“I see, sold up. A man of courage would have turned and taken Fortune by the neck.”
“Would he? It ain’t my way. You may thumb me in like a March onion for to come up in June, but if the ground don’t soot me I jumps out. Gardening was my ban and I tuk to the road. What’s the odds? Here be the Lake o’ Wine a-blossoming like a toolip at the end of it.”
“But is it, Joe?”
“Ain’t it, now? I speaks free, me and Rudland being left alone on guard.”
“Why, where are the others?”
The ex-gardener gave a ponderous wink.
“Two ’ll suffice,” he said, “to keep this ’ere maggot from eatin’ his way out of the apple.”
“A baby would suffice, Joe, in my present state.”
The man nodded again serenely.
“I can ventur’ to ease you a trifle,” he said.
“No, leave me alone. I’m best left quiet. It’s odd what browsing lambs you all were till misfortune came like a wolf into the fold. What do you expect for your share, Joe?”
“More or less than you are a-going to offer me to let you escape. It’s no good, cap’en. The riches of the world wouldn’t bribe me with Fern a-treadin’ on my tail.”
With the words he went to the door, looked back grinning, and vanished.
Tuke waited during an interval of suspense, until he judged himself strong enough to make a noiseless effort to rise. Then, very cautiously and by slow degrees, he got to his knees—to his feet, and stood swaying. Suddenly he wrenched his arms, and they parted and swung down idly by his sides. It was as he had felt and dared to hope—the slash of the murderous knife had severed his bonds at the wrist.
For some moments he stood wrapt in the mere ecstasy of physical relief. Then he tried to lift his arms, found himself unable to, and looked down at the poor dangling limbs. They were a pitiful sight—swollen, paralyzed, discoloured, and streaked with clotted blood. In alarm he endeavoured to woo them to a return of circulation by gently swinging and rubbing them against his coat-skirts. For a time no result was apparent; but persisting, in what panic flurry of motion he could contrive without noise, he was rewarded by and by with an awakening of such twinges as he was convinced betokened a renewal of life in the maltreated members. The twinges increased in quick recurrence and in force, until his arms seemed mere engines of boiling and bursting pains. He could hardly endure the agony and not cry out; but he set his teeth and rubbed either limb furiously with a hand, unconscious in his torment that the power of motion was thus restored to him.
At last the pain slackened, and he was able to think. He examined his wrist and found the wound to be a long and superficial one, but enough to have caused him considerable loss of blood had chance not applied an effective tourniquet. His hands were still little capable, his whole frame was suffering and enfeebled; but his triumph of release from bondage was a stimulant that wrought upon him like wine.
A weapon—that was his first necessity. Moving with extreme nicety, he examined every corner and crevice in the room. Not so much as a broken penknife rewarded his search. Across the hall-passage Mr. Corby lifted up his voice in sincere but unmelodious praise of the red, red rose. Escape appeared impossible but by some bold and unexpectedcoup. Was he strong enough to venture it—to issue from the room suddenly, overwhelm the unsuspecting Joe, put himhors de combatwith his own hanger, and made a bolt for the wood by the garden-way? The risk was fearful; and what but a floundering death in the drift should follow, with pursuit perhaps in his tracks? On the other hand, to delay meant probable outrage and mutilation, and a certain steady decrease of physique hour by hour.
He was resolved to it; he stood with his shoulder set to the door-jamb, tense for one uttermost effort—when the sound of voices close by in the drive brought him to a pause; and the next moment he heard the front door flung open.
Silently, his heart fearfully drumming, he stepped back to the very spot from which he had risen, and, slipping down upon the boards, resumed as nearly as he could the position in which the ruffians had left him. As he did so, he heard the tramp of men in the passage, a sound of jeering voices, and the next moment the door of the room was thrown open and his visitors of the morning re-entered.
They bore the appearance of men baffled, but with some gloating evil in their hearts. Fern strode to the prisoner and picked at him roughly with his boot-toe.
“How now!” he shrilled. “D’you make your bed there?”
Tuke judged defiance the better policy.
“Curse you!” he cried in a broken voice. “Do you see this patch on the floor? ’Twould have said little for your judgment to have left me to bleed to death. A fine leader of rogues, on my faith!”
“Ha! my friend—we’ll cauterize the next wound for you with a red-hot blade. And so you’ve been seeking to bribe the sentry?”
There was hoarse laughter from the door, where a half-dozen scoundrel faces were gathered.
“I take my cue from the foremost of you,” said the prisoner, speaking up from the boards. “’Tis not so long since Mr. Brander there made me an offer of half-shares if I would give him secret possession of the gem.”
The devil stood a-tiptoe and looked out through the schoolmaster’s eyes. Mr. Fern’s face was gone a raw beetroot colour.
“How’s that, Brander?” said he.
“A ruse,” said the other coolly. “I have more tricks to my philosophy of persuasion than you have methods to your villainy.”
“My style suits my company best, I think. You acknowledge you tried to treat, then?”
“And do you look to my condescension to deny or explain?”
There had been murmurs at the door; and, upon this: “He’s lying!” cried a voice.
Mr. Brander was a man of few superfluities—a born director of others. This was because he never let an occasion over-ripen, but plucked his fruit before it fell. He had been quite prepared before the threatening utterance, and with the echo of it he wheeled about and fired his pistol with unerring aim into the thick of the group.
On the clap of the shot broke a loud hiccough—as if the bullet had pierced a wind-bag—and a fellow pitched forward on the threshold and bled silently on the floor.
“That’s my bird,” said the sportsman.
He strode to the door, the company stumbling and retreating before him.
“I’ve the other barrel,” he said. “Does any one want it?”
He stood waiting a moment in a black pause before he spoke again:
“You’re reflecting who it is plans the entrances while your cow-heads are butting at the wall. Who is it prepares the way, here and everywhere, I say, and supplies the brains without which you’d never finger a crown-piece of your own getting?”
A little patter of voices murmured up, “Ebenezer Brander!”
“Ah!” he said, “that’s proper scholars, and spoken to the word.”
He pocketed his discharged pistol.
“When you feel you can do without me—when you feel you can depend upon him there” (he turned fiercely and signified his captain, who stood with an infernal smile on his face) “for all that suits you best—then’ll be the time to question my methods and offer me my pass to hell.”
He kicked out his foot slightly in the direction of the dead rogue.
“We were a baker’s dozen. Take away Judas Iscariot and change the luck.”
Perhaps the suggestion, the appeal to superstition, operated as powerfully with the company as the man’s own sinister personality. With exclamations of approval they dragged away the fallen body. It left a torn wake of red behind it.
“Now, Mr. Fern,” said Brander, turning once more upon his chief—“in your own interests you’ll thank me, I know, for this exhibition of authority. It only remains to give this gentleman his last warning.”
“You bitter dogs!” cried up the captive, horror-stricken and overcome at the swiftness of the tragedy. “I refuse any terms you may offer. Why, what could such brutal cowards effect against a couple of honest, determined men? Kill me, if you like, and certify yourselves for the gallows. I back my good fellows to hold you at bay till the snow melts, and there you’ll be caught in a trap and the crows shall banquet. Kill me, and effect more than you’ve done in all these two days!”
Forgetful in his emotion of every prudence, he raised himself on an arm. Brander uttered a hoarse chuckling cry.
“God of thunder!” he exclaimed. “Where’s Joe Corby?”
The man was pushed into the room.
“Joe,” said the villain—“he tempted but couldn’t prevail, eh? Isn’t that so?”
The puzzled fellow scratched his head.
“Work it out, Joe. We cut you short in cutting his bonds, didn’t we?”
He was fingering his second pistol. Tuke cried out in agony:
“The man’s innocent, you hound! ’Twas that ruffian’s knife severed the strands when he slashed at me!”
Brander hesitated; but Joe’s profound amazement was convincing.
“Providence works for us in spite of fools—eh, Jack Fern?” said the former.
He called in two of the men.
“Splice him up again,” he said, “and firmly.”
It was useless to resist. They tied the wretched gentleman’s hands behind him once more, cruelly enough, with a long cord, and the slack of this they fastened to the fire-grate.
“Now,” said Brander—(he seemed virtually the leader; through all this scene the nominal one stood blazing sullenness)—“we’ve a little surprise for you, my buck, and have effected more, perhaps, than you think. Bring in the girl there!”
Lost, broken, and dumfounded, the captive raised his miserable head at the words. What new triumph of devilry did they betoken?
Darda, before God! His swimming heart was conscious of a shock, and following it a little burst of shameful thankfulness. Bad was it, in all conscience, but——
He knew his cracked lips trying to mutter, “What has happened? How did she fall into your hands?”—but only inarticulate sounds came from them.
The girl stood there on the threshold, fierce, defiant, held by two men. The next moment, at a gesture from Brander, she was gone.
“Now, sir,” said the schoolmaster, beckoning his coconspirator, and coming close up to his victim—“we deal, as you see, in very severe realities. We have two in our power at this outset of our little campaign. A capture a day would serve, but we are impatient for a quicker settlement. To-night again for reflection. ’Tis a concession, but we grant it you. With dawn to-morrow it is for you to decide the fate of this maid and of your own very ornamental members.”
Tuke, like a dying man, saw him nod to him darkly—a grotesque phantasm as of a last delirium; saw him turn and, in company with his chief, stalk from the room; knew himself committed to such a further ordeal of torture as he feared his weakened body would be powerless to sustain; and, as the last echo of retreating footsteps came to his ears, his head dropped upon his breast and he despaired.
Anapology is submitted for here retailing some commonplaces of a very evil duet of rascals.
That began with certain dropping shots of irony, and it ended at pretty close range.
The kitchen of the tumbled lodge served for guardhouse; and the two officers were quartered in the little parlour opposite Mr. Tuke’s room of bondage. Between walked a sentry, and another (on this occasion Mr. Joseph Corby) was stationed to the front of the house in the freezing moonlight. Burnt fallow-deer meat had been plentifully bolted after the exertions of the day, and kegs of rum—supplied, it must be confessed, by Mr. Breeds, who was not otherwise represented in this climax of affairs—topped very agreeably the simplicity of the repast.
Mr. Fern and his lieutenant exchanged speech for the first time after the second glass. Then said the former suddenly:
“Brander, who’s the cock of this run?”
“Oh, don’t you know, Jack Fern,” was the answer; “the bantam, by the token, that crows himself red in the face?”
There seemed some personality here.
“Then I’ll have you know, by God, that I’m not to be supplanted by any white-shackled rooster that can out-screech me. You assume too much authority, sir, on the strength of an acquaintance with primers.”
Mr. Brander very urbanely recited the fable of the cock and the jewel.
“’Twas the Lake of Wine,” said he; “and there it was under your nose while you kicked up the dunghill. Primers have their uses.”
“Maybe; maybe not.”
“Why, man—give me Cutwater’s letter.”
“What for?”
“Give me Cutwater’s letter, I say.”
The other hesitated, then from a pocket-book that he drew from his coat, selected a yellowed fragment of paper and flung it sulkily across the table to his companion.
“Now, Mr. Fern,” said Brander, taking up the letter deliberately and referring to it—“vouchsafe me your kind attention, if you please. This was dated, I think, some months before the lamented gentleman’s death, and was addressed to you?”
“Oh! curse you out of your pedantry, Ebenezer Brander!”
“In it occur the following words, once expressive of mere violence to you—of enigma to me. Let me re-read them. ‘I’ve got the stone, bloody Jack Fern, and the stone I mean to keep. You’ll find it, despite the devil and Mister C., will you? Find it, you——’ (Tut, tut, Mr. Cutwater! what a shocking unpoliteness!) ‘Pray to the blessed St. Anthony, you’d better; for it’s hid well, I’ll tell you. It’s in my head but you’ll make a lame matter of the search.’”
He finished, threw the paper back to the other and pulled at his pipe.
“‘In my head,’” he repeated, softly knuckling the table. “Who, when you showed him the letter, half-read the riddle in those words, and egged you on to renew the search? Whose prognostications were verified in that which was overheard by our friend the innkeeper?”
“I grant you can see further into a haystack than the most of us.”
“You do, do you? Then what’s your complaint?”
“That you undermine me in the favour of my fellows, by God!—that you assume the leadership and work first and foremost to your own advancement.”
“Have I misrepresented you in giving that gentleman-scamp his last warning?”
“No.”
“In concealing from him the truth of the girl’s throwing herself into our hands?”
“No.”
“You would have blundered in all this. You have the hoofs and horns of a bullock, and they are your one appeal and resource. Take the fighting to yourself and leave the diplomacy to your betters.”
“You don’t rest content with your share. I grant you one devil, and you spawn out a dozen. As there’s hell smouldering for us all, I believe there was truth in the fellow’s story of your double-dealing with him.”
Brander rose to his feet.
“Mr. Bloody Jack Fern,” he said, “I’ll wish you good-bye and a happy release from your difficulties. I waive all claim to a share in the profits of this undertaking as conducted by you.”
“Sit down, man, sit down—by God, sit down! I believe you’ve the right honour, and I apologize. ’Twas a test, and the devil fly away with it! I don’t understand your methods. To me we’re as little advanced as two days back, and I begin to scent failure.”
“Of course. You’ve a crimson standard of measurement in such affairs. A murder or two would set you clucking like a hen.”
“The thaw, man, the thaw. Should it come, as that fribble hinted, before——”
“And where should we be the better then, for staining our hands? I play for our necks, Jack Fern. From the first I’ve founded our claim on the unlawful detention of the stone. But you want the leadership—you want the leadership and that means the credit for all. And you shall have it, by thunder, and set that fat head of yours, with the brains drawn out o’t, against a miry problem you shall sink in for all your frog’s croaking.”
Mr. Fern came slowly to his feet.
“Not empty enough,” he said, in an indrawn voice—“not empty enough, Ebenezer Brander, to misread the little game you’re contriving. Oh, I see through it, my friend! You’ll carry your brains to the enemy’s camp, will you, and——”
He choked with his rage. In a moment he had snapped out his knife and sprung round the table. The other was prepared for him in the same instant. They set at one another bent-headed, like a couple of game-cocks seeking to strike. Here promised an end of the pretty conspiracy; but the devil cares for his own. On the tick of combat the door was thrown open and one of the gang stood gaping in the entrance.
“Curse the fool!” cried Brander. “What does he want?”
The man, half-drunk, stood confused, as if he had interrupted some sacred ceremony.
“The gal,” he mumbled, “she’s a-singin’ psalms in the attic.”
“You——!” shouted the schoolmaster; cracked in his upper register and went into a skirl of laughter. The tension of the cord was eased, and both men fell back.
“Get to your bowl, you horn-bug!” screeched Fern. “What, the fiend! Shan’t she prepare herself for the sacrifice?”
“Oh!” said the man, “I thought subbody might ’ear—thas all.”
“Hear, you rat? Who’s to hear in the middle of Sahara?”
He waved his hand peremptorily. The fellow stumbled out and drew the door to behind him with a clap. Fern slipped his knife into its sheath. He looked at the other scoundrel stealthily, and grinned.
“Cry off, Brander,” he said. “We’re hunting counter. Fill and call a toast, man. My heart warms to the ladies. ’Twere a pity to waste this heat of passion on a friend’s undoing, when an enemy, and a pretty one, offers.”
Brander strode to the table and seized the flask.
“A bottle to that,” he said grimly. “Nothing under a quart reconcilesmeto a petticoat.”
They sat for an hour—for two hours, swilling fire and wickedness. The night closed upon itself, and the moon was half-across the sky. The frost without crackled in the very heart of the fearful sentry, so that presently he could stand it no more, and tapped on the casement.
“It’s in my roots,” he said, when Brander came to him. “I must be let in or die.”
“I can’t have you in his room, Joe. He’s far too cunning a gentleman to trust you with him.”
“Then give me a drink. A bucket of schnapps wouldn’t drowse me here.”
They handed him out a stiff jorum in a bottle, and closing the window again, resumed their orgy. Another hour passed. Suddenly one beast looked significantly at the other, and both rose. Together they staggered to the door, opened it, and lurched out into the passage. The sentry here came to himself with a start, and stared at them like an owl. They bade him have ears for his only business, and went swaying on to where, by the kitchen, a little stairway led to the floor above. The house was dimly lighted with candles that guttered here and there on brackets. One of these Fern seized in his evil hand, and they ascended softly to a narrow landing. The congested snore of many crapulous ruffians came to them from below; a third sentry nodded at hand on the top step.
“Let him be,” whispered Brander. “He shall be breeched for neglect to-morrow.”
In a little attic, with barred windows, the girl had been confined. Gently they turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door, and entered.
The room was empty as a rifled grave.
Stupidly staring, they saw by the hearth a heap of rubbish, an overturned flag; and with bursting oaths they rushed for the place, and, swinging the light down, were aware of a jagged rent, torn through the rotted fabric, that looked into the room below.
“Hisroom!” cried Fern, putting his hand to his forehead and staggering back.
The next moment they were out on the landing again. The sitting sentry grunted and cocked a bleared eye at them. With a foul curse, and no condescension of question to him, Brander drove his heavy foot at the man with all his force. The fellow started up with a shriek like a neigh, doubled upon himself, and, toppling, went down the whole flight with a noise of snapping, and collapsed in a writhing and coughing heap at the bottom.
Immediately there was a humming uproar of waking men, in the midst of which the two bounded into the passage and scrambled for the door of the second prison-chamber.
They burst it open. The window was flung wide—the room was empty—a fragment of rope trailed from the fire-place.
“Dolts! dogs! bullock-heads!” cried Brander, pelting, screaming with fury, into the passage again. “Where are they? What have you been doing, hearing, overlooking in your damned folly? Let me pass, you worse than curs and maniacs!”
He was wrenching and tugging frantically at the handle of the entrance-door. In an instant he was out, had staggered, had sprawled with his hands to save himself, and had gone with a sliding run into the snow. He was up directly, and shrieking to those within for a light. Some one brought it flurried, and he seized and held it over some shapeless thing huddled against the porch.
“Drunk?” he muttered. “No, by God!” and he stooped and gave a little pull to the inert mass. A squelch of darkness ran out into the snow, that received and held it like a blotting-paper.
Mr. Corby had been stabbed to the heart.
Whenupon the poor gentleman, starved and re-fettered, descended once more the sick loneliness of confinement, he assured himself that only a little time now was needed to see the quenching of his last spark of reason. He was so exhausted and unstrung—so doubly weakened by this latest wanton cantrip of Fortune, as to feel that the spirit of venture, fluttering within him on a broken wing, was physically incapable at last of the least independence of action. He looked upon himself as one who, having half raised a fallen treasure from a near-inaccessible ledge, has let it slip out of pure carelessness into the abyss; and so regarding his folly, he was miserably ready, like the born gambler he was, to cry Kismet! over his punishment.
The girl it was concerned him most—prominently for her own sake, but also because he might not guess what her seizure betokened, or what weak defences had made the fact of it possible. About her condition, or her safety in the midst of these lawless ruffians, his brain was too worn to speculate; but at least he could understand that the purpose for which she was held would not be allowed to perish upon itself of inaction.
He was only numbly conscious of the passing hours; the semi-torpor induced by cold and hunger deadened the pain of his scarified wrists, and he sat or lay huddled against the hearth unmoved to the least further effort of self-release. Sometimes, as evening crept on and darkened, he was aware, in a confused manner, of jangling sounds about the house that he dimly associated with the definite business of life—the rattle of pans and of crockery; the purr of rough voices strangely attuned to the pitch eloquent of the domestic virtues; later, a harsher medley of discords—the song, the quarrel, the crash of boisterous mirth, and often enough the thud of blows or shuffle of drunken feet. Intermittently through all, the penance-walk of the sentry in the passage went monotonously on, now dragging sullenly, now moved to some spasmodic briskness as the laugh bubbled high in the kitchen, now accented with a curse like a dog’s snap at a fly. Intermittently, too, came the hum of voices from the room opposite, sinking and swooping and moaning, as if a wind of evil thoughts were there gathering for any purpose of destruction.
And the night deepened, and the cold; and deep sank the expression of both into his tormented soul.
Once he thought he heard a window opened and the sound of voices in parley; and at that the least spark of hope flickered in him that negotiations (of what nature he was too stupefied to so much as remotely conceive) were in process on his behalf. But the murmur ceased and the glass was rattled to, and a profounder misery settled upon him that the little needle of light had showed itself to vanish.
He was abandoned to his fate; and about that he felt no bitterness. Only he greatly desired that the climax of his personal affairs should suffer no long postponement.
It may have been an hour short of midnight when, with his sad eyes fixed upon the moonlit square of window, his lids closed involuntarily and he sank into a sort of unresting stupor of the faculties. How long this travesty of sleep dwelt with him he might not know; but in an instant he had leapt from it and made as if to scramble to his feet. Something, that seemed to his disordered mind horribly suggestive of evil, had come between him and the white patch of the casement.
He tried to cry out, and found no power but for a sigh; and suddenly the shape was beside him, silently, on its knees, and an arm was round his neck and a soft hand upon his mouth.
“Betty, Betty, Betty!” whispered a tiny febrile voice in his ear—and instantly he knew, and, giving a little broken whinny, dropped his tired head upon her shoulder.
She clasped him, and she made no shame to kiss him with her lips like flowers; and then very gently, very pitifully, she passed her fingers over his right ear, over his left, and gave a heaving sigh from the bosom that lifted against his cheek.
“Oh, the cowards, the cowards!” she whispered, “to fright me so, and for a lie!”
He found a little voice for her. He would have, I think, from the grave.
“Are you come to save me, Betty?”
“Yes.”
“My hands are tied behind. They are so cut and bound I have lost all feeling in them; and if I shouldn’t be able to rise, Betty?”
She held his head to her convulsively. She cried silently, as a woman can if she will.
“We must not be a moment,” she whispered. “I hear them talking. We must move like mice. There is a horror outside; but what of it, if it let me pass to you.”
She put her hand again on his mouth, tacitly bidding him to the most tense silence. With her heart torn with pity, she bent and examined the knots. They were cruelly drawn, but love and good white teeth will work sufficient miracles. She had cracked harder nuts in her time. He felt her at work like a rat, vicious and determined. Once he felt lips light like down on the bruised members, and he thought. Though they were mortified and dead they should quicken at that.
All of a sudden his hands were free. He would have endeavoured to rise, but with a quick gesture she kept him down. She came to the front, and swiftly with her strong young arms pulled the boots from his numbed feet.
“Now!” she signified.
He was up in a moment. Broken as he was, the stimulus given his spirit by the devotion of this true soul was divine. Supporting him with all her love, she helped him step by step across the floor. Then for the first time he noticed that the girl was in her stockinged feet, and that the casement stood wide to the freezing night.
Come to the opening, he stooped his face to hers with a very pathetic look.
“Not now,” she whispered. “Not an instant for delay or explanation”—but seeing what he would be at, she put an arm to his neck, and drew his lips hard against hers.
The sill was but a step to an active wench. Betty was outside, scarcely having released his hands; and then she turned and beckoned. At her nod, another appeared at the opening—Dennis, by all the alphabet of wonder! She bade him to keep perfect silence by a word. The good fellow was white as ashes, and as he came up he was fumbling a long blade into his pocket. The moonlight revealed a wide horrified look in his eyes. He was like a saint whom love has defrauded of heaven.
He took his master under the arms, and with a convulsive effort haled him out into the snow. Inevitably a little noise resulted. Betty gave an indrawn gasp; but by all good luck a burst of laughter from within covered the accident.
Tuke stood like a drunken man, swaying and staring vacantly about him. Against the porch he was aware of a misshapen bundle.
“God forgive me, sir,” said Dennis. “’Twas for you I did it.”
The woman was the Roman.
“He died at his post,” she whispered; “and I would have done it blithely myself for this. And Mr. Whimple, he has stood guard at the door and left me only the sweets of service.”
Then she said, “Are you strong now to come?” and, seeing her poor gentleman all weak and bewildered, she held him again pitifully and bade Dennis to his other side; and so they led him, with what swiftness they could compass and creeping like frantic things, out through the lodge-gate and a little way up the foundered road, until they came to that very snowy gap in the brushwood through which the party of wanderers had forced their way three days before. And presently—for the moon made all distinct—they broke and stumbled into the clearing and stood before the ice-house.
“Betty,” then murmured her master—“I must not question; but why not push up the drive, now the coast is clear?—And here we shall only die.”
“Oh! you are wise,” she cried, with a little triumphant laugh—a pretty confection of love and relief and tears. “You are wise and bold, but not a little stupid perhaps. Who shall say that another sentry is not posted between the lodge and the house? And now you are to see.”
She put her shapely foot against the door and pushed it open. She jumped into the jaws of Erebus, and held up her arms to him; and he let himself down into them, trusting, and was taken and rejoiced over.
“Now,” she said, “whatever comes we are safe to win clear, and I will cry a little. But I can cry walking.”
“And will you explain a little, Betty?”
“This is no ice-house; or at least it is only the mouth of an underground passage, that leads straight through into that you call the ‘Priest’s Hole.’”
“Betty!”
“I have heard grandfather (woe is me—the poor old man!) talk o’t many a time. For he worked here when a lad in the service of Sir Thomas Woodruff. And I doubted not your honour knew; though the end in truth was choked with rubbish. But when you returned not, and the rogues came in force and made their purpose clear, we women watched wi’ sore hearts from the shelter of the roof, and we saw Sir David Blythewood and the captain come out on to the snow by the fringe of the shaw no earlier than this morning; and I cried at once, ‘They ha’ taken refuge in the ice-house, and have lain there in ignorance to this moment!’”
“Go on, Betty. Are you sure of the way? Never mind my crowing, girl. I haven’t broken food or tasted drink for three days, and my lungs are like glass paper.”
“Oh me! but I will not cry for a minute. I took Jim, and we found our way to the hole and went down into it; and there sure enough under the ledge was a stone in the wall that turned on a great pin; and this we swung round and saw a black gully shoot before us. Well, we took a candle and entered, and not twenty feet in, the light went out and we had to walk in darkness.”
“Oh, my child, my little Betty! That said ‘Go back!’ as plain as foul gas could speak.”
“Did it? It was close and stifling, of course; but we took hands and won through this very tunnel we are creeping along now; and all of a sudden we came to rubbish and the murmur of voices. At that Jim shouted. They were close at hand and heard us plain; and in ten minutes we had made a hole through the heap big enough to pass through.”
“And foolish they must have looked to hear how they had sat down to die within reach of rescue.”
“Maybe.”
“Did they not, Betty?”
“How should I know? I had no eyes for them. You weren’t there.”
He stopped in the black darkness and put his arms about her.
“Dennis,” he murmured back. “Are you following? Don’t run us down, but listen to this. I love Betty Pollack with all my heart and soul.”
The girl burst into tears.
“Don’t!” she whispered, and clung to him convulsively.
He said softly over his shoulder:
“Take up the tale, Whimple. She saved you?”
“She saved us, sir. We had dwelt there like fools. We had waited anxiously for your return; and at last, when hope was failing us, Sir David set off in your tracks, fought his way to the lodge, and came within view of the truth. He saw the villains all about the place, and had much ado to keep himself secret. But he managed to steal back unobserved; and all that afternoon till dark one or other of us was posted in the wood watching for your return. And so the night shut upon us again, and we tried to comfort ourselves with the assurance that you had had warning, had evaded the enemy, and had made your way round to the house by a circuitous path. Sir, when this good girl saved us, and we came to know you had probably fallen into Fern’s hands, I think there was none in the world more broken-hearted than Dennis Whimple.”
“Good fellow! But who gave you confirmation of the truth?”
“Fern himself, sir—the bloody villain himself. He came before the house at noon to-day, with a flag of truce—that Sir David would respect, though the captain desired to shoot him then and there—and told us that he had you a prisoner. Now Sir David would not let him know that we three was returned, hoping thereby to tempt him and his band to venture themselves to their destruction—as they already deemed the little garrison to be innocent of fighting men—and he sent one of the grooms to parley. And Fern promised this man one of his master’s members for every refusal of the stone he should receive. This, Captain Luvaine regarded as an idle menace; but later, some one looking out of the window saw in a snow-drift against the drive-end a pole posted; and nailed to the top of this was a horrible fragment, and underneath a paper, with ‘Tuke’s right ear’ written bold thereon.”
Betty shuddered in the arms of her dear knight.
“’Twas a beastly act,” he said sternly, “for which, if I live, that bitter scoundrel shall pay in full. And you believed it?”
“Sir David was for sallying forth at once by way of this passage; but he was over-ridden, and it was judged wiser to make the attempt at rescue by night. Then comes Betty, sir, and claims the post of danger for her woman’s wit—and, and——”
“Mr. Whimple must squire me for love of his master. And we prevailed, and here is your honour, and—oh! my love—my only love!”
And Betty gave full vent to her tears at last—though she cried very silently, like a thoughtful girl.
Now, it must not be supposed that throughout this explanation Mr. Tuke’s devoted members were in full vigour of speech and hearing. He asked and listened and answered, indeed, in a manner of tender emotion; but he must lean against the tunnel wall for support of his trembling limbs the while, and his voice was so weak that sometimes it was barely audible.
Suddenly, however, he pulled himself up with a jerk as if a shot had struck him, and, “God in heaven!” he cried—“the girl—Darda!”
A surprised pause followed.
“Sir,” said Dennis, in a trembling voice—“what do you mean?”
“My God! don’t you know where she is?”
“I haven’t seen her since she greeted me on my return. She gave me food and drink and went—to the house-top, I thought. You know her ways, sir.”
“She is in Fern’s hands. They brought her to me in evidence.”
A second pause as of death befell. The girl in his arms held her breath.
“I must go back,” said Dennis, in a lost, low voice—“I must go back.”
Tuke struggled to free himself.
“Come!” he said—“we will go together.”
Betty held him like a mad thing.
“You shall not!” she cried. “Are you crazed? What could you do but weaken Mr. Whimple’s hands? And he would have two to his care instead of one. The girl is right and wily. She’ll have her plans, I warrant.”
Still he struggled feebly in the encircling arms.
“Run, Mr. Whimple!” she cried. “I will hold him that he cannot follow!”
The echo of the man’s footsteps already came from a distance.
“Betty!” panted her master reproachfully. “Oh! what do you make of me?”
“One, I hope, that’ll hold himself sound for all our sakes. For shame! Have you not duties forward?”
He must allow himself to succumb to this sweet sophist. They stumbled on together once more through the dank and inky blackness. Their unshod and frozen feet suffered cruelly on the rough floor, and many little exclamations of pain were forced from either.
“Who was it that was hit by the villains, Betty?”
“’Twas the lord creature.”
“Good God! Then he and Miss Royston are there after all?”
“Aye; they be.”
“And is he killed?”
“Not he; though were he, he couldn’t make more noise about it.”
Tuke laughed feebly—a little bleat that was music to the other.
“Have I said something foolish? But we read of chance folks whose death makes a noise, your honour.”
“My honour again? But I’ll not gainsay you, darling. My honour and yours. Will you be my wife, Betty? And stay here and rest awhile, sweetheart, and we’ll choose the colour of the wedding-gown.”
A whitebed and sleep; food and drink in judicious allowance; salve for his hands and love for his heart; not least, the conviction that he might rest secure of the right conduct of his little garrison—and the returned sufferer, committing himself to the processes of a radiant constitution, found his trust justified in such a rapid convalescence as he had hardly ventured to expect.
He slept off a dozen hours of the clock like one, and woke when it was nearing noon, already more than half restored to himself.
At the first sound of his moving, Sir David came to his bedside, and looked down upon him with a comical air of chagrin.
“Good and satisfactory,” said the baronet; “and now, sir, we need your counsels to rid some innocent people of a very blackguard incubus.”
“Heaven bless them! But one word first—Darda?”
“Trust the jade! She was brought in by her brother not ten minutes after you arrived.”
“Thank God for that! How——?”
“Why, it seems she made a hole in the floor of the attic where she was held, dropped down into the very room you had quitted, and took advantage of the window you had left open. That other’s a rare wench of yours, Tuke.”
“Aye, aye.”
“You turn their heads, sir; and damme if your virtues compare with mine. Why, the mad girl, it appears, gave herself to the rogues on the chance of helping you, and was right savage when she found she had been forestalled. Burn me if I can see so much in you! She would ha’ been on your tracks sooner, but that she must stop to collect a bag-full of her mummies and things; and there she was makin’ for the tunnel as cool as a gipsy, when Whimple sighted her.”
“Well, what is toward this morning?”
“Not a sign. The rascals are well served, believe me, and cuttin’ one another’s throats by now.”
“Two are accounted for already—one by their own devilry, and one by Dennis’s knife.”
“Would you believe it, Tuke—the man’s as haunted as if stickin’ a mongrel were murder.”
“It is to him. He hath saddled himself with a life-long ghost for my sake.”
“Folly, sir, folly. He hath not the right trick of sport. Will you rise and come to counsel? If only I could make to ‘Chatters’ for reinforcements, and take the enemy in the rear?”
“Ah, if we only could! Must I dress by candle-light?”
“Why, ’twould be rash to open the shutters and invite a bullet.”
Half-an-hour later, refreshed and re-invigorated, though still conscious of a swimming weakness, the master of “Delsrop” descended to his dining-hall. On his way he passed a little group of his maids—a bevy of frighted and tear-stained faces that appealed to him humorously and pathetically. He stopped a moment.
“Take heart, my girls,” said he. “We’ll soon be quit of trouble now I’m come to my own again.”
“God bless you, sir! We never thought to see sich doings when we took service here.”
“Why, no more did I. And I swear my service is harder than yours.”
“That red-faced villain, sir. Jane have seen smoke come out of his mouth.”
“Tut! What an unconscionable scoundrel! We must put a snuffer on him.”
He smiled and nodded and went on his way. He suffered some small trepidation thereby over the thought of what he was about to face.
Miss Royston rose with a little stiff laugh as he entered the room. She was trim and dainty for all her poverty of circumstance. He went straight up to her and bowed low.
“What can I offer you,” he said, “but my deep regrets?”
“Indeed, sir,” she answered loftily, “’tis our friend’s trouble that hath worked your misfortune. You are recovered, I hope?”
“I am almost well.”
The Viscount Dunlone, who had been seated over the hearth, and who was in truth the only other present, rose here with a glowering face. His left arm was swathed in linen bandages.
“That being so,” he said, “I will ask you, is it not intolerable I should be brought by your invitation to this monstrous pass?”
“Sure, sir, I deplore the accident, but I must insist ’twas Sir David bid you here.”
“I have been wounded nigh to death, sir——”
“Oh, my lord!” put in Angela sharply, “the flesh was but cut.”
“Madam, permit me my own form of words. I have suffered a cursed mauling, sir, under your roof and in an affair that no whit concerns me.”
“And I am sorry, Lord Dunlone. What more can I say, but that the affair concernsmeno more than that it affects my friend’s friend, and that I wish us all well out of it.”
“That isn’t enough for me, curse it! I’m to be flouted and shot at and treated with no more respect than a cursed commoner, and then be given an account of regrets! You’ve returned to your own, sir; and now I’ll look to you to put an end to this cursed business, and to procure me a safe pass out of your accursed wilderness.”
“Lord Dunlone, listen to me. When this business is settled you can call me to what account you please. In the meantime, as I am master here, you will dispose yourself according to my direction and as I think most profitable to our security and welfare.”
He turned from the peer and walked to the fire-place.
“You belittle my lord and his grievance,” said Miss Angela primly; “but no doubt you are within your right, Sir Robert.”
The indignant “drizzler” walked to the door, puffed with fury. On the threshold he twisted about.
“Oh! very well,” he said in a high voice. “You take your course, and I mine when this matter is ended.”
He flung himself out and banged-to the oak behind him. Mr. Tuke looked gravely at his companion.
“So, he hath told you?” he said.
“He revealed it when he was very wild with his wound. You have not treated me well, Sir Robert.”
“I have no claim to the title. My repudiation of it was a condition of this inheritance.”
“And so your chickens came home to roost. Fie, Sir Robert! With what character would you pay your court to an innocent lady?”
“How hath he maligned it? I will vindicate it against a dozen puppies of his kidney.”
“And to the glory of what Dulcinea?”
She looked at him searchingly; with what intention who shall say.
“Am I to read confirmation of the story in this hunting of a gallant by his kitchen wenches?”
“Why not? Slander is the hall-mark on virtue. ’Twas one of these ‘kitchen wenches,’ as I have the tale, was your salvation at the first.”
“Oh! I grant she knows a rogue by his scent. She served the tap to such, I believe; and ’twas right noble of you to bring her to draw the ale to your honour.”
“Madam, is it not shameful to speak thus of one who preserved you all by her wit?”
“Mercy on us! I meant no offence. I love her solicitude in sitting up for the wanderers all night, and closing the shutters on her friends the thieves when she saw them breaking out of the drive. But what was that to her taking the burden ofyourrelease on her shoulders? and I trust she hath not found herself conducting a forlorn hope.”
“Her conduct is and has been what any with nobility must applaud.”
“I thank you for including me amongst the elect.”
“My name, madam, should I choose to recover it—as I may—will rank with the oldest and stateliest. I regard it as the meanest bribe to the consideration of one that simple self-respect adorns beyond the favours of kings.”
“Ah, me! We poor worldlings! It is well, I see, to go to school to misfortune, and better to pull mugs of ale to country louts. I can congratulate Lady Linne, at least, upon a very knowing taste in liquors.”
Mr. Tuke stared in amazement. Here, he could have thought, spoke the bitterness and scorn of jealousy. What if, at his last meeting with her, she had thought fit to stultify her previous insolence by a show of condescension to him that for the moment conveyed its calculated charm? He had looked upon this, on reflection, as a mere move in her game of coquetry—a bait to the sulky lord who “drizzled.” He had hardly dreamed that anything personal to himself could weigh in her balance against broad acres and a title; and nothing she had then said had weaned him from his newly-indulged lust of liberty. Now, all at once it came to him that Mr. Tuke transmogrified might boast attractions to a semi-romantic nature that no titled idiotcy could rival; and at the thought a very rigour of fright seized all his limbs, and he spoke out in quite a tremor of hurry:
“I am my lord’s tailor, as you know, madam, and though Mrs. Pollack may not show the best of taste in condescending to me, she hath still done me that honour.”
The advantages, where vanity is to receive a blow, are all on the side of breeding. An irrepressible start and glance of astonishment—and Miss Royston found herself in a moment.
“Indeed?” she said. “And now I protest my wit is at least equal to hers in foresight. But I applaud your determination to settle down in life at whatever price.”
She rippled out a spirited little bravura as she turned to some needlework that lay on the table. The necessity of, at the present crisis, conducting all the comedies of life by candle-light threw a curiously theatrical glamour over the scene.
“I hope for Lady Linne’s sake,” said Miss Royston, as she patted her work approvingly, “that a quick end may be put to this very unpleasant predicament. You will be married, of course, the moment you are a free agent again. Perhaps they have a recreant parson amongst our friends at the lodge. They will take to thieving sometimes, I am told. Is not this a pretty stitch? Can Mrs. Pollack thread a needle? She will have had a sampler, I warrant, in the parlour, with a full pot foaming white wool forremarque. And I vow, sir, you have never yet asked how it was my lord Dunlone came by his hurt.”
“I have not,” said the bewildered baronet. “You said it was but a flesh one, and I confess I attached little importance to it.”
“It was received in your service, sir; or, at least, under your roof. You must not think a fine independence releases you from the bonds of courtesy to those who stoop to favour you. ’Twas a ruffian fired at one of your grooms as the man went to close a shutter, and the ball wounded my lord as he stood behind. Perhaps it was not much; but blue blood is a vintage we hold a little higher than small beer.”
She turned round with quite a radiant smile.
“Would you mind doing something?” she said. “We are really a trifle bored, you know, with this tame inactivity.”
Now, before Mr. Tuke was called upon to reap the full embarrassment arising from that impulsive confession of his to Miss Royston, events came to so crowd themselves upon the little stage of his history as that he was spared what might have been otherwise a very complicated situation. For, indeed, he had not thought in what matter Betty Pollack, unchaperoned and living, so to speak, under his protection, was to find her due of respect from his servants and of consideration from his guests.
In this latter question, however, when he came to face it, he was to suffer relief of his apprehensions in a treatment that was, nevertheless, a little galling; for, whether from offended dignity, or from any policy of indifference, Miss Royston made no allusion to the subject before others, and, indeed, to all appearance, gave herself no least concern about it. Still, Betty’s honour being his, and his desire great that she should be placed by no private selfishness in a false position, he was determined at the first convenient opportunity to proclaim her his betrothed.
With regard to the present predicament, the morning of his restoration to his friends saw much barren counsel and a dearth of decision. Therefore, dispensing with informal advice, he went to examine his defences and his commissariat. Given his adequate garrison, the former were impregnable to any assault the rogues could venture; and, locked in the coach-house was such store of fallow-deer meat as would provision the company for months. The difficulty of feeding these poor brutes was a matter that bothered him. They may have been a score in number; and, should they once eat him out of hay and corn, there would be nothing for it but to make a battue of them, and salt or smoke as much of their flesh as circumstances would permit. As for the human needs, his larder was for the present well stocked.
For protective purposes he could now number in all—not counting Dunlone and the women—six men and a boy, a fighting strength sufficient to justify him in taking action on his own account, did he care to risk the lives of honest people in so indifferent a business. He did not, of course. What need was there to put a termination to conditions whose favour was all for the besieged? And he was conscious, moreover, of that weakness of his party that lay in a lack of fire-arms. Three fowling-pieces and a brace of duelling pistols—such was his artillery, and a very limited supply of ammunition to the back of it.
But they could afford to lie, and snugly, in these their winter quarters till the snow should melt. When he came to look at the great drifts piled all about the house; when he had made himself acquainted with the excellence of Master Cutwater’s defences; when he compared his position with that of the ruffians in their broken sty, and thought of the improvidence of the typical bravo, and of how there, in the lodge, food and fire would be sure to fail in the course of a day or two—he could only marvel at the audacity of villainy that could ever have dreamed of prevailing in a contest of such unequal forces—of the desperate courage, or the magnificence of a cupidity, that could still wait on in the face of so stubbornly forlorn a hope. Yet surely, were Fern once acquainted of the extent of his opponent’s resources, he would elect to withdraw his troop of cut-throats.
Still, he would not concede anything to a sense of security. He had had his sufficient lesson, and he took his little garrison in hand masterfully. The guns he committed to Sir David, to Jim, and the elder groom, while he and Luvaine took a pistol apiece. A guard was constantly posted upon the roof, and another in the hall, and every man was enjoined to be awake to surprises of whatever description.
Satisfied on all these points, he could condescend to some relapse into the social conditions; and three o’clock saw him ushering his company into the dining-hall, where a meal was served.
The master of the house was the last to enter the room, and he led in by the hand no less a person than his pretty maid of the inn. Miss Royston stared amazed at the sight; but Betty herself—a very Hebe, for all her homely gown—looked ready to burst into tears. For any shame-faced agony she might suffer, her dear lord’s word was become a thing to be answered to like a whistle to a dog; and at his nod she sank into a chair at his right hand and drooped her sweet head, while he stood erect, the light shining on his face.
“I wish to tell you all,” he said, in a clear, bold voice, “that this lady hath included herself in her gift to me of my life, and that we are plighted maid and man.”
Angela fell back in her chair, very white and smiling.
“For what we are about to receive,” she whispered to the Viscount who sat next to her. “Why does the creature take us into his confidence? We will accent the lady’s character on trust, though she dips her fingers into the dish.”
“He’s always so cursed convinced we’re thinking about him,” said the lord.
But Sir David Blythewood was risen to his feet, and faced his Bohemian friend with a wrathful face.
“The times excuse some jesting,” he began.
“I am in dead earnest, Blythewood.”
“Then, so am I, sir; and I’ll beg the favour of a word with you by and by.”
“At your pleasure. And now, having called the grace, we’ll drink the soup.”
At all this Luvaine looked plentifully surprised. He stared from one to the other of the company with his melancholy frown; and of a sudden he was on his feet.
“Since none will congratulate you, sir,” he said, “I will venture the statement that I never read man’s happiness in a purer face. I know nothing but this; and I drink the lady’s fair health with all my heart.”
Here in truth was an unexpected champion. With a radiant smile Tuke turned to one of the gaping servants.
“Fill your future mistress’s glass,” he said; “and kiss the rim, Betty, to your good friend.”
The poor girl shot a timid, grateful glance across the table. Her eyes swam with tears. For her, indeed, the ordeal was the severest. Gifted with a natural grace of refinement, she yet would hardly venture to eat or drink, lest she should offend by some little solecism against taste. She would not question her lord’s insistence that she should come and sit at his table and take her right rank that was to be the mistress of it; but, oh! how she had longed to be spared the trial until he had loved her and coaxed her and disciplined her into a grave knowledge of the proprieties.
And, for himself, he was not long in recognizing how his impulsiveness had again thrown him at the jump. For, to satisfy his own scruples of high-mindedness, he had submitted his sweet maid to insult and his guests to embarrassment; and there the situation stuck, and a very awkward and unappetizing one it was.
The meal passed to a stiff accompaniment of formalities of both speech and behaviour. Angela assumed, perhaps, a superlative manner of deportment, and she laughed extremely, on a high note, at some very stupid things Dunlone said to her. It would have been all dreadfully prosaic and worldly, had not a touch of tragedy been introduced suddenly from a quite unexpected quarter.
The wine had been placed on the table and the servants were withdrawn, when Tuke was aware that the crazed girl had come into the room and was standing motionless behind his chair. He turned sharply round. Darda, her hands clasped at her back, was gazing at him with an intense look.
“What is it?” he said. “Have you news?”
“Oh! yes,” she answered, nodding her head—“bad news—very, very bad.”
He thought he saw an expression in her eyes that was strange to him, though he fancied himself familiar with most of her moods.
“Tell it me,” he said, hastily rising—to the good fortune of one of the company.
“Don’t you know ’twasItried to save you?” she asked him in a low voice. “But there was something false—the shadow; it was the shadows that were false. Are you going to throw me away for that? How could I help it? I did my best. You were enchanted, and I walked singing into the castle of the giants to save you; and when I came you were flown. Who tempted you away?”
“Go now, Darda,” he said gently. “I will talk to you by and by.”
“I must know first. They said; but my brain burst like glass, and then I could not remember.”
He took a step towards her; but she backed from him, and cried out in a sudden triumphant voice:
“I can tell her!—the white woman who would set her wit against steel. See now if she can!”
In a moment she had snapped her hands to the front—and a bright blade was in one of them—and she was running to where Miss Angela was seated at the table.
Tuke was upon the mad creature’s heels—his hand clutched at her shoulder. The lady, unconscious that she was the destined victim, was only turned about in her chair with a curious face. It all passed in an instant—a very dramatic episode. The vicious arm lunged out—the pursuer struck up—there flashed an arc of light as the blade somersaulted in the shine of the candles, and there broke a shrill scream and a jarring flurry of chair-legs as the company scrambled to its feet. Then were to be seen Darda standing passively in the grasp of her captor, and the victim fallen into a faint against the shoulder of her neighbour, who looked down upon her with a face all quivering with fright and fury.
And: “Curse me!” cried Lord Dunlone; “why doesn’t somebody come and take her? I never was in such a nest of cursed brigands in my life before.”
Thehapless master of “Delsrop” paced his dining-hall in a rare conflict of emotions. The wine gleamed on the table; but none was there to call a toast in it. His hospitality was abused; his company retired; and he was audibly cursing that cantrip of Fortune that had endowed him with a wilderness and a party of lunatics and cut-throats to people it, and had made of it at the same time a perfect purgatory of misunderstanding.
“Now,” he groaned to himself, “if I am not in the mind to call in Jack Fern and his gang to resolve a problem that gets beyond me!”
All had disappeared from the room, and he was alone. He had himself, in a fury of passion, borne away Darda to the stables—whereto there was a covered passage leading from the north wing of the house—and had locked her in amongst the deer, as safe and appropriate to her animal outburst. Angela—more frightened than hurt by the little punctured wound on her fair white shoulder which the knife had made in its fall—had been supported to an upper room by her brother and Dunlone. Betty was fled, he knew not whither, and Luvaine gone to take his turn of guard in the chamber of the “Priest’s Hole,” which now, in the light of late discovery, was considered the nucleus of danger.
Dusk was creeping on when, in the midst of his irritable tramping, he turned to find that Dennis was come into the room.
“By all the devils of cross-purposes,” he said, stopping opposite the man, “I believe we are the only two in the house, Whimple, that understand one another. Tell me, then—what am I to do with the girl?”
“She must go, sir. Her malady increases, and—sir, let me speak plainly. It is aggravated by some wild passion that—that your neighbourhood provokes—some—oh! how can I face you and cry the mad presumption?”
“Yes—she must go.” (He spoke gloomily and thoughtfully.) “If only this eternal business of the stone were done with, and I could enter into peaceful possession of my own again. And sometimes I think that that will never be; that I hold a position only—a test of manliness and endurance, and that ‘Delsrop’ is no more than a redoubt in the battle of life, to fight from the shelter of, and abandon when my next advance is called.”
“In truth, sir, I believe there is a melancholy curse upon the place.”
“We will hold it, nevertheless, Dennis; but, our duty done by it, my heart, I think, wouldn’t die to see it fall. ’Twould be a sombre rookery for a young mother to rear her brood in.”
He set to pacing the room once more, while the other hung his head in some sorrowful emotion.
“Whimple,” he said, as he walked—“you have associations here—sinister enough; but they are a bond of a kind. I have none, and yet your father’s shadow creeps in mine and influences it, I am afraid, to evil.”
“Oh, sir! don’t talk like that. I have so formed my faith on all of that in you which I lack—courage and——”
“Tut, fellow! D’you think I’m to be overcrowed by a ghost? The sick dog must have his moan, Dennis, and I’m scarce recovered yet of those rascals. Look at my hands, you rabbit. Are these fingers or forked radishes to pull a trigger withal?”
“God restore you, master!”
“As He will—as He will.”
He was still tramping.
“But the stone,” he muttered—“the stone, the stone.”
Suddenly he paused before the servant, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“When you took the skull to your mother,” he said, “how did you carry it?”
“Carry it, sir?”
“Carry it, I say? Did you put the grinning atrocity under your arm—under your coat—how?”
“I put it in a bag, sir.”
“What sort of bag, man; and what became of it?”
“Oh! how can I say?—Yes; I know. ’Twas a canvas thing of my sister’s; that I stole and brought home again; and she rated me that I had appropriated it, for ’twas the one in which she conveyed her treasures to the lodge—the very bag, indeed, she found there and used to stuff her relics into before she escaped last night.”
“Where is it?”
“Indeed, I have no notion, sir.”
“What was its colour?”
“It had stripes of pale red, I only remember.”
“Find it, if you can, and bring it to me.”
“Now, sir, now. You think the stone may have escaped into it? It hath been in their hands, sir, down there. It is not possible.”
“Go, at least, and look.”
He resumed his monotonous walk. A desperate impatience to somehow end all this overbearing insolence of circumstance raged in his veins. But Fate must still be nagging at him like a hot wife. He heard the door opened and thought it was Whimple returned. It was Sir David, however, who stepped primly down and came up with a stony face to the poor man.
“Miss Royston is recovered?” said Tuke.
“The shock dwells with her. The wound is superficial. She is seated with Lord Dunlone for distraction of her thoughts.”
“Ah! women will dare bold remedies.”
“Not less than men, sir, when they suffer a midsummer madness.”
“Blythewood, let us, for Heaven’s sake, be quit of mysteries! You want to quarrel, as I understand, and I’m in no mood to baulk you. What is another sting in this general attack of hornets? Only give me the pretext, man—as to which I swear I’m in a wood of bewilderment.”
“I’ll speak plain enough for an adder to hear. Didn’t you ask my favour to your suit with my sister?”
“Certainly you put the question to me.”
“Need I say more? Was this late insult a calculated one? I know nothing of the claims of the lady, or as to how far her services may warrant your condescension; but——”
“You have gained your object. Not another word, man; unless you wish to fight over a handkerchief here and now. The matter can be arranged when our responsibilities to these innocent folks are happily decided.”
The little baronet bowed.
“I regret you have forced me into this position.”
“Oh! my friend—spare yourself! I am bullied beyond any desire of explanation. I can slash and shout in thismêléeof misunderstanding, and I only dread to die because of the good, sweet soul that has fastened her life to mine. Wait; and for the sake of all give me your present services; and I will meet you with cannon, if you like, when the pother is over.”
“Of course—our interest here is one. You have relieved my mind, by cock.”
“Have I? Then attack the bottle and be merry, and I’ll try to make you company.”
“No. I must go back to my sister. You want blood yourself, though. You’re peeked and haggard man; and no doubt late affairs have over-tried you.”