Within about three paces of me he stopped, and passed his hand two or three times through the blackand white masses of his hair. He had the air of trying to rouse himself from a mood of painful preoccupation. At length he spoke in a faint, unaccented tone, like a voice heard far off.
“I want your sympathy,” said he.
“Have we met before?” I asked, rather taken aback. “I really don’t remember—but I believe I’ve been half asleep, and am hardly awake yet.”
He shook his head slowly, his black eyes curiously perusing my face. “You have chosen an ill place to sleep in,” he remarked after a pause. “Many a year have I sought repose there—in vain.”
“Indeed? Well, I came here quite by accident, and judging by the aspect of the place, I shouldn’t have supposed it would have been often visited.”
“You are right, few come hither now; but as many as do so are liable to meet with me.”
I looked more narrowly at my queer companion, and all at once the thought struck me, the man is mad! Yes, it must be so. How otherwise could the strangeness of his appearance, behaviour, and conversation be accounted for? He did not look dangerous, probably he was incapable of doing harm, and therefore permitted to wander about as he liked. In the moral atmosphere of these ruins he was sensible of somewhat congenial to his own forlornness, and hence haunted them ratherthan any more cheerful spot. Certainly, this was an appropriate haunt for a madman—for one whose mind had fallen into that ugliest chaos which was once beauty and order. But I liked the spectacle of mental even less than that of material decay; and though the poor gentleman had asked me for my sympathy, I scarcely knew how to give it to him.
By I know not what faculty of divination, he appeared to suspect what was passing in my mind.
“I am not mad,” he said quietly, but with a tremor of the finely-cut though irresolute lips. “I am not mad, I have passed beyond insanity. Let me sit down here and talk to you. Nay—do not rise! Recline as you were doing, and close your eyes if you will; I need only your ears.”
While speaking thus he passed behind me, and apparently seated himself at the foot of the oak-tree, outside of my range of vision. But no sooner was he out of plain sight, than I was seized with an odd fantasy that he had actually vanished into thin air, and that were I to look round, I should not find him. His voice only was left, and even that now seemed unearthly. Was it a human voice? and not rather the rustling of leaves and the gurgling of water, translated by my feverish imagination into weird speech?
“You were dreaming,” resumed the voice; “what dreams had you of the wheel?”
“What dreams had I of the wheel?” I repeated, leaning back on the mound, and clasping my hands across my eyes. Here was another instance of my new friend’s insight. How had he known that the wheel was in my thoughts at all! Yet it was true that I had given rein to all sorts of fanciful speculations concerning it, and was now, moreover, quite in the mood to give them utterance. And what better auditor could I desire than a madman, whom the wildest extravagance could not disconcert, nor the most palpable absurdities annoy? The opportunity was too fair to lose.
“What dreamt I of the wheel?” I exclaimed again: “I dreamt it was the mighty Wheel of Fortune, who, weary of trundling it about the world, had left it here amidst the sedge and spray of the waterfall. Henceforth, therefore, there shall be no more ups and downs in life, but mankind shall move for ever across one level plain, unchecked by darkness and uncheered by light!”
“Would you have it thus?”
“Oh no—not I! Come back, fair goddess! come back and wrest thy wheel from amidst those clinging vines and brambles—the arms wherewith reluctant nature strives to hold it back! Bring it forth onceagain upon the dusty road, and turn it as you go, lest our sluggish hearts forget to beat, and we cease to draw the very breath of life, and our souls, torpid and uninspired, grovel earthwards, nor dream of climbing higher than themselves! Bring forth thy wheel, and turn it for ever even as the world turns; for thy fickleness is the life of our lives!”
“Methinks the wheel of misfortune were its truer title; for it turns ever between a fool above and a corpse beneath; and the laugh of madness sounds before, and behind is a track of blood!”
“Nay, name it how you will; since all of human joy and grief, and life and death, have clustered round its course, as the moss and the vines cluster about it now. See how Nature seeks to make the awful symbol of destiny into a plaything for her own beautiful idleness! How fearlessly the light and shadow rest upon it! Yet it is bloodstained. Those rank ferns bend and peer in quest of some lurking horror? What is it? I feel its influence upon me.”
“Aye, you feel it!” murmured my unseen companion, tremulously; “and how could you help but feel it? Do not the tragedies of human life instil their essence into the things we call inanimate? You have shuddered when handling the rack and the Iron Virgin of the Inquisition, and felt faint at the sight of the guillotine and the gallows. You were awedby an evil influence breathed from the actual wood and iron—not by the mere knowledge of ghastly scenes in which they had borne a part.”
“How came the influence there?” I asked, humouring his grotesque theory.
“That which has existed in an atmosphere of revenge, hatred, and despair, becomes at last impregnated with a malignant intelligence derived from them; an intelligence both devilish in itself and able to endow you with its own deformity. And if you hold not aloof from it, you shall surely be destroyed—in soul, if not in body likewise!”
“But do we feel this influence unless aware beforehand that it is there?”
“Fix your thought constantly upon yonder wheel,” was the reply, “and mark if it does not answer you.”
Still with my hands clasped across my eyes, I concentrated my mind as directed, and presently felt my veins crawl with a slow chill of dismay—a chill which deprived me of control over my faculties, while awakening them to unnatural activity. That the wheel had a conscious personality, instinct with evil, seemed no longer open to doubt. Now the plash and gurgle of the water changed to the stealthy drip of blood; and I shrank from the breeze that moved my hair as from a pestilential breath. Was I going mad too? My will seemed to falter; atremor which I could not repress passed through me from head to foot.
“Aye, you feel it,” murmured the voice again. “You are answered!”
By a determined effort I regained command of myself. Perhaps it was none too soon. Nothing is easier than to indulge this morbid vein, and few indulgences, I believe, are more perilous. With my change of mood came a change of tone; I cast aside the hysteric style, and adopted one more brusque and matter-of-fact, to which the reaction from sentimentality may have added a touch of asperity.
“Come, come!” I said. “We are overdoing this folly. I know well enough what place this is; Mr. Poyntz began to tell me about it this afternoon. An amusing story—all about the Laughing Mill, and the fellow who was drowned, and the nymph of the pearl-shell necklace. You see, I know what I am talking about! But the tale broke off in the middle; perhaps you can finish it?”
“It is you who must finish it!” returned the other. “But I want your sympathy; so let me tell my part.”
“Do so,” said I, “by all means. When I know you better, I shall be better able to sympathise with you. As to my finishing the story, I think I’m morelikely to succeed as a listener than as a narrator; however, if it must be so, I’ll give it the best ending I can. And I do sympathise with you already,” I added, after a pause, in a less flippant tone. “I am a man, and I believe in human brotherhood.”
My eccentric companion made no rejoinder, though I fancied he gave a sigh. Presently he began to speak in the same evenly-pitched, far-away voice that he had used throughout. The effect was rather as of a weary reader reading from a book than as of one who talks spontaneously, there was no hesitation, no rise and fall, no fire, no faltering. Yet the recital moved me more deeply than if it had been delivered with impassioned eloquence. Through the sad colourless medium I seemed to behold the direct movement of events, and almost to take part in them. Moreover, as the narrator proceeded, the notion more than once possessed me that his words reached my ears from some inward source—that I was merely thinking the things I seemed to hear. His tone was so attuned to the desolateness of the surroundings, as to appear like the mystic interpretation of their significance, such as might result from intense brooding over them. Indeed, taking into consideration all that I had seen, heard, and fancied that day, I almost believe I could have fallen asleep and dreamed just such a story as he told me.Certainly no dream could have been stranger than the things he told.
They brought the yellow-haired little maiden to the mill (ran the story), and Gloam called her Swanhilda. Jael, the old housekeeper, looked at her sharply, and asked what good such a little creature could be among poor people? the girl was of no use herself, and would only hinder those who had to work.
Gloam answered, “Heaven has sent her to us. She shall be our inspiration, and the symbol of our good. Treat her with reverence, and tenderly, as you would treat the best and purest aspiration of your heart. If we wrong her, it will be our deadliest sin. If we cherish her, the sins we have committed may be forgiven us.”
“She is a gentleman’s daughter, at all events,” said Jael. “Look at the shape of her hands and feet! No, she never worked, nor did her mother before her. Well, maybe her family will come after her some day, and pay us well for taking care of her. Or who knows but she may turn out heiress to some great estate, when she grows up? If that were so.... David, son, come hither. See—she’s a pretty little thing.”
Handsome David stooped down and took the child’s small soft hand. “And so she is—a little beauty!” he exclaimed, looking into her blue eyes. “Can’t speak English, eh? That’s a pity; but live and learn. Right glad am I that you brought her here, sir,” he added to Gloam. “Where did you pick her up?”
“She’s the rainbow after the storm,” Gloam answered, smiling. “But I shall not teach her English. Let her speak only the language which she has brought with her.” And he led the child away.
“That may do for him,” muttered David, “but it won’t do for me. He can talk with her and I can’t; so if he won’t teach her English I will. Devil take me if she isn’t a sweet little fairy; and she’s quite enchanted the Scholar already. He’s a changed man since yesterday. But he shan’t have all the fun to himself.”
“She looks thirteen, don’t you think?” said Jael. “She won’t be a child much longer, David. Why, come three years or so, she’ll be old enough to be married.”
“Ay, old woman; but I shall be too old to marry her,” he answered, with a keen look and a laugh.
“I tell you, son, she’s a lady, and good enough to mate with any man.”
“That’s your notion, and likely enough it’s true.But good blood isn’t all I want—I’ve got that already, thanks to your good looks; what I want and haven’t got is money. And Miss Swanhilda, pretty as she is, has less money even than I.”
“But she has relations—rich relations; her own father and mother may be alive for all we know. If she was saved off a ship where all the rest were lost, of course there’ll be no telling for some time to come. But it’s worth waiting for.”
“Did no papers come ashore—nothing to help identify her?”
“I asked Poyntz that,” said Jael, “and so far as I can make out, I think there hasn’t been anything.”
“Well, I’ll make sure of that next time I go over. We might advertise in the foreign papers after awhile. A right pretty little thing she is, and no mistake. But I’m not a-going to run any risks, old woman. Supposing I was to get tied down to her for life, and then find out that she’d got nothing, what would I do then?”
“There’s no need of supposing any such thing, David. As if you couldn’t make the girl fond of you so as she wouldn’t marry any but you; then you’d have her safe, and if all turned out well, ’twould be time enough to put the ring on her finger.”
“Ay, that’s about the idea, I suppose. Well, the Scholar’s got the start of us now; and ’twon’t do tolet him see what we’re up to; luckily he never did see what’s going on under his nose. By-the-way, that’s a quaint bit of a necklace the child wears; mayhaps that’ll help us to find out something——”
He broke off suddenly, with an oath, and he and his mother stood listening, pale-faced. His eyes were angry, but terror lurked in those of the woman.
A strange jarring sound filled the air; it seemed to come from every side, and screamed harshly into the listeners’ ears. If a fiend had burst into a long fit of malignant laughter close at hand the effect could not have been more hateful and discordant.
“The laugh again!” David muttered between his teeth. “It would be just our luck if it scared our best customer away. Devil take me if I don’t begin to believe it is the soul of that cursed husband of yours, that you treated so affectionately. I’ll swear there’s not a spot of rust on the machinery as big as a pin’s head.”
“Oh, son, don’t look that way at me,” said the woman, in a shaken voice. “I would prevent it if I could; what can I do?”
“You might jump in and follow your husband; that’s what he wants, I suppose,” returned the son, angrily. “It’s you that wronged him, not I; and as long as you’re here we’ll have no luck. That’s the long and short of it!”
The laugh had died away, and Jael, pressing her hand above her heart, turned aside and passed out. She loved her son, and would have shed her blood for him; but this was not the first time he had spoken thus.
After she was gone, David stood at the window, biting his lips and muttering to himself. Suddenly he heard Gloam’s step behind him, and looked round in surprise.
“What was that noise?” Gloam asked.
“Why, nothing new, sir. The same old story. Something wrong with the wheel again, I suppose.”
“I remember no such sound before,” said Gloam, excitedly. “It is hideous, like the shriek of an evil spirit. Let it never come again; it frightens Swanhilda, and comes between us like a prophecy of woe. Let it never come again!”
“You have taken to hearing through her ears and feeling through her senses—that’s all the matter,” answered David, smiling. “It sounds bad to you because it makes her head ache. As to stopping it, I’d do so, and gladly, if I but knew how. It loses us half our custom, for folks say the devil’s at the bottom of it, sure enough.”
“It is a wicked sound!” exclaimed Gloam again, “full of mockery and bitterness. Swanhilda wasborn to hear divine harmonies, and she will leave us if we greet her with such hideous discord.”
“She was born to take her chance with the rest of the world, Mr. Gloam,” replied the younger man, in a harder tone. Then he smiled again and added, in his muttering way, as he left the room, “She’ll get used to it fast enough, never fear.”
But a long time passed without the recurrence of the hateful sound, and meanwhile Swanhilda was recovering from her first melancholy and home-sickness. Gloam had told her that she would see her father and mother again some day, and by degrees her anxiety calmed down to a quiet and not uncheerful expectation. She seemed to know little of the history of her family, or else was averse from discussing it; for amidst all her winning sweetness and pure sincerity she retained a maidenly reserve and dignity not lightly to be overcome. But the guileless fascination which she unconsciously exercised upon all she met was impossible to resist. She gladdened all eyes and hearts, and the mill became a storehouse of beauty and gladness as well as of grain and meal. People came from all the surrounding neighbourhood to see Scholar Gloam’s water-nymph; and at last, when the Laughing Mill was mentioned, they thought of Swanhilda’s airy merriment—not of the ill-omened sound that hadfirst given it that name, but was already being fast forgotten. So the prosperity of handsome David increased, and was greater than it had ever been before; he had as many customers as the mill could supply, and bade fair, in the course of years, to become a wealthy man. He and Jael treated the little water-nymph with every kindness, as well they might; and what Gloam had said seemed likely to come true—that she would be the means of their regeneration.
And Gloam himself was as a man transfigured. He lived no longer amidst his books, but made himself free to all; and the neighbours wondered to find him so genial and gladsome. He and Swanhilda were constantly together; they played and laughed like children; they went on long rambles hand-in-hand; in winter they pelted each other with snow-balls; in summer and autumn they gathered flowers and berries and nuts. He treated her with the most reverent and entire affection; he was ready to sacrifice anything for her sake, to give her anything—unless it were, perhaps, the freedom to be to another all that she was to him. But apparently she was well content. Gloam was the only one who spoke her language, and the only one, therefore, with whom she could converse unrestrainedly. He would not teach her English, and if others attempted to doso it was without his knowledge or consent. He believed, it may be, that no one but himself could appreciate her full worth, and thought it would be a kind of desecration to let another approach her too nearly. Certainly they were happy together. That part of his nature to which she appealed was not less youthful than she was herself; and in her society he felt himself immortally young. He forgot that there were lines upon his brow, and that his figure was bent, and that his hair had begun to be prematurely white. And he doubted not that as he felt so he seemed to her.
Was his confidence justified? Had this child who was just beginning to be a young woman, penetration to see the fresh soul within the imperfect body? A more experienced man would have had misgivings, knowing that young women are apt to judge by appearances, and to be more swayed by downright power and passion than by abstract right and beauty. But Gloam’s experience had not taught him this. He did not dream that she could ever learn to deceive him, or to give him less than the first place in her heart. But he dreamed that some day, distant perhaps, at least indefinite—they would be married. By all rights they belonged to each other, and when they had played their childish games to the end, and had wearied of them, then would theyenter upon that new phase of life. Meanwhile he would not speak to her of the deeper love, lest she should be startled, and the frankness of their present intercourse be impaired. But women have been lost ere now through fear of startling them.
So more than two years slipped away, and the child Swanhilda had grown to be a tall and graceful maiden; which seemed half a miracle, so quickly had the time passed. Her blue eyes had waxed larger and deeper, and in moments of excitement they became almost black. Her hair was yellow as an evening cloud; her face and bearing full of life and warmth. Her nature was strengthening and expanding; she was beginning to measure herself against her associates. Though so gentle, she was all untamed; no one had ever mastered or controlled her. She knew neither her own strength nor weakness, but the time approached when she would seek to know them. Every woman is both weaker and stronger than she believes, and it is well for her, when the trial comes, if her strength be not the betrayer of her weakness.
At this point in the story the voice of the narrator grew fainter and then made a pause. I still kept myreclining position, with my hands clasped above my closed eyes. In fact, it would have required a greater effort than I at the moment cared to make to have sat up and looked about me. The sun, I knew, had already sunk below the crest of the slope; the gorge lay in shadow, and beneath the oak it was almost dark. As I lay waiting for the tale to recommence, the sombre influence of the wheel asserted itself more strongly than ever. There it loomed, in my imagination, black, grim, and portentous. Its huge spokes stretched out like rigid arms, and the long grass which streamed along the gurgling water resembled the hair of a drowned woman’s head.... But now the voice began again.
One summer afternoon Gloam and Swanhilda were sitting on the wooden bench beside the mill, watching the heavy revolutions of the great wheel. They were alone. David was in the mill-room finishing the day’s work, and Jael was preparing supper in the kitchen. For several minutes neither of them had spoken.
“Do you remember,” said Swanhilda at last, using her native tongue, “the first day I came here, how there came a terrible sound that made me miserably frightened? I have never heard it since then. What was it?”
“Only a rusty axle; at least, so I suppose. Thatcareless David had forgotten to oil it properly. But I gave him such a scolding that there has been no more trouble.”
“David is not careless—he works very hard, and I love him,” retorted Swanhilda, tossing back her yellow hair. “Besides, such a noise could not be made by an axle.”
“You may like David, but you mustn’t love him; you are a little princess, and he is only the housekeeper’s son.”
“What is the difference between loving and liking?” inquired Swanhilda, folding her hands in her lap, and turning round on her companion.
He took her hand and answered, “I shall teach you that when you are older.”
“I am not so young as you think. I am old enough to be taught now.”
“No, no, no!” said Gloam, shaking his head and laughing; “you are nothing but a child yet. There is plenty of time, little water-nymph.”
“If you will not teach me, I’ll find someone else who will teach me. I will ask David; he has taught me some things already.”
“He? What have you learnt from him?” cried Gloam.
Swanhilda hesitated. “I should not have said that—but it’s nothing, only that I am learning tospeak English. He didn’t want you to know until I was quite perfect, so as to make it a surprise to you.”
“He had no right to do it. Why should you learn to speak with anyone but me?” exclaimed Gloam passionately.
“Do you think I belong to you?” demanded Swanhilda, lifting her head in half-earnest, half-laughing defiance. “No; I am my own, and there are other places besides this in the world, and other people. I will go back to my own country.”
“Oh, Swanhilda,” said Gloam, his voice husky with dismay, “you will never leave us? I cannot live without you.”
“I will, if you are unkind to me.... Well, then, you must not be angry because David taught me English; and you must let him teach me the difference between liking and loving; I’m sure he knows what it is!”
“Do not ask him—do not ask him! That is my right; no one can take it from me! I saved you, Swanhilda; I brought you back to life, and that new life belongs to me!” The hand that held hers had turned cold, and he was pale and trembling. “I have kept you for myself; I have given up my own life—the life that I used to live—for you. But I cannot return to it, if you leave me.”
“I did not ask you to give it up,” she returned, waywardly. Then she relented, and said, “Well, you may teach me about loving, if you want to. Only, afterwards, you must let me love anyone I please!”
Gloam looked upon her for several moments, his black eyes lingering over every line of her face and figure. “You belong to me,” he repeated at last. “If you left me for another, I should wish that your pearl-shells had drawn you down——”
Before he could finish uttering the thought that was in his heart, the words were drowned in a throbbing yell as of demoniac laughter. The evil spirit of the wheel, after biding its time so long in silence, had seemingly leapt exultingly into life at the first premonition of meditated wrong. Swanhilda shuddered, and hid her face in her hands. David thrust his head out of the mill-room window, and saw Gloam make a gesture of rage and defiance.
“Aha!” he muttered to himself, “so the children’s games are over, are they? Can it be the devil’s game that my beloved brother thinks of beginning now?”
Another year passed, and again a man and a woman were sitting together on the bench beside the mill. It was night, and a few stars twinkled between the rifts of cloud overhead. The gorge was so dark that the mill-stream gurgled past invisibly, save whereoccasionally a rising eddy caught the dim starlight. The tall wheel, motionless now, and only discernible as a blacker imprint on the darkness, lurked like a secret enemy in ambush. The man’s arm was clasped round the woman’s waist; her head rested on his shoulder, and her soft fingers were playing with the pearl-shell necklace that encircled her neck. They spoke together in whispers, as though fearful of being overheard.
“You silly little goose!” the man said; “a few months ago nothing would make you happy but learning what love was; and now you have found out you must ever be whimpering and paling. Why, what are you afraid of?”
“You know I am happy in loving you, David,” was the tremulous answer; “but must lovers always hide their love, and pretend before others that they do not feel it? When I first dreamed of love, it seemed to me like the blue sky and the sunshine, and the songs of birds; but our love is secret and silent, like the night.”
“Pooh! nonsense, and so much the better! Our love is nobody’s business but our own, my lass. You wouldn’t have Gloam find it out, would you, and part us? What! have you forgotten the fit he was in at my teaching you English a year ago? He wants you all to himself, the old miser! You weren’thappier with him than you have been with me, were you?”
“Oh, David,” whispered the girl, clinging to him, “that was so different! I was happy, then, like a wave on the beach in summer. I had no deep thoughts, and my heart never beat as you make it beat, and my breath never came in long sighs as it does often now. Gloam used to say that he had brought me back from death to life; but it was not so. I lived first when I loved you. And the old happiness was not real happiness, for there was no sadness in it; it never made me cry, as this does.”
He drew her to him with a little laugh. “When you’ve lived a little more and got used to it, you’ll stop sighing and crying, and be as bright and saucy as you were with Gloam. But you won’t want to tell him ... eh?”
She hid her face on his shoulder. “Oh no, no, no; I could not; I should feel ashamed. But why do I feel ashamed, David? Is not loving right?”
“Right? to be sure it is. Nothing more so! And the pleasantest kind of right, too, to my thinking. Eh, little one?”
“David, I have heard—are not people who love each other married—at least sometimes? and after that they are not afraid, or sad, or ashamed?”
A smile hovered on David’s handsome lips.“Married, yes, stupid people get married. Timid folks, who are afraid to manage their own affairs, and can’t be easy till they’ve called in the parson to help them out. They’re the folks that don’t love each other right down hard, as you and I do. They’re suspicious, and afraid of being left in the lurch; so they stand up in a church and tie themselves together by a troublesome knot they call marriage. No, no; we’ve nothing to do with that; we’re much better off as it is.”
“But my father and mother were married, and they were not suspicious,” ventured Swanhilda again, after a pause.
“Oh, ay, they were married,” assented David; adding, half to himself, “and if they were alive, too, and anxious to fill a son-in-law’s pockets, I’d open mine, and gladly. But my father and mother were not married,” he resumed to Swanhilda, with another smile, “so you see we’ve a good example either way.”
She made no reply, but lifted her head from his shoulder and sat twisting the necklace between her restless fingers, her eyes fixed absently on the darkness. The clasps of the necklace came unawares apart, and it slipped from her bosom to the ground. She uttered a little cry, and stood up with her hands clasped, all of a tremble.
“I have lost it!” she said. “David, some harm is coming to me!”
“Nonsense! here it is, as good as ever.” He picked it up as he spoke, and drawing her down beside him, fastened it again round her neck, and then kissed her face and lips. “There, there, you’re all right. Did you think it was dropped in the mill-race?”
“Some harm is coming,” she repeated. “It has never fallen from me since my mother put it on my shoulders, and said it would keep me from being hurt or drowned, but that I must never part from it. But I trust you, oh, my love! I trust you. Something seems wrong somehow; I have given you all myself....”
“Lean close up to me, little one; rest that soft little cheek of yours against mine, and have done with crying now, or I’ll think you mean to melt all away and leave me; and what would I do then?”
She turned and clasped her arms around him with a kind of fierceness. “I leave you, David? Oh—ha, ha, ha! Oh, but you must never leave me, my love—love—love! Oh, what should I do if you were to leave me?”
“Hush, girl; hush! you’ll rouse the house, laughing and crying in the same minute! Don’t you knowI won’t leave you? There—hush! You’ll wake Gloam else.”
“He loved me, too; he wouldn’t leave me; but he thought I wasn’t old enough—not old enough, ha, ha!... David, does God know about us?”
“Not enough to trouble Him much, I expect,” said the young man, with a short laugh. “If anything knows about us, it’s the old wheel there, waiting like a black devil to carry us off. Come, we must creep back to the house.”
They rose, Swanhilda stood before him, her sweet sad face glimmering shadowy pale through the darkness. “Say, ‘I love you, Swanhilda, and I will never leave you!’” she whispered.
He hesitated, laughed, stroked her hair, and stooping, gazed deep into her eyes, as on the day when they first met. Did his heart falter for a moment, realising how utterly she was his own? “You trusted me just now,” said he; “are you getting suspicious again?”
“No; but I am afraid—always afraid now. When you are not with me, I am afraid of everyone I meet; I think they will see our secret in my eyes. When I lie alone at night I am afraid to pray to God, as I used to do. What is it? Why do I feel so? It must be that we have done some wrong. My poorlove! have I made you do any wrong? I would rather be dead.”
“Little darling—no! You couldn’t do wrong if you tried. There is no wrong—I swear there isn’t. Listen, now in your ear: I love you, Swanhilda, and I will never leave you! Satisfied now?”
Low as the words were whispered, they were heard beyond the stars, and stamped themselves upon the eternal records. But their only palpable witness was the mill wheel. A log of wood, carried over the fall, came forcibly in contact with the low-impending rim. It swung the heavy structure partly round upon its axle. And straightway, upon the hollow night, echoed a faint yet appalling sound as of jeering laughter. Slowly it died away, and silence closed in once more, like darkness after a midnight lightning flash. But it vibrated still in the startled hearts of the man and the woman, who crept so stealthily back to the house, and vanished in the blackness of the doorway, and it revisited their unquiet dreams.
Summer and winter came and went, and were followed by a gloomy and dismal spring. The late-lying snow was dissolved by heavy rains so that the mill stream was swollen beyond precedent, and rolledthundering through the gorge with the force of a full-grown cataract. But the mill was idle, and the wheel stood still. None came for flour now, nor to bring grist; for many a week all work had been foregone.
Yet the house was not deserted. An elderly woman, with a forbidding face that had once been handsome, moved to and fro behind the windows; and a man, bent and feeble, with strangely-grizzled hair, sat motionless for hours at a time in his study-chair. Sometimes, in his loneliness, he would set his teeth edge to edge, and clench his thin hands desperately, and utter an inarticulate sound of menace. But at a certain hour of the evening he would arise and walk with noiseless steps to the door of a darkened chamber. There he would pause and lean and listen. Presently from within would be heard the shrill, petulant crying of an infant, and anon the voice of its young mother, sad and tender, soothing and pathetic: “Baby, baby, don’t cry; hush, hush, hush! father will come to us soon; he will come, he will come! he loves us and will never leave us; hush, hush, hush!”
At these sounds the pallid visage of the man would quiver and darken, and he would press his clenched hands upon his breast. Returning at length to his study, he got upon his knees and stretched his arms upwards.
“God—God of evil or of good, whichever you are—give my enemy into my power! Let my curse work upon him till it destroy him: let my eyes see him perish! He has robbed me of my love, and my hope, and my salvation; he has defiled and dishonoured that which was mine; he has made my life a desert and an abomination! Yet I would live, and suffer all this and more, if he might perish by my curse, body and soul, for ever! Grant me this, God or Devil, and after do with me what you will!”
Such was his prayer. But he never entered the darkened chamber where the child and its young mother lay; he never looked upon them or spoke to them, nor did his heart forgive them. He could not forgive till he had had revenge. Since that hour in which he had first learnt the truth, and with hysteric fury had sprung at the seducer’s throat, his soul had been empoisoned against them and all the world. He was possessed by that devil to which he prayed, and good was evil to him.
One day he was standing in a kind of stupor at his window staring out at the black mill-wheel, which was now the only object in the world with which he felt himself in sympathy. There came a knock at the door, and Jael, the housekeeper, entered. Since the calamity which had befallen, her manner towards Gloam had undergone a change. She had beforeexercised a kind of authority over him, such as a compact and unsympathetic nature easily acquires over one of wider culture but more sensitive than itself. But Gloam had become more terrible in his desolation than a less naturally gentle man would have been; and Jael feared him. She felt that he might murder her; and minded her steps, lest in some sudden paroxysm he should leap out upon her.
She advanced a little way into the room, and stopped. He did not turn, or show that he was aware of her presence. After a few moments she said:
“Master, he is coming back; David’s coming home again, sir. He’s going to make it all right with Swanhilda—he means to marry her!”
Gloam did not stir; but as Jael watched him narrowly, she fancied that his limbs and body slowly stiffened, until they became quite rigid; only his head had a slight shivering motion. The woman shrank back a step, with a feeling of alarm.
It seemed a long while before Gloam spoke, and the same slight, involuntary shiver pervaded his voice. He still kept his face carefully averted.
“David coming back?”
“Yes, sir; I had a message from him this morning.”
“To ... marry her!”
“Yes, indeed, sir; he’ll make an honest woman of her. What he has done has laid heavy on his conscience ever since. And so he says he hopes you’ll forgive and forget, and that we’ll all prosper and be happy in the future.”
Gloam’s chest began to heave, and he folded his arms tightly across it. There was another long pause, as though he feared to trust his voice to speak. Finally the words came between his shut teeth:
“When—when—when?”
“Did you mean, when will he be here, sir? Well, he was expecting to reach the next town late this afternoon; and from there he’d foot it over here; and that wouldn’t bring him here till nigh midnight. But likely he’ll wait over, and get here to-morrow morning. Luckily though there’s a moon to-night, to show him where to step, in case he comes right on.”
Gloam unfolded his arms, and raising his hands to his head, passed them several times slowly through his hair; staring downwards, meanwhile, at the wheel. The rigidity had passed away, and he seemed to be recovering from the agitation into which the first shock of the news had thrown him. Jael’s mind was a good deal relieved at the absence of any signs of hostility on his part against David; and she was just about withdrawing, when Gloam turned quickly about and stepped after her.
For the first time in the interview she now saw his face; and the sight so far startled her firm nerves as to draw from her a short low cry. It was not that the face was pallid, furrowed, and wasted; it had been all that from the first; but what appalled her was the ghastly expression of the mouth and eyes. It was not a smile, unless an evil spirit smiles, foreseeing the destruction of its victim. Evil it was—delightedly evil, like the triumph of long-baffled hate. It was a cruel, hungry, debased expression, hideously at variance with the passionate and ill-regulated but refined character of the man. It suggested the idea that Gloam was possessed by a strange spirit, more potent and more wicked than his own, which commanded his body to what uses it pleased, in spite of all that he could do.
For it was evident that he himself understood the cause of Jael’s dismay; and he made a violent effort to drive the awful look out of his face. So far from succeeding, however, he was forced to break out into a frantic laugh, which echoed shrilly through the silent house, and seemed, to Jael’s scared ears, a copy of the infernal cachinnation which was wont to issue from the bewitched mill!
“Don’t mind it, Jael,” he said, as soon as he could speak; “it’s nervousness—it’s the reaction from suspense! Wait,—have you told...?”
“Swanhilda, sir? not yet,—I thought I’d best break it gradually——”
“Don’t tell her! don’t hint it to her!” He spoke in a harsh whisper, bending forwards towards her: “Because—because he might not come after all!” Then the mocking devil seized upon him again; and though he folded his arms and held down his head, the unholy laughter which he strove to suppress shook his whole body and turned his white face dark.
The housekeeper was glad to escape from the room; for she thought Gloam must have gone mad, and knew not what insane violence he might commit. Her first impulse was to run out and summon help, but after her immediate panic had cooled down, she thought better of such a proceeding. The explanation of his behaviour which Gloam himself had given seemed, upon reflection, reasonable enough. The abrupt manner in which she had told the news had thrown him for the moment off his balance. It was, upon the whole, rather a good sign than a bad one, for it showed him not so much deadened by suffering as he had appeared to be. When he had had time to rally, he would be his own gentle and manageable self once more.
Meanwhile she made preparations to receive David on his return. The young man’s conduct towards Swanhilda had so angered his mother thatshe had more than acquiesced in the banishment which Gloam’s rage had forced upon him. Not that she loved Swanhilda much; nor did the mere immorality of her son’s deed greatly afflict her. But she had never ceased to have faith that, sooner or later, news would come of the yellow-haired maiden’s relatives beyond the sea. It would come, perhaps, in the form of a wealthy and open-hearted gentleman; or of a lady, with diamonds sparkling on her hands and bosom. They would say, “We have learnt that the little niece or cousin whom we had thought lost, was saved, and is living here with you.” “Yes,” Jael would reply; “and she has been brought up as true a lady as if she were in a queen’s palace; for we knew she had blue blood in her veins, and would come by her own at last.” Then Swanhilda would appear, and captivate them with her beauty and simplicity. But when they offered to take her away, the girl would say, “Not without David, for I love him!” Whereupon, no doubt, there would be objections and remonstrances; but David’s handsome face and engaging manners would half disarm them; and at the last Jael herself would arise, and sacrificing the woman to the mother, would declare openly, “He too is of gentle blood; his father was old Harold Gloam; he is the descendant of gentlemen, and not unworthy of the girl who loves him.”So would resistance finally be overcome, and all concerned be enriched.
Such had been Jael’s dream; and her resentment at the revelation of David’s crime had been mainly aroused by the fact that it involved the frustration of a chance of fortune her own espousal of which had rendered especially dear to her. When the scheme was first conceived, the young man had, indeed, acquiesced in it, but as time went on, and inquiries proved fruitless, he had abandoned the hope of obtaining wealth and station through Swanhilda’s means. Yet the girl loved him, and was very beautiful; much of their time was of necessity passed in each other’s society; and in the end the sin was sinned. Doubtless he had regretted her ruin; but to make her honourable amends had not been compatible with the projects of his ambition: and when Gloam’s unexpectedly violent outbreak had driven him forth upon the world, he had perhaps deemed his banishment a not inconvenient pretext for freeing himself from the encumbrances, such as they were, which might otherwise have impeded him. He left Swanhilda behind, to pass her dark hour alone.
But, this being so, what was the occasion of his sudden change of purpose? Was he penitent? or had he found that honour and expediency could bemade compatible after all? The letter which he had written to Jael did not explicitly answer this question; but from hints which it contained, the housekeeper had drawn favourable inferences; and she looked forward to his coming with agreeable anxiety. She had told Gloam the news, intending (should he refuse a reconciliation) to acknowledge to him that his father was David’s likewise. But his strange behaviour had frightened this purpose out of her head; and when she recollected it again, it seemed most advisable that the revelation should for the present be postponed.
About sunset Jael was surprised by the beginning of a jarring and rumbling noise, the like of which had not been heard in the gorge for a number of weeks past. Half incredulous of the evidence of her own ears, she paused to listen. Certainly there was no mistake—the mill was going! She stepped to the window and looked out. Yes, there revolved the great black wheel heavily upon its axle, churning the headlong torrent into foam, and hurling the white froth from its rigid rims. As she gazed, astonished, she saw Gloam issue from the mill and stand beside the boiling mill-race, watching, withmanifest excitement, the sullen churning of the huge machine. He wore no hat, his hair was tossed and tangled, his bearing reckless and wild. All at once (for the machinery, having been so long out of use, had doubtless become very rusty) an unearthly peal of laughter—or what seemed such—was launched upon the evening air. It partly died away; then it again burst forth, clinging to the listener’s ears and stabbing them, and leaving a sting that rankled there long afterwards. In the midst of the infernal din, Jael saw Gloam toss up his arms and abandon himself to a sympathetic paroxysm of grisly merriment. The man and the machinery were possessed by one and the same demon.
“Master—Master Gloam!” cried the woman, throwing open the window and lifting her voice to her shrillest pitch, “what is the matter? Why have you set the mill going?”
He glanced up at her with wild eyes, and waved his hand. “It is a season of rejoicing,” he answered. “The prayer that I prayed is coming to pass. Therefore let the wheel go round. Hear it, how it laughs and rejoices!”
“But there is no grist—the mill is empty.”
“It will not be empty long; the grist is coming. It comes! it comes! Let the great wheel go round and grind it to powder!”
Jael drew back with a sickening apprehension at her heart. Gloam was too plainly in a state of delirious frenzy, if he were not actually mad. She longed for David’s appearance, and yet dreaded it; she knew not whether the meeting between the two men would issue well or ill. And then her mind reverted to Swanhilda, and she asked herself what the effect of her lover’s presence would be upon her. Ever since the first week following upon his departure the young mother had maintained a singularly passive demeanour, only occasionally disturbed by seasons of vague and tremulous anxiety. The housekeeper had looked in upon her several times that afternoon. She lay quietly in one position, her eyes open and fixed, save when the baby claimed her attention. She did not speak, and seemed scarcely aware of outward things. Even the uproar of the mill, when that began, commanded her notice but for a short time, and appeared rather to gratify than to distress her. She perhaps associated it with the thought of David, and fancied it in some way indicative of that home-return which she had all along never allowed herself to despair of. But she was as one partly entranced, whose ears and eyes, as some believe, are opened to things beyond the ordinary ken of human senses.
The evening was cloudy, and night came onapace. Gloam had re-entered the house shortly after dark, and Jael presently went to his room to ask him where he would take his evening meal. But he met her in the upper passage-way. He seemed to carry something in his hand. She could not make out what it was, and he immediately hid it beneath his coat. To her inquiries he replied that he was going forth to resume his old practice of walking, and that he would sup with David after his return. Jael, in her uneasiness, would gladly have persuaded him to remain at home; but he was obstinate against all entreaties, and finally pushed roughly by her and was gone.
Meanwhile the mill was still in motion. The housekeeper had an impulse, soon after Gloam’s departure, to go out and uncouple the machinery; but she feared lest he might resent her interference, and forebore. The noise, and the suspense she was in, combined to keep her in a state of feverish restlessness. Her thoughts busied themselves, against her will, with all manner of gloomy and painful memories and speculations. The vision of her youth rose up before her, and filled her with vain, remorseful terrors. She strove to cheer herself with picturing her son’s arrival; but even that had now become a source of apprehension rather than of comfort. All the time she was oppressed by an indefinable sensationthat someone was prowling about outside the house; and once, after the wheel had delivered itself of an outpouring of inhuman mirth, Jael fancied the strain was taken up in a no less wild, though not so penetrating key. Was it possible that Gloam was lurking in the gorge? And, if so, what could he be doing there? Cautiously she peered out of the window; but the moon was as yet obscured by clouds, and nothing was certainly distinguishable. She returned to the fireside; yet paused and listened again, because—or else her excited imagination deceived her—another and a different sound had reached her from without: a sharp, grating sound, like that made by a rusty saw eating its way through close-grained timber. Ere she could be certain about the matter, however, the noise stopped, and returned no more.
An hour or so later, it wanting then only a few minutes of midnight, Swanhilda suddenly awoke from her half-trance, and sat upright in her bed. The house resounded dully to the muffled throbbing of the machinery, but otherwise there was no stir. The little baby had fallen sound asleep, and lay at its mother’s side, with its tiny hands folded beneath its chin, and grasping the pearl-shell necklace, which was its favourite plaything. After sitting tense and still for a moment, Swanhilda got out of bed, huddled onsome clothes, kissed the unconscious baby twice or thrice, and then silently left the room. In another minute she had stolen down the stairs, and was standing between the house and the stream in the open air. She looked first one way and then another, and finally, without any hesitation in her manner, but with an assured and joyful bearing, bent her steps towards the top of the gorge. A narrow footpath led up thither, and at the highest point turned to the right, and was carried across the torrent by a narrow bridge formed of a single plank. When Swanhilda came to the turn, she did not go over the bridge, but sat down upon a stone amidst the shrubbery, and waited.
How had she known that there was anyone to wait for? Jael, certainly, had told her nothing; still less could she have learned anything from Gloam. Nevertheless, there she sat, waiting, and knowing beyond question that her lover was near, and was rapidly coming nearer. In a few minutes she would hear his steps; then he would be upon the bridge, and she would rise and meet him there. Had he not promised, months ago, that he would never leave her? and though he had been driven away for a time, she had never doubted that he would return. He loved her; soon, soon she would feel his arms about her, his kisses on her lips. Ah! what happiness after allthis pain; what measureless content! How glad would be their meeting; and when she showed him their little baby, the cup of joy would be full. Nay, it was so already. In all Swanhilda’s life she had never known a moment so free from all earthly trouble as was this!
It was near the end. She stood up; she had heard a footstep; yes, there again! He must be close at hand; if it were not so dark she would have already seen him. And now the clouds which had so long obscured the moon broke away, and the pale sphere hung poised in dark purple space, and shed a dim lustre over the little gorge. The light glanced on the curve of the cataract, and twinkled in the eddies of the pool, and danced along the tumultuous rapid, and glistened upon the froth of the mill-race. There the black wheel still plunged to its work, whirling its gaunt arms about as if grasping for a victim. In the bushes close beside it crouched a man with white face and staring eyes. He had laid his trap, and was waiting the issue. He had not seen Swanhilda leave the house and climb the little path; his eyes and thoughts had been turned elsewhither.
David came swiftly along the upland path, whistling to himself as he walked. We will not search his thoughts, seeing he was so near the end of his journey. When he arrived at the brow of thegorge, and was within a few paces of the bridge, he halted and peered forward earnestly. What figure was that that seemed to stand expectantly on the other side? It could not be Swanhilda—ay, but it was! He gave a little laugh, and then his hard heart softened and warmed towards her. “How she does love me, poor little thing!” he muttered. “And I’ve treated her devilish badly, no mistake. Well, well, I’ll make it up to her, if all goes well, see if I don’t!”
He came on to the bridge, and Swanhilda also hurried forward. Then the man below among the bushes started up, dry-mouthed and breathless. In an instant he sent forth a great, terrible cry of warning and agony; but before it could be uttered the lovers had met upon the narrow plank, and Swanhilda had received her kiss. While their lips yet touched, the plank, sawn in two all but a finger’s breadth, broke downwards, and they fell, clasped in each other’s arms—headlong down over the fall, down to the bottom of the eddying pool; up again, and over in the rapids, whirling round and round, dashed against the jagged stones, bleeding piteously; stunned, let us trust, already, but still clinging to each other. Now the last plunge: and so, at length, with a final shriek of heaven-defying laughter, the hungry demon of the wheel grappled its prey. Ay, snatch at them,tear, break, grind them down and hold them there; they are past feeling now. But not so the man upon the bank, with uncovered hair showing black and white in the moonlight, who has looked on at this scene, powerless to help, but awake to every swift phase of the tragedy, losing not a struggle or a pang, realising his own unspeakable horror and anguish, and foreseeing no comfort or pardon through all time to come.
The wheel stopped suddenly. Jael came breathless out of the mill-house, and shrinkingly approached the margin. A formless mass of something was wedged beneath the lower rim of the wheel and the bed of the stream, and a long mass of yellow hair floated out along the black water, and gleamed in the lustre of the untroubled moon. The man on the other side was kneeling down, and seemed to be gazing idly into the current.
“He was your brother,” said Jael, sobbing with rage and misery. “Your father was his. You have murdered him. God curse you! I wish you lay where he is.”
“Why, Jael,” returned Gloam, smiling at her, “you invoke a curse and a blessing in the same breath! My brother?—well. Swanhilda loved him and not me. Thank God I was the brother of the man she loved; the same blood ran in our veins—sheloved a part of me in him. But why do you trouble yourself to curse me, Jael? I ask the charity of all men, and their sympathy!”...
I unclasped my hands from above my eyes, and started to my feet. No, there was no one near me; I was quite alone. It was deep twilight, but objects were still discernible: yet nowhere, neither beneath the Black Oak, nor beside the Laughing Wheel, nor anywhere in the gorge, could I see a trace of my late companion—of him whose last words were even then ringing in my ears: “I ask the charity of all men, and their sympathy!”
The next morning I was down late to breakfast. It was glorious weather, and the blue sparkle of the sea came through the open window, bringing with it a limitless inspiration of hope and wholesomeness. It was difficult to believe that there had ever been any sorrow or wrong in the world.
“Ye’re not looking right hearty,” said Mr. Poyntz, with bluff geniality, while his good wife set before me a huge plate of daintily fried bacon and eggs, and a smoking cup of coffee. “Maybe ye walked a bit too far last night? ’Twas powerful late afore ye got home, anyhow.”
“Yes,” said I, glancing at Agatha, who was knitting a pair of stockings for Peter in the eastern window, the morning sun glistening on the broad plaits of her yellow hair. “Yes, Mr. Poyntz, I think I must have made a very long journey last evening. By-the-way, is not to-day Sunday?”
“Ay, surely!” exclaimed husband and wife in a breath; and then the former added, “Ye’ll be wanting to go to church, I suppose?”
“No, not this Sunday; though I hope to go before long, if Miss Agatha is willing to show me the way.” I glanced at her again as I said this, but she would not look up, and I could not even be sure whether she were listening. “What I want,” I continued, “is for you, Mr. Poyntz, since you’ll be at leisure, to take a stroll with me a little way up the stream. It will be a novelty, perhaps almost as much so to you as to me.”
“Up the stream, is it?” returned he, pausing in the operation of cutting up a piece of tobacco, and turning his blue eyes on me; “why, truly, sir, that’s a trip I’ve not made for a number of years. Howsoever, none knows the road better than I do, and if so be as naught else ’ll do ye, why, I’m your man!”
Accordingly, so soon as I had done breakfast, the sturdy old mariner mounted a wonderful glazed hatand a new pea-jacket of blue pilot cloth, took a fresh clay pipe from the mantelpiece, with a sigh and a shake of the head over the destruction of his beloved meerschaum, and professed himself ready.
“Good-bye, Agatha,” I said, passing the window. “Is there anything you would like me to bring you when we come back?”
“Oh, a great many!” answered she, looking up gravely; “but nothing, I’m afraid, that you can get for me. Though—you’ll bring yourself back to dinner, I suppose, won’t you?”
She bent over her knitting as she said it, and her mouth and downcast eyelids were very demure. Nevertheless, I was encouraged to fancy that my former remark about church-going had not fallen so entirely unheeded as it had appeared to do. Before I could hammer out a fitting answer (my brain always seemed to work with really abnormal sluggishness when I most wanted to do myself credit with Agatha), Poyntz rolled out in his deep, jovial voice, “Back to Sunday dinner? Well, I should hope so. Why, the old woman is baking a pie as I’d sail round the Horn to get a snack of! Come on, Mr. Firemount; it’ll go hard but we fetches back an appetite as ’ll warm the women’s hearts to look at.”
We trudged off at a tolerably round pace, and soon struck into a narrow grass-grown lane which ledtowards the east; and had proceeded some distance along it before I said:
“Do you know, Mr. Poyntz, that your daughter is one of the loveliest women in the world?”
“Ye mean Agatha? Ay, surely, that she is, heaven bless her! She was always that. A tiny bit of a lass, I remember her, not so long as my arm; as pretty a baby she was then as she’s a woman now.”
“Has she any thought of getting married soon? Such a face and character must have suitors enough.”
“Well, as touching that, sir,” said Poyntz, taking his pipe out of his mouth and looking at it carefully, “ye mustn’t think of Agatha just the same as of the fishermen’s girls you meet round about. Good, honest girls they all are, I’m saying naught against that; but Agatha, d’ye see, is a bit different. Ye’ll maybe think it queer I should say it, sir; but say it I will that Agatha is a lady. She may live in our house, and put up with our ways—nay, and love us too, which sure I am she does; but all the same, if ye notice, she don’t speak the same as me and the old woman do, nor she don’t think the same neither. She’s built on other lines, as I may say—a clipper yacht, while we’re but fishing smacks, or trading schooners at best. And that being so as it is, the young fellows of our neighbourhood don’t find they’ve got muchshow alongside of her somehow. They’re afraid of her, that’s the long and short of it. Not but she treats ’em kind enough, ye understand, as a lady should; but ’tis the kindness of a lady, and not of an equal, and there’s not one of ’em staunch enough to hold out against it. And how be they’re fine lads, many of them, I can’t truly say as I’m sorry for it, if so as Agatha is content.”
“Nor can I,” I echoed to myself, with devout earnestness. “She does seem of a different stock from most I see here,” I said aloud. “I have seen women somewhat like her at Copenhagen; though I don’t know whether I should have thought of that if I hadn’t happened to say something in Danish, yesterday, and she answered me in the same language.”
“Did she now!” said Poyntz, tipping forward his hat and scratching the back of his head. “And if I might ask it, sir, how came ye to speak Danish your own self?”
“My family was Danish before I was born; and I was taught the language almost before I knew English. Our name used to be Feuerberg; but we’ve translated it since we’ve emigrated, you see.”
“Ay, surely—Feuerberg,” said Poyntz, puffing his pipe preoccupiedly.
We walked on for awhile in silence. So greatwas my desire that the evidence I had been arranging in my mind should be borne out by the facts, that I was almost afraid to put the matter definitely to the proof; while Poyntz, on the other hand, was evidently taken by surprise, and had not got his ideas quite settled. At length, however, I thought I would hazard one hint more.
“I’ve been thinking of that yarn you were spinning yesterday afternoon—in fact, I believe I dreamt of it last night; and I should imagine that the little yellow-haired girl, if she grew up, would have looked enough like Agatha to be her sister—or her mother, at any rate.”
“And I’ve been thinking, sir, of the accident that stopped me from finishing that there yarn ye speak of, and of the hearty thanks I owe ye for the stout heart and ready hand that saved my Peter. But thanks is easily said; and I mean more than words come to. I’d not have ye suppose as I’d give all trust and confidence to a man just because he’s done a brave act for me and mine. But as I told you once afore, and speaking out man to man, I like the looks of ye, and ever did; and seeing as how ye’ve found out a good bit of our little secret already, and seem like you’d an interest to know more of it; for that, and likewise because of another thing, as I’ve just found out myself, and it may be as important as any—well,I’ll tell ye what about Agatha there is to tell.”
At this moment, however, we passed round a clump of oak trees, and found ourselves right at the entrance of the little gorge where I had had my adventure the night before. Poyntz halted, and fixed his eyes gravely upon the scene for several moments. “Ay, the same old harbour,” said he; “it’s changed a bit now, but it brings it all back to me the last time I was here. This is the Laughing Mill, Mr. Feuerberg. And this here is the Black Oak, and here is poor Gloam’s grave, d’ye see? with the bit of gray stone a-sticking out of the end of it.”
“Why was he buried here?”
“Well, ’twas his wish; that’s all. He was crazed the last years of his life, with grieving on the death of the young girl as he’d picked up on the beach, that I was telling you of. A sad thing it was altogether. She went wrong, d’ye see, with the fellow David, the Scholar’s brother, and was drowned here along with him; but how that came to pass was never rightly known. ’Tis thought the Scholar had meant for to marry the girl himself. And so would David have married her, I doubt, if he’d known what I know.”
“About the family?”
“Ay, sir, that. Ye maybe ’ll remember the ironbox as I picked up? Well, I didn’t tell anyone about it then, not even the Scholar; and soon after the night of the storm I shipped for Rio, and was away a matter of two years. When I came back I heard as how David was thick with the girl—Swanhilda they called her. Then I opened the box, not having done it before, and found papers in it telling who she was, and that folks of hers were living in Germany, having emigrated there from Denmark; and from what I could make out—for ’twas in a foreign lingo, and I was forced to borrow a lexicon to it—it seemed likely as how they was well off. Now, I had my opinion of David, that he was a worthless sort of a chap, though clever and handsome; so thinks I, I won’t tell him of this, for if so be as I do, he’ll wed the girl in the hope of money, and not for true love of her, who was worthy the love of better than he. But what I’ll do, I’ll write to those her folks in Germany, telling them as how she’s here; and when they come, then they can do for her as they find best, and it’ll be out of my hands. And so I did, but had never an answer, why I don’t know. But it never came in my mind, sir, that the fellow David would ever be so black a scoundrel as to lead the poor innocent girl wrong. How be, when he had done it, thinks I, I’ll tell him of her folks now, because now the best can happenwill be that they marry, though the best is bad enough; and if I tell him, maybe he’ll make her an honest woman, as the saying is. And tell him I did, with a piece of my mind touching my thought of him, into the bargain. And he promised me as he’d go and make it right the next day—this being spoke in the town above here, whither I’d gone for to see him. And it can’t be said but what he kept his word; only he and she was drowned in the night, and crushed under that there wheel, as never has turned since, to this day.”
“What became of her baby—she had a baby?”
“Ay, and so she did, sir. Well, ’twas cared for by the housekeeper—she being grandmother to it and so having first right, the more as the Scholar was crazed, though not dangerous, but mild and melancholy-like. But in years the old woman she came to the poor-house, and there died; and I took the baby, and gave her what best I had to give, and better schooling than the lasses care for hereabouts. And as luck would have it, an elderly woman of Danish blood being come by a chance to the village, I got her to be nurse to the little one, and so grew up to a knowledge of her native tongue, d’ye see, and the fairy tales and such like thereto belonging. And—ay, I see you’ve guessed it long already, sir—that’s Agatha.”
I had intended relating my vision to Mr. Poyntz on the spot where it occurred; but I know not what reluctance prevented me. It was too solemn and inexplicable an experience to bear discussion so soon. So, instead of that, I told him, as we trudged homewards together, the history of the Feuerberg family, and how all tended to ratify my conviction that Agatha and I were cousins, though far removed. And I may remark here that he and I between us had afterwards no difficulty (what with his documents and my knowledge) in establishing the relationship beyond a doubt. “But,” I added, as we stood on the brow of the slope overlooking the old house, and saw Agatha appear round the corner and kiss her hand to us, “but she and I are the last of our race, and there is no great fortune awaiting us, that I know of. Only, Mr. Poyntz, I love her with my whole heart; if she can love me, will you trust her to me?”