A moment he paused. The smell of lifeless earth was about him—a dull sense of pressure seemed to set his eardrums tattooing. Then his pupils, relieved of the sheeted glare without, dilated, and he saw the profound gloom of the passage to be broken into by a little glimmer of light at its far end. Hearing his companions behind him, he crept on. So low was the boring that in some places he had to stoop almost double to pass. But he went forward steadily, and all at once regained a thought of space and stopped in amazement and concern.
He was in a little circular chamber, whose walls and floor were built of blocks of unhewn and uncemented stone. Other blocks, roughly squared and shaped, stood on the level here and there; and against one of these was piled a heterogeneous heap of human bones, mixed with fragments of stone implements and arrow-heads and some beads of dull amber. Over all a flaring dip—wedged into a cleft-stick stuck in a crevice of the wall—cast a wavering glow. It made manifest the simple austerity of this antique chamber of the dead; and it did more—it revealed Dennis on his knees beside a pallet of dried turves, whereon something long and gaunt and quiet was extended.
“Whimple!” exclaimed his master softly. He felt Luvaine’s breath at his ear, and extended his arms that the other might not pass. The servant turned his head. A lost, wild expression was in his eyes.
“Dead!” he muttered, in a dreadful voice.
Tuke went forward and looked down. She had noble sepulture, this tameless wanderer. What a fiercely handsome face it was—stone in the midst of stone. But all the age of sixty years of loneliness was gathered in it, now the informing will was withdrawn. In her long discipline of hatred she had yielded so little to her fellows, that not even the right of her burial should be theirs. In her own earth, after all the long vain baying of the human pack, she had lain herself down to die of the frost-stroke; and here she was, as much a part of the ancient cairn as the elf-arrows that were strewn about her.
“Dennis!” said his master again—and the man looked up in his face and said simply: “She was my mother.”
Tuke put his hand gently on his shoulder.
“I have thought as much. You would not have her removed?”
“No, no! Let her lie at peace.”
“I think you are right. Such a tomb as this is for the hunted.”
A discordant cry echoed through the chamber: “The skull! My God, let me pass!”—and Luvaine, dashing aside the restraining arm, bounded to the furthermost of the stone blocks and snatched something into his hands. He had no respect, no sympathy, no decency even, in the covetous lust of his soul. Perhaps if he had had, the Fates had vouchsafed a kindlier turn to his fortunes.
Tuke and Blythewood would not echo his jubilance—would hardly give him their notice, indeed. To them a solemner tragedy appealed—a mystery far profounder than that of humanity’s morbid attraction to coloured pebbles. It was only when a second horrible cry broke from him that they looked round, startled.
He was standing with the skull held out before him in one hand. His face was ghastly and contorted; his eyes, in the marionette play of light and shadow, were dancing devils of fury.
“It is gone!” he shrieked—“the stone is gone!”
Tuke’s very gorge rose. The nerves of his jaw seemed to click rigid.
“Dennis,” he said, with a sternness that was only for that other—“forbear your grief a little, my good fellow. For the sake of common decency let us resolve this matter now and at once.”
He crossed to Luvaine.
“Well, sir,” he said—“you say the stone is gone?”
For answer the other held him out the skull. He was so lost in the terror of loss that he would have scarcely resented a blow.
Tuke took the ugly relic in his hand, and offered it to his man’s inspection.
“Is this,” he said, “the same you gave to your mother? Can you identify it?”
“It is the same. There is the bulged eyelid and the chalk-marks yet about it.”
“The stone may have dropped out. We can show you no better consideration, Dennis, than to begin and end the search here and now.”
Luvaine was on his knees already, diving into and scattering the little heap of bones and implements. He found nothing there; nor could any of them, after the most exhaustive search, discover a trace of the missing gem. The candle on the wall guttered and flared down while they were at work, and Dennis replaced it with another from a little bundle he had brought with him. He had made it one of his duties, it seemed, to supply these to the lonely woman.
Suddenly Luvaine rose to his feet with an evil expression of face.
“This is trouble thrown away,” he said. “There is one and one only likely place to overhaul.”
Dennis cried “No, no!” with an agonized look.
“Whimple,” said his master gently—“these are great stakes at issue, and to curtail the search would be to place me at least in a very false position. Let it be done with all reverence, by your hands.”
The servant knelt beside the body with a stifled groan. As he did so, a common impulse led Tuke and his friend to hastily block the soldier’s path. The maniac did not interfere; but he glanced over their shoulders, gnawing his knuckles and jerking his every limb in a fury of impatience.
“There is nothing on this poor body,” said Dennis, after a pause, looking up. “Almost as little without as within, poor soul.”
“Nothing in or about the pallet?”
“I have made a complete search, sir. There is not a trace of the stone.”
Luvaine broke out with a shriek.
“He has but looked like a sluggard wench. There are fifty places yet. Let me at her!—let me at her, I say!”
“You shall not, by God!” said Tuke.
The wretched creature wrung his hands.
“You would dash the cup from my very lips!” he yelled. “You would drive me mad among ye! I will not be denied!”
He struggled to pass them. They drove him back, and took their stand by the prostrate body.
“The search here has been thorough,” said Tuke. “I watched and I marked. Anywhere else in the chamber you like, sir; but these poor remains rest sacred from further abuse.” (He felt Whimple’s lips upon his hand as he spoke.) “Hunt, sir, hunt while we wait a little longer; yet I fear the stone may have dropped anywhere on her passage hither, and may lie now sunk for ever in the grass of the downs. Hurry, man, if you would look further, and would not have us snowed up to perish beside her that lies here.”
The rabid creature, chattering and foaming, went off on twenty different scents while they waited. Every stone and crevice of the little room he examined—the broken tunnel explored, candle in hand—even re-issued into the thicket and beat wildly about with hand and foot. At length it became evident, even to him, that his search must prove vain. He desisted, with a dead-white face set to his companions, and: “Come,” he said, in a hollow voice, “and conduct me back to the hell I had a little escaped from.”
Could it be possible that a passion so uncleanly could rise to the least nobility of despair? For a moment Tuke’s heart swerved in a rush of pity for anything so forlorn.
“We may find it yet,” he said. “When it is safe to return we will look here again.”
“No,” said the other; “it is lost to me for ever. I know now and feel it.”
He went out first, with a dull and dogged step. Dennis lingered to whisper a last word of love to the stark thing on the pallet. Suddenly he stooped, lifted the skull from the stone whereon his master had replaced it, and laid it softly down at the feet of the dead woman.
“Perhapshekneels there now, and is forgiven,” he murmured. Then he blew out the candle and followed the others into the open air.
As he came forth of the thicket, a charge of laden wind near took him off his feet. Staggering and half-blinded, it was some moments before he could collect his sight and his senses. Then he saw his companions huddled about the trunk of a little beech tree, and ran to them, foretasting the peril.
One and all they were now menaced by a loss more final than that of any stone, however costly. While they were within, the wind had called up its reserves and the undulating plain was all one sheeted spectre of driving white.
“We must make the attempt,” said Tuke. “To stay here is to perish.”
He took Blythewood’s arm, and drove into the whirl as he spoke. The other two followed apart.
The snow was up to their ankles; it hurtled into their faces and stung their blinking eyelids. Every minute they felt the labour of progress more acute.
“My God!” cried Sir David—“seven miles of this!”
“Oh, courage, man! There is no hope but to keep going!”
For long they marked their bearings pretty well. Then, looking over his shoulder, Tuke uttered an exclamation and stopped.
“Dennis!” he yelled, for the man had disappeared.
He ran back in their fast-vanishing tracks—stumbled over the fallen body.
“Up!” he shrieked—“don’t give in like this!”
The poor fellow begged to be allowed to sleep—just forty winks, he said.
“Forty winking devils!” shouted his master.
He had him up and on in a moment—placed him between himself and Sir David. Thenceforward the three held together, swaying and struggling. The wiry soldier could take and keep his own measure of endurance.
But now, confused by the temporary delay, they fell doubtful in their landmarks, wavered, and woke to the knowledge that they were lost. Dennis, who alone of them knew something of the road, was fallen into a state of semi-stupefaction and could scarce speak coherently. Indeed, it was all one for that, for the prospect was quite blotted out in the mist of twinkling flakes; and to keep the wind at their backs was become their only guide.
It was a long, agonized advance against the forces of Death. They dared not stop for an instant to breathe or think. They must plod their frantic way whose every step was a lifted labour, and hardly could they cheer on any fainting spirit amongst them who threatened to lag to his destruction. The snow deepened; and often now they floundered into drifts, and must struggle forth and on with their hearts sobbing in their breasts.
At length, when dusk was a little threatening to foreclose, they came down upon trees and a mass of choked underwood. This, like desperate men, blind and unreasoning, they fought through—crossed a downward slope of white—plunged into a second great tangle of growth, tore their way through it, and brought up sharp before a little low door that seemed to pierce the base of an inverted bowl of snow set in a small clearing. It was no time to wonder or inquire. Tuke kicked at the woodwork, and it reeled open on screaming hinges. They saw an aperture leading to some darkness of refuge—stooped, and one by one scrambled in and sank exhausted upon the rubbish that lay beneath.
Perhapsa half-hour elapsed before any one of the exhausted men was able to do more than sigh and shift his aching limbs on the bed of rubbish where he lay. They had taken the precaution to pull the door to behind them, and though they were thereby condemned to a profound darkness, the close sunken quarters, warmed with the natural heat of their bodies, wrought a life in them by degrees and a gradual curiosity as to the character of their refuge.
Luvaine was the first to drag himself upright. Standing with his shoulders on a level with the door-sill, he cautiously made a little opening and looked forth long and critically. Then he reclosed the aperture and sat himself down again.
“David,” he said (from that time he, as far as possible, ignored his host), “are you recovered?”
“Convalescent, sir”—he was heard to sit up in the darkness; “I’m at the brandy and beef-tea stage.”
“That’s a pity, for neither will you taste again this side the grave.”
“Oh, Luvaine! What do you mean, man? Where are we?”
“That I can’t tell you—unless it’s a tool-house sunk in some spinney. But, for our prospects—look for yourself, David.”
“Is it so bad as that?” said Tuke, sitting up in his turn.
“Look for yourself, David,” repeated the soldier; “and tell me if you see one hope of escape.”
Both hearers scrambled to their feet, and one of them flung open the door. The mouth of their refuge looked westwards, so that by good fortune it was little encumbered of the driving snow; but that had drifted and piled itself over the easterly slope of the mound in such a manner as to throw an irregular outwork, varying from one yard to many in depth, all about them, and upon this fresh deposits from the bewildered sky were ceaselessly accumulating. It had fallen deep dusk through all the high thicket that encompassed their clearing; but it was yet light enough to see how the white storm—disciplining its fury as the wind dropped with night—was settled to a direct purpose of crushing under the whole resistance of life. Now the flakes fell in dense, sluggish lines upon the open ground, as if the vast weight already cast down were drawing out the very entrails of the heavens.
Blythewood levered himself up and sprang outside. The fall made of him in a moment a man of snow.
“What are we to do?” he shouted. “Good Lord! think of the house and of them two fuming for us to return! Shan’t we make a dash through the wood and try at least to get our bearin’s?”
Tuke had heard a sound, and had bent over Dennis. He came to the opening.
“The poor fellow is half-delirious, I think,” said he, “and in no state to go on. Make the effort, you, and I’ll stay here with him.”
“David,” said Luvaine, “I’m for you. Give me a hand.”
“No,” said the baronet—“not for all the little devils of Angels in the world!”
He jumped down again.
“We’ll stick together,” he cried. “What ails the man?”
He was lying on his heap, flushed and with his eyes closed. Now and again his lips would mutter meaningless fragments of speech.
“This is a girl in breeches,” said Luvaine. “We should have set him on a jackass.”
“It wouldn’t have been courteous to throw all the burden on you, sir,” said Tuke politely.
Blythewood burst out laughing.
“David,” said the soldier in a high voice, “there have been those who have learnt before now the danger of riding me roughshod, and——”
A fresh explosion greeted him, and he stopped, frowning heavily.
“Captain Luvaine,” said Tuke, looking round, “I would remind you that this man, knowing himself of a poor constitution, has cheerfully submitted it to considerable hardship for your benefit——”
“Well, sir, I make no denial of his cheerfulness, or of his sense of duty to his superiors.”
“—And that for some time now a large burden of responsibility, wholly unconnected with any interest of mine, has lain upon my shoulders.”
“You refer to the stone? Surely, sir, you don’t hold me to blame for it, or, in a matter of such importance to me, grudge the sacrifice of a little personal comfort?”
“I leave you to judge of that—as of the propriety of some little courteous acknowledgment.”
“You have it in full,” said the soldier sullenly. “If I fail to express it, you must understand me to be a man of few words.”
Blythewood had his tongue in his cheek.
“We’re all babes in the wood,” he cried; “with a fair chance of sufferin’ their fate. Let’s get under the leaves and tell stories, and not risk goin’ to heaven squabblin’. Hasn’t a man of us a flask about him?”
They were not vouchsafed even that comfort. The long night drew upon them huddled down there in their burrow. The cold was at first piercing, and they soon fell silent, each as wrapped in dismal reflection as, inadequately, in his great-coat. They could not sleep, but only shiver and suffer; and the servant moaned and whispered intermittently through the endless hours. His master did what he could for him in the pitchy darkness, building him a pillow of dead leaves and drawing the skirts of his own surtout about the icy feet.
Towards dawn, however, a little comfort of warmth triumphed in the cabined hole. This was because the snow had then completely enwrapped their place of refuge. One by one, weak and exhausted, they dropped into a shallow abyss of sleep.
Tuke was the first to come to himself again. He started up with a jerk, and felt the rat of hunger gnawing at his ribs.
“Now,” he thought—when he could at last recall his senses—“whither does this tend? We have not eaten or drunk for nigh twenty-four hours, if I may judge, and a definite movement of some sort becomes necessary. Surely four strong men should be able to master any situation.”
Then he thought of Whimple, and bent his head to listen. The man was breathing regularly and profoundly.
Looking up again, with an exclamation of pleasure, he was aware of a little weak finger of light pointing into the gloom. Day had broken. He got to his cramped feet, jubilant in a moment, and, feeling for the door above, essayed to open it. Something resisted. He put all his nerve into a mighty push, felt the hinges yield—then the obstruction; and in an instant a great buttress of snow fell away from the outside and light leaped into the pit.
Light gorgeous and bountiful. The snow had ceased; a hard wintry sun revealed a little surrounding world of heaped and drifted desolation, wherein the very trees seemed but accidents of the storm, or frost-flowers enamelled upon the wide windows of the mist.
The noise of his onset and the gush of radiant air awakened two other of the sleepers.
“Out!” he cried softly, for fear of disturbing Dennis—“up and out and reconnoitre!”
He scrambled, himself, to the open, and was joined by his companions.
“Where in the name of mystery are we?” he murmured.
In the heart of a little wood, apparently—in a clearing ringed about with trees, and so choked, in the course of those fifteen or so pregnant hours, with the white fall, as to seem to offer an insurmountable barrier to their escape. Towards the middle of the circle the snow lay shallowest; but all around against the tree-trunks it sloped upwards to a considerable height, suggesting a bowl of whipped cream that had stiffened to the shape of the vessel it lay in.
“Gentlemen,” said Tuke, “it behoves us to make the struggle. The sky is resolute steel; to remain here is to perish. What do you say?”
Blythewood gave out a rather tortured little laugh. He, as they all did, wore an unshorn and haggard look; but his lips were set grimly.
“I’m with the fox that bit off his foot rather than remain in the trap,” he said.
“And I. Now, will you two try to push into and through the trees somewhere, that we may at least get our bearings? I will remain with Whimple while you are gone, and will make the attempt on my own account if you return unsuccessful. It will be as well to keep a reserve of strength.”
“Oh! certainly,” said Luvaine. “And if we are fortunate, sir, you can set your care for a fellow-creature against our trouble and endurance.”
Sir David pulled the speaker hastily away.
“Au revoir!” he cried over his shoulder. “I hope we shall bring you tidings.”
Tuke watched them wade their first, comparatively easy, paces; then he dived into the cabin once more.
“Dennis!” he cried.
The man was sitting up, an expression of the most profound astonishment on his face; but all token of fever vanished.
“My good fellow—you are in your senses again?”
“Am I, sir? Then they are queerly lodged. Wait!”
He passed his hand over his forehead in a bewildered manner.
“I remember,” he muttered. “The walk and my dead mother, and then——?”
“We fought our way back, Dennis. Lost and beaten we stumbled upon this unspeakable refuge, and here we have lain all night.”
“This?—this?” (Whimple’s eyes were wandering over roof and floor of the little chamber.) “Surely, sir, you know where we are?”
“Not I, indeed.”
“In your own grounds, sir—the old ice-house in the thicket.”
Tuke stared a moment; then, with a shout, scrambled up through the opening and gave out a yell of recall. There was no response. His two companions, to whatever fortune, were vanished and out of earshot. Convinced of this, he turned and slipped again into his burrow.
“You are sure, Dennis?”
“Quite sure, sir.”
“And we have fancied ourselves buried in some isolated spinney, and looked to nothing but a lingering death where none could come nigh us through the drifts.”
“Is it so bad as that? We may find it hard to win to the house even yet, then.”
“Tush! you faint rogue. My heart sings like a cricket. Sir David and Captain Luvaine are gone to explore. We will have the laugh of them when they return.”
“Are they away, sir?”
Something of the familiar look of nervousness and hesitation came to his face.
“What is it, Whimple?”
The man burst out all at once:
“Let me take the opportunity, now and for ever, to ease my heart of the last of its burden—to tell my dear master all that I have so long withheld from him.”
“You wish to?”
“I have always wished to; but whileshelived—sir, she was my mother, and it were bitter that a son should record his mother’s shame.”
He turned away his head, so that his face fell into shadow.
“The wrong she suffered was at the hands of my father that was murdered and strung up on the downs.”
“Yes, yes,” said Tuke. “That is not all unexpected.”
“It was a fearful wrong, sir, committed on a helpless girl; for she had flouted and dared him; and I it was that was born to be the shameful witness of my father’s violence, and the victim now of my mother’s hate and loathing, now of her furious caresses. She carried me with her into the hiding her profession secured her; for she was a bold horse-woman and popular in travelling shows. But when I was turned nine, she left me under care in a seaport town; and thereafter I saw her but at long intervals, and then to mark little but the hardening of her nature and the steady elimination from it of all kindly and social sentiments. Still, I was to learn from her own lips what, I think, a man can never find it in his sympathy to interpret—the inconsistency of a woman’s soul. No doubt that is like the figure called a parallax——”
“Oh! Dennis—confound your parallax. To my mind it is more like a parachute—an empty thing that any draught shall influence.”
“You don’t mean that, sir.”
“Don’t I?—Well, talk in English, you rascal. Your learning hips a simple country squire.”
“It is no learning, indeed; but a little love for books. She told me of my origin, sir. Judge of what the revelation was to me, who was ignorant as yet of any word of the wicked story. She told me all, and she told me—sir, she said to me, in a burst of wild defiance, that she was about to place herself under the protection of the very man who years before had wrought her that great evil.”
“Am I surprised, Dennis? I think not. I have gone to school in the world. Woman is the archetype of rebellion. She it was pulled down the angels. She must revolt against any restriction not imposed by herself, and she has always a fiercer joy in defying the social laws than she has pleasure in subscribing to them. She knows the world was her original birthright, I suppose, and has a secret admiration for the sort of crime that lost her her heritage. Cutwater scorned the conventions that ostracized her, and he had blackened his soul for her sake. Queer reasoning, maybe from our point of view; but—yes, I can understand her returning to him.”
“She did, sir; and for years I saw her no more. She returned to him, and, as I afterwards learned, soon wearied my father of her presence, and left him, taking with her the baby-daughter that she had borne to him. You know the rest—how, but a little before his death, my father, remembering the fact of my existence, summoned me to him and sought to practise on my simplicity. It was what I had dreaded ever since I had been acquainted of the cruel truth. It finished what my long anguish of suspense had begun. Constitutionally without fibre, I became the nerveless, haunted creature of your first knowledge.”
“And it was after his death that your mother brought the girl to burden you with its charge?”
“No burden, sir. I joyed to have the little thing. But she was uncanny. From near the first she showed herself instinctively attracted to the dreadful thing on the downs, and when the head fell and she could secure it, she came home with a posy face of delight. It was chance hearing of the story of his murder that brought my mother to me with the child; and at first she would give a little to its keep; but, as the years went on, and she herself become poorer and wilder, it was she also that must become in a measure my charge; though she would never set foot inhishouse, or take from me aught but the barest of necessaries.”
“Well, Dennis—and this was the story you confided to Mr. Creel?”
“The story, sir; as you know it all now—and God bless you and him!”
“And do you think the poor woman there had knowledge of the treasure she bore away in the skull?”
“I cannot think so. He was not the man to put his confidence in any of her sex; and you must remember, sir, that he had always carried a make-believe in his eye-socket, that was a mark of the familiar terror of his glance; and that ’twas his cunning only substituted the stone for the glass. That the thing dropped out anywhere on its passage to and from is the most likely solution.”
“No doubt; and we can’t hunt over seven square miles or so of grassy down, as we hunted—that reminds me; you never heard of our discovery in the wardrobe, when——”
A joyous whoop sounded in their ears, and, as Tuke got to his feet, the aperture was darkened by the figures of the returned explorers.
“Now,” said Sir David, looking down into the pit, with his arms akimbo—“ain’t we heroes? And where would you guess we’ve been to the trouble to pitch our camp?”
“Not in mine own grounds?” said Tuke. “No, no!”
“Who the deuce has been tellin’ you? P’raps you think that spells the end of our difficulties? Are you Julius Cæsar, sir—or whoever the cove was that went over Mount Blank? I tell you there’s a range of drifts between this and the house as big as Snowdon.”
“Then, now comes my turn. Stay you here and leave the rest to me.”
As he spoke, distant, but sharp through the frosty air, came the report of a gun.
Tukescrambled up and out into the open.
“Sport in this weather?” he muttered, staring at his friend.
“Sounds queer, don’t it? and yet, what else can it be?”
The other did not answer; but his eyes retained a sort of startled musing.
“Well,” he said at last, “I must trymyfortunes.”
“We had best all go together.”
“No, indeed, my friend. Think of the tax it would be upon Captain Luvaine’s critical perceptives.”
“You are so very witty,” said the soldier dryly. “You put the words in my mouth.”
“I have had to swallow some of yours, sir. ’Tis just an exchange of courtesies.”
“Oh!” cried Blythewood—“the deuce of this sparring! I refuse to hold the stakes any longer.”
“Who asked you to, you rogue. You’re getting conceited.”
“Where are you going to?”
“I have a plan to push out by the tumbled lodge, if I can win there, and see if the drive is passable. It should be.”
“Well—why shouldn’t we all go?”
“If you move, so do I not. Then see if you can find the way by yourself. No, no—stay where you are. In half-an-hour I will be back as full of information as a verger.”
He waved his hand, and ran off, as he could, across the snow. He was stiff and numb with cold; his lips were cracked with it—his fingers felt and looked like ingots of blue steel. There was such a piercing rigour in the air as converted his very breath into frost upon his face.
He thought he remembered the little alley by way of which he had once emerged from the clearing; but to reach it, it was necessary to struggle through a drift nine or ten feet high. He did not hesitate, however; he went into it as if he were diving under a breaker, seeking to bore a hole by the mere force of his onset. And in this process he came near to smothering himself at a swoop; for the arch of snow formed above him broke down as he kicked his way on, and, dragging tributary avalanches with it, completely overwhelmed and half-suffocated him. Now he had to gnaw his way, as it were, through the thick base of the drift, and this he felt he should never have breath or vigour for; for the first was already coming in tight gasps, and the second was futile to express itself in anything but a series of aimless and spasmodic jerks. Suddenly it occurred to him that he would stand up. He put all the weight of his back into a mighty heave—felt the superincumbent mass break and part, and his face, like a purple bulb, sprouted from the surface and he could breathe again. Still buried to the neck in the drift, he drew in air and cogitated. The collapse of his tunnel had sunk a shallow groove of uncompact snow to his front; and presently flapping and floundering, he was able by slow degrees to force a cutting through the heap, and to come out on the other side amongst the trees, horribly draggled and exhausted, but triumphant.
Here, where he now found himself, the thick interlacing of the branches overhead had made a roof to the under-earth, so that the fall had penetrated only occasionally in any considerable quantity, and he was able to continue his way without much difficulty. But all about him a chill inhuman twilight reigned; for the roof itself was a loaded canopy, and many of its high girders were already snapped beneath the pressure.
Going cautiously, he came all at once into the little track he sought, and, speeding along it, emerged upon light and heaped snow once more, and the rear of the tangled garden. This, now, was a mere shapeless confusion of wadded white, and the ruin itself—
The onlooker started where he stood and gave a low whistle. What strange company was lodged in this deserted spot, that smoke should be rising from two of its broken chimneys? The next moment he thought—Could it be possible that Darda was trapped and imprisoned by the fall in her gruesome museum? He uttered an exclamation, waded from his covert, and with some difficulty gained the back entrance to the building. Here, through a chink—for the door stood ajar—a fine smell of stewing meat, that was mightily grateful to his nostrils, was wafted to him. He paused an instant in indecision, then conscious of a little squirm of fear, he rated himself for a coward, kicked off the snow that clogged his heels, pushed at the panels, and entering, came to a stop in the passage beyond. All was quiet as the grave—nothing but the pleasant humming sound of a fire burning in its grate hard by. Not condescending to so much as step softly, he strode down the familiar passage, and came to where the doors of the two sitting-rooms met him on either hand.
“Who’s here?” he cried, striving to read the gloom, for, from whatever cause, the place was dark as a well.
With the words on his lips, he was aware of a sound—suppressed laughter—a little scuffle. Not knowing whither to turn, he struck out blindly anywhere on the instant—recoiled, and in a moment his arms were caught in vicious hands, and there came a great noise of feet and voices all about him. Feeling the utter futility of effort for the time being, he submitted to his unseen captors.
“Light!” cried a little thin voice.
The front door was unbolted and flung open, and a weak radiance of sunshine broke into the passage. Then all around him Tuke saw a nightmare of jeering faces (one even looked through a great gap in the ceiling above his head), and a babble of hoarse laughter rattled the very ribs of the crazy tenement.
“This, gentlemen,” said Mr. Tuke, “is a quite overpowering welcome.”
He saw surrounding him a very choice variety of villainous faces—perhaps a dozen types in all; but, if his blood ran cold, he had a lofty fancy to attribute it to the weather.
“And why am I detained in this forcible manner,” he said, “when I come to visit my own lodge?”
A second little griding of laughter was his response.
“Here be a mouching toff,” croaked one of the rascals that held him.
“Give us the griffin, l’utenant,” quoth another hoarsely.
“Stow your cursed babble!” yawped a voice that the captive recognized; “and tie his hands behind him.”
He had not been able to suppress a start at the tones, though he cursed himself for his weakness; but now he looked forward cool and steady as the speaker faced him.
“Oh, Mr. Brander!” he said—“so you captain this amiable company? I see, I see.”
“Why, sir,” said the pedagogue sourly, “you may have stumbled through the fifth proposition and yet lack penetration. I have not the honour to lead in this business.”
“Will you answer me a question?”
“Not one. Are his hands tied, you?”
“As fast as your tongue, sir, I can assure you. Mr. Corby here, whom I recognize by his bashfulness, has spliced me as conscientiously as he would bud a rose. How is gardening doing, Joe?”
“Get along!” said that person. “You want bedding out, you do.”
“Why, Joe, I’m with you. I never felt myself in closer quarters.”
Another squiggle of laughter greeted the sally.
“You might graft a new pair of ears to this gentleman,” said Tuke. “He’s been lopped, it seems, for canker; and that’s a disease peculiar to roses and curs, Joe.”
Brander’s face went furious.
“You stinking aristocrat!” he screamed. “I’ll pipe a tune for you by and by, and you shall dance, by God!”
He stamped his foot and waved with his gaunt arms.
“Kick him into the parlour!” he shouted—“and let his wits fatten on the frog-skins. He’ll want them in good condition presently.”
The prisoner made no resistance, and was haled rather than driven through the doorway of the room to his right—thrust and locked in.
The shutters, it seemed, were closed, and the place—except for the little glow diffused by a fire smouldering on the hearth—was in darkness. Not knowing if a trap of some sort was set for him, and being indeed considerably amazed and dumbfounded for all his fine show ofsang-froid, he would not venture to do more than cross cautiously to the neighbourhood of the chimney corner, where he set his back against the wall and awaited events with what philosophy he could muster.
Little sound of voice or movement came to him from without. The rogues, their ruse accomplished, assumed all the secrecy of their profession, and to the noise of boisterous mirth succeeded some fitful suggestions of stealthy toing and froing that it was far more difficult to hear with equanimity.
Fortunately his trial of suspense was a short one. He had not been in the room many minutes, when he became conscious that he was not alone. Somebody had come in, but so softly and with so sidling an action that he was hardly aware of the fact until he heard gentle fingers manipulating the bolts of the shutters. The next moment the flaps were pushed quietly open and white daylight broke into the room.
He was in Darda’s museum—that he had guessed—and advancing towards him was a figure, very placid, very venerable—Mr. Fern, whom it seemed a profanation to dub Jack.
The new-comer stooped a little courteous bow as he came forward.
“We are badly accommodated for seats,” he said in his mild, high voice; “but here is a chair—or the remains of one, and a little steadiness of posture may make it even comfortable to you. Pray avail yourself of it.”
The gentleman laughed.
“If you will untie my hands,” he said.
“I see no difficulty, Mr. Tuke. You will of course give me your parole not to attempt to escape.”
“Am I to be a prisoner in my own lodge?”
“I greatly fear so, sir. This quite unexpected development largely facilitates what might have been otherwise a prolonged and tiresome business, and we can’t afford to let you go. I will be frankness itself, Mr. Tuke; and we really can’t afford it, sir.”
“And I will imitate your candour, and ask what the devil you, a common thief, mean by asking a gentleman for his parole?”
“Rash blood, sir—hot, rash blood. I was older than you before I learnt to pick my words. But, without that little one of yours, I much fear that I shall be unable to relieve you of this temporary inconvenience.”
“Why, zounds, Mr. Fern! You are here in force, it seems—a dozen or more blazing cut-throats to keep the cage.”
“Honest fellows and well to be trusted, sir. At the same time you are noted for being a gentleman of daring and resource (I must really make you that acknowledgment), and far be it from me to risk the least of those scenes of violence that my soul abhors.”
“Botany Bay has made you squeamish, it appears. Have you buried the hatchet with which you killed Cutwater?”
Mr. Fern shrugged up his hands deprecatingly.
“It pains me,” he said gently, “to hear a repetition of that old slander at this date.”
“What! you didn’t murder the miserable rogue, and help to string him up afterwards?”
“Such an old slander, sir; and is the age of reason never to be forgiven its youthful peccadilloes?”
“Oh! I cry you mercy, Mr. Fern. If this was a peccadillo, I can understand your abhorring violence.”
“Harkee! Mr. Tuke. I don’t say I would have withheld my men from their just resentment; but that I took no active part in it is the truth.”
“What sucking infants, to be sure, are you and your schoolmaster! I shall believe just this—that Cutwater stabbed himself in twenty places and then jumped his neck into the chains. But—to be candid again, Mr. Fern—what an unperspicacious rascal you must have been to kill your goose with the golden eggs.”
“Sir, there is one crime that, to my mind, cries to heaven above all others for vengeance, and that is treachery on the part of a confederate. What was I to hesitate, if I was chosen the minister of a divine retribution? And now, by your leave, we will come to business.”
“What can there possibly be of that between us?”
“A little, sir—a little. The question of ransom, for instance.”
“Ransom—ransom? in the matter of a few hundreds of yards of drive?”
“What is that to the point? One may lie in Newgate and only three feet of wall separate him from free pavement.”
“Very pertinently put; and you have all the advantage of knowing. But, do you seriously propose, as a sane man, Mr. Fern, to place, at this end of the eighteenth century, a gentleman’s private house under siege?”
“I am bound to confess I do.”
“Well, you have your plans, I presume, that you are not likely to acquaint me of.”
“Indeed, sir, you are free to know all. It is my simple intention to force entrance, and deal summarily with any that shall oppose me in my perfectly legitimate search.”
For a placable man, Mr. Fern’s eyes assumed a rather lurid complexion.
“I may tell you,” he said, a little loudly for him, “that I have here a disciplined and rather unscrupulous force under my command, and that this show of resistance on your part is neither convincing nor judicious. Indeed, your somewhat fatuous self-confidence in thus venturing beyond your own lines, proves you quite ill-fitted to cope with so pregnant a situation.”
“At least you will acknowledge the house is well-defended?”
“Pooh! A mere question of gunpowder. You have Cutwater’s iron shutters—which you have closed, of course—and a quite inadequate company to hold them; and of this, one already, as you know, is but now placedhors de combatby a shot from an over-eager young member of my band.”
“True, true,” murmured Tuke—“the man.”
“A man, sir, undoubtedly; and a fool to thus expose himself. What could you do with such material, Mr. Tuke, even had you remained there to captain it?”
“Oh! thank you, Mr. Fern. You have comforted my heart amazingly. That Whimple is a sterling soul, and his precautions that I have laughed at justify themselves. But who thought to put them into practice?”
The other, that was so like a Quaker in his appearance, gasped and stared.
“Truly, sir,” he said. “I fail to comprehend you.”
“It is simple, my fatuous and over self-confident friend. You have greatly enlightened me. I do not come from the house. I was benighted yester-eve in the snow, and this morning, seeking to escape from my predicament, stumbled hap-hazard upon your camp.”
“You do not come from the house!”
“On the contrary. From quite another direction.”
“And you are alone?”
“Surely that is a superfluous question?”
For the moment Mr. Fern seemed to blaze up into a rather fearful travesty of himself. The contrast between his white hair and brick-red face became an exceedingly baneful one. In the flashing of the fire, however, he was his placid self again.
“This,” he said (his precise lips seemed educated, like stops, to the exact harmonies of speech), “all redounds to our advantage. Wherever you come from, you have fallen a very opportune hostage.”
“Ah! my friend. But it shows others than the master of the house to be on the alert. I am not informed of the details of your attack; but no doubt you thought to rush the place at your first assault.”
“You are absolutely right. We failed in that; but I may tell you, sir, that any prolonged resistance there, besides necessarily proving futile, will greatly incense my men.”
“But why necessarily futile?”
“Pooh! Mr. Tuke. We have gone over our ground long and carefully. (Again I will be entirely open with you. Why should I not? If ever right justified might, it does in this business.) Do you fancy I am ignorant of the nature and capacity of your household?”
“True, true. Now, I am curious to know, Mr. Fern, how long you have been gathered here in this force?”
“Shall we put it at seventeen hours? When the snow increased we saw that Providence was set to favour the cause of justice, and we moved up here by twos and threes, and were all—thirteen of us, sir—assembled in the lodge by four o’clock of yesterday afternoon.”
“So ’twas the snow decided you?”
“Sir, I will own to you that we had thought originally to make a simpler finish of the matter; but your unexpected return from London disturbed our plans. However, all has worked for the best; for here we stand in our relations of besieged and besieging, as isolated as though we were vulture and deserted camel in the midst of Sahara. You see your position, Mr. Tuke. There is no hope of succour from any quarter. We have food and ammunition in abundance, and if we choose, we can batter your house about the ears of its two or three defenders. Already my strong fellows have been at work, cutting a path up the drive and beyond it, and they have accounted for one of your trumpery force. If you are wise, you will consent to treat. If you are humane, you will forbear to sacrifice to your vanity the lives of the unthinking few who serve you. And you have women there, Mr. Tuke—women, sir, women! They have a fashion of thinking death not the worst evil they can suffer.”
The captive, his heart blazing, saw the soul of this unspeakable ruffian revealed. He would have risked all and choked him with his hands, had these been free. As it was, he sought to play a sounder part by hiding his repulsion.
“Now, sir,” said the white-haired man very softly, “I put my proposal quite definitely—quite plainly, that there may be no mistaking it and no temporizing with it. I will exchange the person of Mr. Tuke for the stone that goes by the name of the ‘Lake of Wine,’ and, upon receipt of the latter, will withdraw my men and leave this neighbourhood for ever at peace.”
The other did not answer.
“You need not say,” went on Mr. Fern in the same quiet tone, “that you have not the jewel or any knowledge of its whereabouts. That were superfluous. I possess convincing evidence of its being concealed somewhere in your house. Pray do not trouble yourself or me with a denial.”
He paused for an answer. An acute observer might have noticed that his fingers twitched a little, as though they longed to tear out by the roots the confession he so suavely invited.
“And if I refuse your terms?” said Tuke, looking steadily at his man.
“Then I much regret it will be necessary to adopt coercive measures.”
The baronet drew himself up, the fury he had so long suppressed glinting in his eyes.
“You brazen scoundrel!” he cried, “to dare to assume that any threat could bring me to condone your villainy! Do your worst, you dog, and clinch your account with the devil!”
He was starting forward, when the other went swiftly to the door, opened it, looked back with a horrible smile, and vanished.
“And here endeth the first lesson,” said Mr. Tuke.
Uponthe unfortunate gentleman, now committed to an irksome and most apprehensive solitude, fell a score of little demons of melancholy and alarm. To men of his fibre there is no chastening so bitter as confinement; and though with the master-rogue he had borne himself like the spirited knight of destiny he was, no sooner was he left alone than he found his indignation subordinated to reflections that were distracting to the last degree.
What would his companions think had become of him? and, failing his return, would they follow in his tracks and fall into that selfsame snare?
Was Miss Royston, with her lordling cavalier, even now established a prisoner in his house? or had she failed to respond to her brother’s invitation?
Who was it that had shut “Delsrop” against the besieging rascals? and would his household, deprived of its legitimate head and in ignorance as to his fate, exhibit the nerve to conduct and sustain an effective resistance?
What member of hispersonnelhad been shot that morning? A man, it appeared. Then, if not Dunlone——
He ran over in his mind the names of those in his service—two grooms, one of them a mere boy, and the imported Jim. These, with Betty, Darda, possibly Angela, and three maids, were the sum total of the defenders. Half-a-dozen girls, two men and a boy; and one of the latter already accounted for.
He groaned, and set to tramping to and fro like a wild, caged beast. His impotence, the impossibility of resolving any one of these problems that tortured him, set his brain reeling. His hands had been corded behind him so tightly that the flesh swelled and lapped over the knots. Yet it was not his personal discomfort that chiefly perturbed him, or any apprehension of the force of coercion his captors would be brutal enough to employ. That he was condemned, in the midst of a stirring episode in his career, to a pitiful inaction, was what galled him like a rowel.
Almost simultaneously with his interlocutor’s withdrawal from the room, a sentry, of a villainous cast, had made his appearance outside the window, where he took his stand, flint-lock on shoulder. Another (by token of his hard breathing and the intermittent click of a hammer against his coat-buttons as he shifted his position from time to time) was stationed outside the door.
From the room opposite came fitfully the sound of voices in low discussion. The fire upon the hearth died upon itself and consigned the stark little room to a perfect apathy of chilliness. Frost gathered on the diamonds of the casement and turned the stolid sentry into a phantom of himself. And still the dull hours sped onwards and not a soul came to lighten his depression.
He had long before drawn the marrow, in his monotonous tramp hither and thither, from every object of slightest interest that the small ruined chamber could boast. Here was the crazed girl’s museum, arranged on worm-eaten shelves—a medley of grotesque rubbish that superstition had thought fit to respect. It was a gruesome litter—skins, stones, and petrified vegetables; and he had cursed his own high precipitancy over the thought of how a little forbearance on his part might have saved to the collection its most notable item, and so rendered nugatory all the present evil that encompassed him.
Once he had stooped to examine a certain object amongst the trash—a round pebble that seemed familiar to him. It was the scrawled stone that had been slung through a window for Dennis’s behoof, and he peered at it with an emotion commingled of curiosity and remorse. So Darda it was had secured the treasure—to her, no doubt, a veritable message from the shadows. And had the rascal that threw it recognized his handiwork amongst these other fetishes and chuckled to see it reserved for such high distinction? It was probable enough, for the room bore signs of late occupation by some very rough company. Gnawed crusts, onion-skins, tobacco-ashes lay scattered about the hearth. In one corner was a litter of twigs and broken branches, hastily collected, it would appear, for fire-wood, and cast down beside them was an old canvas-bag, striped pink and drab, that had been stuffed with dead leaves for fuel. In another a greasy gridiron and a dinted tin pannikin or so were evidence of a certain commissariat foresight on the part of the besiegers; while an empty rundlet, thrown aside like a discharged cartridge-case, was earnest of that species of baggage without which no knight of fortune can be brought to take the road.
Each and all of these objects the prisoner dwelt upon, and passed by, and reviewed again and again, till his brain learnt to loathe their inevitability at the turning-points of his wearisome sentry-go. And still the icy hours closed upon themselves and no soul came near him.
By and by, as an acute accent to his long trial of cold and anxiety, extreme hunger asserted itself the overpowering sensation. He had not touched food then for more than thirty hours, and his frame had been submitted during the whole of that time to severe and exhausting experiences. When at last, from thoughts otherwise preoccupying, he woke to an amazed realization of the fact that he was being starved into submission, he strode to the door and kicked at the panels in an excess of furious indignation. To the very thundering noise of his onset a low voice across the passage returned like an echo.
“Rudland, if the prisoner shows himself outside, shoot him at once.”
“You hound!” he shouted at that—“bring me food! d’ye hear? bring me food, or I’ll burn the house down!”
A little answer of laughter was clipt in the bud. The threat was to be considered. A moment later Brander’s step crossed the passage, and the man himself entered the room. His eye sought the fire-place, found its relief in the dead coldness there, and came back with a twinkle of mockery to the prisoner.
“You are hungry?” he said.
“What would you suppose, fellow?”
“That you are, of course. ’Tis a pitiful sensation. I’ve suffered it, believe me.”
“D’you think to starve me into tameness?”
“What!—a high-spirited gentleman like you? I believe—as I have advised elsewhere—that far more caustic measures will be necessary to prevail with you. Still, hunger is a very good ground-bait to precede the angler and his hook.”
“And you think to subdue me by such means? ’Tis a protecting clause of humanity that scoundrels cut their cloth according to the measure of their own cowardice.”
“According to the features of their hostages, by your leave, sir.”
“I’m not going to ask you what you mean.”
“You shall have the explanation gratis. You’ve twitted me, vulgarly enough on the loss of these——”
He signified with a fierce gesture his flapless earholes.
“Twitted?” said Tuke. “Where is the reason to twit a docked curt?”
“You’ll find they left me my teeth, by God—my teeth and my nails.”
He almost shouted—“You shall grow a love-lock—you shall grow a love-lock, sir, to hide the place that your lady mayn’t know when she whispers there!”
“What! are you going to cut off my ears?”
“Aye, you may grin your fill. You’ll grin to suffer that on an empty belly. You shall feel the hook before we land you, and grin like a sole!”
There was something so horribly relishing in the man’s tone that the listener’s heart went sick.
“Mutilation!” said he. “Beware what you say, fellow.”
“’Tis what we’ll do, man. We’ll lop your fine heroics toe by toe, till there remain nought but stumps to foot it on. Why—d’ye suppose we’ve pushed the matter so far to shrink at a shadow? I give you warning. We’ve neither time nor mood for palaver. To-night you shall have for reflection—the devils of cold and hunger to counsel you; and so be you’re in a like frame of obstinacy after that test to-morrow you shall be pruned for token to your friends over there, and again and yet again till you or they are convinced of the wisdom of an exchange. I’ve learnt the right art of clipping in Calabria, sir, and will shave you that ’twill be a pleasure to you to feel the razor.”
He stopped, with a dark and malignant look on his face—backed a step, opened the door and disappeared.
For a minute after his exit Tuke stood too astounded for speech or action. That here, on his own land, in the heart of orderly England, he should be held by blackguard outlaws for ransom, and menaced with outrage like any victim of continental brigandage, seemed too preposterous for belief. Coming to his senses, in a paroxysm of rage he flung himself against the door and hurled curses on his invisible enemies till he was hoarse. Not a murmur in response was vouchsafed him. Spent and agitated, though still boiling with anger, he resumed his monotonous tramp to and fro, till, utterly worn out, he let himself drop upon a heap of sticks, and, leaning his shoulder against the wall-corner, fell into a sort of stupor of exhaustion.
Night closed upon him lying thus—a night of sleeplessness and torture. His furious struggles to release his hands had only riveted their bonds the closer, and his inflamed and swollen wrists gave him exquisite anguish. The position of his arms was one long cramping torment. The worm of hunger writhed in his vitals, while fever glowed in the marrow of his bones; and all the long dark through, the bitter frost smote his limbs into numbness and seemed to hammer at his heart.
Now and again to his deadened senses would come a little appeal like a memory—the smell of roasting meat, the crackle of a fire, the sound of reckless voices passing discordant toasts. He only connected these with the processes of a conscious delirium, and was concerned simply that they would not cease and leave him to his miserable loneliness.
Sometimes, in lucid intervals, as it seemed, and that before the rising tide of darkness had drowned the last glimmering streaks of light, he would find himself on his feet insanely inspired for the twentieth time to break his prison by one swift and silent effort; and there always, a blurred phantom outside the window, was the inexorable presentment of the guard.
No least balm of sleep could he woo to his aching eyelids; only presently, into his other sufferings was dropped that keystone of anguish, a raging thirst.
Racked, body and mind, burnt and frozen and twisted, he fell at last into a torpor of the senses that must do duty for rest, and so triumphed over the hours and was aware all at once of daylight in the room. The very sight was life. A haggard ghost of himself, he scrambled painfully to his feet, and, lurching to the window, stood drinking in the weak wine of sunlight.
Suddenly it came to him that the sentry was withdrawn. A wild hope tingled in his veins, only to as swiftly die away. These dogs could take the right measure of cruelty. Yesterday, bound as he was, it would have needed all his vigour and resourcefulness to escape by way of that little aperture; now, weakened and nerveless, he must find the task impossible. And, even while assuring himself on this point, he heard the room-door opened, and, turning, saw a stealthy face look in, take stock of him, and vanish.
Presently, finding a little of the spirit of strength and defiance returning to him, he set to tramping the room again, feebly at first, but by and by with an increase of vigour. For an hour he may have walked, when, without forespeech or warning, the door was flung open and there quickly entered Fern and Brander, who shut themselves in and stood by the threshold, facing the prisoner.
Both men were braced and accoutred as if for some immediate business of violence. Into belts drawn about their waists were stuck murderous-looking knives; pistol-butts stood from their skirt-pockets, and each had a flint-lock slung across his shoulders. For the rest they were the suave and the brutal, and a couple of as soulless ruffians as ever fouled the sunlight.
There was to be no more temporizing, it seemed; and the white-haired leader spoke up at once.
“We would ask your decision, Mr. Tuke,” he said.
The gentleman, his eyes blazing contempt, had paused opposite the two, as if he questioned a very daring intrusion.
“What do you want of me?” said he.
“The answer is simple. We demand our own—a ruby that goes by the name of the ‘Lake of Wine.’”
“I have no such ruby in my possession.”
“Tut, sir, tut; the prevarication is unworthy of you. Let us say, then, the skull that contains it.”
“The skull!”
“Mr. Tuke, Mr. Tuke, this will not serve your purpose. We have direct evidence of the truth, sir, and that from more than one source.”
“You have, have you?”
“—And I am free to advise you, sir, to refrain for the future from discussing with your friends such very private affairs on the public road.”
To the unfortunate prisoner all in a moment came a clap of revelation.
“We were overheard?”
“Ah-ha! You give yourself away.”
“There was more said—and ’twas that evening the ‘First Inn’ was fired.”
Some conscious sign passed between the rogues at his words. Tuke sprang at them, actually gnashing his teeth.
“I guessed it, you foul-blooded dogs! and may God burn your hearts for that wanton ruin of a poor maid!”
They had seized him and forced him back struggling and helpless. The beast was awake in Fern. His eyes opened bloodshot, his lip was lifted; he snapped out his knife and held it like a butcher.
“You Jack-a-dandy!” he screamed in a woman’s voice—“for a word I’d rip you like a pig!”
He stamped on the floor.
“Take your choice, or go piecemeal to hell. An ear and a nose and a lip for the stone, and if they don’t serve, every member of your cursed carcass for token to the fat wench I gave you for mistress.”
Tuke wrenched himself free, and, butting with his shoulder, flung himself at the scoundrel with all his force. He felt himself spun round—a fiery tooth crossed his wrist, and he stumbled and went his length on the floor. Looking up as he lay, momentarily expecting to feel the deadlier plunge of the blade that had already slashed at him, he saw to his surprise Fern raving and struggling in the grasp of his more powerful fellow-rogue.
“Let go!” he was shrieking—“you fool, d’you think to baulk me in my blood-lust!”
“Yes!” cried Brander fiercely. “You kill the goose—you kill the goose, you madman! Come out—by God, you shall! I’ve another test to propose!”
His own face was white with fury as he held back the dribbling and snarling animal, and had his better strength failed to master it, it is likely he would have driven his knife into the swollen throat under him. But he prevailed in a moment, and dragged the other in a patter of curses from the room.
As the key turned in the lock, Tuke collapsed upon himself in a half-faint.
Toa sane and humane soul there is no revelation so shocking as that of the scorn in which its rectitude is held by the prevailing beasts of the world. To the most of us at some time comes this bitter realization of the force that keeps humanity low. High as our sense of justice and of decency may be—serene as may figure the outlook from our lofty chambers of self-respect, we have only to descend into the plain to find manifest the brutal ruggedness of life that our hitherto aloofness has idealized. The impotence of honesty to enforce itself in any question of might; the impotence of morality to convince self-interest of its baseness—these are the first lessons in the despair of being. And when, for climax, actual bodily violence shakes us out of all the uses of dignity, we are fain to wonder what creative incongruity seeks to leaven all these seething continents of devils with a finger-pinch of just men, and how the end has justified the means of blazing Sodom and the Deluge.
To the fainting and battered prisoner in the lodge something in the nature of such reflections was conveyed through his sufferings. He had been beaten and mastered, it seemed, by the force that was merely brutal. Such a situation for himself he had never remotely conceived. His vagabondage was to have been of the picturesque sort that aims at nothing more definite than a scorn of conventions. That which gives or receives a blow—sings with the birds or plays with the prison rats, with an equal philosophy, or an equal bluntness of perception, was outside his scope, and certainly outside his knowledge. If asked, he would have said the condition was not possible to him, inasmuch as all his experience led him to such a confidence in his innate capacity for finesse, in his own masterfulness and sense of what was due to himself, as would carry the most difficult situation. That any, no matter who, should dare to treat him with the contempt of the strong for the weak, he had not dreamed could be; and waking to the realization that itwas, a bitter stubborn hatred of those who had taught him his lesson stung in his veins like poison.
It was a poison, nevertheless, that was a tonic. It brought him to himself, and to a determination to subordinate his passions to his intellect. Let him recover a little, regain a moiety of his strength, and, instead of wasting his time in fruitless ravings, he would study to set his wits against his captors’, and win or die in the attempt to vindicate their superiority.
He was lying on his back on the floor as he had fallen. For how long a time he had been stretched there he could not guess; but he was stiff and numb with cold, and all his agony of being seemed concentrated in a single flaring thread. This was underneath him, he fancied—a taut string of pain; and at first he could not account for it, or disassociate the sensation from some ridiculous travesties of delirium. He had been given a red-hot knife with which to carve his dinner—a joint all ribs and emptiness; he had thrust his hand into his pocket, which had been lined with a grid of steel blades; he had broken a great crystal goblet from which he was about to drink, and a keen fragment had sliced his arm.
By and by the unfailing localization of these grotesque injuries led his recovering perceptions to the remembrance that his hands were tied behind him and that he was lying upon them. Then in a flash he recalled the final scene—the vicious swoop of the knife and the stinging pain that followed; and he recognized all at once that he had been stabbed.
The nature of the wound—what was it? With an effort he turned upon his side. For all the cramp and torment in his arms he could move his fingers a little. The pressure on these maltreated limbs had wrought one benefit—it had stopped the flow of blood. But there was something else—something——
With the little weak cry he gave out, he rolled on to his back once more; for there had been a sound at the door, and a man came into the room.
“Joe,” he said feebly—“Joe Corby!”
The new-comer, looking down upon him, nodded.
“How’s you?” said he.
“I’m very bad, Joe. I’m hurt in body, and more in mind that you should lend yourself to this business. What makes you do it, Joe?”
Mr. Corby’s answer was enigmatical and brief.
“Bulbs,” said he.
“Joe,” said the patient, “you’re a man of such few words that I hardly like to ask you to squander any on an explanation. Still circumstances have dulled my faculties.”
“I spekilated in ’em,” said Joe, “and I were sold.”