Whata fantastic nightmare in my memory is that amazing voyage! Were souls as oddly consorted ever launched on an odder? Looking back at this date on all the circumstances, our isolation, our helplessness, our exhaustion of mind and body following on the strain—and that, by long hours yet, not to be withdrawn—it appears to me little less than miraculous that we ever won to harbour. Had it not been for the strange distraction of a certain recital which the occasion called forth, and which, occupying our thoughts both during and after its telling, rendered us partly oblivious to our condition, a very creeping paralysis of terror would, I believe, have ended by destroying us. To swing there unrelated to any visible hold on life but the sodden, weltering stick beneath us: lost atoms in a vast immensity of mist and water! My mind, save I gripped it frenziedly to its own consciousness, would have reeled and forsaken me, I think. Sometimes for a moment, indeed, it would be almost gone, dropping through the seeming clouds on which we swam into immeasurable abysses of space; and it was only on these occasions by grappling aghast with the figures of reality before it, that it could recover and control itself. If only we could have seen the shore—could have steadied nothing more than our vision on that ghost of moral support, it would have been something. But by now the haze had shut down, and we were derelicts utterly committed to the waste. It was a bad time—a bad, forsaken time, and I do not much like to recall it, that is the truth.
We had perched Joshua, having with some distress got him on board, between us on the twin spar, where he could set his back against the broken top and hold on mechanically till he was in the way to convalescence. Fore and aft of him, squatting or straddling on our slippery bed, we made at first fitful attempts to dig a little way on our craft with our feet; but the load was too heavy thus lightly to be influenced, and we soon gave up the effort. We might, perhaps, have affected our course a trifle by swimming and pushing; we did not dare. It had been a different matter in the first excitement of escape, with the sand under our feet. Now, in the reaction to a consciousness of our drenched, and overwrought, and half benumbed condition, the water had become a fathomless horror, lapping after us with hiss and hurry to devour what it had seduced from its shallows. There was a heaviness, a deadliness in it, level and undisturbed as it seemed, which it was sickening to contemplate. And so we sat close and drifted, and essayed—did Harry and I, while Joshua was recovering—to reassure ourselves and one another with fitful banter—the most cheerless, hollow stuff, God knew, and soon to expire of its own pretence.
For a time, undoubtedly, the tide carried us shorewards, leisurely and with no affectation of charity. The wreck sunk and disappeared behind us: was a wreck—a bulwark—a stile in mid-desert—a post—a stump—was gone. We distanced it so slowly that scarce a quarter of a mile could have separated us from it when its last token was submerged—and our hearts seemed to founder with it.
“Harry!” I cried, in a sudden shock of terror: “what if, at this rate, we never reach the shore at all, and are carried out again by the ebb!”
He wriggled and snarled.
“What’s the use of meeting trouble half-way? We’ve four or five hours before us, and if we can’t drift close enough by then to finish swimming, the deuce is in it. Hold tight, Dicky—that’s all you’ve got to do; and I’ll answer for the rest.”
His self-confidence soothed me supremely. And I was the more comforted to see Joshua stir himself at that moment and sit upright.
“What’s that?” he said. “Leave me out of the question if you want to swim.”
“We don’t want to swim, Mr. Pilbrow—not unless the tide won’t serve us to the end; and then I hope it’ll be only a little way.”
“Well,” he answered, “go when you will; only I want to have a word with you first, Richard.”
“You are all right again, sir?”
“Right?” he muttered. “I don’t know. The land drops and flees before me. The cold is in my heart. I must ease it, Richard—I must ease it of its secret load before that winter gets home.”
“O, don’t talk like that!” I complained. “It’s to flout Providence in the face after this mercy.”
“Well,” he said, with a melancholy smile, “I shall be lighter anyhow for the easing. With this weight continuing in me, I should sink like a plumb.”
“There’s to be no thought of sinking, Mr. Pilbrow,” I said. “But if there’s something you’ll feel the better for ridding yourself of, why say it and have done.”
He turned stiffly in his place so that the spar rocked, and looked at me, where I sat behind him, with a most yearning affection.
“If you were entitled to the truth before,” he said, “how much more now, when you have saved my life.”
“Saved your life!” I exclaimed.
“Didn’t you!” he answered. “Didn’t you risk your own by letting go to reach me, when I might have pulled you down?”
“O, nonsense!” I cried, with a real laugh. “We should have both been in a bad way, I dare say, if Harry hadn’t had the sense to catch my foot. He towed us in. If there’s any credit it’s to him.”
“He did the resourceful thing, and you the brave,” persisted Joshua. “I owe to him through you; but to you first. If I live, I will honour that debt. If I am to die——”
“In good time, Mr. Pilbrow!” I cried reassuringly. “This little contest had flushed and rallied us all. “In good time! We aren’t going to give up, I can assure you, having come so far as this.”
“By God’s providence!” answered the ex-bookseller, with unwonted devoutness. “Only I feel that while I delay to tell you, the devil struggles to hale me into the deeps.”
“Out with it, then!” I said lightly, “and let’s crow to see him gnash his ugly teeth at being anticipated.”
I realized that he was about to give us the long-expected story, with a shadowy abstract of which he had only as yet tantalized me, and, through me, of course, Harry. Could we have had our curiosity satisfied under circumstances more tragically wet-blanketing? Yet there was a providence in that no less. The little sparks of inquisitiveness which survived in us, expanded in the revelation to flames of heat, which, in warming us, distracted our thoughts from our miseries. I will not believe this opportuneness was accidental. Mercy, in all the Committee of Destiny, is jealous to keep to herself the casting vote, I think.
His face fell; the evil shadow I knew darkened on it a moment; but almost in the same thought was gone. He wrung his lips with his hand, and heaved a profound sigh.
“Succeed, then,” he said, in a sad inspired voice, “succeed to the truth for which your father died; and God spare you to find your inheritance a rich one! If He will; if for your most loyal faith in me, dear child, I could so requite you, I could pass contented under the waters to the rest the land has denied me. I am weary, Richard; I am wearied to death; and to lie floating off my legs appears beatitude.”
He sighed again, and setting his teeth in the very act, forced himself frowningly and inexorably to his task.
“I have hinted to you already,” he said, “that this long fever of my quest dates from Abel’s disappearance with a certain book which contained the clue to an important secret. Hear, then, at last, what that secret was, and how it came into our hands.
“My brother Abel and I were twins and enemies, partners and apart. Why? I cannot tell. Look at two dogs of a litter quarrelling over a bone, and seek for the reason there. We thwarted one another—at every turn we did, and ruined our common business in a mutual spite. You know as much; yet in fairness I must urge that his was the more rancorous and vindictive spirit. I would have cried halt sometimes; but Abel, never. He had the fiercer resolution; he went armed; I feared while I hated him. ... The book in question was one of a packet over which we had perversely disputed in the sale-room; an old scorched and dog’s-eared commonplace book of the seventeenth century, in contemporary crimson calf, and bearing inside its cover the name of ‘Carolus Victor, Chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty’s Prison of Newgate.’ Yes, you remember the name. I once let it out unguarded. Well, he was our inspirer, as some Morell or Morant was your uncle’s. ... There was nothing of note about this book. It contained just the jottings and excerpta of a decent unremarkable man; ‘tips’ for homilies; memoranda of ‘last testaments;’ mere personal data of a conscientious and commonplace clergyman, whose lines had fallen in incongruous places. With all that we have nothing to do. Our business is with a folded letter, in the handwriting of this same Carolus Victor, which ages ago had been slipped between the leaves, and had there adhered through the melting of the wax with which it was sealed.”
“How had it got there?” I asked, because he here came to a dramatic pause, which seemed to challenge questioning.
“Ah!” he answered. “How? And why it had remained undelivered? I can submit only a plausible theory. A second-hand book-shop, gentlemen, is a mine of reference. Research presently revealed to me that this Carolus Victor, Chaplain of Newgate, had died—suddenly, by presumption—in that very year, 1679, which dates not only his letter, but the last entries in his diary where it was found. Suppose, then, the letter written by this Victor, and never delivered to him to whom it was addressed; suppose the book containing it tied up unexamined with the deceased’s other manuscript effects, and put away on some remote shelf and forgotten; suppose some jealous no-Popery bookdealer snatching it years later from the flames of Newgate, and consigning it to his own store, where, in the excitement, it was again forgotten till finally brought to light in the sale-room, a scorched and smoke-stained packet to excite the ridicule of the dealers. Suppose anything or nothing; conjecture and account as you will. The fact remains that Carolus Victor’s commonplace book came intact, and holding fast to its enclosure, into our hands. ... Into our hands—intoourhands, I say. Were we not brothers, twins, partners? Abel, before bidding for it, had known or guessed nothing of what the packet contained. He had bought the lot, a business transaction, merely to spite me. And yet now he would claim the whole fruits for himself!”
A fury and excitement took the narrator’s voice at this point. The heat he exhaled was communicated to us in part.
“Go on!” I said, giving a vigorous kick into the water. “There was a letter in the book, you say. What was it about?”
He struggled with himself a moment, dropped his face into his hands with a groan, looked up, and resumed in a more ordered voice—
“I am coming to it. It is stereotyped on my brain—all of its accursed riddle, that is to say, but the key. It was dated Newgate, 1679, and was superscribed to one Peachumn, a doctor of divinity, (to whom, you will always bear in mind, it never was delivered), from which honoured friend and counsellor the writer craved certain instruction and advice in a very private and particular matter. He had had confessed to him that night, he said, a passing strange story by one Vining, a prisoner, and grey in iniquity, who was condemned to suffer on the morrow for piracy on the high seas. This Vining, according to his own statement, had been, about the second decade of the century, a student in the great English College of Douai, in France, whence one winter he had been sent, in company with an ordained brother collegiate, on an extraordinary secret mission across the water to a little town on our east coast. This mission, said Vining, was nothing less than to recover, if possible, from its secret hiding-place in the crypts of a certain long abandoned church, a great treasure of gold pieces, which had lain there ever since the suppression of the religious houses—a suppression which, in this case, had but hardly anticipated a natural dissolution more complete. For the church in question was, it appeared, already doomed when the king’s edict fell. Lingering, a relic of the greater past, amidst the ruin of those eastern shores, the sea had since taken its outworks; and now the treasure (the existence and depository of which had been made known through the death-bed confidence of a former sacristan) must be secured without delay, if recovered it were to be at all ... Richard! itwassecured by those two—a loaded box of iron. And then the madness of possession smote the wretched clerk. In the darkness of the crypts he murdered his companion, and in the darkness the curse of God fell upon him. His hands were scarlet with consecrated blood. He loathed to handle the price of his iniquity; but, like Judas, he cast it from him, and with it hid the body of his victim in a place whence he hoped neither could again be brought to light to testify against him.”
He paused. And “Where was that?” I asked faintly. An extraordinary fancy had taken possession of me—a thought so stunning, so bewildering in its first weak conception, yet so explanatory, if admitted, of Rampick’s incomprehensible behaviour, that I fairly shivered under it. I looked dumfounded at Harry. He also, if I was not mistaken, had been smitten with a like shock of expectancy.
“Where was that?” I repeated; and so, innocently, applied the match to this tow. Joshua did not answer, to my surprise, for a moment; and then suddenly I was conscious of the flame rising and blazing in him.
“Where!” he shrieked. “Give me the key if you pity me! It is that has kept me hunting these long years, ravenous like the dogs that devoured Sin, their mother, and yet were unappeased. Give me the key; give me rest, or here and now the waters of oblivion!”
For an instant I really believed he was going to rise and plunge. Had he done so, I doubt if, in our weakened condition, we could have saved him a second time. But in the thought, he had clutched at himself once more; and his passion grew inarticulate, and ceased.
When at last he resumed his tale, it was with a manner of some suffering shame.
“Richard,” he said, “touch me there and I am mad. Rebuke me with thine eyes, sweet boy, and I am sane and sorry. I will not offend again. Listen, the story breaks off with the night of our quarrel—Abel’s and mine. He had discovered and was reading this letter spread out before him on the table, when I came up unnoticed behind him and read over his shoulder. The confession was all there, to the flight of the murderer and his subsequent life of crime; to the agony of his haunted soul and his desire, in the shadow of death, to make restitution. Some words by the chaplain followed; some prayer of the weak soul to his stronger confidant to guide him in this pass, whether for action or unconcern. And at the foot of the sheet he ended with the words. ‘And the confessed Place and deposit of this treasure are——’ and there passed over the page, and I never learned them, was never to learn them, Richard. ... Some sound I made roused Abel from his absorption. He leapt to his feet, cramming the paper into his pocket, and faced me.
“‘Well, where are they?’ I asked, smiling. Yet in that moment I knew he would never tell me.
“‘Miles under the sea, probably, by this time,’ he answered. ‘You will understand that, if you have pryed to any purpose.’
“‘Abel,’ I said quietly, ‘you are lying. The place still exists, or you would not wish to conceal its name from me.’
“‘Well,’ he said, with an evil grin, ‘the book is mine, and the secret with it. You disputed its purchase, remember.’
“‘I may have,’ I replied. ‘But bought it is, and with our money—ourmoney, Abel. I will not yield my right to a share in it.’
“I advanced upon him. I was hell inside, though calm outwardly. And as I came, he pulled a pistol from his breast—he was left-handed, like the crooked beast he was—and held it at me. I told you he always went armed. ... Richard, I confess the creature appalled me. He would have made nothing of shooting me like a dog. I hesitated; and then fell to entreaty, expostulation, threats. He was grey and hard as steel. In the end I must desist, though still resolved to get at the paper by fair means or foul. When he was gone, in a hunger of agitation I threw myself upon the book. It told me nothing, of course. I flung it down again, and went to bed, poisoned with black thoughts. In the morning when I rose, late and racked with fever, I found him gone, him and the book and the paper—gone, without leaving anywhere a trace of his direction. I could not believe it for a time; then madness took me. I went up and down, mouthing like a beast—by day and night, Richard—by day and night. It was then I must inadvertently have fired the stock. You know the rest.”
He ended in a deep depression, and burying his face in his hands, set to rocking to and fro.
“Rest!” he suddenly cried. “No rest for me! All these years I have pursued him, a wicked, laughing shadow, in the likely places of the land—always on these eastern coasts or near them, exploring ruins or the histories of them—recognizing at last my own madness, yet unable to lay it. And still the shadow flies before; and still I follow, myself a shadow!”
Again I looked at Harry. He understood, and answered my mute inquiry.
“Yes, tell him,” he said. “Tell him, if he’ll believe, how he’s been mistaken by a madman for the risen ghost of his brother yonder.”
It was the conviction in both our minds. It grew inevitably out of the tale just told us. Time, place, circumstance; the combative brother who went armed; the pistol clutched in the deadlefthand—these, taken together with Rampick’s discovery of our discovery, and his imagined identification of the dead, invoked by us, as he thought, to rise and denounce him, left us in no moral doubt whatever. Yet still, the coincidence was so amazing, I hesitated to commit myself. I must take breath, fencing a little longer with the truth.
“Mr. Pilbrow,” I faltered, “were you and Abel so much alike?”
He had started at Harry’s words, and was sitting rigid, awaiting my answer.
“We were twins,” he said quietly, “scarce separable, perhaps, in feature, unless by the lines which hate had chiselled to distinguish us. His were deeper scored than mine.”
“And his dress?” I said: “how did he go dressed?”
He bent over the step to stare at me.
“He wore a blue coat, Richard. Why do you ask?”
I gave a little gasp.
“Tell him,” said Harry again.
“Wait a moment!” I fluttered. “Why, who could say, Mr. Pilbrow, that thieves or the sea hadn’t taken this treasure long ago?”
“Abel,” he answered, in the same voice. “Abel, the direct consignee of the secret, which was sealed by Carolus Victor, and never opened or delivered till it came to light in our parlour. Abel, who knew this coast, had written guide-books, about it—misleading guide-books, indeed, to me in my killing search—and who was aware that the place, the actualcachéof the treasure, still survived—or why should he have sought to hide the truth from me, and have fled in the night, himself like a thief? Abel, the cursed shadow that I follow, and cannot run to earth!”
“O, Dick, tell him!” cried Harry once more.
“Mr. Pilbrow!” I broke out, trembling with excitement. “I believe you have hunted counter; I believe we can show you where your shadow lies. It is in the hill under the abbey ruins, and you must take off your curse from it.”
Confession, discussion, incredulity, conviction, with all their concomitants of amazement, awe, emotion, were long over; long put aside in reservation was the unsolvable problem of Rampick’s part in the dark mystery of the hill; long had our last exhausted consideration of these questions lapsed into something like a silence of despair, as we drifted, with gentle lap and wallow, over those immeasurable heart-breaking wastes.
At least with Harry and me, I think, hope had attenuated almost to the vanishing point. Brain-sodden, benumbed, half lifeless, grown near unconscious of time or place, the instinct to hold on, the power to keep at bay the last fatal drowsiness alone remained to us in ever-diminishing degree. We did not know, in the confusion of our senses, whether we were drawing inshore or to sea; we did not know whether we were rocking, an idle log, virtually unprogressive, or slipped into one of the coast currents, and speeding silent on an interminable journey. We could not tell the sick drawl of the hours, for our watches had, of course, stopped. But we dreaded horribly the time when dusk should fall, if it should find us derelicts still. And so it found us, drooping down and closing in; and then Providence seemed hidden, and we despaired.
I cannot picture, indeed, the terror of that darkening desolation; the running fields of water, spectral with foam, fenced within an ever-contracting cyclone of dusk, devouring their own boundaries, and committing us slowly to entombment in one final sepulchre of night. It is all an impossible dream, in my mind—a sort of horrible pantomime, in which a sense of induration, of fixity, while I watched grotesque figures, born of my imagination, come and go in my brain, was ineffably dissolved by the spirit of the moon, and changed into consciousness of heaven.
Joshua, I knew, felt nothing of what we did, except, in a measure, physically; and, even there, the exultation in his soul was tonic to his body. Since our capping of his secret with our own, he had been a changed creature—a bent bow released and snapped upright. It is difficult to describe his transformation—his translation, rather, inspired as Bottom’s. Where had been sombreness, depression, some self-deprecation, was self-assurance, some rallying blitheness, boisterousness almost. He had been crushed, and was expanded; beaten, and was triumphant. That he should have run, when near broke with the chase, his shadow to earth, and through me, the son of the man whose memory he worshipped! It was stupendous. He could not contain his glee, or discipline his expectancy, now it had once burst those year-long bonds. He was convinced with, more utterly convinced than, us, that the body was Abel’s. He would tolerate no suggestion of error. And where the body was, would be the book, the clue—finally the treasure. I doubted if, in all these generations, it could still lie hidden there undiscovered and unravished. He laughed my scepticism to scorn. That Vining would never have concealed the evidences of his crime in a place easy or inviting to be come at, he declared. Probably, indeed, he had restored them to the originaloubliette, which, I might make sure, would have been chosen by the monks with a cunning genius for its inaccessibility, either by smugglers or other casual squatters in their abandoned vaults. Moreover history, or at least gossip, might be trusted to have left us record of such costly treasure-trove thus unearthed, if unearthed it had been. Nevertheless, he questioned us closely as to our underground observations, which, indeed, had not been exhaustive. But they were enough, it appeared, to confirm his assurance. Desire is the most credulous of all enthusiasts.
All this was before the last abandonment to despair had overwhelmed us, Harry and me; and it was useful in helping us to a sort of fictitious endurance. We might have succumbed sooner, otherwise, and actually foregone our living rescue. He was so strong and hopeful; so certain that Destiny would not have led him thus far, by such tortured ways, only to see him founder when within sight of his goal, that some part of his faith could not fail to communicate itself to us with vital results. At the same time, I think, we shrunk from the merciless expression of his triumph.Ourconcern, in revealing the truth as we supposed it, had been with the tragic end of his brother. Not so his. He had no sentiment for Abel even now; no pity for the fate which had overtaken him. The best he could find to say about him was that he had paid the penalty and called quits, and left the better man to come into his own. Not for himself—that was the moral reservation, after all, which silenced and confounded us. He longed for the treasure; he gloated in the thought of its resurrection; but now for my sake, not his own. With the prospect of its recovery instant in his mind, he never wavered in his intention to bestow it all on the son of the man who had died to vindicate his honesty. I could have laughed again over this tragic, comical, chimerical bequest to me; only tears were too near the source of humour. It was terrible, and indecent, and pathetic in one.Wesought life for no end but sweet life’s own. The rest was a mockery.
Well, he kept us alive with it, that I believe. Even after he himself was numbed and silenced from stimulating us, from encouraging us by sympathy and example to prevail through hope, he would keep nodding brightly to us to rally our spirits, until his neck got too stiff to nod at all.
It must have been half-past six and near the time of ebb, when the spectral dark which engulphed us knew a change. The fog, lying low on the water, grew slowly diaphanous, waxing from a weak dawn, like heaven seen through dying lids, to a sweet and solemn lightness. For long we were too exhausted, body and mind, to consider what this portended. The lightness increased; and suddenly high over the bank shone a little red spark like a lantern. We lifted our dazed heads; we stirred stiffly where we sat. O God! O God! what did it mean?
Swiftly it broadened, glowing like a rising fire. It mounted, or the haze shrunk beneath it—who could tell? In a moment it was free, and we knew it, in wonder and thankfulness, for the moon.
She was in her first quarter—a child moon, swelling into maidenhood. Slowly, slowly she rose, while we watched her, gloating, absorbed. Gradually the blush with which she had first observed us, sole spectators of her girlish disrobing, faded into a white glow of pity. Her tresses fell from her neck upon the sea, the mist parting to let them by, and were extended to us, “Climb to me by them,” she seemed to whisper; “here is the way to hope.” And lo! full in the midst of that shining path rode a little boat.
There was a man in it, a solitary fisherman trawling for soles. The agony of the moment gave us life and voice. We screamed to him; we waved; we made every frantic demonstration that was possible to us in our condition. He heard and saw us—and he sat as if stricken. Ghostly, leisurely, we drifted past, and the boat faded and became a phantom behind us.
We could not believe it. We never ceased to cry out. It was too hideous, too cruel for truth. Harry, with a dying effort, half rose. I don’t know what desperate thought was in his mind.
“Hush!” I suddenly implored; and we all became stone.
There was a little knock and paddle coming to us out of the mist. In a moment the boat forged into sight, approached us, and hung off.
“Who be ye?” said a fearful voice.
We answered all together in a babble.
“Nay, let me speak alone,” said Joshua; and he hailed the man clearly.
“We went to visit the wreck on the sands; we were abandoned there by a scoundrel, and we have been floating on this spar ever since.”
Still the man was not convinced. We could hear him distinctly spit into the water. It is so his class exorcises all demons.
“What might be your names, now?” he asked cunningly.
Here was a poser for the devil.
“First of all, Master Richard Bowen,” began Joshua.
“Hey!” interrupted the boatman, with all his voice of wonder; and he sculled rapidly up, and alongside. “Master!” He peered through the mist. “Lord have mercy on ’s, ’tis himself trewthfully!”
“Old Jacob!” I cried, in a faint voice between laughing and sobbing. “Old Jacob, help us off this before we die!”
And after that I remember nothing.
Youremember old Jacob? ’Twas he seconded Harry so unhandsomely in the great fight. He had retired upon his savings now, and did no work, save when a still night persuaded him forth with line and trawling-net, and the loan of a friend’s boat could be procured. Such had been the case when we ran across him. He had taken advantage of the holiday spirit, which kept all “afternoon farmers” of the sea scrupulously away from it, to pull a few miles out in a borrowed craft, and try for a basket of fish to make a welcome garnish to his Christmas pot.
He was lying, when he picked us up, off the banks some four miles from land in a southerly direction, and in a few minutes was to have hauled in and returned home. By so narrow a margin of Providence were we acquitted. In all these hours, it appeared, we had made no nearer the coast than this; had just swung hither and thither gently, drifting south, on the whole, and making two feet shoreward, perhaps, for every one we retired. Probably, in the end, we should have dropped sluggishly on the banks again, unless the outward race of the tide, more vicious than the inward, had swept us over them. In either case, however, the result would have been the same, I believe. Another hour or two must have seen the finish of our endurance.
As it was, I don’t know how they got me on board. Harry, with his stronger fibre, rallied immediately under the excitement: the strain off, I collapsed—that was the difference between us. I was physically and mentally frozen; I could not make an effort on my own account; but lay on the planks, my head on my friend’s knees, listening, in a sort of staring dream, to the murmur of voices above me punctuated by old Jacob’s exclamations. They were telling him, I knew, enough of the facts to explain our situation; and I heard Harry impress upon him the necessity of keeping all to himself, until we had seen Mr. Sant, and learned what course he proposed to take. Old Jacob made no demur. He was honoured in their confidence for one thing, and, for another, his admiration for his former master was still so unspeakable, that he chuckled at the mere idea of temporarily sharing a secret with that great man.
Harry questioned him about Rampick’s doings since our abandonment on the sands. He knew nothing of the fellow; had neither seen nor heard of him. Probably, he thought, if he were convinced no one had witnessed our departure, he would, after deserting us, have pulled oblique up or down the coast, to some outlying station on it, in order to establish analibiin case of inquiry.
“He were free to go his gait, without risk o’ being observed in these merry times,” said he. “Reckon he’s turned up late, with his story of Jack or Jim visited, and the wur-rds spoke, and mayhap some proof of what Jack give him or Jim lent, to the very tune of innercence.”
I heard them all. Their speech drummed on my brain, as if it were parchment, which was just what it felt like. I lay staring at the light of the moon, for my back was turned to the beautiful thing herself; and I was not unhappy, only utterly cold-blooded. I thought, perhaps, from my long semi-immersion I had become a fish. What a fate, to go gasping through the world, with round lidless eyes and ears palpitating like gills, and never to feel warm again!
Presently we came to shore; and they tilted me up, as if I were a board, and stood me on end, so that I could not help laughing. But even then, in the most extraordinary way,coldair seemed to come from my lungs. Some one, with a whisper and nudge, as if to fire my interest, pointed out to me a boat, Rampick’s, pulled up on the beach, its sides gleaming wet in the moonshine. I crowed and acquiesced, very knowing about nothing, as they seemed to wish me to be; and then, having my legs pointed out to me, tried seriously to remonstrate with and command them, for they were in the most drunken condition. I supposed, indeed, that they were quite detached from me, until, between Harry’s and Jacob’s support, I set them moving; and then I understood that they still acknowledged my control, and I was gigglingly interested in them, looking down on them idiotically as they went splayed, and giving, and pulling themselves respectable over the hard. They found the Gap a tough business; but once up and over it, the descent beyond appeared a matter of moments. While I was still chuckling to Harry, and failing in words to express to him what the joke was, there close before our faces was the door of number three, the Playstow; and I gaped and grinned and delightedly pointed out my discovery to my friends. While I was yet in the act, it opened hurriedly to a great surge of light; and I saw the figures of Uncle Jenico and Mr. Sant, standing blowzed and flurried, in the midst of the furnace. Suddenly they moved and came towards us; and at that I tried to hail them with a shout of laughter; but, instead, staggered and slipped down into their midst. It was very restful, after all; and I thought I would stop where I was. But the jangle of many voices worried me, and I closed my eyes. Then, instantly, as it seemed to me, I was lifted up, and borne aloft, and smothered in down, or snow, which embraced me very cold and peaceful. The light sunk low, and the voices to a whisper. I was quite content, so long as they would leave me packed there frozen. But presently I was conscious that this was not to be. Something, by creeping degrees, tickled, and bit, and stung at my feet. The poison rose, giving me intolerable pain. I moaned and cried; and, at the sound of my voice, they lifted me up and poured fire down my throat. The rising and the falling heat met, it seemed, at my heart, and I believed it was consuming. I struggled to beat out the flames, to reproach these demons with their cruelty—and then in a moment, in a blazing swerve to consciousness, I saw them. They, or their shadows, leapt gigantic on the ceiling; furious, gnashing caricatures of my uncle, Mrs. Puddephatt, Mr. Sant, Fancy-Maria. A furnace glared and reverberated behind them. They sprang and held me down, and rasped my limbs till they crackled and smoked. From prayers and anguish I passed to frenzied defiance. If they would torture me so pitilessly, I would of myself stultify their efforts. I felt the waters of revolt rising within me. An instant, and they gushed to the surface of my body, putting out the fires all over. Surcease from pain, a delicious oblivion overwhelmed me, and I sank back and forgot everything.
Once out of dreams of dewy meadows I awoke, and found my hand in the hand of my uncle, who sat beside the bed. He was himself once more, the real loving normal Uncle Jenico, and I smiled drowzily on him, and dropped away again. A second time I awoke; and there was Fancy-Maria beside my pillow, softly rubbing a smut into her nose with her thumb, and repeating to herself the multiplication table to keep from nodding.
“Three sevens ain’t twenty-four, Fancy-Maria,” I said, and off I went again.
At last, and finally, after unravelling a great endless jest of a rope, I stuck at a prodigious knot, and gasped, and opened my eyes.
“I thought that last snore would finish you,” said a voice.
I sat up. I was in bed in my own room; the noonday sun glowed on the blind, and squatted down before the dead embers of the fire, sniggering like a Bonanza, was Harry. He rose, yawning, and came across to me.
“All right?” he said.
“Right as a trivet.”
“Hungry?”
“Just!”
“You’ll do, then.”
“Think I should—when I’ve had something to eat.”
Sweet is the constitution of youth. It all came back to me now, and without distress.
He sat down on the bed.
“Why, whatever was up with you last night?” he asked curiously.
“I don’t know,” I answered, shame-faced. “Didn’t you feel it?”
“Not much. Not in that way. It was good enough for me to be safe. I say, you gave us a precious fright.”
“I’m very sorry. I couldn’t help it. What happened? Was Uncle Jenico very put out about our not coming home?”
“Near off his head, I should think. He’d sent for Sant. Nobody had heard or knew anything about us. But, of course, they never supposed it was quite so bad as it was.”
“Poor old chap! I was an ass to go off like that. Well, what was decided?”
His face fell a little sombre.
“Sure you’re in a fit state to hear?”
“O, I’m all right, I tell you. It would worry me not to know.”
“Very well. Then, when we’d got rid of you at last, and had something to eat and drink, we held a council of war. Mr. Paxton was in a rare state. I think he’d have liked to shoot that beast at sight. I’d never thought he could be like that, and I tell you it made me crow to see him. But your friend Joshua was for a postponement, until he could visit the crypts. He went through his whole story again, just as he’d said it to us. We told your uncle everything, of course, from first to last; and Sant, naturally. And thenhecame down. He would hear of no course but the direct one. He’d go straight up to the Court for a warrant against Rampick for attempted murder; and, after that, to wring out and air the whole dirty business. He didn’t mind about risking his own popularity; he didn’t value at a brass piece the insane flummery of the treasure, as he called it. He and Mr. Pilbrow near came to words about it; and then——”
“What then?” I asked him, for he had stopped.
“I hardly like to tell you,” he said. “Sure you’re all right?”
“O yes, of course!” I said impatiently. “Do go on!”
“Well, we’d all gone out on the step, to see Mr. Pilbrow off, and he and Sant were standing wrangling there, when who should come slouching past but Rampick himself.
“I tell you he gave a screech, and dropped in a heap where he stood. We all ran out, thinking him dead. I don’t know now whether he is or not.”
“It would be the best way out of it all, perhaps,” I muttered.
“Maybe it would,” said Harry. “They got help and carried him home, and Sant went with him. He’s been there ever since, I think. At least he’s not come back here. Anyhow it stops the warrant business for the time. And there we are. Nobody knows the real truth but old Jacob; and Sant bound him to silence for the present. We’ve been looking after you ever since, young gentleman; and here I am, having taken my turn by the fire.”
“It’s very good of you, you old idiot,” I said rather tremulously. “Harry, if—if he’s rested, do you think you could send Uncle Jenico to me now?”
He nodded, comprehending perfectly, and went out. I don’t intend to recount the meeting that followed. If I had loved the old man before, you may understand what penitence now made of my feelings. I was painfully suspicious that that secrecy as to my own movements had been dictated rather by private selfishness than consideration for my relative. Certainly I had feared that, had he been told of our purposed trip to the sands, he would, in his uneasiness of mind, have put forward all sorts of objections, even, perhaps, had I proved obstinate, to a personal appeal to me not to desert him in his depressed condition. And now, supposing that eternal sealhadbeen put on our actions, what a heritage of mental torture, of unfounded self-accusations to impose on that blameless soul! I ended by swearing that for the future no simplest scheme of mine should take shape without his sanction. And then he was pacified, though still, while Rampick’s fate was undecided, in a fever of nervousness to keep me within sight and touch.
I came down to dinner, at which Harry was an invited guest, and made up handsomely for my late abstinence. We had a merry meal, though still in some perturbation as to Mr. Sant’s prolonged absence. During the course of it, I suddenly found a huge 21, scrawled on a scrap of paper, lying on the table beside me. A smutty thumb print in one corner informed me at once of the authorship.
“Three times seven, Fancy-Maria?” I said. “That’s a good girl! I knew you’d come round to my point of view in the end.”
She backed, giggling, out of the room; and a heavy sound in the hall which followed, endorsed, so to speak, by a pasty disc on her bustle when she reappeared, showed us that she had sat down in the pudding. But that, fortunately, was when we were at the cheese.
Mrs. Puddephatt was genteel and a little distant in her visitations during the meal; and, finally, with such spectral significance, that Uncle Jenico, though she had not spoken, felt constrained to offer her a sort of apology.
“There’s something behind, you think,” said he. “Well, candidly, there is, but it’s not exactly our secret as yet, my dear woman. When it is, you shall have all the facts.”
She gave a sharp wince, as if suddenly recalled to herself with a pin; and, drawing herself up with her arms folded, gazed at him with stony abstraction.
“Which you was addressing me, Mr. Paxton?” she said. “Would you take the liberty now to repeat yourself?”
Much confused, Uncle Jenico did.
“Ho!” she exclaimed, with decision. “Well, I must believe my ears for the future, I suppose, when they accuses me of curihosity, and pryingness into things which people no doubt has their very good reasons for keeping dark, and not becoming to a decent woman to pollute herself with hearing. I thank you for your consideration, Mr. Paxton, venturing to remark honly as it were uncalled for; me being the last person to worrit herself about her neighbour’s concerns, nor accustomed in London to know so much as the name of the next door, which is a feature of the metropulis neither hunderstood nor hemulated by provincial rustication.”
“I’m very sorry,” began Uncle Jenico. “I really thought——”
“Permit me to say, sir,” she broke in rather shrilly, “that you should not think about a woman at all, save in the way of kindness; and leastways, not to adopt her to your fancies. Suspicion begets the shadows of its own rising, Mr. Paxton.”
And, with these enigmatical words, she left us quite crushed and flabby.
We had hardly recovered, indeed, when steps outside woke us alert, and the next instant Mr. Sant entered.
He looked pale, and worn, and unshaved; but his eyes lightened at sight of me sitting there rested and confident.
“Ha, Dick!” he said. “What a brave constitution, you little dog! Is it fit for another strain yet, do you think?”
He came and put an affectionate arm over my shoulders.
“Is it fit?” he repeated, while Harry and Uncle Jenico stood wondering.
“You’ve nothing else for him at present?” said my uncle suddenly, and almost fiercely. “I’m not going to have him overtired, Sant.”
The rector said “Hush!” and crossing over to see that the door was tight shut, turned to us with his back against it.
“He’s dying,” he said. “It was a stroke, or fit, and the heart is just doing time for a little. The hope of your forgiveness is all, I do believe, that keeps it going.”
He looked intently at us. None of us spoke.
“He knows the truth now, and in his turn confesses everything,” said the clergyman, clearly. “He understands the terrible mistake he made. His brain clears of its delusions in the searching atmosphere of death. If you can forgive him, forgive the great wrong he designed you, he may be saved for God yet. But there is no time to lose.”
I felt that the blood had left my face, making my head swim and my heart beat suffocatingly. This was a hard relapse upon horror. But had we not learned to hit and be hit and nurse no resentment? I pulled myself together.
“Broughton regulations, sir,” I said, with a rather shaky smile. “Come on, Harry. Let’s go and find Mr. Pilbrow, and bring him, too.”
“Stay,” said our tutor, in a very sweet voice. “I’ve fetched him already. He’s waiting outside now. He will abide by your decision, Richard.”
“Then, let him be my dear boy’s deputy to forgive,” spoke up Uncle Jenico, sharply. “There’s no occasion to submit Richard to this fresh ordeal.”
Mr. Sant looked at me.
“He’s got a bad enough road to go, uncle,” I said. “I don’t want to lay up more remorse for myself. We’ll cheer him on his way. Come, Mr. Sant!”
My uncle uttered what sounded like an oath. But he objected no further.
“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum suum!” I heard him mutter viciously; and I ran up, and shook his hand hard, and hurried out.
In the little garden we found Joshua. He understood without a word. He was very sombre; but quiet, and glad, by his glistening eyes, to see me well.
We hastened up the village street. News of our mission had got abroad; vague and speculative as yet, for Jacob had been loyal. But the people we passed looked at us covertly and curiously, scenting strange revelations in the air.
The ex-smuggler lived, was dying, in a little cottage up a squalid alley near the head of the village. It was a poor, dreary hovel, the mere lair of a beast, self-degraded, God-forsaken. His wretched wife, the real scapegoat of his sins, took us in to him.
“He’s dyin’ hard,” she said, in a thin fretful voice; “hard as a lord, wi’ the whole world to lose. He allers was above his station, was Jole. Lived on dreams, he did. I mind the time he promised me a kerridge; and now we’ll be bad set to find a hearse.”
He sat propped up under a frowzy patchwork quilt. A silhouette under broken glass was clutched in one of his hands. The whole man was sunk in upon his frame; his breath, always difficult to him to draw, laboured heavily; his eyes, in their livid halos, were quite unearthly. The woman went to him, and made some show of easing the coverlet on his chest.
“I was telling the gentlemen,” she said, shrilly, “that time was we was to have our kerridge, and now summut less than a hearse must serve.”
He nodded, and moved his ashy lips, and fingered the picture in his hand.
“He’s daft on it,” she said, turning to address us. “’Tis our little Martha, gentlemen, took at the fair before her going. I tell him he needn’t look to join her where she sings among the angels. He should have thought about it earlier, if he wanted to curry favour. Better to pass on what he can get from you, if so be as you’re agreeable.”
I felt a sudden thickness in my throat.
“We forgive you, Mr. Rampick!” I cried out, and hung my head, and turned in dumb entreaty to Mr. Sant. He hurried to the bed-head, and put a gentle manly arm about the dying sinner.
“Do you hear, Rampick?” he said. “As God witnesses, they forgive you.”
The smuggler moved his exhausted hands. Mr. Sant, understanding, lifted them both for him in an attitude of prayer.
“Mr. Pilbrow,” he said softly, “he wants you to hear the truth, if possible, from his own lips. Will you come?”
Joshua moved up, and knelt by the bed. We all heard the broken, gasping confession—
“Tuk you—furhim, I did. ’Twas in the days—afore the—’arthquake. We had our store—whereyou know, in the underground vaults of th’ old abbey. Over above, in the hopen, was a knot of arches—running together, like the bow ribs of a ship; and—set in the pavement under—ina dark corner behind ruins, were a stone movingona pivot—what let down him—as knew the trick—bya flight of steps, to the crypts. The powder—was kep’ handy—just below; and beyond—in th’ old cellars running seaward—till they bruk off—in a choke of ruin, behind the cliff face—lay the teaandbrandy.
“At that time we was a good deal chafed—asone might call it. What with a revenue cutter—and a sloop of war to back it—our last run had been a runfurlife—and—at the end it were touch and go to get—the stuff housed. And in the thick,ofthe excitement, who should be sprung—upon us—as we thought,buta spy. He come from nowhere—it seemed. He was just up there one day poking—andprying—among the ruins—and I see him. For hours he went—sniffing round—while I watched secret. He squinted, and he tapped, and he went—in and out—cautious; and sometimes, he’d stamponthe ground, and listen—furthe holler echer—with his ear down like a dog. Then—by-and-by—off he went,ontiptoe, and I follered, tracken en—tothe Flask. They could tell me nothing—about en there; saveashe’d walked over—by his own statement—from Yokestone. The thing looked as blackashell; and what we done—we done—in justice to ourselves as we thought—because we was druv,toit. I had no handinwhat follered. I wouldn’t have: I never—could abide—the sight of death.
“We was stowing—the last of the cargo—bystarlight, when I see—the man agen. He was setting, behind a stone, his eyes shining—like a cat’s—upon each of us—tradesmen—aswe disappeared, down the hole. We was druv to it—aswe thought—and tuk our plans—cautious and seized en. He was a cat—he was. We bled, a few on us. But we got en down, he screeching—all the time—about some treasure, he was come arter,—and then I left en,andwent up—to keep watch. I couldn’t stand—what I knew was to foller. I’m a peaceable man—by disposition, I am. It was a providence—arter all.FurI hadn’t abin—there not a minute—when all hell bruk—underneath me, and went outwitha roar. The blessed ground—heaved itself—likeso much bed-clothes; the arches—come thumping down, and all—in a noise—asif, the Almighty was a tearing—of His world—to tatters. I were spilt on my face—lucky,furme, I’d moved away to git—out o’ earshot—of the thing, under—and when I come—to my senses, I didn’t know myself—or the place. I crep’ home—dazed-like—to bed;andkep’ it—fura week—hearing of the ’arthquake. But I knew, in my heart, what had happened. Some fool had fired—the powder—andclosed up, the hill. It were so—I was sure—when I come at last—to look. It seemed all fallen,inupon itself. Where the passage—had been—were just, a shipload, of ruin, the half of it turned over—andsunk, into the herth. I never believed—from that moment—tillthe day I seen it, proved otherwise—that so much—asa babby—could find its way agen—intothem shattered vaults. But the Lord—has His way.”
He ended, amidst a deep silence, and sank back exhausted. Joshua got quietly to his feet.
“You are forgiven, Rampick,” he said, “by me and by us all. Make your peace with God.”
Mr. Sant motioned to us.
Silently we filed out, and left the dying and his minister alone.
Wewere all sitting very sombrely in the gloaming, when Mr. Sant came in to us. There was no need to question anything but his face.
“Yes,” he said, “it is over. God give him mercy!”
By common consent we would speak no more on the subject until nature had been restored. There was a scent of battle, not to speak of eggs and bacon, in the air, which inspired us somehow to brace up our loins before the ordeal. Tea was on the table, and we sat down to it, and presently were doing justice to Uncle Jenico’s plentiful fare. Then, refreshed and reinvigorated, we pulled our chairs to the fire, and the ball began.
“Now, Mr. Pilbrow,” opened the rector, cautiously, “what is your next move?”
“To find and search my brother Abel’s body,” answered Joshua, prompt and perfectly cool. “What is yours?”
“To go straight to the squire, and put the whole matter into the hands of the law,” said Mr. Sant.
“You will give me a day or two first?”
“No!”
“One day?”
“No.”
Joshua scrambled to his feet, and went to and fro.
“This is intolerable, sir. It is my brother who was done to death, and the cause is mine.”
“It is the cleansing of my parish, sir, and the cause is mine.”
“I must secure my treasure first, sir.”
“Your treasure be——!”
I am sorry to say Mr. Sant went the whole length of the expression.
“Your parish,” said Joshua, viciously, “has postponed its cleansing six years. A couple of days longer won’t spoil it.”
“It would spoil my conscience in my own eyes, Mr. Pilbrow. I do not compound a felony, now I know of it, for an hour.”
“Then go at once, sir, to be consistent, and, to satisfy your conscience, defraud this orphan, your pupil, of his just indemnification.”
The clergyman rose to his feet.
“Indemnification? For what, sir?” he said, very sternly.
“For the loss of his fortune, of his father, sir,” said Joshua, as resolutely; “who, to vindicate the truth, died and left him bankrupt of his legitimate expectations.”
Uncle Jenico, shifting nervously in his seat, put in a pacifying word. The truth is, the dear old fellow had been in a suppressed state of excitement ever since our visitor’s first dark allusion to his mission on these coasts had begun to shadow itself out into some form and substance.
“Sant,” he said, “I think you must be reasonable. We don’t stand first in this matter. The treasure——”
“Nonsense!” interrupted the clergyman loudly. “Do you credit a word of the stuff!”
“To be sceptical without knowledge—the boast of fools!” cried Joshua, repeating himself.
“Hush!” said Uncle Jenico. “Sant, hadn’t we better first learn from Mr. Pilbrow how he proposes to act in event of the—the clew really coming to light?”
The rector was silent.
“You are an adept in matters of conscience, sir,” said the bookseller, bitterly and rather violently. “There was no question of hurry when you wanted to use us to help you smuggle a soul into salvation. I won’t say that, if I’d foreseen your intention, I should have postponed my forgiveness till I’d gone to the hill and verified the man’s words; but I do say that in acting on a generous impulse, without a thought of possible consequences to myself, I was playing a better Christian part than you, who had this damning sequel in your mind all the time.”
Harry, very restless, cried out here sensibly enough—
“Aren’t we rather fighting in the dark? It mayn’t be Mr. Pilbrow’s brother that was the supposed spy, after all, in which case there’s no question of treasure. I think he’s the right to go and see first, before any steps are taken. I beg your pardon, sir.”
Mr. Sant sighed, his brow lightened, and he patted the boy’s shoulder approvingly.
“Good fellow!” he said. “No doubt it would be best to clear the air of this fantastic stuff, before we begin to set our house in order.”
Then he turned to Joshua genially.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Pilbrow. I was betrayed into some unwarrantable heat. I confess we look at this matter from different points of view; but that is not to say that mine is necessarily the right one. Indeed, you have given me a lesson in Christianity, to which I seem to make, I admit, a scurvy return.”
The little bookseller bowed, grimly still, but without answer.
“If then,” said the clergyman, biting under the irony that would make itself felt in his words, “you find this clew—find this marvellous deposit of wealth—there are laws of treasure-trove: you cannot think for a moment that I will, that I can, counsel secrecy—allow Richard to share in the profits of a felony——”
“Felony, sir!” cried Joshua.
“Is not that what a hoodwinking of the law would amount too? You agree with me, Mr. Paxton?”
“Yes, yes—O yes, of course!” assented Uncle Jenico, faintly.
“Harkee, Mr. Parson!” cried Joshua, in a heat. “I throw the word in your teeth. I am no suborner, sir, no, nor glorifier of my own ignorance neither. Be sure I don’t know the law better than you, before you tax me in advance with cheating it.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Sant, smiling. “I don’t know the law on the subject, I confess.”
“Then take this, sir, for your rebuke,” said the other, sourly; “and be less apt—for a clergyman—to damn without book. The law of England—Idoknow it, and have reason to—takes its definition of treasure-trove from the jurist Paulus, who lays down that ‘vetus depositio pecuniae cujus dominus ignoratur,’ that is to say, ancient concealed treasure of which the lord of the soil is ignorant, becomes, being discovered, the property of the Crown, if presumptively deposited by some one who at the time intended to reclaim it.”
“Exactly,” put in Mr. Sant. “And yet, in the face of——”
“Will you permit me?” interrupted the bookseller, with a manner of most frosty sarcasm. “For all your cloth, sir, I would not have you on a jury, lest you stopped the case before hearing the other side.”
The rector muttered an apology. He really did look abashed.
“I say,” repeated Joshua, “that the Crown, to prove its title to treasure-trove, must prove the depositor’s intention to reclaim first. Where that is wanting, orwhere an intention to abandon can be shown—as when the goods were thrown away in a panic, or for other reason, to be rid of them—the treasure remains wholly and solely in the possession of the finder.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Sant, plucking up heart. “And what benefit is that alternative to you?”
“What benefit! To me!” cried Joshua. “Have you heard my story, sir? Did you listen to it? Did you hear me quote the man Vining’s confession that he had abandoned the price of his iniquity, and cast it from him?”
Mr. Sant reflected. He was getting interested, I was sure, after all.
“’Tis a subtle legal point, I think,” said he. “I foresee, anyhow, fine complications; even if you had evidence—which you have not—of this intention to abandon.”
“Which I have not,” repeated Joshua, “at present. And which I shall never have, to the right effect, if your delicate conscience can forestall me.”
“You are unnecessarily sarcastic, sir,” said the clergyman, gravely. “You must give me the credit of my intentions. This Augean stable in our midst—it must be cleaned out as soon as recognized, or I become an accomplice in its condition. Why should any prompt summoning of the sweeper—of our legal Hercules—affect your position?”
“Because, sir,” said Joshua, vigorously, “he would, a thousand to one, lay bare, in so drastic a process, the golden deposit underneath, and so rob me of any title to its discovery.”
Mr. Sant grunted uneasily.
“The better title is certainly yours,” he conceded.
I believe there was enough of the imaginative boy yet left in him to thrill and respond to this exciting legend of gold. Uncle Jenico felt the change, and fell back, glistening, and softly rubbing his hands together.
“Mr. Pilbrow,” said the clergyman, suddenly and decisively, “will you tell me plainly what you propose?”
“I propose,” said Joshua, as instantly, “to visit, and identify, and search the remains of my unhappy brother to-morrow; I propose to take advantage of the letter which, I am convinced, will be found on them, and which, by every right, is legally mine, to secure the treasure. After that, sir, let in your Hercules with a fire-hose, if you will. I shall be content for my part. Possession is eleven points in the law, and for the twelfth I will go to pitch-and-toss with it.”
“Sant, that is certainly fair!” cried out Uncle Jenico, impulsively, and immediately fell abashed.
A longish silence ensued.
“Very well,” said our dear rector at last. “I will agree to defer my action till after to-morrow; but on condition that, once having secured his wonderful haul, Mr. Pilbrow openly challenges the law to deprive him of it. It is buying a pig in a poke, I believe; but I must guard myself by insisting.”
He uttered a rather enjoying laugh, which he tried to make ironic.
“That’s capital,” said Uncle Jenico. “You don’t object to the condition, Mr. Pilbrow?”
“No,” said Joshua, shortly. “I ask for complete secrecy in the mean time—that is all. That man’s wife——”
“She will say nothing,” said Mr. Sant. “The honour of her poor rogue is safe with her.”
Then we fell excitedly to discussing ways and means. The embargo once off my conscience, I was eager to join in the search. But here Uncle Jenico was quite absolute and imperative in vetoing my taking any part in it. He would not, on any condition whatever, have me descend into the hill again. I was disappointed; but he was unshakable, and in the end I had to submit.
It was finally arranged that Mr. Sant, Joshua, and Harry should meet early on the following morning, and complete their expedition, if possible, before the village was awake. And, on this understanding, at a latish hour we parted.
The next day was Christmas eve. I had never known one to drag so wearily. Uncle Jenico and I were up betimes, and making a show of following with serenity our customary occupations. But it was all a transparent pretence. I took no more interest in my books, nor he in his new invention, than if they had been prison tasks. We just perspired for the return of one or other of the party to put an end to our intolerable suspense; and that was the beginning and end of it.
At last a shadow danced on the window, and the door opened, and Harry hurried in. In the first sight of his face we read momentous news. I could hardly control myself as I said—
“Well?”
He had shut the door behind him, and stood there, breathing quickly, his eyes like white pebbles.
“Harry,” I whispered, “wasit Abel?”
“Yes.”
“And the letter was there?”
“Yes—in his pocket. He—I could hardly look—he seemed to fall to pieces.”
“And—and it said where?”
“Yes. You’ll never believe.”
“Where?”
“In the well.”
“In the——”
“In the well. What fools we were never to think of that before! Of course it stood at the end of the crypts once—the most natural place for him to throw them into.”
His “them” seemed to hit me in the throat. I had forgotten about the murdered priest. I stood gaping like an idiot, lost in the plain marvel of the thing. I had forgotten Uncle Jenico, till his voice, speaking in a queer, shaky way, recalled me to the thought of him.
“My wrench!” he said. “They will have sunk to the bottom. We shall have to pull it down!”
“That’s just what we’re going to do,” said Harry “to-night, after every one’s asleep.”
Thevillage was long asleep when at last we issued forth, as blamelessly agitated a body of brigands as ever trod the corridors of night. We had taken our measures with infinite precaution, so that not a hint of our designs should leak out; yet still we had delayed, sitting, like the party in the parlour, “all silent and all damned,” while Dunberry sunk into deep and deeper unconsciousness of our conspiracy in its midst. We were assembled, in fact, in the rector’s study, Joshua, Mr. Sant himself, my uncle, and we two; and there we stuck, spelling out the blessed quarters, until the chimes of the school clock, coming in a flurry out of silence, called up a single rebukeful stroke from Time, and subsided upon it. So late as this, an hour after midnight, had we resolved to linger, to make assurance double sure; and at the sound, with a great pouf! of relief, we were on our feet and tingling to depart.
There had been no longer any question, of course, since our learning where the treasure was, or should be, concealed, of my foregoing my share in the attempt to recover it. No possible peril, within reason, could attach to this purely open-air sport; though, indeed, Uncle Jenico had made, even now, some presumptive risk to me the excuse for his joining us in the expedition.
It was a question, at this last, if he or Mr. Sant were the more excited. Our dear comical tutor and sceptic still made a show, it is true, of subscribing to a madness in order to humour a party of lunatics under his charge; but this affectation, I do believe, took in none of us. Was it not he, in solemn fact, who had insisted upon the necessity of this postponement of the foray until the small hours? Was it not he who had manœuvred to enwrap our plans in a profound mist of secrecy? Was it not he who had appointed the present rendezvous with a masterly eye to contingencies? As to wit: (1) His house stood remote, and we could reach the sea-front from the back of it, without ever touching the village; (2) A French window gave from his study upon the garden to the rear; (3) There was a little hand-cart for luggage in a shed in this garden, which cart offered itself apt to a dual purpose—(A) to convey down to the shore a pick and a shovel, together with Uncle Jenico’s colossal wrench, which, under pretence of its being submitted to some test, had already been brought to the rectory; (B) to serve as vehicle for the carrying back of the treasure.
On the top of all which, I ask you, was Mr. Sant the incredulous humourist he professed to be?
Whateverhethought, however, Uncle Jenico was patently and irresistibly the enthusiast of the undertaking. He stumped along, dear soul, his face one moon of hilarity. The adventure was to his very heart. To be called upon, insuchan enterprise, to advertise the merits ofsuchan invention, his own! It was unspeakable—beyond expectation! He laughed constantly, holding my arm, and rebuking me for being a sluggard when I tried to regulate his pace lest he upset himself.
Harry trundled the cart, making the softest track he could manage, under the hill towards the Gap. It was a brilliant moonlit night, with a singing wind. We had brought lanterns; but had no need of them. It was near as bright as day, indeed, and we sped rapidly on our course, never having need to pause or pick our way till we reached the sands. The great shaft of the well, when we stood over against it, seemed to topple towards us, tragically anticipating its doom. The sight of it, so lonely and so ancient in this moon-drowned solitude, thrilled me with a sort of pity. It had stood so long, baffling the winds and tides, foregathering with such generations of dead and departed ghosts! And now at last man’s cupidity was scheming to compass the final ruin of what Nature had been impotent to wreck. Ah! a more fatal force than any storm! the one against which no monument, however venerable, is proof.
If the others were touched by this spirit of regret, they were sensible enough to subordinate it to the inevitably practical. While I was, literally, mooning, they had already lifted the wrench from the barrow, and were busy, under Uncle Jenico’s directions, getting it into position on the sand.
I can only hastily elucidate the idea of this machine. Pinned to a sort of frame, or trestle, which was anchored all round with stout grapnels, and shored up in front against a bracket, was a ship’s steering-wheel, which the inventor had picked up cheap at a marine auction. A good rope (length indefinite), to be passed round the subject of the proposed haulage, and its two ends then carried to the wheel and clamped, one on each side, to its rim, completed the design. So disposed, nothing remained but to turn the wheel by its spokes, when the rope would garrotte the object, and, mechanically contracting of itself, induce a forward strain.
Now, I know little about scientific values; but certainly in this case the result justified the means, as you shall hear.
We had got all in place but the rope; and then suddenly Mr. Sant drew himself up, scratching his head in an unclerical manner.