“I say, Rees, you made a mistake with that old boy just now. You didn’t notice his face as he hung his head down. Now, if you were to call me a humbug, a liar, and a thief, I should forget it, knowing that we’re friends for all that. But this old fox remembers. I know he hates me, but through thick and thin I’m going to treat him like a brother.”
“Well, I don’t pretend I can hide my feelings,” said Rees, in a tone of large generosity.
“It’s necessary, though, when one’s not quite acting on the square.”
“What do you mean, Sep?” and Rees turned on him quite fiercely. “Do you think I’m such a skunk as not to give Lord St. Austell what belongs to him, shamefully as he has treated me?”
“Oh, no, no, Rees, I forgot for the moment,” answered Sep.
And he looked up into his friend’s handsome face with amused curiosity. Did Rees really believe in his own integrity still?
Therain continued to fall in torrents all day long after Rees Pennant’s discovery of the mysterious drain. He took Sep Jocelyn home with him, and they waited in fiery impatience for the evening, unable to settle to any occupation or amusement but that of speculating on the marvels they might find. Godwin was away; Hervey was reading in his own room; Deborah was, if the truth must be known, cooking in the kitchen before dinner, brushing Rees’s macintosh afterwards. The only person, therefore, who interfered with their excitedtête à têtewas Mrs. Pennant, who noticed her darling son’s restlessness, and was curious as to the cause.
“Well, my little mother,” said Rees, throwing his arms around her and giving her a more affectionate hug than he had bestowed upon her of late, “and supposing I tell you that I see a prospect of helping you, of doing more for you than either Godwin the grumpy or Hervey the heroic! What would you say then, mother?”
“My dear boy, I should only say that you were doing what I always expected of you,” said she, too much delighted by this welcome change in his manner towards her to be very curious as to the precise meaning of these large promises.
“And without becoming any man’s servant, either,” continued Rees, whose strong point was not prudence.
Sep twitched his friend’s sleeve warningly unseen by Mrs. Pennant.
“Rees only means,” he put in with his quiet little mincing voice, “that he thinks he has a chance of a berth in London at a good salary.”
“Yes, yes; in London, that’s it,” assented Rees quickly.
“In London,” cried Mrs. Pennant. “Oh, I should like to live in London again; nothing would please me better.”
Rees and Sep both grew suddenly subdued and reticent.
“I—I don’t know whether that could be managed, mother dear, until my position was more secure. You see I—I—in fact, I’m not sure at all about it yet, you know.”
“I don’t want to force your confidence, my son, since I see there is some little surprise intended for me. But if it is any situation which depends on talent and a good appearance,” she went on proudly, “I have no fear for you.”
Rees turned the subject in a tremulous voice. He loved his mother, and thought of her continually throughout this enterprise, now congratulating himself that he might be able to support her in the comfort and luxury which he considered to be the only suitable surrounding for her, now trying to stifle the knowledge that she would look upon this secret search with the most violent disapproval.
So he took Sep off to the stable-yard to hunt for a second spade, a piece of rope, and for an old lantern which Rees knew to be lying about there. They found it, rubbed it up, and put a piece of candle in it. Unfortunately, one of the glass sides was broken, but they thought that this would not matter.
At tea, Rees was preternaturally gay, Sep unusually silent. Soon afterwards, on pretence of going to Mrs. Kemp’s, they left the drawing-room; and taking with them the spade, the rope, and the lantern, slipped through a little door in the wall at the bottom of the garden, and made for the ruins.
It was unusually dark, for the grey clouds were thick in the sky and the rain was still falling. Outside the castle walls, under the trees on the west side, Amos Goodhare, a gaunt figure shivering in the damp, was waiting. Very few words were exchanged between them, for their plan of action was already settled. Then Rees left the other two, and going round to the castle gates, pulled the bell which summoned the custodian.
Mrs. Crow was rather cross, not having expected to be disturbed so late.
“Really, Master Rees,” she said, using, as most people did, his boyish name, “I can’t think what you’re up to, a-wandering about them ruins at all hours of the day and night. And if it’s to meet Lady Marion, who came in here after you last night, I can tell you I’ll not be a party to it, that I won’t.”
“My dear old soul,” said Rees, throwing his arm round her in his fascinatingly affectionate way, “there’s nothing I want less than to have Lady Marion always at my heels. So, if she turns up while I’m inside, you just tell her I’m not there. Why, I come here so that I may study in peace away from the girls, they pester one so.”
And, with a light air of all-conqueror, he tossed up into the air a book which he had taken care to bring as evidence of his veracity.
Mrs. Crow shook her head and began to chuckle indulgently.
“Oh, what a lad you are, with your carneying ways. I suppose it’s poor Miss Deborah you mean, since everybody knows she’s dying for ye. Well, well, some hearts are made to be broken, and others made to break them, I suppose. But it’s a pity, for sure, that you don’t make it up together, for you’d make a handsome couple!”
Rees laughed, and passed in not ill-pleased. His was not a nature with any great depth of passion to bestow on any woman. But he knew that Deborah was the handsomest and altogether the nicest girl in the neighborhood. So it pleased him to hear that she was in love with him. In his way, too, he loved her, and would most probably have proposed to her on his father’s death but for the influences which had lately been brought to bear upon him. At present, however, no woman held any but the most insignificant place in his heart or mind, and as he hurried to the vaulted chamber all thought of Deborah went out of his head.
Everything was secure. After one glance in the dusk, he returned to the inner court, and climbing to the outer western wall of the castle by the help of a broken turret staircase and the branches of one of the trees which had sprung up in what once were rooms, he leaned over the broken battlements and whistled softly. The trees grew tall and thick outside the walls on this side, and the ivy clung to the ruins with the strong clasp of a couple of centuries. Amid the mass of foliage Rees could not for several minutes distinguish the two men’s figures in the obscurity far below him, though he could hear their voices softly answering him.
Assured that all was safe, and that they were ready, he made one end of the rope he carried fast to one of the iron bars used in the building of the castle, which time and weather had laid bare, and threw the other end over the wall.
“All right!” said Sep’s voice in a husky whisper.
The strong, gnarled branches of the ivy afforded such a firm support to the feet that Sep, who, like most ne’er-do-weels, had had a short spell of the sea, found no difficulty in climbing up, by the aid of the rope, very quickly.
Then they hissed out “All right!” to Amos, watching below, and taking the rope with them descended to the scene of their search.
“Why doesn’t Goodhare come too?” asked Rees, in a low voice. “He could get up quite as well as you, and we shall want all the help we can.”
Sep uttered his mincing little laugh.
“Because our friend prefers leaving the risk to us, and doesn’t consider that sharing terms need begin until the profits roll in,” said he.
Sep had the blessing of shrewdness and the curse of never being able to profit by it.
“What risk?”
“The risk of being found out, and the risk of losing our limbs or our lives. If Lord Hugh really did lose his life down there, you know, why shouldn’t we?”
“And supposing you and I choose to say—‘No risk, no profit’?”
“Then he would choose to tell the earl all about it, and you and I would look very small.”
Rees walked on in silence. He was beginning to see some of the disadvantages of having a rogue for a partner. At sight of the grating, however, when they had removed the covering, everything but the excitement of the search went out of his head. Not heeding Sep’s admonitions to be careful, he lighted the lantern, and went down the steps with so much haste that at the bottom he slipped, and found himself sitting in the mud on the floor of the little chamber, close to the mouth of the drain-pipe.
Luckily, all the water had by this time drained off down the pipe, and he was able to make a thorough examination of the walls and floor. The little chamber was about six feet square, rough-hewn in the rock. The walls were wet and slimy, and the floor was deep in malodorous mud. As he slipped into the slush, his heels fell with a dull thud on something which was not rock. Not heeding the mud, nor the whispered cries of his friend above, who was afraid he had hurt himself, Rees groped about with his hands in the slime which covered the floor.
Suddenly Sep was startled by a wild cry. Half beside himself with fear for his companion, he began to descend the steps himself. He saw the light of the lantern moving about below him; the worst had not happened therefore: Rees was alive. As he put his foot on the bottom step, Sep found himself suddenly seized by a strange figure with wild eyes and face bespattered with mud, coated from head to foot with slime. Being a particularly neat and dapper little man in his appearance, Sep rather resented this embrace.
“I’ve found something!” stammered Rees hoarsely.
“Yes, I see you have; and you may keep it, and welcome,” answered Sep, trying ruefully to brush the mud off his own coat-sleeves.
“But listen, Sep, listen, you don’t understand,” went on Rees, at a white heat of excitement. “I’ve found a trap-door in the floor. What do you think of that?”
“Perhaps it’s another drain,” suggested Sep, who was inclined to be sceptical about the whole business, knowing by experience that fortunes are more easily lost than found.
“Nonsense! We’ve got to open it. Hold the lantern and give me the spade.”
Sep obeyed, and stood on the bottom step, a pitiful figure, holding the lantern aloft while he shivered with the damp, grew sick with the smells, and gazed at his coat-sleeves with ever-increasing annoyance to think that he had let himself be drawn into such a crack-brained enterprise.
Meanwhile, Rees, with feverish energy, was cleaning the mud in spadefuls from a space on the floor about two feet square. When this was done, down he went on his knees again, and after several futile efforts, lifted, not a trap-door, but a heavy square piece of wood, like a box lid, which had evidently been sawn out of the trunk of a tree in the roughest manner, and chopped into an uneven square. This was about five inches thick. When it was dragged away, the light of the lantern showed an abyss of blackness underneath, at which both men instinctively drew back a little. After a few seconds, Rees knelt down again beside the hole and peered into it with keen eyes.
“There are steps down cut into the rock, Sep,” he whispered at last hoarsely. “Quite straight down they are, only just notches for the feet,” he went on. “And there’s an iron rail fixed close to the wall at the side of them, like those in locks on a river.”
Sep stooped gingerly, and looked down too.
“Stand back,” said Rees impatiently, “I’m going down.”
But Sep, one of whose qualities was an absolutely unselfish power of self-sacrifice, prevented him.
“Don’t be absurd, Rees,” he said quietly. “I can climb better than you, and it may come to be a climbing matter. Give me the lantern.”
He took it from his companion’s unwilling hand, and began the descent. But when he had gone ten or twelve steps it seemed to Rees that the lantern swung from side to side, and that Sep was going down very slowly.
“Are you all right, old man?” he asked anxiously.
No answer. At that moment the light in the lantern went suddenly out, and there came up to his ears a dull sound like the fall of some heavy body.
“Sep, Sep, are you all right?” again he shouted, in a voice that rang in the hollow space.
Again no answer. The truth flashed upon him. The cavernous abyss below him was full of foul poisonous gases, such as he had often heard of at the bottom of old wells. There was not a moment to lose. Already poor Sep, stupefied by the noxious vapors, might be beyond the reach of help. Fastening the rope they had brought with them to the top of the perpendicular iron railing in such a manner that the knots, wedged in on the top step, kept it firm, he fastened the other end round his waist, and half-climbed, half-slid down into the blackness below.
He had not gone down far, however, before he began to feel the influence of the vapors which had overcome his friend. He found himself growing giddy, and then for a moment, which seemed to him an hour, he partly lost consciousness of what he was doing. But he struggled with this creeping paralysis, and by a strong effort of will recovered command of himself and remembered his errand. The length of the rope just enabled him to get to the bottom of the steps. The darkness was absolute. He held his breath to avoid inhaling any more of the foul, heavy air than he could help, and, stooping down with outstretched hands, touched the insensible body of his friend. He gathered him up with the support of the rope, and being lucky enough to find the iron handrail at once, he dragged himself and Sep up the rugged steps as quickly as the heavy burden would permit.
Rees’s movements had been so rapid that the whole proceeding of descent and ascent had not occupied more than a minute. Short as the time was, however, it had been long enough for the poisonous gas to take effect. By the time they got to the little chamber which contained the opening of the drain, Rees felt that he was succumbing to its influence, and that the only chance, not only for Sep, but for himself, lay in reaching the purer air above. He staggered across the muddy floor, and with efforts which grew every moment more frantic as again he felt a dizziness like approaching death come over him, he dragged his companion, whether dead or alive he did not know, up—up to the floor of the vaulted room.
“Thank God! thank God!” he cried deliriously; and then he turned, thinking the voice was that of some one else.
Then again for an instant he remembered where he was, and staggering about on the rocky floor, called, “Where are you, Sep?” in a husky, weak whisper. He felt his limbs give way under him, and, sinking on the floor, he had just strength left to reach his friend’s motionless body, when his senses left him.
Sepwas the first to recover consciousness. Little by little, beginning by half-opening his eyes in the darkness only to shut them again, without thought, without memory, he at last woke with a start to the knowledge that he was lying on something very hard, in a cold, dark place, that his teeth were chattering, and that he was very badly bruised on his right arm and side. Then, turning, he saw the pale remains of the daylight, or the pale beginnings of the moonlight, coming through the deep embrasure of the window. Following the line of faint light with eyes in which the intelligence was scarcely yet awake, he saw on the floor, almost close to him, what looked like a tumbled heap of dark clothes.
Then he remembered. Shaking off the stupor, which again seemed to be overpowering him, Sep turned his friend’s body so that he could dimly see the face. At first he thought he was dead, and with a shriek of horror Sep started to his feet. But Rees stirred at the sound, and in a moment his friend was again beside him, loosening his clothes, watching eagerly the first faint signs of returning life, and muttering curses on his own weakness in having helped him in this dangerous, mad enterprise. At last Rees, after uttering a few faint sighs, rolled over on his left side, and again his companion thought he was dying, if not dead.
Springing up again with a despairing exclamation, Sep was on the point of risking discovery by rushing to the lodge to summon help, when Rees, as if instinctively knowing that his project was in danger, recovered himself quite suddenly, like a child waking out of sleep, and stopped him with a hoarse cry.
“Where is it? What have you done with it, Sep?” he asked wildly, but in a weak voice.
“Done with what?” asked Sep, startled by his friend’s tone, and fancying at first that the incidents of the night, whatever they might have been, had turned his brain.
“The gold! You know,” said Rees mysteriously.
Sep sat down beside him, much excited.
“Gold. Did you really find any, Rees? Tell me just what happened. I only remember feeling giddy and then drowsy, and then the light went out.”
“You fell down, and I went to bring you up. You were right deep down there, on the ground, insensible. I couldn’t see you, but I felt you, and I dragged you up. And then I saw gold, gold, shining all round us on the walls in the darkness; but when I touched it I found it all like dry powder. I suppose I was dreaming, Sep,” he added slowly.
“Of course you were. And you went down to pull me up?” Sep went on wonderingly. “It was very silly; you might have been overcome just as I was, and then we should have lain dead together.”
“Well, that would be much better than for people to say Rees Pennant left his friend to die alone.”
This sort of romantic outburst became Rees, because a little Welsh rhodomontade was natural to him; and, indeed, he was physically brave enough. Sep took his hand affectionately.
“Now, Rees,” said he, “we must get away, and never come near this villainous pest-hole again.”
Rees pushed his friend’s hand away like an impatient boy.
“You need not come again,” he said. “But I shall come here again and again, and go down that hole again and again, until I find what it leads to, and whether there is anything in it worth finding.”
He spoke with dogged obstinacy, but indeed after the evening’s adventures, and the cold awakening from that dream of gold which turned at the touch, there only remained to him the embers of hope and sullen persistency in carrying this project through to the end.
“Oh, well, then, of course if you come, I shall,” said Sep, in his little chirpy voice. “We’ll come, and come as long as you like, till we both find a fool’s grave down there.”
Rees did not answer. He was busy replacing the grating over the hole, and covering it up as before. Then they walked in silence, still suffering from a sort of lightness in the head, out into the open air, and climbed up to the spot on the wall where Sep had been drawn up. By the same means he was now let down again very silently, by the watery light of a moon that was battling not very successfully with the clouds. Then Rees walked out by the gate, as he could do without summoning Mrs. Crow, and rejoined the other two men under the castle wall.
Amos Goodhare was in a state of much excitement, and professed great enthusiasm over the devotion which each of the young men had displayed towards the other.
“It is such hazardous enterprises as these,” he said warmly, “which bring out in their brightest colors the qualities of young men.”
“Yes, and of older ones too,” assented Sep, in his best fool’s manner, which the librarian did not yet understand.
Goodhare heartily applauded Rees’s determination to go through with the adventure, but declined the offer that he should share the dangers of the next descent with a good-humored laugh.
“I am too old,” he said. “My limbs are too stiff for such doings. What would have become of me if I had been in the place of either of you? If in Sep Jocelyn’s, I should have been too heavy for you to lift; if in yours, I should not have been active enough to get him out in time. No, I must take the humbler part of watcher, and be content therefore with such share of the spoils—if there are to be any spoils—as you think due to my initiative.”
The younger men could not but agree with the justice of this reasoning, in whatever light they might consider these last words. They parted for the night very soon, Rees declaring that he had a plan, and that if Sep would be at the same place under the walls on the next evening but one, he would by that time, he thought, be in a position to perform the perilous adventure in safety.
On the evening appointed, therefore, Rees, without increasing the risk of exciting suspicion by meeting the other two men first, passed as usual through the castle gates and mounted to his place on the west wall. The weather was fine and mild, so that they had to wait their opportunity of escaping the eyes of such of the townsfolk as had strolled this way for a summer evening’s ramble. Sep’s seafaring experiences now stood him in good stead. As soon as Amos, on the watch a few yards below in the cricket meadow, gave the signal that no one was near, Sep seized the rope, which was almost hidden by the thick ivy, and was safe on the top of the wall in a few seconds.
Then came a more severe trial for their patience. Rees and his companion had scarcely got down to the inner court of the castle when they saw in the distance a small party of young tradesmen of the town and their lasses, who were being escorted over the ruins by one of Mrs. Crow’s sons. The two young men, knowing every corner of the old building, easily found a hiding-place for Sep and for a mysterious parcel which Rees had brought, hidden under his rug. This rug he now quickly spread on the remains of one of the wide inner walls, and throwing himself upon it, he lit a cigarette and opened before him a book, on which he appeared to be intent as the excursion party came up. He had to look up then, however, for he and his family were so popular that more than one of the intruders stopped to make kind and respectful inquiries after his mother, which Rees, though boiling with impatience to get rid of them, was obliged to answer civilly. This incident caused a delay of nearly an hour before the two young men could begin their work.
At last, however, the wicket-gate swung to behind the party. Sep instantly, on a whistle from Rees, came out of his hiding-place, and they descended together to the vaulted room. Here Rees, going down on his knees on the floor, opened his mysterious parcel and spread out before Sep’s inquiring eyes a great coil of old garden hose, neatly repaired in various places, and furnished at one end with a sort of macintosh bag.
“What’s that for?” asked Sep.
“To breathe through,” answered Rees in a tone of triumph. “It was the foul air that put out the light and overcame you and me. To go down there safely one must have air from above, like a diver. I’ve stopped up all the holes in the tubing myself, and I’ve joined our own garden hose with Mr. Long’s, which I borrowed out of his tool-shed without troubling him for permission; and I’ve contrived, as you see, a sort of loose air-tight mask at one end to cover the nostrils as well as the mouth. Provided with this, I believe I can breathe down there as freely as up here. Anyhow, I mean to try.”
Sep, though not inclined to put much faith in this ingenious arrangement, and, in fact, most dismally minded concerning their chances of escaping with their lives out of the adventure, listened submissively to all his friend’s instructions, and agreed at last, with much reluctance, to be the one left at the top, while Rees was to test his own apparatus.
Rees then showed his friend an old miner’s lantern which he had bought secondhand in Cardiff years ago when he was a boy. A very long rope completed his equipment. One end of this rope he tied round his waist, fastening the other securely to the bars of the iron grating; then attaching the air-tight mask over his face, with the tube depending from it, he took the lantern in his hand and began the descent.
Sep’s office was to keep the tubing straight, that the supply of air might be unimpeded; also to watch the rope, and, when he saw it jerked three times, to help his friend’s return to the upper air by hauling it up with all his might.
Although he had made light of the risks he was about to run in order to encourage his friend, Rees was really quite as fully aware of the desperate nature of his enterprise as Sep was. All definite hopes about the supposed treasure had, indeed, given place in his mind to the mere desire to carry on to the end an exciting adventure; for Rees, though deficient in moral strength, had just the needful dash and daring for a dangerous feat of this kind. He thought he saw in the discovery of these underground steps, not the confirmation of Goodhare’s ambitious hopes, but the foundation for them. It was, therefore, as an explorer rather than as a robber that he made this third descent.
The first flight of steps was quickly passed. The next stage was the flight of rugged, perpendicular notches with the handrail at the side. To his great joy, the tubing answered admirably. He got to the bottom of this flight of steps, and landed on the spot where he had picked up Sep’s insensible body, without having suffered the slightest inconvenience. Neither did his light go out, although he fancied that it began to burn rather dimly. Down there, in the depths of the earth though, surely his imagination was beginning to play some odd tricks with him. The ground, which was still hard and rocky, sloped down from the bottom of the steps towards what looked like the black round mouth of a cavern. It seemed to Rees that a thin mist, rising like curls of filmy smoke, came out of the blackness of this opening continually, and mounting slowly to just above his head, obscured his view of the walls. Was there some intoxicating property in this vapor, that, in spite of his precautions, perhaps began to cloud his brain? For, as he looked at the walls, he saw again the effect which had dazzled him before; on every side the rock shone like gold in the light of the lantern. He hastened to examine the walls, and found that this singular effect was merely produced by a sort of glaze which, as he could not doubt, the gases generated at this cavernous depth below the earth’s surface had, in the course of ages, deposited there. This, he thought, as, much excited by the strange sight, his eyes ran round the steep, glistening walls, might be another and very reasonable origin of the hidden gold story. Indeed, on this point he was now satisfied, and for a moment he hesitated whether, as he began to find it much more of an effort to draw breath, he should not make his way back to the upper air, and, if not relinquish further search, at least put it off for the present. One look into that cavern a few yards off, though, he must cast.
His lantern, meanwhile, was certainly growing very dim. He had done everything so rapidly that only a few seconds had elapsed since he had began the descent. He now ran down the slope, but stopped short just in time, with a guttural ejaculation of horror.
For the rock ended abruptly in a perpendicular cliff.
Rees, shaking and shivering with an odd feeling of having been very near the Great End, peered down. He could see nothing. There was a cavernous depth of blackness below, but he could tell neither its width nor its height, for his light was waning rapidly. Suddenly he caught sight of something which roused him again to a frantic pitch of do-all, dare-all curiosity. It was a rope attached to an iron staple at his feet, and hanging down. The temptation to go further was now irresistible. Throwing himself first into a sitting position, with his legs hanging over the rock, he tried the rope, giving it a tug with his disengaged hand. It seemed firm. That decided him. He fastened his lantern to the rope which was tied round his waist, and seizing the other, swung himself over and began descending, hand under hand. He had not gone down more than a couple of yards, however, when the rope, which was old and rotten, gave way, and he was thrown to the ground. Luckily, this was only a couple of feet or so below him, and he picked himself up at once, unhurt, with his lantern unextinguished.
As he did so, he noticed a strange sound like heavy hailstones falling. Beginning as he touched the ground, it continued for a few moments after, growing gradually fainter. This, he found, proceeded from the walls, which were here only just far enough apart to allow him to pass without touching them. The disturbance he made in the still air had caused hundreds of little flat flakes of stone to crumble off the rocky sides and to fall to the ground.
He was now, he felt sure, going under the river; for the passage went straight forward without slope or curve. He was conscious, as he hurried on, of a strange acrid smell, quite unlike the damp heavy fumes which, in spite of his precautions, had faintly reached his nostrils in the stage above. Here it was dry—strangely dry—with an atmosphere which, although not hot, seemed to parch the flesh as he passed.
But, in the meantime, breathing through the tube was becoming difficult, and a mad impatience seized him when he found that there was a sudden turn in the passage just in front of him, while he had come so close to the end of the tubing that the length left would not allow him to pass the corner. If he went carefully, however, he thought he could, by the last rays of his dying candle, manage to look round.
Very cautiously he now moved; two steps more; yes, he could just do it. The tube was stretched to its utmost length; already he felt himself half suffocated, as if it had caught on something. But as he reached the corner, and held the little flickering light up to see what it led to, his eyes fell on a sight which would have stopped his breath with horror even if he had been breathing free air.
Seated on a chest against the wall, leaning his head back, and meeting Rees Pennant’s stare of dismay with eyes wide open and horror-struck as his own, was a lean and shrivelled man.
Rees Pennantwas physically brave, but the sight of those staring eyes meeting his in the bowels of the earth gave him a shock which, in the state of excitement into which his recent adventures had thrown him, for the moment caused his mind to lose its balance. He thought the man was alive, and, reeling, began to murmur some hoarse words of explanation of his own intrusion; but they came forth in indistinct, guttural sounds through the tube which covered his mouth. His hand shook so much that the dying light in his lantern went suddenly out, leaving him in utter darkness. Losing his head altogether, he uttered a wild cry, and would have burst himself loose both from tube and rope if a strong pull at the latter had not suddenly called him to remembrance of Sep faithfully waiting for him in the vaulted chamber above.
The fact was that Rees, in his efforts to get as far as the length of the tube would allow, had given the three pulls which he had arranged between them as the signal for Sep to help him to return. In spite of himself, therefore, he felt that he was drawn backwards. He had been pulled two or three steps when he heard the clink of his nailed boots against something on the floor, which, by the sound, he thought must be metal. Stopping, he groped on the ground, and had just time to pick up something small and round, which he fancied might be a coin, when a stronger pull then before at the rope round his waist dragged him away, and told him that Sep believed him to be in some dire emergency.
More and more rapidly he felt himself pulled along, until it was as much as he could do to save himself, in the darkness, from injury against the rough walls. When he reached the cliff, he was indeed thankful for the help the rope afforded him; for it rose almost sheer from the ground, with but few notches down the side on which the feet could rest. After that, however, the rest was comparatively easy. Impelled to increased speed by the fact that he was now nigh to suffocation, as poor Sep could not draw the rope and keep the tube straight at the same time, he reached the bottom of the upper staircase in very few moments, and tearing off the macintosh mask, drank in the air in great draughts.
“Are you all right, Rees? Are you all right?” asked Sep, in tones of deep anxiety.
“All right?” sang out the young fellow, in a voice which thrilled with triumph. “Yes, righter than I ever was in my life, for I’ve found Lord Hugh!”
Scrambling up the remaining steps, he flung himself down, panting, by the side of Sep, who threw his arms round him with genuine delight, which, to do him justice, was caused more by the sight of his companion safe and well than by the news he brought.
When Rees, now again feverish with excitement, told him his adventures in thrilling whispers, Sep was carried away with astonishment and delight, which reached their climax on the production of the piece of metal which Rees had picked up in the darkness. For this proved to be, as the latter had supposed, a coin, heavy, clumsy, of a fashion they had never seen; but it was gold, genuine gold. The young men looked at it, rubbed it, turned it over reverently in their hands. There was a romance about this gold, the property of a king long since passed out of reach of the need of it, and guarded for more than two centuries by a dead man, which appealed to the imagination.
“You think it was Lord Hugh of Thirsk I saw down there, don’t you?” asked Rees in a low voice.
“Who else should it be? Did you notice his dress?”
“No, nothing but his eyes, staring straight at me, I tell you, like those of a living man. I thought he was alive. If he had been dead two hundred and forty years, he would be crumbled to dust, wouldn’t he?”
“I don’t know. Shall you go down there again?”
“No,” answered Rees, with a shiver. “I don’t think so. I—I suppose it’s sentimentality, but even if he has down there with him the thousands that old beggar expects, I don’t like the idea of robbing a dead man of what he’s watched over for more than two hundred years.”
“Well,” said Sep, who, as usual, was ready to chime in with the views of his companion, “you mustn’t let him know what you’ve found then; for he’s a greedy old hunks, and as cynical as they make ’em. Let’s keep him out of it altogether if we can.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when both were startled by Goodhare’s voice. This gentleman, who was not likely to lose anything for want of a little watchfulness, had conceived the idea that something was likely to turn up this evening, and had managed, in his praiseworthy intention of looking after his own interests, to scale the outer wall of the castle with the help of the ivy. He heard Sep’s words, but affected not to have done so, since any little resentment he might feel would “keep,” and to show it now would be inconvenient and even dangerous.
“Are you there, boys?” he asked therefore in a low voice, speaking in a mild and patriarchal tone.
“Yes,” answered Rees, with ill-humor which he did not hide.
He had slipped the old coin into his pocket at the first sound of the librarian’s voice; but the action did not escape Goodhare’s keen eyes. As the latter advanced and took his place slowly on the ground by the younger men, it was evident to him that something of great interest had occurred. The disordered and dirty state of Rees’s clothes, the frayed rope, the excitement under which both young men were laboring, all spoke eloquently of some discovery.
“So you’ve been down, I see, and I see also that you’ve found something. Come, lad, out with it; I’m sure by your face that I did not set you to work in vain.”
Rees moved uneasily.
“You seem to know more about it than I do myself,” he said, rather sulkily. “I’ve risked my life over this business, and I’ve found a stopped-up passage certainly, but nothing of these thousands you talked about.”
He could not, however, meet the eyes which were fixed steadily upon him.
“If you don’t choose to tell me your adventures, Rees, at least you can trust me,” the old man said at last with affecting simplicity. “So you won’t be alarmed if I withdraw from a conference where I see I’m not wanted.”
He was in the act of rising with much dignity when Rees drew him pettishly down again.
“Sit down; it’s all right,” said he. “Only you needn’t bring more risk upon us by coming in to play the spy.”
“Indeed, I think you might know me better than to suppose that was my intention. I——”
“All right,” said Rees, cutting him short. “There, that’s all I’ve found and the body of a dead man.”
“A dead man!” cried Amos, who had clutched the old coin which Rees threw to him with greedy eagerness. “A dead man! Why, that must be Lord Hugh, and it’s all true! This,” he went on, turning over the gold piece in his lean fingers, “is a louis d’or. And there must be more—more!”
“That’s all I found, at any rate,” said Rees shortly.
“And you were content to come away with that, without hunting, searching, finding the great treasure which we may now be sure he had on him!” hissed out Goodhare, his mildness giving place to such burning fierceness of look and manner that it crossed the minds of both young men that he looked like a savage animal ready to spring upon Rees and tear his heart out.
“I was content to come away before I was suffocated, certainly,” said Rees very quietly. “I would sooner die a few years later a beggar on the top of the earth than die now in the bowels of it with my hands full of gold. Besides, I didn’t find any gold, except just that one piece. Probably they had drafts on bankers in those days just as they have now, and the fortune may turn out to be just a bit of faded and worthless paper.”
This suggestion startled them all for a moment. Then, however, Goodhare shook his head.
“It is not probable,” he said. “The money was brought from the one country to the other, and I should doubt whether the credit of the King of France was good enough in England for his draft for a large sum to be honored by any banker, even if the times had been more settled. No, depend upon it, if there was treasure sent it was in specie.”
“Perhaps the chest he was sitting on—” began Rees.
“Chest!” echoed Goodhare impetuously; “there was a chest, you say! Surely you don’t mean to let the night pass without ascertaining what is in it?”
“I do, though,” said Rees frankly. “The journey down there and back, with the dangers of poisonous air on the one hand, and no air at all on the other, bruising one’s limbs, and tearing one’s flesh, is not to be undertaken every half hour.”
Goodhare was white and very quiet, but they could see fiery anger and impatience in his eyes.
“Those who cannot face danger are not worthy of a great reward,” he said sententiously.
“Face it yourself, then,” answered young Pennant, and he brought the tube and the rope over to Goodhare. “We’ll arrange all this for you, and as there are two of us, we shall be able to help you better than Sep could me.”
Amos saw that the young man, fresh from his triumphant adventure, must be humored.
“Well, lads, you must forgive the impatience of an old man who has only a few years left in which to enjoy life,” he said benignantly. “And now I think you both deserve a little merry-making for your pluck, so you must come home with me and share my humble supper.”
He helped them actively in coiling up both rope and tube. The lantern Rees took home for examination, as the light it had given was by no means satisfactory. Then, for fear of possible watchers at the lodge, Goodhare and Sep were let down in the usual manner, while Rees walked out by the wicket-gate. Ten minutes later they were all at the librarian’s lodging.
The younger men had expected nothing but the most frugal fare, and they were too much excited to have cared what was put before them. To their surprise, however, Goodhare had provided a game-pie, and on turning the key of a small corner cupboard which one would have supposed devoted to books, he revealed a small cellar of different wines of the choicest brands.
“Now, boys,” said Goodhare in his most benevolent tones, “I shall not complain if you leave my cellar empty. For we shall soon be able to fill it again in London—glorious London. I had a presentiment that we should have something to celebrate to-night.”
While he left the room for a corkscrew, Sep, to whom wine was an irresistible temptation, made a brief but close inspection of the bottles, at the end of which he turned to his friend with a dry laugh.
“The old fox made good use of his time up at the castle,” he said.
Before the less suspicious Rees could make any inquiry, Amos had re-entered the room.
It was not difficult, in the state of high excitement into which his adventures had thrown him, to make Rees drink a great deal more wine than he had ever done in his life before, nor by artful suggestions, to tickle his imagination into the belief that a princely fortune lay at his feet ready to be enjoyed. At the same time, by rousing in Sep memories of his past dissipations, Amos managed to make him feel discontented with his present quiet life, and eager to indulge again in the old excesses. Thus the librarian secured a half unwilling ally in the corruption of Rees Pennant, who, from listening with disgust to their remarks on women, passed to laughter, and finally to a boastful share in the conversation. As for Lord St. Austell, when reference was made to him, Rees had no words strong enough to express his contempt and abhorrence for the man whose vices he had, a moment before, seemed anxious to emulate.
By midnight it was evident that, unless they wished to court a death-blow to all their plans by some indiscreet revelation on the part of Rees, his potations must cease. So Goodhare and Sep, better seasoned than he, escorted him home, and returned to continue their revels without him.
In this quiet country town, burglaries were so little feared that in many houses the front-door could be opened from the outside and was yet left unlocked at night. Rees, therefore, was able to let himself in without rousing the household. But when, as steadily as he could, he had stumbled upstairs and reached the landing, he met Deborah, in her dressing-gown, and with her hair arranged for the night in a long plait down her back.
“Oh, Rees, where have you been? I have been so frightened about you,” she said in an anxious whisper.
For answer he flung his arm round her and gave her a kiss.
“Well, as long as you didn’t tell, I’ll forgive your fright, Deb, because it makes your eyes look so large and pretty,” answered Rees, who had sense enough left to speak in a whisper.
The girl raised her little brass lamp and looked at him with a puzzled expression. There was a freedom in his manner, a boldness in his kiss, and something in his tone which made her blush crimson, and feel afraid of him. Having no idea of any of the causes of his excitement, she asked:
“Won’t you come and say good-night to mamma? She’s gone to bed, but she’s been so anxious about you, for you never said you were going out.”
Rees remained for a moment without answering. The mention of his mother brought a momentary feeling of shame to him. But then the evil effects of his recent experience again made themselves felt, poisoning Deborah’s beauty to him. He pulled the girl down beside him on to the box-ottoman which stood in the corridor, and said vehemently:
“No, no; stay here and talk to me. Tell me it’s true you love me, as they say you do.”
Deborah, now beginning to suspect something, disengaged herself with the air of a Juno.
“I love you so much,” she said with simple dignity, “that it gives me great pain to see you disgrace yourself. Go to your room now, as quickly and as quietly as you can.”
Rees, overwhelmed with shame, and feeling for a moment as if the wind of an angel’s wing had wafted away the mists of evil which had for months been creeping ever more closely round him, crept away, without so much as daring again to meet her eyes, to his own room.
Nextmorning Rees rose with a violent headache and a feeling that the whole world was out of joint. He was ashamed to meet Deborah, ashamed to meet his mother, and not in the mood to bear with Hervey’s sententiousness. So he had a hurried breakfast alone, in a ground floor apartment, which was still, in memory of past glories, called the “housekeeper’s room,” and slipping out by the back garden door to avoid the rest of the household, he started for a walk by himself, full of remorse, full of great resolutions, and a determination that never again—no, never, for the sake of gold or for any other cause, would he consort with the satyr-like librarian, who seemed able, by a look, a word, to throw a taint upon all things fair and good.
Rees crossed the bridge, and sauntered along the banks of the river, instinctively choosing the direction which brought him face to face with the grey-walled ruins which had lately been the centre of all his dreams. At the first sight of the castle, in the hot morning sun, he felt that he hated it, connected as it was with all the disturbing forces which had been agitating his formerly happy life. But as he walked he began to feel that, whichever way he wished to look, those broken towers, those huge piles of rough stone, were the one point in the landscape to which his eyes must turn. They fascinated him: he watched the new and fantastic shapes which the jagged walls formed from every fresh bend in the river’s banks with a sense that they now formed part of his life, and if that crumbling ruin were to disappear from the face of the earth the world would be empty for him.
He began to live over again, in spite of himself, the adventure of the night before; the descent of the two flights of steps, the cliff, the groping along the passage, the glassy stare of the dead man’s eyes. Then suddenly he was struck with the idea that down under the ground, perhaps at that very moment underneath his feet, the dead messenger of a dead king was still keeping watch and ward over his master’s gold. Out here in the staring sunshine, with the hot haze dancing over the narrow river, and the clang of the workmen’s hammers coming to his ears from the shipbuilders’ yards, all those experiences of the darkness seemed like a dream to him.
And yet he had seen it all with his own eyes, so he had to assure himself; and the old louis d’or which he had picked up among the dust of hundreds of years was still in his pocket. He drew it out and looked at it, and the coin seemed, by its incontrovertible reality, to put more practical thoughts into his head. That underground passage must have an end, an opening; and that opening would probably be on this side of the river. Slowly, thoughtfully, he retraced his steps, until he was exactly opposite the perpendicular cliff on which the castle, its foundations deep in the solid rock, stood.
The ground on which Rees was standing, on the opposite bank, was an open and very undulating meadow, under the numerous hillocks of which the imaginative could fancy the graves of the besieging Puritans to have been made. It was so open, indeed, so fully exposed, not only to passers by, but to occupants of the cattle lodge and of a couple of adjacent cottages, that Amos Goodhare, in his exhaustive scourings of the neighborhood, had never dared to carry on his researches there except at night.
Now Rees, less cautious, found himself strolling very slowly along with eyes fixed intently on the thick grass, which, cropped close by cattle on the higher ground, grew thick and lush at the water’s edge. At last he sat down immediately opposite the window in the rock which gave light to the vaulted apartment in which his adventures had begun. His feet were only just above the sedge, and the grassy ground on which he was sitting was so soft from the heavy rains that he found a great slab of earth giving way under his weight, and sliding gently down with him towards the water. He scrambled up hastily, but in regaining his feet he caused the displaced earth to come down still faster, so that he fell down on his hands and knees and cut his left wrist against a stone. This stone proved to be the upper edge of a great slab of rock, which the freshly-moved turf had grown over and hidden. Rees drew a long breath. Was this the other entrance to the underground passage?
It was impossible to ascertain this now, in broad daylight, exposed to curious eyes. With a wildly beating heart, every thought but of the lost treasure again forgotten, Rees walked quickly away in the direction of the town library. He felt that he was bursting with this new discovery, that he must confide it to some one. Goodhare received him, seated in the library, surrounded by a pile of books of reference, the leaves of which he was busily turning for a pale, spectacled young man, who was taking notes by his side. Rees watched the librarian in amazement. It seemed scarcely conceivable that this grave, reverend-looking man, absorbed in intellectual work, and taking deep delight in it, could be the same creature whose eyes last night had shone with evil passions and almost ghoulish greed. In another moment, however, the spell was broken; Amos looked up, and there passed over his face the strange change which was like the peeping out of the spirit of evil through a hermit’s eyes. He finished his work, however, after only a brief, respectful request to Rees to wait.
As soon as the spectacled young man had left them together, Rees, boiling with impatience, dashed across the room and communicated his discovery. Then they formed their plans for prosecuting the search, but, in their dread of prying eyes, decided to put off the execution of it until the next moonless night.
During the four following days, in the course of which they thought it prudent not to revisit the castle, all three of the conspirators lived in a state of intermittent fever, haunted by fears that some accident would lay bare to others the secret which the earth had so long hidden. These fears, however, proved unfounded. On the night when they all groped their way to the river bank with no other light than a dark lantern, they found the stone slab and the loosened earth exactly as Rees had left them.
Then began a task much heavier than they had expected. The stone was not far above high-water mark, and was situated near a bend in the river, so that the earth had accumulated upon it, especially at its base, during the ages which had elapsed since it was last displaced. The three men dug alternately for more than two hours and a half before there was any possibility of moving the stone. When they at last got clear of the surmounting obstructions, however, the task of raising the stone was comparatively an easy one. For, buried in the sand beside it, was a rusty iron bar, which they used, as it had evidently been used before, as a lever. The only thing which caused them still to doubt whether this was indeed the entrance to the passage was its extreme nearness to the water. However, all doubts on this point were soon set at rest; for, on raising the stone, they found that it covered the entrance to a narrow passage, not high enough even for a short man to stand upright in, which sloped rapidly down to the left, then, with a sharp curve, dipped more suddenly still to the right.
These facts Rees, who, armed with the miner’s lantern, entered first, ascertained after a very few minutes’ exploration. But at the bend the air grew so foul and heavy that he retreated, and again had recourse to his rope and his air tube. Thus equipped, he went on with his researches, and proceeding cautiously down the second incline, which was steep and exceedingly rough under the tread, he soon came to a third abrupt bend, after which the passage, now grown so much steeper that notches had been cut in the ground to help the passenger, turned again sharply in the opposite direction. When he had gone a few steps Rees stepped upon something, the sound of which set his heart beating violently and caused him to come to a dead stop. The incline was so abrupt that he had been walking with his head well back, feeling for each notch with careful feet. Stooping down he now saw that the ground was strewn with coins, grown dingy in the dust, but the reddish glitter of which, when he picked some up and rubbed them on his coat-sleeve, proclaimed them to be gold.
It was true then—the story of the lost treasure was true!
Rees climbed down the remaining steps, the nails in his boots clanking at almost every tread against more of the scattered coins. At last he was again on level ground. Stumbling against something, he heard the surging sound of a sea of gold pieces, and discovered at his feet a small clumsily fashioned chest, made of wood, covered with leather, and strengthened by metal bands. The lid was open, and the coins with which it had been filled were pouring from it. Rees scarcely noticed it.
For, not a yard from where he stood, was the dead Lord Hugh of Thirsk, the wide cavalier cloak still hanging in dusty folds from his fleshless shoulders, the low-crowned hat, with its ragged shred of feather, still lying at his feet.
Rees shuddered. This man, dying nobly in the execution of his desperate duty, reproached him—stung him with a half-acknowledged sense of a great difference. He stole closer, and by the lantern’s weak light examined the motionless figure. The face was grey and shrivelled, the dry lips had fallen apart, and the glassy eyes stared out of cavernous sockets. Yet Rees fancied he saw the remains of a noble and handsome countenance in the wreck death had made. The hair fell, dark and lank and powdered with dust, upon the shoulders. The withered hands still rigidly clasped the thighs, as if their owner had determined with resolute strength of will to wait for death quietly. The low seat on which his body rested was formed of two small chests, of similar shape and size to that one against which Rees had stumbled.
Rough conjectures as to the events which had immediately preceded Lord Hugh’s death flashed through Rees Pennant’s mind as he made his way rapidly back to his companions, without disturbing by so much as a touch the solemn peace of the dead man.
No man, Rees supposed, could have carried more than one of those chests at a time. Small as they were, not more than twelve inches high, by ten wide, and eight deep, the weight of each when full of gold must have been great. Lord Hugh must have brought them down from the castle one by one when he resolved to try to escape by risking the unknown dangers of the disused subterranean passage. Rees pictured to himself that he must then have found his way to the other entrance, and either finding the stone impossible to raise, or discovering that he was in the midst of the Puritan camp, he had crept back, perhaps dashing to the ground in his despair the chest he had brought with him, and having failed in his enterprise, rather than fall either within or without the walls into the enemy’s hands, he had sat down and calmly waited for death in the poisonous air.
This was the last of the romantic side of the adventure which Rees was allowed to see. With his return to Goodhare and Sep came the greedy, the base, the commonplace. When the opening of the entrance for some hours had allowed fresh air to mingle with the poisonous gases in the passage, which Rees’s intrusion had moreover helped to disperse, in the cold grey light of the early morning Goodhare himself ventured to go down, followed by Sep, and, pushing aside the body with avaricious, ruthless hands, began to drag up one of the chests with long, lean, clutching fingers. Lord Hugh’s dead body fell to the ground with very little noise, his long cloak in a moment losing its shroud-like dignity and splitting into ragged strips. Goodhare did not heed it; Sep glanced at it with a shudder; only Rees felt still the influence of the sentiment with which the sight of the poor cavalier had impressed him. Then back again they all went into the chilly morning air, carrying one of the chests with them. They worked all through the hours of early morning, until not a single coin was left in the cavernous passage of all the treasure which Lord Hugh had guarded so long. They did not attempt to carry it away then, as the daylight was growing strong, and at any moment they might be espied by some laborer on his way to work. Leaving the chests just within the entrance to the passage, they replaced the stone, and covered that over carefully with the clods of turf. Then, forced to trust to chance the safety of their fortune, they parted and returned as quickly as they could to their homes.
On the following night they removed the whole of the gold to Goodhare’s lodging, where Amos made a rough calculation that the value of the gold, though much greater at the time it was first buried than now, would prove to be about fifteen thousand pounds. Rees made some faint suggestions about making known the discovery to Lord St. Austell; but Goodhare, while listening gravely, said it would be better for them first to take the gold up to London, and have the value decided by experts. To which Rees with little persuasion, and Sep without any, agreed.
They had made their plans for going to London, and Rees was, under the auspices of the two other men, looking forward to this new experience with vague delight, when Goodhare, who constantly affected to depreciate Deborah’s charms, found an opportunity of meeting her alone as she was returning from some trifling errand for Mrs. Pennant.
Deborah had never tried to hide her dislike and fear of the librarian except by the barest show of civility, and therefore her surprise was unbounded when she suddenly found that he was making her an offer of marriage. When, not heeding her prompt refusal, he proceeded to tell her that he had just had a large sum of money left him, and could make her rich and independent, she drew herself up with much indignation.
“I don’t think you understand women very well, Mr. Goodhare,” she said coldly and proudly. “The first step towards marrying a man that I shall take will be to like him. That step, in your case, I have not taken.”
Goodhare’s face turned the ugly grey color to which any strong feeling brought it, and his eyes flashed.
“You are wasting your time waiting for Rees Pennant, Miss Audaer,” he said, coolly; “he has other aims in view. In fact, perhaps I may say you have seen the last of him. If he does ever see you again, however, don’t be surprised if he makes you proposals less honorable than those you have so very prettily rejected to-day.”
Deborah broke away from him with an exclamation of disgust, and ran home as fast as she could, humiliated beyond expression by the man’s offensive words and manner. She could not quite, try as hard as she might, dismiss some of his words about Rees as idle ones. The young fellow had gone out very early that morning, and had not yet returned, although it was past dinner-time. Tea-time passed, and still he did not come.
Then, overpowered by a dreadful presentiment, Deborah crept upstairs to the open door of his room, and finding it empty, went in. On the dressing-table was a note directed hastily in pencil to his mother. She carried it with a heavy heart to Mrs. Pennant.
It was as follows:—
“My dearest old mother,“I am off; gone, not for long, but still gone. I have got a situation in London, and shall send you money every week, and come and see you very soon, be sure. I couldn’t bear to say good-bye.—With all love, your ever affectionate son,“Rees.”
“My dearest old mother,
“I am off; gone, not for long, but still gone. I have got a situation in London, and shall send you money every week, and come and see you very soon, be sure. I couldn’t bear to say good-bye.—With all love, your ever affectionate son,
“Rees.”
Mrs. Pennant burst into tears.
“My brave, darling boy,” she said, not willing to own she was hurt at this leave-taking, “he was quite right, as he always is. I could not have borne his going.”
Deborah did not answer. A great fear blanched her cheeks. Goodhare had had money left him, and Rees had gone. After the words the librarian had used, she could not fail to connect the two facts. Was it in Goodhare’s service that Rees was to be employed?
If so, the one being evil and the other weak, what power could save the man she loved from ruin?
Fourteenmonths passed quickly and quietly away in the Pennant household, during which time the eldest son never once revisited his old home. At first Rees wrote to his mother regularly once a week. Very short indeed his notes were, but they were always warmly affectionate, and they always contained messages for Deborah and a remittance of thirty shillings or two pounds towards the house-keeping expenses. Poor Mrs. Pennant, who had been told how difficult to get situations in London were, was crazily proud of the immediate success of her favorite son, and only afraid that, in the wish to send her as much as he could, he was denying himself more than he ought to do.
Before long, however, these dutiful attentions began to fail. The remittances dropped off first, and the notes contained excuses, to which his doting mother replied by immediate assurances that she was in no need of money. This was now true. The energetic Godwin, who was acquitting himself admirably in his new position, sent home to his mother more than enough money to keep the little household in comfort. He also persuaded Hervey to apply for his own old situation in the Monmouth Bank, with many artful suggestions as to its being only for a time, and just to show people that a young man of unusual intellect could make himself a position anywhere. Hervey had swallowed the bait, got the situation, and, rather to his own disgust, proved a very good clerk. Once in the bank, therefore, he remained there, as Godwin had expected. For however high his soul might soar, and however far his great mind might roam, his great body had a habit of remaining docilely, in cabbage-like fashion, wherever circumstances placed it.
Both Hervey and Godwin remained as much in love with Deborah as ever, but she resisted steadily every attempt to break down the brotherly and sisterly relation between her and them. Godwin, in spite of discouragement, persisted, every time that he paid his mother a visit, in renewing his advances. But he did so in such a prosaic, matter-of-fact manner that Deborah could treat them as a joke.
“Are you still in the same mind, Deb?” he would ask in an off-hand tone, at the first opportunity when they were left together.
“About what?” she would say, affecting to have forgotten such a ridiculous trifle as his last proposal.
“About marrying me.”
“Marrying you! Of course. What nonsense!”
“Very well, then, I hope you’ll die an old maid,” he would say viciously, to close the subject.
And Deborah would only laugh to herself in a contented manner, as if she felt that in that respect her fate was in her own hands.
As the girl was too handsome not to arouse envy among her own sex, she was often made to feel uncomfortably conscious that people believed she was pining for love of a man who did not care for her. Lord St. Austell, among others, tried to take advantage of this supposition. He had always been a great admirer of Deborah’s rich and massive beauty, and as he belonged to that class of men who consider all women, in the position of dependents, fair game for their attentions, he now lost no opportunity of trying to ingratiate himself with her.
It was early in October of the year following Rees Pennant’s departure from his home. Lord St. Austell, who was down for the cub-hunting, called upon Mrs. Pennant, and used all the genial charm of manner for which he was well known, in the endeavor to break down an instinctive shyness which the beautiful Miss Audaer had always left with him. But Deborah left him a good deal to Mrs. Pennant, who prided herself on being a brilliant talker and a woman of enduring fascination, and had had in her time ideas of becoming an Anglicised version of Madame Récamier. Not to be daunted, the earl called one morning before the old lady was prepared to receive visitors. She sent Deborah to the drawing-room with elaborate messages of regret, which Lord St. Austell quickly cut short.
“Well, Miss Audaer, it really doesn’t matter, I only came to leave these papers for the old lady, and to ask” (and he dropped his voice confidentially), “whether you had any news of our old friend, Rees. I knew,” he went on, “that if anybody had heard from him, it would be you.”
Deborah blushed and looked very unhappy.
“No,” she said. “For the last six weeks we have heard nothing. He hardly ever writes to me, only to mamma, and his notes are never very long. He travels about a great deal, he says, for the firm of lawyers he is with, and doesn’t have much time for writing.”
“Does he ever write to you, though, except from London?”
“No.”
“Ah! And he is with a firm of lawyers, travels about, and was able from the first to send home two pounds a week?”
“Oh, he doesn’t now. He hasn’t sent any money for a long time.”
“I wonder what the young beggar’s up to?”
Lord St. Austell was walking up and down the room, and he said this half to himself. But Deborah, all passionate excitement, sprang up from her seat and placed herself right in front of him.
“What do you mean, Lord St. Austell?”
“Rees has been telling his mother a parcel of falsehoods, that’s all. Do you think an idle, self-indulgent young scamp like that would get a salary large enough for him to spare two pounds a week? Do lawyers send their clerks scudding about all over the country like bagmen? No, Miss Audaer, our young friend is amusing himself, and doesn’t want his mother to come up to interrupt his pleasures.”
“But he has no money!” said Deborah, whose face expressed the strength of her feelings.
“How do you know? He manages to have the things that money gets, I happen to know, for not six weeks ago I saw him at Goodwood, perfectly dressed and perfectly mounted. Now, those are things which people can only do when they have either money or credit. The little beggar had the audacity to cut me, not that I bear him any malice for that,” he added, good humoredly.
Poor Deborah was greatly troubled.
“He is so weak, so dreadfully weak; he must have got into bad hands,” she said, in a quavering voice. “And yet, what can one do? Mamma will not go up to see him, because from the tone of his letters she can see he does not want her to. And she believes, or tries to believe, his constant promise of coming down to see us.”
“Well, if you wait for that, you will have to wait until the young scapegrace has got to the end of his tether,” said the earl, with a short laugh.
“But what am I to do? Mamma will believe nothing; indeed, I could scarcely wish her to. In the meantime——”
“In the meantime the lad may go one step too far, and the next news you have of him may be—through the newspapers.”
Deborah drew her breath with a sob. These suggestions were only an echo to the fears which had lately been haunting her.
“I’ll tell you what you could do,” the earl went on, in a kindly, sympathetic voice. “You might discover an excuse for wanting to go to London; I am going up myself in a day or two, and you would be very welcome to my services as an escort, since I don’t suppose they would let you travel alone. Then I would help you to find him out, and if he’s got into some scrape, we’d do our best together to help him out again.”
“Thank you,” said Deborah, “I’ll think about it.”
The earl was delighted, thinking he had advanced a step. But the girl had the discretion which natural modesty imparts, and though she did give his proposition a second thought, it was with a slight alteration which he had not contemplated. The result of her reflections was that she put it into Mrs. Pennant’s head that Rees might be ill, and that the best thing they could do was to go up and see him without too long a notice of their intention.
The discreet submissiveness towards the members of her family who were of the superior sex, which had become a habit of her life, made the old lady at first disinclined to act on Deborah’s suggestion. But, by working upon her maternal fears, the girl at last induced Mrs. Pennant to write a note to Rees, at the address in St. Martin’s-lane from which he always dated his letters, informing him that she was anxious about his health, and that she would call and see him within a few hours of the arrival of her note.
The two ladies left Carstow by the 4.12 train one raw October morning, before it was light. Hervey got up to see them off, but was just too late; they caught sight of him, panting and blinking on the platform, in the dull flicker of the gas-lamps, just as their train steamed out of the station. They had a dreadful, slow, stopping journey, and reached Paddington at ten minutes past ten, benumbed with cold, sleepy, and depressed. It was Deborah’s first visit to London, and the sensations she experienced as they drove in a shaky four-wheeled cab across the town between Praed street and Trafalgar-square were mingled bewilderment and disappointment. For a film of brownish fog enveloped the houses and obscured the sun, gave a wet, greasy look to the pavements, and to the atmosphere a heaviness which seemed suffocating to the country girl.