Lord St. Austell listened in complete, attentive silence. Rees thought it was all right, when, at the end of his carefully prepared and beautifully delivered speech, the earl burst into a fit of laughter.
“Oh, you boys and girls!” he said, indulgently, but with great amusement, “when will you learn a little sense?”
And again he began to laugh.
When Rees had recovered from his first impulse of rage and mortification, he asked, in his haughtiest manner—
“Am I to understand from this strange reception that you refuse my proposals?”
“No, no, dear boy, we won’t put it like that,” said the earl, seeing that he had hurt the young fellow’s feelings, and laying on his shoulder a kindly hand, which Rees instantly shook off, as if by an accidental stumble. “We’ll forget all about it, we’ll decide that you never for a moment dreamt of such folly as asking for one of my poor dowerless, unattractive girls. Why, lad, what would you live on?”
“I may be rich some day,” said Rees quietly.
“Well, well, so you may, and then you can marry a beautiful woman, and treat her a great deal better than most of us treat our wives. And mind, my boy, I like the impulse which made you feel you would like to be something nearer to me; for that, I am sure, was what first put this mad notion into your head. And I have a proposal to make to you, which I hope may lead to something more satisfactory than this unlucky one of yours. I have an opening for a steward on my Midland property, and you, with your love of the open air, and of riding and driving, would find it an easy and pleasant berth. I need not tell you that I should treat you in a very different spirit from that which I should show to anybody else. And I should overlook any shortcomings which might arise from want of experience——”
“You may save yourself the trouble of making excuses for me, my lord,” interrupted Rees, whose handsome face was white with passion. “You will not have me for a son-in-law; well, at any rate, you shall not have me for a servant, and I wish your ugly daughters better husbands.”
Lord St. Austell looked up in pain and amazement. But Rees had left him, and was speeding back towards Carstow. The earl’s face grew very grave as he asked himself what miracle could have wrought such a hideous change in the frank, generous-spirited lad.
In the meantime, Rees reached the little town, still in a tempest of passion. He called in at the library; Goodhare was out. He hurried home, dashed through the garden, and into the house by one of the back windows, without noticing that there seemed to be an unusual silence and stillness about the place. A servant whom he met ran out of his way, as if afraid to meet him. Deborah burst out crying at sight of him, and tried to detain him at the foot of the stairs. But she could not speak, and after waiting by her side impatiently for a few seconds, Rees gently pushed her aside, and mounted the staircase to his mother’s room.
With her he was sure of sympathy, no matter what he had done; no matter, too, how much in the wrong he might be.
He burst open the door, and dashed into the room.
Mrs. Pennant was there, but she was not sitting as usual, knitting in her low armchair by the window. She had his father’s desk on her knees, and was busy, with Godwin, reading over the papers it contained. Her eyes were red with crying, but her face wore a set, stern expression of responsibility and anxiety. Godwin also looked sad and anxious. Both mother and son started at his abrupt entrance, and the former, holding out her arms towards him, tried to smile as she asked him where he had been.
“To meet Lord St. Austell,” answered Rees, bewildered by the strange reception he met with from every one. “And what do you think, mother, he presumed to offer me?”
“I don’t know, my dear boy,” said Mrs. Pennant, caressing his curly head with a trembling hand.
“He wanted me to become his steward—his land steward. What do you think of that?”
Godwin sprang up from the seat by his mother’s side.
“For heaven’s sake, Rees, don’t tell us you were such a fool as to refuse?”
“I did refuse, of course. It is not for me, the prospective head of the Pennant family, to become the paid dependent of any man.”
“Well, it’s better than being a pauper, head of the family or not. And that’s what mother and I have just discovered you to be.”
Mrs. Pennant’s tears began to flow again.
“He is right, Rees, I am afraid,” said she, in a sad, low voice. “Your father never would let us know the real state of his affairs, and we have just found out enough to make us fear that we are absolutely ruined.”
Rees looked from one face to the other in utter bewilderment. His mother drew his head tenderly to her breast.
“Your poor father, Rees, fell down dead in the drawing-room two hours ago.”
Rees tore himself from his mother’s clasp with wild eyes. For a moment he saw the reckless folly of the course he had been pursuing, and the ruin to which it had brought him. The next, his mind was again clouded. For the poison of delicate flattery had been subtle, and had penetrated his system thoroughly.
Half an hour later he was walking up the hill, with unsteady steps, towards Amos Goodhare’s lodgings.
Rees Pennantreached Amos Goodhare’s lodgings just as the latter, having finished his tea, was about to start on his usual evening walk.
He saw the young man coming up the street, and waited on the threshold for him, noting, with hawk-like keenness, the signs of unusual and strong emotion in his ingenuous face.
“Come in, come in, my dear young friend,” he said with soothing deference, which poured balm into poor Rees’s wounded soul. “I am fortunate, indeed, to have delayed starting just long enough to see you.”
And he stood aside, inviting the young man to enter with a welcoming gesture.
Rees hurried in, threw himself on the little, hard, chintz-covered sofa in the cottage sitting-room, and tried to bury his face in the one brick-like cushion. Goodhare followed him into the room, and, without worrying him by persistent inquiries into the cause of his evident distress, stood beside the couch and placed a firm hand, the very touch of which seemed to the unhappy lad instinct with friendship and support, on the young fellow’s shoulder.
The room faced the east, and the light from the window was, moreover, obscured by a screen of long-legged geranium plants. When, therefore, Rees suddenly turned and looked up at the librarian, he did not notice the hungry impatience in the elder man’s eyes, like the expression of a vulture hovering over the body of a dying traveller. He saw only the tall figure bending over him, felt only the pressure of a long, lean hand on his, and believed that here at last was some one who understood him, who loved him, not with the blind, unreasoning love of his mother and Deborah, but with affection and admiration which were a just tribute to his own high qualities. Here he should find true sympathy, unmixed with blame.
“Something is troubling you, my dear boy, if you will allow me to call you so,” said Amos, at last, in a voice the very tones of which were consolation. “Tell me if you like, or be silent if you like. You can take your own time with—if I may presume to call myself so—an old friend like me.”
“Thanks, Goodhare, thanks a thousand times,” said Rees; and wringing the librarian’s hand with a strong, warm pressure, he sprang up, tossed back his curly hair, and held up a frank, young face, convulsed with a dozen emotions which he in vain tried to hide, to the shrewd gaze of the elder man.
“The fact is, you must know—or perhaps youdoknow—that I’ve been making an arrant fool of myself. I don’t know how it was that I didn’t see it before, but I see it now with a clearness that’s positively appalling.”
He sat down, and leaned forward on his elbows with clasped hands and an expression of utter hopelessness. Amos waited in respectful silence, and presently Rees continued—
“First of all, my poor father’s dead. He died of heart disease this afternoon, and that was the news that greeted me when I returned home this evening, after receiving the greatest blow to my feelings—to my vanity, if you like—that I’ve ever had to put up with.”
“Poor boy!” murmured Amos compassionately.
“Secondly, we are ‘broke,’ absolutely without the pounds, shillings, and pence necessary to pay for bread and butter, coals and candles, let alone such extras as rent and clothing. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it? But worse remains behind.” He was trying to recover his old bright manner, and to face his difficulties with some appearance of courage. “For I have the satisfaction of knowing that it’s my own fault that I am not to-day in possession of prospects of supporting my family in a much more comfortable manner than before. That’s not exactly a comfortable frame of mind, is it?”
“Why, no, I’m afraid it is not. But surely you exaggerate——”
“Not a bit of it. And you’ve only heard about half. The last and worst point is that I’ve quarrelled with my best friend, and in such a manner that even the most grovelling apology would scarcely put me right with him again.”
Goodhare had listened with his head half turned away, in the attitude of deep attention, to his young friend’s recital; the glow of satisfaction in his eyes as each misfortune was named thus escaped his hearer’s observation. But when he heard the last, the crowning source of distress, Amos, old as he was, could only conceal the passionate, evil joy he felt by an abrupt change of position. Rising hastily, as if overcome by the sad intelligence, he went to the window and looked out into the little stony street, while visions of ill-gotten gold floated before his eyes, and sounds of the boisterous revelry, for which his corrupt soul hankered in age as it had hankered in youth, made hideous but welcome music in his ears. It was with a start he turned, as his companion’s voice broke in upon his reverie.
“Well, what do you think of my position now?”
Amos had to think a moment before he spoke. For in the glowing picture he had conjured up, the poor tool had been forgotten. Then, with measured steps, he crossed the little room, and sat down by Rees.
“Tell me,” he said sympathetically, “if you will so far honor me with your confidence, how this disastrous state of things came about.”
Rees told him the whole story faithfully, not withholding the record of his own shame and astonishment, and the mortifying derision with which the earl had received his proposals. He had expected sympathy, he had expected a kindly palliation of his own fault. But he was not prepared for the torrent of outraged amazement with which Goodhare heard the account of Lord St. Austell’s behavior.
The librarian walked to and fro on the hearth-rug, which was the longest promenade his tiny sitting-room afforded.
“To think that he, of all men, after the admiration he always expressed for you, the hints which he has frequently given about the handsome manner in which he intended to provide for you”—here Rees looked up in surprise,—“that he should treat you in this manner, as if you were his inferior! I cannot understand it! I always imagined him to be a man of right feeling and noble instincts, incapable of outraging the feelings of a man poorer than himself.”
“Well,” said Rees, who, now that his own cause was espoused so hotly, could afford to be magnanimous, “money makes the one great difference now, you know, as Lord St. Austell has said himself a dozen times.”
Amos stopped suddenly in the centre of the hearth-rug.
“If you could only, some day, get rich, make a fortune, and come back and see him anxious for you to renew your proposal! What a revenge that would be for you!”
The young man looked at him dubiously. Even to the excitable brain of twenty-three, that seemed a fantastic and melodramatic idea.
“Yes,” he answered, rather drily, “but fortunes are not picked up in the roads.”
“Not often,” assented Amos, watching him. “Yet still I have heard of money being picked up in strange ways.”
“It isn’t likely to come much in my way, though, unless indeed I eat humble pie, and beg his lordship to give me the—the place, I suppose you call it, which I refused to-day so contemptuously.”
“And are you really ready to do that?” asked Amos, in a tone so full of scorn that the weak and sensitive lad writhed under it.
“As ready as I am to starve, perhaps,” answered he, reddening.
“But why do either?” asked the librarian, in a low, soft tone of gentle persuasion. “Providence does sometimes favor the deserving, and though I am not superstitious, I am inclined to think that, having preserved you from a life of unworthy drudgery, such as your own family seem to have been quite willing for you to adopt, Providence has some better destiny in store for you than you fancy.”
“Providence had better make haste about it then, or she may find that she has missed her chance.”
“Shall we take a walk together?” asked Amos, who began to see in the lad’s eyes the look of desperation he had been hoping for. “The fresh air sometimes cools the brain, and gives one fresher and brighter thoughts. It is my sovereign remedy for all the ills of my dull life. Come.”
Rees let himself be led out by the librarian; but when the latter wished to direct his steps towards the ruins of Carstow Castle, he drew back and protested.
“Not to the castle. I don’t want to go to any place which reminds me of that man and the humiliation he put me to to-day.”
“Try to get over that feeling,” insisted Amos, gently drawing him forward in the direction of the old walls. “Take my word for it, the humiliation will some day be on the other side. Besides, the old castle can hardly be called his property. Any treasure found buried in the ruins would not be his; it would belong to that vague thing, ‘the Crown.’ ”
“Treasure!” echoed Rees, astonished. “Why, surely you don’t believe that cock-and-bull story Lady Marion told me! Lord St. Austell himself said that every ruin in the three kingdoms had some such story attached to it, as surely as the ivy.”
“That doesn’t prove that it may not sometimes be well authenticated. As a matter of fact, in this case I believe it to be so.”
“Have you told the earl?”
“When I hinted my belief it was received with derision. So I have kept it to myself till now.”
“With derision, do you say? But Lady Marion thought there was something in the story. And she thought you had kept back part of the story.”
“So I had. It would have been of no use to Lady Marion; so far, indeed, it has been none to me. But with your help——”
“You don’t count on my help for a robbery, surely!” interrupted Rees with much haughtiness.
“No. Of what use would it be for anybody to count upon your help in a dishonorable action? I am not so stupid. But I do think that you will not refuse your assistance in discovering the treasure, if indeed it should exist, which is, as you say, by no means certain. The search will be an arduous one, and will require the exercise of qualities of no common order. But if something should come of it, think what a splendid opportunity you would have of heaping coals of fire on the head of the man who insulted you so lightly to-day. That, indeed, would be a noble revenge, and his lordship could hardly, in common gratitude, do less than accept you for a son-in-law if you put in his hands such a handsome supply of ready money.”
“But if this apocryphal treasure really existed, and were discovered by us, how do you know what its amount would be? And what good would it do to Lord St. Austell if buried treasure goes, as you say, to the Crown?”
“The treasure, if it exists, consists either in the jewels—royal jewels, mind, which Henrietta Maria sent to the Netherlands to be sold—or in the proceeds of that sale, which, it was expected, would be sufficient to wipe off long arrears of debt to a whole army and to pay for the levying of fresh troops. Now only two-thirds of a buried treasure are claimed by the Crown. Wouldn’t the remaining third of such a sum as that be a comfortable little windfall?”
“I dare say it would,” answered Rees hastily. For he was anxious to get rid of a subject which he felt to contain a temptation to his honor. “But as you have conceived the idea of this find being possible, I don’t think I ought to step in at the last moment and rob you of part of the honor of it.”
“But it is not the last moment; it is, on the contrary, only the first step that we have reached—that of recognising the fact that there may be treasure there, and that, if there is, it can only be reached from the inside of the castle walls.”
“From the inside?” echoed Rees in spite of himself, interested in the ever-fascinating suggestion, and impressed by the growl of passionate, hungry earnestness in the elder man’s hawk eyes.
“Yes. And as only the members of your family are allowed to ramble over the ruins without a guide nobody but you can pursue the search. Do you see?”
“That is unfortunate,” said Rees, with the irascible decision of the weak, who never feel that they have sufficiently emphasised the determination which they doubt their power to keep.
“For nothing would induce me to take advantage of a favor shown to me. Besides,” he added, after a lame pause, which Amos did not attempt to break, “after this afternoon’s work, of course Lord St. Austell will retract his special permission to my family.”
“He won’t think of it,” said Amos quietly. “And if he did, he wouldn’t condescend to do so.”
“And I shall certainly not show myself less magnanimous than he,” said Rees.
Again Goodhare said nothing; and again it was Rees who had to break the silence. It was rather awkward to do so, but curiosity concerning this project of the librarian’s began to burn within him.
“What makes you so strong in this belief, Goodhare? It isn’t like you to take an infatuation without good reason to back it.”
“There were nearly always, at the period when Carstow Castle was last rebuilt, subterranean passages built through which the occupants could escape in case of a surprise.”
“But, if there had been, would not the garrison have used these passages to escape by, when they were hard pressed, during the siege?”
“The surmise is that these passages, not having been used for many years, were believed to be impracticable. If they existed at all, this was probably the case, as I have searched the neighborhood thoroughly for nearly a mile in every direction round the castle, and I can find no trace of any opening.”
“And don’t you think what that proves is that there never was either passage or opening?”
“I do not. I believe that this unlucky Lord Hugh, knowing the heavy responsibility which lay on his shoulders, may have tried this means of escape, and been buried in the attempt with whatever he carried, whether jewels or money. How else—in what more reasonable manner can you account for his utter disappearance? For that neither he, nor the money he had been sent to fetch, ever reached the king, is certain.”
“I should think any manner of accounting for his disappearance likelier than that one,” said Rees. “And even if that were the true explanation, nothing would induce me to prowl about Lord St. Austell’s property to find out the truth of it.”
He said this haughtily, yet he waited when he had finished speaking, to hear Goodhare’s further arguments.
But the elder man had apparently decided that to argue against such flinty determination would be waste of breath. He turned away from the young man with a sigh.
“Well, Mr. Pennant, it is no use for me to try to persuade you into any course which you do not think strictly honorable, I know. I will, therefore, say no more about this, but only ask you to believe that I would never have breathed a word on the matter to you, if I had not myself believed it to be a suggestion which you might follow up to your own honor and Lord St. Austell’s profit.”
“I don’t wish to do anything to his profit,” said Rees passionately. “But, of course, I know you meant well, and—and thank you, and—and good-night.”
He gave Goodhare’s hand a grateful squeeze, and then lingered as if expecting a little more argument or a little more persuasion from him.
But none came. Goodhare simply wished him good-night, and left him to return home by himself with slow steps and an unusually reflective manner.
When he got home he found that his practical brother, Godwin, and his harassed mother, had had time to make a more thorough examination of such of his father’s papers as were within their reach, and that the result, even of this cursory search, was worse than they had feared. Nothing but debts, debts; bills unpaid, liabilities unmet. It was ruin, absolutely ruin, without a hope. Rees had to learn the truth, from their haggard eyes first, and their lips afterwards. Poor, kind-hearted old Captain Pennant had not been of so much account in the world or in his own household but that this discovery of the penniless state in which he had left his family over-shadowed their grief at his death.
Rees listened to the recital at first in dumb dismay. Then came a feeling of bitterness, of injury. Lastly, the idea of the gold which might lie hidden among those old ruins within half a mile of his own wrecked home rushed into his brain, not as the chimerical vision it had appeared when Amos first mentioned it to him that evening, but as a vivid, saving truth. So fast had the welcome fancy grown unconsciously in his mind.
At ten o’clock that night, when the quiet little town lay already asleep, and the bats were flying in the moonlight about the ragged walls of Carstow Castle, Rees crept out of his home like a guilty creature, and ran along the quiet roads and lanes with a fast-beating heart, until he stopped under the old portcullis, and leaned, panting for breath, against the massive oak door, which, studded with huge nails, and held together by thick bars of rusty iron, had stood the test of centuries of hard usage, and still kept intruders out of the ruin as it had kept them out of the castle in the time of its strength and its prime.
What were the secrets it held within its keeping? Was there indeed gold, in handfuls, in sackfuls, buried behind its jealous barrier?
Rees Pennant’s brain was growing heated under the spell which the glittering fancy cast upon him. With stealthy feet he soon was pacing underneath the walls, as Amos Goodhare had done the winter and the summer long, now caressing the rugged old stones, now tearing away the ivy which covered them, maddened by that idea of hidden treasure to be had for the finding, which has played havoc with the reason of stronger men.
He saw no one on his stealthy walk. But he was not unseen.
At the angle of the ancient wall, Amos Goodhare, to whom this nightly prowling was now an accustomed thing, suddenly caught sight of this new searcher in the darkness. He drew back hastily into the shadow of the trees, where his eyes seemed to blaze luridly out of the surrounding blackness as he laughed to himself silently.
“Caught, caught, my little fly,” he thought, with the nod of a triumphant fiend. “There we are—a step nearer to my gold,mygold!”
Rees came on, and passed him, feeling the old walls with feverish hands, and unluckily not seeing Amos, nor the expression with which his friend and mentor gloated over his boyish eagerness.
So, turning his back reluctantly to the castle and its grim grey towers, Rees crept, in a fever of longing and high excitement, back to his home.
Mrs. Pennantwas a woman of some strength of character, which had never before come out so vividly as it did on the occasion of her husband’s death.
She spent very little time in weeping over his loss. She was one of those women in whom the instincts of maternal affection are much stronger than the marital; and in truth her patience had been so hardly tried by Captain Pennant’s almost imbecile mismanagement of his affairs and the necessity of controlling her exasperation into the outer aspect of submissive respect, that there was a touch of relief even in her sorrow.
The few days between the death and the funeral were passed by all in an uneasy state of apprehension as to what would follow. Rees was hardly ever in the house, and could not be approached on the subject of his future actions. Hervey mooned about, comforting himself, after his usual fashion, by great thoughts of life and death, and the impracticable things he would do to get his family out of their difficulties. Godwin went quietly backwards and forwards to the bank as usual. Deborah kept out of Mrs. Pennant’s way, believing, poor child, that as that lady had never liked her, and had only suffered her to remain a member of the household in consequence of the captain’s express wish, she should now be ignominiously expelled on the first decent opportunity.
Deborah was Captain Pennant’s truest mourner. During the days when he lay dead in the house, she spent most of her time watching by his coffin, gazing at the passionately loved face of her “father,” as she had always called him, and grieving over her loss with all the intensity of her fiercely loving nature. The remaining hours of her time she spent, not in luxurious regret at leaving the old house which had so long been her home, but in looking over the clothes of the boys and mending such as wanted repairs, and in doing every little bit of active work she could think of to save Mrs. Pennant trouble. She did not love Mrs. Pennant; sometimes she had felt she almost hated her; but she appreciated the sense of duty to her husband which had made the lady tolerate her presence, and she felt bound to make what small return she could before breaking what she believed to be to the elder lady a galling tie.
So, on the day after the funeral, Deborah presented herself early in the day before Mrs. Pennant in her walking dress. The elder lady was writing at the table, and the girl stood for some moments watching her, without speaking; she was a good deal affected by the prospect of parting, now that it was so near, more especially as she noticed that Mrs. Pennant had aged suddenly, and that her handsome face showed the lines and wrinkles brought by care and anxiety more clearly than ever before. At last Mrs. Pennant looked up.
“Oh, are you going out, Deborah? Would you mind taking these letters to the post for me? I have just finished.”
Deborah murmured assent, and Mrs. Pennant bent over her writing. As she closed the last envelope, she looked up again. The girl stepped forward and quietly took up the letters. Then, turning to go, she addressed Mrs. Pennant without facing her, for she was afraid of breaking down, and bringing upon herself a cold reproof.
“I am going away, mamma. I came in to say good-bye to you. I am afraid you will not believe me when I say I am sorry to leave you; you think me ungrateful, but I am not. I am afraid I have been a burden on you for a great many years; but, thanks to your goodness, I can support myself now. I shall never forget you, or the boys, or—or my dear, dear father—I mean Captain Pennant.”
Mrs. Pennant was entirely taken aback. It was not until this moment that she knew how much she should miss the bright, beautiful face, or how lonely she should feel without the girl whom, in spite of herself, she had long secretly looked upon as a daughter.
“This, this is very sudden. You might have spoken to me. I had a right to expect to be consulted,” she said, trying to speak coldly, but with a tremor in her voice.
“I didn’t know how—I didn’t like to trouble you,” faltered the girl.
“Where are you going to? What do you want to do?”
“I have got a situation as help, lady-help they call it, at a little town the other side of Monmouth.”
“Lady—help! A girl brought up as Captain Pennant’s daughter!” cried the poor lady, in disgust and dismay.
“Well, mamma, what could I do? I should never have had the patience to teach children; and I can cook and sew a little, and I’m sure I could scrub. Nobody will ever know me as Captain Pennant’s daughter any more,” she said sadly. “I am simply Deborah Audaer, the fisherman’s daughter.”
“But you can’t go back like that, it’s impossible,” said Mrs. Pennant pettishly. “You are a lady now, whatever you were born. And my husband adopted you as his daughter, so his daughter you will always be to me. And you must remain with me. Understand that.”
She spoke sharply and querulously, but with determination. Still Deborah stood before her, looking perturbed and undecided.
“Do you hear what I say?” asked the old lady, peremptorily.
“Yes, I hear, mamma,” answered Deborah, in a low-toned, broken voice. Then, after a moment’s further hesitation, she moved two steps nearer, sank down on her knees, and hid her face in Mrs. Pennant’s chair. “Mamma,” she whispered, “I can’t stay—if you speak to me like that. You must try to be fond of me, and I’ll stay, and be good to you, work for you if I can, comfort you if I can. You would never let me love you before—will you try now? Captain Pennant is gone, Rees doesn’t care for me now; I can’t live without any love, in the place where I had so much. I would rather go away among strangers; I could bear that better.”
Mrs. Pennant was touched. At last she felt her heart go out to the brave, frank girl, and she put a trembling hand upon her neck, where the soft brown hair strayed from under the sombre black bonnet.
“Stay, child,” she whispered. “You shall not have to complain.”
Half a word was enough for Deborah, craving, as she did, an affection to replace what she had lost. She threw her strong young arms round her with a clasp in which the poor harassed lady felt at last not only comfort, but support. And from that hour Deborah transferred, if not all, at least a great part of the affection she had felt for her adopted father to his widow, whom she cherished and served with a true daughter’s devotion.
Meanwhile, the unhappiest member of the household was poor Rees, who, before his father had been dead a week, found that his own position as head of the family had been practically usurped by his younger brother Godwin. This shrewd and energetic fellow, on learning Lord St. Austell’s offer to Rees and the latter’s refusal of it, had instantly been seized with the idea of applying himself for the post.
The earl was rather cold at first, feeling, on account of Rees’s conduct, a temporary disgust with the whole family. But Godwin insisted so humbly, representing truly enough that he had had, young as he was, much more business experience than his elder brother, that at last he gained his point to the extent of being appointed assistant steward on trial.
When Rees learnt this, although he tried to congratulate his brother, and to wish him God-speed on his journey northwards, he fell into a passion of remorse and anger, and, rushing out of the house towards the spot which he now began to haunt as regularly as Goodhare himself, he flung himself down under the trees in a large field which stretched under the western wall of the castle, and burying his face in his hands, gave himself up to a paroxysm of despair.
What had he done, he the spoiled favorite of the county, who had begun to look upon all men’s indulgence as his right, that he should suddenly find himself thrown down from his long-established position, an exile from Llancader, cut by all its inmates, neglected by Goodhare, and even avoided by his faithful slave, Deborah? For the girl’s spirit had at last rebelled against his curt assumption of indifference towards her; while, as for Amos, he had had reasons for his own for giving the young man a wide berth for a few days. Those few days, however, were now over; and that very afternoon Amos, having seized the opportunity of his dinner-hour for a prowl round the goal of his dreams, saw the young fellow as he lay stretched on the grass, and instantly decided that the time was ripe for another step. He came down to the lower ground, therefore, and called Rees gently by his name before the young fellow had heard his footsteps.
The lad sprung up with a flushed, wild face and reckless manner.
“Goodhare,” cried he, hoarsely, “I’ll begin hunting to-night, this very night.”
The elder man smiled gravely, and stroked his beard in a meditative manner.
“You have decided, then, to give Lord St. Austell the third part of a handsome fortune, if indeed we are so fortunate as to find anything at all, which possibly we may not do.”
“Well, let’s find it first, and we can talk about Lord St. Austell afterwards. The finders of a big hoard are entitled to something, I suppose?”
“Very little. They may claim a trifling percentage, I believe, perhaps 2 per cent. or 3 per cent., on the value of the find as assessed by the Crown. Enough to pay the expenses of the journey to London to claim it. But even then, there are such pleasures in London, such wines, such lovely faces—a week’s visit would be well worth all the trouble.”
“Wines! I don’t suppose the finest wine that ever was made would intoxicate me like a gallop over the hills here!” said Rees, doubtfully. “And as for faces, I don’t believe there’s another in England as handsome as Deborah’s!”
An ugly flush rose in the elder man’s cheeks at the mention of her name.
“Deborah! Why, she’s a negress compared to the London girls. They are the pick of the beauty-basket, as I think you will say. For if you cannot judge a woman’s beauty, who should, when all the pretty lasses in the county are waiting for you to throw them the handkerchief? But they are dumpy, dowdy creatures you will find when you get to London.”
“And if we find all this, we shall only get a few pounds? But that is not fair. What right has the Crown to it, that never heard of it? Or Lord St. Austell, who laughed at the idea of its existence?”
“That’s what I want to know. The Crown portion will perhaps be paid away in the pensions of those noblemen who are paid handsomely by the State for being the descendants of Charles the Second’s mistresses. Or it may be spent in keeping up Buckingham Palace, where the Sovereign never lives, and where a collection of splendid pictures moulders away in the company of the Royal spiders, the public not being allowed to enter and see them. I don’t know. And Lord St. Austell’s portion? Well, he will be able to enjoy himself in town upon that,” added Amos, with suggestive dryness.
“At any rate,” said Rees with excitement, “the thing is first to find it, before we settle what’s to be done with it.”
“That is just what I say.”
“How shall we begin?”
“You must take up a craze, say botany for instance, and start specimen-hunting inside the castle walls. You must have a pickaxe and spade; I will get you those up over the walls—and you must explore systematically, bit by bit. I will be on the watch outside. You will always let me know what part you are at work in, and I will keep watch. I have two hours in the middle of the day, and as many as you like at night.”
“All right. We’ll begin to-night.”
They parted with only a few more words, for Rees was oppressed by the consciousness that, explain it away as he might, he was about to do an underhand action; and Goodhare, when he had gained a point, was not a man to weaken his effect by superfluous words.
That night the search began. Day after day and night after night it continued, and always without result, until the young man’s heart grew sick within him, and the elder grew fierce with disappointed longing. In the hot afternoons, when the trees that grew thickly on the high banks of the Wye seemed to dance in a heat-mist; in the cool, summer nights, when the owls peered out with gleaming eyes from the ivy bushes which hung round the broken turrets, Rees worked on. He dug deep in the beaten earth which had collected in the ruined chambers. He clave with his pickaxe old beams that had fallen to the ground to become food for the busy worms. Not a grating in the ground that he did not examine; not a blocked-up doorway into which, by long and patient labor, he did not grope. Their way of working answered admirably. If any one from the neighborhood, or a party of tourists, approached the outer gate, Rees had instant warning from the watcher outside, and on the entrance of the visitors a handsome young man would be found seated on a broken step in the outer court or on a massive window embrasure in one of the damp, cool vaults below, attentively studying a bramble or a weed by the aid of a book or a microscope.
One curious discovery he made in the second week of his labors. It was that the earth on which the castle was built possessed the property of preserving, almost uninjured by damp or decay, anything which was buried at a certain depth within its bosom. For he came upon the bodies of various dead pets, a guinea-pig, a rabbit, and a white rat, to which his brothers, in their childhood, had given honorable sepulture within the castle walls; and they were all in a perfect state of preservation, except that they had become dry and shrivelled.
Amos Goodhare’s information here came in to account for this. He had himself visited certain caves in the neighborhood of Bordeaux, in which the bodies of a dozen dead monks were preserved, their habits still clinging, uninjured, round the shrivelled and wasted forms. He gave Rees a scientific account of the properties of the soil which produced this effect, to which the young man was too much excited to take heed.
For he had got an idea into his head that the subterranean passage, if it existed at all, by which the unlucky Lord Hugh had tried to make his escape, must start from a certain large vaulted chamber, the base of which and part of the walls were formed in the rock itself. This chamber was the lowest part of the castle, and not being so much exposed as the rest to storm and siege, was in an excellent stage of preservation. It looked out through a deep-walled window over the river, which formed at this point a beautiful bend, with trees on one side and swelling meadow ground on the other. The original level of the floor was at present not easily to be found, as the rock surface was encumbered with stones and earth.
Here it was, however, that Rees had resolved to make a search, the thoroughness of which should be complete. At last, on the fifth evening of his labors, when he had dug deep down in the piled-up earth, until the last of the daylight had faded out of the sky, he felt the floor tremble under his feet.
He was by this time in utter darkness, his spade working mechanically in the hard earth.
He stopped, shivering from head to foot, cold from excitement and an instinct of mad joy. A hoarse shout escaped his lips in spite of himself.
The next moment it turned to a low-breathed exclamation of savage impatience. For a girl’s voice called to him from the outer court, and in another minute the faint light which came through the doorway was blocked by her figure. It was Lady Marion Cenarth.
“What are you doing here, Rees Pennant,” she asked sharply.
Onhearing Lady Marion’s voice, Rees felt his heart stand still. It was by this time quite dark in the cavernous chamber, so that he could only guess that she must have been watching, unseen by him, for an hour or more. He had a few moments to consider what he should do, for at the first sound of her voice he had stepped back hastily into the black shadow of one of the corners of the chamber, from whence he could observe her figure as long as she remained with her back to the faint light at the entrance.
“I know you are here, Rees. What are you doing?” she repeated.
And she passed with careful feet through the doorway, and began to advance towards the middle of the vaulted room.
Rees, interrupted thus, as he believed, on the brink of an important discovery, and afraid every moment that Lady Marion’s feet would touch the iron grating he had just partly unearthed, felt that he could have killed her. But there was no time to be lost in explosions of resentment. The intruder had to be treated with, and at once. Throwing himself on his hands and knees, he crept hastily towards the doorway by which she had entered, while the slight noise he made in gliding over the rocky floor and the smooth-trodden earth which had in course of time accumulated over great part of it, was drowned by her own constant and excited calls to him by name. He slipped through the opening quickly, and ran up the rickety wooden steps which now connected these lower chambers of the ruins with those above.
A dozen steps more brought him to the open air, in the inner courtyard of the castle. Thence a little hazardous climbing enabled him to reach the outer wall, at a point immediately above the chamber in which he had been at work. Leaning over the ruined stonework so that his voice might penetrate through the embrasure of the great window below, he at last answered her repeated calls.
“Hallo!” he cried. “Hallo! Who’s that down there? Is it you, Mrs. Crow? Do you want to shut up early to-night, eh?”
“It is I, Lady Marion Cenarth,” answered a voice from the window below, tartly.
“You, Lady Marion, you!” cried Rees with well-acted astonishment. “Why, are you down in those dungeons? You’ll catch your death of cold.”
Rees would not have believed, ten minutes before, that he, the open-hearted, the recklessly sincere, could have assumed a sentiment he did not feel. But the hunger for hidden gold, the desire to keep his fancied discovery secret, had already done their work upon him.
“Can’t you find your way out? Shall I come down and help you out?”
No answer at first. But she had evidently heard him, for her cries ceased. Rees climbed down much more slowly than he had come up, went to the top of the wooden steps, and called again.
“Lady Marion, Lady Marion, are you still there? Shall I come down and help you?”
She was stumbling towards him over the uneven floor. He leapt down and offered the assistance of his hand. There was only just light enough for her to see it, and for the first moment she refused haughtily, shrinking back as if the very offer had been an insult. The next, she characteristically tried to atone for this conduct by excessive humility, and seized his arm with pathetic eagerness. Rees, impatient and annoyed, helped her up the shaking steps without another word, while she muttered lame apologies for troubling him to come to her.
When they reached the open air, however, and she was able to see his face, the suspicions which had brought her to the castle returned in full force.
“Rees,” she said, assuming an air of searching penetration, “it is of no use trying to deceive me. What makes you come here night after night? You do, I know, for I have just found it out from Mrs. Crow, and she says you never miss a single evening. And who is there about besides you? When I got down to that dungeon I distinctly heard somebody digging. The sound left off as soon as I called you, so I am certain there was some one.”
“Really, Lady Marion, I don’t think I am responsible for every noise heard in this old ruin, and don’t know why I should be put through a long catechism about my movements here, when the place is free to every rat and bird in the country!”
In her usual blundering, tactless way the girl continued:
“The rats and birds only come to find a shelter. I don’t see what a man should come here for late at night, unless he’s a thief.”
Of course this speech, according a little, as it did, with the feeling in his own conscience, maddened Rees.
“And, pray, is that the category in which you place me, your ladyship? Do you think I have formed a design for carrying off the castle, stone by stone, and building it up somewhere else?”
“No,” answered she, “of course not. But how about the treasure lost in the Civil War?”
“Treasure!” echoed Rees, with a long, loud laugh of scornful amusement, which his intense excitement enabled him to simulate quite naturally. “Oh, if you believe that story, of course you can believe anything. If you were to hear I was a murderer, you would take it for granted. I think you will feel easier if I relieve you of my presence. It’s not pleasant for a lady to be alone with a rogue so late in the evening.”
He raised his cap, and was hurrying in the direction of the principal gate, and had reached the outer court of the castle, when Lady Marion, always weak when she ought to have been strong, ran after him in the humblest of moods.
“Rees! Rees!” she cried, “I didn’t mean what I said. Come back! I’m going to Mrs. Crow for a candle, and I’m going to hunt through those rooms that we call the dungeons, for I’m sure I heard some one there. Won’t you help me?”
Rees grew hot with fright. How on earth was he to keep her from carrying out this fatal intention? Unluckily for him, she noticed his hesitation, and putting a shrewd interpretation upon it, she ran on past him, and had burst open the door of the custodian’s room before he could stop her.
Rees was beside himself. In his rage, impatience, and confusion, no plan for stopping her occurred to him, and he stood by the great gateway of the castle, kicking his heels against its huge beams in blank despair. As he did so, the gate, which alone was used now, creaked and slowly gave way behind him. He turned, and perceived that the big key of the gate had been left in the lock by Mrs. Crow when she admitted Lady Marion. He thrust it open, putting his shoulder against it impatiently, and found himself face to face with Amos Goodhare.
Rees uttered an exclamation of relief and joy. Here was advice and help.
“What am I to do?” he whispered hurriedly. “Lady Marion is here, suspects something, and insists on searching the place.”
“Make up to her, of course,” said Amos, who had very nearly added “you fool.” “Let her think you are crazy about her, and she’ll hold her tongue safe enough. Just the kind of girl—mad as a hatter and not too handsome; nothing like that sort to keep a man’s secret. Go in.”
Rees obeyed; indeed, Amos emphasized his injunction by a push which sent him staggering. But as the door was drawn softly to behind him, he felt his spirit rising in resentment at this change in the librarian’s manner towards him. For Amos had suddenly dropped his pedantic respectfulness, his gentle movements, had looked at him with fierce impatience, and had been both rough and rude.
“I shall just wash my hands of the whole thing, and go home,” he said to himself. But he hesitated, with his hand upon the gate. At that moment Lady Marion appeared at the door of the lodge, candle in hand, and with just a glance at him, made swiftly across the courtyard in the direction of the “dungeons,” as the vaulted apartments overlooking the river were called.
“You needn’t come with me, Mrs. Crow,” he heard her call out as she ran. Rees followed her, all his anxiety about the safety of his secret alive again. She flew over the grass, a great sparrow-legged girl, not yet grown out of immature gawkiness, and got down the wooden steps somehow in a wonderfully short space of time. But in her haste she let the candle fall, and the light went out. Rees, at the top of the steps, looked down into the black vault, where he heard her groping about, and conceived the project of passing her again in the darkness, finding his way into the next and lower apartment, in which he had discovered the grating, and flattening down the earth to cover the traces of his work.
At the doorway, however, were two steps; stumbling on the damp and slippery surface of the second, he made enough noise for her to find him.
“Rees,” she cried, “don’t go away. This is a horrid place; something flapped past me. I feel quite frightened. It is you there, isn’t it?”
Thinking that, by not answering, he should alarm her still more and induce her to find her way to the upper air, he was silent; and creeping away into a huge arched recess in the lower apartment, he leaned back and waited.
But Lady Marion, though susceptible to feminine fears, had some courage and more curiosity. She hunted about on her hands and knees in the outer room until she found her box of matches, struck one, discovered her candle, and relighting it, prepared for an exhaustive search.
He heard her manly footsteps—she and her sisters all wore flat-footed, “sensible” boots—tramping over the stones and the hard earth. He had just time to seize his pickaxe and spade, thrust them into a heap of loose rubble that filled one corner of the recess, and to kick a few spadefuls of earth over the uncovered grating, when she reappeared at the doorway.
Holding her candle high, she looked round the walls suspiciously, without condescending to take any notice of the young fellow’s presence. Then she advanced slowly into the middle of the floor, peering curiously at the ground beneath her feet as she did so.
Rees held his breath. The next moment, making up his mind that there was nothing else to be done, he sprang forward and flung his arms around her.
“Marion, Marion,” he cried, “it can’t be true that you care for me if you won’t so much as look at me.”
The ruse succeeded. Lady Marion, who, in spite of her affectation of mannishness, was at heart rather a limp, pliable, and easily dominated young woman, was taken aback.
“Oh!” she exclaimed faintly, with a feeble feint of disengaging herself.
“I suppose you don’t know—the earl won’t have let you know—that I proposed to him for you, and that he rejected me almost as if I had been a groom.”
“Don’t, don’t, Rees, I can’t bear it. I’ve been miserable ever since.”
“He told you then?”
“No, I guessed it from his manner, and when I found you didn’t come to Llancader, and then I spoke to mamma, and she told me, and said it was no use hoping. Oh, but Rees, I don’t think you can care as much as I do! You—you think more about getting this treasure than about me. I know you do. I know you were angry at my interrupting you. Yes, and I believe youwereat work in here, and that it’s only to prevent my finding out something that you are so nice to me now.”
She thrust him away from her, noticed the roughness of the fresh-dug earth at her feet, and looked up at him with triumphant suspicion.
“Ah!” she cried in a whisper.
Rees was seized with a bold idea.
“Yes,” he said, “I have been digging here; I have been trying to find the treasure. For if I could show him the way to a little fortune, the earl could scarcely refuse to let me marry you.”
Lady Marion, fond of him as she was, had the sense to look doubtful.
“And Deborah? They say you like Deborah better than me!”
Rees was not past blushing, and he blushed now.
“Nonsense!” he said. “Look here, Marion.”
Stooping down, he scraped away the loose earth and discovered the grating on which he had built such high hopes.
“This is what I found to-night,” said he. “It may be only the covering of an old drain. But it may be something more. At any rate, that is my secret, which I have confided to nobody but you. Is that confidence enough? Now do you believe I care for you?”
It was a bold stroke, and he watched the effect in desperate excitement. Lady Marion’s sallow face lighted up with eagerness as great as his own as she looked down at the rusty grating, which, slightly displaced during Rees’s labours, shook under the tread.
“But did you do it for me, Rees—really for me?” she asked still half-doubtfully.
“If I had not, why should I confide in you? I did not want you to know my aims yet, certainly; I was too much humiliated by your father. But you have found me out, so you may as well know everything. Now, Marion, if ever I get your father to accept me for a son-in-law, will you have me?”
The poor affectionate girl was overjoyed. She hung about him, kissed his hands and his hair, and assured him that she would wait ten years for him if a prince were to woo her. She begged him to see her home as far as the park gates, as a compensation for the fact that they would have to be circumspect and content to see each other seldom. It was Rees who, impatient at her demonstrativeness, impressed this upon her.
“But I can come and see you at the same place to-morrow evening,” said she. “Mademoiselle de Laval always leaves us quite undisturbed in the evening, and thinks we are busy over our Greek. I can slip out without the least danger. I shall come; don’t be afraid.”
Rees was already wishing her or himself at the bottom of the sea. Overwhelmed with shame and anger at his own conduct, he bade her as hasty a farewell as she would allow, returning her passionate kisses with embraces so reluctant and perfunctory that if she had not been so infatuated they must have chilled her own warmth.
Then, when she had left him and disappeared through a little side-gate into the park, he crept, with slow feet and hanging head, towards Goodhare’s lodging.
The librarian was enjoying a frugal supper of a couple of poached eggs, a slice of bread and butter, and a glass of milk; and as he ate he studied a heavy, much-used volume of Cicero.
The young man shut up the book impetuously and flung himself into a chair opposite to Amos.
“I’ve found the entrance to the passage, I believe,” said he, “a wide grating under two feet of earth, with a couple of stone steps to be seen underneath.”
Amos started up with an exclamation of triumph.
“And I ought to be able to take full advantage of it, for I’m on my way to become a very finished scoundrel.”
He related the incidents of his discovery and of his interview with Lady Marion. Goodhare listened with the ugly look of covetousness in his eyes which had sometimes shocked Rees before now. When he had finished, Amos burst out into a laugh of hideous, satyr-like raillery.
“Don’t pretend to be ashamed of your conquest; that sort of modesty doesn’t deceive me. And I won’t distress you by asking for any details of the interview.”
Rees started up, his face flushed, his hair disordered, his whole bearing speaking of shame for himself, but also of indignation against his companion.
“You are making me a thief, Amos; you are making me a rascal; but you have not yet made me forget that I was born a gentleman,” said he.
The next moment, Amos meanwhile going on quietly with his poached eggs and bread and butter, the poor lad seemed to realize what an empty boast it was that he had uttered so proudly, and he sank down again in his chair and buried his face in his hands. But the fascination of the hidden treasure soon came over him again, driving out all other thoughts and feelings. Springing up once more, and leaning across the table to make his words more emphatic, he whispered:
“Goodhare, it’s all up with us. I left the grating exposed, and forgot to fill up the hole in the earth above it!”
Amos had the wit to hide part of what he felt; but he betrayed enough to show Rees a little more of the demoniacal side of his character.
The two men parted that night with hearts and minds burdened with the deepest anxiety. The poking about with a stick of a couple of Mrs. Crow’s children might reveal enough to set the neighborhood talking and prying, and then good-bye to visions of a golden independence.
Onthe following morning Amos Goodhare, for the first time since his dismissal, visited Llancader Castle. He asked modestly whether he could see Mademoiselle de Laval, having, from his knowledge of the habits of the place, been able to choose the hour when she was resting in her own sitting-room before beginning the day’s labors.
He was shown up to this apartment, where the lady received him very graciously. Amos took care to let her think that his visit was prompted by an overwhelming wish to know whether the recent damp weather had affected her rheumatism, and it was not until he had listened sympathetically to an exhaustive list of her “symptoms,” that he enquired after the family. Then he asked, confidentially, whether there was any truth in a report he had heard that Lady Marion was engaged to the eldest son of the late Captain Pennant. To this, Mademoiselle de Laval replied with horror on her face that the very mention of his name was forbidden in the household.
Amos Goodhare’s face immediately underwent a change, and expressed the deepest anxiety. In answer to her questions he then very reluctantly confessed that Lady Marion and Rees Pennant were in the habit of meeting late in the evening. Mademoiselle was much alarmed, but at first inclined to be incredulous.
“Very well,” said Amos quietly. “I would not take the trouble to prove what I say if I did not feel so much admiration for you and so much grateful interest in his lordship’s family. But find out whether Lady Marion was in the house last night between eight and nine. What would happen to you if anything were to go wrong with one of the young ladies? It goes to my heart to think of the cruel injustice which might be done to a lady of such talents and accomplishments as yourself.”
He did not prolong the interview after that; for he had succeeded in thoroughly alarming her, and he felt sure that in future Rees would be able to pursue his researches without interruption from Lady Marion.
Rees went to the old castle very early that morning. It was a pouring wet day, and he had to tell the custodian that he had left something in the ruins the evening before in order to account for his appearance there in weather which no sane person, without some strong reason, would have chosen for a ramble among the mouldering stones.
Breathless with anxiety, he crossed the two courts, and entered the vault with streams of water pouring down his mackintosh. The rain had done him good service; not only had it prevented Mrs. Crow’s boys from wandering among the ruins, but it washed down in torrents from the upper chambers, and rushing through the exposed grating, carried with it a quantity of the earth which had accumulated above. Rees could see the stone steps underneath, and with fiery energy he dug away spadeful after spadeful, until at last the grating, loosened in its place, shook under his feet. A few more frenzied efforts, and he was able to raise it half a dozen inches. He could scarcely restrain a cry of joy, which, however, speedily changed to a groan of disappointment.
The grating was kept down by no hinges; it was more than two feet wide, of clumsy, old-fashioned workmanship, though of much later date than the last rebuilding of the castle in the fourteenth century. With great difficulty Rees raised it, tearing the flesh off his hands as he did so on the iron bars, which were caked with a hard deposit of rust. He had taken the precaution of bringing in his pocket a candle and matches. Striking a light he descended about a dozen rough and much worn stone steps in a sort of well hewn out of the solid rock. He had to move very carefully, as the steps were steep and unevenly covered with earth which the late rains had converted into mud; while the rude walls were too slimy with damp for the irregularities of their surface to afford him any hold.
The air down here was cold; it chilled his heated body and made his teeth chatter. Taking a couple of steps rather more quickly than the rest in his excitement and impatience, his right foot suddenly splashed into water. Drawing it back hastily, he peered into the darkness at his feet, and saw that what he had taken for the entrance to a subterranean passage was apparently nothing more nor less than an old, long disused well.
With a moan of anger and bitter disappointment, he sat down, with his feet on the lowest dry step, while a cold perspiration made him shiver from head to foot, and at the same time his forehead burned, and his mouth was so parched that, as he drew breath, he emitted a choking cough. He felt as if the hidden gold had been wrenched out of his eagerly clutching fingers, the gold which was to have supported his mother, showered presents on Deborah, restored his prestige as the genius of his family, and perhaps made him an earl’s son-in-law—for somehow that first idea of making known the discovery to the earl had, under the fire of Goodhare’s discourses, melted quite away.
He had brought his spade with him, and he sat holding it idly in his hand, and not heeding the fact that the rain-water from above was all the while trickling down the steps, making his seat not only damp but dangerous. Suddenly he slipped, and the spade in his hand scraped the ground at the bottom of the water.
It could not be very deep then! Perhaps it was not a well at all!
His excitement returning, he drew the spade slowly and carefully from left to right, stirring the foul mud at the bottom of the stagnant water, and causing noxious odours to rise from it. The water was not more than a foot and a half deep. The evil smells were so overpowering that he felt himself turn sick, and had to go back up a half a dozen steps to get fresh air and to recover himself.
When he redescended he found that the water had gone down a little. At first he thought this might only be his fancy, so by the faint light of his dwindling candle-end he watched. Surely enough, the water-line on the shiny wall seemed to emerge higher and higher above the foul black liquid, and Rees could hear the quick drip drip of water below him. Again he sounded with his spade even more carefully than before. Close under the bottom step one corner of the implement got caught in a hole, which proved to be round and about seven inches in diameter. As Rees passed the spade backwards and forwards, he heard a rushing sound, and the water began to go down much more rapidly. This small hole, he thought, must be the top of a drain-pipe which had become choked with obstacles which the spade removed.
He glanced at his candle—there was not half an inch of it left. Would that water never go down? With frantic impatience he dragged his spade to and fro from wall to wall. Work as hard as he would, he had not time. The candle-end, which he held in his left hand and glanced at anxiously, grew hot between his fingers; then the wick fell over, burning him so that he had to shake it off hastily on to the wet step, where it went out with a faint little hiss and splutter.
“Hang it!” almost shouted Rees, forgetting his caution, forgetting everything in his frantic impatience.
“Hallo!” cried a voice above, which sounded hollow in the rocky cavity.
Rees could have bitten his tongue out. He leaned against the uneven and slippery wall, shivering with alarm and disappointment. Had he fatally betrayed himself? Who was the intruder? All that he could tell as yet was that it was the voice of a young man. Rees kept quite still and silent, hoping against hope that the man would not see the opening in the floor of the vaulted chamber. The day was so dark that this was just possible. But the hope was vain. Rees heard footsteps, and then another exclamation as the tiny light of a match appeared for a few moments at the opening in the floor above him and then went out.
At that moment his foot slipped, making a slight noise.
“Who’s there?” cried the voice above. “Not Rees, not Rees Pennant? For God’s sake, answer?”
Rees recognised the voice by this time. It was that of Sep Jocelyn, one of his most devoted admirers and friends.
This Sep was a short and rather thick-set fair man, without hair on his face, who was five-and-thirty, but looked ten years younger until you examined quite closely the little thread-like wrinkles which crossed and recrossed his face in all directions, and the white streaks in his thick fair hair. While still very young, he had been left an orphan with command of money; as usual in such cases, he had been ruined in character and fortune in the most commonplace way—by bad women, worse men, and drink. At three-and-thirty he had been discovered in abject circumstances by an old aunt, the widow of an admiral, who had carried him off with her to her house in Carstow, where she could still keep up some show of state on an extremely limited income.
Here she tried hard to regenerate him, and as far as that could be done, she succeeded. That is to say, he became entirely respectable, lived soberly, went to church, and was a most submissive, affectionate, and good-humored companion to his aunt, of pleasant, if somewhat effeminate manners. But at heart he was blasé and cynical, with a surprised feeling that any one could be so misguided as to bestow on him so much attention and kindness, which he certainly was not worth. And yet he was grateful, in a certain way, making due allowance for the facts that his aunt had wanted a companion, and that she belonged to the sex which has a fondness for the reclamation of ne’er-do-weels. Belonging to that class of men who, incapable of leading, have an instinct of attaching themselves where they will be led, he had become the devoted satellite of Rees Pennant, whose handsome face and dashing manner fascinated and enchained him.
Rees, who made the not unnatural mistake of rating Sep’s devotion higher than it was worth, felt intensely relieved on learning who his discoverer was. In an instant he made up his mind to confide in him. Knowing, as he did, that he must have help to prosecute his researches further, it seemed, indeed, that no better assistant could be obtained.
“S-h!” he hissed, and creeping up three or four of the rough steps as quickly and quietly as he could, he asked in an eager whisper, “Who is with you?”
“Little Jack, Mrs. Crow’s boy. He’s outside. I told him not to come down; the room above us is ankle deep in mud. What are you doing down there? What a pickle you’re in!”
“I’m clean to what I shall be before I’ve done,” said he, in a low voice, as he crept up the remaining steps, replaced the grating with Sep’s help, and taking off his waistcoat, laid it upon the bars and shovelled a layer of earth on to it.
Then, silencing all his companion’s questions until they should be above ground, he seized his arm and hurried him upstairs, where they found little Jack making mud-pies in the outer doorway. In a few words, and with an air of the deepest confidence, Rees then told Sep the story of the MS., the supposed lost treasure, of his discoveries and his hopes. Sep was desperately interested, ready to hazard his own limbs, if needful, to help his friend’s researches, although he knew by this confidence Rees was only making a virtue of necessity.
They decided that, as Sep had not the same right of entry as Rees, some way must be found to draw him up over the castle walls. Sep, who, on hearing his friend had gone into the castle, had braved torrents of rain and huge stretches of mud to meet him, was ready to submit even to this.
They left the ruins together, and meeting Goodhare, who was, as usual, on the watch outside, Rees introduced him as a confidant, and related his discoveries. Amos could scarcely conceal his rage and disappointment—rage that a new hand should be engaged in the work, to take his share of the hoped-for spoil; disappointment at the result of the discovery on which Rees counted so much.
“What on earth possesses you, Pennant, to imagine that any good can come of your finding an old blocked-up drain?” he asked scornfully.
Rees, exhausted by excitement and manual labour of an unaccustomed kind, and flushed by a sense of achievement, was incensed by the question and by this familiar manner of address.
“The feeling which possesses me,” he answered promptly, “is indignation that I should associate myself in any work with an impudent and lazy rascal, who waits outside for the result of other people’s labor.”
Instead of resenting this insolence, Goodhare listened with his head bent down, as if with remorse, and made full and ample apology for his impatience.
But when he had turned to go back to his library, after a most affectionate and respectful farewell to Rees, and a cordial one to the new associate in the enterprise, Sep linked his arm within that of his friend, and suggested, in his mincing voice and manner: