goes by the name of Bill Adams; an' you'll find him livelier than he looks. Everyone does. But I forgot; you ha'n't seen him yet, and he can't come in, havin' to look after the cask."
"The ca—" Miss Elizabeth had almost repeated the word, but managed to check herself.
"You ought to consult someone about it, at your age," said Mr. Jope solicitously. "Yes, the cask. Rum it is, an' a quarter-puncheon. Bill and me clubbed an' bought it off the purser las' night, the chaplain havin' advised us not to waste good prize-money ashore but invest it in something we really wanted. But I don't know if you've ever noticed how often one thing leads to another. You can't go drinkin' out a quarter-puncheon o' rum in the high road, not very well. So the next thing is, we want a house."
"But," said the girl, "who ever heard of a house to let hereabouts!"
Mr. Jope's face fell.
"Ain't there none? An' it seemed so retired, too, an' handy near Plymouth."
"There's not a house to let in St. Dilp parish, unless it be the Rectory."
Mr. Jope's face brightened.
"Then we'll take the Rectory," he said. "Where is it?"
"Down by the river.…But 'tis nonsense you're tellin'. The Rectory indeed! Why, it's a seat!"
Mr. Jope's face clouded.
"Oh," he said, "is that all?"
"It's a fine one, too."
"It'd have to be, to accomydate Bill an' me an' the cask. I wanted a house, as I thought I told ye."
"Oh, but I meant a country-seat," explained Miss Elizabeth. "The Rectory is a house."
Again Mr. Jope's face brightened.
"An' so big," she went on, "that the Rector can't afford to live in it. That's why 'tis to let. The rent's forty pound."
"Can I see him?"
"No, you can't; for he lives up to Lunnon an' hires Parson Spettigew of Botusfleming to do the work. But it's my father has the lettin' o' the Rectory if a tenant comes along. He keeps the keys."
"Then I 'd like to talk with your father."
"No you wouldn't," said the girl frankly; "because he's asleep. Father drinks a quart o' cider at three o'clock every day of his life, an' no one don't dare disturb him before six."
"Well, I like reggilar habits," said Mr. Jope, diving a hand into his breeches' pocket and drawing forth a fistful of golden guineas. "But couldn't you risk it?"
Miss Elizabeth's eyes wavered.
"No, I couldn'," she sighed, shaking her head. "Father's very violent in his temper. But I tell you what," she added: "I might fetch the keys, and you might go an' see the place for yourself."
"Capital," said Mr. Jope. While she was fetching these he finished his beer. Then, having insisted on paying down a guinea for earnest-money, he took the keys and her directions for finding the house. She repeated them in the porch for the benefit of the taller seaman; who, as soon as she had concluded, gripped the handles of his barrow afresh and set off without a word. She gazed after the pair as they passed down the street.
At the foot of it a by-lane branched off towards the creek-side. It led them past a churchyard and a tiny church almost smothered in cherry-trees—for the churchyard was half an orchard: past a tumbling stream, a mill and some wood-stacks; and so, still winding downwards, brought them to a pair of iron gates, rusty and weather-greened. The gates stood unlocked; and our two seamen found themselves next in a carriage-drive along which it was plain no carriage had passed for a very long while. It was overgrown with weeds, and straggling laurels encroached upon it on either hand; and as it rounded one of these laurels Mr. Jope caught his breath sharply.
"Lor' lumme!" he exclaimed. "It is a seat, as the gel said!"
Mr. Adams, following close with the wheelbarrow, set it down, stared, and said:
"Then she's a liar. It's a house."
"It's twice the size of a three-decker, anyway," said his friend, and together they stood and contemplated the building.
It was a handsome pile of old brickwork, set in a foundation of rock almost overhanging the river—on which, however, it turned its back; in design, an oblong of two storeys, with a square tower at each of the four corners, and the towers connected by a parapet of freestone. The windows along the front were regular, and those on the ground-floor less handsome than those of the upper floor, where (it appeared) were the staterooms. For—strangest feature of all— the main entrance was in this upper storey, with a dozen broad steps leading down to the unkempt carriage-way and a lawn, across which a magnificent turkey oak threw dark masses of shadow.
But the house was a picture of decay. Unpainted shutters blocked the windows; tall grasses sprouted in the crevices of the entrance steps and parapet; dislodged slates littered the drive; smears of old rains ran down the main roof and from a lantern of which the louvers were all in ruin, some hanging by a nail, others blown on edge by long-past gales. The very nails had rusted out of the walls, and the creepers they should have supported hung down in ropy curtains.
Mr. Adams scratched his head.
"What I'd like to know," said he after a while, "is how to get the cask up them steps."
"There'll be a cellar-door for sartin," Mr. Jope assured him cheerfully. "You don't suppose the gentry takes their beer in at the front, hey?"
"This," said Mr. Adams, "is rum; which is a totally different thing." But he set down his barrow, albeit reluctantly, and followed his shipmate up the entrance steps. The front door was massive, and sheeted over with lead embossed in foliate and heraldic patterns. Mr. Jope inserted the key, turned it with some difficulty, and pushed the door wide. It opened immediately upon the great hall, and after a glance within he removed his hat.
The hall, some fifty feet long, ran right across the waist of the house, and was lit by tall windows at either end. Its floor was of black and white marble in lozenge pattern. Three immense chandeliers depended from its roof. Along each of the two unpierced walls, against panels of peeling stucco, stood a line of statuary—heathen goddesses, fauns, athletes and gladiators, with here and there a vase or urn copied from the antique. The furniture consisted of half a dozen chairs, a settee, and an octagon table, all carved out of wood in pseudo-classical patterns, and painted with a grey wash to resemble stone.
"It's a fine room," said Mr. Jope, walking up to a statue of Diana: "but a man couldn' hardly invite a mixed company to dinner here."
"Symonds's f'r instance," suggested Mr. Adams. Symonds's being a somewhat notorious boarding-house in a street of Plymouth which shall be nameless.
"You ought to be ashamed o' yourself, Bill," said Mr. Jope sternly.
"They're anticks, that's what they are."
Mr. Adams drew a long breath.
"I shouldn' wonder," he said.
"Turnin' 'em wi' their faces to the wall 'd look too marked," mused Mr. Jope. "But a few tex o' Scripture along the walls might ease things down a bit."
"Wot about the hold?" Mr. Adams suggested.
"The cellar, you mean. Let's have a look."
They passed through the hall; thence down a stone stairway into an ample vaulted kitchen, and thence along a slate-flagged corridor flanked by sculleries, larders and other kitchen offices. The two seamen searched the floors of all in hope of finding a cellar trap or hatchway, and Mr. Adams was still searching when Mr. Jope called to him from the end of the corridor:
"Here we are!"
He had found a flight of steps worthy of a cathedral crypt, leading down to a stone archway. The archway was closed by an iron-studded door.
"It's like goin' to church," commented Mr. Jope, bating his voice. "Where's the candles, Bill?"
"In the barrer 'long wi' the bread an' bacon."
"Then step back and fetch 'em."
But from the foot of the stairs Mr. Jope presently called up that this was unnecessary, for the door had opened to his hand—smoothly, too, and without noise; but he failed to note this as strange, being taken aback for the moment by a strong draught of air that met him, blowing full in his face.
"There's daylight here, too, of a sort," he reported: and so there was. It pierced the darkness in a long shaft, slanting across from a doorway of which the upper panel stood open to the sky.
"Funny way o' leavin' a house," he muttered, as he stepped across the bare cellar floor and peered forth. "Why, hallo, here's water!"
The cellar, in fact, stood close by the river's edge, with a broad postern-sill actually overhanging the tide, and a flight of steps, scarcely less broad, curving up and around the south-west angle of the house.
While Mr. Jope studied these and the tranquil river flowing, all grey and twilit, at his feet, Mr. Adams had joined him and had also taken bearings.
"With a check-rope," said Mr. Adams, "—and I got one in the barrer— we can lower it down here easy."
He pointed to the steps.
"Hey?" said Mr. Jope. "Yes, the cask—to be sure."
"Wot else?" said Mr. Adams. "An' I reckon we'd best get to work, if we're to get it housed afore dark."
They did so: but by the time they had the cask bestowed and trigged up, and had spiled it and inserted a tap, darkness had fallen. If they wished to explore the house farther, it would be necessary to carry candles; and somehow neither Mr. Jope nor Mr. Adams felt eager for this adventure. They were hungry, moreover. So they decided to make their way back to the great hall, and sup.
They supped by the light of a couple of candles. The repast consisted of bread and cold bacon washed down by cold rum-and-water. At Symonds's—they gave no utterance to this reflection, but each knew it to be in the other's mind—at Symonds's just now there would be a boiled leg of mutton with turnips, and the rum would be hot, with a slice of lemon.
"We shall get accustomed," said Mr. Jope with a forced air of cheerfulness.
Mr. Adams glanced over his shoulder at the statuary and answered "yes" in a loud unfaltering voice. After a short silence he arose, opened one of the windows, removed a quid from his cheek, laid it carefully on the outer sill, closed the window, and resumed his seat. Mr. Jope had pulled out a cake of tobacco, and was slicing it into small pieces with his clasp-knife.
"Goin' to smoke?" asked Mr. Adams, with another glance at the Diana.
"It don't hurt this 'ere marble pavement—not like the other thing."
"No"—Mr. Adams contemplated the pavement while he, too, drew forth and filled a pipe—"a man might play a game of checkers on it; that is, o' course, when no one was lookin'."
"I been thinking," announced Mr. Jope, "over what his Reverence said about bankin' our money."
"How much d'ye reckon we've got?"
"Between us? Hundred an' twelve pound, fourteen and six. That's after paying for rum, barrer and oddments. We could live," said Mr. Jope, removing his pipe from his mouth and pointing the stem at his friend in expository fashion—"we could live in this here house for more'n three years."
"Oh!" said Mr. Adams, but without enthusiasm. "Could we now?"
"That is, if we left out the vittles."
"But we're not goin' to."
"O' course not. Vittles for two'll run away with a heap of it. And then there'll be callers."
"Callers?" Mr. Adams's face brightened.
"Not the sort you mean. Country folk. It's the usual thing when strangers come an' settle in a place o' this size.…But, all the same, a hundred an' twelve pound, fourteen and six is a heap: an' as I say, we got to think over bankin' it. A man feels solid settin' here with money under his belt; an' yet between you an' me I wouldn't mind if it was less so, in a manner o' speakin'."
"Me, either."
"I was wonderin' what it would feel like to wake in the night an' tell yourself that someone was rollin' up money for you like a snowball."
"There might be a certain amount of friskiness in that. But contrariwise, if you waked an' told yourself the fella was runnin' off with it, there wuldn'."
"Shore-living folks takes that risk an' grows accustomed to it. W'y look at the fellow in charge o' this house."
"Where?" asked Mr. Adams nervously.
"The landlord-fellow, I mean, up in the village. His daughter said he went to sleep every afternoon, an' wouldn' be waked. How could a man afford to do that if his money wasn' rollin' up somewhere for him? An' the place fairly lined with barrels o' good liquor."
"Mightn't liquor accumylate in the same way?" asked Mr. Adams, with sudden and lively interest.
"No, you nincom'," began Mr. Jope—when a loud knocking on the outer door interrupted him. "Hallo!" he sank his voice. "Callers already!"
He went to the door, unlocked and opened it. A heavy-shouldered, bull-necked man stood outside in the dusk.
"Good evenin'."
"Evenin'," said the stranger. "My name is Coyne an' you must get out o' this."
"I don't see as it follows," answered Mr. Jope meditatively. "But hadn't you better step inside?"
"I don't want to bandy words—" began the publican, entering as though he shouldered his way.
"That's right! Bill, fetch an' fill a glass for the gentleman."
"No, thank you.…Well, since you have it handy. But look here: I got nothin' particular to say against you two men, only you can't stop here to-night. That's straight enough, I hope, and no bones broken."
"Straight it is," Mr. Jope agreed: "and we'll talk o' the bones by an' by. Wot name, sir?—makin' so bold."
"My name's Coyne."
"An' mine's Cash." Mr. Jope fumbled with the fastening of a pouch underneath his broad waistbelt. "So we're well met. How much?"
"Eh?"
"How much? Accordin' to your darter 'twas forty pound a year, an' money down: but whether monthly or quarterly she didn' say."
"It's no question of money. It's a question of you two clearin' out, and at once. I'm breakin' what I have to say as gently as I can. If you don't choose to understand plain language, I must go an' fetch the constable."
"I seen him, up at the village this afternoon, an' you'd better not. Bill, why can't ye fill the gentleman's glass?"
"Because the jug's empty," answered Mr. Adams.
"Then slip down to the cellar again."
"No!" Mr. Coyne almost screamed it, rising from his chair. Dropping back weakly, he murmured, panting, "Not for me: not on any account!" His face was pale, and for the moment all the aggressiveness had gone out of him. He lifted a hand weakly to his heart.
"A sudden faintness," he groaned, closing his eyes. "If you two men had any feelin's, you'd offer to see me home."
"The pair of us?" asked Mr. Jope suavely.
"I scale over seventeen stone," murmured Mr. Coyne, still with his eyes closed; "an' a weight like that is no joke."
Mr. Jope nodded.
"You're right there; so you'd best give it over. Sorry to seem heartless, sir, but 'tis for your good: an' to walk home in your state would be a sin, when we can fix you up a bed in the house."
Mr. Coyne opened his eyes, and they were twinkling vindictively.
"Sleep in this house?" he exclaimed. "I wouldn't do it, not for a thousand pound!"
"W'y not?"
"You'll find out 'why not,' safe enough, afore the mornin'! Why 'twas in kindness—pure kindness—I asked the pair of ye to see me home. I wouldn't be one to stay in this house alone arter nightfall—no, or I wouldn't be one to leave a dog alone here, let be a friend. My daughter didn't tell, I reckon, as this place was ha'nted?"
"Ha'nted?"
"Aye. By females too."
"O—oh!" Mr. Adams, who had caught his breath, let it escape in a long sigh of relief. "Like Symonds's," he murmured.
"Not a bit like Symonds's," his friend corrected snappishly. "He's talkin' o' dead uns—ghosts—that is, if I take your meanin', sir?"
Mr. Coyne nodded.
"That's it. Ghosts."
"Get out with you!" said Mr. Adams, incredulous.
"You must be a pair of very simple men," said landlord Coyne, half-closing his eyes again, "if you reckoned that forty pound would rent a place like this without some drawbacks. Well, the drawbacks is ghosts. Four of 'em, and all females."
"Tell us about 'em, sir," requested Mr. Jope, dropping into his seat. "An' if Bill don't care to listen, he can fill up his time by takin' the jug an' steppin' down to the cellar."
"Damned if I do," said Mr. Adams, stealing a glance over his shoulder at the statues.
"It's a distressin' story," began Mr. Coyne with a very slight flutter of the eyelids. "Maybe my daughter told you—an' if she didn't, you may have found out for yourselves—as how this here house is properly speakin' four houses—nothing in common but the roof, an' the cellar, an' this room we're sittin' in.…Well, then, back along there lived an old Rector here, with a man-servant called Oliver. One day he rode up to Exeter, spent a week there, an' brought home a wife. Footman Oliver was ready at the door to receive 'em, an' the pair went upstairs to a fine set o' rooms he'd made ready in the sou'-west tower, an' there for a whole month they lived together, as you might say, in wedded happiness.
"At th' end o' the month th' old Rector discovered he had business takin' him to Bristol. He said his farewells very lovin'ly, promised to come back as soon as he could, but warned the poor lady against setting foot outside the doors. The gardens an' fields (he said) swarmed with field-mice, an' he knew she had a terror of mice of all sorts. So off he rode, an' by an' by came back by night with a second young lady: and Oliver showed 'em up to the nor'-east tower for the honeymoon.
"A week later my gentleman had a call to post down to Penzance. He warned his second wife that it was a terrible year for adders an' the ground swarmin' with 'em, for he knew she had a horror o' snakes. Inside of a fortnight he brought home a third—"
"Bill," said Mr. Jope, sitting up sharply, "what noise was that?"
"I didn't hear it," answered Mr. Adams, who was turning up his trousers uneasily. "Adders, maybe."
"Seemed to me it sounded from somewheres in the cellar. Maybe you wouldn't mind steppin' down, seein' as you don't take no interest in what Mr. Coyne's tellin'."
"I'm beginning to."
"The cellar's the worst place of all," said Mr. Coyne, blinking. "It's there that the bodies were found."
"Bodies?"
"Bodies. Four of 'em. I was goin' to tell you how he brought home another, havin' kept the third poor lady to her rooms with some tale about a mad dog starvin' to death in his shrubberies—he didn't know where—"
"If you don't mind," Mr. Jope interposed, "I've a notion to hear the rest o' the story some other evenin'. It's—it's agreeable enough to bear spinnin' out, an' I understand you're a fixture in this neighbourhood."
"Certainly," said Mr. Coyne, rising. "But wot aboutyou?"
"I'll tell you to-morrow."
Mr. Jope gripped the arms of his chair, having uttered the bravest speech of his life. He sat for a while, the sound of his own voice echoing strangely in his ears, even when Mr. Coyne rose to take his leave.
"Well, I can't help admirin' you," said Mr. Coyne handsomely. "By the way the rent's by the quarter, an' in advance—fours into forty is ten; I mention it as a matter of business, and in case we don't meet again."
Mr. Jope counted out the money.
When Mr. Coyne had taken his departure the pair sat a long while in silence, their solitary candle flickering an the table between them.
"You spoke out very bold," said Mr. Adams at length.
"Did I?" said Mr. Jope. "I didn't feel it."
"What cuts me to the quick is the thought o' them adders outside."
"Ye dolt! There ain't no real adders outside. They're what the chap invented to frighten the women."
"Sure? Then," mused Mr. Adams, after a pause, "maybe there ain't no real ghosts neither, but he invented the whole thing."
"Maybe. What d'ye say to steppin' down an' fetchin' up another mugful o' liquor?"
"I say," answered Mr. Adams slowly, "as how I won't."
"Toss for it," suggested Mr. Jope. "You refuse? Very well, then, I must go. Only I thought better of ye, Bill—I did indeed."
"I can't help what ye thought," Mr. Adams began sulkily; and then, as his friend rose with the face of a man who goes to meet the worst, he sprang up quaking. "Lord's sake, Ben Jope! You ain't a-goin' to take the candle an' leave me!"
"Bill Adams," said Mr. Jope with fine solemnity, "if I was to put a name on your besettin' sin, it would be cowardice—an' you can just sit here in the dark an' think it over."
"When I was on the p'int of offering to go with ye!"
"Ho! Was you? Very well, then, I accept the offer, an' you can walk first."
"But I don't see—"
"Another word," announced Mr. Jope firmly, "an' you won't!For I'll blow out the candle."
Mr. Adams surrendered, and tottered to the door. They passed out, and through the vaulted kitchen, and along the slate-flagged corridor—very slowly here, for a draught fluttered the candle flame, and Mr. Jope had to shield it with a shaking palm. Once with a hoarse "What's that?" Mr. Adams halted and cast himself into a posture of defence—against his own shadow, black and amorphous, wavering on the wall.
They came to the iron-studded door.
"Open, you," commanded Mr. Jope under his breath. "And not too fast, mind—there was a breeze o' wind blowin' this arternoon. Steady does it—look out for the step, an' then straight forw—"
A howl drowned the last word, as Mr. Adams struck his shin against some obstacle and pitched headlong into darkness—a howl of pain blent with a dull jarring rumble. Silence followed, and out of the silence broke a faint groan.