He went out. As the door closed upon him, a savage but irresistible sputter of laughter came from the lips of the other.
“Was ever solicitude more impudent?” he murmured. “To press me to fatten on my own wine for the sacrifice!”
Once more he went to and fro, while dark gathered about him. Not long elapsed before he leapt towards the door with a positive curse to hear it turn on its hinges again.
“Who’s there?” he cried angrily, and strode upon the offender.
He had no blame for it this time. He pulled her down into his arms, and pushed the door to, and fondled and caressed this poor partner of his disgrace. She was all frightened and trembling, it seemed; and she buried herself against him as a young rabbit snuggles into a corner.
“Where have you been this long hour, my Betty?” he said softly.
“I wanted to attend the lady of ‘Chatters’; but she was angry with me and has been saying cruel things.”
“Never mind them, my bird. People of her condition talk from the head; and that so often aches from confinement in close rooms that it makes them disagreeable.”
“It isn’t true what she said—that no foolish grace of yours can make an honest woman of me?”
“It isn’t true, Betty.”
“Why, I know my heart, and that the blame is mine. But you wouldn’t so punish me for a little offence. I would follow you through all the world, and take her gibes right meekly at your bidding. I am the better woman in my faith, and she’d give all her ladyship and her diamonds to know of you what I know.”
“If you are sure, Betty, I must believe—for you never speak an untruth.”
“Why should I, and shame my love? I have nothing but that to make me worthy of you.”
She clung to him and looked up in his eyes, imploring.
“When shall we be free? Oh, ’tis all the same as if you were a plough-boy.”
“Fortune favour us, my dear, and I will marry you in a month.”
She cried a little at that.
“Shall I ever do you credit and repay your goodness? I only want to belong to you and not make people stare or call me a knowing jade that has captured her gentleman. Let me live apart and not come to table again, and I’ll strive and strive to pick up the grand ways and read a book of fashion.”
“What! and cease to be yourself that I love? Girl we will eschew the conventions, and entertain no company but that of kennels and hutches and beehives. I would rather know the nightingales in my wood than fifty birds of paradise in turbans round my table.”
They started apart as a knock came to the door.
Bidden to enter, one of the grooms, pale, eager, and excited, stepped hurriedly down into the room, his gun over his arm.
“Sir,” he said, “a man is come from the snow and is knocking at the door for admittance.”
“A man? What man?” said Tuke.
“George, sir, looking from above, cries that ’tis him with the white hair.”
“Come with me and have your gun in readiness.”
Betty ran forward with clasped hands.
“Oh! don’t go, don’t go!” she whispered.
He smiled down upon her.
“I will parley voo from the passage, my dear; and Will shall point his barrel at the key-hole.”
He strode out of the room and cried in a sharp voice: “Who’s there?”
“John Fern, by your leave, sir.”
The answer sang in muffled by the thick oak.
“Are you tired of life, fellow?”
“I am a humble dependent on your bounty, Mr. Tuke. I come with a flag of truce, trusting to your honour.”
“I have none for vermin. We may shoot such sitting.”
“Be generous, sir. We are trapped. Frost and starvation have worked for you.”
“I am beholden to them. They are good agents of retribution.”
“Will you not be merciful? We surrender at discretion.”
“You are too late in coming to it.”
“For the love of God, sir, take me in and hear me!”
The gentleman hesitated and pondered. Were the man in truth alone, he could not see what ruse might be designed. His tale, too, was probable enough. Baulked in their outrageous plot at the very outset, what likelihood was there that the improvident scoundrels would have calculated against such a contingency as the present one?
“Wait!” he called suddenly, “and I will consider.”
He whispered his man to stand rigidly on guard, and, going softly, ascended the stairs to an upper room that would command view of the porch at an angle. Here cautiously he unbarred and opened the shutters and looked forth. The closing dusk played like smoke on the great snow-heaps that stretched all about the house and to the opening of the drive to his right, where a billowy rampart of whiteness marked the termination of the path cut by the besiegers. Thence, to the front-door, an irregular slur in the frozen carpet betokened the further passage to the house forced by his visitor below, whose broad squat figure he could distinguish set squarely in the shadow of the porch. Elsewhere there was no sign of life or movement. Dead winter reigned in the fields of fallen snow, in the stony sky, in the stark and sapless branches of the trees. The man was alone, as he had stated, and beyond the immediate reach of his comrades.
He descended swiftly to the hall once more. The faithful William stood at cock as he had left him.
“Are you there?” he cried.
“I am here, sir.”
“I will let you in. A twitch of treachery, and you get a bullet in your brain.”
“Mr. Tuke—you can trust me!”
He inside unhitched the fastenings—snapped key and bolts. “Cover him, Will,” he said, and swung open the door.
Mr. Fern walked in with a very humble obeisance. A white down of many days’ growth bristled villainously on his chin. He looked battered and unkempt, but not ill-nourished for a starving man.
The door re-locked and made secure: “Go before into that room,” said Tuke, “and remember that you tread on glass, sir.”
“I make no protest, Mr. Tuke. I assume your action guarantees me a safe-conduct, and that the fact that the muzzle of your servant’s piece actually touches my head argues no base intent on his part.”
“He is fairly efficient with his weapon, sir. I warn you he answers to the prick of discipline. Shoot this man at sight, William, if he attempts to move.”
He had signed to the smooth ruffian to stand with his back against the table.
“Sir,” said Fern, “will you not hear me speak?”
“Before witnesses, fellow. Believe me, I’ve had enough of your sole company to serve me a lifetime.”
He was turning to go, when he was aware of the girl standing, with frightened eyes, in the shadow of the hearth.
“Before God, sweetheart,” he cried, “I commit you to rare company! This is the hound, Betty, that wrought you a cur’s vengeance!”
The visitor pursed his lips and shut his eyes and shook his head in some patient dissent.
“You will not let me plead,” he murmured. “It is safe to slander the dumb.”
“Give me your piece, William, and go summon Sir David and Whimple hither. I will not let him out of my sight.”
The groom obeyed and hurried off. The moment he was vanished Betty came like a tassel-gentle to her master’s call.
“He is an old man,” she said. “He should have had pity for white hairs. Why were you so cruel to my grandfather, sir?”
“Young lady,” said Fern sorrowfully—“whoever it was worked you that wicked wrong—and I confess I have my suspicions—hath unwittingly, it seems, provided it a golden sequel. Like the beautiful phœnix, which you may have read of, you renew yourself in the ashes of your own destruction, and you shall wear fine feathers yet in a triumph over misfortune.”
“Don’t answer him, Betty,” said her master; “and go up-stairs, wench. I’ll not have you breathe in the same room with him.”
The girl went to the door, looked back wistfully, and obeyed, at the moment that the groom, followed by the two he had been dispatched for, entered the dining-hall.
Sir David’s face expressed sufficient astonishment.
“Who the thunder’s this?” said he, stopping blank on the threshold.
“This is the affable Mr. Fern, Blythewood, who comes to surrender himself into our hands. The frost, he says, has demoralized his gang.”
“Do you scent a trick? Have a care, Tuke.”
“Sir David,” quoth the other, mindful of his prisoner’s face, “how is our company disposed?”
“Why, man—here are we four; Captain Luvaine and Jim are on guard; Lord Dunlone is above, and the boy, a sterling lad, keeps watch at the window.”
Mr. Fern slurred an irrepressible start into a change of position.
“Did you speak?” said Mr. Tuke politely.
The man muttered something in the nature of a negative.
“Oh!” said the gentleman—“I thought perhaps you fancied you had put your head into a hornet’s nest. Is that you, Whimple? Were you successful?”
“I cannot find it, sir. The girl must have concealed it.”
The servant spoke in a strange pre-occupied voice. He stood in the shadow of the flung-back door, and from his covert he looked upon the old enemy of his peace with tranced, motionless eyes, and the expression of one who dreamed a nightmare “and woke to find it truth.” Even Mr. Fern showed some embarrassment under the pitiless scrutiny.
“May I speak at last?” he said, uneasily shifting his head, so that his glance fell upon the opening of the door. “I own us bested at every turn, Mr. Tuke—and—here’s for you, by God!”
The room was lighted only by some candles burning in a sconce within his short reach on the table; and by a sudden adroit movement he had thrown these down.
“Here!” he shrieked shrilly, and leapt forward and sideways.
A fiery tooth tore itself through Tuke’s shoulder, while an explosion shook the room. In one wild instant all was uproar and confusion, in the midst of which the groom ran to the hearth and kicked the smouldering logs into a blaze. Light leapt up, and revealed a struggling and swaying block of men down by the door, and in the aperture above a dark figure standing irresolute.
“Where are the others?” gasped Fern. “Shoot, you fool!”
The hoary scoundrel had played his jack to an ace. Seeing the long shadow of his partner creeping forward in the light of the hall, he had assumed him supported by their full force and had struck on the instant. His blow was miscalculated. Brander, it seemed, was alone. The latter stooped forward eagerly, a pistol raised in his hand. His difficulty was to hit the pigeon and not the crow. The flash of indecision cost him dear. Tuke, trailing on his knees, fired full at him, and the fellow doubled and collapsed on the step like a kinked sand-bag.
Fern was under Whimple and Sir David. He struggled like a madman. The taut strength of the old villain was amazing. The groom was hurrying to help, when the baronet, spun aside as if he were a child, crashed against him and both tumbled on the floor in a heap. In the same moment the robber tore his remaining adversary beneath him, scrambled up and squatted on the man’s legs, and, his eyes streaked with passion, clubbed his discharged pistol to brain him. With a desperate effort Dennis jerked up his knees, and shot the fellow face downwards upon himself once more. Fern gave a cry like a lashed dog, and rolled off and over on to his back. The servant had simply held his knife upwards and hurled the other to his own immolation.
The victor, quite maddened and overwrought, rose to his knees, and crying: “For my father that you murdered!” drove his blade over and over again into the quivering body. Then, suddenly, he cast the weapon from him and himself upon the boards, where he buried his face in his hands and fell crying and sobbing.
Now this was all a matter of a few seconds, but the noise had roused the household; and steps were heard hurrying down the stairs—as Sir David and the groom having come to their feet again were all re-making for the combatants—when the climax of the tragedy broke in a clap of fury to which the prelude had been a whisper. For, in some quarter of the house, a sudden shot rang out, and immediately there was a roar like a peal of subterranean thunder, and on its heels a hell of clanging and splintering sounds and the explosion of shattered glass—and the very floor of the room seemed to yawn and belch forth flame and cloud, as if a crater were formed beneath the foundations of the building.
Half-blinded and half-stunned, Tuke staggered to his feet and stood reeling. A monstrous silence succeeded the uproar, accented only—as a spout of black smoke rose to the ceiling and blossomed out there into a great fungus of death—with falling and tinkling sounds as of glass and dropping plaster. Then, close at hand, he heard voices crying to him, and he tottered towards them.
Captain Luvaine—misanthrope, ascetic, wiry as a ferret and disciplined on a drum-head—had fallen asleep at his post. No doubt the exhaustion induced by cold, hunger, and the emotion to which he had lately been subjected, was responsible for this lapse into a condition quite humanly natural. It was unfortunate for all, however, and very particularly for the unfortunate gentleman himself, that it should have occurred in the place and at the moment most fatal to the cause he had to serve.
For half-an-hour—his pistol cuddled in his left arm as if it were a wakeful baby—he measured his monotonous tramp in the little circumscribed chamber where was situated the “Priest’s Hole.” Upon a bracket on the wall a single candle burned, its flames shrugging peevishly in the cold draught that came through the high grating in the masonry. The trap of the vault was thrown open, the woodwork lying flat upon the floor; but the stone below was swung to upon its pivot, and at every recurring wheel in his march, he glanced down to see that this stone held its place, and that no stealthy pressure was applying to it from the tunnel-side. For, an extreme probability that the rogues would follow in the tracks of their escaped victim (no fresh snow having fallen to obliterate them) as far as the ice-house in the clearing, and would so learn of the existence of the underground passage, had led all engaged in the defence of the house to accept this quarter of it as the one most open to attack, and therefore to be more jealously watched than any other.
Often the soldier would bend and listen acutely for any least murmur of voices or rustle of secret footstep whispering into the blank deadliness of the pit beneath him. He heard nothing; was conscious of no sound he could set apart from the distant noises of the house as suspicious and unaccountable. Yet the voices were there and the footsteps; but muffled so completely by the thick stone as to be inaudible to the solitary man above.
Presently he found something irresistibly attractive in the swaying flame of the candle on the wall. It was an aspen leaf blown by the wind. A certain fever in his blood seemed to temper the cutting draught to the caress of a summer zephyr. He was on a breezy common he had known in childhood, eagerly hunting over a familiar poplar tree for the moth (he remembered all at once, it went by the name of the “Sycamore”) that lay cunningly hid by day in the furrows of the bark, from which in colour it might scarcely be distinguished. He put out his hand with a smile, staggered on the brink of the pit, recovered himself and resumed his tramp with a curse at his own folly. But by and by the flame fixed his attention once more. Tibbie! Who was she, and why should he associate her with the jumping light? He remembered all at once. It was the queer name of a little Scotch girl he had worshipped as a boy. She had had hair golden as barley straw, and he had begged a curl and had put it in his Bible, where it was always connected in his mind with the tongues of flame. Good God! how long ago was that? And would Tibbie give him a curl now, if she knew? Quite suddenly his eyes were thick with tears. He pressed his hand to them fiercely, and went up and down again—up and down. What strange caprice of memory was renewing for him these shining ghosts of his past? The new emotion, with a touch of ancient sorrow in it, sang in his brain like restful music. Standing, he leaned against the wall, shut his eyes—and immediately, with a throb and swerve of ecstasy, he was asleep.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Mr. Fern had set his snare with fine tact. In his desperation (for he had, indeed, come to that condition) he was resolved to win or lose all by a singlecoup de main. His statement of his case—so far as it went—was unexaggerated. His rascal improvidence had provided against no contingencies. His gang was mutinous from cold and hunger—most of all from the failure of liquor-supply through the impossibility of communicating with Mr. Breeds of the “Dog and Duck.” Baulked by the unexpected return of the master of “Delsrop”; baulked in his design to “rush” the house at the very outset of his daring swoop upon the estate; out-manœuvred in his attempt to make capital of the hostages that a fickle rogue’s Providence had flung into his arms, he must exercise all his diplomacy of scoundrelism to quiet the rebellion that had broken out in his own ranks. The discovery of the escape of the prisoners was the critical moment of his authority; and it was only when pursuit led to the revelation of the subterranean passage, that he found a new argument to the favour of his fellows, and to the postponement of the sacrifice of his life to their fury.
Very noiselessly, he had in person explored the tunnel, and satisfied himself that a guard was stationed at its outlet. The trap also (so it happened at the time) was closed and bolted; and it was evident that this must be forced, at the crucial moment, by means instant and effectual. Now, though he was ignorant of the real numerical strength of the garrison, he could not doubt that so obviously weak a position would be strenuously cared for by the enemy. A single man, indeed, properly posted and armed, might account for his entire gang, one by one, as it issued into the pit through the narrow aperture (the secret of whose revolving stone he had, with superior craft, easily unravelled); and a mere struggle to force this point was therefore out of the question. He would conceive a subtler plan. He would himself venture into the stronghold and would engage its defenders in talk, while Brander and the rest made their silent way under the house to the vault-opening. Here a bag of powder was to be fastened under the trap and fired by a train run up a stick. The sentry would be either killed or disabled by the explosion—the way burst clear for the uprush of his fellows; and, in the terror and confusion that should ensue, he would take the enemy in the rear and complete its demoralization.
A very pretty plan, and a bold—but, alas! we know what “gang aft agley.” A very significant accident was to frustrate it—a characteristic piece of recklessness to hoist him and his with their own petard. For as to the latter, it would not satisfy the rogues but that they must bring all their store of powder in a barrel along with them, as they looked to quarter themselves snugly in fine linen for the night, and their ammunition as a precaution must not be left behind; and, as to the former, lo! when Brander cautiously shifted the stone and looked out, there was light shining into the pit and the trap flung open.
Here was a heavy to-do—nothing to blow up and the guard above probably on the alert!
The rascal motioned his crew to intense silence, and dared to creep a step forward into the vault. The two that were carrying the powder slung between them, softly lowered the barrel a little back from the entrance, and all stood waiting.
Brander cocked his flapless ears. Dead quiet reigned above and about him. He dreaded he knew not what ambush, and the suspense was intolerable. Desperately he took his courage in hand and climbed out of the pit. In the dim and gusty light he thought the place deserted; for Luvaine leaned asleep in a dark angle of the wall and was not readily distinguishable to a rapid survey.
He was on the point of summoning his men to the surface, when something in white, that flitted by the doorway and paused and looked in, caught his eye. He gasped, hesitated, and followed in pursuit. Was it a snare. There was a pregnant silence about the place that peopled every corner with watchful eyes. He felt the sweat under his clothes and a fright of superstition in his heart.
As he came softly out of the chamber the phantom-shape was speeding before him. Suddenly it turned, nodded to him, put a finger to its lips, and again sped on. His hand closed rigidly on his pistol-butt; his teeth clipped an oath of fury. He had recognized her—the mad girl that had evaded his clutches. She had escaped from the stable, it seemed, and was mounting to her eyrie. She went lightly up the stairs, and for an instant a great longing seized him to follow and kill her. Then, all in a moment the danger of his position rushed upon him. In the act of turning to retreat, however, he became conscious of the sound of voices issuing from a room down the passage at the further end of which he was standing—voices, and amongst them that of his leader. Immediately he was impelled to creep thither, inform himself of the state of affairs, and make his plans accordingly. A pistol-shot from an unexpected quarter through the brain of the master of the house, and the situation might resolve itself without any larger appeal to violence. He stole forward, and went to his fate.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Luvaine came to himself with a shock. Something had rung out, and there was a distant flurry of shouting in his ears. He started forward, amazed at his own abuse of the trust committed to him. With eyes yet clouded with the fumes of sleep, he looked down into the vault. One of the irresolute company a little bolder than his fellows to solve the reason of the inaction that had befallen, and of the noise that suddenly swooped down upon them, was crept out into the pit; but seeing the face staring down he re-dived for his burrow like a rat. It was his jump that sprung the mine. The soldier, his aim like a drunken man’s, snapped up his muzzle and fired at the retreating figure. There followed a monstrous burst of flame—a booming crash—and he was blown against the wall like a leaf, and his spine broken. Shrieking in his agony he fell, tearing with his nails at the boards of the floor; then a merciful oblivion came to him, and the convulsion of his limbs relaxed in whatever position they had assumed, and he lay sprawled and breathing out his life.
His ball had pierced the powder-barrel, and the fate of the wretches crowded in the tunnel was a thing to recognize and forget—if one could.
Duringa period of supreme trial Sir David showed himself a man of courage and resource. The appalling thunder of the explosion, the vision of the fiery upheaval of the floor were still in his ears and eyes, when he leapt to the immediate necessity of action and of his taking the situation by the throat. Tuke was disabled—his servant half-insane with hysteria. Somebody must rally the household, and quickly; for, though the dense pall of smoke that choked the room, fitful fires were winking and blossoming; and it was evident that the place was alight in more than one quarter. It was no time to marvel or speculate over the nature of the wild catastrophe that had occurred. His interest at the outset was to secure the escape of every inmate of the house; and he plunged into the hall with a shrieking summons to man and maid to make for the passage. Into this, heavy clouds of gaseous vapour were rolling from its further end; their direction seeming to point to the locality of the explosion. He ran to the front-door, tore open the fastenings, and flung a way into the freezing cold of the outer night. Then he rushed back and, repeating his summons, made for the stair-foot. Here he met them coming down pell-mell—choking, sobbing, feeling their way in mad terror—men, women, and the one boy.
What was it? What had happened?
His sister flung herself into his arms, imploring to be saved; Dunlone, quaking and white as a turnip, shook out curses of impotent frenzy; the maids cried and gabbled volubly, and even the boy was moved to some shrill expression of inquiry as to the cause of so stupendous a bang.
The little baronet silenced and marshalled them all. He led them—preceded by one loving soul—shivering and shrieking down the passage—into the open air; and there against a snow-drift he left them, and fled back to his duty.
Not an individual, thank God!—save those already accounted for—was injured. He came upon the master, faint and stumbling, in the hall. On one side the faithful groom supported him; on the other a poor girl received his weight. She, this pathetic maid, looked dumbly at the rescuer, wistful as a shorn lamb.
“What can you do to this?” her eyes said. They might have yearned as those of her, the mother of the cripple that was brought to Jesus.
“Help him outside,” he said, with compassion in his voice. He did not know that here his quarrel with his friend was pitifully resolved.
Through the now ruddy fog he went down into the room of death. Brander, lying in his agony at the step-foot, cried to him to save him from a horrible fate.
“The worthy first,” he said sternly, and could have found it in his heart to pity the poor wretch for the despairing moan he vented. But it was Whimple he hunted for and shrieked to; and whose prostrate form he at length stumbled upon.
“What are you doing here?” he yelled. “Do you want to be grilled like a herring?”
“Let me burn and cleanse my hands,” the poor fool cried up. “No water will wash them.”
“You madman! You struck for your life and revenged your master!”
“My God! Is he dead?”
The man got to his feet in the terror of the thought.
“Is he dead?” he whispered awfully, his ghastly face pressed forward.
“No—but he’s hurt—he’s hurt. And there’s another to pull from the fire—Luvaine, that my mind misgives me lies at the source of this trouble. You’ll come, man, and help me with him, if he’s alive?”
“Yes, yes—life! Oh! show me where I can do something to save it!”
He stumbled blindly after the other, and he gave out a heavy groan as he passed by the inanimate bundle on the floor. Bloody Jack Fern showed his right title to the adjective; but it was obvious he was gone beyond considerations of rescue.
The draught drawn into the burning house had for the moment a little thinned the smoke in the passage. They took advantage of the respite, and plunged for the rearward chamber, where they assumed the victim must lie. The misty lightnings flashed from the blazing room were their only lamps of guidance; for the crash had extinguished or overturned every taper in the lower part of the building, and a reeling darkness added to the horror of the situation.
Fortunately Dennis was familiar with every stone of the old grange; and he led Sir David, who clung to his coat-skirt, with an unerring instinct. But at the very entrance of the vault they stumbled over somedébris, and recovering themselves and moving forward again, down they clumped upon a flap of shattered wood-work, and near rolled into a black yawning mouth that breathed a sick vapour at them.
Blythewood raised himself cautiously on his hands.
“Luvaine!” he yelled. “Where are you, man? Luvaine! Luvaine!”
No sound of answer came back to them; but, listening intently, they were in a moment aware of a little breathing moan against the wall in their neighbourhood.
“He’s there, by the Lord!” said Sir David, in a suppressed voice.
When, come again with difficulty to their feet, they followed the whispered clue to the poor broken creature and tried to shift him, he pattered out such a delirium of torment that they must refrain from the effort to bear him out in their arms. But they made a sling of Whimple’s coat, and getting him into this as best they could, they took it between them, and treading with infinite care, accomplished their escape from that veritable trap of death. Returning to the passage, they found this to be filled anew with driving volumes of vapour, and a great increase of roaring and flaming sounds to proceed from the dining-hall; but they passed the danger at a scamper, looking thereinto as they fled by at a rising sea of fire that leapt up the walls in pointing waves, and fell and spread abroad and leapt again. And from the threshold step, over which in his terror he had managed to struggle his half-paralyzed arms, Brander screamed to them and prayed to their mercy with knotted hands.
And at the last they saved the scoundrel, when the heat smote upon their faces like scourges of nettle and the smoke plugged their throats; and they laid him down in the snow a little apart from the rest, and paused at length and wiped their sooty brows and breathed in the frost as if it were perfumed sunlight.
Now were all accounted for; but the bitter night must take much that the fire had spared unless they could win to some cover. They stood there, under a fat drift piled against a tree on the lawn—to the shelter of which men and women had forced and beaten a passage—they stood, a poor, homeless group, with their wounded laid on coats amongst them, and watched the processes of a new enemy they were powerless to control. And, as the fury of flame leapt from window to window, crossed by luminous shadows, as though fiends were ransacking the building for the little household treasures that are dear to sentiment, cries and exclamations of pity rose involuntarily from the lips of all, and some of the women wept and called upon the men for the love of God to return and rescue—what they did not know; but in truth it was the children of their imagination.
But suddenly a more real questioning terror was passing amongst them. The girl—Darda—where was she?
“In the stable,” murmured Tuke from the ground. His head was pillowed upon Betty’s shoulder. But for very shame the girl would have stripped off her skirt to wrap it about his frozen feet. They were risen above the petty conventions of behaviour, these two. In the shadow of pain, of death, they had failed of touch with the particular proprieties, and they clung together like sworn lovers and defied the world. And, at least for the moment, their attachment was respected of all, for the most paltry natures find life in its tragedies a little unadaptive to their rules of social conduct.
Now, at the word of horror, Dennis started forward with a cry of agony. His sister—his poor mindless charge! That he should have been so lapped in his own selfish misery as to forget her! He had thought, in his stunned mind, that she had been amongst the women. How could she be, when he had himself witnessed her removal to the stables?
He struggled off across the snow, followed by the tireless William. Angela, placed and supported between her brother and Dunlone, shrieked faintly after him. The girl must be held in durance—somewhere, in a place of safety. She should die were she brought again into her neighbourhood! Blythewood soothed her distress. She should be well protected, he swore. The lord, coming somewhat to himself, and perhaps relieved to be escaped under whatever conditions from that abode of brigands, cursed the lady under his breath for a little pretty whimpering,—and was half moved to slide his arm about her waist. He withheld that condescension, however, for the present.
The two men were seen to reach the stables—to force, after some strenuous effort, the door of the coach-house. From the gap made by them the terrified deer broke forth and scattered in all directions. Some sprang into drifts and were lost; some huddled against the wall, afraid to venture further; one or two came stumbling and leaping in the foot-tracks, and ran up, bleating very humanly for protection to those superior animals who could not find it for themselves.
And now ensued a period of intense anxiety and emotion; for minutes passed and the rescuers did not reappear. And, with incredible speed, rushing like a blood-wanton dog amongst a flock of sheep, the fire seized room after room and worried it, and raced on roaring until the whole building was involved. And young shoots of flame sprouted from the roof and grew and flourished in a moment like burning aloes, and the heat waxed intense.
From the first, indeed, no least hope of checking the conflagration had suggested itself. The old dry interior of the building caught as if all its solidity were so much illusion of lath and canvas; and the water-supply was frozen to a minimum.
Quite suddenly the little group made one mouth of a low moan of horror. Upon the north parapet of the roof a figure had come out—that of the missing girl. She stood beside a chimney-stack, whither the flames had not yet reached, and in the shaking glare she was as visible to all as though it were sunlight. She carried, it seemed, a bag of some sort in her hand, and she made no gesture of fear; but, in an instant, as a fountain of fire rose behind her, scattering sprays of sparks, she was dancing and kissing her hand to her own shadow on the chimney-stack.
Then they saw that the two men were come out of the stable and were standing beneath, calling frantically up to the mad creature; and she bent and looked down upon them, while sobs and cries broke from the watching women and the men breathed hard.
Her brother, it was evident, was beseeching her to throw herself, as her one chance, into a thick drift that lay beneath; and she could be seen to nod to him and to point exultantly to the bag on her arm. But in the act it slipped from her grasp and fell, and at once she fled after it, plunging from the parapet like a swimmer. Into the snow she went, as if it were foam, and flakes of the frozen crust of the drift span up and were flung against the wall. And the pent burden of the spectators found its shrill vent once more, and was lowered to sighs of pity as the two were seen coming across the snow with a limp shape looped between them.
She had dived, and over the brink of Cocytus. She had gone to the shades that were ever her kinsfolk. When they looked at her they saw a smile on her mouth; but her hair hung slack, as if the flame of her soul was withdrawn from it. She was reasonable at last; and to make her so just this had been needed—to snap her slender neck like a lily-stalk.
* * * * * * * * * * *
When, by midnight, the great fire was died down to a cinderous glow, gasping and winking amongst walls of slag, the sad onlookers were moved pathetically to see the purple vault above them all embroidered with stars; the clerestory of the trees hung with them; the white pavement ghostly in their radiance. The candles of the vast cathedral, whose tapering walls are the cone of the earth’s own shadow, were lit, and the voiceless anthems of peace rose in the dreaming sighs of half the world.
The flames, checked by the stone passage, and rising straight and clear in a windless night, had spared the stables; and thither at the last they all bent their footsteps, bearing the dead and the wounded with them.
My lord, my lady; Tom and Dick and Moll—there they were fain to camp amongst the muck and litter left by the fallow-deer; and the frost pinched them sadly, and hunger even, and for the sick thirst; and never did reluctant day so dawdle in the East.
Froma deadening of all his faculties, of all his perceptives, to stupor; from stupor to a delirium of weariness, in which so little as a ring on his finger was a conscious burden; from weariness to fever and a recrudescence of those mental and bodily pains he strove so frenziedly to forget; from this state at last to the yielding stage of exhaustion, and Tuke, the man not so much hurt as overwrought, fell into a profound slumber and got his restoration of it.
For long, before this came, he was aware only of a close darkness—a darkness that seemed a cabined horror of himself, were it not assured and comforted by a presence that, in supreme moments of torture, he grew to know he could depend upon for pitiful help and a silent passion of sympathy. This presence, swift and invisible, was always at hand when he most needed it—soothing, murmuring; taking upon itself the responsibility of questions he could not answer; brushing away with snowflakes the stinging wasps that settled on his shoulder. It was so prompt, so gentle, so full of resource, that he came to think that if he could only put to it the supreme problem that vexed him beyond endurance, it would resolve it at once with a quiet laugh, and so secure him everlasting peace. But, whenever he came to the point of explanation, he found that the problem itself had eluded him, and he could not remember what road it was that his tired brain had gone astray on. At length, ceasing to struggle, he floated inanimate on the tide against which he had fought to make head, and was borne by it into a haven of rest.
He woke to find himself lying on the ground in a queer little chilly chamber, into which a weak light filtered through a cobwebbed window. Looking up, in some pleasure of languor, he was interested in certain straps and buckles that hung from wooden brackets, and a couple of odd bonnet-shaped things that stuck out from the wall. Lazily he amused himself by associating these with twenty different uses, until—reason passing from the fields of romance into the high-road—he came in a moment to the knowledge that he was lying in his own harness-room, and to memory of all that had brought him there.
In the shock of revelation he struggled to a sitting posture and uttered a startled little pipe. It was no great sound, but it was enough to bring a certain bird to its wounded mate.
She came in, shut the door behind her, and, hurrying to him, knelt down and threw her arms round his neck, and cried joyful tears. Her pretty plumes were ruffled, her eyes clouded with the weariness of long watching; but she was ten times woman for her blouzed appearance, and he would not have had her one draggled wisp of hair the neater.
“Why, Betty, I am well—and what a fainting miss to succumb to a scratch!”
“Indeed it is an angry wound, and you were worn and sick.”
“We are houseless, my girl—nothing but the cold fields to nest in. You have your arms about a man of snow, and he melts in their warmth.”
“Ah, me! You plucked me from the fire but to burn yourself. You are a man of passion rather, and you overbear your foolish maid. And are you ruined, dear? I would be joyful to know it that I might work for you and die for you.”
He laughed a little.
“Why,” said he, “the house is gone, to be sure, and all my trouble with it, I hope. And I have that of the vagabond in me that I think I feel the freer for the loss of so responsible a property. But I have enough for us yet, maybe, to make out life withal; and we will e’en look about us, Betty, for Mr. Rogers’s cot by a ‘willowy brook.’”
“And will the gentleman let it to us?”
“That he will, I swear. For I have met him at ‘Whitelaw’s,’ with his dry face sunk in a green tabinet kerchief of the nicest mode, that meant more to him, I’ll warrant, than all the green pastorals he ever invented. But have I slept the night through, my wench; and is our hearth cold that was to have leapt to my wife’s home-coming? It was piled too high, Betty, and I have given you a roasting welcome. And what are we to do now, or how escape from these beggarly quarters?”
“Why, for shame, are you fit to move? But Sir David Blythewood is abroad already with the men, to see if they cannot fashion a raft, or sled is it called, of planks to draw over the freezing snow and carry us all to his own great house.”
“He is an admirable creature. There—give me your soft shoulder, girl, and I will talk with my eyes shut, for my brain spins like a top. Where are the rest? And pray God all are sound!”
“Ah! You don’t remember—the poor captain!”
“Luvaine? Is he hurt?”
“He cannot live—not many hours more. Sir David and I have watched with him all night. He has suffered, but he is at peace now, for he is dead, poor soul, below the waist. ’Twas in shooting at the wicked men that tracked us through the tunnel that he made the explosion, for Mr. Brander says they would bring powder along with them in a barrel, and——”
“Brander? Is the rogue spared, then, when an honest soldier falls?”
“He is sore wounded, but he will recover, perhaps.”
“An idle rally that shall earn him the gallows. And so they came by the hole after all, and were caught in their own springe? He hath a soldier’s death; and tell me that is all, Betty.”
“Ah! no—the girl.”
“I remember—I remember that. She sprang from the roof.”
“Yes.”
“And she is dead? A pitiful account for a dump of red crystal. How much blood yet will it absorb before its lust is quenched? My heart cries for the unhappy child. But something comes to me, Betty, that I think I have struggled for through a fever of hours. You must go——”
“No, no! Oh, don’t bid me away from you!”
“Tush, you simple! ’Tis but a yard or two, and to ask of Dennis the bag the poor natural threw down, for I heard the women cry it.”
“I will ask him. He is with the captain yonder.”
“Why, it loathes me; but I have a shadowy idea, and I must act the part of an honest man, though it were to give the stone a new lease of devilry. And Dennis is there, you say?”
“In the coach-house, where the sad captain lies, and Mr. Brander over against him by the further wall.”
“And where are the rest?”
“The maids and Miss Royston are in the loft. She sleeps on the straw, the pretty tired lady, like a flower that has fallen with the cut corn. And the lord, for he would not have nay, has a stall below to himself.”
“He is fitly housed; and have you filled him the manger with dead thistles? Go, Betty, go—for I shall never be at peace till this about the bag is resolved.”
When he was alone once more, he sank back and yielded himself to bewildering dreaming. Here, it seemed, the second phase of his life ended and the third was to begin. What should be its nature? He could not, nor would he, contemplate the possibility of a self-resurrection to conditions similar to those he had left behind. Indeed, he had no doubt whatever that his circumstances were totally inadequate to a rebuilding of his ruined property, and what would a houseless estate be worth to him or to any one else? But, apart from that question, he felt himself quit of all desire to re-accommodate his innate wildness to the humdrum existence of a country squire. Rather a hundred times would he settle with his dear mate in some remote pasture by woods and waters, and dig his own potatoes and bake his own loaves for the little mouths that should nibble at them by and by. To reverse a familiar image, he had been a butterfly, he had been a grub; and now he would fain be a caterpillar, feeding on the green leaf, and taking the sun and the rain as his animal prerogatives. Then he found himself with an ardent longing to repudiate for once and for all his father’s scornful bequest; to heal him of his wound, and shake the dust of “Delsrop” from his feet, and, holding his love’s hand, to set his face to the wind and to the hills, and walk on and away. But how, then, could he rent his cot, or how feather it for those prospective nestlings? It all worried and confused his weakened brain. He would put it to Betty—Betty, upon whose sympathy he was learning to depend as something very sweet and personal to himself.
He opened his eyes to find her standing beside him, that very pink and white bag that had caught his attention at the lodge, swung in her hand.
“He brought it in last night,” she said, “and here it is untouched. He asked me very humbly when he might see you, for he is lost and broken, though he does his duty like a man.”
“With such a constitution, to act as he hath acted is to outman us all. Good Lord! is the thing stuffed fit to burst with the poor creature’s curiosities? Whatever her mishaps, she must save those, it seems. Empty them out, Betty, on the floor—here, pellmell, beside me; and I will test the value of my surmise. Bah! frogs and sloughed skins and bones! A loathsome collection; and she was like a flaming Dryad of the woods. Here is a rat’s skull, and here——”
He paused, gave out a hard breath, and suddenly struggled to get to his feet. The girl flew to him.
“What are you at?” she cried. “Oh! you will hurt yourself.”
His face was pale and bore a startled look.
“Help me up!” he muttered. “Nay, wench, I must—I must! ’Tis here, the villainous thing, in my hand!”
He held open his palm. A chalky lump was in it—a worthless-looking fragment.
“What is that but rubbish?” she said.
“Rubbish? Why, so it is, Betty, but ’tis the rubbish fools strangle one another to possess. I must go to him, the dying man. I was right. It has lain there thrown away while we were cutting throats. He must see it and know it before he passes. Good God! Betty, Betty, I must go to him, I say!”
He was so wild and impatient in his efforts to rise that she bent all trembling to help him, as the wiser policy.
“And will you be sick again,” she said, “and break my heart?”
“I should be sick to remain. There—I am up and steady. Give me your fine, firm arm, Betty, and lead me to his bed.”
Very slowly and shakily he made his way to the coach-house; but, when he was come there, he stood erect, almost without support, and took in the melancholy scene. Dennis, white and haggard, started up from a stool on which he was seated beside a rough pallet stretched on the ground; but his master put a finger to his lips, and motioned him to silence. Then he went and sat himself down on the vacant seat and looked upon the stricken man.
“Luvaine!” he said, softly.
The dying soldier stirred and gave out a little moan. His face was so scorched and disfigured with gunpowder as to be hardly recognizable, and all the upper part of his body was swollen to grotesque proportions; but the coat that had been drawn over his paralyzed lower limbs lay as flat as though nothing but its natural folds raised it from the floor.
“Luvaine,” said Tuke again, “can you hear me?”
As he spoke the door was opened, and Sir David entered. He looked a fagged and worn little man, but a light of bantam heroism glinted in his eyes.
“Tuke!” he exclaimed in astonishment.
“I have slept, Blythewood, and have found a little of myself again. There is something more I have found—hush, man! the stone.”
“Great God!”
He closed the door and came forward, gasping.
“The stone!” he said, in a hoarse whisper.
Tuke nodded.
“Hush!” he murmured again. “He hears, I think.”
Betty knelt pitifully beside the sufferer. Her breath was like balm on his poor battered face. His eyes turned to her with a pathetic gratitude that was moving in the extreme. They heard him murmuring to her, thickly and brokenly.
“She hath been an angel to his torments,” whispered Sir David. “All the long night she hath never ceased to care for him, and he follows her with his eyes till the tears of both make a veil between. She can read his least desire, as——”
Betty turned her head and looked up.
“He is speaking. He wants you to listen.”
Both men stooped to catch the muttered words.
“It is found. I knew before you spoke. I knew its discovery at the last would find me here—here, on the ground. The curse of the predestined is unfulfilment. Let me look at the wicked talisman that is soaked in the blood of martyrs. Let me look, I say.”
Tuke leaned over and placed the infernal pebble, splotched and overlaid as he had recovered it, in the groping hand. The fingers closed convulsively on it. The eyes of the dying were fixed questioning.
“You would have me say how it came to light?”
He—all the watchers, looked round with a start. Against the further wall a deathly shape was risen upon its elbow—Brander, gasping and shaking and holding his hand to his wounded chest. He nodded frantically, as if he would say, “Go on!”
“It had fallen out, to the bottom of the bag in which the skull was placed for removal. This bag the girl Darda had used, it seems, for transporting her relics to the lodge. The rogues found it there and collected fire-wood in it. Darda, when she escaped, must have pulled out the sticks, returned her treasures to the bag, and brought all home with her. Still those possessions in her poor life that represented most to her, she must carry them with her when she leapt from the parapet; and to me this moment the bag was brought packed as she had left it. Through all this lust of violence and misery the stone hath remained unguessed at where it dropped from the socket of the skull; and, while the scoundrels yonder were gnashing and whetting their teeth, there it lay in their midst, within reach of all, and not a man might buy himself with the knowledge an hour’s surcease of the hell to which he was condemned.”
He turned—he could not help it—with an air of irrepressible triumph to the wounded wretch away from him. A fierce mockery of the creature’s impotent malice was on his lips, but nobility prevailed and he forbore to express it. For a moment Brander stared at him as if he would have bartered his last chance of life for a loaded pistol in his hand; then, with a rending groan, he went flat upon his straw pillow and turned his face to the wall.
A silence of some minutes succeeded, while the dying man twisted the shapeless lump feebly in his fingers. Then, all at once he was speaking again, and his voice gathered strength over the painful syllables.
“Kithless and alone; pre-doomed to a curse, and conquered by it at the last. What chance has ever been mine—what hope to escape the ambush laid for me? The love of woman——”
He slewed his head about, with its melancholy burning eyes, and his gaze dwelt upon the girl beside him.
“The love of woman,” he moaned faintly, “what might it have made of me? I was debarred from that and all by a foul inheritance. The sins of the fathers—the sins of the fathers!”
Again a silence fell; but, of a sudden, with a convulsive effort, he had forced himself up sitting, and, leaned upon one hand, was devouring the stone with a great hunger of vision.
“A life of torment for a minute of ecstasy!” he cried in a strong voice; “and who shall accept the heritage now to his undoing? Is there any fool in the world invites the curse?”
“Luvaine,” said Sir David, gently, “let me take the vile thing and hurl it into the sea.”
The dying man looked at him with a strange stare.
“Because it has been the sport of devils, shall we discard its infinite possibilities of good? It is the means—the means, if somewhere we can find the instrument.”
Betty, with her loving woman’s instinct to pity and relieve, had put her arm about the trembling shoulders to support them. Now Luvaine’s head fell back upon that tender pillow, and a rare smile flickered on his tortured mouth.
“To line the cot for the little piping nestling; to nurse it to rich comfort, and train it to be noble and generous and true; to convert this wickedness into a blessing—take it, my child, and with it the last gratitude of this poor foundered wreck.”
The girl looked up, frightened, at the others.
“No, no, no!” she whispered, in a tearful voice, “I cannot.”
“Child—woman, would you deny me this ray of light into the black pit of my doom? The scale is all weighted down on one side. What shall I have to set against the fearful load? They are pinioning me now—my God! I am called to the question!”
Sir David came forward swiftly, took the gem from the nerveless hand, and placed it in Betty’s. A sigh quivered up from the soldier’s lips. He gathered all he could of breath for a last effort.
“I call those present to witness,” he cried, “that I, Edward Luvaine, do here on my death-bed make free gift of the ruby, called the Lake of Wine, to Betty Pollack.”
He sank back and spoke never again. In a few minutes the death-agony was on him. It was brief, but so convulsive while it lasted that, when he was fallen stiffly to rest, they had to fasten his left arm down with a ligature to bring him to some composure of attitude.
Then the girl, seeing the others desired to talk, begged them to leave her alone with the dead while they went outside, for that her heart was full of tears, and she would pray mercy on the poor sinner.
They went sombrely, and stood without at a little distance in the snow.
“It would scarce be decent to congratulate you,” said Blythewood, gravely.
“Indeed, sir, I am not sure it would, or that it is at all a subject for congratulation. At any rate compliments on such can hardly be exchanged by us.”
“You are bitter, and you have very full cause. I spoke once before without book; and now, it seems, Angel and Dunlone have an understandin’. Give me your hand, man; and, frankly, I’m sorry. Why, I could ha’ wished it was you, by my soul, and what was my rudeness then but a left-handed compliment?”
“My lady Viscountess will grace any position she condescends to!” cried Tuke enthusiastically; and the two men shook hands then and there.
“And now,” said Blythewood, “we have been experimenting with a sledge of our own manufacture; and I make no doubt we can transport the whole party to ‘Chatters’ before the day is out.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
Tuke, a weary ghost of himself, that bodily hurt and mental emotion still would not spare, was returned from inspecting Sir David’s travelling contrivance. As he pushed open the door of the stable, he saw that that drove the blood upon his heart, and paralyzed him, voice and limbs, so that he stood like a man of stone. Betty still knelt, her face buried in her hands, beside the dead soldier; but crawled silently to within touch of her—by what desperate disciplining of suffering who might tell—was the wounded brute that, but a few minutes earlier, was extended, helpless apparently and near to dying, against the further wall. Now, as Brander saw the door swung back, he raised himself on one hand, a short knife poised in the other, and in his eyes was an expression of such devilish triumph as turned the soul of the wretched onlooker sick. The blade whipped aloft—the arm of the dead man sprung up and struck the murderer a backhanded blow full in the face. His knife rattled on the boards—he gave a screech of terror, and rolled grovelling and as Tuke, the horrible spell broken, bounded to his love and caught her, fluttering, to his arms, Sir David and the others rushed into the stable with pale faces, and the how, when, and what, of startled men.
Now, when all was explained, and the half-convulsed ruffian tied up with little regard to his comfort, it was vain to try and convince Betty that the ill-secured ligature had snapped fortuitously, releasing the hard arm like a spring, and, marvellously enough, at the opportune moment, and that her safety was due to an accident. “But,” said she, “the dead struck for his own, and because he had dedicated that to good uses. And now I will take the poor man’s trust, and try to acquit me of it so that he shall have peace in his grave. For I owe him that at least for my life.”
And, with the words, she put her arms around her man’s neck before them all, and that so that she might hide the tears she could not repress, for she was much and for many reasons overcome.
“And what,” said Tuke, with a smile, “have you done with the trust, Betty?”
“Why,” said she, “I slipped it under my garter.”
“Well,” cried Creel, “you have sown your wild oats and reaped a whirlwind; and now at last is the calm; and you shall sit under your fig-tree and grow fat.”
“Never, my old friend. We shall come and go like the swallows, and build under the eaves of the world.”
“Aye, aye, and rear a brood at every visit, no doubt. Well, you have realized well on the famous stone, and can indulge a whimsey or so. And you can afford to waive title to the estate, and encumber me with a property I neither covet nor care for. But you are wise no doubt; and maybe you have that of the gambler’s instinct left you to know when the luck hath turned. And, if anything will convince me it has, Sir Robert, it is in the fact that that one rogue was spared for the gallows and to give evidence against himself in a near incredible story; which he did with so fine a tact of villainy as to startle virtuous truth out of conceit with itself.”
“Mr. Creel, Brander was not the first that missed his vocation of attorney.”
“A stale witticism, Sir Robert, that has its origin in the unreasoning petulance of unsuccessful litigants. Yet what man blames his broker that he takes his percentage equally in a good or bad speculation?”
“Why, I spoke the common cant thoughtlessly, sir, and only aimed at a laugh. I would ennoble all lawyers for your sake.”
“Well, well. And so the man Whimple goes abroad with you?”
“I would not part with him for a fortune. Sir David Blythewood offered to take him into his service, but——”
“Ah! I hear that gentleman’s half-sister is pledged to a coronet?”
“She will bring it lustre.”
He rose, and the attorney with him. The old grey eyes of the latter looked kindlily over their glasses.
“And what are your plans?” said he.
“To travel for a year, maybe, while our garden is maturing.”
“The garden that is in the green hollow out of the world? God make it fruitful for you. And is Lady Linne pleased with her new-found title?”
“She is a woman of very women, sir; and all grace I offer her is but repayment of a loan of her own advancing.”
“Well, indeed; you are very much in love.”