“Whereabouts is it to be passed round?” he said.
“O!” answered Uncle Jenico: “as high up on the shaft as one can reach.”
“My good man,” cried the rector sarcastically, “do you really imagine we are going to haul that thing over by tugging at its base, or near it?”
“It is tottering already. It is laid bare to its lowest course. These boys examined and proved it!” answered Uncle Jenico.
Nevertheless, I could see he was taken by surprise and dismayed.
“That may be,” said Mr. Sant, “but——”
He paused, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed out comically.
“O, it will never do!” he said. “We must give this insanity a better chance. By hook or by crook, we must get the thing fixed up near the top.”
I started forward.
“I’ll carry the rope up, sir. I know the way. Harry and I climbed it once before.”
“No,” cried Uncle Jenico, sharply and decisively. “I won’t have you go on any account, Richard!”
“Then it’s to be me!” cried Harry; and, as I muttered discontentedly, trying to block his way, he evaded me and ran for the shaft. Mr. Sant, trailing the rope, followed him, and in a moment they were under its shadow.
I chafed, watching them: but my relative was inexorable. And, indeed, to speak truth, there was considerably more risk in the venture than formerly before the storm. Harry, however, accomplished his part in safety; and, while he still dwelt aloft, holding the loop in place, Mr. Sant captured the two ends of the rope, and came running towards us with them. In a moment we had pulled them taut and clamped them in place to the wheel. And then we hailed Harry to come down, which he did, rather with a run, so afraid was he of missing any detail of the sport.
Uncle Jenico had already given a half-turn to the wheel, in order to clinch the hold of the rope; and now he stood in a tense eagerness, dwelling on the psychologic moment. He held, by right of patent, the larboard spokes; Mr. Sant, the port. The dear old man was so wrought up out of feebleness, that I was apprehensive of the part he insisted upon taking in the manipulation of his own design. He would not be denied, however; and who could have had the heart to disappoint him? Was not this the very first time that his genius for invention promised him a harvest of gold? He took a long breath, and tightened his hold on the spokes.
Joshua stood rigid, awaiting the result. Harry and I shook on wires, staring from the wrench to the shaft, and hardly stifling the exclamations that rose to our lips. It was a solemn moment.
“Go!” cried Uncle Jenico; and the wheel spun a little, stiffened, and began to cry ominously.
Something cracked; thank Heaven it was only Uncle Jenico’s braces! The old man tugged and puffed, wrestling with his task. Suddenly he staggered—the wheel seemed to give and spin away from him—and he was almost on his face. In the same moment I fancied the shadow of a night-bird had crossed my vision—and I looked; and where had been the well was nothing. It was fallen prone upon the sand, so wearily, so softly, that in that humming wind no sound of the concussion had reached us.
Hardly suppressing a cry of triumph, we dropped everything, and raced for the place. The shaft in falling had broken into three pieces, of which the middle one was in a proportion of two-fourths. The fracture nearest the base was only three or so inches in width; but the top fragment was quite detached, and tilted over a little away from the neck.
Where the shaft had stood was surprisingly little scar in the ground—nothing to see, in fact, but a pyramid of sand, which had run from the stuffed base of the well in its parting. Upon this we flung ourselves, scrambling and scraping like children about a burst sugar cask. We clawed, as badgers claw, throwing the draff behind us. A hole opened under our furious assault, and sunk, and deepened—and revealed nothing. We ran for the tools, and picked and dug like madmen. Presently Mr. Sant threw down his shovel.
“We are feet below the well bottom. Are you satisfied at last, Mr. Pilbrow?” he said, really in a quite quarrelsome way. He had been cheated, he felt, of the fruits of his own condescension.
“No,” snarled Joshua, “I’m not. Here was mud, perhaps, once. It was a loaded box of iron—we know that. It may have sunk far.”
Mr. Sant laughed offensively. The best of us bear awakening from engaging dreams badly. As for me, I had desisted from working when he did, and was sitting disconsolately on the lower part of the shaft, fumbling with my fingers in the fracture.
All in a moment the blood seemed to rush to my heart, making me gasp. I jumped to my feet.
“Here it is!” I screeched. “I’ve found it! I felt it!”
My fingers, burrowing through the crack into a choke of sand, had touched upon the iron-bound corner of a box.
They were all up and swarming about me directly. One by one, quite cavalier to each other in their eagerness to dive and feel, they exclaimed and fell back, Some people say that colours are indiscernible by moonlight. I can answer for the flush which suffused our rector’s cheek as he looked at Joshua.
But it was Uncle Jenico who commanded the situation.
“We must rope this lowest piece, and pull it away from the other,” he cried, full of bustle and excitement. “What a providential thought was this wrench of mine! Hey, my boys? Ha-ha!”
It was brilliantly the obvious course, and at the word we were all scurrying to put it into execution, Uncle Jenico directing us in a perfect and quite lovable rapture of self-importance. He and I, when the rope had been readjusted to its new position, hurried to manipulate the machine, while the others remained to watch the result of our efforts on the huge pipe of masonry. We seized the spokes.
“Right!” said my uncle, with a laugh of joyous confidence.
Now, I don’t know if the first test had amounted to no more than a little soft extra persuasion applied to an already tottering article. I know only thatthatsuccess was not to be repeated.
“Right!” said Uncle Jenico; and the wheel turned under our hands, tightened, and began to scream as before, only infinitely more distressfully. We strained our mightiest, putting our backs into it.
“It gives, I think,” said Uncle Jenico, in a suffocating voice.
And with the word, an explosive lash whistled by my ear, the machine bounded and pitched, and there were we rolling on the sand amidst a mad wreck of everything.
We were neither of us hurt. Uncle Jenico sat up ruefully. Mr. Sant came running to us across the sand.
“Anybody killed?” he panted, as he rushed up.
Nobody, by God’s mercy! It was the nearest shave. If I had had a whisker, it would have been shorn off, I think. The rope had snapped like a piece of string, and we were right in the path of its recoil.
“Anyhow, I suppose we moved the thing a little?” said Uncle Jenico.
“Not an inch,” was the answer.
“Eh!” cried my uncle. “I can’t understand. It must have severed itself on a sharp stone, I suppose.”
“That was the case, without doubt,” said the clergyman, kindly. “Well, there’s nothing for us now but to take pick and shovel, and dig out the pith of the thing. It will take a little longer, that’s all.”
Indeed, we found the other two, once assured of our safety, already hard at the job. It proved a tough one, for the silt inside from long pressure was grown as compact as mortar, and every fragment of it had to be chipped off and pulled away—a difficult matter, when from the depth of our boring it was no longer possible to wield the pick. However, we got through it, taking turns at the tools, and working now by lantern light, for the end of the great trunk was turned from the face of the moon.
Suddenly Harry, when he and I were once more hammering and shovelling together, uttered a stifled sound, and scrambled up, so quickly as half to fracture his skull against the roof of the tube. Then, holding his head, and squatting out backwards, he gingerly raked after him a little white thing—a human bone.
I scuttled to join him, and we all looked at one another.
“We’re coming to it,” muttered Mr. Sant; and almost on the instant, as we plunged in again to resume our burrowing, the end was wrought. A slab of concreted stuff, falling detached to our renewed blows and tilting outwards, let down an avalanche of loosened sand, and, slipping on its torrent—what?
We did not wait to discriminate. The dead, it seemed to us only, had come sliding and chuckling to meet us half way, with his, “Here we are again!” like a clown.
“It’s there!” gasped Harry, as we stood up outside. “Some one else must fetch it—not me: I won’t.”
Joshua dived on the instant: we heard him scuffling and chattering inside. And then he emerged.
“The rope!” he cried like a madman. “Fetch it—a bit of it—anything!”
I ran off, unknotted the shorter length from the wreck of the machine, and returned with it to him. He disappeared again into the tunnel, drawing the slack after him, and in a minute reissued, unkempt and agitated beyond measure, and disposed us all to haul. Without a question we obeyed, and, at his word, set our shoulders to a simultaneous tug. Slowly the capture responded to our efforts, and drew out heavily into the open—a great iron-ribbed box, with the upper half of a human skeleton chained to it by the neck.
Joshua seized the pick, and, before Mr. Sant could stop him, had parted at a blow the skull from its vertebræ. It leapt and settled, grinning up at us from the sand.
“That was basely done,” said our rector. “Take your spoil, sir. These poor remains are my concern.”
Joshua had thrown away the tool, and was standing, as if petrified, looking down on the chest. It might have measured a yard by two feet, and some two feet and a half in depth. The wood, under the corroded clamps of iron, was spongey, half-eaten by water, and, half-eaten, preserved in sand. But of the immense antiquity of the whole there was no question.
“We must secure what of these bones we can,” said Mr. Sant. “Well, Dick? Well, Harry?”
His quiet appeal overcame our repugnance. Once more we grovelled and groped in the bowels of the well. It was a gruesome task; but we fulfilled it. Excitement, no doubt—an eagerness to be done with it, and so earn the sweeter reward of adventure, stimulated us. At the end we had found, and gathered into a heap outside, all evidence that remained to mortality of that ancient deed of murder. It made one’s brain swim to look down on this wonderful tragic salvage of the centuries. It was all true, then—all true! And Destiny had made us her instruments in this unspeakable resurrection!
All this time Joshua, and even my uncle, had remained as if tranced. Now, suddenly, the former raised his voice in a shrill ecstatic cry.
“Poor Abel! poor fool! Come, let us load up! What are we waiting for?”
It was evident he was wrought far beyond any susceptibility to moral warning or rebuke. The rector perceived this, I think, and submitted himself to circumstance.
The truck was hurried up, and the chest placed upon it. It needed our united efforts to raise the thing; and at our every stagger Joshua sawed out a little jubilant laugh. We gathered the tools and the ropes and the ruin of the wrench, and piled all on top. Then we disposed the broken skeleton amidst, and started on our way home.
It was a hard pull now, though we all gave a hand to it. Three o’clock had struck, when at last, exhausted and agitated, we drew the little cart cautiously up to the study window, and unloaded it of its weightest burden, leaving the rest temporarily outside while we examined our haul.
The box had been stoutly fastened and secured; but the wood being shrunk away from its clamps rendered our task an easy one. A little wrenching with forceps, and the whole lid came apart, sinking upon the floor with a dusty clang. And then——
Sleeking and glinting through a dust of perished rags—piled to the throat, and kept burnished by the sand that had filtered in—a glut of gold!
Gold in rouleaux and ingots; gold in sovereigns and ryals; gold in angels and rose-nobles—near all of Henry the Seventh’s and Henry the Eighth’s reigns, and of incalculable antiquarian, apart from their intrinsic, value; gold in patens; gold and more in a jewelled ciborium; chased gold and ivory in an exquisite chalice with handles, and little queer figures of saints in rich enamel; gold in such wealth as we had never dreamt.
The vessels had been wrapped, it appeared, in soft skins of suckling-calf vellum, which had long crumpled into a floury meal, keeping all bright as blossoms preserved in sand, and easy to dust and blow away, We felt fairly drunk with the sight, as we gazed down spell-bound into that brimming reservoir of all wealth.
And then suddenly Mr. Sant had fallen upon his knees.
“O Lord!” he prayed, in a low half-agonized tone; “teach thy servant to deal rightly with this, converting it to fair uses, and justifying himself of Thy generosity.”
A little dead silence followed; and at the end Joshua bowed his head, and raising his hands clasped together, cried twice, in a firm voice—
“Amen!”
And so at last was consummated that wonderful and tragic tale of mystery and fatality, which had begun for me in the old court house of Ipswich. Truly, other things than hanging and wiving go by destiny.
Therewas a sequel, which I must relate. Stories of recovered treasure, if true like this, do not always end with the emotional unities and the final chapter. Morning does not always bring a confirmation of pious resolves. A little sourness of digestion sometimes impairs the glamour of last night’s feast of righteousness. That is the deuce of it.
Now, I will not say that Joshua repudiated in the slightest reality the sense of that “Amen” of his; but, once awake and restored to the full realization of his possession, he certainly did try to back out of his undertaking to challenge the law to deprive him of it. Not unscrupulously—not in the least. He merely strove to convince Mr. Sant as to the actual letter of that law, and, consequently, of the Quixotry of calling upon it to establish his claim—probably at considerable expense to both sides—to do what was already, by its own decreeing, indubitably his.
But he was entirely unsuccessful. The rector, seeing in this only a personal obstructive policy, designed to shackle that main moral question of the cleansing of his Augean stable, utterly declined to forego his bond, and wrung a promise out of my reluctant relative himself that I should not be allowed to touch a penny of this treasure until it could be proved well-gotten.
So Joshua, forced at last to give way, though with a very ill grace, sent in his notice to the Ipswich coroner.
In the mean time the process of cleansing was carried through with all despatch. The hill was cleared, at some risk, of its tragic impedimenta, which—after a jury had sat on them, and brought in a verdict of accidental death—were consigned to rest in the churchyard—Abel’s, with some distinction, in a separate grave. The whole story was wrung out at the inquest, and aired, and hung up on the lines for gossips to find holes in; and gradually the village—with the entire country-side, to boot—subsided from its fever heat of excitement, which was only to suffer a temporary recrudescence in thecause célebrewhich came presently to provide the epilogue.
One day, a tax-cart, a coroner’s clerk, a posse of insurance-office firemen, and a couple of cavalrymen from the barracks to escort the whole, appeared before the rectory, and, removing the treasure-box, well encased and sealed, from the clerical strong-room—where it had lain perdu since its discovery—mounted that and Joshua in the vehicle, and incontinently drove away with both.
We saw him go, sitting darkly on the top of his coffin, like a dyspeptic Jack Sheppard being jogged off to Tyburn; and thereafter for a desperate week or more heard or saw nothing of him. Then one day, a great trumpeting and cheering in the street brought us all out pell-mell; and there he was, worshipful in the repute of fabulous riches, being carried shoulder high.
He had won his cause; and through whom do you think? Why, Mr. Quayle. The little Q.C. accompanied the procession, and shared in its triumph. Joshua had alighted on him, quite accidentally, in Ipswich, and revealing to him everything—not without an ironic satisfaction, one may be sure, in returning at this eleventh hour a Rowland for his Oliver—had engaged him to conduct his case. And he had done it, and won it; and the treasure was ours.
“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said the little man, meeting me again with delight. “Richard, I am rebuked. I once said you were the son of your father, but not so good a lawyer. I withdraw the riservation, entirely. You could see further than some of us into a stone wall. To think now that your friend spoke the truth through ut all! I’ll never trust the evidence of me nine senses again. Five, is ut? Well, I was thinking of the Muses, I suppose. ’Tis a weakness I have, and will prove my undoing in the end. Never you bother about the girls, Richard. They spoil your law.”
I have only a word or two to add. I am afraid to declare what that box of gold realized. The sum, anyhow, was so large as to enrich us all. A great part of its treasures was distributed into the cabinets of collectors, the beautiful chalice finding its way, I believe, at an immense figure, into the museum of a famous cardinal and virtuoso in Rome. From the total proceeds Joshua handsomely presented to Harry the equivalent of a comfortable income, which was the means of helping my dear friend to the very satisfactory position to which he attained a few years later in London. For me he held the residue nominally in trust till I was come of age, when he proposed to establish himself and Uncle Jenico as pensioners on my bounty. The question was one merely of terms. We made, in fact, our common home together until the end, even after I had so far neglected Mr. Quayle’s advice as to bother my head very much indeed about one girl, and to wive her into the bargain.
We had left Dunberry soon after the events narrated above, taking Mrs. Puddephatt with us for housekeeper, and not forgetting Fancy-Maria. For some time, I understand, after our departure, the famous crypts were a gazing-stock, attracting so many visitors that in the end Mr. Sant’s dearest wish was realized, and a popular watering-place established on the foundations of the old smugglers’ haunt. But long before that the vaults had been closed, as unsafe, by councillors’ authority; and at this day only a deep depression in the soil above denotes the spot under which the tragedy of Abel Pilbrow was enacted.
So the old order changes—all, that is to say, but Uncle Jenico, who is engaged at this moment, very bent and white, in demonstrating to my little boy the method of his latest machine for solving the riddle of perpetual motion.
THE END
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g.drowzily/drowsily, schoolhouse/school-house, barn-door/barn door, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Assorted punctuation corrections.
[Part I/Chapter I]
Change “mamma said we mustrestrench, and cried” toretrench.
[Part II/Chapter VIII]
“watch him fattening, andenjyhim in anticipation” toenjoy.
[Part II/Chapter X]
“He stood before me,droppingwet, a most wretched” todripping.
[Part II/Chapter XV]
“It was a brilliantmoonlightnight” tomoonlit.
[End of Text]